Chapter 3

Chapter

Three

C hristian shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the illicit images he had of Aliya and his nose of her aroma, but it was no good. The longer he trailed in her shadow, weaving through the bazaar crowds, the more he became convinced the scent he kept catching was the unmistakable perfume of a woman’s arousal—sweet and spicy.

What the hell was he doing here? Apparently, the duties of being Fariq’s second-in-command were as varied as the day and the man’s mood. He was used to doing everything—overseeing the books, keeping inventory, and making sure the ship was fully stocked with anything that might be needed. He bought guns, negotiated deals with warlords, drug cartels, and the secret agents of one ruling country, only to betray them at Fariq’s whim to another. He hired, fired, and buried the mercenaries they lost when they had a run-in with either their enemies or the Wild Mustang Security Firm. In other words, he managed the minutia. And now he was walking through a third-world bazaar with the pampered baby sister of the world’s most-wanted criminal, wishing she was his woman, and they were on vacation, so he could take her back to their hotel room, strip her naked, and have at her until she was screaming his name in need and surrender.

She was too beautiful for her own good. Every time she glanced back over her shoulder, as if to check that he was still there, then frown at him, he wanted to draw her into his arms and kiss her pouty mouth until it was bruised and swollen. Then he wanted to go to work on her lower lips, leaving them the same way before parting them and thrusting his way into her. He wanted to bury himself balls deep, then hammer her into submission—right here in the open, back at that non-existent hotel, or tucked into the relative privacy of some doorway out of this blazing hot sun… He honestly didn’t care where he had her, so long as she became his.

She never should have knelt between Fariq’s feet. She should have knelt at his , placed her pleading hand on his thigh. He wanted her between his legs, on her back beneath him, and on her knees as he pounded her from behind—first her pussy, then her ass. God, he wanted to fuck her ass—preferably after he’d turned it a deep shade of red.

Not that he intended to neglect her pussy or her mouth. He wanted to walk into her room to find her kneeling on the floor, head bowed, legs spread, and hands resting on her thighs with her palms turned up. He wanted her to submit, to present herself to him for his taking and use—any way, any time, and anywhere he wanted.

He had to stop doing this.

Hell, what he had to do was get back to the boat and make use of one of the professionals Fariq kept on the yacht to appease the men, a tall, chubby blonde as far from being Aliya’s type as he could find. Except he already knew, denied the one he wanted, he might as well fist his own cock in the shower as fuck anyone else—both would be equally unsatisfying.

When the hell had this happened? When had he developed feelings… no, not feelings—he couldn’t afford feelings. When had he become infatuated with this woman? She was Fariq’s sister! The man was a villain—every bit as deadly as he was rich.

Like he himself was any better, Christian scoffed. He’d been with Fariq, what… six years now? Already his picture was up on the Hague’s list of most-wanted criminals, right next to Fariq’s. He’d broken noses and fingers and shot people. Violence had become a constant companion. Hell, he couldn’t even fuck a woman anymore without first tying her up or putting his hand on her throat, so he could see that little spark of panic tint her pleasure when he squeezed, edging her, and bringing her right to the brink of coming, over and over again, without once letting her fall.

He liked that. He liked being in control of a woman’s orgasms. He liked giving little nips of his teeth, little pinches, and slaps that grew in frequency and force until the woman beneath him was gasping, writhing, and completely unable to distinguish the difference between the pleasure he gave her and the pain. He honestly couldn’t tell if he’d always had this proclivity or if he’d simply grown into it. Fifty Shades of Fariq, filling up the dark side of his soul.

By rights, Aliya should have been just as black on the inside as he was, as her brother couldn’t help but make the people he came in contact with on a daily basis. Yet as Christian watched her pause over the purses at yet another vendor stall, he couldn’t see a lick of darkness anywhere in her. She seemed so… pure, not a description he was used to applying to anyone these days. No, Aliya was anything but dark, and though his mind kept trying to conjure her as the world’s most alluring temptress—a shockingly innocent one—spoiled and in need of a good spanking, but innocent, nonetheless.

She needed to get away from her brother before he turned her the way Christian had been turned. Or before Fariq found that perfect business deal to use her for. Christian felt his gut clench. Was that what Fariq had planned for her? Had he raised her to use as a prize for some soulless warlord? Or maybe the whispers on the ship were right, and Fariq was grooming her for himself. Sick, but Fariq had called her his most precious possession.

Maybe she was adopted. Christian trailed in her shadow, watching her. Not only would that explain how she could be related to Fariq and still be so na?ve, but it would also explain how she could seemingly have no concept of the money she was spending. At every stall they came to, she bought something—hair ribbons, veils, a pair of plain white canvas shoes.

It might even explain her guilelessness. At one point, when she thought he wasn’t watching, she’d slipped an old beggar man some coins. She’d leaned down and whispered to him before pressing something in his hands, glancing back at Christian over her shoulder as she’d done it, as though afraid she might get caught being kind. Considering her brother, he supposed that wasn’t an unreasonable fear. Fariq could be generous, but usually only if there was something to be gained. Under these same circumstances, it was hard to imagine her brother would have approved.

Like so many markets in the poverty-stricken countries where Fariq so liked to hide, the streets here were full of panhandlers. Thieves and conmen ran rife through the compounded earthen alleyways and along the rooftops. They had sharp eyes, capable of spotting a mark from blocks away. Certainly, they saw Aliya. Or maybe it was the sparkle of money being dropped from her hands into that withered, grateful old man’s, but they came from everywhere after that—the poverty-stricken and lazy alike, children forced to scrounge for whatever they could get to help feed their families… if they still had families. Once upon a time, the sight and plight of them had bothered the hell out of him. He remembered passing out money to as many as he could afford and being swarmed just like she was now.

He felt like an ass, shoving them out of the way and shouting in Darija for them to get back, but this was how kidnappings started. He wouldn’t just be damned if he had to go back to Fariq alone because he’d lost Aliya—he’d be dead.

He managed to make his way through the rabble and dispersed the beggars enough to catch up with Aliya, who’d somehow managed to slip through the thick of the crowd until she was several stalls away.

“Don’t do that again. Keep your money in your damn pocket,” he told her, grasping her by the upper arm.

“I’m shopping. People spend money when they shop. Besides, you’re not the boss of me,” she taunted, wrenching her arm away. Glaring at him with eyes that openly challenged him to stop her, she walked away with her chin held high.

That look was at once both mildly adorable and beyond aggravating, mostly because she was right. He had no business telling her what to do, but oh, did his palm itch to show her exactly what he could be the boss of if he was of the mind to be. The image of her tearful face, pleading with him to stop spanking her, that she’d be good, flashed through his mind, leaving him once more rubbing his mouth in frustration and ignoring his throbbing dick as he followed behind her.

The vast majority of merchants crowded along the catacomb of narrow streets that made up the bazaar held their shops under cloth canopies, their wares laid out on blankets and in baskets on the ground. For them, the line between poverty and feeding their kids at night lay solely in the number of sales they made each day, and they could spot a sympathetic heart every bit as easily as the thieves could. They threw themselves into hawking their wares for her inspection, making his job that much harder. He did his best to keep an eye on everyone around them, behind them, on every stall that Aliya visited, and the incredible swell of the crowd as it pushed like a living thing, constantly trying to get between them. Everywhere he looked, someone was looking at her.

Of course, they were—she was beautiful. Whether they watched because of her looks or her money, he had no idea, but they were staring as she moved from market stall to market stall, seemingly unaware of the attention revolving around her.

The fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Something was off. He didn’t know what, but it felt wrong, and… shit, Aliya was too far ahead of him again. Damnit. He had to push through people to catch up, and still, small as she was, she slipped effortlessly through the dense market crowd. She didn’t even look back when he called for her to wait.

“Shit,” he muttered.

All by herself, she was like herding a clowder of uncooperative cats. For the life of him, he couldn’t seem to keep up with her. The moment he glanced away to keep a watchful eye on those around them, she was gone. He spotted her at the spice merchant, buying cinnamon sticks, but by the time he got there, she’d vanished, only to reappear several heart-pounding minutes later at a clothing stall two stalls down.

“Aliya! Goddamn it!” he bellowed. “Wait for me!”

She stopped at the towels, the toys, and he finally caught up with her when she paused to chat with a man who let her pet the monkey on his shoulder and feed it bites of fruit.

Grabbing her arm, the minute he was close enough, Christian spun her around to face him.

“Stay with me. I mean it, do not leave my side again.”

She should have been intimidated, should have obeyed, yet the very next time he looked away, off she went again. There were so many people here, and the street was so narrow, it was aggravating. Every hackle he owned kept prickling the back of his neck, his soldier’s sixth sense telling him something was up.

That’s when he saw it—the shadows of two men racing across the sunbaked clay of the two-story building almost directly across from him. The flapping canopy of another stall quickly obscured it, but in the half-second he’d glimpsed them, he recognized the shadowy form of rifles clutched in their hands, rather than sticks or shovels.

It was sheer reflex that made him want to grab the arm next to him, and true to form, it wasn’t Aliya’s.

Fuck.

The burqa-cloaked woman yanked away, startled, and the shopkeeper yelled at him, but Christian was too busy searching above the crowd, up one side of this narrow street and down the other, before finally catching sight of Aliya’s dark hair as she slipped a scarf over her head. She ducked behind the flapping shield of a hanging blanket as he ran after her, shoving past shoppers too slow to get out of his way.

By the time he got to the other side of that blanket, she was even further ahead of him. He only just caught a glimpse of her pink sundress as she ducked into another alley. He put on a burst of speed, catching up with her before she could slip away again. This time, instead of her arm, he fisted her hair and dragged her back to him, ducking into a small café.

“Let go of me!” she snapped, attracting the attention of the patrons.

Quickly, Christian explained in their native language that Aliya was his bride and was having some difficulty understanding her new role as wife versus pampered daughter. Several of them nodded appreciatively.

“If you need, I have a private room in the back…” offered the sympathetic proprietor.

“ Ibn haram ,” she snarled, winning arched eyebrows from those close enough to overhear her.

“You think I’m a son of a bitch now…” he growled, taking the owner up on his offer and dragging her toward the back room. “You have no idea… but you’re going to.”

“Who do you think you are?” she demanded the minute he shut the door for privacy. “When I tell my brother how you manhandled me…”

“If you think that’s manhandling, you haven’t been with the right men.”

Her slap across his face was unexpected, but not nearly as unexpected as the right cross she landed on his jaw, which snapped his head back and made him see stars.

“Oh,” he breathed, almost laughing as he looked at her again. “You nasty tempered little brat.”

He grabbed her by the arm before she could shove past him and march back into the populated café. Spinning her around, he tossed her over a nearby table and lifted the hem of her dress, surprised when he encountered a pair of white cotton shorts. She definitely hadn’t been wearing those when she’d been scaling her way down the yacht’s ladder. He stripped those down as well.

“Naughty, naughty, Princess. Where did you get those?”

“Don’t you dare!” she screeched, kicking her legs, squirming desperately to wriggle away from him.

Hand raised, Christian stopped, mesmerized at the sight of her perfect, pale, dusky buttocks. Someone needed to put her in her place or, at the very least, teach her the danger of striking a man she knew very little about, but that she was now in position, not only to be spanked but to be fucked, was difficult to ignore. That portion of his brain that still retained the instincts of a caveman took over, emotion and need rushing to the forefront of all thought… or lack thereof. His cock became painfully hard and throbbed in anticipation, barely contained by his jeans.

“ Ibn haram !” she spat yet again.

“Among many other things,” he assured her. Before she could dispute his right to punish her, he brought his hand cracking down on her left cheek, hard enough for color to bloom, leaving his perfect handprint on her gorgeous ass.

She would learn to obey him after this. She would also keep her distance, and he knew he probably would never have her like this again, but imposing his discipline on her became his driving need. He landed another harsh blow to her other cheek, rhythmically tattooing her entire backside with enough force to make her catch her breath.

“Stop it,” she hissed as he continued to deliver what he was sure was a first and long overdue spanking. If she thought she could stoically endure his treatment, she had another thought coming. When she tried to get up, he forced her back into place, pinning her down by the neck.

“Nice try, Princess, but I don’t think so. The next time you hit a man, you better make sure he can’t get up again. You’re too small, with far too tempting a bottom to get away with it.”

“Ah!” Aliya squirmed to get away, but he held her fast as his open hand punished her now blushing globes. She fought him in earnest, but he never missed his target, and she was no match for his size, strength, and determination. Panting and biting her lip to keep from crying out again, she finally acquiesced to his control. Only then did he cease his torment.

That was when his began. Her bright red ass quivered, beckoning beyond all resistance for him to caress away the hurt. Let her go and back away . He touched her instead, his fingers trailing down into the cleft of her clenching buttocks until he reached the dark rosebud of her back passage.

“Let… l-let me go!” She threw herself back into her struggles, shoving with both arms in a vain attempt to get up, but he had her trapped.

Removing his hand, he punished her resistance with another swift series of stinging swats, not stopping until she was yowling, anything but stoic now, and once more fighting herself to hold still—to submit to his punishment.

To him.

He slipped his hand between her thighs, pinching the sensitive skin when she didn’t soften to his touch and open her legs. Obedience came with a gasp as he went from pinching to light, stinging slaps that spanked directly over her sweet pussy lips, steadily increasing in force until she finally gave in. Was that wishful thinking on his part, or did she really moan as she shifted her feet apart, opening to him? He grinned. There it was—evidence of her arousal, nothing but her sweet perfume and a copious amount of slick for his use.

He cupped her wet outer lips, the throbbing of his cock intensifying as he squeezed. What had started out as a disciplinary spanking, meant to teach her a lesson, devolved into easing both their need. They were in the back room of a public café. She was the pampered little sister of the most ruthless criminal in the known world. And still, he shoved two fingers into her cunt, plunging in and out of her tightening heat to her accompanying gasps. Her hips twisted as she writhed on the desk, moaning as her body went flush with desire.

“Don’t worry, Princess.” He stepped up behind her. “I have just what you need.”

He parted her legs, pinning her hands behind her back to hold her in place while he unfastened the fly of his jeans. She could have got up if she truly wanted to. He wasn’t a rapist. He might even have let her go if she’d only tried, but Aliya’s protest was little more than a wiggle of her hips and a clench of her fingers, clawing uselessly at empty air. He rewarded the token effort with exactly what it deserved—another hard swat to what by now must be a very painful bottom. Then he freed his cock and with his other hand, grasped her hip and mounted her from behind. With a heavy groan, he sank deep, shocked when he encountered the thin membrane that proved her temptress aura a liar and her innocence as shockingly true.

“Shit, Aliya,” he growled, letting go of her hands and trying to draw back.

“No!” Pushing back against him, she impaled herself all the way to the base of his cock.

Her heat was heavenly. The velvety softness of her pussy as she shivered up and down his length was mind-blowingly good.

She was trying to move on him, the writhing of her untried body instinctive and driven by the same need that dissolved her into soft tears. It was her quiet weeping that undid him. Groaning, he forced himself to be still and allowed her velvety sheath to accept being invaded for the first time. The pulsing of her heartbeat thrummed around him, engulfing him from the tip of his cock to the base. It was the most sensual anguish he’d ever endured, and good intentions be damned, he couldn’t stop himself.

His hips moved, thrusting a gentle rhythm Aliya swiftly responded to, arching her back, her body straining to achieve its first real orgasm. As she stiffened with a sharp gasp, shaking with the intensity of her climax, he increased his plunging, taking her to the heights of ecstasy a second time before flooding her pussy with his cum. He pressed her down flat against the table, forcing her still as his cock finished spending itself inside her. Her sheath was still contracting around him, spasming rhythmically, greedily milking his cock for every last drop, and savoring every bit of bliss she could win from the encounter.

Withdrawing, Christian watched his cum dribble out as her pussy gaped from his hard use. The flecks of blood on the inside of her thighs and on his cock were a sharp reminder he really had felt what he thought on that first impaling thrust. He shook his head. What the hell had he done? He’d not only fucked Fariq’s baby sister, he’d taken her virginity. He should be terrified for them both, but all he could think about was getting her naked and on her back so he could do it all over again.

“We need to get out of here and find a place to talk,” he said, drawing away from her.

Easing up off the table, Aliya sighed. She rubbed her wrists, then rubbed her bottom. Finally, she pulled her shorts up, smoothed her skirt down, and before his eyes, became the unsullied princess once more, only with his cum smeared on her thighs as she turned around.

“There’s nothing to talk about it.”

“Nothing? I took your virginity…”

She shrugged with one shoulder. “It was mine to give…”

“I think your brother might think differently.” He rubbed his face with both hands, wearier than he’d felt in a long, long time.

She shrugged again, but her dark eyebrows were buckling, her brow creasing as if she didn’t understand why he was protesting.

“If it comes up, I won’t tell him who it was.”

“That’s not the…” Exasperated, he rubbed his face and stepped close to her again, lowering his voice and striving for calm enough to explain. “Aliya, I fucked you over a table.”

She stared back at him, completely non-comprehending.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I liked it.”

“You deserve better,” he argued. “You deserved a comfortable bed and a gentle introduction to lovemaking. Every inch of your body should have been adored. I should have been soft with you.”

“I was raised in a convent,” she quipped. “But even I know it doesn’t work well unless it’s hard.”

“Not funny.” He almost swatted her but pointed at her instead. “I’m going to get us a cab. You stay here until I come back for you.” He should go but couldn’t help touching her one last time, cupping her bottom in his hands, feeling the heat blazing from her well-spanked flesh through her clothes and into his palms. “Make no mistake, that you deserved, but the other…”

“Was I that bad?” she asked softly, disappointment creeping into her eyes. “Didn’t you get any pleasure?”

He couldn’t help himself. He slanted his mouth over hers, his tongue sweeping through her mouth, enticing hers to dance with his. Nibbling on her lower lip, he kissed her until she softened against him.

“More pleasure than I ever thought possible. I’ll take care of this, Aliya. Are you all right?”

She nodded, and with one last gentle kiss, he left the back room and made his way through the café out onto the street. This changed things. It shouldn’t, maybe for some men it wouldn’t, but it changed things for him. Whether he had all the evidence they needed or not, it was time for him to get away from Fariq, and he was taking Aliya with him.

He hailed a cab, then quickly jogged back through the café to fetch Aliya… only to find the back room was empty. The back door was standing open, swaying ever so slightly, and when he ran to it, he was just in time to see Aliya at the opposite end of a long, cluttered alley. She was alone, pulling her shawl back over her dark hair, which immediately killed the spark of panic he’d felt at his first thought—kidnapped—finding her gone.

He opened his mouth to shout after her, but a booming explosion rocked the market half a block behind him, sending a shower of broken bricks and chunks of clay raining down everywhere. The shock wave knocked him down, the entire back of him stinging as if he’d been physically slapped. Whether it truly was as silent as it seemed to be directly following that explosion or if it was the ringing in his ears masking all sound, he didn’t know, but for a few startled heartbeats, the whole world fell absurdly still. When he looked up, instead of being huddled on the ground with her arms thrown up over her head at the far mouth of the alley, Aliya was gone.

The rapid fire of automatic rifles discharging on the other side of the café killed the silence. Then came the screaming.

Scrambling to his feet, Christian ran down the back alley, but when he rounded the far corner, Aliya wasn’t huddled on the ground there, either. Instead, the alley opened back up onto the main market street, now flooded with fleeing, panicking people. Somewhere out there, amid the bullets and the shoppers, was Aliya.

“Fuck. Fuck!” A bullet zinged past his ear as he bolted out of the relative safety of the alley into the running crowd. He ducked and dodged through the stalls, leaping over spilled wares just in time for the person running alongside him to get shot. Bullets peppered the corner of the alleyway he threw himself into for cover. Where the hell was she?

Spotting two discarded shoes halfway down the alley, he broke into a run, but the alley dead-ended in someone’s private garden, shrouded on all sides by clay walls, half-again as high as he could reach by jumping.

He ran up one of the two household steps that shared the garden area, but the door at the top was locked. So was the other door at the top of that set of steps, but the door rattled loosely when he shook it. When he heard the sharp firecracker report of rifle fire coming from inside, he drew his gun and kicked in the door.

Two men in black flak gear hunkered at the window, firing randomly into the crowd, short, sharp bursts meant to hit above the ducking heads of the fleeing, screaming people, deliberately, methodically scattering them. One snapped around when Christian kicked in the door. Had he not recognized the man as one of Fariq’s, he’d have shot him.

The other man recognized him, too, never fully bringing his rifle up high enough to shoot.

“What the fuck!” Christian snapped, anger exploding through him every bit as violently as the bomb had done.

The second guy jerked around, although the first grabbed his gun, averting it before the man could aim it. Christian would have shot him. The only thing that kept him from firing was seeing how openly startled they both were.

“Where is she?” he snarled, only just keeping his temper under control.

“Who?” the first guy asked.

“Mona fucking Lisa,” he snapped. “Who do you think I’m talking about!” Ripping the headset from one of their heads, he yelled into the microphone, “Cease fire, goddamn it. Aliya’s in the market!”

Someone swore through the earpiece before the ceasefire was repeated, and the order to withdraw abruptly given.

“You lost her?” the second guy asked incredulously.

“You shot at her?” he returned. His own gut was too tight for him to truly enjoy the rapid paling on both their faces.

“We were following orders!” the first protested, but he wasn’t listening.

The sound of gunfire was completely gone by the time Christian raced back out the back door. Where was she?

From the porch, it was a short leap onto the top of the high wall. He scanned the sea of small, crooked gardens that made up a neighborhood block worth of private backyards. The echoes of people screaming and running on the front side of the house at his back ricocheted off the earth buildings, along with the distant wail of emergency sirens.

Frustrated, he looked back the other way, and it was only by sheer happenchance the wind caught a hanging laundry sheet, lifting it just enough for him to catch sight of Aliya three private gardens away, huddled against a wall. She wasn’t alone. A dark-skinned man dressed in Islamic white shoved something into her hand, forcing her fingers closed around it before he bolted out of the garden and down another side alley.

She looked at her hand, then as if suddenly feeling eyes on her, she looked up. Their eyes met.

“Stay right where you are!” he shouted.

Eyes widening, she charged down the alley after her fleeing companion.

Christian bolted after her. Running as fast as he could the way he’d come, he spilled back out onto the main street, where a shower of bullets very nearly hit him. He ducked, throwing up an arm to deflect the chunks of clay that peppered his face as the building was hit instead. He ran faster.

“Cease fire!” someone shouted, but the spray of bullets still followed his duck-and-dodge all the way to the next alley, where he damn near ran smack into Aliya on her way out.

She yelped, her eyes widening and her face paling. Snapping around on her heel, she tried to run back the other way.

What. The. Fuck ?! What the hell was she doing?

Growling, Christian tore up the street after her. She wasn’t a soldier, nor was she a spy, and she sure didn’t spend two hours every morning like he did, working out his guilt and frustration on the machines in Fariq’s private gym to keep in the top physical condition this shitty job demanded of him. She still surprised him with how fast she moved, especially with him right on her heels.

“Stop, goddamn it!”

She dove into another garbage-strewn back alley, racing between the narrow buildings, past two huddling people at the mouth at the far end, and directly into the duck-and-dodge of the market crowd, fleeing from the bazaar. Too late, she tried to find a place to hide, but he was right behind her. Grabbing a basket of roasted nuts, she threw them at him. His arm blocked the basket, sending a shower of nuts bouncing off his back, but he finally snagged the back of her dress.

A single shot rang out just as he yanked her backward, out of the middle of the street and against a hard wall. Had he not lost his balance, he’d have been killed. The bullet meant for his head ricocheted off the building, pelting his hair and the side of her face with sharp chips. Throwing his arm over her, he kicked in the nearest door, and threw her into the cover of the building ahead of him.

As he grabbed the door, for a half-second, he thought he spotted a familiar face staring coolly down at him from the rooftop of the opposite house. Lamar reloaded the rifle he’d just fired, and Christian slammed the door.

Grabbing Aliya before she could pick herself up off the floor where she’d fallen, he pulled her well away from both the door and the windows.

“L-Let go,” she gasped, trying to extricate her arm from his grasp.

“No! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Anywhere away from you!”

“The hell you are!”

From farther up the street, shouts signaled the arrival of the local police. They filed into the marketplace like soldiers at war, belatedly returning gunfire at what few snipers still remained, sending Lamar and what few of Fariq’s men still remained into retreat. That the police had no idea who they were looking for was obvious. When Christian cautiously glanced out a side window, he could see uniformed officers yanking people out of the fleeing crowd in random arrests and kicking down doors to search the rooftops on either side of the market.

“You’re hurting my arm,” Aliya tried again, still breathing hard from their run, but her voice wasn’t quite as shaky as it had been a moment ago.

Ignoring her, he dragged her through the house to the back door into the private garden. Grabbing her around the waist and planting a hand on her ass, he all but threw her up and over the wall that separated this line of houses from the row directly behind them.

Jumping to catch the top of the wall, he heaved himself up after her. Dropping into the next garden, he grabbed a fistful of her hair before she had fully picked herself up off the ground.

“Stop!” she gasped, but he was pissed, and they weren’t safe yet.

There were no alleyways here. He broke into the occupied house, standing sentry between him and the next open street. With Aliya clawing at his hand the entire way, he marched her past a startled old woman cooking in the kitchen, two kids playing in the living room, and out the front door.

The street was much calmer but filling fast with refugees from the bombed-out bazaar. Police were everywhere, putting up barricades and stopping anyone they thought looked suspicious.

He checked the rooftops, but nothing moved, and he saw no sign of Fariq’s men. Nor did he recognize the faces of the men hurrying past him to get home or to safety.

The businesses here must have closed when the bomb went off. Dragging Aliya behind him, he crossed the street to where an empty café stood, with half-eaten food still on plates and coffee cups still on the tables. The front door was closed, and the shutters were drawn on all the windows. The patrons had fled in case the trouble from one street over decided to spread itself to this one.

The familiar whoop-whoop-whoop of helicopter blades caught his ear, and he quickly ducked to see past the fluttering canopy, only just catching sight of a helicopter swiftly retreating out to sea.

It was over.

Try telling that to the rest of his body. Christian’s senses were keyed, every inch of him primed to move as fast as possible, and it didn’t matter what the direction. His grip on Aliya’s arm never loosened, and he barely noticed she’d drawn blood with her clawing attempts to pry his fingers loose.

“Stop!” she gasped, digging in her feet when he would otherwise have hurried her back out into the crowd to get a little more distance between themselves and the police, who were itching to make arrests.

“We have to keep going,” he muttered, but with a last violent yank, she wrenched her arm free.

Stumbling, she fell into an abandoned table, knocking over the coffee cup that had been left behind with its patron’s hasty departure. Rubbing her arm, she glared at him.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” For the first time, every ounce of energy he’d been pouring into his fight to keep her safe while they escaped that FUBAR of whatever Fariq had been trying to do, snapped, becoming anger. “What the hell were you thinking? Who was that?”

“Who?” she shot back.

“That man you were with!”

“What man?” A flicker of nervousness in her eyes told him she knew exactly who he was talking about.

“You’re a piss-poor liar,” he growled. “The one you were with back there in that garden. What did he give you?”

“He didn’t give me anything.” She hiked her chin. “For all I know, it was just somebody trying not to get shot!”

She was still lying. His eyes narrowed, every instinct he had homing in on her face. He wasn’t mistaken and sure as hell hadn’t been seeing things. Not when he watched that unknown man slip her something and certainly not when she…

“You looked right at me,” he marveled. “You looked right at me and ran the other way.”

“H-How was I to know you weren’t trying to kill me?” she accused, but she stuttered, and the nervous glint in her eyes only grew more obvious.

“How were you to…” His anger spiked all over again. “Why, you spoiled rotten little liar!”

He’d never meant to touch her again. Well, that wasn’t strictly true—he’d meant to get them to safety, then he’d touch her in all kinds of ways and places. It all happened so fast. One minute he was standing there, telling her exactly what he thought of her, and in the next, he had her by the arm, his butt in the first chair he came to, and she was yanked down across his thighs.

He spanked her exactly the way a spoiled rotten liar should be spanked—hard, fast, and with the flat of his hand—making sure she got the message in a way sure to stick with her for at least the rest of the day.

He’d meted out a good handful of swats before his anger abated enough to realize something didn’t add up. Where had she gotten the pair of white shorts? Shorts she certainly hadn’t been wearing when she’d come down the ladder of Fariq’s yacht. He looked at her feet, suddenly noticing they weren’t bare from having dropped her shoes in the alley. She was wearing canvas tennis shoes.

She’d bought a change of clothes in the market. She’d done it covertly. Each time she’d snuck away from his side, forcing him to chase her through the market, she hid the purchases she was making. The ones intended to alter her appearance so she could slip into the crowd unnoticed, by him or anyone else.

She’d planned this.

She’d planned to run away from him… no, not him—Fariq.

“Are you crazy?” she shrieked, kicking up her heels, twisting in a vain effort to grab his slapping hand or yank her skirt down over her rump.

That Fariq’s men might have been acting on her orders… that Lamar might have taken that shot at his head on her command… rekindled every ounce of fury shock had momentarily lulled.

“Oh, Princess,” he seethed. “You want to play with the devil? You have his attention now.”

Grabbing the back of her new shorts, he stripped them off her ass and down her legs. That he ripped her panties off at the same time hadn’t been part of the plan, but he wasn’t complaining. He shut his ears to her shrieks and blistered her naked ass, locking his arm across her back, grabbing her hand when she flung it back in defense of her quickly reddening bottom, and clamping her wildly thrashing legs between the vise of his thighs. He didn’t stop until his hand ached, and her ass was a bright flush of hot, angry red.

“Stop!” she wailed. “Christian, stop! Please!”

Eventually, she laid limp across his lap, absorbing the swats he gave her with no more protest than the wordless wails that grudgingly dissolved into tears. He had never once touched a woman against her will or in anger, but this had been twice in the space of an hour. Goddamn, though, if this hadn’t been well-deserved.

Abruptly, he released her, shoving her to get her moving off his lap.

Sobbing, she scrambled to her feet, pulling up panties and shorts over her apple-red cheeks and slapping at the back of her dress to get it back down in place. A rueful deflowered liar, she rubbed at the seat of her skirt, staring up at him with tears on her cheeks and a bright humiliated blush turning her face the same apple shade his hand had painted her bottom in. Her eyes searched his face. It took every ounce of willpower not to reach out to her… to comfort her, but he needed her to learn right now, lying to him had consequences.

“Are you insane?” she sobbed. “You c-can’t… c-can’t…”

“Says the woman who just tried to have me killed!” he snapped. “Want to tell me why?”

Her jaw dropped. Startled, she even stopped rubbing.

“You really are crazy! Why would I do that?”

“You tell me! And while you’re at it, tell me why you were running like that, leading me a merry chase through back alleys and backyard gardens?”

“I never?—”

He stood up so fast, he knocked the chair he’d been sitting in over. Grabbing his belt, he had it unfastened and half yanked free before she shrieked and jumped back. Doubling his belt in his hand, he grabbed her wrist when she threw up her hands to stop him.

“I was running away!” she shouted. Bursting into tears again, she wailed that phrase twice more as he yanked her around, holding her arm while he raised his belt raised high, but he never struck her with it. He stopped when it suddenly sunk in what she was confessing.

He stared at her—her breasts were heaving as she breathed, the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat was beating wild, and her chocolate eyes were wide, watery, scared, and sad. What the hell was going on? More importantly, just who was Aliya Abdal, and what kind of game was she playing?

“Why?” he demanded.

She stared at him, her twisting dance to tuck her bottom out of his belt’s reach dwindling away to nothing.

“Because he’s horrible,” she said softly, shoulders slumping as she covered her face with both hands. Bowing, she wept into them. “He’s a monster.”

Caught completely out of his element, Christian lowered his belt. Where was the spoiled little rich girl he thought had been manipulating him just seconds ago? Where was the liar? Every instinct inside him was positive of the truth, she kept sobbing into her hands until the pain of her bottom became too much, and she reached back to rub it. The liar was gone, and in her place stood a young woman with a hot, sore bottom, her virginity gone, and he was the one responsible for both.

Aliya sniffled, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“Please don’t tell my brother,” she begged.

Please don’t tell her brother? He’d just spanked and fucked her? How did that man in the garden factor into her trying to run away? Slowly, Christian lowered his belt.

Fariq would lock her in a cage if he so much as even suspected she was trying to leave him. If he found out Christian had taken her virginity, he’d kill them both. Shit. He had ruined her—in her brother’s eyes if no one else’s—and for that alone, he was now responsible for what happened to her. Christian stared into her pleading eyes, knowing that all the way to his soul.

“Please?” she whispered. “He’ll never let me out of his sight if he knows what happened.”

Jesus, she was trusting. There wasn’t another man in Fariq’s employ he would have trusted to keep a secret like this. That she’d begged it of him just showed how desperate she was.

Or stupid.

Or just incredibly na?ve.

That was the one trait anyone related to Fariq should ever have possessed. Yet here she was, standing right in front of him, pleading with the most beautiful, forlorn eyes he’d ever risked falling into, while the world continued to turn, smoke from the bombing pouring up to stain the sky above the buildings, and police shouted and searched all up and down the street around them.

One was looking right at them. The bored look on his face suggested he’d not only seen the spanking, but he was mentally chalking it up to Aliya being caught somewhere she never should have been. Obviously, people involved in terroristic activities didn’t stop in the middle of it to punish one another. This was an unrelated domestic matter, so they were being left alone.

Christian put his belt back on.

“What did he give you?”

That she knew exactly who he meant but still wanted to try to hide it only threw another log on the damned fire of naivety he wished wasn’t burning so bright inside her. He hadn’t been this close to a truly guileless person in… he couldn’t even remember, but his own sister, Finn, sprang to mind. The unexpected surge of protectiveness that swelled was nearly blinding.

“M-Money?” She wrung her hands, stammering the word so badly, it came out sounding as if she were asking instead of answering his question. She was a horrible, horrible liar.

Frowning, he only had to touch his belt again before she hastily changed her answer.

“A piece of paper, b-but I don’t know what was on it! I swear, I don’t! I…” She wilted right in front of his reproving eyes. “I dropped it.”

Considering how rotten she was at hiding the truth, that was probably for the best.

“Who was he?” he asked a bit more gently. “Interpol, CIA, NATO?”

She shrugged, then seemed to collapse in on herself.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. H-He wasn’t the man I usually see. He said the man I used to talk to died in an accident yesterday, and he’s not the first one.” She shook her head. “How are they supposed to help me if they keep dying?” The latter, she said to herself.

Shit. If she was talking to someone from any one of those agencies, this kind of secret could get her killed. And him as well, just by sheer association. What the hell had she gotten herself into? Did she have a clue how much danger they were in… how much danger she had put them in? Fariq would kill them both without batting an eye. He didn’t know which agency had hung her out to dry, but he had no intention of doing the same. He hadn’t been responsible for anyone but himself in so long, he was surprised the prospect didn’t leave him rattled. He had to get her to safety but without it coming back to get him killed. The last thing he needed was Fariq looking at him any more suspiciously than he already did.

He tilted her chin up with his hand.

“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but you’re done playing spy.” He didn’t try to soften his tone or spare her feelings. “You are so far out of your league, you’re only going to get hurt or killed. I know Fariq loves you, but if you think for a second, he is capable of loving anyone beyond proof of their disloyalty, you don’t know him half as well as you think you do. You also have no idea how horrible he really can be if you give him a reason. So, stop trying.” He started to turn away but stopped. “I don’t know who your handler is, but from this point on, you answer to me. You’re my responsibility. You ever run from me or put me through anything like this again, I promise I’ll blister your butt and fuck your ass. I’ll make what happened today feel like a Sunday morning spent in bed with a man who loves you. Got it?”

Her eyebrows buckled, giving him the distinct impression she didn’t. Jesus, he didn’t do innocence, but he had bigger problems to figure out than whether losing her virginity had confounded her or if she just didn’t understand how he could make the spanking she’d just received ever feel wonderful. He was putting his money on the latter because nobody was that innocent, right? After all, the second he’d encountered her maidenhead, he’d tried to pull back, and she had shoved her cunt down his cock. Nobody in this day and age, who responded the way she had, could be that innocent.

He couldn’t afford to dwell on that right now, though. Fariq would expect him to get Aliya back to the yacht, especially after an attack like the one he’d launched on the market. There was no delaying that, but now he had bigger issues to figure out.

Who was the man she’d met with, and what was he going to do about Lamar—the man who had looked right at him, known exactly who he was, and still taken a shot at him—on whose order?

Every instinct was convinced if Aliya was telling the truth about not being involved—and he was inclined to think she was—that left only one other person. Fariq. No one else in his employ would have had the balls. But why?

His gut prickled, dread flowing cold through his veins. As his mind raced to connect what he didn’t know, the actions of today matched the only possible cause that made sense—after so many years as a double agent in Fariq’s employ, he’d finally been found out. Or had Fariq discovered his sister’s betrayal? No, he would have wanted to deal with that personally. This felt like business, but why had Fariq risked his sister?