Chapter 5

Chapter

Five

A liya locked her bedroom door, not that she felt any safer. Fariq had a key to every door on his yacht, and her room was certainly no exception.

She broke down, melting against the door, dissolving into tears, but even that brief fury of sobs didn’t last or come out as more than just a hitching breath or two. Then she was running again, this time into the bathroom. Ripping off her clothes and dropping them on the floor, she ran the hottest bath she could stand to sit in.

She could still feel Fariq’s hand between her thighs as she scrambled to scrub herself clean. She could feel those half-hearted smacks of his hand bouncing off her bottom cheeks just before letting her go. They had felt nothing like the stinging swats delivered by Christian. While Fariq’s handling had brought only disgust, Christian’s had evoked far different, far more erotic feelings. Hugging her legs against her chest, Aliya buried her face between her arms and cried.

She remembered to turn off the water, but only because it overflowed the tub. In the end, she ran out of tears long before she ran out of sadness. In due course, the water grew cold. Eventually, Fariq even came to check on her. She never heard him come in. The first she became aware he’d entered the bathroom was when she heard his tsk as he reached for a towel, spreading it out on the floor to mop up the spilled water.

“You know better than this,” he chided. “What is wrong with you?”

Rolling up his shirt sleeve, he reached into the water to unplug the tub. She hugged herself tighter, trying to hide her nakedness, but he paid no attention, simply shook out another clean towel and held it out for her.

“Come now. Up. You’ll catch your death.”

If she moved, she’d bare herself to him even more, but there was no way to refuse, not without risking another punishment.

Standing, she let him wrap her in the towel, the overlarge terrycloth folds covering her from shoulders to mid-thigh. Her legs didn’t want to work, she’d sat for so long. He had to help her balance as she stepped over the high side of the tub onto the damp floor.

He tsked again, drying her, just as he had when she was a child.

Except she wasn’t a child anymore, and what he’d done to her in his office hadn’t been anything a brother would or should do to his sister, whether he’d raised her or not.

Yet the Fariq handling her now wasn’t that cruel man anymore. He was back to his normal, big brother, almost fatherly self. Neither his touch nor his gaze seemed to notice she wasn’t the child he perpetually seemed to want her to be as he steered her from the bathroom into her bedroom.

Lying on the foot of her bed were the forbidden shorts and shoes she’d left in his office. She glanced at him, surprised, but he left her and her unanswered question at the bed while he busied himself searching through her tidy closet for appropriate sleepwear.

“Why do you never have anything decent to wear?” he said, skipping right over her pink silk pajamas to draw out a plum-colored baby doll-style nightie, mostly lace and netting, with spaghetti straps and too little fabric to cover either her breasts or her panties. It was also completely transparent. “Where did you get this?”

“You brought it back from Paris,” she said, her voice pitifully small. She hated it. She hated the tremble that quivered each mewling word, and above all, she hated that it made him smile.

“So, I did.” Removing it from its hanger, he dropped the gown on the floor. “Ladies don’t wear such things. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He rummaged until he found a pink silk nightgown. It also had spaghetti straps, but the bustline was more modest, the cut almost shapeless, with a skirt that extended to her knees.

“Here we are.” He handed it to her. “Go on, put it on.”

He gave her bottom a dismissing pat as he walked away, but instead of leaving, he went only as far as her dresser and rummaged that drawer next, this time for panties that matched.

“I brought your things back to you,” he said offhand without so much as a glance at the shorts and shoes placed neatly at the foot of her bed. “Christian, for all his heavy-handed ways, was right. I spoil you, perhaps too much. I need to learn that I can still love you yet be strict at the same time.” He held up a pair of French-cut black lace panties. “Especially if you’re going to be wearing these. Did I bring these back from Paris, too?” He gave her the same knowing look he did whenever he caught her doing something she shouldn’t.

Her face flushed hot. Still wrapped in a towel with the nightgown abandoned on the bed where he’d dropped it, Aliya couldn’t move. He hadn’t bought those. She had, in a fit of defiance, almost six months ago. She’d met someone at one of the functions where she’d accompanied him, and they’d exchanged phone numbers, but Fariq always kept her phone locked. She had limited internet access and only one number—his—cleared to ring through to her cell. Fariq had refused to open her phone’s access to allow her either to call the young man or to have him call her.

Her fit had cost her two weeks of freedom when she’d been grounded, unable to leave her room, much less the ship. The next time he took her shopping, she’d blindly grabbed those off a hanger and thrown them in among his other undergarment purchases for her because, damn it, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was tired of being treated like one, punished like one, and dressed like one. She wanted to get off the yacht. She wanted to meet people and be free to have friends. Just once, she wanted to buy something for herself, something pretty, not to mention with some color—any color—other than pink.

“No, Fariq. I did.”

He tsked, turning the panties over in his hand to show off the double strand of pearls that were the reason why she’d never worn them once she’d gotten them home. Why anyone would make underwear that pretty, then put a pearl necklace as the only gusset between the legs, she had no idea. It wasn’t really even underwear. It was a fragile belt of black lace around her hips and two strands of pearls that did absolutely nothing at all to cover either her sex or her buttocks. The only thing she’d liked about it at the time was that it had cost him a hundred dollars. Pretty much from that moment on, all it had done was make her feel guilty. She’d have thrown them out ages ago, but she was pretty sure her garbage was searched.

“Where did you get them?” he asked in a sing-song, scolding tone that made her feel small.

“At a market in Italy.”

“Reid might be right in his assessment of your behavior,” he said, giving the underwear a dismissive toss onto the discarded nightie. “You seem to be cultivating a rebellious attitude. I’ll not tolerate it, Aliya, my darling. I will put you across my knee daily if you insist on it.” He arched his dark eyebrow and leveled a stern frown at her. “And I won’t be as forgiving as I was today. The next time you force me to debase us both in a show of physical chastisement, I will apply myself until the marks become impossible to count. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Fariq,” she barely managed, her throat so tight, it was choking her.

“Is that what you want?”

She quickly shook her head, unable to say anything, barely even able to breathe.

His face softened, and he selected a pair of pink cotton panties. Taking her hand, he placed them in her palm.

“Do you need me to dress you for bed like I did when you were little?”

Trills of panic shivered up the back of her neck.

“I-I can do it.”

“Then do so, please.”

She prayed he would leave, but turning his back was all the privacy he allowed her. Folding his arms across his chest, he waited for her to obey.

Knowing the few choices she had were nothing but an illusion and painfully aware he now faced both the makeup mirror on her vanity table and the dressing mirror on her closet door, Aliya turned her back as well. Shedding the towel, she climbed into her panties and nightgown. Before she could bend down for the discarded towel, Fariq picked it up.

He’d been watching her in the mirror. Her skin crawled, but he only draped the towel over his arm and peeled back the blankets on her bed.

“In you go.”

“But it’s not even supper ti?—”

Dropping the blanket, he unbuckled his belt.

Aliya scrambled into bed. Lying flat on her back, as stiff and flat as she could make herself, she held her breath. She honestly didn’t know what she feared most—that he might whip her with it or unfasten his pants entirely and crawl into bed on top of her.

He didn’t do either. Calmly, he rebuckled his belt without a word, then bending, he pressed his cool lips to her forehead.

“Grounded,” he reminded her. “Five days, this time. I’ll have your supper brought to you, but then it’s lights out for you. Do not disobey me again, my darling. You will not like the consequences, and I’m done giving warnings.”

He was leaning over her, one hand braced on the mattress, the other combing fingers through her wavy black hair. Her belly was a swarm of bees, their droning hum of warning tightening her insides until she couldn’t move. All she could do was lie there, her brother’s obedient baby sister, too scared to move.

“What do we say, Aliya?” he reminded, his fingers trailing from her hair to caress her cheek and the trembling of her bottom lip.

Her throat seized on her when she tried to swallow.

“Thank you for loving me enough to correct me.”

His face softening, he smiled. “I will always love you, Aliya. Always. That’s what brothers are for.”

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. Rolling onto her side, she endured the caressing stroke of his hand on her back until dropping one last lingering kiss on her head, he departed at last.

The door could not have closed behind him fast enough.

The warning bees were humming, and her skin was crawling so viciously, all she wanted was to jump in the tub again, but she couldn’t. She dared not move. Her room was full of cameras, and Fariq was always watching.

Holding the blankets tight around her, she rolled onto her back and stretched her legs before she cramped. It wasn’t until her toes bumped the pile of her shorts and tennis shoes on the foot of the mattress, she remembered them.

That he’d brought them back to her was almost as astounding as the fact he’d left them in a stack on her bed. He would never do that. Her brother was tidy to a freakish degree. A place for everything, as he liked to quote, and everything in its place—and woe be to the person who failed to follow that saying as if it were their life’s purpose.

She should put them away.

She looked to the door, reluctant to get up when he’d already put her to bed. She didn’t know if the consequences of being caught out of bed tonight would be greater or equal to the consequences of her brother finding the stack still on the foot of her bed—or worse, kicked off on the floor—come morning.

Throwing back the blankets, she hurriedly grabbed the shorts, throwing them into the bathroom hamper. Rushing the shoes to her closet, she quickly rearranged all the pairs that lined her shoe cupboards until there was a spot for the white canvas sneakers with her other white shoes. She accidentally dropped one as she was slipping them into place. When she did, a crumpled roll of paper fell out from between the laces and tongue.

She picked it up.

Financial institutes , a ccount numbers, and a list of dignitary contacts .

It was the scrap of paper the agent had slipped her in the market. The one she thought she’d lost as she was running away from Christian.

A sound from the hallway outside her room jolted Aliya from her open-mouthed shock. Shutting the closet, she hurried back to bed, clutching the note in her hot and sweating palm.

No one came back into her room.

Financial institutes. Account numbers. Dignitary contacts .

She listed those three things over and over in her head, committing them to memory in case she lost the paper again.

Financial institutes.

She had no idea how she was going to get that, but now more than ever, she knew she had to get away, and there was just no way that would happen if she didn’t have help.

Account numbers.

If her brother caught her snooping, he’d kill her—maybe only figuratively, maybe literally. He’d never seriously hurt her before. He’d never punished her in front of someone else before, either. Nor had he ever put his hand between her legs and… and touched her.

Contacts.

She had no idea how to get any of that for NATO, but she already knew, regardless of the consequences, she was going to try.