Chapter 9

Chapter

Nine

A liya hated Fariq’s Marshan fortress. Old and remote, it was built on a rocky cliffside overlooking the ocean. A man standing anywhere on the parapet wall could see an attack coming from any direction for miles before the danger was close enough to strike. In medieval times, Fariq told her, such vigilance was a necessary thing.

Apparently, it was just as necessary now.

They’d still been miles from land when a low-flying helicopter swooped in to rescue them from the yellow raft. That Christian and Fariq seemed to know the pilot was obvious. It was just as obvious no one would be going back to where the yacht sank. There wasn’t any reason to go back—Fariq had made sure of that.

They had found seven survivors total, and the first two people they’d pulled from the water were not the same two men who had ended up rowing them to Spain. One had been a chef, an older man who had thanked them profusely in a language Aliya didn’t recognize, much less understand. The other was a woman, one she recognized. She’d walked into her brother’s office once to find the woman on her knees between his legs, her dark hair bobbing enthusiastically in his lap just behind the edge of the desk, which had obscured everything from her sight except what was actually happening. It was the first time Aliya had ever witnessed such a blatant sex act, either in person or on the television. It was also the first and last time she’d ever entered any of Fariq’s rooms without knocking.

Then they’d found a merc silently swimming among the floating debris, trying to find a wood table or desk sturdy enough to hold him out of the water. Fariq welcomed him into the raft with nothing more than a pat on the shoulder, and just as warmly beckoned his past paramour to him and the raft’s open entrance. Offering her a sip of water from the ration pack, he then leaned away from her to pass the ration pack around to everyone else and promptly grabbed her by the ass and legs and dumped her out of the raft.

Aliya came onto her knees, yelling, but neither the merc, chef, nor Christian said so much as a word as Fariq pulled his gun. She’d heard the woman splashing and sputtering back to the surface just before he fired, the loud finality of the sound making her jump. As fast as it had all happened, apart from that one startled squawk of sound, she hadn’t protested. Apart from the gun when it fired, she hadn’t seen the murder, but there was no mistaking the meaning of the silence that followed.

“We are in a survival situation, my dear one,” Fariq told her when she stared at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “We will all be required to do things we’d rather not, but it’s the only way we’re going to live through this.”

The next three they found alive, Fariq shot outright, without letting them in the raft. The man they found swimming toward shore not thirty minutes after the yacht had vanished under the waves and once the paddling began, was brought into the boat.

“I don’t need two rations,” Aliya begged when Fariq put the man in the place of the chef and beckoned the older man to crawl up from the back of the raft to the mouth of it. “Please, I can share. Don’t do this!”

Neither merc said a word, and Christian… just sat there, his jaw clenching and unclenching, not saying a word, though it looked as if he wanted to.

“Dry your tears,” Fariq told her. “We can’t afford to waste our moisture.”

The chef had to know what was going to happen, but he went to Fariq, anyway. Resting his hand on the other man’s shoulder, Fariq patted him twice, thanked him for his service, then shot and dumped him into the water.

“You’re horrible!” Aliya screamed at him, bursting into tears. “I’m the most useless person here. Shoot me!”

She tried to shove away from him when he came back to sit beside her, but his arm was like banded steel, and when he drew her to him, no matter how she resisted, she couldn’t pull away. They were on a raft. There was nowhere to go and no help in sight. Only Christian, sitting almost directly across from them, his stony expression impossible to read apart from the tic of muscle leaping along his jaw as he clenched it and only a faint hint of fury winking in and out of his eyes as he glared.

She tried to turn her back to her brother, but it backfired when she lost her will and ended up being drawn down until she laid in the bottom of the bobbing raft with her head in Fariq’s lap, his gentle hand caressing her cheek, her tangled hair stiff with ocean salt, and her shoulders shaking as she cried.

“Hush, love,” he told her. “You’ll give yourself a headache. Close your eyes. Sleep.”

She’d wanted so badly to push away, but ashamedly, she’d curled up and gone to sleep. It was the only avenue of escape she had and was so much better than seeing who he might shoot next.

Then came the rescue chopper.

Now, here she was, no longer a prisoner aboard Fariq’s yacht, but a prisoner in a crumbling Spanish castle along the coastline of Marshan. Her room was at the end of a short hall where Fariq also had his quarters and was guarded at the only staircase leading to and from there. She had a balcony, though, a very small balcony that overlooked the sea. The beautiful ocean, with its endless waves that kept rolling in to bathe the rocky cliff base and its uncannily gorgeous sunsets that painted both water and sky, making it so outlandishly impossible to believe how utterly horrible this place was.

Aristocratic. Elegant.

Brutally awful.

Just like the man who owned it.

She hugged herself against the rough ocean breeze whipping her hair across her eyes, forcing her time and again to push the long wisps over her shoulder and behind her ear.

A flower plopped softly onto her head, slipping down the fall of her waist-length hair before landing on the stones of the balcony floor at her feet. She looked at it, hesitantly bending down to pick it up. She turned the pink and white-streaked water lily blossom over in her hand before, just as startlingly, a tin can on a string dropped almost directly in front of her face, with another lily carefully bound to it with a length of white string.

Reluctantly, she followed the dangling string up to the balcony a good two full stories and a little to the left of hers, where Christian leaned, elbows propped on the stone rail. He brought his finger to his lips, then gave the dangling can on a string a little tug before showing her the other tin can it was attached to. He brought it to his lips, and when she was slow to grasp the concept, to his ear. Her breath caught, her heart giving a tiny leap as she reached for the can. Glancing up at him, she hesitantly brought the can to her ear.

“It’s the only way I could think of to talk to you in a way I’d be sure he couldn’t intercept or overhear,” Christian said into the can.

That she could hear it through a length of string was nothing short of a marvel. Hesitantly, she brought the can to her mouth, swiping the wisps of her hair the wind kept teasing across her face while he moved his can to his ear.

“Can you hear me?”

He smiled. When some of the tension eased from his features, she realized how tense he seemed.

“Yes, Princess. I can hear you. Now, I want you to hear me. Keep your head down. Keep your mouth shut. Be patient and wait for my cues. I’m going to get you out of here.”

So, she waited. She got ready for bed that night and managed not to cringe when Fariq opened the door to her room, approved her choice of nightgown, then helped her into bed,

“Try to forget what had to be done on the raft,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. “Know that I showed mercy to those we couldn’t afford to bring with us by not allowing them to drown or be eaten alive by sharks. Be grateful that once again, I saved you.”

“Yes, Fariq,” she said quietly.

He withdrew, turning off the light as he closed the door. She heard him lock it before heading to his own quarters.

Aliya was looking out the open balcony doors at the moonlit inky skies when she saw a tumble of bedsheets descend from above and Christian sliding down them. He was crazy, but her body came back to life in a way she hadn’t thought impossible.

He put his finger to his lips as he crept into her room and sat on the end of the bed. Leaning down, he kissed her with barely restrained passion. Aliya sat up, drawing her nightgown over her head, and folded back the bedclothes, entreating him to join her. She’d begun to crave his attention—both discipline and loving.

Christian smiled and slid his hands between her legs, parting the petals of her sex as he stroked her.

“We don’t have time, Princess. There will come a day when I’ll remove these silky curls, so I can better see your arousal.”

His words were almost as intoxicating as the delicious fondling he was inflicting on her.

“You know the rule about touching yourself, right?” he growled quietly. “I’m the only one who gets to pleasure you.”

“More,” she pleaded.

“Not enough time. I just wanted to make sure you were all right, but I can’t seem to keep my hands off you.”

“More.”

“I want to have the time…”

“Please? I want whatever time I can have. More.”

Christian stood, pulling his t-shirt over his head and stripping off his jeans. He wore no underwear—no boxers, no briefs, nothing. His cock jutted away from his body, proud and sure.

“I’ll make it good for you,” he whispered as he rolled her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, making them harder still when he pinched them.

She inhaled sharply but placed her hands on top of his.

“Oh, Princess, I am so going to hell for this…”

Christian knelt between her legs, spreading them wide, and allowed his cock to nudge her labia. Using his cock to rub between the lips of her sex allowed her to be less weary, not only of him but of what he could make her feel.

“Christian,” she’d sighed, tilting her hips into alignment with his hard cock.

He made a place for himself in the cradle of her hips before placing his hand over her mouth and thrusting into her in a long, powerful move, driving to the end of her sheath. She was grateful he managed to muffle her strangled cry as she climaxed just from the act of his possession—and she had no doubt, Christian had possessed her.

Aliya watched the grin spread across his face and realized she hadn’t asked for his permission to come. Surely, he couldn’t expect her not to when everything he did seemed to focus on his pleasuring them both. When he moved, she was tight but slick with her need.

Christian slid his hands under her ass and fucked her, first with slow, deliberate moves, then picking up his pace. He fucked deep and hard as her body responded and stiffened in anticipation of the orgasm she could feel building.

He let go of one of her ass cheeks and brought his hand to wrap around her windpipe. Although terrified of suffocating or drowning, all Aliya felt was an exaggeration of her now rampant desire. She writhed beneath him as he thrust inside her, grinding his pelvis into her clit, and forcing her over the edge into an abyss of feeling and sensation as he flooded her pussy with his cum.

Aliya’s sheath clamped down on his length, spasming as she milked every last drop of his essence. Christian collapsed on top of her, catching his breath as she felt their shared peace and completion settle over them like a shroud. She clung to him with both hands, hoping to ensure he couldn’t see the welling tears rushing to fill her eyes, distorting her vision behind their watery sheen.

He withdrew and kissed her savagely. “You’re mine, princess. Don’t you ever forget that. I’ll get you to safety.”

“When? How?” she whispered. “I don’t have anything to give to NA?—”

He shook his head as he dressed.

“Doesn’t matter. Your time as a spy is done. You’re out, and I won’t be far behind you. Behave yourself.”

He started to climb the makeshift rope, gathering and pulling up the end behind him as he went. His feet had just disappeared when a sharp knock on her door punched through the middle of her, seizing her stomach and her heart in its panicky hold. Grabbing her nightgown, she whipped it over her head and yanked up the bedclothes. The loss of his presence was appallingly acute. She wished that was her, being yanked to safety over the stone rail of his balcony two floors up. She’d known he wasn’t the same kind of monster as her brother. She’d seen it in the way the muscle in his jaw had ticked.

Her door opened, without an answering hail from her, and in walked her brother, casually dressed in dark pants and white business shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, with the sleeves rolled up as far as his elbows.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, his dark eyes sweeping her empty bedroom. “I was about to knock when I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

“Just to myself,” she lied breathlessly, coming in from the balcony in the hopes he wouldn’t feel inclined to step outside, and she wouldn’t inadvertently give Christian away by stupidly looking up. “I was just… thinking out loud.”

“About?” Stalking her across the room, he stopped just shy of both her and the balcony threshold but did not step outside.

“Everything that’s happened.” As far as reasons went that both felt like the limpest and useless answer she could give, but the most plausible. They’d just been attacked at sea. Their ship had sunk, he’d murdered people in cold blood, and they’d been rescued by helicopter. If anything gave someone the right to talk to themselves, wasn’t that enough? Frankly, he ought to be glad she wasn’t also replying and/or arguing with herself.

“Mmm, all of it necessary, I assure you.” His gaze slipped past her, sweeping what he could see of the very small balcony behind her before drifting out to sea. “Beautiful,” he murmured, touching her shoulder to turn her back to face the sunset. She tried not to shiver as his hands settled on her shoulders and the brush of his breath prickled through the fine hairs on the back of her neck. “Everything, it seems, is more lovely in Marshan. Would you like to go out with me?”

Turning, she stared up at him, sick to her stomach and hoping like hell she didn’t show it.

“I’m sorry?”

“Out,” he repeated. “You and me. Would you like to step out of this room? They have lovely gardens here, fountains, though I see you’ve already met the water lilies.”

Stunned, only now because of where her mind had automatically jumped when he’d said it, she was even slower to comprehend what he meant by that.

“Water… wh-what?”

Tipping his head, he deliberately looked to something on the floor behind her, and her stomach sank again. The flower Christian had dropped on her. She turned and stared at it while her brother turned his all too perceptive stare back on her.

“Oh,” she said faintly. “That.”

“Mmm,” he said again. Nudging her aside, he checked the balcony corners to either side of the door before he stepped out any further. He bent and picked up the flower, turning it on its short stem between his fingers. “Beware of Spanish men. They’re only out to steal your innocence.” Easing out of the open balcony doorway, he turned back to her, the lily still in his hand. “You are still innocent, aren’t you?”

Her heart in her throat, Aliya stood rooted where she was as he came back to her.

“Wh-What do you think me guilty of?”

His face didn’t soften, but after a moment, his smile did broaden.

“Not quite the question I was asking, my dear, but it’ll do.”

Tucking the flower into her hair behind her ear, he cupped her cheek.

Don’t kiss me. Don’t kiss me. Don’t ? —

His thumb caressing the curve of her cheek, he leaned in and pressed his lips to the soft skin of her forehead.

Her breath caught as her knees wobbled. Every nerve inside her cried out to break away, but she couldn’t make herself move. Not even when he pulled back, but only far enough for his gaze to wander her features before he leaned in again. Only this time, his mouth aimed lower than her forehead. Her skin crawled as he pressed another kiss to the cheek opposite the one his thumb was stroking. Shivers wracked her as he moved lower skill, stroking along the line of her jaw with his lips.

“Stop.”

Her knee almost buckled, and when he snaked his arm around her waist, trying to draw her closer, all she felt was the electrified prickling dread that accompanied her fast-rising panic over where this abomination might be going. “Fariq...” She tried to pull away until his fingers combed up the back of her head to fist in her hair, holding her tight and steady. “Fariq!”

He kissed her mouth.

Her body stiffened at the unpleasant assault. Grabbing onto his shoulders, she shoved to break out of his grip as hard as she could but barely budged him. The pull on her hair was incidental, painful, but hardly worth noting once she felt the unmistakable bulge of her brother’s cock, prodding against her hip.

“Stop!”

He broke his mouth from hers and let her go, but only far enough to spin her around. Instead of fisting her hair, his arm locked around her neck while his other wrapped her waist, pinning her firmly to him.

“I saved your life today,” he said, walking her farther into the room, heading straight toward her bed. “One would think you’d be a little grateful.”

“What are you doing?” The panic soared. “What are you doing? You’re my brother!”

“True, and with your virginity intact, you are so much more valuable,” he murmured behind her ear, his lips once more brushing a kiss across the nape of her neck. “But oh, so tempting. After all,… how much money do I need?”

She jabbed back with her elbow, ducking to get out of his octopus grip, but his arm around her neck tightened, momentarily cutting off her air.

“Stop!” she strangled.

Suddenly letting go of her, he violently shoved her belly-down onto the bed.

She was scrambling to get out from under him even as she felt him climbing on top of her, straddling her kicking legs as he caught her flailing hands, wrenching them up behind her back until shocks of pain stabbed into her shoulders. She kicked, her feet bouncing harmlessly off his back as he settled his weight on her upper thighs. Yanking her dress up out of his way, he bared her buttocks, clad now only in a thin pair of white satin panties. He tore them, the fragile fabric giving way to the brutality of his yank.

Now she was bare and could feel him, the rock of his hips as he mock thrust against her. The bulge behind the rough fabric of his fly ground against her buttocks, renewing her will to fight him off, although she didn’t have the leverage or the skill to match even half of what she was about combat.

She burst into tears, wrenching her head away from his kiss when she felt him leaning over her, and found herself suddenly staring back at the open balcony doorway.

Only it wasn’t empty anymore.

Christian was there, his gun in his hand, black fury darkening his handsome features as he strode silently across the threshold, taking aim at the back of her brother’s head. Whether he hesitated to pull the trigger because the potential of hitting her was so high, she didn’t know. All she knew was the sudden, sharp knock at her bedroom door stopped everything half a heartbeat later.

Swearing under his breath, Fariq growled, “What?”

The fury on Christian’s face blacked in an explosion of rage and helplessness before he quickly retreated out onto the balcony.

“We have a problem,” a man whose voice she didn’t recognize called back through the closed door.

Swearing under his breath again, her brother snapped, “Take it to Reid.”

“He’s being sent for,” the man on the other side of her door said. “But, sir, trust me… you’re going to want to see this.”

Sighing heavily, after a moment, Fariq let go of her hands. Shoving off her and the bed, he ignored her sobbing. Scrambling to get distance between them and her dress down over her exposed ass, she huddled at the headboard of the bed, staring at him with huge and wounded eyes.

“Work calls,” he said, adjusting himself in his pants. “Be a good girl. Needless to say, you’re grounded until I get back.”

Aliya held it together just long enough for him to walk out the door. Climbing off the bed, she ran to the balcony and very nearly collided with Christian hiding in the shadows, every breath he exhaled, a seething sound that hadn’t relaxed simply because Fariq left the room.

“I thought you were going to shoot him,” Aliya gasped, her voice barely above a whisper.

Watching the door Fariq had gone through, in case he came walking back inside, Christian finally asked, “Has he ever done that before?”

Stepping back, she wrapped her arms around herself, not even trying to pretend she didn’t understand what he was asking.

“No. Never. He... he’s kissed me. He’s... touched me, but never like that. It’s always been so cold and calculating… almost as if he was sizing me up.”

A tic of muscle pulsed twice in his jaw before he looked up the sheer stone face of the old fortress and taking hold of the rope that now dangled down to her balcony from where the other end was still tied to his.

“I have to go.”

“Take me with you!” she pleaded, but it was a ludicrous request, which she knew, even as she said it. It wasn’t as if he could just waltz out the front door with her hand in his and call her cab or smuggle her out folded up as small as she could hold herself in his suitcase. She was trapped, thoroughly pinned under Fariq’s ever-watchful eye. There was no getting out of here for her, nor would there be for him if she was with him.

“I can’t.” His look said he wished it were otherwise. She felt a tickle of... was that relief, he genuinely seemed to want to help her. “If I could...” He didn’t finish that sentiment, not that she didn’t know what he wanted to say. “Here.” He handed her the gun he’d brought with him. “Take this.”

It was surprisingly heavy, the textured grip still warm from where he’d gripped it. She’d never in her life held a gun of any kind.

“What do I do with it?”

“If he comes back in here... if he tries to pick up where he left off, shoot him.”

Shoot her own brother? Despite what he’d tried to do to her, she was still appalled.

“I…”

“If you can’t take the shot,” he cut in harshly, “then don’t pull the gun. Don’t let him know you have it, or he’ll know where you got it.”

That it would go badly for them both was a sentence he didn’t need to finish. She put the gun on the stone rail, every tingling nerve in her body in revolt. The heavy coldness of the gun was the last thing she wanted to hold. Standing this close to Christian, it was harder for her to feel the unpleasantness of her brother’s touch that still lingered on her skin, but it was there. Tiny tingles ran up the backs of her thighs where he’d straddled her. A faint humming sensation moved under the skin of her cheek, her lips, and the back of her neck.

She hesitantly touched his cheek, her fingers tingling at the contact, a reminiscent touch of what Fariq had done to her, but the resulting sensation was so not the same.

Christian flinched. “Don’t,” he said harshly, his voice husky and low, dipping into ‘bedroom’ tones that made her shiver.

“What?” she asked, unable to stop looking at his mouth. What would it feel like to have his lips brushing across the back of her neck? His big hands throwing her down on the bed, tearing off her panties to bare her for his taking?

“What you’re doing now,” he snapped. “Looking at me like I’m some sort of damned hero. I’m not.”

But wasn’t he, though? Didn’t heroes do exactly this sort of thing, promise to help where help was needed? She bit her bottom lip, her thumb moving of its own accord to caress his mouth.

He caught her wrist but didn’t snatch her hand from his skin, almost as if he couldn’t. At that moment, for just a flash, she thought he was angry with her. It was right there, glittering in the depths of his intensely blue eyes right before he swore under his breath.

In the next moment, he yanked her hand away, throwing off her touch before capturing her face in his hands and crushing her lips beneath his own in a kiss so passionate, her toes curled. Her back arched, melting into him as her breasts pressed hard against his chest, the ache to feel him, skin to bare skin more than she wanted to endure.

She tried to catch his shoulders, for the stability as much as to ease her need to feel him, but he grabbed her arms again, twisted them up behind her back, and pinned her wrists together just above her ass, holding them in one of his big hands while his other grabbed the front of her silk nightgown. The fragile fabric ripped when he yanked it, tearing one fragile spaghetti strap at the shoulder seam, baring her left breast. The heat as he engulfed her nipple, catching it in a suckling wet kiss, stole her breath away.

She wanted to be quiet. There were men—armed guards—stationed outside her door. The last thing she wanted was to have them come in to investigate any sounds of ‘distress,’ but a tiny mewl escaped when his suckling kiss ended in a nip, the sharpness of his teeth sending zings from her breast straight to her pulsing womb, titillating more than it hurt. Looking at her, his face darkened with a war of desire and reluctance.

Her breath caught, and her whole body ached with need.

“More?”

Abruptly he let her go, and in his harsh, low bedroom voice, said, “Don’t, Aliya. I’m not gentle.”

When had she ever known gentle?

“I didn’t ask you to be,” she countered.

That didn’t bring him closer, though. He backed away, one shaky step after another with a warring look in his eyes that said he knew better than to give in to this, no matter how much he wanted it. The bulge in the front of his jeans made that much unmistakable. Her fingers ached to touch it, to fill her grip with it, and feel for herself just how hard, long, and thick he was with his desire for her.

She edged back into her room, stopping just across the balcony threshold to stand in the last rays of light from the dying sun, nothing but a line of brightness along the ocean horizon. The water and sky behind Christian were painted in streams of purple with a blue-black blanket growing to cover it from the East. Retreating just a little deeper into her bedroom, she stopped again. Sliding the only remaining spaghetti strap off her arm, she let the remnants of her silk nightgown slip down her body until it was nothing but a pink puddle at her feet.

She’d never done this before, not for anybody. Always under her brother’s watchful gaze, when had she ever had a chance? When had she ever wanted to? His eyes fixed, first on her hands, then on her breasts when she bared them, until she finally stood there, naked before him, hesitantly offering up her hands—offering herself to him.

The dark hunger grew so fiercely, it was all she could see on his face as he gazed his fill of her.

“More,” she whispered again.

“Shit,” he said as he broke free of the fragile tethers his self-control had tried to bind him in.

He tore off his shirt as he stormed toward her, casting it aside to grab her. His hands clapped onto her ass, lifting her hard and fast against him, her feet leaving the floor. It was so exhilarating and natural to wrap her arms and legs around him, clinging to him with the whole of her body as he carried her to her bed, consuming her with hungry kisses every step of the way.

Dropping her on the mattress, he crawled over the top of her.

“You think you want more? Be careful what you ask for, little girl. I’m just the kind of man to find out exactly how much you can take.”

He whipped his belt off, the maneuver mesmerizing her, but not in a fearful way. She felt the strong pulse of her pussy as she watched him use the length to bind her wrists above her head, fastening her to the rail of her headboard. That caught her by surprise, but she didn’t panic. She could have got out if she wanted… but she didn’t. As tight as the leather felt around her skin, he’d buckled it so loosely to the rail, with a little pulling, she’d have come free.

She looked from it to him as he took hold of her by her throat and chin. The tips of his fingers and thumb dug into her jaw firmly, only a nuance of pressure shy from painful.

“If at any point you want this to stop, you say red. Got it?”

“Got it.” She’d have nodded but for his grip.

His gaze locked on her lips. When he bent over her, for a moment, every eager inch of her tightened in anticipation of his kiss, but at the last moment, he veered away. As if afraid to let himself be gentle with her, his hungry mouth locked on her breast again, suckling one nipple, then the other, spreading her legs wide before he moved down to settle himself between them.

The rasp of his whiskered chin, rubbing across her mound, had her trying to snap her legs shut, but he was lying between them with his arms locked over her thighs. No matter how shocked or surprised she was, there was no blocking him out as he parted the folds of her sex with his fingers, laying her open so vulnerably, mortifyingly bare to the next assault of his mouth—and it was an assault. His tongue lashed her, drinking in her taste as he explored her folds in search of every hidden spot that made her twitch, gasp, and eventually come. Arching off the sheets as the heat of his hard, suckling mouth fastened onto her clit in a kiss so brutally intense, she almost screamed. She bit her arm to keep back the sound.

His tongue was on her, rubbing harsh circles that made her back arch. He was definitely not as new to this as she was.

“Oh my God.” She whimpered, clamping him in the vise of her shaking thighs.

He broke the kiss on her clit, pulling back far enough to give the folds of her pussy two sharp slaps—the sting far more intense than when he’d spanked her.

“Spread them,” he ordered. “You want ‘more’ from me, Princess, then you don’t get to control my movements.” He slapped again when she was slow to get her uncooperative legs to relax enough to open, the tips of his fingers smacking directly over her clit.

Vaulting partially upright, she almost let go of the headrail, but his hard look stopped her.

“Don’t you fucking dare, little girl,” he warned. “Not unless you have a very specific word you want to tell me.”

She trembled, her breathing every bit as shaky as the rest of her, her pussy throbbing from more than the few relatively light slaps. Forcing herself to lie back, she renewed her grip on the headrail.

“You’re very wet,” he said, spreading her open again.

“Sorry.” It took everything she had not to roll her hips in needy anticipation of his next kiss.

Chuckling, Christian very deliberately scraped her clit with his stubbled chin, back and forth, up and down, making her ass jerk, flinching into the mattress as if she could possibly escape the rough, delicious, prickling of those caresses. She clamped her lips, muffling her mouth against her own arm, but there was no silencing the sobbing moan that escaped.

“What’s the matter, baby?” he mocked, one thumb easing into her, followed by his other. He spread her open in the most intimate way a woman could be, stretching her, filling her up.

Aliya moaned, only to swiftly bite back another shrill cry as he deliberately peeled the protective hood back from her clit to begin his next circling assault. He gentle, but it was all whisker, and there was no holding still for it. Held down by the hips, there was no escaping.