Chapter 10

Chapter

Ten

S he couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even make a sound for fear of alerting the guards, and it was hard, so very, very hard not to scream out the wondrous pleasure when he finally fastened the burning heat of his mouth onto her belabored nub of sensation. His tongue renewed its torment as his thumbs moved inside her, sometimes in tandem, sometimes not, but there was no escaping his invasion.

She had a man inside her. She had Christian inside her. He was touching her in a way no one else ever had, in a way she’d known since high school biology was a distant but eventual fact of life. Three different high schools, three different nuns—this forbidden knowledge had been imparted in the vaguest, most clinical terms, with such a degree of disgust and disapproval, should the whole messy, painful, and sinful beyond all forgiveness act be committed anywhere but in the sanctity of the marriage bed.

Of course, those classes had been followed by how many months trapped in the company of Fariq’s mercenary men? They’d taken all the vagueness out of it, one coarse and overhead conversation at a time. The women Fariq hired to keep them company had filled in the rest of the missing details. Although not allowed to socialize with either group, Aliya wasn’t stupid. From what she’d overheard in a year’s worth of snips and snippets of other people’s conversations, she knew women were supposed to find this every bit as enjoyable as men, but she hadn’t known it would feel like this.

She hadn’t known every muscle would tighten and shake with every circling stroke of his tongue, flicking, lashing, caressing her clit. She hadn’t known being filled like this, his fingers in her body would awaken every nerve she didn’t know she had, setting them on fire until she was sweating even as she writhed, bucking her hips into the thrusts of his thumbs and the hot suckling of his mouth.

“God!” she groaned into the flesh of her arm. Her toes locked in tight curls, her grip shaking the headrail as she arched under the force of the pleasure exploding through her. “God! Stop, stop, stop!” It was almost painful, it felt so good, and his mouth wasn’t stopping. His thumbs kept stroking. She was going to come again. She panicked.

“Stop!”

The heat of his mouth abruptly abandoned her, leaving her pussy aching with want. His gaze as hard as his face, he crawled straight up her body and grabbed a fistful of her hair, holding her immobile as he straddled her shoulder.

“Is ‘stop’ the safeword I gave you?” he demanded.

Shaking, every nerve in her body crying out the loss of him, she shook her head.

“Don’t you shake your head at me.” His grip in her hair tightened. “You have a mouth for three reasons, one of which is speaking. Use your words.”

“No, ‘stop’ is not my safeword,” she gasped.

“No, it’s not.” He unfastened his jeans.

For all that she hadn’t known how to handle the sensations rocketing through her mere seconds ago, her eyes locked on his hand and his fly, the hunger inside her rocketing that much hotter and higher. Her womb pulsed, spasms rippling through her sex, the wetness flowing as he pulled out the hard jut of his cock.

“I’m the one who says how much is too much. Unless you have something specific to say to me, I’m the one who decides what, when, and where. Open your mouth.”

His cock was huge from this angle. Thick and veiny, a tiny drop of moisture was welling from the mushroom tip as he angled it toward her mouth.

“I’m going to teach you to suck cock,” he said when she hesitantly opened her mouth.

“You did that on the yacht.”

He chuckled malevolently.

“No, little girl, I fucked your mouth. I did all the work and pleasured myself. You’re going to learn to pleasure me.”

“Oh, okay,” she quavered.

“Okay?” His grip in her hair tightened again, and for the first time, the ferocity of his expression faltered, replaced with a quirk of a smile and a glint of humor. “Yes, Sir,” he supplied. “I own you in this bed. I want to hear that deference when you speak to me.”

“Oh, okay.”

Christian growled.

“Sorry, yes, Sir,” she said, testing how it felt to say that to him. The weight of him sitting on her chest was comfortable. Her nipples were peaked and hard as diamonds beneath the rough denim of his jeans. When he fisted his cock, she couldn’t help but watch the stroke of his own fingers. Her mouth watered at the thought of tasting that clear drop as it trickled off the head of him. She’d liked the taste of him when he’d come in her mouth the first time.

“Rule number one,” he told her, “don’t bite. The rest you can figure out as we go. Open.”

The taste of him was better than she remembered. He slid in over her tongue into the back of her throat, stopping just before she choked. She almost let go of the headrail in her moment of panic to keep him from going too deep.

“Look at me,” he ordered. “Relax your jaw and your throat. Your mouth belongs to me, and I’m going to fuck it. We’ll start slow, but when I think you’re ready, I’m going to go hard and deep. Just relax and concentrate on your breathing. If you find you can’t, trust me. I’ll take care of you, right?” Said the man with his cock pushed all the way to the back of her tonsils.

“Ah-ha,” she replied, just trying not to drool.

As it turned out, he could have cared less. Holding her head pinned to the headrail, he used her mouth to his own pleasure, thrusting slowly at first, letting her get used to the feeling, sometimes withdrawing far enough to instruct her how to lick, when and where to suck and tease. She liked the taste of the clear, salty drop that kept leaking from him. She liked the softness of his skin wrapped so tightly around the hardness of his length. She liked the veins, the ridges feeling good moving along her lips whenever he leaned her back and just pumped. Most important of all, she loved the look on his face. His expression darkened, his eyes closing for longer periods of time, and his breath catching in grunts as his movements quickened.

True to his word, he took it slow, but all too soon, when he pushed into her, he was pushing all the way into the back of the throat, tripping her gag reflex, making the drooling worse, making her nose and her eyes run. Cutting off her air, time and time again, yet if she could have let go of the headrail, she’d have shoved her hand between her legs and come to the desperate strokes of her own fingers.

He suddenly pulled out of her, rolling off her altogether. Grabbing her ankles, he pulled her halfway down to the foot of the bed, breaking her grip with the headrail. The belt only offered the most token resistance before releasing her, just as she’d thought. She didn’t have time to dwell on it, though. Hooking his arms under her knees, he bent her legs back onto her chest as he moved into position.

She caught her breath when she felt the prodding of his cock, sliding along her slit. She was so wet when he lunged forward, it only took changing the motion of his hips for him to slide in. It wasn’t deep but enough for her to feel the difference between his thumbs and the head of his cock.

“Look at me,” he ordered, his voice little more than a rasp. “You’re going to try to be quiet, but I don’t think you’re going to make it. So, I’m going to cover your mouth. Do you want to say the word? Are you tempted to say it, even a little?”

“More,” she half-whispered and half-moaned.

“Oh….” He shook his head, dissolving into breathless chuckles. “Princess…”

The pulsing of his cock amplified the pulsing she could feel inside herself. She felt stretched so much on his length, even though she knew he wasn’t near as deep as he could be—as he would be in just a few heartbeats more.

“If you want me to stop, just stick your tongue against my fingers. That’s the new safeword for as long as my hand is over your mouth. Got it?”

“More, more, more, mor?—”

He clapped his hand over her mouth and in a single hard surge, gave her exactly what she was begging for. The loss of her maidenhead hadn’t been half as great as the shock of suddenly being filled to the hilt. She grabbed the bed with clawing hands, her hips bucking in revolt of the rest of her to meet him halfway.

She gasped, almost screamed, yet her ass had a mind of its own. Her hips were writhing, fighting under his weight to make him thrust again.

“Hold still,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “Hold still, baby… fuck… fuck! ”

Again, she felt it, the brittle snap of resistance that moved through him as he broke free of whatever tethers his iron-clad will was trying to bind him in. He rose over her, every hard line of muscle in his body bunching and rippling as he moved.

He’d said he wasn’t gentle.

Still not asking him to be, she locked her arms and legs around him, riding the storm of his hard rocking. The whole bed shook under the fury of his thrusts. Gripping him in the vise of her thighs, she shook. She could have spent the night losing herself in his shows of control—the hand over her mouth, the utterly exposed position he forced her into as he pumped into her—but the end came way too soon. It ripped into her from out of nowhere, starting in her pussy and womb, then shuddering through all the rest of her, one taut muscle at a time. She arched into his pounding, her hips bucking frantically all on their own. She shouted into the hand he clamped down hard over her mouth.

“Shit.”

A warm, wet jet of spurting shot over her thigh and across her stomach as Christian shoved off her, rolling right off the end of the bed not half a second before the door to her room slammed open, and both armed men from the hall barged in. They stopped when they saw her naked on the bed.

Vaulting upright with a shriek, Aliya grabbed at enough blankets to cover herself, hopefully before they saw the ropy line of sperm splattered across her belly.

“Masturbation!” she screamed. Grabbing a pillow, she threw it at them.

Grabbing the arm of his companion, one soldier retreated out of the room, pulling the other after him. They hastily closed the door again.

Scrambling off the floor, Christian attacked her, stealing kiss after hungry kiss from her lips, her shoulders, her breasts, while yanking up the pants he’d never removed and fastening them once more around his lean hips.

From out in the hall, a distant voice shouted down to them. “Where the hell is Christian Reid?”

Snatching his belt off the bed, he chuckled before stealing one last parting kiss from her ready lips. He grabbed his shoes and shirt off the floor on his way back out the way he’d come. Throwing off the blankets, she ran to the bathroom, drawing a hot bath with plenty of soapy bubbles to scent her and wash away all trace of him.

The bedspread… was there evidence left on that?

She would have run to check while the water ran, except she heard the main door to her quarters open again, and purposeful footsteps strode in.

“Search it,” Fariq said so coldly, she almost froze right there on the bathroom floor tiles.

Footsteps were striding right toward her closed bathroom door.

Whipping around, Aliya jumped into the tub, tucking herself down into the faintly too-hot water, under as much of the suds as she could splash up over herself.

“I’m in here!” she cried, hurriedly scrubbing her belly and between her legs as the door handle jostled. “Don’t come in! Don’t?—”

Fariq stalked in, sweeping the spacious bathroom with a dark glare to make sure it was empty before that glare came to settle directly on her.

Arms folded over her breasts, she ducked that much farther under the floating bubbles.

“I-I-I said…”

“Masturbation,” he returned, coming in far enough to close the bathroom door behind him. “Yes, so I heard.”

In spite of the hot water, her body ran cold as he approached her. Looking her over from head to the twin islands of her knees, poking up above the blanket of soap bubbles, he bent and shut off the water, condemning the bathroom to instant silence, broken only by the crackle of hundreds of tiny bubbles popping and their breathing. She had to fight to keep hers even as the slow seething of his own washed over her, raising every fine hair to stand at dreaded attention under his grim stare.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered.

He stared at her, his face a stony mask, saying nothing, waiting.

“I-I shouldn’t h-have…”

“It was my fault,” Fariq said, startling her. “The changes in your body have obviously awakened you in ways that are not unexpected, but still, my dear Aliya, that was entirely inappropriate. Your future husband will require that you be a virgin and will want to instruct you in the ways of pleasuring him.”

“What about my pleasure?” she asked quietly.

“Your pleasure, if any, will be given by your husband. You don’t touch yourself without my permission,” he continued, temper spiking hotly. It was rare when he showed his anger to her. Frozen in her bath, she hugged herself, her mouth gaping as he said, “Your body is not your own. Your orgasms, if he allows them, are not your own. Ladies do not touch themselves. Whores do. Are you a whore, Aliya, my love? Do you want me to treat you that way? To have you service my men? To take you myself?”

“No!” She shook her head, hearing his horrible edicts, knowing she shouldn’t be surprised, yet gut-punched by the raw, unmistakable meaning behind each one.

“You will remain chaste and pure,” he rasped, abruptly dropping to sit on the edge of her tub. He grabbed her wrist, prying one arm out of its shielding hug. “Remove your hands. I wish to see what will be offered to the right man. Move them,” he ordered, and when she resisted bellowed, “You do not tell me no!”

He grabbed her by the neck and, when she struggled to break his hold, dunked her under her bathwater. It was barely deep enough for the water to close over her nose and mouth when her head hit the bottom of the tub, but deep enough to drown. When her brother pinned and held her underwater, that’s exactly what she thought was going to happen.

Modesty gave way to instinctive survival.

For the first time in her life, she threw everything she had into fighting him off. Water went everywhere as she kicked and clawed, beating her limbs against the confines of the tub in her haste to pry herself up to where the air was waiting for her. Her head began to pulse, her lungs growing tight and achy with her mounting need to breathe. Clawing his hand, she tried to pry his fingers off her throat, but the more she fought, the worse the need became until with a kick of instinct that rocked her whole-body, her mouth opened against her will, and her lungs sucked.

Water rushed into her.

Fariq let her go, standing to get out of the way when she came barreling up out of the bath, coughing and retching. There was nothing lady-like about the way she fell out of the tub, naked on the white tiles, vomiting water with each involuntary gasp her spasming lungs forced her to take.

Picking up a dry hand towel off the counter by the sink, Fariq dried his hands and arms, and finally, dabbed his wet clothes in an ineffective effort to dry them. Anger once more firmly under control, he waited for her coughing heaves to calm, and she was lying there, limp and just trying to breathe.

“I am willing to be indulgent with you, Aliya, my love,” he coolly told her. “Your future husband may not be so inclined. Maidenly shyness is, after all, to be expected when a girl is at last ready to become a woman. Bear in mind, however, it is also tiresome, and your husband will expect you to welcome his use as often as he chooses.” Dropping the towel on the counter, he started to leave, only to pause after unlocking the door and looked back at her.

“Get up.”

She pushed shakily to her hands and knees, slowly crawling off the wet tiles until she was standing unsteadily. Her hair hung in wet straggles over her face, clinging to her shoulders and back. The urge to cover herself itched at her hands, but she didn’t dare.

“Chin up,” he ordered.

Swallowing hard, she obeyed but looked everywhere but directly at him, too afraid of what she might see as he gazed on her.

“I think I should start training you. We’ll start slowly,” he decided. “When next I come to you, I expect to find you in a far more obedient frame of mind. I have waited a long time for you to grow up. Perhaps I have spoiled you a little too much, but you would do well to remember that you are mine. Every inch of you belongs to me. Everything you have is because of me. Nothing comes for free in this world, my darling. You owe me a price, and of all the things I have offered up for auction over the course of my career, you will be my crown jewel. Don’t think for a second I won’t sell you to the highest bidder. Force me to punish you like this again, and I promise I will ensure your future husband is less than gentle with you for your first time. Nod your head, so I know you understand.”

She nodded, tiny up and down shakes of assent.

“Good girl.” He opened the door, slipping out through the crack, not risking any of the men she could clearly hear roaming through her bedroom from catching a glimpse of her.

Because she was his. She belonged to him—right up to the moment he auctioned her off.

Her brother.

Her knees wobbled.

“Cover yourself,” he said, closing the door behind him again.

Aliya didn’t. The minute he was gone, she collapsed in a wet heap in the puddles on the floor. Cupping her aching throat, she rocked, too wounded to even cry.