Chapter 13

Chapter

Thirteen

W hen the shuddering jolt rattled her bed, Aliya snapped from one nightmare into another, certain Fariq was back to hurt her again. The sheet on her back, rough as sandpaper on the welts, covered her nudity from the three men assigned to keep her in the room… and everyone else out.

“What is this?” Fariq had demanded, ripping the blanket right off her bed and all but rubbing the section stained by that telltale smear of Christian’s cum in her face. How he’d even seen it, she didn’t know. Even after he’d shown it to her, she could barely see it.

“I can smell the sex in here,” he’d railed at her. “Who was here? Who did you take between your legs? Do you know what you’ve cost me? All the years I spent training and educating you. Do you have any idea what those invited to the auction would have paid for you?”

Never in a million years would she have thought she’d be strong enough not to tell him. Especially after he took his belt off and ordered her stripped naked and tied to the bed.

It had hurt. Oh, had it hurt, but Christian was her secret. He was the only thing she’d ever had that was all her own, not given to her by her brother. She refused to let Fariq take him away.

Three times Fariq had come back, his belt in his hand, the same demanding question on his lips. “Who, my darling? Whisper it to me or scream it, I don’t care.”

She’d bit her arm once and bloodied her own lip during the worst of it.

The ropes were eating into her flesh at her wrists and her ankles. Every part of her ached, but her secret was still hers.

But for how much longer? The last time he had come to her, he’d climbed on top of her, unzipped his pants, and rubbed himself furiously against her buttocks, finally spraying her with his cum.

“If he dared to mark you as his, before I carve his balls from his body, he will see you have been marked as mine.”

He’d left in a fury, leaving her to fall in an exhausted, aching sleep in which she continued to endure the strokes of his belt and his fumbling until she honestly couldn’t tell which was worse.

She drifted back to sleep.

A shuddering crash against the door startled her awake again. Alarms were going off. She could hear the distant blaring, punctuated by what sounded like the whoop-whoop-whoop of helicopter blades and explosions.

The men came in from the balcony, ducked down behind the doors, their guns at the ready. Watching whatever was happening outside, they didn’t draw attention to themselves by joining in the sporadic gunfire she could make out between the booms and shockwaves that rattled her in her bed.

With a bang, the door slammed open. Three whisper-soft snicks of air punctuated the darts that hit each of the men as they turned, guns at the ready to meet this new invasion.

All three fired back at the door before slowly, one after another, they dropped unconscious to the ground.

She needed to roll her head to see who had come in. She was so heavy, so achy, so tired, she’d throw up if she had the energy to do so. She alternated between fevered sweating and teeth-chattering chills. And pain, there was so much pain. The agony was specific, then everywhere. There was no escaping the malaise that had overcome her.

The bed shook under the weight of someone hurriedly clambering onto it.

“I’ve got you, Princess.” Christian’s voice was gruff, but his hands were gentle as he cut through the ropes that bound her. Pulling her into his arms, he dragged her to the edge of the bed. “I have you. I need to use my guns. Can you stand?”

He tried to force her upright, but her legs melted out from under her, and she slid right off the mattress onto the floor.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked as he bent, hooking her arm over his shoulders and hugging her to him as he picked her up.

“No, Princess. It’s me.”

She sucked a sharp breath as the pain that ratcheted through her when he dropped her to sit. Her back had caught the worst of Fariq’s fury, but he’d lashed her ass as well and sitting hurt. Maybe the pain was a good thing, helping to clear some of the fog out of her head.

The tiny capsule Christian snapped under her nose did the rest.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, grabbing her nose. “That’s awful! What is that?”

“Ammonia. Take another whiff, then we need to run.” Leaving her at the bed, he ran to the closet, grabbing a yellow sundress and a pair of white shoes.

“Where are we going?” She obediently took another sniff, scrunching her face as the irritant worked its way through her tingling nose and into her lungs. “Ugh!”

When he didn’t answer, she realized he’d stopped in the process of bringing her clothes to her. He stood there, his expression an open wound.

She looked down, though she already knew what he was looking at. She had two marks that could be seen from her front. One where the belt had curved over her left shoulder, leaving its bruising bite in the paleness of her arm. The other at her waist, where the belt had wrapped to bite into her hip and abdomen.

He tore his gaze from her, but not before she saw the glimmer of what might have been tears. Steadying himself with a breath, the suspicious glimmer of wetness was gone when he turned back to her and very carefully helped her into her dress.

“I’m okay,” she said.

He got down on his knees to help her feet into her shoes, one-inch heels, the lowest of the pairs in her closet.

“I’m okay.” She touched his shoulder only to have him flinch away. He doggedly put her shoes on her. “Christian… I didn’t tell him anything. I was strong. I didn’t say a word.”

His head snapped up, and he looked at her. She didn’t know what she expected. Maybe for him to be relieved to know Fariq wouldn’t be coming for him next. That he was still safe and could continue to do… whatever it was he was so focused on doing in his mission to bring her brother down. Instead, in a flash, his eyes darkened furiously.

He looked angry at her .

“Oh, Princess.” Cupping the back of her neck, he brought her down until their foreheads touched, and his breath warmed her lips. She couldn’t pull back, even if she’d wanted to. His grip on her was strong and absolutely in control. She liked it. Drawing back, he looked her in the eyes.

“The next time someone asks you questions, you answer them. You tell them everything they want to know. Immediately. Completely. One hundred percent. Honestly. Do you understand me?”

“B-but… I was strong.”

“And now you’re hurt.” He gave her a gentle shake. “You’re hurt because of me, and I can’t bear it. I swear to you—I swear it—what I am about to do will guarantee he never lays another hand on you. Nothing like this will ever happen again. I’ve done some terrible things, and if, somewhere down the road, someone tries to get to me through you, baby, I want your solemn word you will tell them anything and everything they want to know.”

She shook her head.

“I won’t accept defiance in this, Princess.” His eyes darkened, his eyebrows arching. “If you think I won’t punish you right here, right now, you’re right, but we won’t always be here, and you won’t always be hurt like this.”

Her stomach tightened, squeezing so tight on itself, at first she felt sick. Then she heard the truth and promise beneath his words—in the future, they would be together. Christian was telling her without saying the actual words, she meant something to him, he would not abandon her, he would save her, or they would save each other and be together. Try as she might, she couldn’t for the life of her imagine Christian coming at her with that same look of dark fury on his face, pitilessly lashing her back.

Oh, he might spank her, but he would never beat her.

On the heels of that thought came the memory of him jerking her across his lap at that empty café table in the bombed-out market, right before he yanked her shorts and panties down and blistered her bare bottom with the flat of his hand. He’d taken his belt off, too, and come at her, but he hadn’t used it. He’d listened to her instead.

He might well use a belt on her in the future when she had been exceptionally naughty, but never with the intent to harm her. She would never be afraid of Christian—her own personal knight in shining armor.

Aliya remembered the night when he’d caught her in Fariq’s office. Her body remembered that night, too—slammed belly-up against the wall with his hard body pinning her in place. She remembered the heady bulge of his cock, pressing so hungrily against her naked ass and the slow grind of his hips as he made sure she knew exactly what it was she was feeling. She remembered the way he’d spanked her, then filled her mouth with his swollen cock for the first time.

Christian wasn’t Fariq. Being spanked across his knee had hurt, but she could see how stupid she’d been that day—desperate, yes, but definitely stupid. Start to finish, she’d earned that spanking, but not once had she been afraid of him, and not once had he given her a reason to be from that day forward. He’d protected her—in Fariq’s office when her brother had performed that awful mockery of what Christian had done, and again the night she’d tried to get the information NATO had demanded if she wanted their help to escape. On the balcony, when he’d dropped the tin can just to give her words of encouragement and tell her to hang on, that he was going to get her out.

He didn’t have to do that. She was the last thing he needed to risk trying to take care of, but she would love him forever just for trying.

She would love him forever.

When had that happened?

“You wouldn’t do this to me,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he agreed, bracing his hands on the mattress on either side of her hips. Rising on one knee, he brought his face up to hers. “But I would bust your little ass, and I do mean bust, if you asked for it. Like you’re asking for it right now, looking at me as if you’re measuring whether doing it your way over mine might be worth the consequences. I promise, Princess, if you think spanking is the only method when it comes to corralling disobedience, you have one hell of a surprise coming to you.”

The whole fortress rocked, and they looked up as a shower of plaster dust came pouring down on them. Cracks in the ceiling showed the stress the building was taking as the Wild Mustang’s fiery pilot took her revenge on it for the kidnapping of her lover.

“Is that going to come down?” she asked.

They were running out of time. Grabbing the sheets off the bed, he ripped, twisted, knotted, and braided them into a length, then tied it to a stone pillar in the railing of her balcony. Looking down, he threw the makeshift escape rope over the side.

“We’re too high up,” she said when he came back to her. “He’ll never believe we descended halfway then jumped. He knows I’m scared of heights.”

“He’ll believe it,” Christian said, coming back to her. “He knows I’m stubborn enough to carry you down on my back, regardless of what you’re scared of. Come on.”

“Please don’t make me go down the sheets.” Just the thought of it made her panic, but he caught her by the hand.

“We’re not,” he assured. “We’re going out the door.”

Hooking her arm over his broad shoulders, he forced her to her feet.

She tried so hard not to gasp, but the pain that shot through her with every move or brush and touch of his arm as he wrapped her back stole all stability right out of her knees. When her legs tried to buckle, he hugged her even closer, his arm around her waist, pinning her to him and supporting her as much as he could. It was a good thing he did. She more stumbled than walked with him to the door. Everywhere his body touched hers, pressed on hot, angry welts. She hurt. She hurt so badly, the more she tried to carry her own weight, the worse it got.

“Have you eaten since I left?” He muscled her into the hall after a quick look to be sure the coast was clear.

“No,” she panted, already out of breath. “I w-was being punished.”

“Water? Anything to drink at all?”

“N-No.”

“I think your back’s bleeding, you’re dehydrated, and you’re going into shock. I’m fucking going to kill him.”

The whole building rocked again as they reached the grand staircase at the end of the hall. Wide enough for six men to descend shoulder-to-shoulder, it overlooked the red and gold-trimmed grand foyer three floors below. It was the perfect vehicle for someone of great importance and even greater ego to make an entrance. Or it would have been if part of the stone ceiling hadn’t collapsed, taking out the entire center just above the second-floor landing.

“You wouldn’t send me to bed without supper if I was disobedient?” she asked as much for the reassurance as to help distract from how much her back hurt.

“What he did wasn’t loving discipline,” he said flatly, looking up at the ceiling, down at the hole, then down at the stairs in general as he tried to ascertain how stable it would likely be, especially if he tried edging her around the gaping hole. “It’s deprivation torture, pure and simple. And no, I wouldn’t do that, not for a night, much less two days.”

A sound from the hallway in the direction they’d just come from had him ducking down with her, hiding them behind the stair’s railing. Peeking back through the stone balusters, she was just in time to see her brother and a troop of six men marching down the hall toward her room. Her brother had a gun in his hand.

“Time to go,” Christian said. As soon as they were out of sight, he grabbed her arm to heave her up again.

She heard the yell when Fariq found her room empty, the guards slumped on the floor, and the false avenue of escape Christian had tossed off her balcony, leading them a merry chase back the way they’d come.

The biting pain of his arm clamping across the small of her back and her hips made her head spin, and it took all she had not to scream. Supporting her as her uncooperative feet stumbled down the stairs, she lost a shoe somewhere. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember when that had happened.

“How would you punish me?” she asked as he stopped several steps up from the hole. Curious and needing the distraction, she looked at him, so she wouldn’t have to see how high up off the first floor they were.

“We’ll talk about it later, okay? Right now, I need to think.”

The hole was massive, nearly taking out the middle of the staircase. Only a six-foot stretch of the left-hand railing remained, although it looked anything but sturdy enough to support her, much less him. He rubbed his mouth and glanced up at the third floor. The echo of Fariq’s voice ordering the rooms to be searched helped him make up his mind.

“Would you tie me to the bed?” she asked as he set her down within three steps of the hole.

“I consider that more for fun than punishment. Look, pay attention.” Hunkering down as close to the edge as he dared, he gauged the drop before fixing his gaze on her. “I’m going to lower you through the hole?—”

“Spreadeagled?” she asked, finding it impossible to focus on anything but the mental image of her being bound to his bed. She should be horrified. She should be shaking from dread and all the bad memories her brother had tried to cement in her over these past two days. Yet try as she did, she couldn’t dredge up a single fearful shiver at the thought of Christian binding her. In fact, it was doing just the opposite. The burning pulse of the wounds on her back kept trying to shift, sending their heated throbbing down through her core to nestle in between her legs. The more she tried to imagine watching Christian’s strong hands tying her wrists and ankles to opposite bedposts, the worse—or better—it got.

The more she tried to dredge up the same fear and horror she’d felt, the safer she felt, perched a good ten feet up from the pile of rubble scattered across the marble tile floor below. Christian was strength and safety. There was no horror to be found in his arms, and she couldn’t think of anything he might do to change that. She wanted more than anything to curl up in his arms, even now, when it hurt like hell.

He snapped his fingers in front of her.

She focused on them.

“Princess, stay with me.” He checked her pupils before taking her pulse. “Baby, you’re in shock. I need you to pay attention?—”

“Spreadeagled?” she asked again, the driving need to know took priority over everything else. “I wouldn’t mind being tied like that if it was in your bed.”

“Okay,” he said, snapping out of whatever thought process that had thrown him in. “I’m going to lower you down as far as I can, but then I’ll have to let you go. Do you think you can do that?”

“Do you want to have sex with me like that?”

He laughed, soft and low. “In more ways than you can possibly imagine.” Shaking his head sharply, he started to take off his belt. “I’m going to lower you down with this?—”

“On my stomach or on my back?”

“I sincerely doubt you’ll be able to hold on at this point?—”

“Do you want to gag me?”

“The thought has definitely occurred. Look, I’m going to bind your wrist, so I can get you as close to the floor as possible, but then I’m going to have to drop you.”

Her stomach quivered, tightening in the most delicious coils as she watched him wrap his belt tight around her wrist twice before feeding the tail through his buckle.

“This won’t hold you for long,” he said, tightening it as much as he could. “In fact, if you struggle or even if you dangle too long, you’ll fall out. Can you do that for me, Princess? Can you try to be still while I lower you?”

She tried to kiss him.

Her lips brushed his only for a moment, just long enough to feel the warmth, taste the faintness of sweet coffee on his breath, and feel the softening of his mouth, just before he kissed her back as his hands settled on her waist.

“Yeah,” he chuckled, brushing her bottom lip with his own, sending her pulse to fluttering and her sex to quivering, along with all those delicious knots trembling inside her. “You are definitely the right girl for me.”

He gave her no other warning before his hands seized her waist, and down she went, tipping into the hole before she could do more than register she was going sideways. It was probably for the best he hadn’t warned her. Grabbing his shoulders was sheer reflex. She’d have wrapped her legs around him too, but she just wasn’t quick enough. Gravity had her, and down she went, the belt wrapped around her wrist, along with the strong as hell grip of his left hand. With his right, he grabbed onto one of the balustrades to keep from tipping himself headfirst into the hole.

The muscles in his arm bulged, the veins popping out against the skin with the strain. He was so strong yet gentle in his own way. The veins protruded down the length of his arm as he stretched her out as close to the ground as he could get her until she dangled a good three feet above the broken stones of both the ceiling and the shattered portion of the staircase.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

Her head spun. She had a moment of sheer amazement as she realized, for the first time in her life, her feet were off the floor, and she wasn’t the slightest bit afraid. Christian had her—he would always have her, and she would always be safe. She wasn’t scared—not of heights, not of anything. Staring up into this face, she hung by his grip and waited for him to command her.

“Don’t break your ankle,” he told her.

He said the sweetest things.

He dropped her.

She tried to land on her feet, but her legs were jelly. They melted right out from under her, and she dropped straight to her butt, then her back on the floor. She hit two chucks of stone—a small one bumping hard enough to make bruises of its own in the small of her back and another whacking her shoulder. That would probably bruise, too, but for now, she barely felt it. She stared up, watching as Christian quickly lowered himself to dangle by both hands, judging the distance he had to drop before taking the risk.

Of course, he landed on his feet. He was so much stronger than she was. One day... one day she wanted to be like that, but right now, she couldn’t even get up off her back. She had no strength, not even to lift her hand when he reached for her.

He grabbed her, quickly unfastening his belt from around her wrist just as the scrambling of hurried footsteps and calling voices began to echo through the foyer from somewhere overhead. Picking her up, he covered her mouth and carried her deeper into the shadows under the staircase, hugging as close to the wall as he could get.

Not that she was about to say anything. Disoriented as she was, it barely registered that she was shaking, shivering uncontrollably, though it wasn’t the cold she felt. Not with the heat of her back growing, spreading its insidious warmth through her until now, she wasn’t just shivering, she was sweating.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, his narrowed eyes following the echo of their searching pursuers footsteps up through the two balconies that hid them from sight. “I’ve got you, baby. Just be as quiet as you can, all right?”

She nodded, locking her jaw in an effort to keep her teeth from chattering, then from crying out when he hooked her arm over his shoulders again and half-carried, half-dragged her through the destroyed foyer, ducking into shadows and behind pillars to avoid being seen by the three men stalking the length of the hallway above, searching the rooms, searching the rubble in the foyer around them.

“There’s no sign of them. They had to have gone out the window.”

“Find them,” Fariq’s cold voice filtered down from above. “Aliya is not to be harmed. No one hurts her but me. Go.”

She shook, but not because of his words or even because she feared they might actually be caught. Tucked up against Christian’s side, all she felt was safe.

And hot. Her body was pulsing, the heat drowning out the pain. She still felt it, but it felt distant, inconsequential.

Something was wrong with her.

“I don’t feel good,” she mumbled, her head drooping so heavy and low, try though she might, she couldn’t summon the strength to raise it.

“Stay with me, Princess,” he soothed, soft as a whisper, his focus still fixed on where Fariq was coming down the stairs as far as the hole. Aliya could hear the slow, familiar tromp of his movements. She wanted to look up, but her head was spinning. She was so hot, so tired.

“I know you’re here,” Fariq called down. “I know you can hear me. You can probably even see me, tucked up like a rat wherever you’re hiding. I just want you to know, you can leave. Just go, I won’t hurt you. Given a few months to get over the pure, unadulterated piss-off of your betrayal, I doubt I’ll even think of you again… so long as you leave her here. She is not for you, and you know it. She is mine. She has always, always been mine to do with as I wish. If you take her with you, I will hunt you both and won’t stop until I’ve killed you.”

A small rock came tumbling down through the broken gap in the staircase.

“You know me,” Fariq said, the soft, gravelly grind of pebbles under his shoe suggesting his shift in position as he lowered himself to squat at the edge, no doubt craning to see far enough under the ledge in the direction he thought they were hiding. “You know I’m as good as my word.”

The world suddenly spun, and the next thing Aliya knew, Christian had her tossed over his right shoulder. He kept hold of her wrist, pinning her limp arm over his left shoulder to prevent her from falling off. His other arm clamped across the back of her legs.

How very Neanderthal of him, dominant, and oh, so sexy. This wasn’t something that happened in the real world, but one of those things fantasy alpha men did when their women weren’t cooperating, and they were all done putting up with it. Instead of possessive, it felt protective, and despite the dig of his shoulder into her midriff, she liked it. If she weren’t so cold and tired, trying with all her might not to throw up, she’d have told him so.

Slowly letting go of her wrist, Christian drew one of his guns. On silent feet, he circled in the shadows, abandoning one pillar to duck behind another with a far better view of Fariq squatting on the stair. He wasn’t alone. At the very top of the stairs, two of her brother’s men were scouring the upper hall and what part of the open foyer they could see from way up there.

Christian had the advantage. Sick as she felt, even Aliya could recognize they had a better view of them and in particular, of her brother.

“I won’t let you keep her,” her brother announced.

“Funny,” Christian coldly replied. “I was just about to say the same to you.”

He shot just as Fariq stood, the bullet missing where his head had been to ricochet harmlessly off the marble steps behind him.

Fariq ducked behind the stone rail for cover, but the men behind him were already charging down to protect him.

Firing repeatedly, Christian hit one of them before ducking down the hall to the main doors. There were men all over the perimeter wall. Holding onto Christian’s belt with her free hand to keep from bouncing against his back, she saw them. She knew they’d been seen, but Christian’s betrayal of her brother must not yet be common knowledge. The men looked right at them, then away again, more preoccupied with the helicopter now winding up its attack.

“I will never stop hunting you!” Fariq’s furious shout echoed from the fortress behind them.

Christian didn’t stop running or even look back as he carried her across the courtyard into the garage.

“Hey, you found her,” a merc called from the shadows.

Christian shot him. That he regretted it almost immediately was something she could feel in every tense line of his body as he watched the other man fall. The man was her brother’s. If he knew they were trying to escape, he would have tried to stop them. Aliya knew that, so Christian certainly had to have known it as well. He’d been a spy in the company of these mercs for years, and somewhere along the way, the lines must have blurred. He’d just been forced to shoot a friend.

Turning sharply, Christian carried her to a car, opened the door, and set her down gently in the driver’s seat.

“Look at me.”

Shifting her stare from the closed garage door directly in front of her to him, Aliya waited while he checked her eyes and her pulse.

“Princess,”—he hunkered down beside her—“your back is infected, and you’re in shock, but I need you to do something for me. It’s very important.”

“Okay,” she agreed, heat throbbing everywhere she touched the seatback. It hurt a lot, but she was strong and would do whatever he needed her to.

“Take this.” He put a cellphone in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “I’m going to activate this and open the door. When I do, I want you to drive as fast as you can up the road one mile. Just one mile, then stop. People in a helicopter will pick you up.”

“A helicopter?” she echoed. “What, the one firing on us?” She wasn’t so sick that she couldn’t follow that. “Wait.” Startled, she suddenly realized something else. “You said, me, not us.”

“I’ll be coming right behind you,” Christian promised. He cupped her face, stilling her objections, although not her confusion. “I have to do one thing first, then I’m going to come for you. I’ll always come for you. I promise.”

She couldn’t for the life of her think how, but her thoughts were so confused. She nodded.

“What’s the plan?”

She looked at him, shivering as she drowned in waves of sweat-inducing heat.

“Drive fast, one mile, then wait for the helicopter.”

“Good girl.” He tapped the phone in her hand, and it began ringing, then buzzing in a series of computerized fax-like sounds before the red light near the cell’s camera began blinking. “Don’t drop that, no matter what.” He shut the door, and she gripped the steering wheel tightly in her free hand.

She was about to leave him behind. Tiny kernels of cold panic began eating away at the heat in her belly.

“I’m right behind you. Trust me. That big bed where you want to be tied down is waiting for us.”

She nodded, swallowing hard and starting the car.

“I’ll find you,” he promised as he hit the switch, raising the automatic garage door. “Go. Go!”

The phone in one hand, she jerked on the gear stick the way she’d seen her brother’s driver do, stomped on the pedal that made the engine rev, and promptly ran into the black vintage Jaguar directly behind her.

“Forward,” Christian said helpfully, then pointed to the open garage door and the bright sunny landscape laid out ahead of her. “That way, Princess.”

Shifting gears, she hit the gas again, and this time did exactly what she was supposed to. She drove as fast as she dared, very nearly running over someone at the gate when he tried to get her to stop and didn’t stop. She was so dizzy, and although she’d seen it done hundreds of times, she’d never driven anything in her life. The car hardly wanted to stay on the road. Worse, she had no idea how far she’d actually gone when she finally stopped. Black smoke rising in the rearview mirror was all she could see of the fortress.

He was coming. Christian was coming.

Shutting off the car, she sat in the quiet, half-off the road, staring out over the Spanish countryside, wild-flower fields on her right, a grassy cliffside overlooking the dark ocean waves on the other.

Christian was coming.

She was so hot and so tired. Hugging the phone to her chest, the red light at the top blinking rhythmically, she closed her eyes. Just for a minute. Just until he and the helicopter caught up with her.

Any minute now.

Any minute…