by Delta James
“No time.” Sneaking a quick peek out the door to make sure the coast was still clear, Reid pointed the way to his escape route. “She’ll be waiting for you on the balcony.” He had someone else waiting on him, and the itch to hurry and get to her was starting to crawl in his skin. “Tell…” He stopped, knowing how completely inadequate it would sound, and for the life of him, not sure why he felt the need to say it, other than she might never otherwise know how often he truly did think of her. “Tell Finn I’m sorry.”
Apologies and mea culpas were useless in situations like this. He knew better… so did Thom.
“Tell her yourself. Come with me. Whatever information you got, we’ll get it to Markoff together.”
“I can’t.” Not without Aliya. “Not yet.”
Thom stared at him, again that flicker of suspicion and disbelief darkening his eyes.
“Fine,” he said, giving in. “We’ll come back for you.”
‘I won’t be here’ was on the tip of Reid’s tongue, but he never got the chance to say it. Thom threw the vicious roundhouse punch, his fist connecting with his chin, snapping his head back, and knocking him out cold.
Aliya…
He came to slowly, his chin aching, blood in his mouth, but with the fortress still shaking from the blasts of Avery’s military-grade chopper. How long he’d been out for, he didn’t know, but thanks to Thom’s fond ‘goodbye,’ he had even less time than before.
Once he and Avery were gone, so too would Reid’s chance to get Aliya out while there was still enough confusion for them to pass unnoticed. And, of course, for him to kill Fariq on their way out. If what that man in the security room had told him was true, if there was so much as one brutal mark on her, he wasn’t leaving here while that man still breathed.
Chapter 13
When 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 e
yes.
“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, o
kay? 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.”