by Delta James
“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…
Chapter 14
Reid stood in the open garage doorway, regretting every life choice he’d ever made, but none quite as keenly as this one. He watched her drive away, wondering if her unsteadiness behind the wheel was indicative of how sick she was or because she had no idea how to drive.
It didn’t matter. The phone he’d given her was operating under one of his own special programs. He’d dialed to call for his emergency exit with NATO. They’d be none too pleased when they realized it wasn’t him but Aliya. The phone would repeatedly ping her identity and location to them. She was Fariq’s sister, after all, still had information that would be valuable to them… and damn it, they owed her.
They might not realize it while it was happening, but they would save her.
His job now was to make sure she stayed saved.
With his own words, Fariq had sealed his fate.
She is mine. She has always been mine…
I will never stop hunting you…
For as long as he drew breath, Fariq would do everything he could to reclaim his innocent younger sister.
Yeah, well, Reid wasn’t about to let Fariq have her. No matter what else she did with her life, the one thing Aliya would never need fear again was that her brother would hurt her.
In fact—ejecting the almost empty clip from his Glock, replacing it with a full one—he intended to guarantee it.
Closing the garage door, he went to the mercenary he’d shot, deftly rifling his pockets for all the ammunition clips he could use. The man’s name was Royce, and he’d liked him. He’d seemed a decent man as far as any man in Fariq’s employ could be. The problem was, he was Fariq’s man, and Christian could not afford to leave anyone alive behind him, with a gun or the ability to use one.
One look at the courtyard, then back to the fortress, he knew deadly little Avery and her military chopper were gone. She’d come for Thom and had retrieved him… at least he’d done that much right.
What he’d gotten wrong was not killing Fariq when he’d had the chance. The men on the perimeter walls were gone. Having spent years co-leading the mercenaries, he knew exactly where they were and what they were doing. The fortress was done. It was bug-out time—grab anything of importance and onto the next hideout—with one major difference from every other time Reid had issued the order in their militarized past.
This time, although Avery and Thom were gone, there was still an enemy in the compound—him. Fariq would be scrambling to get away now, but he would be laying traps all along the way.
Reid had known for years he wasn’t going to get out of this alive, but as he headed back into the fortress, for the first time in a long time, he found himself hoping he lived just long enough to bury Fariq first. If he didn’t, Aliya would never be safe,
nor would anyone else he cared about.
The courtyard was eerily empty as he crossed it, heading into the fortress pretty much along the same path as he’d left it. Moving cautiously along the walls, his gun cupped in his hands, he searched the upper floors for hints of movement but found none.
Fariq wouldn’t be escaping this place via any of the vehicles in the garage. His preferences were usually the helicopter or one of his many boats. If Avery was even halfway competent, she’d have taken out the helicopter. That left the yachts safely ensconced in the protective caves built into the cliffside below the fortress. Those cliffs were the biggest reason this fortress had been chosen. It was big enough to hide not only Fariq’s secondary yacht but a small army’s worth of speedboats and at least two power cruisers.
That’s when it hit him—Fariq, the body double, and the boats.
Fariq was going to make his getaway, but he wasn’t going to take the yacht. Already stirred up, the Wild Mustangs wouldn’t be satisfied with simply reclaiming their computer geek. Now that they knew this location, they would be back, and they would be crawling every inch of the ocean in search of any boat, plane, or chopper matching Fariq’s grandiose style.
Reid already knew Fariq wouldn’t be on the yacht, his body double would. Fariq would be on one of the fleets of smaller boats, all launched at the same time to better his chances of escape.
Unless Reid got to him before that happened, Fariq would disappear, and God only knew when he’d ever get close enough to stop him again.
He had to get down into the caves, where he encountered his first trap.
There were three access points to the caves. One by water was completely inaccessible unless one was already in a boat. The other two laid inside the fortress at different ends of the structure. Knowing both were likely to be peppered with enough distractions for Fariq to escape, Reid headed for the closest of the two.
The minute he set foot on the stairs, he was shot at. There were at least a half-mile of stairs leading down to the underground cave system. It would take him hours and a limitless supply of percussion grenades before he reached the bottom. By then, Fariq would be gone.