by Delta James
“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.
Chapter 11
This was how men—never mind double agents—got killed. Scaling the outer fortress walls from one balcony to another, like a lovelorn teenager incapable of thinking with anything but his dick. Yeah, well… his dick was pretty happy about everything, except the coitus interruptus ending he’d been forced to accept, but the rest… the rest had been better than he could ever have imagined.
Arm over arm, he hauled himself up the rope to his balcony as fast as he could move. Yanking the rope up behind him, he untied the knot, and just as he heard Fariq’s unmistakable voice, commanding Aliya’s room to be searched, he ducked back into his room. Jesus, he’d made it. The strain from how fast he’d had to climb could still be felt in his arms and shoulders, but there wasn’t time to rest. He changed his clothes, throwing off his jeans and yanking on a pair of black trousers, then casting aside his white shirt and donning a blood-red, short-sleeved jersey knit top. Wetting his head as if fresh from the shower, he hurried downstairs, running into a second crew of armed men halfway down the stairs, charging their way up to his quarters.
“I heard the boss is looking for me,” he said, only the men didn’t smile back when he flashed his. They didn’t stop coming either. They grabbed him by the arms and hustled him downstairs. “What the hell is going on?”
“He’s on a real tear this time,” the merc to his right said; Christian thought his name was Phil. He was normally very good with names, but it had been a while since he’d hired the men who outfitted Fariq’s fortress. “They’re saying we have a spy.”
A lead stone dropped in the center of him.
“Who?” Reid said.
“I don’t know, but he’s been calling for you for the last half hour, and is he ever in a mood.”
That was worrisome, although not as half as worrisome as being taken straight to Aliya’s quarters instead of Fariq’s new office.
“What the hell’s going on?” Christian asked, stealing a hasty look around the room. There was no sign of Aliya, though she might have been in the bathroom Fariq stormed out of. Aliya didn’t follow, and he quickly closed the door behind him. Everything in him itched to shove past Fariq and check on her, but sure as that cold look on Fariq’s face—sister be damned—that would be the end of them both.
“Where the hell have you been?” Fariq growled.
“Taking a nap,” he snapped back. “I just spent the night on a bloody raft in the middle of the ocean. I was tired. How is it you’re not exhausted?”
“This.” Closing the distance between them in three long strides, he grabbed Reid’s hand and slapped a small microchip into it. “Look at that and tell me what you see.”
The lead weight in his stomach grew a lot heavier. He knew exactly what it was. He’d planted it months ago when they’d bought this place with the intent of using it as a safe place, a just in case sort of place. Like it had become when the yacht sank.
“Looks like a computer chip,” he said reluctantly.
“And what, apart from our private business, do you think is on it?”
Everything that had passed through Fariq’s computers since he’d installed it. Every communication, every banking transaction—everything NATO needed to put this man in prison for the rest of his life.
“Let’s plug it in,” he said. “Maybe I can crack it.” He’d have to corrupt it and dreaded trying to do it with Fariq hanging over his shoulder.
Fariq barely let him finish before snatching the chip from his hand and sticking it back in his pocket.
“So, now you’re a computer wizard, are you? You think you can do better than the three men who’ve already tried?”
“Do you want to know what’s on it or not?” he shot back. It was like baiting a tiger. He could only let the man walk on him for so long before the tiger started thinking he was prey and could only stand up to him for so long before he thought he was being challenged. “Who else do you have?”
“No one I can trust,” Fariq said pointedly. He glared at the mercs crowding Aliya’s room, everywhere but at him, but Reid got the point. “So,” Fariq decided, “I may as well get someone I already know I can’t trust, albeit one who’s capable.”
“You’ve got someone specific in mind?” He was almost afraid to ask.
“Get me Thom Lyndon.”
Reid stared at him and was sure the ‘are you fucking crazy’ was perfectly evident in his tone when he said, “You want me to kidnap one of the Wild Mustang men?”
“Take two men with you. Get him tonight.”
Jesus.
As he watched the other man stalk from the room, the relief knowing he hadn’t yet been found out, never came. For the last few years, every second he’d lived without suspicion shining directly on him had been another second he could still twist things to his advantage. This didn’t feel like that. With his microchip in Fariq’s pocket, all he felt was the clock ticking down the seconds of the time he had left.
He looked at the closed bathroom door, but there was nothing he could do about that itch between his shoulder blades that begged to check on her.
There were too many men here, and by the looks of them, they were planning to stay awhile.
His time was almost up. He had to get out of here.
If it killed him, he had to find a way to get Aliya out of here first.
“You and you,” Reid said, thumbing at the men who had escorted him down here. “Meet me at the helipad in twenty.”
Twenty minutes was more than enough time to get ready in Fariq’s employ. When he gave the order, you dropped what you were doing and did it. Hungry? Tough, eat when you get back. Just on your way to the shower? Nobody needed to be clean more than he needed to just be there. Twenty minutes was the length of
time he figured anyone would need to arm-up and get on the chopper.
Twenty minutes wasn’t anywhere near enough time while also trying to plot the immediate coup of a king and keep one very important person from falling into the line of fire. Still, from the moment Fariq ordered him to kidnap the Wild Mustang Security Group’s resident computer geek, a plan began to form. It wasn’t a good plan, he’d be the first to admit that. There were major problems, the biggest that none of the Wild Mustangs knew he was working undercover; not even his sister knew. The old saying, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ didn’t amount to a whole hell of a lot when everyone thought he was loyal to Fariq.
He went to his room, shutting and locking the door before shoving the heavy four-poster bed a good three feet over. He had to use his knife to pry up the false stone top on the hidden compartment he’d installed all those months ago, just on the off chance.
The wireless computer system he’d tucked into it with its microchip recorders and twin signal boosters he hoped might combat all the stone in this place were still there, feeding off the electrical wires of the ceiling light one floor below. He had no idea if any of the information he’d partitioned from Fariq’s personal computers had actually made it onto the microchip, but he took it, slipping it into his pocket.
From there, he made his way to the armory, loading his weapons—two extra mags for the Glock in his chest holster, a 9mm tucked into the back of his pants, and a smaller Colt Mustang for his boot. He wasn’t expecting too much trouble, so long as they caught Thom off-guard and alone.
He gave the rest of the Wild Mustangs until tomorrow morning before they were fast on his tail like a swarm of angry hornets, ready to take the whole place out. Faster, maybe, if he could figure out where and how to leave the microchip where the rest of Thom’s crew was sure to find it.
As it turned out, that was both easier than he thought, but sure to circle around and bite him in the butt.
One of the first tasks Fariq had assigned Reid when he came to work for him had been to put trackers on every one of the Wild Mustang vehicles, both business and personal. It was an ongoing surveillance process. That group was hard on vehicles. They didn’t seem to be happy unless they were blowing something up, and that went double for their feisty little firecracker pilot, Avery Jackson. So naturally, the one night it would have served him best to find Thom all on his geeky lonesomeness, he was making happy with the unpredictable Mustang girl.
Tracking Thom’s truck to her place, guns drawn, they silently infiltrated the house. While Phil moved deeper into the house, past the kitchen, and down the hall toward the bedrooms, Reid hung back, sweeping the unfamiliar house for a place where his tiny microchip might be quickly found. Son of a bitch. A soft whistle from the backroom told him Phil had Thom. That was a lot quicker than he’d expected, and a stab of frustration bit into his chest. He had one chance at this. Aliya depended on his doing this right, but everywhere he looked, he kept second-guessing himself.
He could stick it in the middle of the big screen tv. Though smaller than a fly in size, the microchip would stick out like a dot against whatever movie was playing behind it. Unless, of course, Avery didn’t watch TV, and how likely would she be to pull up a movie and popcorn after discovering they’d taken her boyfriend? Same for her laptop screen. Shit. He should have put more time into planning this, except there was no time.
Voices from down the hall, where he presumed the bedrooms were, told him he really was out of time. One of those voices was Phil, the other a woman’s.
Avery, the firecracker herself.
Alone with Phil, who was an idiot. An opinion that only deepened as Reid made his way down the long hallway, listening while Phil laughingly said, “I bet he paddled your butt before he fucked you raw. That’s what I would have done.”
Avery wasn’t even his, yet the stab of fury that comment set off was almost blinding. All he could see was Aliya lost in her brother’s fortress, surrounded by men just like Phil. Men who’d take her innocence and twist it for their own desire.
“Holy shit! You let him fuck your ass?” Phil said, and the depth of lust he could hear in that man’s voice was sickening.
“I always do what Daddy tells me,” Avery said in the softest, baby doll voice Reid was pretty sure she’d never used and probably never use again once she’d sidled in close enough to idiot Phil to disarm him.
Sure enough, finally reaching the doorway, Reid found himself staring at a scene he never would have expected. Phil had Thom on his hands and knees, gun pointed at the back of Thom’s head, but all of Phil’s attention was locked on Avery, naked, blonde Avery Jackson, her flaming red backside showing how she and—Reid snorted—‘Daddy’ obviously liked to play their bedroom games.
Obviously, he didn’t spank her anywhere near long or hard enough if she was willing to put herself in this kind of danger the minute Thom was on his knees.
Her attempts at innocence were laughable. Avery was not Aliya. She was dangerous. She was also smart enough to know the jig was up the minute he stepped into the bedroom, taking stock of the situation.
Phil only noticed him when he looked up from her tits long enough to notice her focus had shifted beyond him.
“Get Lyndon up and ready for travel,” he ordered, glaring at Phil. “And you,” he said, turning to the Mustang’s female pilot, “drop the act, Avery.” He tossed her a dressing gown, which she scrambled to put on, covering herself from view.
Reid could tell Thom’s protectiveness was rising by the fury darkening in his eyes as Phil bound him in zip ties, forcing him to watch while Reid did the same to his baby girl. It wasn’t until he had her completely fastened down, he knew where to leave the microchip. Somewhere Phil couldn’t see it. Somewhere she couldn’t help but find it once she got her hands free.
His gaze fell on her breasts, barely covered by the loose terrycloth folds of her dressing gown.
Actions have consequences. He knew that, even as he fell back on his best asshole routine. He needed this to be obvious without being obvious. He needed her to remember this.
He needed to get Aliya out. What kind of man was he if he didn’t do everything in his power to achieve that most important goal? Everything didn’t mean only the nice things.
“You’re a tasty piece of tail,” he told her. With his censuring gaze, he let his stare tell her something else entirely. Play with fire, and you’ll get burned, baby girl. You know better.
She glared at him, seething through tightly pressed lips as he turned her around in her chair, forcing her and Thom to see one another.
“If we had more time and circumstances were different,” he continued, turning his smirk on Thom next, “maybe we could have taken turns.”
This is what happens when a man fails to protect the ones he loves.
Thom’s face darkened, his body straining against the zip ties that held him, but Reid suspected he got the silent message. Especially when he put his hand down the front of Avery’s dressing gown, planting the microchip—Aliya’s best chance for escape—on her breast before giving her nipple a tweak.
Be glad it’s me and not someone else doing this.
Disgusted with himself, he tied her to the chair before pulling out the sedative he’d taken from the armory. Kidnappings went so much easier when the victim couldn’t struggle.
“This will only hurt for a minute and will wear off in a few hours with no lasting side effects. Once you wake up and get free, don’t call the cops. We just need Thom’s help for a day or two. Call in sick or whatever you have to do to keep the Wild Mustang boys off our back. As long as Thom cooperates, we’ll return him to you unharmed, and everyone can get back to their spank-happy lives.” He stuck her arm, feeding her less than half the dose. He needed her out only long enough for them to get away. After that, he really needed her awake and alert enough to find that microchip. He cupped her chin, watching as the sedative began to take effect in her eyes.
“If you hur
t him,” she seethed, already fighting the drowsing effects, “I will hunt you down and kill you. I’ll never stop. I will destroy you, Fariq, and anyone else who helps you.”
“I’m sure you will.” In fact, he was banking on it. One baby girl unwittingly coming to the aid of another.
Save my Aliya.
The thought resonated in its rightness. She wasn’t just an innocent, not just a girl who needed protecting, not just a sub he would enjoy training. She was his Aliya—his—and nothing and nobody was going to deny him.
Chapter 12
“You want me to do what?” Thom Lyndon asked, his eyebrows arching high.
“Break the code on that chip. Smart as you are, it should be simple enough. When you’re done, you can go home.” To his credit, Fariq was doing a remarkable job keeping himself together, but there was something seriously wrong with him. Thom was one of his nearest, dearest, and most dangerous adversaries. At the very least, Fariq ought to look at the man, but he only paced, looking at the time, looking at the window, glaring at the door. It was the closest Reid had ever seen the man come to unraveling, and it wasn’t hard to guess why.
Something had happened while he was gone. There were men on Aliya’s balcony now, as well as outside her door. He hadn’t seen her, couldn’t talk to her. Even her cellphone, which Fariq had locked down with so many child restrictions to make it practically useless, had been revoked.
What had happened, he didn’t know yet, but as soon as he got out of here, he was going to find out. Designed to pick up everything sent or received on any device within these walls, hopefully, there was something on the computer hidden in the floor under his bed. But first, he had to get Thom working on cracking the cipher on the computer chip Fariq had found and hope the code was strong enough to confound the computer wizard long enough for Avery to launch her rescue. Otherwise, he would be exposed.
