by Delta James
He stripped away his sheet, grabbing her ass and lifting her to sit on the counter once more. Her legs wrapped around his hips. Nothing felt more natural or more necessary than his heat and hardness pressing against all of her.
Her gasp filled the bathroom when he entered her, filling her so hard and so completely, she couldn’t breathe.
He stilled, his body tense as hers throbbed around him, the minute pain of his entry already washing away beneath her need to feel him moving inside her.
“More,” she begged.
“Did I hurt you?”
Releasing his shoulders, she grabbed his ass cheeks, digging into him with her fingernails to force him to move.
“More!”
Growling into her mouth, he grabbed her wrists and pinned them behind her back, holding them in one iron-fast fist. Hooking his arm under her left knee, he hiked her leg up, giving himself the access he needed to fuck her as hard as he desired.
He was winding her up, filling her beyond her ability to take silently, and far, far beyond her ability to hold still. She squirmed in the confines of his arms, fighting to meet him halfway with each pump of his hips.
“More…” she panted. “More!”
He clapped his hand over her mouth, muffling her cry as he shoved his finger up inside her ass.
“Is this the more you want?” he demanded, thrusting in deep and grinding his hips until the shock of the newness had faded enough for her to once more want to match his movements. “There’s my good girl. Ride my cock, princess.”
Letting go of her hands and hair, he caught her by the ass, working a second finger into her while she wiggled and bounced, trying to find a rhythm strong enough to match her need. Every in and out glide of his cock felt better than before, tighter. The pressure of his fingers opening her up from behind so foreign, the pinch of discomfort when he pushed his fingers deep and pried her ass cheeks wider apart felt good, too.
“You like that?” Christian laughed, a husky, guttural sound. “You like my finger in your ass?”
“Yes!” Her body flushed with the mortification of knowing she did, and her pussy released a gush of hot arousal, filling the small bathroom with the sloppy wet slapping of his cock spanking her greedy pussy. “Yes… Christian, please…”
The rippling spasms of orgasm shot through her sex to her womb, rocking her with wave after intensely pleasurable wave until she could no longer make herself move to the thrusts of his cock. She locked up, frozen in the grip of the spasms that wracked her, the sharpness worse when he suddenly pulled out of her.
Pulling her off the counter, he bent her back over it. He grabbed her by the hair and forced her to look at their reflections in the mirror. Gripping his jutting cock in his hand, he stroked along the seam of her pussy, teasing but not entering.
“Who owns your pussy, Princess?”
The peaks of her nipples thrust hard as diamond tips.
“You,” she moaned.
He slammed inside her. She braced her hands against the mirror, pushing back into his thrusts to keep from banging her head. The intensity was already there, building up inside her again, making her legs shake with the impending force about to tear through her.
“Who owns this ass?”
She threw her head back when his thumb invaded her the way his fingers had.
“You!” she mewed, trying desperately not to cry out.
“I should spank you right here and now, shouldn’t I?” he demanded, his laugh little more than a breath as he rode her. “Let everyone out there know who you belong to. Who you listen to, who you obey. Whose cock you bow to, and who has the authority to bring you to tears when you’ve been disobedient.”
She squeaked, feeling the loss of his cock when he abruptly pulled out of her so keenly, she almost cried.
Picking a sheet off the floor, he wadded it into a tight ball and dropped it on the counter in front of her, then held her gaze in the mirror.
“Consider this a warning,” he sternly told her. “The next time you want to waste your breath, telling me how useless you are, I won’t care where we are or who might be close enough to hear or even that you already have marks on your back. I will put you over my knee, and I will bust your ass before I punish it the way I’m going to punish you right now. Bite the sheet, princess. This might hurt a little, but nowhere near as much or as deeply as what you said hurts us both.”
“B-But—”
“Bite,” he ordered.
Hugging the wadded-up sheet tightly, she buried her face and the shrillness of the cry she couldn’t quite bite back when he fit his cock to her back passage and relentlessly pushed his way inside. He used spit and her own fluid to lubricate her, neither of which lasted very long. But then, neither did he, much to her relief.
His hips spanked her bottom, his cock battering her insides until, with a handful of harder than normal thrusts, he stiffened with a grunt, and she felt the hot gush of fluid spilling inside her.
That second orgasm still hovered inside her, teasing her with how close she was to falling into its unrealized grip if only he’d take her clit into his hand again.
Except he didn’t, and not because he didn’t know the rawness of the need he’d brought her to the brink of before abandoning it. He cleaned himself, then her.
“If you come without my touch or without my permission, you won’t sit for a week. I’m the one who decides if you come or not. Am I clear?”
She groaned, then scowled. “Yes,” she sulked, using the sheet he’d given her to cover up again.
The phone came to life a second time, vibrating in the basin of the sink, where they must have knocked it, but she ignored it.
“Look at me.”
Frowning, she did.
“One way or another,” he promised, “it’s going to be okay.”
It didn’t feel that way.
“Everything has a price,” he said again. “I’ve known for a long time, I was going to have to pay for what I’ve done.” Cupping her face between his hands, he pressed his forehead to hers just long enough for her to melt against him. “I promise I’ll find a way to make sure you’re okay.”
“How are you going to do that if they send you to prison?” she asked thickly, all the good feelings he’d evoked just mere seconds ago melting away, leaving her feeling nothing but the dread and uncertainty of the future stretching out before them.
“I’ll find a way. Just do what I tell you, and keep your nose clean. Fariq’s gone. If they’re looking to pin his crimes on someone else, I’d rather they pinned them on me instead of you. Got it?”
She folded her arms across her sheet swaddled chest, staring at a point on his chest, so he wouldn’t be able to read the minute defiance she felt her eyes betrayed. She was pretty sure he saw it, anyway. After a moment, his arms opened, and he pulled her in for a hug.
“Got it?” he asked again, breathing his fondness for her into her hair.
She melted into his embrace.
“Got it,” she finally repeated, but she didn’t have to be happy about it.
The phone in the sink started its third round of humming, which gave her an excellent excuse to get out of this before she dissolved into tears… again.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” She reached behind her to grab it. “He needs to cut the umbilical cord if whoever he’s been talking to can’t stand not hearing from him for five seconds.”
He got the pocket door open, allowing her to finally break away from him. The distance became immediately unbearable, but she made herself walk away—her back to her seat, and him back to the handcuffs waiting for him at his.
Her legs still hurt, so did her back, but the swim of endorphins in her system meant the minute discomforts that accompanied every step were located in a whole new set of places. Like, the inner slopes of her thighs. Her legs were never meant to stretch the way he had when he’d been pushing to get deeper inside her, and—she eased herself down to sit—her poor bottomhole. She could
n’t remember ever being so aware of that aspect of her anatomy, but, oh—she rolled her lips to prevent any telltale sound from escaping as her weight settled onto the seat—did she ever feel it now.
“Enjoy your phone call?” her Mustangs companion asked with a smirk.
“Yes, thank you. Here.” She handed him his phone back. “Now, you can enjoy yours. She hasn’t stopped calling for the last ten minutes.”
He startled and quickly checked his phone. His eyebrows quirked.
“I don’t know that number.”
She turned back to the window, giving him what privacy she could in an enclosed helicopter. Resting her head on the window, she tried not to think about all the things that could go sideways once they landed. He kept calling her princess, but this wasn’t a fairytale, and no matter how positive she tried to be, she couldn’t imagine this coming to a happy storybook ending.
“Holy shit.” Sitting straight up in his chair, the man beside her turned to the Wild Mustangs’ leader. “I have three missed calls from the Pentagon on my phone.”
“I’ll do you one better,” the female pilot suddenly called back over her shoulder. “I’m being redirected to Morón Air Base, and we are being ordered to take the handcuffs off Christian Reid. They’re not saying, ‘right fucking now,’ but it’s certainly implied.”
Chapter 17
Reid sat on the end of a very comfortable medical examining table in Morón’s on-base hospital, dressed in a fresh, clean military uniform he had absolutely no business wearing. The electrical marks Fariq had burned into his chest and thigh had been treated and rebandaged. He’d been given two injections, which was two IV drips and one injection less than what Aliya had received after being whisked off for treatment. He had no idea where she was, but he knew it wasn’t far. There were two officers stationed outside his door—not so much to prevent anyone from talking to him, he suspected, but to keep him from ‘wandering’ off. A third man, a young soldier with glasses who introduced himself as General Markoff’s aid, Tannehill, kept him appraised of her progress.
“Sepsis isn’t fun, but they think she’ll make a full recovery. If someone hadn’t treated her, she’d be doing a lot worse than she is.”
“Is she going to be released after this?” he’d asked.
Tannehill blinked at him twice. “I assume so. At least, I haven’t heard any differently. General Markoff should be here momentarily. I’m sure he’ll have more information for you.”
“Am I under arrest?” he persisted, pretty sure he already knew the answer but not quite able to let himself trust it. He knew the wrong he’d done over the years, and yes, he’d done it under the guise of being an undercover agent, but that only protected a man from so much. Yet when the Pentagon called and ordered handcuffs to be removed, they were.
So, here he sat, awaiting the General’s leisure, wondering who Aliya had called and what she’d said, knowing this absolutely flew in the face of the ‘do nothing’ edict he’d given her, although he also knew she’d done it before he’d passed that edict down. Unless, of course, one counted the time on Fariq’s yacht when he’d told her to stop playing spy games before she got them both killed.
He wasn’t sure it was fair, but if by some miracle they both got out of here, he was absolutely going to count it. Then he was going to spank the hell out of her. He didn’t care how long or how hard, he would forever emblaze the print of his palm across her ass if that’s what it took to finally drum into her head that she couldn’t afford to remind anyone she had once shared her brother’s last name. He meant to take care of that personally with a ring… and a collar. No one—be they good guys or bad—would believe she was innocent if she dabbled so much as her tiniest toe in politics, expressed an opinion in foreign affairs, was seen with a gun in her hand, or so much as talked to the wrong man in a coffee shop.
She was tainted. She might not understand that, but he did. Her brother had a lot of enemies. She would never, ever be completely free of the consequences Fariq’s actions had wrought.
Neither would he, for that matter, but at least he’d had the choice.
The door opened, and he looked up to find the Tannehill smiling as he leaned in.
“The General is ready for you now.”
God knows, he’d waited long enough, but right then, Reid wouldn’t have minded a moment or two more to brace himself for whatever was going to come of this. He followed the aid down the hospital corridors. For all that he might not be under arrest, the two guards fell seamlessly into line behind him and were never more than two steps away as he was taken to a nearby consultation room.
There were six men already seated at the table when Tannehill opened the door and motioned him in. Christian recognized them in an instant.
“Cobb,” he said, surprised.
The older man looked up with a wry smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yeah, fancy.” Feeling even more as if he was walking into a trap, Reid sat down as Tannehill disappeared out the door, and his escort took up their guard positions in the hall. Lowering his voice, he asked, “Anyone know what’s going on?”
“I was about to ask you. Especially since I was told, I was being shipped to Guantanamo tomorrow morning.”
“They told me the same,” another man stated, winning a chorus of nods or grunts from the others.
A few minutes later, the door opened again, and Aliya was wheeled into the room. Clothed like a hospital patient, she sat in a wheelchair with a mostly empty saline bag hanging just behind her, connected to her arm.
“Who’s General Markoff?” she whispered the minute Tannehill retreated, and the door closed again.
“Never mind that,” Reid whispered back. “Who the hell did you call?”
The door opened before she could answer, and General Markoff walked into the room. Briefcase in hand, he walked to the head of the table, leaving his aide to close the door and ensure their privacy. Clearing his throat, the older man glanced up long enough to give everyone a smile that did anything but disarm, then he sat down.
“Can I get anyone anything? Coffee, something to eat? No?” When no one said anything, he folded his hands on the table and smiled again. Turning to Aliya, he asked, “How are you feeling? Better now?”
“Yes.” Shooting Reid an uncertain look, she cleared her throat. “Yes, thank you.”
“Good. I’m glad, very glad. I honestly thought once I achieved my current star level, I’d be far and above getting my ass chewed quite the way it happened today. I understand, young lady, I have you to thank for that.”
Reid grabbed her knee under the table, but either she was unfamiliar with that subtle form of requesting her to button up, or the general had just pricked enough of her temper, she ignored it.
“Maybe if you hadn’t hung your own agent out to dry after all he’s done… Ow, ow! Why are you squeezing my leg so hard?”
Markoff’s dark eyebrows shot up to where his graying hairline would have been had it not receded more than a decade before.
“It’s fine,” Christian cut in, more to her than to his old boss. “I knew the risks when I signed on for the job.”
She scoffed, and as much as it annoyed him that she was goading him into having this argument here, in front of everyone, he also knew she was right. He’d thought he’d known back when he was recruited, fresh out of college, with an axe to grind and a wrong to right. But no one, regardless of their level of experience, could ever have known what living with a man like Fariq would entail. He’d made his choices, did what he had to, first to blend in, then to advance in Fariq’s mercenary ranks, until at last, he’d reached a position capable of gaining real and useful information. But positions like that didn’t leave a man with clean hands. So, he created his own tightrope of what was right and wrong, what he would or wouldn’t do, but even then, when it all boiled down and Fariq gave the order, he’d wrapped himself in the marginal comfort of knowing the men he had to kidnap, ruin, hurt, or even kill to mainta
in his cover weren’t any more innocent of their consequences than Fariq… or himself.
Shifting in his chair, Reid faced her. “Hey.”
She folded her arms across her chest, only reluctantly shifting her glare from Markoff to him. He knew she didn’t want to, but she was listening, which made him smile. For the first time in a long time, he made a decision that actually filled him with relief.
“I made my choices, Princess. I’m ready to take the consequences. Let me do that, okay?”
“They could hang you,” she said, her voice growing hoarse as her throat—indeed, her whole-body—tightened.
“Young lady,” Markoff broke in, “that would involve a trial. Now, I don’t for a second think you had either the audacity or the clout to call the President of the United States, but whoever you did call must have called in one hell of a favor. There will be no trial. Rather than risk revealing that we had an agent in your brother’s empire during the worst crimes he’s committed over the years, and apparently, we never had the balls to simply shoot him, I have been ordered to make this go away. So… you are free to go—with the stipulation I never have to hear about any of you ever again. No mentions in any local newspaper. No police arrests.” He pinned Aliya with another stern look. “No phone calls.”
Reid sat in stunned silence with everyone else at the table.
“We’re free to go?”
“All of us?” Cobb broke in, incredulous.
Picking up his briefcase off the floor, the general laid it on the table, popped the locks, and withdrew a short stack of envelopes. The ones he gave Cobb and his men were standard white mailing envelopes. The two he laid in front of Reid and Aliya were bigger, thicker, and document-sized manila. “Your severance packages. Courtesy of the phone call.”
“We didn’t work for you,” Cobb said, opening his to peek at what was inside. “Holy sh—never mind.”
Curious, Reid slipped his finger under the sealed lip and pulled out the Non-Disclosure Agreement, which didn’t surprise him, and a sizeable check, which did. It was every penny of his salary that had been direct deposited into his personal bank account since he’d joined Fariq.
