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“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 harmher. 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.
