Reid
WILD MUSTANG SECURITY FIRM
DELTA JAMES AND MAREN SMITH
Chapter
One
L’Amore Sofferente Hotel
Base of the Matterhorn, Switzerland
Christian jerked his head up between his aching shoulders, surprised to find he wasn’t lying down. He was hanging, his tightly bound hands caught on a meat hook dangling by a chain from the ceiling. His head hurt, pulsing where he’d been struck. His whole body ached, dull throbs that echoed every blow he’d received from the beating he’d taken both before and after he’d been knocked unconscious. Even his feet hurt, the tightness of the bonds that bound his splayed ankles to metal floor rings cutting into his flesh and preventing him from standing upright, forcing him to hang by his wrists at an awkward diagonal angle. Taking stock of both the pain and his captive situation, he also noticed they’d stripped him naked.
“Aliya!” He bolted upright in bed, cold sweat pouring off his body.
“I’m here, Christian,” she said, waddling back to bed from the bathroom, fresh from the shower with a towel on her head. The room was still mostly dark, lit by the soft glow of the nightlight, meant to keep her from stubbing her toes and the graying hue of early morning, glowing on the walls around the drawn window curtains.
Relaxing slowly, Christian Reid watched his very pregnant and naked wife cross the room to him and wondered at the confluence of events that had brought him to this peaceful place. Well, she wasn’tthatpregnant, not yet, but she was carrying the baby up front and had such a small frame to start with.
Funny how that small frame had been one of the first things that had struck him about Fariq Abdal’s little sister. That and her stunning beauty, something her pregnancy had only enhanced, in his opinion, anyway. It had taken several spankings and fucking her daily to convince her carrying his first-born just made her all the more irresistible to him. While she might protest and caterwaul through each of the former sessions, she remained a more than eager participant in the latter. In her second trimester, Aliya’s hormones were in full swing, and she craved sex every bit as insatiably as she had Cobb’s smashed-avocado chopped-chicken salad during the first semester. He occasionally still teased her if their child was born avocado green, those salads were the reason why.
She sat on the edge of the bed, gently drying her hair.
“Was it the nightmare again?” she asked, leaning down to kiss him deeply. He nodded. “Ibn haram,”she hissed.
“Aliya,” he scolded. “Is the mother of my baby allowed to curse?”
She barely managed not to roll her eyes. “No, but he was, and I’m glad I killed him.”
“Me, too.” Christian grinned. “Still, I don’t think that’s any way for a loving wife to greet her husband when he wakes with a hard-on.”
“When,” she demanded with the light, bubbly giggle he never got tired of hearing, “have you ever awakened andnothad one?”
Grasping her by her middle, he tossed the towel aside and gently rolled her over his body onto the bed next to him. His hand descended to swat her luscious backside three times. Even pregnant, his wife was happiest when reminded who was the Dom and who was the submissive.
Who was he kidding? That was the state that made both of them the happiest.
“Christian!” she protested, laughing.
He swatted her again. “Up on your knees and present yourself to me.”
Her reaction to the mock sternness in his voice was immediate. Aliya shivered, a slow flush of desire rising to stain her chest and quicken her breathing. She raised herself onto her knees, resting her upper body on her forearms. He loved fucking her from behind—hell, he loved fucking her every way—but now, with her pregnant and on her knees, he could better control his penetration.
Leaning over her, he ran his hands from her backside up her spine and sighed. This was the best way he knew to banish the vestiges of the nightmare that still plagued him all these months later.
“You are so beautiful. I’m the luckiest sonofabitch in the world to call you mine.”
“Yes, you are,” she said, her dark hair falling forward, hiding her face from him, although her amusement was evident in her voice.
Grinning, he rose quickly to swat her backside harder still, loving how the brief sting made her breath catch.
“Watch yourself, Princess. A piece of ginger stuck up your ass won’t hurt the baby and might do you a world of good.”
“No, no, no!” She still laughed, although her protests sounded far more genuine. “Please, Christian. I’ll be your good little pregnant wife.”
He snorted.