Page 291 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

Stumbling, she fell into an abandoned table, knocking over the coffee cup that had been left behind with its patron’s hasty departure. Rubbing her arm, she glared at him.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” For the first time, every ounce of energy he’d been pouring into his fight to keep her safe while they escaped that FUBAR of whatever Fariq had been trying to do, snapped, becoming anger. “What the hell were you thinking? Who was that?”

“Who?” she shot back.

“That man you were with!”

“What man?” A flicker of nervousness in her eyes told him she knew exactly who he was talking about.

“You’re a piss-poor liar,” he growled. “The one you were with back there in that garden. What did he give you?”

“He didn’t give me anything.” She hiked her chin. “For all I know, it was just somebody trying not to get shot!”

She was still lying. His eyes narrowed, every instinct he had homing in on her face. He wasn’t mistaken and sure as hell hadn’t been seeing things. Not when he watched that unknown man slip her something and certainly not when she…

“You looked right at me,” he marveled. “You looked right at me and ran the other way.”

“H-How was I to know you weren’t trying to kill me?” she accused, but she stuttered, and the nervous glint in her eyes only grew more obvious.

“How were you to…” His anger spiked all over again. “Why, you spoiled rotten little liar!”

He’d never meant to touch her again. Well, that wasn’t strictly true—he’d meant to get them to safety, then he’d touch her in all kinds of ways and places. It all happened so fast. One minute he was standing there, telling her exactly what he thought of her, and in the next, he had her by the arm, his butt in the first chair he came to, and she was yanked down across his thighs.

He spanked her exactly the way a spoiled rotten liar should be spanked—hard, fast, and with the flat of his hand—making sure she got the message in a way sure to stick with her for at least the rest of the day.

He’d meted out a good handful of swats before his anger abated enough to realize something didn’t add up. Where had she gotten the pair of white shorts? Shorts she certainly hadn’t been wearing when she’d come down the ladder of Fariq’s yacht. He looked at her feet, suddenly noticing they weren’t bare from having dropped her shoes in the alley. She was wearing canvas tennis shoes.

She’d bought a change of clothes in the market. She’d done it covertly. Each time she’d snuck away from his side, forcing himto chase her through the market, she hid the purchases she was making. The ones intended to alter her appearance so she could slip into the crowd unnoticed, by him or anyone else.

She’d planned this.

She’dplannedto run away from him… no, not him—Fariq.

“Are you crazy?” she shrieked, kicking up her heels, twisting in a vain effort to grab his slapping hand or yank her skirt down over her rump.

That Fariq’s men might have been acting on her orders… that Lamar might have taken that shot at his head on her command… rekindled every ounce of fury shock had momentarily lulled.

“Oh, Princess,” he seethed. “You want to play with the devil? You have his attention now.”

Grabbing the back of her new shorts, he stripped them off her ass and down her legs. That he ripped her panties off at the same time hadn’t been part of the plan, but he wasn’t complaining. He shut his ears to her shrieks and blistered her naked ass, locking his arm across her back, grabbing her hand when she flung it back in defense of her quickly reddening bottom, and clamping her wildly thrashing legs between the vise of his thighs. He didn’t stop until his hand ached, and her ass was a bright flush of hot, angry red.

“Stop!” she wailed. “Christian, stop! Please!”

Eventually, she laid limp across his lap, absorbing the swats he gave her with no more protest than the wordless wails that grudgingly dissolved into tears. He had never once touched a woman against her will or in anger, but this had been twice in the space of an hour. Goddamn, though, if this hadn’t been well-deserved.

Abruptly, he released her, shoving her to get her moving off his lap.

Sobbing, she scrambled to her feet, pulling up panties and shorts over her apple-red cheeks and slapping at the back of herdress to get it back down in place. A rueful deflowered liar, she rubbed at the seat of her skirt, staring up at him with tears on her cheeks and a bright humiliated blush turning her face the same apple shade his hand had painted her bottom in. Her eyes searched his face. It took every ounce of willpower not to reach out to her… to comfort her, but he needed her to learn right now, lying to him had consequences.

“Are you insane?” she sobbed. “You c-can’t… c-can’t…”

“Says the woman who just tried to have me killed!” he snapped. “Want to tell me why?”

Her jaw dropped. Startled, she even stopped rubbing.

“You really are crazy! Why would I do that?”

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