Instead, she’d learned how to be a lady, the kind he wouldn’t be ashamed of or need to scold.

She’d never had anyone—apart from Fariq—she could call a friend because she’d never been anywhere long enough to make one. She’d only had her brother. She adored him, idolized him, felt safe and secure with him.

Or at least, she used to.

Slowly, Christian heaved himself to his feet, only to stop halfway up. Hands clasped to thighs, he let out a slow breath as he steeled himself to bring his legs together.

Worrying her hands, she watched him.

“I’m sorry.”

He laughed darkly. “Nowhere near as sorry as you’re going to be in about half a minute.”

The look he gave her was even darker, sending shivers dancing down her spine and strangely, straight to the tips of her tightening nipples. The sensitive flesh drew into achy points, jutting out against the confines of her bra as if reaching for him. The urge to back away was strong, but since he only bowed his head, his big hands braced above his knees as he breathed through the last of the pain, then slowly straightened, she chalked the threat up to… well, getting kneed. She’d never really noticed how much bigger he was… until now.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked guiltily. Her brother used to keep Tylenol in his desk. If he didn’t lock it, she was pretty sure she could find it.

He laughed again, still low and dark. “If we were on land, I’d be sending you for two or three stout switches right now.”

All right, she was starting to feel a little less bad. Hands knuckling onto her hips, she snapped back, “You grabbed me first. If you don’t want to get kneed, next time, keep your hands to yourself!”

Opening his eyes, he fixed his steely blue gaze directly on her—sending shivers once more racing through her.

“You’re right,” he said. “I did it wrong last time. Let’s try this again.”

Her womb pulsed. One hot, wanton, thoroughly out-of-place throb of desire lit her up between her legs like fireworks on the Fourth of July, then he lunged at her.

She’d have throat punched him, except he moved too fast. She hadn’t realized how big his hands were until he clamped onto her wrist. Her womb sent out another needy pulse of lust-filled wanting, but a cold shock of common sense just as quickly dashed that sensation from everywhere except her steadily throbbing clit and ever-tightening nipples.

She gasped, but that was all she had time for before he spun her around, wrenching her arm up her back, and slammed her belly-first against the wall. She yanked her head back in time to keep from whacking her cheek, but before she could even suck her next breath, he’d yanked her skirt up past her hips, holding it there with the same hand that tightly gripped her wrist, and the flat of his other hand came crashing down with a single, hard swat that lit up her left butt cheek in the vibrant shock of stinging pain she’d felt in the café in Morocco.

She lost all the breath in her lungs. Sucking another shrill gasp, had he struck her again, she’d have screamed. Instead, his hard body flattened against her, pinning her to the wall, so a stray thread would have been unable to squeeze between them. His hips flatted her ass, covered by only her thin, silk panties and the tingling sting of his single handprint. His slow exhale brushed hot breath across the back of her neck as he inclined his head. She tingled there as well, her breasts and nipples loving the crush of him pinning her to the wall.

“You need your ass beat,” he growled, raising all the fine hairs on the back of her neck and arms, sending that all too inappropriate sizzle of sensation rioting through her waking nerve endings. The pitch and timbre of his voice changed, shivering her. “You need a lot of things,” he mused. In a swift shift of his weight, he abruptly kicked her legs apart, wedging his knee between hers until she could feel the hard press of his thigh flat against her buttocks and flat against her sex. The pressure of his rough touch made her pussy and clit spasm. “Play with melike that again, I double-fucking dare you. Not only will I play, I promise I won’t play fair.”

Her whole body shuddered in the most delicious wave of wanting when he shifted at her back, and she felt the very solid, prodding touch nudging her buttocks from behind. She might have been raised in Catholic boarding schools for most of her life, but their encounter in Morocco had taught her exactly what that was, and she thrilled at the memory.

“Wh-What…” she stammered, but she had no way to finish. Heat laved her, the embarrassing lick of its flames between the lips of her sex feeling less like her own flowing wetness and more like the toying light caress of his fingers tickling through her folds.

His fingers flexed on her captured wrist. The strain his hold was putting on her shoulder was at once uncomfortable, yet—her breath caught—exhilarating. She should not be feeling like this. Not in this crazy situation and certainly not for this man.

His hips moved again, this time drawing back only to push the prodding bulge of his cock against her, mock thrusting that made the flames of her body flush hotter.

“Stop it,” she whispered, her refusal falling far short of sounding convincing.

“Stop what?” He pumped slowly, grinding the bulge of his cock in the valley between her buttocks.

“That.” Her breath caught when his caress heated a path along her hairline from the nape of her neck to the shell of her ear. Her skin prickled, waiting with heightened anticipation for the caressing kiss of his lips to follow. What she felt instead was the comb of his fingers sliding up the back of her scalp before closing a fist in her hair. He pinned her head to the wall every bit as fast as the rest of her body was pinned beneath his pressing weight. He didn’t kiss her ear, biting it instead, his teeth catchingthe vulnerable lobe and sending every nerve inside her leaping in a sexual frenzy she had no idea how to withstand.

The nip echoed in the peaks of her bud-tight nipples.

It echoed even more fiercely between her legs.

She tried to snap them closed, but her thighs only clapped against his leg, hugging it fiercely tight against her pulsing pussy.

“That, what?” he mocked. “Use your words, baby girl. Tell Daddy again what he can and can’t do.”

Her exhale shivered out of her.