Page 292 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

“You tell me! And while you’re at it, tell me why you were running like that, leading me a merry chase through back alleys and backyard gardens?”

“I never?—”

He stood up so fast, he knocked the chair he’d been sitting in over. Grabbing his belt, he had it unfastened and half yanked free before she shrieked and jumped back. Doubling his belt in his hand, he grabbed her wrist when she threw up her hands to stop him.

“I was running away!” she shouted. Bursting into tears again, she wailed that phrase twice more as he yanked her around, holding her arm while he raised his belt raised high, but he never struck her with it. He stopped when it suddenly sunk in what she was confessing.

He stared at her—her breasts were heaving as she breathed, the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat was beating wild, and her chocolate eyes were wide, watery, scared, and sad. What the hell was going on? More importantly, just who was Aliya Abdal, and what kind of game was she playing?

“Why?” he demanded.

She stared at him, her twisting dance to tuck her bottom out of his belt’s reach dwindling away to nothing.

“Because he’s horrible,” she said softly, shoulders slumping as she covered her face with both hands. Bowing, she wept into them. “He’s a monster.”

Caught completely out of his element, Christian lowered his belt. Where was the spoiled little rich girl he thought had been manipulating him just seconds ago? Where was the liar? Every instinct inside him was positive of the truth, she kept sobbing into her hands until the pain of her bottom became too much, and she reached back to rub it. The liar was gone, and in her place stood a young woman with a hot, sore bottom, her virginity gone, and he was the one responsible for both.

Aliya sniffled, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“Please don’t tell my brother,” she begged.

Please don’t tell her brother? He’d just spanked and fucked her? How did that man in the garden factor into her trying to run away? Slowly, Christian lowered his belt.

Fariq would lock her in a cage if he so much as even suspected she was trying to leave him. If he found out Christian had taken her virginity, he’d kill them both. Shit. He had ruined her—in her brother’s eyes if no one else’s—and for that alone, he was now responsible for what happened to her. Christian stared into her pleading eyes, knowing that all the way to his soul.

“Please?” she whispered. “He’ll never let me out of his sight if he knows what happened.”

Jesus, she was trusting. There wasn’t another man in Fariq’s employ he would have trusted to keep a secret like this. That she’d begged it of him just showed how desperate she was.

Or stupid.

Or just incredibly naïve.

That was the one trait anyone related to Fariq should ever have possessed. Yet here she was, standing right in front of him, pleading with the most beautiful, forlorn eyes he’d ever risked falling into, while the world continued to turn, smoke from the bombing pouring up to stain the sky above the buildings, and police shouted and searched all up and down the street around them.

One was looking right at them. The bored look on his face suggested he’d not only seen the spanking, but he was mentally chalking it up to Aliya being caught somewhere she never should have been. Obviously, people involved in terroristic activities didn’t stop in the middle of it to punish one another. This was an unrelated domestic matter, so they were being left alone.

Christian put his belt back on.

“What did he give you?”

That she knew exactly who he meant but still wanted to try to hide it only threw another log on the damned fire of naivety he wished wasn’t burning so bright inside her. He hadn’t been this close to a truly guileless person in… he couldn’t even remember, but his own sister, Finn, sprang to mind. The unexpected surge of protectiveness that swelled was nearly blinding.

“M-Money?” She wrung her hands, stammering the word so badly, it came out sounding as if she were asking instead of answering his question. She was a horrible, horrible liar.

Frowning, he only had to touch his belt again before she hastily changed her answer.

“A piece of paper, b-but I don’t know what was on it! I swear, I don’t! I…” She wilted right in front of his reproving eyes. “I dropped it.”

Considering how rotten she was at hiding the truth, that was probably for the best.

“Who was he?” he asked a bit more gently. “Interpol, CIA, NATO?”

She shrugged, then seemed to collapse in on herself.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. H-He wasn’t the man I usually see. He said the man I used to talk to died in an accident yesterday, and he’s not the first one.” She shook her head. “How are they supposed to help me if they keep dying?” The latter, she said to herself.

Shit. If she was talking to someone from any one of those agencies, this kind of secret could get her killed. And him as well, just by sheer association. What the hell had she gotten herself into? Did she have a clue how much danger they were in… how much danger she had put them in? Fariq would kill them both without batting an eye. He didn’t know which agency had hung her out to dry, but he had no intention of doing the same. He hadn’t been responsible for anyone but himself in so long, he was surprised the prospect didn’t leave him rattled. He had to get her to safety but without it coming back to get him killed. The last thing he needed was Fariq looking at him any more suspiciously than he already did.

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