Page 298 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

Her look of disbelief bled into horror as he took her by the arm, turned a nearby chair around so he fully faced Christian, then sat down. Whether she actively tried to lock her legs against him or the shock of realizing what her brother intended was toomuch for her, Christian didn’t know, but he knew it was too much for him. He almost came up out of his chair in protest when Fariq pulled her up to stand at his side.

“Please don’t!” she cried.

“Oh, come now.” Rolling his sleeves up past his elbows, he patted his thigh. “It’s not the first time I’ve done this. Remember shortly after our father died… and all the other times?”

Pale and shaking, she didn’t even try to run.

“I’m not a child anymore or even a teenager. I’m twenty-two.”

“Much too old for spanking, I agree, yet here you are, having earned one. I’m sure Reid will agree that your future husband will thank us for ensuring you learn to obey.”

Blinking fast against the rise of watery tears, she shook her head, and for the first time, the mildly amused smile that had curled Fariq’s lips, pretty much right from the moment he started this shameful act, vanished. His narrow face hardened, his eyes growing cold.

“Don’t tell me no,” he warned. “I won’t put up with it. Bare your bottom right now, and put yourself in position, or would you rather I did it for you? You remember how that turns out, don’t you, my dearest? The longer you delay, the worse this will be, or so the verbiage goes.”

There was a threat in there. Christian had no prior information about which to comprehend, but Aliya did. Her dark eyes flooded with tears. Looking from her brother to him, her face turned a deep shade of mortified red before she abruptly dropped her gaze to the floor.

He wanted to go to her, to grab her, stopping her hands as she slipped them under the skirt of her pale summer dress and took her underwear off. She balled them up in her hands, trying to hide them from everyone’s view, but Fariq held out his hand in a wordless command. Without a choice, she gave them to him.

“Obey,” Fariq told her, dropping her underwear on the floor, so Christian had no choice but to see it.

The urge to snatch them up and hide them for her—or hell, put them back on her—was almost more than Christian could bear. In all his years with Fariq, he’d committed a lot of insufferable acts, but having to sit and watch Aliya’s deliberate degradation was intolerable. He wanted to stop it, but he couldn’t, not without risking a bullet in his head or hers. He couldn’t even leave because this was his fault. He had dared put his hands on Aliya, someone Fariq had already described as his most prized possession. He’d meant it, Christian realized with a sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach, which only twisted harder when Aliya broke into sobs as she lowered herself into that age-old position over her brother’s lap.

“Little ladies get to wear their panties. What do bad girls have to do?” Fariq said, staring at him. “Normally, they get their bottom spanked on the bare, but as Reid is here, I will preserve your modesty with your thin skirt. Come now, darling, you remember how this goes.”

Covering her face in both hands, Aliya cried into them, but only for a moment before placing herself over her brother’s lap.

There was nothing Christian could do to stop it, not without making things a hell of a lot worse.

Covering her face again, Aliya stiffened, flinching at each touch as Fariq adjusted her across his thighs.

He couldn’t watch this, but just as he was working up the nerve to look away, Fariq pinned him with a hard stare. Christian kept his face frozen in a mask and could only pray conveyed boredom instead of horror as Fariq lay his open hand on his sister’s ass. He was being judged.

A real man wouldn’t care.A real man would launch himself to his feet and put a stop to this.

How? Should he pull the gun from his holster and put a bullet between Fariq’s eyes, with Aliya lying right there, bare-assed and bawling? Then what? They were on Fariq’s mercenary-infested yacht in the middle of the ocean. What was he supposed to do, shoot everybody?

He kept his features coldly schooled as Fariq moved his hand from the curve of Aliya’s bottom, trailing down her thigh to slip up under her skirt to cup between her tensing legs, laying claim.

“What do you think, my friend?” Fariq asked. “Am I doing this right?”

“She’s your problem.” His throat was so tight, Christian hardly recognized the harshness of his own voice. “Do what you want with her. I really don’t care.”

They both deserved to burn in hell.

“Fariq, please,” she sobbed, squeezing her legs as tightly together as she could, but his hand stayed right where it was.

Two steps… that was all it would take. One hard burst of speed and consequences be damned, he’d have had Fariq by the neck while he beat that smug, twisted smile right off his face.

But he didn’t move. Folding his hands tightly together, he braced his elbows on his knees, forcibly locking himself in place.

“If you’re doing this for my sake, you should know something.”

Dark eyes narrowing slightly, Fariq waited.

“Had she been anyone else, even your beloved babybrother, I’d have knocked her on her ass for slowing me down the way she did. I didn’t choose to be there, and I sure didn’t choose to be her babysitter. I only acted as I did because blistering her butt seemed a safer course of action than breaking her face. If you want me to say I’m sorry, you’re going to be waiting a long time. If you think I’m going to jump out of this chair in defense of her spoiled little ass, you’ll be waiting even longer. I couldn’t care less what you do. The only thing she is to me is trouble, I’d justas soon not have to deal with. And you’re right, I deserve a bonus for the shit I had to deal with today.” He hated himself for saying that, especially since she heard every word. She didn’t deserve it, but it worked.

Studying him a moment longer, Fariq finally took his hand out from between her legs.

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