Page 300 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

He tsked again, drying her, just as he had when she was a child.

Except she wasn’t a child anymore, and what he’d done to her in his office hadn’t been anything a brother would or should do to his sister, whether he’d raised her or not.

Yet the Fariq handling her now wasn’t that cruel man anymore. He was back to his normal, big brother, almost fatherly self. Neither his touch nor his gaze seemed to notice she wasn’t the child he perpetually seemed to want her to be as he steered her from the bathroom into her bedroom.

Lying on the foot of her bed were the forbidden shorts and shoes she’d left in his office. She glanced at him, surprised, but he left her and her unanswered question at the bed while he busied himself searching through her tidy closet for appropriate sleepwear.

“Why do you never have anything decent to wear?” he said, skipping right over her pink silk pajamas to draw out a plum-colored baby doll-style nightie, mostly lace and netting, with spaghetti straps and too little fabric to cover either her breasts or her panties. It was also completely transparent. “Where did you get this?”

“You brought it back from Paris,” she said, her voice pitifully small. She hated it. She hated the tremble that quivered each mewling word, and above all, she hated that it made him smile.

“So, I did.” Removing it from its hanger, he dropped the gown on the floor. “Ladies don’t wear such things. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He rummaged until he found a pink silk nightgown. It also had spaghetti straps, but the bustline was more modest, the cut almost shapeless, with a skirt that extended to her knees.

“Here we are.” He handed it to her. “Go on, put it on.”

He gave her bottom a dismissing pat as he walked away, but instead of leaving, he went only as far as her dresser and rummaged that drawer next, this time for panties that matched.

“I brought your things back to you,” he said offhand without so much as a glance at the shorts and shoes placed neatly at the foot of her bed. “Christian, for all his heavy-handed ways, was right. I spoil you, perhaps too much. I need to learn that I can still love you yet be strict at the same time.” He held up a pair of French-cut black lace panties. “Especially if you’re going to be wearing these. Did I bring these back from Paris, too?” He gave her the same knowing look he did whenever he caught her doing something she shouldn’t.

Her face flushed hot. Still wrapped in a towel with the nightgown abandoned on the bed where he’d dropped it, Aliya couldn’t move. He hadn’t bought those. She had, in a fit of defiance, almost six months ago. She’d met someone at one of the functions where she’d accompanied him, and they’dexchanged phone numbers, but Fariq always kept her phone locked. She had limited internet access and only one number—his—cleared to ring through to her cell. Fariq had refused to open her phone’s access to allow her either to call the young man or to have him call her.

Her fit had cost her two weeks of freedom when she’d been grounded, unable to leave her room, much less the ship. The next time he took her shopping, she’d blindly grabbed those off a hanger and thrown them in among his other undergarment purchases for her because, damn it, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was tired of being treated like one, punished like one, and dressed like one. She wanted to get off the yacht. She wanted to meet people and be free to have friends. Just once, she wanted to buy something for herself, something pretty, not to mention with some color—any color—other than pink.

“No, Fariq. I did.”

He tsked, turning the panties over in his hand to show off the double strand of pearls that were the reason why she’d never worn them once she’d gotten them home. Why anyone would make underwear that pretty, then put a pearl necklace as the only gusset between the legs, she had no idea. It wasn’t really even underwear. It was a fragile belt of black lace around her hips and two strands of pearls that did absolutely nothing at all to cover either her sex or her buttocks. The only thing she’d liked about it at the time was that it had cost him a hundred dollars. Pretty much from that moment on, all it had done was make her feel guilty. She’d have thrown them out ages ago, but she was pretty sure her garbage was searched.

“Where did you get them?” he asked in a sing-song, scolding tone that made her feel small.

“At a market in Italy.”

“Reid might be right in his assessment of your behavior,” he said, giving the underwear a dismissive toss onto the discardednightie. “You seem to be cultivating a rebellious attitude. I’ll not tolerate it, Aliya, my darling. I will put you across my knee daily if you insist on it.” He arched his dark eyebrow and leveled a stern frown at her. “And I won’t be as forgiving as I was today. The next time you force me to debase us both in a show of physical chastisement, I will apply myself until the marks become impossible to count. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Fariq,” she barely managed, her throat so tight, it was choking her.

“Is that what you want?”

She quickly shook her head, unable to say anything, barely even able to breathe.

His face softened, and he selected a pair of pink cotton panties. Taking her hand, he placed them in her palm.

“Do you need me to dress you for bed like I did when you were little?”

Trills of panic shivered up the back of her neck.

“I-I can do it.”

“Then do so, please.”

She prayed he would leave, but turning his back was all the privacy he allowed her. Folding his arms across his chest, he waited for her to obey.

Knowing the few choices she had were nothing but an illusion and painfully aware he now faced both the makeup mirror on her vanity table and the dressing mirror on her closet door, Aliya turned her back as well. Shedding the towel, she climbed into her panties and nightgown. Before she could bend down for the discarded towel, Fariq picked it up.

He’d been watching her in the mirror. Her skin crawled, but he only draped the towel over his arm and peeled back the blankets on her bed.

“In you go.”

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