Page 304 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

Remarkably, Aliya froze. Facing the door with her hand on the latch, she reluctantly turned just far enough to see him.

“You? It’s you? You’re the one who’s supposed to keep me safe?”

Keep her safe? Right now, the only thing keeping him from throttling her was the fact he couldn’t get his legs to stand. He clutched himself and through gritted teeth.

“There’s nobody here keeping you safe. Who the hell told you that? That dickwad agent I saw you meeting in Morocco?”

Her jaw dropped. “No, Dewey Robinson. He said the agency is watching me and will always keep me safe. Ithasto be you!”

He pushed himself to his knees. He was going to throttle her—right after he throttled all the bastards who had told her that.

“No one,” he said darkly, “is watching over you. And Dewey was a jackass for trying to recruit you. You’re going to get yourself killed! Frankly, princess,”—cupping his aching balls, he glared up at her—“you’re going to be really fucking lucky if I’m not the one who kills you, and I do mean right fucking now.”

Chapter

Seven

Aliya wrung her hands, watching in a mix of dread and relief as Christian slowly picked himself up off the floor. He wasn’t holding himself, but he did have his hand braced hard against his thigh as close to cupping his wounded package as he could get.

“Where the hell did you learn to do that?” he growled through gritted teeth.

“Sister Mary Benedicta.”

Raising his head, he glared at her. “Who?”

“One of my teachers at the school I attended in Spain. There was a rash of rapes one year, so she taught us that. She said if we had to hit a man, we had to hit him hard enough to knock him down and be unable to get up again, long enough for us to run away.”

Both hands braced against his thighs, he glared even harder.

“You went to Catholic school?Fariq,” he emphasized with high skepticism, “sent you toCatholicschool?”

“Twenty-seven of them,” Aliya replied, not quite sure why that of all things should be odd. “My father was killed when I was nine. Fariq raised me as best he could, but he’s… always been…” The tightness in her throat made it hard to keep talking.She couldn’t believe what she was saying. “A-A busy, um… important…”

The flatness of his angry expression only got flatter the more she said, so she stopped.

“Terrorist?” he finally finished for her.

She wanted to object, but after what happened in the marketplace, then to Lamar, how could she defend him?

“Makes you wonder why he chose Catholic schools,” Christian scoffed.

“They were high-security boarding schools, built like fortresses. Sometimes in big cities, but more often than not, they were very remote. I was never in any one place too long. Every few months, he moved me, and I never went to the same school twice.” Her voice got soft and small when he frowned. “They were all-girl schools.”

“NowthatI can believe. He didn’t want to share you with anyone else, even back then.”

She recoiled. “That’s disgusting.” But that didn’t make it untrue. When she thought about it, she could still feel the way her brother had forced her to bare her bottom before cupping her sex between her legs. He’d held her as if he owned her.

Aliya fought back the shudders. It was hard to understand how she could go through that, how she could know the things she now knew, and still love him. He was her brother, and when she looked at him, she saw the one person had always been there for her. He was the wall which had stood between her and their father whenever he’d fallen into one of his tempers, taken blows for her when he was there to interfere. He’d doctored her cuts and bruises and held her, shaking with anger as he whispered promises it would never happen again whenever he’d come home too late to stop it. Then their father had died. Honestly, she didn’t remember very much about those early years.

What she did remember was Fariq suddenly stepping into the center of her world and her life, taking over their father’s position in the company as well as in their home. The house was sold, Fariq became nomadic in his movements, and Aliya went to the boarding schools. But she was never beaten again, and she couldn’t remember ever wanting for anything. Not after Fariq took over her care.

He’d never complained. She’d never had a phone number for him, an address, or any way to get ahold of him. He’d sent her letters like clockwork every two weeks, telling her he was proud of her, that he missed her, sometimes gently chiding her if she did something that wasn’t proper, but always telling her that she was loved. His cards never missed a birthday or a holiday, and he always seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

Yes, she’d hated how frequently she had to move, but she understood it wasn’t her brother’s fault. He was doing whatever he had to for whatever job it was that forced him to live like a nomad, making money hand over fist, making enemies, so he always had to live surrounded by armed bodyguards and soldiers.

“Proper ladies do not ask such questions,” had been Fariq’s quiet reply the one time she’d dared to ask him what he did for a living.

She’d never asked again.

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