Page 342 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

“Get me down, Princess,” Christian rasped, heaving at the ropes that bound his arms, but she couldn’t. She simply didn’t have the strength or the will to pick herself up off the floor a second time. All she could do was heave the gun up, barely in time to aim at the door before it was kicked in by two men in full black flack gear.

“Shit!” the leader said. They jumped back behind opposite walls as she opened fire, systematically emptying the gun. The top half of the gun cut the tender webbing of her hand when it snapped back over her thumb. Hurting in so many places, she barely noticed the pain, but there was no ignoring that she had failed.

Dissolving into exhaustion and useless tears, she threw the gun at them, but she couldn’t even do that right. Missing the gap of the open doorway, it hit the threshold and bounced back into the room, clattering across the floor almost back to her foot.

Hanging from his bonds behind her, Christian finally said, “You can come in now.”

Gasping and hiccupping, she looked at him in surprise, then to the open doorway.

“I don’t know,” a man drawled from behind the cover of the wall. “Are you done fucking shooting at us?”

“No kidding,” the other grumbled. “Next time you don’t want to be rescued, just don’t ask us to come. I am getting married, asshole, and she just asked for an extra thousand on the budget. I could be getting laid right now.”

“Please cut me down,” Christian said, ignoring their wisecracks. He sounded every bit as tired as she felt.

Cautiously poking his head around the corner, the leader of the flak men took one assessing look at them both and dropped the jokes.

“Cut him down,” she told the four men who filed into the room, already putting their guns away. Of the two of them, she didn’t see where she ranked in importance, but the rescue party seemed to disagree. It took two of them to support Christian while a third cut him down. Wrapping her in a dusty sheet, the fourth picked her up off the floor, carrying her out of the room and out of sight of everything within. She craned her head, thin panic wending its icy way under her skin when she lost sight of both Christian and her brother.

“Avery’s going to be pissed she didn’t get him,” someone said.

In a not so quiet whisper, another said, “I think that’s his sister, so…”

That was the last mention anyone made of Fariq, at least within her hearing. If anything, that made her feel even worse.

“Wait,” she protested as she was being carried up a set of rickety wooden stairs out of the cold cellar. Christian was only just now being helped through the door by the two men, half-supporting him and half-carrying him. He was limping, heavily favoring the leg Fariq had burned from just above the inside of his knee, up the slope of his muscular thigh, almost to his cock.

“Fuck, that hurts,” he gasped, arching his back when the electric burns on his ribs scraped the other men’s flak gear.

“Suck it up, come on. Right foot, left foot. We’ll get you a sheet when we get upstairs. Come on, buddy.”

“Bet he didn’t complain half this much while it was happening.”

“Leave him alone,” she said and would have shoved right out of the arms of the man carrying her up the stairs if only he hadn’t stopped and dropped her feet to the floor.

“Settle down, Aliya,” the man told her, the unexpected authority in his tone raising every hackle she had.

Done with pain, guilt, and men who demanded she obey them, she slapped the side of his flak helmet as hard as she could. If he hadn’t had it strapped on, she’d have knocked it off. As it was, it hurt her palm far more than it did him, but he still jerked back to save his ear. She shoved him backward into the stairway wall and nearly fell down the stairs when her knees buckled. Her rescuer recovered from the ineffective—utterly, pathetically ineffective; her eyes burned with unshed tears—blow and caught her arm. He didn’t pick her up this time, yanking her back in close to his side.

“Do not,” he warned, “do that again, little girl.”

“Be nice, Princess,” Christian wearily told her, taking each step as far as the bottom of the stairs with a heavy limp. “They’re just trying to help.”

“We also hit back,” the one holding her warned.

“Only if you want to have a problem,” Christian shot back. “No one disciplines my woman except me.” Tired took a backseat to possessiveness. He couldn’t walk any better than she could, but he still stared the other man down, daring him to put that assessment to the test.

“I don’t even like you,” the guy holding her arm muttered.

“You don’t have to,” one of his own men said. “I also think she’s been hit enough, so cut her some slack, okay?”

The guy holding her arm looked from her to her shoulder. The belt bruise that wrapped there was just another reminder of how powerless she was. Adjusting her sheet, she swaddled herself, so no one could see her marks.

“Don’t help me,” she said when he reached for her arm. Avoiding his hand, she grabbed the rickety rail with both hands and made herself go up the stairs by herself.

“Princess,” Christian called after her, the censuring disapproval in his tone following in her wake. He only said it once, but she felt the weight of it with every shaky step she took until, at last, she reached the top.

There were three men in the kitchen on their hands and knees and two standing over them with rifles when she pushed open the cellar door and shuffled out of the darkness into the well-lit room. She recognized the two who had held her down for the doctor. The third had a red face and bruised throat and gave her little more than a surly side-eyed glare as she shuffled past him on her way to the door.

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