Page 21 of Desperate Measures
Unfortunately, we’re on a time limit.
I give her pussy one last thorough kiss. Enough to pull her to the edge but nowhere near enough to push her over. Then I raise my head. “Be a good girl tonight, and I’ll reward you.”
“You are such a bastard,” she whispers.
I push to my feet and pull her up to join me. It’s quick work to soap her up and then wash her hair. Another thing I’d enjoy taking more time with. Another thing I have to put to the side for tonight. For once, Yasmina doesn’t fight me. She just stands there and passively follows orders. It won’t last, but if I wanted a passive submissive, I could have found one long before now.
I shut the shower off. “Get dressed and meet me at the front door in forty-five minutes.”
“Yes, Daddy.” She uses the term as a weapon, sugary sweet with a venomous center.
That’s my girl.
I scoop up my clothes and stalk out of the room, leaving her staring after me. The temptation to turn around, to drag her to bed and play out a new kind of game, is almost too much to resist. I have to maintain control, though. Tonight is too important.
The Underworld is a sex club, but it’s so much more complex than that. Sex is one of its main attractions, yes, but power eclipses all else. Every major player in Carver City has a membership there, and it’s where we conduct deals over drinks and occasionally a blow job. No violence is allowed, on threat of expulsion and being eighty-sixed for all time. All stand equal before the owner, Hades, and though the only territory he rules is the Underworld itself, he’s arguably the most powerful person in the city.
Bringing Yasmina there sends a clear message to everyone who matters. Balthazar is out. I’m the new ruler of his territory. It should also cut Ali off from anyone looking to ally themselves with him.
It’s more than that, though. I want to use our new standing to solidify power, yes, but I also want to see what Yasmina thinks of the club. Even watching her reactions as we drove through the city was a revelation. I can’t wait to see the way her eyes go wide, to see what gets her hot, to explore with her.
I stop in the middle of pulling on a clean pair of pants.
Yes, I can enjoy myself tonight, but I can’t afford to take my eyes from the prize. Getting lost in Yasmina, as appealing as it sounds, is not the endgame. In fact, it may just distract from the endgame.
I can’t afford to be distracted. Even by her.
Especially by her.
7
Yasmina
In between leaving me in my room to get ready and meeting me at the door, something changes with Jafar. He barely looks at me in my scandalous red dress before he whisks me down to the car and we’re driving into the night.
I put it from my mind. A chance to be free of the penthouse is too important to worry about where his head has gone. It’s not as if he’ll confide in me. I’m a pet to be taken care of. Something occasionally entertaining but nowhere near a full partner.
A full partner.
The thought seems ludicrous. Nowhere in the world I move in is there a chance for people to see me as anything but a possession. I hate that. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be as good a ruler as my father—better than my father. Instead, I am a pawn to be moved about on someone else’s chessboard. My father ensured that before. Jafar ensures that now. He might as well slap a collar around my throat and attach a leash.
The thought sends a shiver through me. I wish with all my heart I could say it’s unpleasant, but the truth is far more complicated. I crave things I don’t understand. Crave things I shouldn’t.
Oh, I understand kink, at least in theory. I’ve read far and wide, and the books I invariable gravitate toward are hot enough to melt my e-reader. They spin fantasies that had me reaching into my drawer for a vibrator more times than I can count.
This is different. This isn’t a story with a happily ever after waiting at the end.
Real life has no such guarantees. Real life is messy and complicated and dangerous in ways that have nothing to do with my bodily health and everything to do with my soul.
“What’s got you thinking so hard over there that you’re not watching the city around us?”
I jump. I can’t help it.
Jafar seems to melt out of the darkness on the other side of the town car. He’s dressed to kill tonight, his black suit expensive and expertly tailored, his black shirt beneath it pressed within an inch of its life. The clothing should dampen his dangerous aura, but somehow it only brings it into sharp focus. This man is a predator. No one with half a brain who looks at him will believe anything else.
He waits for me to answer, and I spend a useless moment waffling between truth and fiction. In the end, I know he’ll accept nothing less than the former. “What is tonight supposed to accomplish?”
“I’m taking you to a sex club. It’s going to accomplish you orgasming half a dozen times.”
