Page 7 of Desperate Measures
Jafar goes still. I sense the danger before the rest of the room. But then, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time studying him over the years. He always goes still before he cuts someone off at the knees. “Richard, would you come into my home and steal from me?”
Stammering. Richard realizes his mistake. I could tell him it’s too late, but instead I squeeze my eyes shut, wanting this whole spectacle to be over.
“This woman is mine, by right and by might. Touch her, and I will rip you limb from limb.”
“She’s just a pair of tits, boss.” This from farther away, deeper in the crowd, as if that will save them.
“Touch her, and I will rip you limb from limb,” he repeats.
Jafar turns and pushes through the doors. I can’t maintain the tension in my body any longer, and I slump down against him. “I hate you.” Maybe if I say it enough times, it will morph into the truth. Anything is possible.
He moves down the steps, and even in my fury and fear, I notice that he takes pains to keep his stride even and not jar me more than necessary. I can’t bring myself to feel grateful. Not after the events of the last hour. Not after his men were so painfully clear with what they would have done to me—what they wanted to do to me.
I shudder. “I’m going to be sick.”
Instantly, he has my feet on the ground and guides me to a bench situated near the driveway. “Head between your knees.”
His big palm on my upper back doesn’t give me a choice in the placement. It helps. I hate that it helps. “They wanted to?—”
“No one will touch you.”
“You did.”
It’s only when his hand stops rubbing my back that I realize it was in motion to begin with. I expect him to argue that I wanted everything he did to me and more. To point out that we have one foolproof brake when it comes to our rules of engagement, and I didn’t use it.
I should know better by now.
“I did more than touch you. I held you down and shoved my cock into that tight little cunt of yours, and even while you cursed me, you came harder than you’ve ever come before.” His breath ghosts against the shell of my ear. “I’m going to do it again. And again. And again. You made your choice, Yasmina. Now you have to live with it.”?5
3
Jafar
Five years of maintaining perfect control and I’ve thrown it away in a single night. Anyone else would call the events of the last few hours a complete and utter victory. I look at the woman curled up on the seat next to me, her long legs tucked under the shirt that I put on her. Yasmina will wear my bruises in the morning, marks on her hips from my fingers and marks on her knees from the marble floor. That doesn’t concern me. She made her choice with eyes wide open, and I’m a bastard because I look forward to every single power struggle in the future spinning out between us.
Connected. Forever. She’s mine now the same way her father’s fortune and business and allies are mine.
My gaze tracks the curve of the bruise darkening her cheekbone. It’s not particularly brutal as bruises go, but what it represents has an inferno of fury spiraling up through me. That fucker kept her in a cage, playing the doting father when it served his purposes, and then sold her to that little shit of an upstart. After all that, he had the audacity to strike her when she protested?
I’m no better than he is in so many ways, but when I strike a woman, it’s because she damn well wants it. Because she gets off on it. Balthazar Sarraf hit his daughter the same way a man kicks a dog because it didn’t immediately follow his orders. It’s a shame he’s already dead, because I would happily kill him for this sin alone.
“Stop staring at me.”
I finally ask the question I should have thought about before shoving my cock into her. “Are you on birth control?”
She shoots me a surprised look. “Of course. I have an IUD.”
Of course. As if it’s a given. “How did you manage that?”
“Our family doctor likes bribes and hates my father. It only took one of my mother’s heirloom pieces to convince him to give me one.”?1 She runs her fingers through her hair almost absently. “I don’t have control of so many things—of anything—but I ensured I’d at least have control of whether I have children.”
Yasmina always was savvier than her father gave her credit for. She’s managed to work around him at least a dozen times since I joined the organization, and those are just the ones I noticed.
“I’m tested regularly,” I finally say. “You have nothing to worry about from me on that front.”
“That’s good, because I already have to worry about you on every other front.” She turns and stares out the window. She doesn’t look away as we drive into town and the city creeps up around us.
It strikes me that she’s never seen any of this before. Sarraf kept expansive and immaculate grounds surrounded by a truly impressive wall and security system. He may have traveled extensively, but his daughter had been confined to the property. For her safety of course.
