Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
It sounds as if it’s filled to capacity.
A murmur goes through the people gathered. It’s speculative and filled with no small amount of gleeful malice. They think Jafar raped me, that he took by force something they followed with covetous eyes since the time I hit puberty and developed breasts.
They could never comprehend the level of my betrayal, that I wanted him to defile me the way he did, that I welcomed his touch even as I mouthed all the protests I could muster. Every word but the one that would make a difference.
Jafar knows.
He owns me, and I have no one to blame but myself.
“Well done.” His voice booms out, silencing everyone. “Tonight is for celebrating.” He lets them cheer, lets the ugliness of their glee wash over me. “Tomorrow, we get to work.”
“Where you taking the girl, boss?” A voice from the crowd. I know that voice. It’s Richard, a man who served on my personal protective detail despite my begging my father to remove him. Another fight I lost. He laughed, the sound buoyed by others around him. “Share the spoils of war!”
Share me.
I tense. I can’t help it.
Surely he wouldn’t …
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 crush you.”
“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 crush you,” 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 even 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 of 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 down 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 on 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 enact 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, Jasmine. Now you have to live with it.”
Chapter 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. Jasmine 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 now 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 sold her to that little shit of an upstart. Then 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.