2. Yasmina #2
My knees buckle, the traitors. I’m forced to grab his shoulders to stay upright.
It’s right around then that I get my first good look at him.
There’s no evidence of what we just did on his face.
It might be there in the extra growl in his voice, but he appears as composed and distant as ever.
It makes me want to strike him. My world just came crashing down around me, and even without access to a mirror, I know that I look a mess.
Jafar skims off my robe, ignoring my weak attempt to cover my breasts. He uses the wadded-up fabric to clean the evidence of himself from my ass and thighs, and somehow that’s the most humiliating part of this whole experience. “I can do it.”
“No.” Just that. Nothing more. He tosses the ruined fabric to join my panties on the floor, and only then does he look at my face.
At the bruise darkening my skin, courtesy of my father’s hand.
Storm clouds gather in his dark eyes. He touches my chin, tilting my face to the side. “Did he do this?”? 3
“You’re going to have to be more specific.” When he just waits, I relent. I’m too tired for this ridiculous argument. Too confused and exhilarated and depressed all at once. “My father doesn’t like it when I talk back.”
“You always talk back. He’s never hit you before.”
“Hasn’t he?”
His mouth goes tight, and I have the presence of mind to wonder if my father is still among the living. He may not stay that way for long with the fury emanating from Jafar.
Funny that he wasn’t angry until this point.
He unbuttons his shirt in neat, precise movements and shrugs out of it.
I skitter back a step. “My room is upstairs. I’ll get my own clothes.”
“You know better.”
Damn it, but I do. This is as much about a power play as it is about anything as mundane as lust. Jafar might want me, but it’s not simply because he’s a man who wants a woman. I’m a symbol, an indicator that his victory over my father is complete on every level. Power, money, home, daughter.
Likely in that order.
Jafar pulls his shirt on me and buttons it up as if he dresses me in his clothing regularly. I’m tall enough that it barely covers my ass, but apparently that isn’t the point.
The conqueror must parade his stolen goods in front of his men.
“Why not just throw a collar on my neck and lead me around naked to really seal my degradation?”
His lips curve. “Maybe another time.” He brushes my hair back, and then his finger is there, tracing the shape of the bruises coloring my cheekbone. Marking it. Memorizing it.
Yes, if my father is alive, he’ll come to regret that strike. I have no doubts about that.
“You’re in my world now, Yasmina.”
Is that supposed to comfort me? He’s a snake in the garden, tempting me into delicious sin and then abandoning me in every way that counts once the deed is done.
Jafar doesn’t seem to need a response. He simply tosses me over his shoulder like some old-world war prize.
I want to scream and curse and flail, but it’s only his upper arm across the bottom of my ass that holds his shirt in place.
If I fight him, I won’t get free, and everyone will see every part of me.
Just more humiliation.
“You’ll pay for this.”
“Unlikely.” He starts down the hallway with an easy stride, as if my weight on his shoulder is completely inconsequential. As if I’m nothing more than another token of his superiority.
I’m thankful that my long hair hides my face as we leave the hallway and enter the main foyer. It’s a ridiculously overdrawn room with a giant curving staircase leading up to the second floor and more than enough space for fifty people to stand comfortably.
It sounds 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.? 4
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 laughs, 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 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