He keeps thrusting, his low sounds just as animal-like as mine. At last moment, he pulls out of me and something hot and thick lands across my ass and upper thighs.
My body morphs into something less solid than muscle and bone. I drop to the ground. I can do nothing but lay there and relearn how to breathe with my lower half exposed, his come cooling on my bare skin.
He just …
That bastard just …
“Say it, Jasmine.”
I blink rapidly, mind gone hazy and indistinct with the shocking combination of pleasure and pain he’d delivered, the dose of humiliation and possession that he cultivated like fine wine. I lick my lips, and it takes me two tries to form the words. “Say what?”
“Say ‘Thank you, Jafar.’”
Over my dead body. “The hell I will.”
“Disobedient to the very end.” His chuckle has my body clenching despite my rage. “We’ll work on it.” He moves off me, and a few moments later he catches me under my arms and pulls me to my feet and turns me to face him. My knees buckle, the traitors. I’m forced to grab his shoulders to stay upright.
It’s right around then that we get our first good look at each other.
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?”
“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 am 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, Jasmine.”
Was 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 counted 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 two curving staircases leading up to the second floor and more than enough space for fifty people to stand comfortably.