Sheikh's Purchased Princess

by Sophia Lynn

  They reveled in each other, and when he told her about his beloved home city of Nahr, she grew quiet, her beautiful gray eyes wide. Nahr was a modern city, with deep roots in the past that supported the pride of its people.

  “I want to see it,” she said, her voice as soft as silk, and he couldn't help a grin from spreading over his face.

  “You will,” he promised, and he started kissing her again.

  He couldn't keep his hands off of her, but he restrained himself. Where he wanted to be quick and savage, he kept himself gentle. It was hard to believe that a girl who had never done anything before could be so enthusiastic, so needy.

  He knew it was an ancient instinct, but a part of him reveled in the thought of having been the only man who had ever touched her, the only one who had explored her lush body.

  It occurred to Adnan that he was drunk with her. He couldn't get enough of her, and if he were not careful, that could be a very dangerous place to be indeed. She was beautiful, sweet and sharp as a whip, and he could already tell that he had given her a part of his heart.

  The wise men of old would have said that it was a mistake to fall more deeply for this woman than he already had. Marriages were made between men and women of equal power and family, where wealth and lineage played the broadest part. Passion was reserved for concubines, women skilled in the art of beauty and seduction. Adnan's heart beat faster.

  Emily had come to Nahr by chance, a wayward leaf blown by an ill wind, but there was nothing preventing her from staying, from seeing what this place could offer her.

  For himself, he knew that he would offer her the world, if she only said yes.

  Chapter Nine

  Emily wasn't sure when she fell asleep. All she knew was that she was cuddled up next to Adnan, safe in the circle of his arms and exhausted from their pleasure with each other. Once or twice during the long day together, she had wondered about the future, but she had pushed it from her mind. There was time to think of the future tomorrow, when she would tell him what she felt, what she needed. The thought of leaving Nahr to return to the United States sent a pang through her, but there was certainly nothing she could do, was there?

  If he asked her to stay, however…

  She put the thought out of her mind. Today, there was simply too much pleasure and too much laughter wrapping around her, waking up parts of her that had been asleep ever since her capture. She couldn't think of the future right now, didn't even want to.

  When she went to sleep that night, a slight smile on her face and her head pillowed on Adnan's thick arm, it was the past that came looking for her, not the future.

  When she was a teenager, she had been part of an accelerated program, one that took her for half the day to the university, to take classes with the college students. She had dressed in her favorite outfit, which were still cheap and slightly tattered, and in typical rebellious teenager fashion, dyed her hair red. But once on campus, she had been badly intimidated by the stylish girls and loud boys in her classes.

  In her dream, a group of girls made fun of her clothes and drugstore dye job, just loudly enough for her to hear.

  “Oh god, it looks like she shops out of a dumpster or something. I can't sit too close because I might end up downwind!”

  In her dream—smaller, skinnier, and out of place—Emily fled, running down the hall, her books clutched to her chest and tears in her eyes. She might have run all the way back home to never darken the doors of a university again, but then she ran straight into a strong pair of arms, brought up so short she gasped.

  In her dream and in her memory, she looked up into a pair of eyes as black as midnight.

  “Are you all right?” the man asked, and she could feel his compassionate gaze on her as she woke with a start.

  She must have made some kind of startled cry, because Adnan woke up immediately behind her. Even as he fumbled for the chain to the lamp, she was out of bed and trembling.

  When the light flicked on, flooding the nighttime room with a rich amber light, Emily wondered if she briefly had double vision. On the bed was the sheikh who had rescued her, the one who had plucked her from a nightmare and given her more pleasure than she could ever have imagined. On the bed was also the man who had changed her life forever, her first love, the one who had disappeared.

  “Love, what's the matter?” he asked, sitting up and watching her across the space. She was glad that he didn't try to cross the floor to get to her. In her state, she didn't know what she would have done to him or to herself.

  “Daniel,” she whispered, and from the look of recognition that flooded his face, she knew once and for all that he had been the man she had known. And blocked from her memory out of hurt.

  “Yes, that was…Oh my god, Emily? You’re that Emily?”

  She started to laugh, a strange crazed and wounded sound.

  “Of course I was,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh god, of course I would be kidnapped across the sea by criminals and then dumped on the lap of my first…my first…Oh god, I can't believe this!”

  He started to approach her, one hand held out tentatively, but when she backed away, he halted. It occurred to her that they were both naked, and with jerky motions, she turned her back to him. Her clothes, forgotten in their passion, were on the chair, and she went to them, yanking them back on.

  She could feel Adnan's gaze on her, which made her antsy and nervous in a way she hadn't been before, when they were so intimate with each other. The truth right now, however, was that she was flooded with memories, and she shook her head, trying to get them straight.

  “Why did you call yourself Daniel?” she asked, buttoning up her dress.

  “Because a friend suggested an English name for an English speaking country. After I had four people in a row ask me where my name was from and how I spelled it, I saw why they gave me that advice. Emily, will you please come back here?”

  “No,” she said, turning to face him finally. There was something in her face that made him make a wounded sound, but when he reached for her again, she shook her head.

  “What were you doing in Boston?” she asked, her voice thin but strong. She needed these answers; more than that, she deserved them. She had gone without them for half a decade.

  “I was seeing the world, to some extent,” he said. “I was also seeing a friend, an ex-pat who was teaching at the university.”

  “You were always so mysterious,” Emily whispered. “I never knew what to expect from you, not really.”

  The smile he gave her was a rueful one, one with real regret in it.

  “I have learned that when people know that you are a sheikh, or the son of a sheikh then, certain things become much more difficult,” he said quietly. “Some trips. Some encounters. Some people…sometimes, you only want to be known for who you are.”

  “I didn't even know your real name,” she said accusingly, her face hot. To his credit, Adnan looked agonized, but it wasn't enough.

  “I…I didn't know it was important to you,” he said, and she wondered if it was possible that she saw red.

  “Then you knew absolutely nothing about me at all…”

  ***

  Five Years Ago

  She hadn't wanted to burst into tears. She hadn't at all, but that was exactly what had happened. The handsome man who had caught her in his arms looked startled for a moment, and then without a second thought, he wrapped his arms around her.

  For a long moment, she simply wept into his shirt, uncaring what she looked like or what was happening to her. It felt so good to simply let everything go, but the problem with letting everything go was that eventually, you had to pick it up again.

  “Oh god, I'm so sorry,” she said, stepping back and wiping her eyes. “I didn't mean…”

  “No problem at all, I'm sure,” the man said, gazing at her with curiosity and a compassion that seemed endless. “Only why don't you come with me? You look a bit overheated, and I can get you some iced tea at that lit
tle cafe there.”

  Emily's first impulse was to refuse, but then for some reason, she fell into step beside him. He was older than her, she could tell, though she could not hazard a guess as to how much. She guessed that he was a grad student, or perhaps a very young professor at the most.

  In her tattered clothes and with her high school looks, she felt very young sitting next to him, but as he spoke to her with patience and kindness, she lost some of her nervousness and fears.

  When he sat back with an appreciative gleam in his eyes and told her that she was perhaps the cleverest person he had spoken to all day, she felt her chest puff with pride.

  “Do you come here often?” she asked, feeling greatly daring. “I mean, here to this coffee shop?”

  “I do,” he said, a smile creasing his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I will be here tomorrow, if you are interested…”

  ***

  “We only knew each other a few weeks. Your hair was red then,” Adnan said, and she felt those traitorous tears in her eyes again; if she wasn't careful, she would start weeping like the sixteen-year-old she had been. A part of her hated that girl, the one who had given her heart away so easily, but a part of her was fiercely protective as well. The way she had grown up, there was precious little time or energy for anything as lovely and frivolous as a love affair.

  “It might have only been a few weeks to you,” she whispered, “but it was everything to me. My parents were getting divorced. I had no friends. I was fighting against a curriculum designed for students two years older than I was…you were all I had.”

  Adnan reached for her again, but she pulled back.

  “Why did you leave?” Emily demanded. “Why did you decide that I wasn't even worth saying goodbye to?”

  Something flickered across Adnan's face, there and gone again. With a sinking feeling, she realized that whatever he said to her next was not going to be the truth.

  “There were pressing matters back in Nahr,” he said finally. “Things I could not get away from. Emily, you were and are a brilliant young woman. I never thought for a moment that you would struggle in my absence or that…”

  “Never thought?” she exploded. “I was hanging on by my fingernails. I was barely clinging to sanity, and you never thought I would miss you?”

  Adnan flinched as if she had thrown fire at him.

  Good, she thought angrily. Let him know how it feels to be so confused, so afraid…

  “I loved you,” she continued. “From the moment I saw you…”

  He looked up at her, shocked.

  “You were barely more than a child,” he protested, but she shook her head.

  “It doesn't matter,” she cried. “I was in love with you, from the bottom of my heart to the top, and seeing you was all that kept me going through it all. I would have done anything for you. I would have listened to anything, accepted the entire you—”

  “I had no way of knowing that,” Adnan said, his voice low. “I thought I was just another adult to you, someone you were spending time with because…because…”

  “Because I was lonely?” Emily laughed, the sound as harsh as the cawing of a crow. “Oh Adnan, I've been lonely my entire life. I had never known what it was like to not be lonely until I met you. It was so much more, though. It was love, even if it was new and foolish, it was love, and you lied to me. You didn't even tell me your real name.” She shrugged. “But it doesn't matter now, does it? That ended when you left the United States, and this has ended now that you're done with what's happened here.”

  His silence was all the response that she needed.

  “It's still dark outside,” she said, aware that her voice was flat and strange. “I'm going to go sleep on the couch.”

  She walked past him, and this time, he didn't reach for her. She would have said that it broke her heart, but as she was realizing, her heart had been broken years ago. It was only now that she could really explore the extent of the injury.

  ***

  Hours later, as dawn was beginning to peek over the city, Adnan gave up on sleep and opened the bedroom door. Emily was curled up on the couch, making herself as small as possible. When he saw the tracks on her face, evidence of her tears, his heart tore.

  “I have treated you very badly,” he murmured. He wanted more than anything to scoop her up in his arms and hold her until everything was better, but he suspected it would take more drastic measures than that.

  Instead, he dressed and walked out of the hotel room, past the faithful bodyguards that still watched over him. He walked to the balcony at the end of the hall, leaning against the stone bannisters as the sun rose.

  A part of him could barely believe that she had been the Emily he had met while he was in the United States. Another part of him wondered if he had known the whole time, despite the change of hair color. That girl had been altogether too young for him, shy and nervous. She had looked at him as if he were a knight who could slay all her dragons for her.

  This Emily had all the innocence of that one, but this one was a fighter. She had learned to battle, and it only made her more beautiful.

  The right thing to do, he thought, would be to send her home. At home, she could start to heal, start to forget about the nightmare that had seized her one dark night. She could forget about Nahr, forget about him, move on as she deserved to do.

  The moment that thought occurred to him, however, he pushed it away. It was selfish, it might even have been cruel, but nothing in him would allow him to let her leave. The idea of saying goodbye to her was like carving out his own heart.

  The twin impulses tugged at him, making him rest his head in his hands. He couldn't let her leave. He didn't want to see her unhappy.

  Adnan wasn't sure how long he had stayed like that, but at some point, a plan began to form. At the core of it was his love for her, and at this point, all he could hope was that perhaps it was enough.

  He straightened, looking east, where his beloved city lay. He had dreamed just twenty-four hours ago that perhaps she would come to love it as much as he did. Perhaps that was still possible.

  He started to walk back into the hotel, his phone already in his hand. He had arrangements to make.

  Chapter Ten

  Emily awoke to an empty apartment, but the last few days had been full of so many strange twists and turns that she was losing the ability to be surprised.

  She had just taken her shower and put on clothes when there was a knock at the door. For a moment, she froze. Knocks were for people who actually had power, whose privacy other people respected. Knocks hadn't been for her for what felt like forever, and she was slow as she made her way to the door.

  At the last moment, she remembered to check the peephole, and to her surprise, a pair of women stood in the hall. They were roughly her age, and they both wore the colorful tunic, trousers, and light scarf that she knew were customary among the women of the region.

  “Who are you?” she asked, opening the door. “What are you doing here?”

  She noted with some chagrin that the bodyguards were still there. Wherever Adnan was, he was still intent on keeping an eye on her.

  “We are here for you,” the first woman said warmly. “I am Bina, and this is Masha. We're here to take your measurements. As soon as we have those, we can start putting together a wardrobe for you.”

  “Some of our clients require specialty sizing, but I think that what we have will fit you perfectly,” chirped Masha.

  Emily felt as if she had slipped into some kind of strange wonderland when both women pulled out tape measures. As they advanced towards her, however, she came alive, scrambling back and putting the couch between them.

  “No,” she said, feeling as if all of the indignities that she had suffered were coming to a head. “No. I'm not doing anything you say unless you tell me what it's for. What the hell is happening right now?”

  Both women looked at her curiously, their heads tilted at such an identical angle that Emily though
t that they must have been sisters.

  “We're here to measure you for your wardrobe,” Bina said carefully, as if she were talking to a child. “The sheikh has flown us in for the purpose. If you are interested in working with someone more prestigious…”

  “We assure you they don't exist,” Masha finished crisply. “We will provide you with the tunics and trousers, of course, but we will also outfit you with leisure wear, couture dresses, and of course the foundation garments and shoes…”

  Emily shook her head. “No, I mean, why are you doing this?”

  “Because we were asked to do so by the sheikh,” Bina exclaimed.

  Masha gave her a sharp look. “He asked us to outfit you for every occasion we can think of. He came to us because we are the best. Do you doubt this?”

  Emily felt as if she were drowning under some kind of tide. At this point, under the gaze of two women who seemed to know so well what was going on, she gave up.

  “All right,” she said helplessly, and with bright smiles, they helped her to the center of the room.

  As they worked, they chatted with each other and with her, complimenting her hair, her body, telling her that their creations would be amazing on her.

  It occurred to Emily belatedly that this must be some kind of apology and farewell gift from Adnan. He was rich after all. Perhaps he wanted to give her a wardrobe before she left Nahr. The thought of never seeing him again made her heart squeeze, but she forced herself to ignore it. She was through shedding tears for him. If he wanted to give her a luxury wardrobe that she would sell as soon as she made it back to the United States, so be it.

  When Bina and Masha finished taking her measurements, but they had another surprise for her. At a word from them, one of Adnan's bodyguards came in, pulling a rack of clothing behind him.

  “These are samples, but I think they will fit you quite well,” explained Masha.