Sheikh's Purchased Princess (10 page)

When Emily's calls had faded away, Adnan came to rest next to her.

“Beautiful precious woman,” he said, and she felt a warmth awaken in her that was like nothing she had ever known before.

***

Adnan couldn't remember a day like the one he had spent with Emily. They made love again, and when they became hungry, they sent for food. They talked and learned about each other. He learned of her music and how she was just finally winning clear of the starving artist status to become a successful artist. She learned about the death of his father, which had made him the sheikh and about his years with Roja in the military.

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 little 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.