Sheikh's Purchased Princess (6 page)

When Adnan's mouth swooped down on hers, his kiss was punishing. It would have bruised her if it were just a little harsher, and she could feel the teeth in it and the tearing need as well.

“I could strip you naked,” he growled into her mouth. “I could pin you to the bed and open you up, without caring how much it hurt you or what you thought about it. I could open every part of you—I could claim it for my own…”

She should be afraid. She should be
terrified
. Instead, she felt her defiance flame even higher.

“You wouldn't,” she whispered. “Not like that.”

The moment she said it, she knew it to be true, and she threw her arms around him. He had shown her how to kiss so brutally, and now she turned it back on him. She pressed her lips hard against his. She wanted to show him that she would not be cowed or frightened, she would not be silenced. More than that though, at the bottom of it, she wanted him. When she was in his arms, she felt safe, and there was nothing, she realized, that would change that.

She could feel him wavering. She could feel the passion trembling at the limit of his skin, how desire would trump anger or better judgment in just a few moments. In just a few moments, everything would change. The thought made her flinch a little, and as connected as they were in that moment, he could feel it too.

When he pulled back from her this time, there was a gentleness to it, and a control that he had lost previously.

“You could tempt an angel to sin,” he said, “but we are not doing this now.”

She opened her mouth to argue—though to argue what she didn't even know—but he was turning away.

“Stay here,” he said sternly. “There are men on guard at the door. You will not like what happens if you try to get past them.”

With nothing more than that, he was through the door, leaving her behind in silence.

***

Adnan did not catch his breath until he was at the small cafe on the ground floor of the hotel. When he did, he wondered if his face was as red as it felt. He hadn't been lying when he called her tempting.

If he were honest with himself, he had never expected it to be this difficult to stay away from her, from Emily. When he saw her that first night, kneeling down in front of him, he had felt pity for her. She was a lost girl far from home, one who needed his help and needed it immediately. He had thought her pretty enough.

Then when she bit him, spat at his threats, fled and fought, something had changed. She wasn't just a victim that he needed to help. She became a vital fighter, one who refused to go down quietly and whose meekness was at best a facade to survive. The slave he had bought, he pitied. The woman he woke up to, he desired.

When Adnan thought about his seduction that morning, the way he’d enjoyed her, he felt as low as a snake's belly. No matter how strong or how brave she was, she was still terrified. It felt wrong to be impossibly aroused by her shivering body. It felt wrong to desire the woman who had been stolen away from everything she had ever known.

No matter how wrong it was, however, he wanted her. He wasn't sure if he had ever wanted a woman more. He had assumed last night, in the dimness of the room, that her eyes were blue, given her coloring. Now that he had seen them in good light, he could see that they were a pure gray, a color that made him think of rivers and rain.

Even in the short time he had known her, he had become incredibly impressed with her resourcefulness and her will. He wasn't sure he had ever met a woman like her before, one that was so passionate even while she was being as brave as she could be.

He knew that he couldn't take advantage of her. Not like this, not now. Perhaps in a few days, when it was all over…

He shook his head. He needed to stay focused. He needed to make sure that he kept her safe. Then, and only then, they could find out what was possible between them.

Chapter Six

Emily ran through her options. For a little while, she entertained a fantasy of overpowering the guards, running out, setting a fire and screaming for help. The more she thought about it, however, the more she realized that it was nothing more than a pleasant fantasy. She could try to escape, but she knew that not only would she never make it out, she would likely be punished for her efforts.

For a brief moment, she thought of Oma, and she wondered if life was like this for her as well. Would it only be a matter of time until her attention shifted from escape to sheer survival? Oma had told her to simply look down at her feet, to count every step taken as one more survived. She took a deep breath, and she told herself that for now, that was what she had to do.

The room was bereft of ways to contact the outside world. The ridiculously out-of-date computer couldn't connect to the Internet, and the flat screen television showed nothing but shows in Arabic. A large bookcase held books in various languages.

The hours wore on, and Adnan still didn't return. When her thoughts turned to him, they became strange and fractured things. She didn't understand herself when it came to him, but there was more than that. Sometimes, when she was quiet, the thought came to her that she had known him before. Something about him was so familiar that she grew increasingly frustrated when the memory darted away again and again.

Emily told herself that it was nothing more than a firing of synapses, a strange and erroneous connection of memory, but some part of her refused to believe it. No matter how hard she looked or what she considered, however, there was no way to fit a man like that into her previous life, and she had to let it go.

She wandered the room, wondering if noble prisoners in times gone by felt the same way. Every need was met. One of the guards at the door had told her that he could order food if she wished. She wasn't going to be starved. She wasn't going to be hurt, as far as she could see. The only thing that she was going to be denied was her freedom.

She tentatively asked for a grilled cheese sandwich and was slightly amused to get a sandwich filled with some kind of cheese she had never had before, along with a dish of bitter greens in lemon juice. The cheese was strong but not unpleasant, and she ate it all, trying not to be grateful for such a small pleasure but unable to help herself.

She wondered for a moment if Adnan meant to leave her here, but surely the guards would be freed, wouldn’t they? He couldn't just leave her in the hotel room like a princess in her tower, but then she realized that he could do precisely that if he wished to. From the discussion he’d had with the skinny man, she knew that he had more money than she could imagine. The fact that buying her was a negligent matter for him meant that he was powerful as well.

No, he very well could leave her where she was, and she would not be able to do anything about it.

A few days ago, she might have panicked at that idea. She might have screamed or cried or tried to destroy the room that she sat in. Instead, she went very still. She made herself take several deep breaths as Oma had taught her, and she tried to make herself blank.

It worked, sort of. At least she didn't feel the animal fear that clawed at the back of her mind anymore. Finally, for want of anything better to do, she went to the bookshelf. After a bit of a search through books that she suspected had simply been bought by the lot from someplace going out of business, she came up with a battered copy of
Pride and Prejudice.

She had loved that book since she was a little girl, and right now, it seemed like the best way to lose herself from the world for a little while. She sprawled out on the bed and started to read. As she dove into the words that had been her refuge for years, something tugged at her memory again, but she shrugged it off.

Emily read for hours. As the light died, she switched on the lamp and kept reading, even when she was stiff from lying on her belly, even when the words blurred in front of her eyes.

She kept on reading even when she could feel how heavy her eyelids were, and she only gave it up when sleep finally took her.

She was having the dream again. She was in the maze, and now she could see more of it. The walls were concrete like the cell where she had woken up, and all around her was the laughter of cruel men, the sobbing of hurt girls.

Though a part of Emily wanted nothing more than to crouch down and hide forever, she knew that she needed to keep moving. She needed to make sure that she wasn't found, and to do that, she had to stay on her feet.

She was so tired, though. It felt as if the world was pressing down on her, making her steps heavy, dragging her towards the ground. Still, she had walked through worse. She had continued when she was so exhausted she thought she might fall, and she had endured. She kept walking.

At some point, she heard footsteps behind her. The moment she noticed them, she heard a laugh as well. Someone was following her. Someone was going to jump out at her, and they were going to hurt her.

Unable to stop herself, she broke into a run. It didn't matter if she ran headlong into something terrible, she simply needed to get away from whoever was following her. She ran until she thought her lungs would burst, and then she ran some more. The thing was right behind her. She wasn't sure that it was even a man anymore. She became more and more convinced that it was a monster.

She shrieked when her bare toe caught on something. She went tumbling forward. This was it. She was falling, and the thing would be on her, tearing her, hurting her.

Instead of hitting the ground, Emily found herself plucked up as lightly as if she were a feather. Strong arms wrapped around her, and suddenly she felt safe. She knew that everything would be all right, and when she opened her eyes, she had no idea where the dream ended and reality began.

She was in the enormous bed at the hotel, and Adnan had returned at some point. He held her tightly in his arms, and she heard him whispering that same stream of comforting words that he had whispered to her in her dream the first night. This time, she didn't fight him. Instead, she simply shivered, clinging to him with everything she had. This time, there was nothing between them, and she knew how very much she needed him.

“You keep having bad dreams,” he said. “It is natural after what you have done through.”

She uttered a laugh that was at least a little more humor than sob.

“I'm sorry if I woke you up,” she said when she had gotten her breath back. “I'm…I'm so sorry, I don't know when they are going to stop…”

“They will stop when they stop,” he said with a shrug. “I know men who have gone through combat who never get the dreams at all, and I know men who have them every night. Either way, there is no shame in it. When you have undergone fear and pain, the horror of being helpless, you deserve to feel everything that comes after.”

She didn't let herself wonder what kind of man could say a thing like that and still buy a woman. Adnan didn't make sense, and the last time she had tried to make him make sense, he had left her alone in the hotel all day.

Right now, all she knew was that she needed him, and she did what came naturally. She twined her arms around his neck, and when she kissed him, there was a gentleness to it that had never been there before.

“I don't want to be alone,” she said nakedly, and in the darkness, she could feel him nod.

“You won't be, I promise,” he responded. He started to say something else, but she kissed him again. She could feel his doubt melt away and turn into certainty as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight.

“Please,” she whispered, not even sure what she was asking for. “Please…”

No matter what decisions he might have come to earlier, they were shattering now. Something in the way he held her, in the tension that stretched between them like wire, told her that he couldn't resist her.

“All right,” he said finally, planting a gentle kiss on the corner of her mouth. “But we're going to do this my way.”

She wondered if she should be nervous about that, but then he was kissing her again. There was a hunger to it, but also a restraint. He kissed her slowly, working his way from her mouth to her jaw to the sensitive skin of her throat. When she felt him graze her earlobe with his teeth, she shivered, clinging to him harder, and she could feel him smile in the darkness.

“Beautiful thing,” he murmured. “So lovely and perfect.”

His arms tightened around her, but it was only to hold her steady while he nibbled at her ear. As a musician, she had always thought that her ears were the most sensitive part of her. Now he was proving it true as he sent shivers of pure hot pleasure through her body simply by lapping gently at the curve of her ear.

“Oh, oh, I can't take that anymore,” she whimpered, squirming against him. Even as the shudders of pleasure shot through her, a part of her hoped he wouldn't stop, hoped that he would push her forward to the next level, whatever came next.

Instead, he only laughed, the soft dark sound making her press against him with a kind of need she barely understood.

“Here, let me show you something good…”

She sat still as he pulled her dress over her head. She hesitated a moment when she felt him reach for her underwear, but when he planted a kiss at the nape of her neck, she lost all of her resistance.

Belatedly, she realized that he had gone to bed naked again. With nothing between them but the sheet, she could tell that he was just as aroused as she was. She reached for his erection, shrouded by the sheet, and he shuddered as she stroked it. Fascinated, she wrapped her hand around him, but Adnan pulled her away.

“That's not exactly what I had in mind,” he said, and before she could ask him what he did have in mind, he had pulled her onto his lap. She squeaked in surprise, but now she found herself settled back against his body, her legs spilled to either side of his and her back to his broad chest. It reminded her briefly of what they had done together early that morning, and she felt a surge of pleasure push through her.

“I do not think you have any idea how beautiful you are,” he said, his words tickling her ear. “But perhaps right now, you will allow me to show you…”