Sheikh's Purchased Princess Read Online Free PDF Page B

way that he couldn’t explain, like the way a compass unerringly pointed out true north.
    He knew that he should simply leave her alone. He also knew he wasn’t going to do that. He pulled the key to the bedroom from his pocket, and simply thought for a moment.
    ***
    Emily never thought that she would sleep. At some point, however, she had crawled into the bed, the mattress more enticing than she would have thought possible. In the last few days, she had been lucky to get a pile of blankets on the ground. The bed was amazingly soft and ridiculously large.
    She had only intended to lie down for a few minutes, perhaps to collect her thoughts. Instead, the moment her tired head hit the pillow, she fell into a deep sleep.
    As Emily slept, she dreamed of a dark place, a maze where it seemed as if monsters were waiting for her around every corner. She could hear them breathing, hear them laughing, hear them talking about what they wanted to do to women like her. When she caught a glimpse of one down a dark alley, she felt strangely heartbroken to realize that he was a human, just like her.
    The voices around her grew louder and closer, as if they were gaining on her. Emily broke into a run, crashing through bushes that tore at her clothes and skin. She could feel a deep panic, one that she had not allowed herself to feel for days. It reached up from her stomach through her throat, and for a few horrible moments, she thought that it would strangle her.
    Just as she was convinced that the monsters would finally catch her, she ran headlong into the arms of a man in dark clothes. She couldn't see his face, but when he wrapped his arms around her, she nearly cried with relief. He was warm, and he was safe. She knew in that moment that she had never been so safe or so cared for her in her life.
    She knew that she had to thank her protector, but instead, all she could do was bury her face in his chest and sob out loud. She felt him go stiff with shock for a moment, but then held her even more tightly, stroking her short blond hair, murmuring sweet words to her in a language she didn't know.
    It was all right though; she didn't need to understand them to know what they meant.
    You're safe, you're home, you're going to be fine…
    She cried until she couldn't cry any more, and then she fell into a deeper slumber, a place where she could actually rest without disturbance.
    When Emily woke up, she could see morning light coming through the barred windows. For a groggy moment, she only thought about how pretty it was, and then two things happened. First, she remembered what had happened to her. Her capture and her sale had not been horrible dreams, and she was farther from home than she had ever been.
    Second, she became aware that she was not alone in the bed. A warm body pressed against her back, and a heavy arm draped over her waist.
    What the hell…?
    She must have made some kind of sound or whimper because the arm tightened protectively around her. When she twisted to look her bed mate in the face, he made a grumbling sound and woke up. It was the man who had bought her, and he looked at her with a sleepy approval that was entirely satisfied and entirely male.
    “So you are finally awake,” he said, and a part of her was furious to hear him speaking to her as if they were actually lovers, as if they woke up in the same bed every day.
    “What the hell are you doing in here?” she asked. “I locked you out…”
    “Locks have keys,” he observed. “And I will point out that this is my room, one that I bought and paid for. As pleasant as it is, there is only one bed, and I certainly wasn't going to sleep on the floor.”
    He sounded so sensible that she wanted nothing more in that moment than to slap him. With a growl, she got up from the bed, but somehow in the night the sheet had tangled around her. It stopped her forward momentum abruptly, and she went toppling toward the floor with a shriek.
    She would have hit it hard if the