Sheikh's Purchased Princess Read Free Page B

available tonight. If you cannot provide me with something interesting by then, I am not interested.”
    The skinny man was all smiles suddenly, and as he bowed his way back to speak with a bodyguard, Adnan could feel his stomach turn over. What the hell was going on here? How could people decide that they owned others?
    Even as he asked himself that question, he knew the answer all too well. People did this because they knew they could get away with it. He would have to play his part or end the whole operation. When he thought of Roja's vengeance, he knew that he had to stay in.
    He only hoped that it would be over soon.
    ***
    “I hope this ends soon,” Emily said, swallowing hard.
    Oma hummed as she put the finishing touch on Emily's makeup.
    “It is better instead to hope that you will find some kind of safe harbor,” she corrected. “Death is an ending, after all.”
    Over the last few days, Emily had come to realize how lucky she was to have Oma. When they came to the holding station where another half-dozen girls were held, it was clear that their keepers had not been nearly as careful with them. They cried, they rocked themselves into a stupor, and they could not believe what had happened to them. Emily would never have called herself happy, but she was at least grimly determined to do what had to be done.
    They had waited for several days in that dark place, and finally one of the armed and masked men had come down. A quick conversation with Oma later, and he had ushered her and Oma into a car and taken them to a hotel room. Emily's nerves were frayed from the constant vigilance, but Oma told her to be calm.
    “This is where you prove yourself,” she said. “If you make a good sale, you can be free of these monsters.”
    Emily could have snorted. Free of these monsters and with someone who was willing to spend money to own a woman. She couldn't see how it was better. She was learning to keep her barbs to herself, however. Instead, she had decided to be watchful and to be clever. At any moment, she might have an opportunity to escape, and when it came, she had to be ready.
    Oma closed the makeup kit with a note of finality. “There, you're done.”
    Emily had been surprised to see the simple white sundress they had given her to wear, along with the ballet flats. With her blonde hair damp and slightly curly and the eyeliner that made her eyes look huge, there was something surprisingly innocent and sweet about her.
    To Emily's surprise, Oma gave her a hug. “This is not the life that you dreamed of,” she said, “but it is one that you can survive. Be brave, all right?”
    “Thank you, Oma,” she said, hugging her back. “I…I will do my best.”
    When a skinny man with a sour face came to take her away, her spirit nearly failed. Then she remembered Oma's stories of girls being beaten until they complied, and she went with him meekly enough.
    The man who was escorting her to the location seemed, to her, to be a bitter thing. He snapped at the driver and at the man who was along ostensibly as a bodyguard but really to keep Emily from escaping. When she didn't move fast enough, the escort pinched the flesh under her arm, making her yelp a little. She could already feel a bruise starting to form, one that would be hidden as long as she kept her arm down.
    “That is what happens when you do not obey fast enough,” he sneered, pushing her through the side door of a luxury hotel. “Now move!”
    She did as he said, seething silently. If she had a way to get out of this situation, she thought that it would be here with him. Emily's spirits fell a little when she realized the bodyguard was going in with them. She looked up when her escort sent the bodyguard to the room they were assigned.
    “Not you,” he said to her with an unpleasant sneer. “You're going right to the client, and you should pray to Allah that he finds you acceptable.”
    Emily bided her time as they rode up in an elevator to the