Read Online Sheikh's Purchased Princess by Sophia Lynn - Free Book Online Page A

only cling tightly to him. A part of her wondered if this was Stockholm syndrome, but she didn't care. The panic she felt about Adnan possibly going into danger was real, and it took her breath away.
    “I don't care about that,” she repeated. “I don't want you to get hurt.”
    He stiffened when she came to him, but then he relaxed, holding her gently in his arms. There was something different about him today, but she couldn't really understand what.
    “I was born in Nahr,” he said conversationally. “I have lived all over the world, but Nahr is my home, my heart. I like to call myself a very modern man, but there are some times when I feel that tradition is best.”
    “What do you mean?” she asked. Emily realized with a strange horror that she was startlingly close to tears. She palmed them away and glanced up at him. The look on his face was unexpectedly soft.
    “When a man of Nahr goes into battle, whether he is a foot soldier or a sheikh, it is his duty to say farewell to his wife. This is an old tradition, one that goes back hundreds of years. There is no ceremony, though, no passing of household authority, nothing like that. People have done it different ways over the years, but the point is the same. The husband tells his wife that he will be away for a little while, and the wife merely says ‘hurry home.’”
    Emily blinked up at him.
    “That's it?” she asked. “Even when he's going out to battle?”
    “Yes. Even when the campaign might carry him hundreds of miles from home. Even when they know that it might be years before he returns. She tells him to hurry home, she smiles, and he leaves.”
    Emily shook her head dubiously.
    “I don't understand…”
    “I have always thought that it was very important. They are not hiding from the truth of what is going on. Many of those husbands never returned at all. Many of them died in foreign lands, died trying to return to a home that would always be looking for them. But for as long as they could be, they were at home. They shared the life that they lived with their wives, and both parties understood that this was a part of the life they had chosen together.”
    He paused. Emily wondered what he was struggling with.
    “Will you say farewell to me like that?”
    She didn't understand why he was asking this of her. She didn't understand what was happening, where he was going, what was going on. However, he had asked her, and she knew that she would never deny him this.
    When he pressed her back to stand on her own two feet, she was steady. For a moment, she felt dizzy at the long history of Nahr wives who had stood where she had, who had looked at the men they loved and realized that they might never see their beloved faces again. Somehow, she was able to draw her strength from theirs. She stood straight and tall, looking up at Adnan. In that moment, she thought that he had never looked so handsome.
    He finished dressing, his hands sure and steady on his clothing. In the end, he looked like a rich man in good clothes; she never would have guessed at the bulletproof vest or the gun holstered under his jacket.
    “Well, little beauty, it has come about that I must be away for some little while.”
    Emily took a deep breath, looking up at him. She tried to put everything she couldn't say into her eyes, but when she spoke, her words were calm and sure.
    “Hurry home, then. I'll miss you while you're gone.”
    The smile he gave her was brief but real, and he pulled her closer, kissing her gently on the top of her head.
    “Thank you,” he murmured, and then he was gone.
    In the wake of his departure, Emily sat back on the bed. After a moment, she wrapped her arms around his pillow, hugging it close. It still smelled like him, and for a moment, tears almost overcame her.
    Why am I doing this? Emily wondered. Why am I so heartbroken over a man who literally bought me?
    No matter what way she came at it, there was no reason for her to be so attached to her