Sheikh's Purchased Princess by Sophia Lynn

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