Slave to the Sheikh: by Nadia Aidan Page A

shadows to clean up the mess, as he inquired if Amir needed medical attention.  When he received no response, the young man disappeared back into the swirling mist of cigar smoke that filled the gaming room where a few patrons still gambled away their fortunes, while well paid exotic escorts fawned and flattered them.
    A gentlemen’s club was no place for the ruler of Sharjah to idle his days and nights, not even if it was a private, exclusive establishment for the billionaire oil tycoons and wealthy Westerners who were eager to indulge in the luxury and decadence of Dubai. 
    With a bitter smile, he corrected himself, former ruler of Sharjah, but no matter, Amir knew it was only a matter of time before the rumors made their way back to his country and the powers that be discovered where he’d disappeared to for the past three months.
    A cavalry would be dispatched to retrieve him then, and they would try to reason with him to resume his rightful position as the regent of Sharjah, but he would refuse.  It wasn’t fair to his people or even himself to return.  He wasn’t fit to lead, not with his mind always consumed with thoughts of the bitch , for he could not bear to even think her name, the pain was too raw. 
    When he’d returned from Cairo, and discovered her gone, he’d sent his best spies and investigators searching for her, first within Sharjah, and then within neighboring countries.  When they’d turned up nothing, he’d sent Khalil, along with more of his men, first to Georgetown University where she was a professor, and then he’d had them scour the entire Eastern Seaboard of the fucking United States.  Nothing. 
    No traces, not one sign of her anywhere.  She’d taken a leave of absence from her job.  She’d rented out her home. And no one was talking.  Not her family, not her colleagues, it was as if she’d vanished.  The only solace that kept him halfway sane was the knowledge that she was definitely alive and apparently well, because when Khalil returned, he’d given Amir an envelope that had come directly from Daniella’s mother.  The envelope had been sealed and addressed to him, and to this day he wished he’d never opened it, but at the time he’d been so desperate for something, just one word, just a hint of how she was doing.  A simple handwritten note, such a feeble connection to her, but he’d grasped it in his hand as desperately as a drowning man gasping for air.
    Every single word was forever imprinted in his memory.  It was a scathing character assault, a vitriolic denial of everything they’d shared.  He’d wanted to rip the letter to shreds, but it had still carried her unique scent, when nothing else of hers that remained in her abandoned villa did.  It was a sultry combination of blooming roses and warm, rich vanilla.  In one breath, fresh and sweet, while in the next, sultry and intoxicating—just like her. 
    After receiving her letter, he’d stopped searching for her.  Somehow she’d learned how betrothal contracts were broken among Sharjah’s nobility.  Misfar al-Sharaf .  After telling him she was not pregnant, in no uncertain terms she also told him she had no intention of remaining in Sharjah because she would not be used in such a way. In a few paragraphs scribbled out in her bold handwriting, she made it quite clear that she hated him, and that she never wanted to see him ever again. 
    He was not a man to give up so easily, but once his anger had waned, he was forced to accept the truth, she didn’t love him.  And no matter what he did, she never would.  He could search the ends of the earth, and even if he found her, it wouldn’t matter.  He couldn’t force her to love him if she didn’t.  He had a life that most envied, but for all the fancy education and abundance of riches, he could not have the one thing he would give it all up for—the love of the one, and only woman, he’d ever given his heart to.
    Once he’d accepted his fate,