Sheikh's Ex-Girlfriend (Khayyam Sheikh Series #1) by Sophia Lynn Read Free Book Online Page A

learning when my brothers died and I took the mantle of sheikh.
    “Now … well, now I do not look to the past. I look to the future, and I hope you are in it.”
    Silently, they pulled up to her apartment. Ella realized with a small amount of surprise that they had been holding hands the entire time.
    “Thank you,” she said, and she knew it wasn't just for the ride.
    The kiss he gave her was gentle, just a sweet brush of his lips over hers, but for some reason, it made her tremble. There was a promise there, and for the first time, she wondered if he could keep it.
    ***
    Five Years Ago
     The cab had dropped them off a block away from her apartment. There were simply so many people swarming the streets that it made no sense to take the cab farther. Ella and Nasim stepped into the wintery night, the first of January, and all around them, the city of New York was alive with promise. There was a sense of wild abandon in the air; people were ridding themselves of the burden of the old year before embracing the new.
    Underneath her thick coat, Ella was wearing a long white dress, sparkling with sequins. Nasim was resplendent in his tuxedo, and when he offered her his arm, they began the walk back to her apartment. She had enjoyed a few drinks, but instead of being drunk, she was only bubbly. The strangest things were funny, and all she wanted to do was to cling to Nasim.
    “You don't mind staying at my place tonight?” she asked again. He had his own room at one of the hotels up in Manhattan, but he hadn't been willing to let her take the train down to Boston after the party. Instead, he had sprung for the cab and guided her away when the party had started to die down. Her co-workers at Quill Publishing had been wild enough, but that was nothing compared to what New York could trot out in the first hours of the New Year.
    “I like your place,” Nasim said, gamely putting his body between Ella and the pair of drunken men who reeled down the street. “It's yours, and that makes it far better than my hotel room.”
    “Yeah, but your hotel room always has fresh sheets, and room service, and … and a view.”
     “Is that why you are with me? For the fresh sheets and the room service?” he asked teasingly.
    She laughed, shaking her head. “No … no there are so many more reasons for you to be with me, my love,” he softly continued.
    Even as tipsy as she was, she looked up at him. They had been introduced at a party held by her editor a few weeks ago, and when she thought back over it, it seemed like the strangest, most perfect thing that they had found each other. It was like a fairy tale. There was so much inside her that she wanted to say, but instead, she only said the first thing that she could think of.
    “You called me 'love,'” she murmured.
    Another man might have flinched away, or even sought to take back his words. Nasim only smiled at her, tilting his head slightly. They were underneath a streetlight, the harsh sodium yellow rendering him in stark yellow and black. There was something foreboding about him, but she knew that when she looked at him, she would only ever feel protected.
    “I did,” he said. “I think, and I think, and that is the only word that means anything to me at all when I think of you.”
    “Only that?”
    “That is the only right one,” he said, and on the first day of the New Year, under a streetlight on the street where she lived, he kissed her. They had kissed before but this one felt different. She could feel it in her bones.
    Silently, they walked to her apartment, taking the rickety elevator up six stories to her tiny space. It was cluttered with manuscripts that she still needed to read, and the sheets weren't as nice as they would have been at the hotel, but still she pulled him into bed with her.
    When he stripped to his skin, the lights from her barred window made deep black stripes along his side. He looked like a tiger coming out of the darkness of the city, but he