Desert King's Forbidden Temptation
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Clare Connelly
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PROLOGUE
THE WATER WAS always darkest near the surface, though that wasn’t how it was meant to be. There, in the inches beneath atmosphere and air, there was supposed to be light, the sun’s warmth permeating the thickness of the sea. Always, the water at the top shimmered. But this wasn’t reality, it was a dream, a nightmare, and the laws of physics need not be obeyed.
He sucked inwards, seeking air, finding only water, drowning, reaching out, touching, feeling, remembering. Something foreign yet achingly familiar, close but always, always out of reach. The nearer he came to remembering, to catching the threads that danced on the periphery of his unconscious, the more they shimmied beyond his reach. A fleeting touch, soft and infinitely comforting, a fragrance—vanilla and persimmon—sunlight dancing on ancient timber floor boards, dust motes and laughter—his, and someone else’s, a voice, a faraway, long-ago voice without a face.
Frustration gnawed and burst him from his dream; a young boy had been drowning, unable to find purchase in the darkness of the ocean’s depths, but now a sheikh awoke, showing not a hint of the nightmare that had taunted him.
There were mysteries in his past, questions that dogged him when he allowed them to slip beyond his defences, but of one thing he was certain: the duty to rule Savisia was his and his alone, and Sheikh Tariq al Hassan would fulfil that destiny with his dying breath. Whatever was required of him, he would offer gladly. He owed this country that much, at least.
