Page 36 of Desert King's Forbidden Temptation

‘Okay,’ she agreed softly. He fought an urge to reach for her hand and hold her close to his side as he guided her from the room.

‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ It was the first either of them had spoken in over an hour. The streets of the city had given way to rural stretches of road and then, finally, to mountains—narrow roads barely illuminated by the dusk light, but sufficiently enough that she could see an increasingly steep drop out of her window, with thick vegetation on his. Tariq drove these roads as though he knew them well, and just the sight of him behind the powerful car, was doing funny things to her pulse. Behind them, another car followed—a four-wheel drive packed with four security guards.

‘They establish a perimeter when I’m in the woods,’he’d said carelessly, as they’d set off from the palace, and she’d tried to tamp down on the idea of this rugged mountain of a man out in nature.

‘Do you seriously doubt me?’

She found herself grinning despite the tension that had been coiling in her belly since that afternoon. ‘We seem to be in the middle of nowhere is all.’

‘Not quite.’

‘Nearly the middle of nowhere?’

‘About ten clicks west of it.’

She lifted her brows. ‘It will be dark soon.’

‘That tends to happen at night.’

Her lips parted. ‘Tariq...’

‘Relax. We’re not staying out here.’

She expelled a shaky breath. It wasn’t that she hated the idea...quite the opposite. But she knew they had to get back to reality, sooner rather than later. Even if that meant taking another ride on his private jet.

He continued to drive, navigating the turns in the road expertly, leaving Eloise free to look over the edge into the ravine below, or to chase the golden orb of the sun as it continued to drop low and finally disappear into the horizon. At some point, the four-wheel drive that had been following them, peeled off, presumably to establish the perimeter he’d mentioned.

‘I like privacy,’ he explained, as if somehow intuiting her thoughts.

‘Where will they be?’

‘They set up a checkpoint on this road—the only way to reach the cabin.’

She nodded slowly, her heart in her throat.

When he brought the car to a stop, half an hour later, the sky was still glowing with the last hints of purple and gold, the clouds silver-fringed pewter. She looked around, her gaze landing on a cabin made of stone in the middle of a dense woodlands.

‘What is this place?’ she murmured, craning forward to see it better.

‘Somewhere I like to come when I want to get away.’

She turned in her seat to face him fully. ‘This is yours?’

‘All this land belongs to the palace,’ he said, gesturing to the mountains they were on.

She let out a low whistle. ‘And your guards, how close are they?’

His eyes locked to hers for a moment too long and her stomach tightened into knots. ‘Close enough.’

‘As in...?’

‘You don’t have to worry, Eloise. I gave you my word I wouldn’t touch you, and I won’t. I just wanted to show you this place.’

She shivered, but it was not a shiver of fear so much as anticipation. She ignored it, her eyes roaming the cottage with undisguised curiosity. ‘Okay.’

‘Come on.’

He stepped out of the car and a moment later was at her door, opening it before she could, holding it for her to step out. Her heart skidded into her ribs. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, careful to step around him, careful that they didn’t touch. It didn’t matter though. The air between them seemed filled with electrical pulses, so whether she touched him or not, she was conscious of a zapping just beneath her skin.

---