Falling For Her Reluctant Sheikh
Falling for a desert prince…Sleep therapist Dr Adalyn Quinn has had difficult patients before…but gorgeous Prince Khalil Al-Akkari presents a whole new challenge! Darkly brooding, and haunted by the night he failed to save his brother, Khalil is the last man Adalyn should desire…But as they share long nights under a desert moon it becomes impossible to deny their sizzling chemistry. Can Adalyn help Prince Khalil recover the peace that eludes him…even if it means unlocking the heart she’s protected for so long?
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‘A sexy, sensual, romantic, heartwarming and purely emotional, romantic, bliss-filled read. I very much look forward to this author’s next book and being transported to a world of pure romance brilliance!’
—GoodReads on Craving Her Rough Diamond Doc
The angrier she got, the pinker she got, and the more heated her whispers became …
And, despite her tirade, with his close proximity she kept looking at his mouth as she made her displeasure known. When she did subconsciously she’d lick her lips, or for a fraction of a second lose her train of thought.
For once he had no idea how she’d respond to a kiss. Would it scare her off? Make her agree to go back to the palace and then home? Make her want more?
What reaction did he even want? He was no longer certain he could follow through on the idea to kiss her senseless and send her away for the sake of his friendship with her brother.
All his planning didn’t give him what he needed. Curling his hand around that bun her hair had been worked into, he pulled her to meet him and caught her with her mouth open. A tiny sound of surprise and alarm sounded in her throat, but it took very little for her to relax into his grip. Her head fell back and it took no coaxing at all for him to gain entrance into her mouth.
Suddenly it was no longer about scaring her away. It was about the feeling that rolled over him as his hand left her hair and he wrapped his arms around her …
In my mind, there are three kinds of sheikh heroes:
1. The kind of sheikh I like.
2. The kind of sheikh I want to shake to death.
3. The hybrid sheikh—the one I want to shake to death, but who eventually wins me over by learning from his mistakes and giving me some good grovelling at the end.
Number threes are my favourite. Throw some sleep therapy into the concept, and I’m hooked. Of all the books I’ve written, this one’s probably my favourite—maybe even surpassing my debut.
Before I got started, I got to do loads of super-fun ‘research’ (note the ironic quotes).
I watched every documentary on sleep and dreaming I could get my hands on. As an unrepentant nerd, this made me completely happy. (‘Research.’)
I read some smoking-hot sheikh books—you know … for mood. (More ‘research’.)
And I spent hours naming fictional countries—something I’d never done before. It was surprisingly difficult but, like most of my brainstorming, I turned it into a fun game and then spent way too much time debating the best locations of the ‘e’ and the ‘a’. (‘e’ and then ‘a’ won, because ‘Merirach’ sounded better than ‘Marirech’. See? Yet more important ‘research’!)
I’d say I hope you have as much fun reading Khalil and Adalyn’s story as I had writing it, but that just seems impossible to me. So instead I’ll say, if you get one quarter of my ‘pleasuretainment’, I’ll consider all those hours of ‘research’ well worth the effort. :)
Amalie X0
There’s never been a day when there haven’t been stories in AMALIE BERLIN’s head. When she was a child they were called daydreams, and she was supposed to stop having them and pay attention. Now when someone interrupts her daydreams to ask, ‘What are you doing?’ she delights in answering, ‘I’m working!’
Amalie lives in Southern Ohio with her family and a passel of critters. When not working she reads, watches movies, geeks out over documentaries and randomly decides to learn antiquated skills. In case of zombie apocalypse she’ll still have bread, lacy underthings, granulated sugar, and always something new to read.
To Laurie Johnson, my second editor. She once suggested I tackle a sheikh book, something I hadn’t considered before and probably wouldn’t have considered for a good long while without her planting the seed.
To Laura McCallen, my current editor, for supporting my tendency to run around naked in public. Okay, that’s a lie. But she does support my tendency to go off on wild story tangents, something I’m extremely grateful for.
Table of Contents
Dedication
BOBBING ON WHIPLASH desert winds, Dr. Adalyn Quinn’s helicopter dropped and paused, dropped and paused, descending in the aeronautical equivalent of two steps forward, one step back, each jostle adding another crack to her already brittle nerves.
Digging her nails into her seat base, she pitched forward, stiff and straining against the seat belts across her hips and torso. The overly snug belts, while uncomfortable, felt illogically safer than wobbling about like week-old gelatin, as she had been.
Her older brother tried but had never quite understood the cold, black pit of fear that sank in her middle when she even thought of travel, so there was no way for him to comprehend the abyss that had been trying to swallow her sanity during the long hours of this godforsaken journey. The one he’d tossed her into.
