Page 1 of Jon’s Desert Prince Dream

Prologue

I lay curled up next to Donovan, enjoying a lazy Saturday—a rare thing in my world. We were sated and tuckered out from some fun times, and with my eyes closed like this, I could fully rest. Truly, not a single cell in my body wished to move.

“Jon?”

“Mmm?” He wasn’t over there thinking, was he? How dare.

“That dream you told me about, with me being a desert prince and you being enslaved, how vivid was this dream?”

“Pretty damn vivid, why?”

“Can you tell me the full story?”

He was truly thinking over there, wasn’t he? “I don’t mind, but why the curiosity?”

“Oh, I don’t know, possibly because you’ve ambushed me with crazy sex three times based on that dream?”

You know, put like that… “I mean, the dream spanned multiple nights, so it’s going to take more than ten minutes to tell it to you.”

I could practically hear him preen. “You dream of me that often?”

“I’m not feeding into a dangerously inflated ego.”

He chuckled, still pleased as punch. “So you won’t tell me?”

All things considered, it was really only fair I told him the story. He had asked, and it was kind of infiltrating our sex life, so… Besides, I didn’t mind. Although I might create a monster by telling him the full story because he was already entirely too pleased as it was.

“Well, all right. The dream starts with me in chains, and I have the sense I came from some kind of European styled country. I don’t have a full background for myself before I’m drawn into the palace. Oh, also keep in mind, the story very much operates on dream logic—parts aren’t going to totally make sense with awake logic. Like, for some reason you were instantly in love with me.”

Donovan snorted. “That part makes the most sense, to my mind.”

I kissed him for saying sweet things, but now that I was in the swing of story mode, I wasn’t going to let him distract me. “Let me see if I can paint the full picture…”

1

I stood still in the lineup because I’d learned the hard way trying to do anything else would get a sharp slap from the guard. It was hard to stand here, though, and keep my head down when my instincts clamored for me to look carefully at all these new people around me. I wanted to get a read on them and figure out just how far into the shit sinkhole I had fallen.

I ended up peeking up through my lashes to manage it. I had to know.

The Tennoan people were lightly dressed, their arms bare, even the women, which would be scandalous where I was from. Their clothes were light in color, and looked like very large tunics loosely belted around the waist. Far more comfortable and airy than the heavy, multi-layered clothes I still wore. I envied them. I was sweltering.

This desert land I found myself in was incredibly different from my own of sprawling green. Fine golden sand spread everywhere in waves; giant palm trees dotted the landscape, barely interrupting the great blue bowl of the sky; and the heat—oh the heat was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I sadly hadn’t been able to see much of the town before being hustled inside, but what I had seen was bright colorful awnings and buildings made of an unfamiliar material. But thankfully the walls were thick and somehow managed to keep the interior of the building cool. I stood in a walled-off courtyard with layers of trees and fabric overhead, and the heat was barely felt here.

From what little I’d seen, the ruling family here did a good job. Every person I’d passed coming into this palace had been well fed, well dressed, and usually smiling—at least until they saw us captives being marched along. Then they’d stared at us with both puzzlement and this sort of denial, as if they couldn’t understand what they were seeing. There was no trace of them enslaving others in their lines, either—not in a single person we passed. In Orleansa, my native country, at least one in twenty or so would have experience with slavery or be involved in the trade somehow. Here, nothing.

Enslavement didn’t exist here.

Hope and fear battled within me: the hope I’d be freed, the fear I’d be sent back and doomed to a worse fate.

I tugged at the fine leather collar around my neck, as I had sweated under it and it chaffed. Damn thing. At least I didn’t have cuffs on my wrists any longer. It was a relief to have them off, but I wished they’d taken the collar off too.

I couldn’t understand why we were here. I’d been bought from a carefully selected lineup, by the ambassador of my country, no less. He was a complete tea towel holder. Solomon had picked us to be a gift to the royal family—likely sex slaves. Or at least, I’d overheard him make a comment to that effect. It didn’t bother him that our fate was such. No one had told us anything, just shoved us onto a ship where we’d sailed for three months and finally landed here. I’d had far too much time in those three months to think about what my future would likely be. To try to steel myself against the bleakness of it all. In between worrying about my future, I’d cursed my stepfather for selling me over and over again. Bastard. I hoped things rotted off of him.

Once we’d landed, that weighty lump had sunk even heavier in my gut, and I’d fought nausea even as I was forced to walk the main street. The time of my reckoning was now here. I’d been allowed to wash this morning, and they’d taken clothes from us to wash last night, so I was at least clean right now. There were a dozen of us, all beautiful people (well, I was all right looking, but everyone else was beautiful) and young, so maybe we were here to be sex slaves? Or were we meant to be used more like tools, to use the psychic gifts we possessed? All of us were a brand of psychic, some more powerful than others. We were either talented toys for a royal’s bed, or we were here to be worked to death.

Those were unfortunately the only options I could think of.

But if slavery didn’t exist here, then the why and what became even more confusing.