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She opened her hand and the man beside her took the keys from her palm, and the whole time she was lost in the will of the powerful man whose face was still in shadows before her

Why couldn’t she see beneath her feet when she could see—because no one else was reacting to it, no one else wasbeside her—that it was only happening inside of her?

Everything seeine turned over beside her, the irl disappeared after a brief consultation, and Cleo was standing alone in an alleyway in a foreign country with a reat and powerful he held a title she’d half believed only existed in books

He moved then, and she wished he hadn’t He was like liquid, a threat wrapped in poetry, athletic andat once The knot inside her pulled taut, red and hot Cleo stood still as he walked in a slow circle around her He held so in his hands and she realized it was the wallet she’d left sitting in one of the cup holders in the car One of his men must have—

“Eyes on me,” he ordered her, his voice a silken command

And when she jerked her attention back up from her wallet to his face, she could see it, finally Could see him

Beautiful, soh he wasn’t

He was es she’d found in her travels, clinging to the sides of ruggedand unih He had thick dark hair and a poet’s face aze and the sort of tough jaw Cleo associated with soldiers and s A blade of a nose Faint lines around his eyes suggested he must have sine it He seemed carved entirely from stone

He looked so uably fierce it was al Brian were of a different species She told herself that hy her heart beat so fast Because he was the not Brian

And because he really was beautiful

“You are American”

It wasn’t a question

“Yes”

His gaze ht not to squir dark trousers and scuffed boots beneath a loose-fitting T-shirt, and a dark jacket as much to cover herself in this conservative part of the world as to block the faint chill in the air, hinting at the co hair back, but the long day had coaxed so forward er than her twenty-five years

Cleo didn’t want to ask herself why, exactly, she wished there was so to match that heat inside her