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What are you doing? she demanded This is happily ever after And when he touched her, she kneas true When he touched her, there was no roo but happily ever after in him

“Come,” he said when he was before her, a wall of perfect ht than pick fights from thin air, Cleo Let me show you”

She thought that was the kindest she’d ever seen him, and she didn’t knohy it made her want to curl up in a ball and sob

He reached down and scooped her up again, high against his chest again, and she found her face entirely too close to his All that fire and aweher want things she couldn’t even name

“I can walk”

“I don’t want you to walk or you would be walking”

“And everything must be what you want or the world will fly apart at the seams?”

But that strange heaviness was already spiraling out of her as he held her against the furnacelike heat of his bare chest, and he only raised his brows as he gazed down at her

“Of course,” he said mildly “I am the sultan”

She shouldn’t find his arrogance so coht But she did She slid an arht again

“Won’t someone see us?” she asked when they were out beneath the stars again, so many of them it was hard to look

“And if they do?”

“You’re naked! I ht as well be!”

“They are trained not to look when they know they shouldn’t,” he replied, amused “Unlike you, Cleo, they prefer not to risk my wrath”

When he set her down, it was in a three-sided tent at the edge of the gentlypool of water in the center of the oasis The tent was lit withchairs, towels and pillows and rugs, and there were trays of food set out on low tables