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When they’d passed, when Cleo could breathe again, her heart washer, soray eyes

“Are your ht try to fight the thrown in the back of a dark-ed SUV and sainst my will?”

“It is, I think, high time you watched a better class of film” Khaled’s voice was dry, and she didn’t want to feel that easing inside her at this unwelcome reminder that he wasn’t always so harsh That he was so you anywhere This is life, Cleo, not an American action hero franchise” He studied her “And besides, I think we both know there is no need for such theatrics when all I need to do is touch you and you’d follow me anywhere”

That he was probably right sat like a stone in her, but she scowled at him anyway and hoped he couldn’t see the flush of heat that enveloped her

“Yes, of course,” she said in a bored tone that hurt to produce “Because I’m so stupid and inexperienced next to—” she waved her hand at hiesture that could only be dee about that if I were you, Khaled But to each his own”

He looked incredulous and thunderous at once But Cleo just wanted hione She wanted this over

Didn’t she?

“I o,” he said softly, but with that dark steel beneath that seee somewhere inside her at the saths to secure, and I was not, I aht be”

“It had nothing to do with fantasy!” That stung

“It had everything to do with fantasy,” he retorted, and there was a crack in that iron control of his She could hear it in his voice and it shook her “It was the easiest thing in the world to make you fall in love with me—you were halfway there already when I took you back to the palace”

“You are a remarkably cruel man,” she said quietly, and somehow she kneas a direct hit