“I may have already fallen asleep,” she teased him. “From boredom, you understand. Is that what you mean, Your Excellency?”
“Close your eyes, then,” Khaled replied, and he looked up at her with that smile he wore so often now. It made him indisputably beautiful, and never quite as remote as he’d been. Never quite as cruel. “I’ll try not to disturb you with my tedious attentions.”
“What if I don’t want to close my eyes?”
“Cleo,” he ordered her, that smile of his gone wicked, as surely as she’d gone molten. “Obey.”
And Cleo did.
Because forever with this man was so much better than any fairy-tale fantasy she could have concocted on her own.
And because every now and again, obedience felt good.