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“Boring,” she confirmed.

“Well, I don’t want to be boring, so…that’s a pretty tree.That one.”He pointed to the line of nearly identical palms that flanked the long driveway.

She snorted in amusement and shook her head.

“No, you’re looking at the wrong one,” he said seriously.“The one next to it.That’s the pretty one.”

“Oh yes, of course.I see it now.”

Nomi tucked the blanket she’d grabbed on their way through the club tighter around her legs.It wasn’t that cold, but given the shortness of her shorts and the fishnet, he wasn’t surprised that she needed something to stay warm.He resisted the urge to put an arm around her, to tuck her into his side.

They drank in companionable silence for a while, and when she started to fidget, Tareq hid his smiling by rubbing his lips with his hand.He expected her to break first, to say something about the game, their letter, their possible scene, but she didn’t.She was definitely fidgeting—toying with the fringe of the blanket, adjusting her legs—but she didn’t speak.

“We might have had too much to drink to negotiate,” he said when it was clear she was going to outlast him, damn it.

“Maybe,” she said quickly, “we could start, and then revisit it…revisit all of this in the cold sober light of day.”

“You sound sad.Why?”

“I just realized that you were drinking.”

“Yes?”

“I mean before, in the parking lot.You were drinking and that might be why you’re…interested.”

Tareq carefully set his glass aside, then shifted, twisting his upper body so he faced her, his knee nudging her legs.“Nomi, we talked about this.”

She didn’t look at him, leaving him staring at her profile.She rocked back, pushing her heels against the stair below her, then relaxed and rocked forward.

“Nomi,” he prompted.

“I remember what you said in the bar,” she murmured.

“Is that what’s making you nervous?What I said?You know that I won’t do anything that you aren’t okay with, and that we haven’t talked about first.”

She nodded, but it was jerky.

“Our scene doesn’t have to involve sex, or any sexual contact.”Actually, one of their two items definitely involved sex, but if she didn’t want that he wouldn’t.Fuck the game and the overseers.He’d have that fight before he did anything to make this woman uncomfortable.

“It’s not sex that’s the problem.”She took a deep breath, held it, then let it out.“You were right that my problem with this is being assigned a partner.I don’t like the idea of someone being…forced…to scene with me.”

“Someone being forced to be with you, or you being forced to scene with someone?”

Finally, she looked at him, and there was something stark and vulnerable in her expression.“Someone being forced to scene with me.Because they didn’t explicitly choose me, they might be disappointed when they see me and say or do something to hurt me—”

He stiffened.

Nomi held up a hand.“Maybe not on purpose, but yes, that has happened.They’ll see me and I won’t match their idea of attractiveness.”

Tareq sat back, surprised as something occurred to him.“Wait, do you think you’re…unattractive?”He winced even as he asked the question, because fuck this had to be horribly rude, but he needed to know.

To his relief, she smiled, though it was just a small twitch of the lips.

“No.But I’m fat.”

“You’re not fat, you’re gorgeous.”

“I didn’t say I was ugly, I said I’m fat.”She gestured to her body.“I’m larger than current conventional beauty standards and diet culture deem acceptable.Fat isn’t, well, shouldn’t be, a bad word.”

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