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She leaned forward, pushing a few buttons on her tablet, and getting the film started while she began to unpack the food. She really wished that she had gone to change. Sitting on the blanket in this dress, which had ridden up mid-thigh, while he sat there half-naked... It was too much.
And she was going to do her level best to pretend that it was not too much, because the whole thing was just...
“Cheese,” she said. “And fruit.”
“No cheeseburger?” he asked.
“Sorry. I can make sure that there is one for your dinner.”
“You act like my nanny,” he said.
“I assure you, I do not feel like your nanny.”
She wish she hadn’t have said that. Not quite the way she had. But then, maybe she just wished that he didn’t make her feel... All of this.
He certainly didn’t seem to have a problem eating what she had brought, cheeseburger or not, and she could feel him beginning to settle beside her.
And she just... Found that she enjoyed sitting next to him.
Especially as some of his tension began to resolve.
“I saw my mother,” he said.
“What?”
“In the library. I caught you, and you looked so terrified... And it made me think of her. My mother. The way that she looked just as...”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“There is no need to be sorry. I was just explaining.”
“But I am sorry. You’ve seen horrible things.”
“The world can be horrible. This is a nice movie about a nice family. And Beth still dies.”
It was such a pragmatic thing to say, and it almost made her laugh. Because he was right. Even being a good, normal family didn’t protect you from tragedy.
Not that either of them would know. He’d had a good family, but they hadn’t been normal, and it made them a target. And she’d had a very, very bad family.
“That’s a grim outlook,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “But then, it is entirely possible that my own viewpoint of the world is not... Entirely normal.”
She had forgotten that there was kissing in this movie. It was incredibly mild. And yet... The tension between the characters, two people coming together at all, touching, felt fraught in the positions that she and Riyaz sat in.
He was half-naked.
And she...
She didn’t have any experience with men. Her mind wandered. To the books that he’d read. But it also wandered to... The simple truth was he had been in a dungeon for sixteen years. She wondered if he’d had a lover before then.
She wondered...
Was it possible that he was actually...? Also a virgin?
The thought made her feel hot.
With her lack of experience, it made sense for her to moon after a man like Cairo. He would know exactly how to touch a woman.
