“I’ve been saving up my own charm for the right moment,” she replied. “Taking my cues from you, I guess.”
Instead of sparking irritation, that only made my grin widen.
“Four days in and she’s already got your number, bro,” Luka guffawed.
Lexi huffed. “He likes to pretend to be the International Man of Mystery, but it turns out he wasn’t all that hard to figure out.”
That set off another round of laughter.
I bent down and placed my mouth at her ear. “Careful. That smart mouth is going to get you in a whole mess of trouble one of these days.”
Her eyebrow notched up in challenge. “Maybe that’s what I’m going for.”
She did not just say that.
She couldn’t have.
Because that was the kind of talk that could blow shit wide open for us. If I got even the tiniest inkling that she wanted to spread her sensationally long legs for my cock, I’d slam inside her so fast she wouldn’t even have time to blink. Maybe if she understood what asking for sex from me truly meant—how it would impact our situation—she wouldn’t have been flirting.
If she thought the shooting at her father’s compound had been dangerous, she had no fucking clue what I could do to her.
Bullets had nothing on the kind of damage I was capable of inflicting.
The level of destruction I was prone to causing.
Sex would be our worst enemy. The most dangerous gateway drug. The most addictive high.
I averted my gaze when I felt beads of sweat gather at my temples.
“So, you guys ready?” Gia asked the table, rubbing her hands together.
Ace frowned. “Ready for what?”
“To get your asses handed to you by a bunch of girls.”
God, she was cute. And unbelievably sexy. I didn’t know a woman could be both of those things in equal measure until I met Lexi.
Round one of our Battle of the Sexes game was multiple choice. By the time it was Lexi’s turn, the guys were ahead by one point. She looked scared as hell when Jasmine turned to her for her first question.
“Okay, Lex… What country is Heineken beer made in? Denmark, Holland, or Germany?”
Too fucking easy. But would she know it?
Lexi’s eyes confidently met mine. There was no hesitation. “Holland.”
I smiled.
“Correct!”
Her entire face glowed with pride. Her pale, supple cheeks flushed a rosy pink, and her smile wouldn’t stay off her face. My favorite look on her so far.
Happiness.
“All right, Nico’s up.”
Cris held up a card in front of me. He laughed under his breath as his eyes flew over the question before he read it aloud. “When do you eat the top of your wedding cake? First anniversary, day after the wedding, or the wedding night?”
Jesus Christ.
Out of the five of us, I had to get this question?
Like a tractor beam, my eyes met Lexi’s across the table. “First anniversary.”
“Correct!”
Miraculously, she was able to find the humor in the situation and laughed. Then I laughed. What else was there to do in light of our fucked up situation?
Each side went through another series of questions before it eventually came back to Lexi. “Where is Jack Daniels whiskey made? Kentucky, Texas, or Tennessee?”
Another question about alcohol. Someone’s definitely planting these cards. Only this time, I was pretty sure Lexi wouldn’t get it right.
She gave me that same confident grin from before as our gazes collided. I wanted to give her a hint, wanted her to get it right, but I refrained.
“Kentucky.”
I shook my head.
“Incorrect. Tennessee.”
Her face dropped. “But I thought—”
“The Bourbon Trail is in Kentucky, legs,” I told her in a cajoling tone. “And there are a lot of distilleries there, including mine. But Jack Daniels started out in Tennessee.”
The fact that she had actually been listening that day I’d talked about the Bourbon Trail had my cock swelling something fierce.
Not here.
Not in the middle of this damn bar, in front of my brothers and sister.
The frown line between her eyebrows—something I noticed only appeared whenever she was upset—smoothed out at my words.
My attention swung over to Cris when he announced it was my question again, but my eyes snagged on Jasmine’s along the way. She looked back and forth between me and Lexi, eyes narrowing in speculation. Then, as if coming to some conclusion, she grinned at me, looking pretty satisfied with herself.
Whatever my future sis-in-law was thinking, she needed to stop.
Nothing was going to happen between me and Lexi outside of our fake marriage.
“If you were born in September, what would your birthstone