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"And your romantic sentiments need pruning," he retorts.
"No sex." I scowl.
He looks at me like I just told him he could never masturbate again. "Yes, sex. Without it, they’ll be able to tell right away that the marriage is a sham."
"How is that possible?" I throw up my hands. "No one can tell if we’ve been sleeping together except you and me."
"You don’t know my brothers. Don’t forget we’re the Mafia. If they couldn’t tell who’s fucking whom, they’d never have been able to survive this far."
"You make them sound like gossiping busybodies," I scoff.
"They are observant." He raises a shoulder. "You have to be to avoid being killed."
Goosebumps pop on my skin. He talks about death so casually, like he faces it every day, which he probably does. How does one face the other side of life so frequently, and yet be so casual about it? Or maybe that’s why he doesn’t give it undue importance. Because he’s so conversant with it, he understands, sooner or later, all of us have to meet our maker.
"What are you thinking?" He scrutinizes my features. "Is it because I spoke about being killed?"
"No. Yes." I shake my head. "It doesn’t matter."
"Sure it matters. If we want to, as you say, put on a show that’s genuine enough to convince my family, then we need to get to know each other."
"Somehow, I regret suggesting that now," I murmur under my breath.
"So, we’re doing this, aren’t we? Pretending to be married, including the entire 'romance'—" he air quotes the last word, "and of course, the sex that comes with it?"
"I never agreed to the sex," I protest.
"But you do agree that without fucking each other, this marriage will be a sham."
I raise my gaze heavenward. "I knew I shouldn’t have brought that up."
"What do you have to lose? If nothing else, you’ll get lots of orgasms out of this arrangement, that much I can promise."
"I don’t just jump into bed with strangers."
"We’ve seen each other without clothes on, we’re sharing a bed, hell, we’re even having a reasonable conversation here. We're well past the ‘being strangers’ phase."
Sadly, he’s right about that.
"I can’t agree to the sex. It feels too cold and calculating. Too transactional," I declare.
"Sex with me is anything but cold, I promise."
My stomach flutters, and a slow beat flares to life between my legs. Tingles squeeze up my chest, and all of a sudden, my skin feels too tight for my body. "Doesn’t change the fact that, technically, we’d only be sleeping with each other to bring veracity to our relationship," I manage to reply.
"So?"
"So, it’s not natural or organic."
He draws in a breath and his massive shoulders flex. "Woman, you are driving me crazy."
"That has been known to happen. Never said being with me was going to be easy."
"No shit." He brings his fingertips together. "So let me get this right. The only reason you won’t sleep with me is because we didn’t meet in a more normal course of events."
"Something like that," I agree.
"So, what if we let things take their normal course and see where it goes?"
