“Exquisite.” I regret the word almost immediately. It’s too much, too vulnerable.

But he doesn’t laugh. Dropping his hand and spinning away from me, he sits on the edge of a table with his feet on the bench. His deck of cards is out, shifting between his fingers.

“Want to learn a trick? One without magic?” He focuses on the cards like he actually needs to watch his fingers to do his fancy tricks. He doesn’t. He fans the cards in front of him. “Choose your fate.”

I pull a two of hearts from the selection. He folds the deck of cards and hands it to me as he plucks the heart from my hand and raises it to his mouth, biting the edge and slowly ripping it from the card with his perfect teeth.

My mouth goes dry. I try to say something, anything, to clear my throat.

“You sure like doing tricks with your mouth.” Shit. I want to pull back the words and choke myself with them. In my head, they brought to mind the night we met, when he coughed up my card. Out in the open, with the air already taut between us, they take on a meaning of their own.

The wicked gleam in Xander’s eyes tells me he hears only the second meaning.

He pinches the torn card between two fingers and flicks it to the side with enough force to hit the wall and slide to the floor. The other piece he pulls from his mouth and drops between his knees so that it lands face-up on the bench. A red two and a jagged half heart stare up at me.

“Don’t we need those for the trick?”

His silence pulls my gaze up to his. “I want to try something else—a new trick, or maybe the oldest trick in the book, depending on how you look at it.”

He reaches out and cups my chin, pulling his hand back slightly so I follow until my legs bump the bench, and I stand with his knees on either side of my hips.

We’re about to cross the line between flirting and something else.

If I’m honest with myself, I’ve been wanting to do this with Xander since he whispered in my ear that first night of the show, but I was beginning to think his little flirtations where nothing at all—just his personality. Stacie is like that. She can look like she’s flirting with a tree she’s just walking by.

I tense. “Why now?” I ask. “Is this because of Roman?”

Xander groans. “Please don’t say his name.” His eyes sharpen. “Are you saying you had something with Roman?”

I shake my head—a lie to both of us.

“I was afraid he’d scare you away,” Xander says. “I didn’t want to start something and then…”