"Cards and tequila. Now you've surprised me."
"Good." He poured two shots of tequila and pushed one towards her. "Let's play strip poker."
Sophie picked up her glass and drained it. She understood his game. This was a prelude to sex, but as the clear liquid burned her throat, she found she wanted to make her own moves too.
"If we're drinking tequila, then the game should be truth or dare."
Lucien swallowed his shot and refilled their glasses. "Fine. But I'll lie, and you'll regret it."
Much as Sophie suspected he was right, the idea of having carte blanche to ask Lucien questions was too tempting to pass up.
"I'll play your game if you'll play mine." She folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head in challenge.
Lucien leaned back in his chair and contemplated her, his shot glass in his hand. In his white dress shirt and the low lamplight of the room, he looked like he belonged in a late-night club, ready to seduce someone over a bottle of whisky.
One hundred percent trouble, and off the scale sexy.
"Fine." He leaned forward and dealt the cards.
"I don't remember the rules," she said, picking them up. Her experiences of strip poker had been little more than glorified snap designed for titillation rather than strategy.
"Good. You'll be naked pretty darn fast in that case." Lucien turned his cards over and studied them. Confusion must have been written all over her face when he looked up again. "Okay, okay." There was a glint in his eye. "Let's make this simple." He gathered the cards back in and re-dealt them just one card each. "Lowest card loses. Aces high."
Sophie nodded and turned her card over. A seven. Maybe...
He flicked his card over in his fingers so she could see it. A nine. He raised an eyebrow, enjoying his advantage.
"This is probably the point where you wish you'd worn more clothes, princess."
She tossed her seven down on the table. His eyes flicked over the card, and then back up her legs to her face.
Sophie kicked off one shoe.
"Both of them. They count as one item."
"According to whose rules?"
"Mine."
She sighed dramatically and removed the other shoe, placing both neatly beside her chair. Lucien retrieved her card and reshuffled skillfully, the cards whirring through his fingers.
Sophie held up a hand to stop him as he leaned forward to deal the next pair.
"Truth or dare first. You promised."
He rolled his eyes and picked up his shot glass, then drained it and banged it down on the table. "Shoot."
Sophie cleared her throat, her own glass still full in her fingers. What did she want to know first? He was one long list of contradictions and unanswered questions. They could be here all night, so she decided not to pussyfoot around.
"Okay." She eyed him levelly. "How many women have you loved?"
He didn't miss a beat. "One."
Sophie realised too late that she’d made the elementary mistake of asking a closed question, leaving her with another, bigger one unanswered. She found the notion of Lucien in love with someone else unsettling. Stupid. She’d think more carefully next time.
"Drink up." He poured his own shot and refilled hers when she'd swallowed it.
Rain beat down on the windows and on their abandoned table outside, making Sophie feel incongruously that it was as if they were cloistered inside playing cards on a camping trip because the weather had turned.
"Do I get to ask you a question now, then?" He shuffled the cards again with idle expertise.
"If you want to."
Lucien's eyes moved slowly over Sophie's face. "How many times have you wished you were in Paris with your cock of a husband instead of me?"
"None." The word came out at speed, a gut reaction that shocked Sophie more than it did Lucien. "Not once," she said, more quietly this time. She'd thought of Dan, inevitably. She'd wondered bitterly where he was and what he was doing, but as for wishing that he were here at her side in Paris instead of Lucien? No. Not even once.
"Does that bother you?" Lucien enquired smoothly.
"You're not allowed to ask a second question," she said, mostly because she wanted to avoid answering it.
Lucien raised his eyebrows for a second, and then leaned forward and dealt two cards.
Sophie reached for hers. Ten of hearts. The corners of her mouth tipped up involuntarily, enjoying the game now that she was likely to win the round. She turned the card to Lucien, who nodded philosophically and dropped his three of clubs on the table.
"Any preference?" he asked, gesturing down at his clothes with perfect assurance.
"You choose."
He rubbed his lips together in deliberation, and then started to unbutton his shirt.
Sophie swallowed her tequila. Trust him to go straight for a big money item. He watched her face as he popped the last button and shrugged the shirt off his shoulders onto the floor.
He settled back into the chair, thoroughly comfortable with his semi-clad state.
"Is it interrogation time again?"
"You say interrogation, I say talking."
"Let's call the whole thing off then and cut to the sex bit."
"Very funny." Sophie chewed her lip. "Why are you so anti-marriage?"
Lucien's expression gave so little away, but Sophie didn't miss the way his grip tightened on the arms of the chair.
He shrugged. "I'll take the dare."
Sophie paused. She hadn't banked on that, and she seriously doubted that her limited imagination could come up with anything that would be out of Lucien's comfort zone, not sexually at least, anyway. The tequila wasn't helping either, she couldn't think straight.
"Umm… Sing to me!" she said, giggling.
He laughed. "Don't be fucking ridiculous."
Sophie realised with pleasure that she'd inadvertently hit on something that actually made him uncomfortable.
"I don't sing. Not for you or anyone else."
"Not even in the shower?"
"Want to come in with me to check?"
Sophie wasn't letting him off the hook. "Truth or dare. You choose."
He rolled his broad shoulders and glanced down.
"Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage, as they say. It fucks people up."
"So you do believe in love?"
"Only when it comes to your tits. And that was two questions. Take your dress off as a forfeit."
It was an unsatisfactory answer, but she had no chance to object as he cleverly moved her attention on with his sexy demand.