5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Sexy and Exotic + Shit
Aspen
Six months ago. Vegas.
“I do.”
It just slips out. And then his lips are on mine.
It’s an absolute landslide. A sudden, crushing weight that levels every defense I have. My fingers tangle in his shirt on instinct, anchoring me to the earth before the sheer force of him sweeps me off my feet.
And as cliché as it sounds, I don’t do things like this.
I am not the girl who has wild Vegas nights.
I’m the girl who double-checks her door locks and sets three different alarms for her shifts at the clinic.
I definitely don’t get drunk and marry strangers.
Hell, I barely kiss on the first date. My life is curated to be boring.
My movements are so predictable you could set a watch by them, largely because my mother’s voice lives in my head, vetoing every impulse I’ve ever had.
I can almost hear her now—Bertha’s disappointed sigh, her warnings about “reputations” and “propriety.” If she also wasn’t one of my best friends, she’d annoy the hell out of me.
But as the noise of the casino floor fades, every rule I’ve ever lived by begins to dissolve.
The over-the-top, bedazzled chapel, with its tacky neon and velvet curtains, melts into the background.
All that's left is the heat radiating off the man standing beside me and the sudden, terrifying realization that for the first time in my life, my mother isn't the one holding the pen.
I am. And I'm about to sign my name to a disaster.
At least that’s what she’s call it.
But at this very moment, all I can feel is him.
His mouth on mine.
His hands at my waist.
The firm, sure press of his body like he already knows exactly how to melt me.
Luca.
I’ve never forgotten to be cautious before, and it is absolutely thrilling.
The officiant clears his throat and we pull apart, breathless, staring at each other like we’ve just opened a door to something neither of us expected.
His smile is lopsided. Daring. “Hi, wife,” he whispers into my mouth.
I smile back, dazed. “You’re really tall,” is all I can manage. Because the man is freakishly tall and my brain is clearly still rebooting.
He winks. “Ya dig?”
I shake my head and laugh because I’m instantly reminded that my new husband looks like a Frank Lucas impersonator.
He’s draped in a floor-length, crushed velvet duster in a shade of royal purple that borders on offensive.
It’s trimmed in faux snow-leopard fur that spills over the wide lapels and cuffs, paired with matching flared trousers that hug his thighs a little too well.
He looks like a fever dream from a 70s street-style magazine. Yet somehow, the sheer height of him and the way he wears the absurdity makes it work.
“Okay, pimp-a-licious. Exactly how tall are you?”
“Six foot, four inches,” he replies with a grin, looking down at me.
“Wow. I mean, yummy. I mean…fuck.” Drunk-me is so uncultured. Thanks God the footage won’t aire.
“Okay, lovebirds, let’s move,” Chelsea interrupts, suddenly between us. She’s got one hand on Luca’s velvet shoulder, the other pressed to the headset looped around her ear as we watch her shuffle freshly-married strangers through a pop-up wedding assembly line.
“Group three’s on deck,” she whispers into the mic clipped to her blazer. “
I blink. “So…Wait. That’s it? Are we—”
“Married?” Chelsea interrupts, excitedly. “Yes! Let’s keep it moving. Photo op’s next, then confessional interviews. You’ll have a champagne toast in the holding room, or feel free to venture off to honeymoon land!”
Luca squeezes my hand, and I swear I feel the kiss again. Still lingering.
He keeps holding my hand as we exit the chapel, and I look over at him.
I’ve just married a man whose last name sounds like a cartoon villain and who looks like Huggy Bear Brown.
Luca Chillmonger.
The name has to be fake. Which makes this little adventure even more fun. Delicious, even.
I blink at the ink drying on the marriage license, the studio lights overhead blazing. Luca—or whatever his real name is—casually stands beside me like he just signed a lease on a one-bedroom apartment and not a legally binding commitment to a woman he met through a wall.
We pose for the wedding photos, a flashbulb-induced haze blurring the edges of the room before we’re ushered into the “confessional.” The associate producers seat us shoulder-to-shoulder on a crushed velvet couch, bathing us in soft, deceptively flattering light before they start firing off questions like a cross-examination.
We navigate the answers—clumsily, playfully, and perhaps with a bit too much honesty—but only after securing a ironclad promise: if we opt for an annulment, this footage stays in the vault.
They agreed, though the hungry look in the producer's eyes tells me they’re betting on us being a disaster they can't wait to air.
“What was going through your mind when you first saw each other?”
“Do you believe this could be the start of something real?”
“On a scale of one to ten, how attracted are you to your new spouse?”
One of them even asks if Luca’s height freaked me out. I’m only five-foot-four, and standing next to him feels like standing next to a mountain range. My mother would be absolutely scandalized if she heard my answer. “My new husband is a tree I have been preparing my entire life to climb.”
Thankfully, that segment finally wraps up. I decide then and there that I need to hydrate. And by hydrate, I mean more tequila—I need a serious infusion of liquid courage if I’m going to survive the rest of this night.
I’m hopeful that we might actually get a moment to breathe, but my optimism is short-lived. Chelsea swoops in again, shoving a branded binder into our hands before we can even catch our breath.
“Inside, you’ll find next steps, schedules, and talking points in case anyone asks you about the show and your involvement,” she instructs, ticking everything off the list.
“This is surprisingly thorough for a Vegas wedding we didn’t even know was happening,” I say with a nervous laugh.
“No kidding,” Luca says. “But at least I ended up with the prettiest girl in the pod.”
He actually made me blush. I never blush on a first date. It sends the wrong message. But Lord, my va-jay-jay is currently preparing a carrier pigeon itself to this man’s penis.
Maybe there was something to everyone’s warning-labels about Vegas because I’m ready to throw out all my morals. This man better stop looking at me like that!
Chelsea taps her earpiece. “Alright, lovebirds. Off the set. We’ve got three more weddings to shoot today, and lighting waits for no one.”
And just like that, we’re being ushered out. Married. Bound. Filmed.
“What the hell did I just do?” The words echo in my head.
Everything is moving like a high-speed train and I’m not sure how to stop any of it. My heart is racing. My mouth is dry. My skin is buzzing because it hasn’t caught up to the rest of my body yet. I need a minute. Just one. To breathe and make sense of all of this. But that minute never comes.
We've stepped out of the chapel, wedding binder in hand, walking into the main hotel area where cameras are still trailing us like persistent mosquitoes. Hotel guests pretend not to stare while obviously taking photos of my pimp. It’s all too much.
That’s when Luca speaks and I can’t help but wonder how he is so…calm? Relaxed? “So,” he says, “Chelsea the producer says we’ve got thirty days to back out if we change our minds.”
It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about our marriage.
I blink up at him. “Thirty days,” I repeat.
“Trial run,” he says with a half-shrug. “Like Costco samples. But with vows.”
I suck in a breath. “Did you just compare our marriage to Costco samples?”
“Yes. And I happen to be quite the snack.”
I roll my eyes. But…facts. My husband is a beautiful man. That rich brown skin, cheekbones that could cut glass, and those eyes. A snack indeed.
“If I agree to stay married to you beyond the thirty days, will you promise to break out the pimp suit at least once a month?”
He grins. “Whatever my woman wants…”
Sweet Black baby Jesus. I don’t know what has gotten into me, but right then, the moment the words leave his mouth, I decide I like the sound of being his.
But there’s no way I’m letting him know that yet.
“I’m nobody’s woman, Chillmonger. So, if you’re going to treat me like property, we can end this game right now.”
He turns, closing the distance between us until his stare is fierce and unyielding. “As long as that plastic ring is on your finger, you’re mine. But I happen to like roleplay, so I don’t mind letting you feel like you’re in the lead.”
“Mmm,” I moan, the sound escaping before I can remind myself that I led the High School Crusaders for Christ ministry two years in a row. A girl like that isn't supposed to make sounds like this.
Normally, men don’t get to me. They don't affect me. I’ve spent my entire life holding the reins, or scaring men off with my harsh tone and confident voice. Yet, my knees are suddenly insisting on buckling for a man I met three hours ago.
It’s a specific kind of authority I’ve only ever seen in my father.
He’s an effortless leader, even in the face of my mother’s meddling ways.
He lets her be exactly who she is, never requiring her to shrink or shadow herself for his sake, but he always knows how to hold the line.
It isn’t an aggressive, heavy-handed thing in an Ike Turner kind of way.
It’s more like Malcolm X where all he has to do is look at you or point a finger in the direction he desires, and the world simply aligns.
Luca has that same gravity, but it’s heavier. Darker. And right now, it’s pulling me straight under and into him.
He’s the kind of man you don’t just look at. You feel him. In the sudden weakness of your knees, the frantic thud in your chest, and the heavy ache in your panties.
And I’m married to him. For the night, anyway.