7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Gearshifts, Glitches + the Ghosts of Vegas
Luca
Six months ago. Vegas.
The high from the go-karts is still humming in my veins when we pull back into the pit.
Aspen is breathless, her hair a wild, wind-swept halo, her laughter ringing out over the roar of the engines.
For a second, I forget about the cameras earlier, the contract, and the fact that I don’t know her last name.
Because this woman is perfect and I feel like I’ve loved her forever.
We walk back to the cubbies where we’d left our things.
The bench is empty.
“Wait,” Aspen says, her smile faltering as she looks at the bare wood. “I put my tote right here. Next to your jacket.”
I scan the area, my stomach doing a slow, heavy roll. “Maybe the security guard moved them?”
I’m not naive. I wouldn't typically leave our belongings unattended, but there was a nice security guard who assured us she’d look after our things. Now, that nice lady is nowhere to be found.
We spot an attendant. “Excuse me?” Aspen calls out. “We left our things with your security guard, and now both she and our bags are gone. Where is the little thief?”
“Jeez. Easy, Aspen.” I guess my bride is a bit of a badass. “I…I’m sure this is all just a big misunderstanding,” I say, trying to keep my voice low and the situation calm.
“Yeah, so...we don’t actually have a security guard on this floor,” the attendant says, twisting a lock of orange hair. “It was probably Julie. She pulls that ‘security guard’ bit, a lot.”
Now my own voice starts to rise. “I’m sorry? Are you kidding me right now?”
Aspen steps in closer. Even though the attendant is taller, she visibly flinches. “Luna, right?” Aspen says, reading her name tag. The girl nods. “I’m going to need you to repeat that one more time.”
Luna clears her throat. “Yes, ma'am. There’s a grifter named Julie who sometimes dresses up as a security guard and pretends to watch people’s stuff just so she can steal it.”
“And you just let her in here?” Aspen yells.
“When we catch her, we kick her out. But I’m a twenty-two-year-old grad student,” Luna mutters. “I’m not risking my life for people who have zero survival skills in Vegas.”
Ouch. “Well, excuse us for believing in the good nature of people!” I shout back.
She frowns, then rolls her eyes. “You are clearly not from around here.”
We spend the next twenty minutes spiraling into a frantic investigation, but nothing turns up. Everything is gone. Our phones, our wallets, and the production packets that had all the instructions for the next steps of SightUnseen.
“Ugg! My phone!” Aspen says, her voice rising an octave. “Luca, everything is gone.”
“Fuck,” I curse. “Mine too. I don’t even have my keys to get back into my room. We’re essentially ghosts in Vegas right now.”
We stand there in the glow of the arcade, surrounded by the electronic chirps of Pac-Man and the screams of aimless children. We look at each other, the gravity of being basically stranded hitting us. And then, Aspen starts to laugh.
It isn’t a dainty giggle. It’s a full-on, hysterical cackle that vibrates in the small space between us.
“We are the absolute worst contestants in the history of reality television,” she gasps, clutching her stomach.
“Most of the other couples are probably in their hotel rooms getting it on right now, and I just had to be Ms. Goody Two-Shoes and take a walk to get to know my husband first!”
I watch her, mesmerized by the shift. I can't tell if she's actually okay or if this is the start of a drunken breakdown where the tears follow the chuckles, but the frantic energy looks damn good on her.
She just keeps laughing, her eyes bright with a manic sort of joy. “I married a pimp! You got conned out of a hundred bucks by a moon-walking Michael Jackson, and now this! We were robbed! No one is going to believe this!”
I can't help it. The absurdity breaks through my pride, and I start laughing too. “Can you imagine retelling all of this for the cameras? My mother will beg the ancestors to take me to my grave for shaming the bloodline.”
We both dissolve into another round of laughter, the tension of the robbery melting into something different. Flirtation.
This is rather new for me. Unadulterated laughter. Reckless flirting. Marriage. I’m starting to realize why Croix insisted I do something so completely out of character this weekend. Maybe he knew I’d run into this. Her.
“These are exactly the kinds of things my mom used to say would happen if I cut class and did ‘bad things,’ when I was a kid” she says, wiping a stray tear from her cheek. “That the devil would make sure to make a mockery of my decision to have 'big fun.'”
“Your mother uses the devil to scare you into submission too, eh?” I ask, my voice dropping an octave until it's a low rumble between us.
“Yes,” she whispers, her gaze locking onto mine with a sudden, sharp intensity. “Though it didn't scare me as much as she thought it would,” she admits.
The confession turns me on more than I care to admit. Because, fuck me, my wife is a little dangerous. And there is nothing I find more enticing than a “good girl” who knows exactly how to break the rules.
And now I have the sudden need to break her.
The last of our laughter dies away, replaced by a heavy, magnetic heat that has nothing to do with the desert air. The atmosphere shifts, growing thick and private despite the world around us.
“But now that I’m with the boy she would have called 'absolute trouble,'” she breathes, “I might even say this was all worth it.”
I raise a brow. “Getting robbed. Really?”
She bites her bottom lip—a habit that is quickly becoming my favorite thing in the world—and I swear this woman wins me over with every mischievous tilt of her head.
She glances around the arcade, and I spot it at the same moment she does: one of those enclosed VR racing simulators, tucked into a dark corner away from the flashing lights. She grabs my hand and pulls me toward it.
Another habit of my wife’s. Dragging me places.
“What are we doing? We don’t exactly have coins for the games anymore, Aspen.”
She doesn’t respond. She just keeps leading me into the shadows of the red car.
“Come on, Chillmonger,” she purrs, the nickname vibrating with a challenge I’m far too weak to decline. “Let me take you for a quick ride.”
Was that supposed to sound as sexy as it did?
Because fuck, I’d love to let her take me for a ride.
But it wouldn’t be quick. A woman like her deserves nothing less than thorough.
Yet, seeing as she’s done everything in her power to avoid getting into bed with me tonight, I hold back the admission.
The filthy thoughts that are racing through my mind are not safe for my wife, yet.
Instead, I follow her to the vintage-style VR racing pod, a fiberglass shell of candy-apple red that looks like it was designed for someone half my size. Aspen clambers in first, her shorts hiking up her thighs as she disappears into the shadows of the cockpit.
I hesitate at the opening, eyeing the cramped seat and the low-hanging roof with genuine skepticism. “I don’t get it. We just lost every single thing we own, and instead of finding the police, you want to...what? Hang out in a plastic car?”
“Don't think so hard. Just get in,” she commands from the shadows.
And fuck if I don’t listen.
There is something about this woman that makes me forget I’m usually the dominant personality in the room.
Normally, being told what to do outside of sports absolutely infuriates me.
I don't take direction well, and I certainly don't follow it. But the moment she speaks—the second I tasted her—all bets were off. She could tell me to do anything, and I would. You should see her. You should see these shorts. I’d get on bended knee and fucking crawl for this woman if she asked.
I awkwardly duck my head, my broad shoulders catching on the plastic car frame as I try to fold my height into the tiny space.
It’s a frantic, clumsy scramble of limbs.
My knee knocks against the steering wheel and my breath hitches as I navigate the tight quarters until, finally, I’m wedged in beside her.
The door hisses shut, plunging us into a cocoon of dim red light and the faint, nostalgic scent of old upholstery mixed with Aspen’s intoxicating vanilla perfume.
The interior is stiflingly close. Because of the narrow seat, she has no choice but to half-sit in my lap, her body pressing flush against mine in a tangle of adrenaline and heat. She turns in the tight space, the movement causing the car to rock slightly on its hydraulic base.
When the plastic car is rockin’, don’t come a knockin’.
She reaches up, her fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling me down into her orbit.
“Stop being such a bore and just be here,” she breathes, her lips brushing against the sensitive skin of my neck, sending a localized electrical storm straight to my gut. “Kiss me like we’re ditching class in high school, Chillmonger.”
I can’t kiss her like some teenager. This woman is my fever dream made flesh, and if I touch her for too long, I’m going to lose my mind.
I’m already halfway gone. If I allow this indulgence to continue, there’s no telling how far I’ll take it.
I’m trying my best not to make her reach for the safe word, but she’s so close now that I can taste the sweetness of her arousal.
She is the ultimate temptation. And right then and there, I decide—if the devil is coming for us, let him watch.
I pull my wife’s mouth back to mine, and in an instant, the last of Ms. Goody Two-Shoes vanishes.
Someone bangs on the side of the plastic shell, yelling that it’s their turn, but we bark a “Fuck off!” in such perfect, harsh unison that the intruder actually scurries away. I have no intention of moving. Not now. Not when my wife has her hand wrapped around my growing erection.
She’s stroking. Squeezing. Wrecking.
Fuck, this does feel like high school.