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 ofSightUnseen.
“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 ofPac-Manand 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 justhadto 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 akid” 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.
