Forbidden Sins

by J. Margot Critch

  She shivered under his touch, and smoothed her hands over his chest. “Well, we’d better get down to business, then,” she said, pushing him backward until he landed heavily on the cushioned bench that stretched along the opposite side of the pod. Reminiscent of how they’d kissed in the booth, she mounted his lap, bracing her thighs on either side of his. Tugging on the front of his shirt, it was her turn to kiss him. And she did so, using more roughness than she needed to. She couldn’t get enough of Gabe. His full lips, his insistent tongue.

  He gripped her thighs and ventured upward underneath her skirt, and when his hands found her ass, he cupped her, his fingers digging hard into her flesh. But still, he pulled his mouth away. “Goddammit,” he muttered, throwing his head against the back of the bench.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t have a condom.” His chest heaved with what she imagined was frustration.

  “Is that all?” She asked. “It’s okay.” She dismounted from his lap to fetch her purse. Reaching inside, she pulled out the condom she’d put in her makeup bag and resumed her position, straddling his thighs. “I’ve got you covered. Literally.”

  The relief on his face was obvious as she moved in to kiss him again. He plucked the condom packet from her fingers as his lips trailed across her jaw and down her throat.

  He went to her again, taking her face in his hands, kissing her sweet lips, tasting her champagne-flavored tongue. “This isn’t very romantic,” he said, between kisses.

  “Are you kidding?” she breathed. “Look at the view. It’s incredibly romantic.”

  “What view?” he asked. “All I can see is you. You deserve better than a quick fuck in a tourist attraction.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Right here with you. This is exactly where I want to be.”

  His hands skimmed over her skin. “Next time, I’m going to take my time with you. So I can explore every inch of your body.”

  Ellie looked forward to that. Those were nice words. But she wouldn’t count on another round with Gabe. This was a one-night stand and she knew it. So she focused on the present, and having Gabe for the next thirty minutes or so. She covered his mouth again with her own for another scorching kiss, before it was time to get down to business.

  “Oh Christ,” Gabe whispered against her. Her fingers made quick work of his belt and the button on his pants. She unzipped him, and reached into his boxer briefs to his cock. He was so hard. So thick. She wanted to fall to the floor between his knees and taste him, but there wasn’t time for that. She wanted him inside of her more than anything.

  Ellie plucked the condom back from his fingers, opened it and rolled the latex over his length. At her touch, he closed his eyes, wincing. He was so hard, and she was ready for him. She thought she might burst if she didn’t feel him inside of her. Gabe pushed up the short skirt of her dress, and thankfully she’d skipped panties when she’d dressed for the evening, because there was now no barrier between her and Gabe. She held him by his base, and guided herself down over him.

  Ellie exhaled as he filled her, and she shuddered against him. She rose again, withdrawing almost all of his length from her, before lowering and taking all of him again. With his fingers digging into her waist, he guided her as she bounced in his lap.

  The lights of the Strip danced in her periphery, but all she could see was Gabe, and she was only somewhat aware of the glass on either side of her. “Can people see us?” she asked, through heavy breaths.

  “We’re pretty obscured right where we are,” he told her. Pulling down the top of her dress, taking her bra with it, he exposed her breasts. He bent over, taking advantage, and took one beaded nipple into his mouth, as he pinched the other between two fingers. Ellie yelled out and arched her back, pushing her chest against him. Gabe took the lead and, pushing up with his hips and holding her aloft, he pumped into her, again and again.

  Ellie felt her heart rate ratchet higher, and heard the hitch in his breath. She was close, and she could tell from the way that he clutched her, how his fingers dug into her waist, that he was, too. He turned her attention to the view, which slowly descended toward the earth. They didn’t have much time. But they didn’t need much more. Wrapping her arms around Gabe’s shoulder, Ellie felt the beautiful crescendo of her climax, and she screamed out her release. Gabe released her waist and about growled against her shoulder, as his body tensed, and then loosened. He lifted his head and looked at her. They locked eyes, their connection fierce and unbreakable.

  Startled by her closeness with this stranger, Ellie’s breath caught in her chest. It was too intimate a moment for her. This was supposed to be a onetime thing with a sexy stranger, but she already wanted him again. “We’re close to the ground,” she whispered, willing her body to move away from him.

  “Yeah,” he agreed and released her. She pulled up her dress, covering herself before she stood and came into view of the other riders and people on the ground, while Gabe stood and discarded the condom in the garbage near the empty bar area.

  “Well, Gabe,” she said, fixing her hair in her dark reflection in the mirror, trying to not look like she’d been fucked senseless on a Ferris wheel. “That was something else.”

  He came up behind her and turned her head in his direction, gaining access to her lips. Gabe kissed her until she ran the risk of running out of oxygen. “Yeah, sorry about how quick that was,” he said, his voice husky with desire. “I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Well, I know exactly what got into me,” she said, turning in his arms to face him.

  “Next time, it won’t be like this, though,” he promised her.

  Her heart fluttered at the prospect of another time with Gabe. “Next time?”

  “Yeah, I already told you that. You can guarantee there’s going to be another time. Definitely tonight, probably in the next thirty minutes.” He looked around the observation pod, as it neared the ground and the end of their ride. “But it won’t be in here.”

  She sighed and leaned into him. “I’ve got some stories, but this might be the wildest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted.

  She looked at him, and one corner of her mouth ticked upward. “A guy like you? A city like this? I find that hard to believe.”

  “It’s true. Compared to everyone I know, I’m the straitlaced, boring one.”

  Frowning, Ellie brushed her lips lightly to his. “You sound sad about that.”

  Gabe shrugged. “I sometimes wonder how much time I wasted in my twenties with my nose in the books, working and studying.” Ellie understood that; while she’d sown many wild oats before she’d been legally allowed to drink, or be admitted into clubs, she’d spent many of the past few years doing the same.

  “Not that there was anything wrong with being diligent and working hard, and I’ve certainly learned how to have fun since then,” Gabe continued. “But when I think of myself as a younger man, I can only imagine myself in a dark corner of a law library.”

  Ellie watched him carefully. “I can already tell that working hard has made you successful, but life has to be about balance, right?”

  “Sometimes I just wonder what sorts of things I missed out on when I should have been young and stupid.”

  Ellie took his lapels in her hands and pulled him closer. “You’re in luck,” she started. “Because young and stupid is one of my specialties. Wonder no more, Gabe. Why don’t we take the rest of this night, and we’ll make some stories?”

  “I like the sound of that. Why don’t we get a room?” he suggested. She almost said yes. Spending the rest of the night naked in a hotel room with Gabe would be one hell of a way to spend a night—and they would no doubt be there in a few hours—but she wanted to show him a wild, stupid, reckless night. She couldn’t help it. Old Ellie was on the loose, and she couldn’t be leashed yet. “As tempting as that idea is,
no way. We’re going to have a little clothes-on excitement before we do that.” She winked. “Then you can ravish me all you want.”

  “Deal. So where to now?”

  “More drinks?” she asked. “It’s still kind of early. We can hit a nightclub. How do you feel about dancing the night away? And we can see just how much trouble we can get into,” she suggested, hoping he wouldn’t say no.

  His chuckle was low, husky. “That sounds good to me. The night is young, and so are we.”

  “Come on.” Taking the lead, Ellie grasped his hand in hers and pulled him toward the door of the pod. When the attendant unlocked it they exited, and Ellie knew that based on their rumpled appearance and flushed cheeks, it was probably obvious to everyone in the vicinity what they’d been up to five hundred and fifty feet above the Las Vegas Strip. “Sorry, ladies,” Ellie whispered to a group of women looking to board next, as she tilted her head in Gabe’s direction. “But look at him. Can you blame me?”

  Gabe chuckled as some of the women in line laughed and cast him interested looks, but Ellie pulled him away before he could say anything. They were on a mission. A stupid and reckless one.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE SECOND GABE opened his eyes, he regretted it. The sun coming in through the open blinds was far too bright, and the room sat tilted on an axis. He squinted as he took in his surroundings. He wasn’t in his own bedroom. He was in a hotel.

  He pushed himself to a sitting position and tried to fight off the nausea caused by moving, while he attempted to make sense of where he was. Piece by piece, through the fog of his hangover, it came back to him. Meeting Ellie, drinking champagne, sex in the High Roller, more drinks, gambling, the penthouse suite, more champagne. More Ellie. More sex. Then even more champagne. He looked down at his left hand, and saw the band around his fourth finger.

  Getting married.

  “Fuck.”

  It all came back to him. Somewhere between the roulette wheel and making their way to the Bellagio penthouse suite, where he currently found himself, they’d decided it would be a really crazy idea to hop in a car and go to a twenty-four-hour wedding chapel at the north end of Las Vegas Boulevard, to be married by a later-in-life Elvis impersonator in a polyester, rhinestone-studded suit left over from the seventies. In a sex-and-champagne-fueled night, he’d gotten drunk and gone and done one of the dumbest things he’d ever done—married a stranger. That drunk, it couldn’t have been legal, right?

  “Ellie?” he called. The suite was silent. In the need to cut loose a bit, he’d gone to an extreme. After years of hard work to reach his goal, he was so close, and he’d just fucked it up beyond all reason. Ellie had brought out something wild in him, and even though the hangover that ravaged him made him wish he was dead, she’d helped him feel alive. When he was with her, he’d felt like a different man. He couldn’t blame Ellie, though. He’d unleashed his own uncontrollable beast in the quest to have an out-of-control night away from the office. After they’d had sex in the High Roller—one of the craziest things he’d ever done outside of the walls of Di Terrestres—it had been his idea to up the wild ante. To do what was most unexpected of him—to go to the chapel and make the lively, strange, fun, amazing woman his wife.

  His head pounding, he looked around. “Ellie,” he called again, and was met with more silence. With a groan, he pushed himself up from the bed and looked throughout the suite. Ellie was nowhere to be found. He did find his phone, however, and then remembered shattering it the night before when Ellie had crashed into him—and into his life. “Dammit. Right.”

  He didn’t know the time, or even what day it was until he went to the smart TV that was mounted on the wall, and was shocked by what it told him. Saturday. Five p.m. He’d somehow slept through most of Saturday. And Ellie, his wife, was nowhere to be found in the suite. He pushed back his hair and pulled on his boxer shorts, which he’d found at the foot of the bed. Then he saw it on the desk—a second platinum band, smaller and thinner than the one on his own finger, diamonds encircling it, on top of a piece of hotel stationery that bore the words Gabe, I’m sorry—Ellie. She’d walked out while he was sleeping.

  It was stupid—he barely knew the woman—but her abandonment still stung him like a great loss. He lifted the note, and underneath it was an official marriage certificate. Goddammit, their marriage had somehow been legit.

  Walking through the suite, he saw the remnants of what looked like a wild night—his clothes strewn about, empty champagne bottles on the floor, liquid soaking the lush carpet—he remembered pouring it over Ellie’s body, and lapping it from her smooth skin—and a room service cart told him at least they’d managed to eat at some point.

  The penthouse suite was empty, but not as empty as he felt. He wasn’t sure if it was the hangover, or disappointment from her absence. But he pushed past the sadness, the stupidity, the disappointment, when he thought of the legal ramifications of a marriage. Off the top of his head, he couldn’t recall Nevada’s marriage laws, but he knew that it would be a lot more than just signing some annulment papers. But not only that, Ellie, being a lawyer herself, through some legal maneuvering, could be entitled to his assets, and the Brotherhood’s assets. He could fight it, but so could she. Ellie wouldn’t come after him, his money, his house, the Brotherhood, would she? Gabe had no idea. He didn’t even know her.

  “Oh God.” This is exactly why he never walked on the wild side. He’d potentially screwed up everything. He had to protect himself and his friends. He and Ellie had been beyond drunk, and he could argue intoxication as grounds for annulment. But he had to find her first. He checked the name on the marriage certificate. Ellie Carrington. He would have to look her up, find her. But first he had to get home, and figure out how to make everything right.

  * * *

  Ellie sat on her bed, her door closed, the blinds drawn and the lights off. She plucked a multigrain cracker from its sleeve and nibbled on a corner, trying to keep her stomach from revolting. She hadn’t had a hangover this bad in her life, and not only was she hungover, but once again, her drunken exploits had affected her sober life. She’d done quite a few questionable things under the influence, but when she’d awakened that morning, Gabe’s arms wrapped around her and a diamond-encircled wedding band on her finger, she’d panicked, slipped out of bed and, as quietly as she could, gathered her things and bolted.

  She had somehow lost a night, and most of Saturday, with Gabe. Her head throbbed just thinking about it. It was a wild, incredible night. If only she could remember any of it.

  It had been a long time since she’d had a night like that. Not since the hard-partying days of old Ellie. The party monster with whom she’d been acquainted in her past had once again reared her ugly head and made overindulgence the word of the day. She’d been drunk on alcohol, and drunk on Gabe. She had only the barest recollection of whatever had passed for their wedding ceremony, vaguely remembering Gabe slipping the diamond wedding band on her finger, and the Elvis impersonator declaring them husband and wife, and wishing them a “rocking life together.”

  This is so fucked-up. How was she going to get out of it? They could get an annulment, but she would have to find Gabe—why had she taken off without waking him and not stayed to talk about what they’d done? “Like an actual adult,” she muttered to herself, reaching into the sleeve for another salted cracker.

  Ellie had had an amazing night with Gabe, and when she’d woken up that morning, she felt the need to get out of there. To put her slip back into old Ellie’s world behind her.

  She’d needed to leave, and hoped he would forget about her, or that their wedding hadn’t been real, or legal. But that morning, as she’d zippered her dress, and took one last look at his sleeping form—that incredible, strong body—her only regret was that she wouldn’t get one more night with him.

  A knock on the door made her wince, the noise vibrating around inside her head, a
gainst her brain. Knowing it was Rachel, she said “come in.”

  Rachel opened the door a crack. The light coming into her darkened room made her squint her eyes shut. “Just get in here and close the door.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Do I look okay?”

  “You do not. What time did you get in last night? Or should I say this morning? I was thinking about calling the police with Gabe’s information, but you sent me this.” Rachel produced her cell phone. Ellie looked at the screen and a picture of Gabe, Elvis and herself, smiling and standing in front of an altar left over from 1979, holding a small bouquet of wilted pink carnations.

  “What happened to you last night? You got married? You’re lucky I had to work this morning, because I would have definitely come out and hauled your ass home.”

  “Yeah. I kind of wish you had.”

  Rachel picked up Ellie’s left hand. “Where’s your ring?”

  “I left it in a penthouse suite at the Bellagio.”

  “This is unbelievable. I don’t even know what to say. You’re married.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “I take it you aren’t a thrilled blushing bride.”

  “Why would I be? It was stupid. A drunken mistake. We need an annulment.”

  “What did you guys decide to do?”

  Ellie winced again, and the pain in her head now had nothing to do with her piercing hangover. It was regret. “Nothing. I snuck out before he woke up.”

  Rachel’s mouth hung open. She picked up a small pillow and threw it at Ellie. “You...did a walk of shame after your own wedding night?”

  “It wasn’t a walk of shame.” She tried to defend herself, but knew it wasn’t going to work. “It was a bad decision. I didn’t know how to face the guy. I needed to get my mind right, organize my thoughts, before I see him again.”

  Rachel looked at Ellie, and laid down on the bed next to her. She took a cracker from the package and popped it into her mouth. “This is you organizing your thoughts?”