Page 7 of Forbidden Sins

“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

THESECONDGABEopened 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 areally crazy ideato 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 beenlegal, 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 thewildante. 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.”

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