Million Dollar Marriage Page 8

  “Also, be aware that there are several ‘ghosts’ hunting you in the maze. If you see one, run. If it manages to catch you, you will need to go back to the beginning of the maze and will lose valuable time. Any questions?”

  I look at Luke. Do we have any questions? He doesn’t; he’s in ready stance, like he can’t wait to plunge in.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Because we really want to encourage couples to work together, you’ll be tied to each other, front to front.”

  Everyone collectively lets out a sigh.

  But I can’t even bring myself to do that. I’m just plain . . . horrified.

  I have to spend the next few hours pressed up against Luke Cross? I thought that was why I kicked him out of the sleeping bag. To avoid such a thing!

  The teams leaving earlier get tied up and sent on their way. We watch them, and all the while my heart is racing. Most of them don’t seem at all bothered by the proximity. But right now, I can’t think of anything other than being so close to Luke Cross that I will be able to feel his every breath, and he will feel mine.

  A few minutes after the second group goes, it’s our turn.

  Blushing furiously, I manage a peek at him as the staff members come around with thick lengths of rope. He has one hand fisted on his hip, one hand working through the even darker scruff on his jaw. His eyes are on me. “You okay with this?”

  I like that he’s asking me. But it doesn’t matter. “Do I have a choice?”

  The staff member instructs us to stand close together. Luke spreads his feet, and I step between his, and we lift our arms as they coil the rope around our waists. Then the rope is tightened, pushing us impossibly close to one another. My breasts squish against his hard chest.

  We drop our hands down, and I feel embarrassed looking at him, so I just stare right ahead, at his chest.

  A moment later, I feel it. His cock hardening against my abdomen.

  I blush. Oh god. This is not happening.

  I shift my stance. “Can you not . . . do that?”

  He lets out a low chuckle. “Can you not . . . have tits? Can you not . . . smell that good? Can you not . . . feel so soft?”

  I tense. “What?”

  “I’m a man. You stop turning me on, baby, and maybe I’ll stop being turned on.”

  I’m . . . turning him on? Me?

  Change the subject. “So, what is the strategy for this?”

  “Same strategy as always. Win. Just follow my lead.”

  “How can I follow you when I’m facing you?” I snap.

  “You know what I mean.”

  With a struggle, we manage to stumble to the starting line. It’s nearly impossible to walk because I’m going backward. I can’t take the lead because I can’t see beyond Luke’s massive chest, so . . . sucks for me. Meanwhile, his cock is growing into a redwood tree between us, pulsing and alive, poking my already roiling tummy. I try to concentrate on the challenge so I won’t think about how it’s turning me on too. Or wonder what it would feel like if he dipped his head down and kissed me.

  “On your mark!” Will Wang shouts.

  “You ready?” he mumbles to me.

  I nod.

  “Get set!”

  He whispers, “When he says go, I want you to lift your legs up and wrap them around me, okay?”

  He didn’t just say that, did he?

  “Wait . . . what?”

  “Go!”

  It all happens so fast. He hoists me into the air, wrapping my thighs around his hips, my arms around his neck, so that he’s cradling my ass. And carrying me, ahead of the other two couples, he races into the maze.

  Luke

  It wasn’t hard. She weighs, like, ninety pounds soaking wet. What was hard was the rain. It was like ice, and sloshing through ankle-deep icy mud sucked. We don’t get weather like that down south.

  —Luke’s Confessional, Day 2

  “Go left! For the last time, go left!” she screams at me.

  My timid little church-mouse wife is the worst back seat driver.

  But I can’t deny, she has some incredible tits. I’ve gotten very close to them, so I know them intimately. Her nipples are hard against me. What I wouldn’t give to feel her, bare, against me, skin against skin.

  And I also can’t deny that I’m rock hard for her. For some reason, the more she screams at me which way to go, the more I want to throw her down in the mud and have my way with her.

  It started pouring about two hours into the maze, and it hasn’t let up since. I haven’t seen another soul in about that long. We’ve made it through five of the markers, and we’re looking for number six.

  I ignore her screaming to go left, and it bites me in the ass, because five seconds later I run into a dead end.

  Shit. I let out a growl.

  “What?” Even before knowing what the problem is—she can’t really see shit, her face buried in my chest—she says, “Told you we should’ve gone left.”

  “You’re fucking brilliant.” I spin to move, and that’s when I see it, about fifty yards away and closing in.

  A ghost.

  Well, really, a guy in an all-blue outfit, slowly lumbering toward me. It’s the first one we’ve seen.

  Fuck.

  “Hold tight,” I tell her, racing forward and taking a quick left like she told me to, running at top speed. Mud is flying everywhere, the rain blurs my vision, and everything bleeds together as I careen left, then right, then left again, trying to lose the ghost. It’d really blow if we had to start from the beginning after all this.

  I see the blue number six up ahead and race for it. She grabs it, tucking it in my jacket, between us. “Number six! Yay!” she shouts.

  “Shh,” I tell her, peering through the dried corn husk wall as I stop to catch my breath. “Think we lost that ghost.”

  “We did? Then let’s keep going.”

  “Give me a second,” I say, still breathing hard.

  She lets out an annoyed sigh. “Just so you know, my favorite pastime is not filling in ovals. I actually am a very good harpist.”

  I let out a laugh. The Marriage Test was more than two hours ago. So that’s what she’s been stewing about all this time? “You’re going to give me shit about my answers when you didn’t get any of them right yourself? What was that shit about me bringing a woman on an island?”

  “Well,” she says, into my T-shirt. “Clearly you like women.”

  So she got my cock’s message? “Yeah, but I like being alive a little more. So, penknife.”

  I start to pick up the pace as she says, “If you think my answer was dumb, what about yours? A bottle opener? Why would I need a bottle opener on a desert island?”

  I shake my head and mutter under my breath, “It auto-corrected. I didn’t know how to spell it.”

  “What?”

  “Bottle . . . whatever. That French guy.” I lean against a wall of corn. “Can we just rest for two seconds?”

  She’s quiet for a little bit. She’d answered books for that question. So in a way, I was right. But I’m not going to say that. I’m shit-stupid compared to her.

  “Oh.” She unwraps her legs from around me and lowers them to the ground, loosening her grip around my neck. I guess that’s the closest she’s going to come to admitting it. And the closest I am. “Sorry. Better?”

  No. “Yeah.”

  I reach between us and adjust my cock through my cargo shorts, but nothing I do is going to stop this raging hard-on. Nothing short of stripping her down and fucking her here, and I know there are cameras. Lots of cameras. There are drones overhead, and the ropes that tie us together are equipped with cameras and voice recorders too.

  “I’m good. Up you go.” I lift her into the place that feels right. Complete.

  I don’t know if I’ve gotten past the point of pain or if my body just wants her that bad, but whatever it is, I don’t have to drop her again. Over the next hour, we manage to get the last four markers, still not seeing anyone else
in the maze. Either we’re doing really well or really shitty.

  “Hold on—I see the exit,” I say to her, sprinting forward.

  Her body tightens around me as we explode through the gates. Camera crews are there, as is Will Wang, waiting for us.

  “Are we first?” I ask him.

  “You’re not done yet!” Will says as we’re quickly untied from each other. I look over at Penny. The lime shit is gone; now she’s covered from head to toe in mud. I bet I don’t look much better. “This van will take you to your next challenge.”

  I’m breathing hard. Penny looks absolutely exhausted. “Next?”

  He nods.

  Fuck.

  We load up into the van, soaked and shivering in the heat being pumped through the vents. A single cameraman comes with us, sitting in the front of the van, filming everything. The driver pulls away, and I say, “Hey. Can you tell us where we’re going?”

  He shakes his head. “Sorry.”

  I punch the seat and sit back. Penny is shaking, drenched, her clothes sticking to her skin. I put my arm around her. “You mind?”

  She shakes her head and leans into me. She smells like earth and rain, and as my lips graze the top of her head, I nearly kiss her there. My cock is still hard for her, so I can’t get comfortable.

  She drops her head on my shoulder, like she doesn’t mind being near me at all.

  And somehow, just like that, we fall asleep.

  FIRST OUTPOST

  Nell

  I’m tired, yeah. But I think with a shower and a good night’s sleep, we’ll be fine. No, of course we’ll be doing both separately! The vows matter nothing to me. He’s not really my husband. Who do you think I am?

  —Nell’s Confessional, Day 2

  We are so close.

  After making it to the airport, the driver gave us our bags and an envelope that wasn’t to be opened until we landed. We cleaned up a little in the airport restrooms, and then we, and the other contestants, were flown off on a three-hour flight to another undisclosed location. Then we were separated and had to decide whether to take a cab or an airport shuttle to our next location, someplace in the mountains.

  Almost the second we got there, I started throwing up.

  Altitude sickness. Great. I’d had the same problem during a family trip to Switzerland when I was younger, but I’d thought I’d outgrown it.

  Now it’s almost nighttime again. We were blindfolded again by one of the accompanying crewmen, but I think we’re in the Rocky Mountains, because there’s a thick fog over the massive peaks around us. It’s damp and gray. We’re in front of a large wrought-iron fence with nine colored gates. If I look through, I can see the sign that says OUTPOST. REST HERE.

  Beyond that, it looks like cabins. Real cabins, with beds and indoor plumbing and all that good stuff.

  I can almost taste it.

  But really, all I can taste now is the bile in the back of my throat. My stomach roils as I sink to the ground and clutch my knees to my chest. I sip some water, hoping that it won’t come back up. My clothes are stuck to my body with dried mud, and I can’t stop shivering from the dampness.

  Luke runs back with another set of keys. There is an old mine car at the front entrance that’s filled with thousands and thousands of keys of all different colors. The rules are that you can try only one key at a time.

  We’ve been trying for hours, pulling blue keys from the car one after another. Or, at least, Luke has. It’s probably a football field’s length to the entrance where the mine car is, and he’s made at least a hundred and fifty trips. There are hundreds of blue keys scattered at our feet.

  Even the cameraman filming this whole fiasco seems annoyed with us.

  I’ve just been slowly dying.

  “You okay?” Luke asks as he runs forward, shoving the key into the padlock.

  I nod.

  “Shit.” I look up when I see a bright-red droplet fall on the ground at his feet. His hands are bleeding. It doesn’t slow him down, though. He keeps right on powering through, like a machine.

  When we got here, we had the lead, miraculously. They’d let us leave the airport in the order we’d left the cornfield, so we must’ve been first. But I keep scanning the road in the distance, waiting for the next group to show up. I know they’ll be here soon. Meanwhile, our lead is shrinking.

  Luke shows up again with another key. He tries it as I struggle to my feet. “Shit!”

  “Let me go,” I say, handing him my water bottle.

  He gives me a doubtful look.

  “Come on. You’ve done enough. I can do this a few times. Just catch your breath.”

  I start to run, which slows to a lumber when I grow dizzy and realize I might throw up again. I dig deep into the pile of keys and pull out a blue one. Then I run back to see Luke pacing back and forth. He uncaps the bottle of water and sucks down a big gulp as I try the key.

  Fail.

  “Look,” he says.

  I peer over my shoulder to see the lights of a taxi coming nearer. Our lead is almost gone.

  I start to run for another one, but he charges ahead of me. I can sense the frustration in his voice as he says, “I’m faster than you. You took too long.”

  I should probably be angry at him, but I’m just too tired. Everything’s starting to blur. I lean over and throw up some more—nothing but water and bile. My head hurts. When I look up, the taxi stops and out comes Ace and Marta.

  Great.

  Luke shows up just then, cursing under his breath about “that asshole.” He tries the lock just as Ace sings over to him, “Hey, pussy boy! Looks like you’ve got company! Stand aside and we’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Luke is pretending to ignore his trash talk, but I can see his facade crumbling. “Fuck!” he mutters under his breath.

  “Let me go next,” I tell him, rushing back before he can argue. I reach into the giant mine car again and pull out another key, thinking how impossible this is. We could be here all night and then never have a chance to experience the nirvana that waits for us behind this gate. I choke back a sob at the thought. I am so, so, so sick. Tired. Weak.

  I limp up to the door, and he takes the key, trying it. He shakes his head and rounds off to head back to the mine car.

  As he does, Marta lets out a whoop. “Would you look at that!” Ace says, pushing open his door. “First try!”

  Of all the dumb luck.

  The two of them waltz in, all over each other. They pause on the other side of the fence to wave at us, and then Ace grabs Marta’s ass and starts to make out with her as they throw their bags down on the outpost platform. “First place!” they scream. Will Wang and a camera crew appear out of nowhere and film the celebration from the other side of the fence as confetti flutters through the air.

  Luke glares at them darkly.

  I pull on his sleeve. “Look.”

  He does. Sure enough, there are three more cars cutting through the darkness, on their way here.

  He’s just standing there, jaw working, so I go back to the mine car. When I come back, he’s yelling at me to go faster.

  “What the fuck? Do you have molasses in your veins?”

  I stare at him as I try the key. “I’m sorry if I’m not as fast as you.”

  “We should’ve found this key by now.” The key doesn’t twist, so he yanks it out from my hands. “Okay. We shouldn’t panic.”

  He’s trying to be calm. But he’s panicking.

  Then he looks at the key I brought and growls. “This isn’t blue! It’s purple!”

  I push my glasses up on my nose and squint at it. “I’m sorry! It’s getting dark, so—”

  He points to the ground. “Why don’t you just sit there and do nothing. We’ll go faster that way.”

  And then he leaves.

  And I have just about had it.

  So I do as the wise master says. I sit on the ground, and I don’t even look at him. I look at my nails. I stare at the sky. I sip m
y water. When he asks for help, I tell him to take a long walk off a short pier.

  “Are you serious?” he says to me. “You’re going to sit there and do nothing?”

  “I’m doing exactly what you told me to, remember?”

  He stares at me, breathing hard, nostrils flaring.

  “Fucking stupid goddamn idiotic challenge!” he shouts at the lock when he tries another key that doesn’t work. He kicks the ground with his boot, grabs ahold of the bars, and starts to shake the whole gate. Meanwhile, the second and third couples—Brad and Natalie with Ivy and Cody—waltz right through.

  “I think you need to calm down,” I tell him.

  “I think you need to get more riled up,” he snaps as another couple—Cara the dancer and Zach the father—gets through easily. “I hate losing.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I mean, what the fuck? I thought you were lucky, Penny.”

  I scowl at him. “Maybe I’m not because my name is Nell!” I almost scream it at him.

  We are definitely losing control. I’ve never been so riled up as this man has made me. And until now he always seemed so calm, so relaxed. I’m shaking so hard, I just want to claw his eyes out. And I’ve never felt like that before, toward anyone.

  We don’t find our key until nearly midnight, after almost four hours of trying. Despite our early lead, we end up coming in sixth place, which I can tell Luke isn’t happy with. But when we stumble into our cabin, his mood magically improves.

  “Fuck yes,” he says as he throws his pack down and looks around. “I mean, fudge yes.”

  I survey the room. It’s small and dark and has one bed.

  One bed. Sure, it’s a double, but . . .

  “Steven and Erica just got through after us. So either Webb and Daphne or Jen and Elliott are going to be eliminated.”

  He’s still talking game. He knows the teams so intimately, but they’re just names to me. I don’t say anything.

  “But we’re way behind Ace and Marta. We have some serious ground to make up.” He scrapes his hands over his face but then stops and looks at his bloody palms. “I am so fucking spent.”

  I peek into the bathroom. It’s a stall shower, a toilet, and a sink. Very rustic. A daddy-long-legs skitters near the drain. I cringe.