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My nails claw lines down his chest that nearly draw blood. Rather than throw me off, Aubry hefts me higher so I land on his cock. Hard.

“No? What do you mean—fuck, yes! No?”

“The mob couldn’t keep me from you.” He spins around and my back slams into the crates. Three of them go flying and hit the ground. I tip back, grabbing onto the strap. Hanging on for dear life, I flex my thighs, dragging myself onto him and every burst of pleasure electrifying through me.

“They kidnapped me,” I mumble, struggling to understand while getting my brains fucked out. “That’s why you left.”

“I’d have fought the whole damn organ—fuck, me—ization for you.”

I’m so close because he’s close. His cock’s throbbing, shoving me to the straining point. I dig into the strap keeping me level, and fight to stare him in the eye.

“Why?”

Aubry lunges forward, pinning me between him and the crates. Splinters fly as he crushes the wood to pulp in his hands beside me. “Because,” he growls, his teeth grazing my neck. “I’m. An. Eggplant!”

The orgasm swallows me whole. I throw my head back, hitting the crates, but the pain doesn’t register.

All I know is the pleasure pumping through me as my pussy milks his cock for all its got.

All the unfinished wood breaks to pieces behind me as Aubry’s arms turn hard as rocks.

His face is redder than a tomato as he hangs onto me, his eyes shut.

I lean forward to kiss him, aching to feel his hot splash inside of me.

“Wait? Eggplant?”

With a roar, he cups my ass and hefts me so high I nearly land on top of the remaining crates. Just as his cock grazes my thigh, he comes. Most of his semen explodes across the fallen tarp, but a few spurts land on my leg. Shaking and panting, Aubry doesn’t let me down.

He drops to his knees even as his cock keeps twitching and spraying down the side of the crates. I brace myself for his hot tongue, but he licks up my inner thigh instead. Did he just…?

With a touch of his finger, Aubry wipes his own cum off the side of his mouth. “I’m an eggplant,” he declares as he stands above me.

My wobbly legs find their way to the floor and I cling to the boxes he tore to shreds. What is he talking about?

“A metaphor? Cause you should stay away from me, but you can’t?”

“No.” He takes a step back and drops his arms to the side. “I am a fucking eggplant.”

In the blink of an eye, this six and a half foot tall man shrinks to a purple vegetable on the floor. It’s not quite like the eggplants I’m used to, more long and cylindrical than pear-shaped. And it’s just sitting there. Spinning in place.

It’s a magic trick. He…he vanished somewhere in the room. I was distracted and didn’t see him run off into the shadows. “Ha,” I try to laugh. My boyfriend is not the one vegetable that can kill me. Nope. That doesn’t make sense. People can’t turn into vegetables.

Okay, they can but in a rather derogatory metaphorical way. Not a literal poof now you’re a cabbage.

Right?

“Very funny,” I cry out, waiting for him to come strolling around the corner and tell me why he really left. “It’s a good trick.”

The eggplant twitches. This time I watch. Purple phases into tan, little limbs sprout then grow in a millisecond. Before I can breathe, there’s a man standing there, telling me, “It’s not a trick.”

“Fuck!” I scream, leaping backward. My wide ass bounds off of what remained of the crates, sending them flying around the room.

“Hey there!” a voice calls from somewhere behind me.

This is a nightmare. A bad one. A voice did not just come out of the darkness after I watched a vegetable turn into a man!

Hands wrap around my waist. In my panic, I raise my arm up to break free, when Aubry holds me to his chest.

“Someone’s in here,” I whisper.

He gives a grim nod, then—while still cradling me—picks up the gun.

“Who’s ready for some fun?” the voice shouts with a terrifying laugh.

Aubry pulls the hammer back. He places me on the ground and gives me a warning to stay back before diving into the shadows. I give him a second before I follow.

What? For all I know the creepy guy could be behind us.

Clinging to his biceps like a comfort teddy, I shuffle beside him. There, silhouetted against the window! A figure moves in the lights of Las Vegas. Aubry lifts the gun, his finger sliding against the trigger.

The silhouette is huge to the point of being inhuman with a spherical head. But I just saw a man turn into a vegetable so anything is on the table.

A jerk. Aubry steadies the gun.

“One, two, three!” A red face leaps out of the shadows.

I blink.

Then I look behind me.

And I blink again.

Nope. There is still a five foot tall tomato talking to me.

“Son of a…” Aubry uncocks the gun and aims it skyward. “I hate these fucking things.”

“What the hell is that?” I ask as if there’s an explanation for a tomato with blinking eyes and teeth. Each tooth is the size of my hand. Oh, that is not right. Its flesh is stained and tattered in places, revealing a metal skeleton clacking below.

Aubry slams the gun down on the head of the tomato. The rotating eyes close and his arms drop. “Captain Roma and the Nightshade band.” He full on shivers and looks about to cross himself. “These things are haunted, I swear.”

These?

Peering past the tomato, I can make out a hot pepper holding a guitar, a bell pepper on bass and…an eggplant on drums. Of course.

“When the casino was built they had to find a way to appeal to the kids. Ya know, like the old pirate ship or the dragon. So Mr. Ato thought to put together an animatronic band of singing vegetables.”

“Do kids like singing vegetables?”

Aubry shrugs like that’s the least of his concerns. “They were in mothballs by the time I showed up. I keep telling him to get rid of them. Kept telling him.” He stares at the withering vegetable band like it’s the summation of all of his problems.

I have some of my own.

“You, uh…you turned into an eggplant.”

“I did.” He turns away from the tomato that could bite my leg off in order to stare at me. “I do.”

“Like a curse?”

“If so, it’s the kind I’m born with. In the blood…so to speak.”

“Do you have blood?” I squeal out as if that’s the most pressing issue right now.

“Eh…kind of. It’s complicated. I’m as much man as I am…talong.”

That’s his name, and his name means eggplant. Because he’s an eggplant.

Holy shit, my boyfriend is an eggplant.

“You didn’t leave me because of the mafia. You did it because—”

“Because I nearly killed you.” His jaw twitches as if he’s fighting back tears, but he swings away before any can fall in order to inspect the creepy band. “And if we don’t get out of here soon, my old family will finish the job.”

“How do we get out of here? You said they have all the doors covered.”

“They do,” he muses, running his fingers over the tomato’s tattered skin.

“And, I mean, Vegas is wild, but I don’t have pants on and you’re completely naked. That’s gonna cause some looks. A lot of looks. All the looks.”

Women will be tearing each other to pieces to get at him. Men too.

Aubry gives me a quick smile, then he bends back behind the tomato. “I’ve got an idea.”

?

“I LOOK LIKE an idiot.” My arms stick out at my sides because it’s impossible to drop them.

“Keep moving,” Aubry orders. He doesn’t hold my hand, but he keeps almost touching it as we work our way through the crowd.

“Sorry, sorry,” I mutter, apologizing every time one of the support struts leaps out and stabs someone. “This is a terrible idea.”

“But it’s working. Look. We’re almost to the garage and no one’s looked twice at us.”

I find that very hard to believe.

Glancing to the side, I stare up at the man dressed like a jalapeno.

Or at least attempted to. The costume could only close somewhere slightly above his belly button.

And his thighs tore the leg holes to shreds.

So instead of looking like a goofy hot pepper, Aubry looks more like a gorgeous half-naked man in the world’s weirdest swimsuit.

Meanwhile, I am a tomato. A tomato deflated on one side, but I am red, I am round, and I am getting stabbed with every step. If it wasn’t my life on the line, I’d have thrown this thing off.

“We just need to make it one more floor,” Aubry assures me.

Right. That’ll be easy.

When he first suggested we wear the band’s costumes I thought he was mad. Knocking out guards and dressing in their clothes seemed more feasible. But for some reason, when they weren’t getting poked, no one’s given a shit about us. They really do run different here in Vegas.

People are hustling but not in the panicky way. More the ‘bar’s closed, so might as well meander back to the car’ kind of way. I start to shuffle on my feet when the world shifts from cheap tile to concrete. We’re almost out.

“Hey!”

I jerk upright and glance back. Aubry lays a hand on my tomato shoulder. “Keep walking.”

Nodding inside the suit, I try to pick up the pace. But sure enough, one of the men in suits starts to wade through the crowd for me. Oh shit. Oh fuck. They’ve spotted us.

I stare up at Aubry, glad that he made a hole on the top for my head to stick out at least. He’s gritting his teeth and his eyes shine with the same look he got when he throat-punched that guy.

This is bad. This is so bad. He strains his hand out to try to shove people to the side.

I don’t need an invitation to take off through the gap.

A man in a suit steps in front of me. With a glower that could drain the sun, he stares down at me. “I know who you are.”

Shit. Shit. Shit!

He makes a Y with his fingers and shakes them at me. “Captain Roma!”

“Yep,” I cry out. “Big, big fan. I love all their songs.”

“Awesome.” He gives a quick nod of his head and I return it, realizing he’s not staring at me, but the grinning face of the vegetable stretched across my stomach.

Aubry takes my hand and tries to pull me past while keeping his head down. The guard returns to checking everyone else who’s not dressed like a giant tomato. I breathe a sigh of relief, when he suddenly shouts from behind us. “See you in the crisper!”

“Yeah, you too,” I call back.

With a groan, Aubry veers off from the crowd. Aside from a woman in a very tiny apron and a bikini top, no one stops us as we reach a red truck parked in the deepest shadows of the parking garage. Aubry only releases my hand so I can get inside.

Once we’re situated, he starts the engine.

I peer out the windows, occasionally looking back to the hissing cat in the carrier behind me. But as he starts to back up, the crowds shift. Tourists become men in suits. Men in suits with guns.

“Aubry!” I point to them and start to crouch down.

He floors it. Right toward the line of men. They dive to the side, unable to get a shot off until we’re flying past. Bullets erupt around me, tearing through the truck bed.

I cover my ears and start to scream. Then I grab Astin’s carrier, nestle him in my lap, and cover over him.

The truck leaps under us, wheels squealing on asphalt, before it peels out into the lights.

All the while, Aubry calmly stares ahead. It’s not until we’re past the casinos that I risk sitting up. Light shines through a hole right above my head.

As I strain my finger up through the exit wound that was nearly in my skull, Aubry sighs. “I’m not getting that deposit back.”