Digital Dalliance: A Hotwife Novel

by Lexi Archer

  He looked at me again and my breath caught. He had the most piercing blue eyes. Piercing blue eyes that were unlike anything I’d ever seen on a human before, though that might just be because I wasn’t looking rather than it not being a trait humans possessed. Obviously it was a trait humans possessed if he was looking at me with those gorgeous blinkers. I was getting scatterbrained. My thoughts were running away from me. I needed to get myself under control.

  “So what brings you to human lands? That’s a dangerous journey for a young elf such as yourself,” he said.

  I threw my head back and laughed, and yet secretly I was delighted. He called me a young. A common misconception, but it also meant that if he was reading my character sheet he wasn’t bringing it into the conversation. That was so refreshing. That was such a change from what I was used to.

  “I guarantee you I was probably fighting off scarier monsters than you could imagine before your great-grandfather even looked at your great-grandmother with a twinkle in his eye,” I said.

  A hundred years ago I would have been able to show off my age to a human by referencing their kings, but that wasn’t the case anymore. The humans hadn’t had a unified kingdom in at least half a century. Just another way that their world kept changing while mine stayed the same. Except for the Sundering, of course. That affected everybody. Still, there was far more potential for intrigue with a good human player. Perhaps that was one reason why I was so drawn to humans. It allowed for a richer role-playing experience than sitting around whining about how much it sucked to be immortal which is what your typical elf role-playing scenario boiled down to.

  Assuming you could find somebody good. I desperately hoped this gorgeous man in front of me was somebody good.

  “My apologies lady elf,” he said. He seemed genuinely sincere. “But a pretty face on an old soul isn’t going to protect you from creatures with sharp teeth any more than my clumsiness would protect me.”

  My character blushed in game and out of the game I felt a flush rising to my cheeks. A surprising flush rising to my cheeks. What was wrong with me that this guy was able to get that sort of reaction out of me with just words on a screen? Not to mention the little problem of the wedding ring on my finger. A wedding ring that came from a meeting in-game very similar to what was happening to me now. That was a dangerous thought.

  Focus. Get back in the game.

  I held up my fingers and allowed a flame to dance from finger to finger. He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t react. Obviously this was a man who’d seen magic before. Or at least he’d heard of it. Either way he didn’t have the wide-eyed surprise that usually accompanied that display. A slight disappointment, but behind my keyboard I was secretly jubilant. I was so sick of people who thought that wide-eyed surprise was the only way to react to magic, as though anybody who lived in a world where magic was a commonplace thing would be surprised by the damn stuff.

  “Ah, I see,” he said. “A sorceress, I presume?”

  I winced at the human word.

  “If you want to reduce calling down the very forces that power this universe and bending it to my will “sorcery” then I suppose you could call me that,” I said.

  “Impressive,” he said.

  He dug into his pocket and pulled something out. I saw a flash of black and then the flames dancing on my fingers winked out. The tingling sensation that let me know I was drawing upon the magical forces that powered the universe disappeared at the same time. I blinked, looked at the object in his hand, and then my eyes widened in surprise. I hated that I reacted like that, but it was the only thing I could think to do in this situation. I did a quick inspect of his character just to be certain.

  “Is that…”

  An Elassa shard,” he said. “It’s been passed down in my family, though I’ve never had occasion to show it off before. I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to show it off to someone who would actually appreciate it.”

  The way he leaned against the barstool with a cocky smile on his face was only slightly ruined when he slipped in a puddle of something on the floor, no doubt left over from his spill a moment ago, and nearly sent the Elassa shard flying across the room. I cried out and held my hand out trying to catch it, but he did a surprisingly nimble dance and snatched it out of the air before it went flying too far. It appeared being constantly clumsy has given this strange man one hell of a set of reflexes.

  And a good thing too. If that really was what he said it was then it was more valuable than the combined wealth of the entire city. They were so rare in the books that kingdoms rose and fell based on possessing one. I didn’t even know they were in the game.

  “How did you get that?”

  He blinked, cutting those delicious blue eyes off from me for a moment. His perfect jaw line worked for a moment and he fixed me with an expression that told me he was wondering if I was entirely right in the head.

  “I told you,” he said slowly. “It’s been passed down in my family.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not what I mean. How did you get that? I didn’t know Elassa shards were even in the game! At least I’ve never seen one before…”

  Of course that didn’t mean they weren’t in the game. It just meant that I hadn’t seen them in the game before. I wasn’t really a big fan of the higher level dungeons anymore, and they were always releasing new toys to entice people to go through that particular treadmill over and over. It was entirely possible this was just some new bit of end game content I didn’t know about because I didn’t ever play end game content despite John teasing me mercilessly about it. It wouldn’t be the first time the developers took an all-powerful item from the books and reduced it to a trinket with a fun animation.

  And looking at this guy’s armor he definitely seemed the type to have a high level trinket. He was decked out in some of the best gear in the game, better even than the stuff that John rolled around in with his group of “elite” raiders. I sighed in frustration. This guy could find time for raiding and role-playing. Why couldn’t my husband give me the same consideration damn it?

  He shook his head and looked at me as though I’d grown a second head. Or as though I’d sprouted fangs like some of the bloodsucking creatures that totally weren’t vampires according to in-game lore even though they sucked and blahed like a vampire lurking along the paths to human lands after dark.

  “Game? What game are you speaking of? Are you quite all right my lady elf?”

  I pulled away from my keyboard and shook my head. Damn! Here I was complaining about people breaking character, complaining about people pulling in information they’d have no idea about, and I’d been so surprised by this strangely compelling man that I went and did it myself! I never did that. That never happened to me. What was going on here?

  And yet I couldn’t deny the way I was feeling talking with this man. There was something about his prose that went straight to my heart. There was something about his prose that went straight down to other areas. There was just something about him that was so compelling, so fascinating, so mysterious. And he was just some pixels on a screen!

  This was dangerous. This was very dangerous. I was feeling the same rush that I felt the first time I met John and I knew it was just because I was a little frustrated with my husband and not because I was actually into this guy or anything. Still. It felt dangerous. Which made it all the more arousing for some reason. I needed to get away from this guy. I don’t know why I had that panicked feeling, or why my breath was picking up and my nipples were straining out for that matter, but there it was.

  I put my hands back on my keyboard. I didn’t make an excuse to get away from him.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I forgot myself for a moment.”

  He chuckled, a deep rich sound that rolled over my body and sent a bolt of pleasure running through me as it hit my ears. “All is forgiven my lady elf.”

  I sighed in contentment. There was something about the way that sounded.
“My lady elf.” As though he was claiming me for his own. I blinked. What the hell was I thinking? Wanting a man to claim me for his own? Now that was entirely out of character both in game and out! I definitely shouldn’t be getting a warm fuzzy feeling about some guy who wasn’t my husband trying to claim me. I should be pissed off. And I wasn’t.

  It really had been too long since John and I had a good date night if I was getting this carried away from a role-playing session in a video game.

  “I’m sorry to cut this short,” he said. “But I’m afraid I have some work to attend to.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief even as disappointment washed over me. I needed to get away from this guy even as I was so intrigued by him that I wanted to spend the whole night role-playing with him and seeing how good he really was.

  “Certainly,” I said. “It was nice making your acquaintance…”

  I trailed off and hoped the question was obvious. It was a question I shouldn’t be asking, but the rational married part of my brain wasn’t calling the shots. He grinned and shifted, his rippling muscles moved this way and that and I found myself swaying back and forth hypnotized by the sight. “My lady elf may call me Conlan, if it pleases you.”

  I arched a curious eyebrow at this delicious man and he looked me up and down as I did so. Normally I didn’t go for this sort of scene, but there was something about this man that was making me enjoy this thoroughly. Far more thoroughly than I’d enjoyed a role-playing scenario in quite some time. In a way that I shouldn’t be enjoying a role-playing scenario with anyone but my husband, only he refused to take part in this part of my life.

  I blushed and told myself that the way my hair was standing on edge all over my body, the way my nipples were straining out, that impossible delicious feeling between my legs that he was somehow able to elicit with just a few words, was just a passing crush. It didn’t mean anything.

  “Interesting name,” I said.

  Conlan fixed me with that easy-going grin. That deliciously sexy grin that made me want to run my lips across his face. That made me want to kiss every inch of his lips even though that was absolutely not the sort of role-playing I ever did and definitely not something I’d do with anyone but John. Still, I suppose it didn’t harm anything to indulge in a little bit of fantasy that would never become reality.

  For some reason that thought disappointed me. End this. End this now Kayla before you get in too deep.

  “Will I see you again?” I asked.

  Damn it. So much for ending it. I bit back a curse as the words flew unbidden from my fingers to my keyboard and into the chat window.

  The whole married thing aside that wasn’t how this worked. If you liked role-playing with someone then you added them to your friend list. You kept an eye on their location and tried to engineer a “chance” meeting. After a couple good role-playing sessions you’d maybe start sending them out of character private messages. Maybe start working on a collaborative story. But at the beginning everything was supposed to feel organic. It was supposed to seem like you were stumbling into one another by accident even if it was nothing but.

  At least those were the role-playing principles that my guild lived by. Those were role-playing principles I’d helped draft as the mistress of role-playing. And here I was throwing my own rules out the window because I was intrigued by a mysterious man who I didn’t know anything about! A mysterious man who wasn’t my husband. Who sent guilt and heat running through my body in equal measure.

  And yet as I sat there at the keyboard, as I thought about this session, the mysterious object he held, and most of all his incredible skill with the written word, I realized I didn’t give a damn. About the role-playing rules or what John would think.

  This was just a game after all. What could it hurt?

  5: Suspicions

  I walked through the door and glanced into the computer room. Sure enough Kayla was in there at one of those stupid inns in a starter zone probably telling some ridiculous story or whatever it was she did when she was ignoring me and not even playing the game. I was surprised at how quickly and how strong that annoyance was, but whatever. I’d had a whole week to stew over what happened last weekend and I was even more pissed off now than I’d been that night.

  Kayla looked over her shoulder which was something of a surprise. That was more acknowledgement than I got last week when I got home. Maybe date night would happen this week.

  “Hey honey, quick question.”

  I leaned against the wide entrance to the dining room turned computer room and looked Kayla up and down. She was looking good in a pair of form fitting pajamas. And let me tell you, Kayla had a form that was worth fitting.

  I smiled at her. “Shoot.”

  “Did they ever add Elassa shards as a high-level item or something?”

  I blinked. How on earth would she know about those? “Elassa shards?”

  “They’re items that negate all magical power, Kayla said. “If anyone tries to throw a magical spell at someone carrying an Elassa shard the spell disappears as though they’re in some sort of anti-magic bubble. And if you get near someone using magic then it stops them from casting whatever spell they were working on.”

  I waved a hand. “Yeah, I know what they are. I was just wondering how you’d heard about them. They were just added with the latest patch and it’s something that you only get if you get a server-first kill on the big bad for that patch. Pretty sure no one has done that yet.”

  Kayla grinned. A secretive grin that made me wonder what she was up to. That was the sort of smile that usually only appeared when she knew something I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to play her game right now. I was still a little annoyed with her despite how well this conversation had been going.

  “So how did you find out about those? I didn’t think you cared about endgame stuff anymore,” I said.

  Kayla rolled her eyes again but it was playful. She still had that smile on her face as well. “They’re items in the book too doofus.”

  “Well yeah, but how did you find out about them in a game context?” I pressed.

  Kayla shook her head and blushed. An interesting reaction. An interesting reaction that made me even more suspicious, though I was careful to stay impassive and not let on that I was getting suspicions.

  “Oh nothing,” Kayla said. “Just some role-player bragging about having one and I figured it wasn’t true, but I guess it is an item now!”

  I shrugged and forced myself to be cool. Be casual. I didn’t want to act like every danger signal imaginable was firing off in my head. “That’s what you’ll get from people who think it’s more fun to spend time making up stories about the game than it is to actually play the game.”

  Those danger signals were still firing off at full alert, but things were going so well with us chatting and it’s not like there was anything really going on other than her asking about in-game items so I decided to extend an olive branch. It didn’t look like she was in the middle of anything anyways. Only before I could suggest a movie I felt my phone buzz. I pulled it out and had an Elassa Chat message from one of my guild mates wondering when I was going to be on for raid night.

  Kayla sighed. “Raid time?”

  I grinned and moved over to wrap my arms around her. Damn she felt good. Smelled nice too. “Actually I was thinking maybe we could watch a movie tonight if you didn’t have anything big planned in-game.”

  Kayla’s face lit up. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She practically jumped up from her chair and enveloped me in a hug that caught my cock’s attention, but I quickly pushed that down. Maybe that would happen. Maybe not. Either way there was another question burning in the back of my mind and I needed her out of the room to satisfy my curiosity.

  “Why don’t you go find something On Demand and I’ll be in there in a minute after I let everyone know I’m not going to the raid tonight?”

  “Sure!”

  Kayla was so excite
d that I almost felt bad about what I was about to do. Almost. There was something about the way she casually asked me about that item, an item that just came out that was a server first deal that she wouldn’t normally know anything about, that had piqued my curiosity. So I sat down at my computer and pulled up the Elassa Item Database website to do a little bit of sleuthing.

  I pulled up the item database and did a quick search for the Elassa Shard. I wanted to make sure the thing had actually been released and I wasn’t just imagining things. Yup, sure enough there it was live and in the game. Interesting.

  I pulled up the forums for our server next. If someone got that thing then it would be all over the place, but the patch had just been released two nights ago and with the way our guild was progressing there wasn’t a chance that anyone had…

  Damn it. I needed to go to the forums more often. Right at the top was a thread congratulating our rival guild, Night Terror, for getting the realm first on that boss. Damnation! I was really hoping we’d get that.

  Of course that just thickened the plot nicely. Kayla didn’t read about server firsts or things like that. There was a special forum dedicated to role-players and she spent most of her time there. So if she was asking me about that item then that meant she was talking to somebody who had it. And from the looks of it the person who got it was Conlan, the leader and asshole-in-chief of Night Terror.

  Not that I really knew whether or not he was an asshole. That was just an assumption I made based on the fact that he was the leader of the competition.

  “Interesting.”

  What was my wife up to when she was doing those role-playing sessions? And had the great and powerful Conlan decided it was time to join the role-playing scene as well? Right now I had a movie to watch, but I was definitely going to keep an eye on this because that nagging voice in the back of my head was screaming that something screwy was going on here.