Betrayed Bride: Claimed By The Best Man

The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, and Kloe Guthrie stepped onto the plush carpet of the Starlight Hotel's penthouse corridor. Her fingers ached from gripping the heavy crystal-encrusted skirt of her wedding gown, thousands of Swarovski elements catching the dim light like scattered stars. She'd been shaking hands and air-kissing cheeks for six hours straight, and her palm still felt stiff from the repetitive motion.

Her ankles burned. The four-inch Louboutins she'd insisted on-because Justen loved how they made her legs look-had rubbed raw blisters into her heels with every step. She slowed her pace, wincing as the leather scraped against broken skin.

Kloe fumbled with her satin clutch, extracting the gold-embossed keycard. Her fingers, swollen from the evening's exertion, struggled to find purchase on the smooth plastic. She needed to get inside, peel off this forty-pound dress, and soak in a hot bath before Justen finished his cigars with the groomsmen.

The corridor stretched before her, lit by antique wall sconces that cast pools of amber light between stretches of shadow. As she passed the third doorway, something stopped her. A scent, foreign and wrong, threading through the recycled air of the climate-controlled hallway.

Cheap perfume. Sweet, cloying, aggressively floral.

Kloe's nose wrinkled. She knew that scent. Candyce had bathed in it since they were teenagers, declaring it "her signature" despite every department store in Manhattan carrying identical bottles in their discount bins. Her cousin had worn it tonight, dousing herself before the ceremony while complaining that Kloe's Vera Wang made her own cocktail dress look "intentionally understated."

What was Candyce doing on the penthouse floor?

Kloe took two more steps. The presidential suite loomed at the corridor's end, its mahogany door slightly ajar. A sliver of warm light cut across the carpet from the gap.

Then she heard it.

A sound, breathy and damp, pushed through the crack in the door. It hit Kloe's eardrum like a physical blow-a woman's moan, pitched high and theatrical, the kind of performance Candyce had perfected in high school theater.

Kloe's heart slammed against her ribs. She stopped breathing. Her body moved forward without her permission, drawn by some horrible magnetic pull, until her eye aligned with the door's edge.

Inside, the suite's sitting room was visible. The Tiffany lamp cast everything in sickly gold. On the cream-colored sofa, two bodies moved in a rhythm Kloe recognized but had never seen from this angle. Candyce's red nails dug into broad shoulders. Justen's hands gripped her cousin's waist, his watch-a gift from Kloe's father-glinting under the lamp with every brutal thrust.

"God, you're so much better than her," Justen grunted, his voice thick with liquor and lust. "Like fucking a corpse with Kloe. This face, this body-this is what I wanted."

Candyce giggled, the sound like breaking glass. "You should have seen her face when you put the ring on. So grateful. So pathetic."

"Four years of playing the devoted fiancé." Justen's laugh was ugly, wet. "Worth it for the trust fund control, though. Her grandmother's lawyer finally signed off yesterday. Once we're married, I can start moving assets."

Kloe's stomach heaved. The keycard slipped from her numb fingers, landing on the carpet with a barely audible thud. But in the ringing silence of Kloe's mind, the sound was a gunshot, deafening and final, shattering whatever fragile denial she had left.

She stumbled backward, her shoulder blades colliding with something hard and ceramic. A display pedestal. An antique vase-Ming dynasty, on loan from the hotel's private collection-wobbled violently, its curved belly tilting toward the marble floor.

Her hands flew out instinctively, a desperate, futile gesture to catch the priceless ceramic before it hit the floor. She braced for the inevitable crash, the shouting, the humiliation of being discovered here, listening to her fiancé fuck her cousin on their wedding night.

The impact never came.

A hand shot from the shadows, large and certain, catching the vase's base before it shattered. The Patek Philippe on the wrist caught the light-platinum, complicated, worth more than Kloe's car.

She opened her eyes.

Black wool. Impeccable tailoring. The scent of Cuban tobacco and wintergreen cutting through Candyce's cheap perfume.

Julian Larsen stepped fully into the corridor's dim light, his tie loosened, his dark hair mussed in a way that suggested he'd been running his hands through it. His eyes-gray-green, predatory, amused-fixed on her with the intensity of a man watching prey walk into his trap.

Kloe knew him. Everyone knew Julian Larsen. Justen's best man, his college roommate, his "brother from another mother" who'd flown in from Singapore for the wedding. The man who'd toasted them three hours ago with a speech about loyalty and lifelong friendship.

Had he been standing there the whole time? Had he watched her entire world crumble while she stood there like a naive fool? The thought sent a fresh wave of humiliation through her, hot and corrosive.

Shame flooded Kloe's veins, hot and corrosive. She tried to sidestep, to flee, but Julian moved with her, his broad shoulders blocking the path to the elevator. He advanced one step. Then another. Until her back pressed against the wall and his body created a cage of heat and expensive fabric between her and the rest of the world.

From behind the mahogany door, Justen's voice rose in a mockery of intimacy. "Kloe's probably asleep already. Poor thing was exhausted from all that smiling. Like a doll, you know? Pretty to look at, but nothing happening upstairs or downstairs."

Julian's breath ghosted across her earlobe, warm and deliberate. "So," his voice was a low murmur against her ear, the vibration traveling down her spine. "You could scream and cry. Or you could make him regret he was ever born. The choice is yours. But you only have ten seconds to decide."

Kloe's head snapped up. She met his gaze directly, her voice a ragged whisper. "Are you enjoying this? Watching me fall apart?"

Julian's thumb rose, tracing the sweat-dampened hair at her temple with a gentleness that contradicted everything in his stance. The touch sent a shiver through her that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

"I don't enjoy watching," he said. His eyes dropped to her mouth, held there. "But I'm very interested in participating."

The door behind them rattled-Justen shifting position, Candyce's giggle cutting through the wood. Kloe's nails dug into her palms, breaking skin. She felt the wetness of blood, the distant pulse of pain.

Julian's hand dropped, capturing her bleeding fist. His thumb pressed hard into the crescent-shaped wound, sending a bright spike of sensation up her arm.

"Room next door," he said, his voice dropping to a register that vibrated in her chest. "Different room. Different man. Different ending to your wedding night."

Kloe stared at him. At the predator's patience in his eyes. At the certainty that he would wait forever for her answer, that he had nowhere else to be, that this moment-her humiliation, her rage, her desperate need to be someone other than the pathetic bride in the corridor-was exactly what he'd been waiting for.

Her fingers found his lapel. Clenched. Pulled.

Julian's mouth curved, satisfaction and something darker flashing across his features. His arm locked around her waist, lifting her slightly off her feet. With one backward kick, the door to the opposite suite swung open, and the darkness swallowed them both.