Don't Fight It

😮Thirty-six hours before my mother’s wedding, a stranger twice my age had me naked, begging, and screaming his name in his hotel suite.🛏️👯‍♀️ --------- His name was Adrian. He was divorced, almost twice my age, and so controlled that he asked three times whether I was sure. I was. By morning, I had forgotten how many times he made me scream his name. I had also lost my black lace panties. I left before breakfast, believing I would never see him again. 💍That evening, my mother called me over at the rehearsal dinner. “Ivy, come meet Graham’s brother.” Adrian turned around. The man who had held me naked twelve hours earlier was my mother’s future brother-in-law. After the wedding, he would become my “uncle.” Neither of us said a word. The next morning, we were ordered to walk down the aisle together. Adrian looked perfectly respectable in his black tuxedo. No one watching us could have guessed what he had done to me in his hotel bed. Then we reached the altar. His jacket shifted open. A strip of black lace was sticking out of the pocket directly over his heart. My missing panties. Adrian caught me staring. Then, very slowly, he buttoned his jacket. I thought that was the closest our secret would come to being exposed. I was wrong. At the reception, Carter Blake—the wealthy man my mother had chosen for me—dragged me onto the dance floor. When I told him to let go, he tightened his grip. “She told you to let go,” Adrian said behind him. Carter laughed. “Your brother married her mother an hour ago. That makes you family, not her bodyguard.” Adrian removed Carter’s hand from my waist one finger at a time. “It makes me family enough to tell you this,” he said. “Touch her again, and I’ll break every finger you touch her with.” The entire ballroom went silent. Then Carter looked from Adrian to me. His expression changed. “You’re protecting her like a man who’s already had her.” Adrian said nothing. He didn’t have to. My mother looked at my face—and whatever she saw made all the color drain from hers. If you were me, would you confess what happened in that hotel suite and destroy your mother’s wedding? Or keep pretending the man carrying your panties over his heart was family?……