Chapter 1
POV: KAMILLA
“Our mother’s a slutty hoe, so you’re doing it,” my sister, Kristy, spewed in my ear over the phone as I sat on the comfy bed in my hotel room with my cracked iPad on my lap, editing a sketch for my new slipper collection that hopefully dropped next fall on New York Fashion Week. “Youarethe maid of honor.”
My lavender nails dug into my orange pen-stylus, almost snapping it in half. “Yes, which means I’myourbitch for the next twenty-four hours—not the father of the groom.”
You didn’t say that when he was licking and fucking you into the wedding cake samples months ago.
I smacked my head, cursing myself for even thinking about that, though it had been the hottest and best orgasm of my life.
Just thinking of his thick yet soft blonde hair between my legs sent shivers down my body, those sultry lips kissing my sticky thighs, his clever tongue twirling around my clit as my fingers and ass sunk into the pretty cakes, spreading frosting everywhere. It took me hours to clean the frosting out of my hair and the dye out of my panties.
But in that moment with him, I didn’t give a flying fuck about destroying my sister’s wedding samples; I was so slick with lust and completely absorbed and captivated by Theo.
Theo.
Theo Lancaster.
His name on my lips brought a wave of heat through my chest. I shook it off, my eyelids fluttering.Stop. It’s over. He’s in the past.
I broke it off weeks ago. Not like there was anything to break, of course. We only hooked up like thirty times and phone sexed like three times a week since he was always dashing around the world like billionaires do.But he always made time for you.
Didn’t matter. Breaking up was for the best. Fucking your mother’s ex and your sister’s fiancé’s father was low. And wrong. Especially since my mother was still fucking obsessed with him. And my sister gave up so much for me growing up—what if things went sideways? That could fuck up her marriage. No.
Thank god, no one knew. I didn’t even tell my besties who I wished were here this weekend to distract me, but they’re all busy and couldn’t make it.
Kristy sucked her teeth. “You’re supposed to be making my life easier, Kammie.” Her voice came out high-pitched, making me wince, annoying my soul.
“Don’t youdarego there—I’ve gone above and beyond for you this past year.” I slapped my tablet before scratching my silk bonnet, the hem of my mint Dolce & Gabbana robe fluttering on the bed. “I worecrocs—fucking ugly ass crocsforyou.”
“Oh my god, you’re never going to let that go, are you?” Kristy sighed. “Most brides have their bridal party wearing spiky heels and awful, matching outfits—I ask you to wear purple crocs for my bachelorette party, and it’s a big deal. You should’ve been happy—”
“To wear rubber oatmeal?” I slammed my pen down. “To have sweaty marshmallows damaging my beautiful feet?”
“You are being overly dramatic—”
“I’m not being dramatic enough! It’s like stepping on a rotting peaches,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s like they were slow cooking my feet with every step.”
Kristy let out an irritated snort. “Do you hear yourself? None of that makes a lick of sense. You’re just a shoe snob—not everything can be as comfy and stylish as your designer slippers,” she said. “Not everyone wants to pay three hundred dollars for comfort.”
“First off, your giving hater vibes, and second, my slippers are made with the highest quality fabrics and materials known to man, and I pay my seamstresses top dollar in New York. Three hundred is barely a profit.” I made slippers because I loved them as a child and nothing made me feel more comfy and relaxed than softness on my feet. They were like my security blanket. “And third, I’m not a snob because I don’t want to wear milk crates on my feet. And four—”
“I don’t need to hear four—”
“And four,” I cut in because I wanted to annoy her even further as revenge for what she was about to make me go do. “My slippers are amazing—they’re like walking on cloud babies.”
“We’ve had this discuss before.” I could feel her rolling her eyes through the phone. “Clouds don’t have babies.”
“Then how do they reproduce then?” I shot back.
Then we launched into a full blown argument about how clouds reproduce, which was normal for us since we loved to debate about the weirdest shit.
“It’s seriously been over ten minutes,” I heard Jay, my sister’s fiancée, groan over the phone. “Can’t you both just agree to disagree?”
“Never,” we said in unison.
“Babe,” Jay said, then I heard kissing noises.
“Barf,” I said loudly, as Kristy giggled in my ear.
“We’ll discuss this after the wedding—but where was I before….oh yeah, I need you to do what I asked before. It’s technically wedding related, so you have to do it. Or you’ll be a horrible sister and a horriblemaid of honor.” Her voice filled with sweetness and sadness as she kept talking, laying it on thick of how she was always there for me growing up, filling up my guilt meter until I sighed, completely defeated.
I hated when she used growing up as tactic to get what she wanted. She hadn’t done it since I was in college, so I have no idea why she was pulling out the works now.
Especially since I’d been a great maid of honor and sister this past year for her, despite all the kooky crap she made me do.
Growing up with her was even crazier though. Like this was my hipster sister who believed in only showering once a week to help the environment, who used her menstrual blood as a face mask to reclaim her femininity and power senior year, who started a movement her freshmen year of high school called “free the pickles” where I had to take pictures of her “freeing the pickles” from jars and swimming with her in the local creek with them because she believed that no one should be eating anything that had been imprisoned and that should be freed to go back to Mother Nature—not to mention she made me stand outside groceries stores protesting the buying of said pickles and even going rabid and throwing pickle juice on a few shoppers who taunted her. Last month, she made her whole bridal party go on a silent retreat in Nebraska where some bald lady made us sit in her backyard while charging us $10 a minute to breathe in her “clean, ethical air” while we ate pink honey and blue milk that tasted like it came out of a dolphin’s tit.
All that and did I complain once? Sure did, but I pulled on my big girl panties and did it anyway, and I made sure to only complain when I could use it toward my benefit. But even so, I did all that because I loved her and she basically helped raise me when my father left us.
But what she wanted me to do now? I couldn’t do it. Nope. It was too much of a risk to my heath.And my pussy.
Not only that but I needed to get these sketches done and sent before five pm today to Gigi Westbrook, the luxury designer who invited me to collab with her for fashion week. I finished the twelve sketches a couple weeks ago and received a notice to redo with ten pages of notes on her vision (which she never gave me before) attached from Gigi with the last sentence saying that she didn’t give third chances. So yeah. I’d been putting my all into these redos—feeling so creative and excited yet nervous—while doing wedding stuff and my running my business and working on my other upcoming lines.
Hectic. My life was hectic. I barely even ate today. And it just hit midnight, and I was severely behind, still needing to finish three sketches before the deadline, and my iPad—Phae Phae—was being slow as heck.
“Why can’t your wedding planner do it? Isn’t this what you pay her for?”
“I didn’t pay Aunt Franny, she kinda just volunteered, and I said yes because I didn’t want mom hiring that rich bitch from manhattan who was trying to make me get a unicorn and an ice sculptor of the Statue of Liberty,” Kristy said in distain. “And Aunt Franny’s asleep right now, and you know what waking her is like.”
“Like waking a hibernating bear. Mom lost a back molar last time,” I said, shivering. “What about your fiancé? It ishisfather.”I tapped my pen. “Shouldn’t he be staying with him or one of his friends anyway? Your wedding’s in like twenty hours.”
“You know we don’t believe in that stupid patriarchal superstition about not seeing the bride before the wedding, so we’re having a nice couple’s night before the wedding. I just orgasmed—”
“While on the phone?” I curled my lips. “Ugh, tmi.”
“—and I’m very happy right now.And don’t you want to keep the bride happy, Kammie-bear?” she said, using my childhood nickname. “Are you really going to make my man leave my side to go do something so trivial?”
Trivial? I blew out a breath, my nerves tightening.I can’t see him. I can’t. I need to keep my distance and going to his hotel room is a bad bad idea.“Why does he need his suit now? It’s midnight. Can’t he just get it from the bachelor suite before the wedding?”
“Dad’s real particular about his clothing,” Jay said in the background. “Since he missed the second fitting, if he tries it on now and something doesn’t fit, the seamstress can fix it asap. She’s on call now.”
“Then let hisparticularass get it himself.”
“That man just got off an eighteen hour flight, not to mention he bankrolled our whole wedding and his only request was for pineapple and coconut-themed food items—odd, I know—but I’m not gonna ask him to do that,” Kristy said, cutting Jay off. “He’s done enough.”
So that’s why I spent all Thursday morning sampling coconut pastries and pineapple drinks.“Then let mom do it. She is his ex.”
That ex part made my stomach sour.
“They arenotexes. They went on one blind date and that’s because mom damn near blackmailed her friend to arrange it.”
“They went out twice,” I said, remembering my mom literally spending a fortune on her hair and nails.
“Okay? Apparently, it didn’t mean much if he never called her back.”
Because he’d been fucking me instead. Shame clawed at my insides. I was a terrible daughter and sister.
“I’m not sending her,” Kristy said, pulling me from my thoughts. “She’s been trying to jump that man’s bones for over a year now since he stopped calling—she’s obsessed. She’ll probably try to seduce him in his tired state.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, a jealous tick forming in my gut. I ignored it. “He’s a billionaire and a grown ass man, he can handle a sex-crazed woman. I’m sure mom’s not his first.”
“Our mother is a gold digging cougar. She has extra strength. Not to mention extra speed if she’s still taking those European vitamins.”
We laughed, both of us remembering when our mother called us a couple years ago bragging about these new vitamins that would make her insides thirty years younger and her tits two inches higher. They cost fifty thousand a bottle.
“She’s not a gold digger.She just wants to marry a man who has the funds to make her happy.”
“If you marry a man for his funds, you’re a gold digger.” Kristy let out a bitter laugh. “She literally got mad at me for a month when I told her that Jay declined his inheritance.”
And it was a big inheritance. Over five billion, plus he was supposed to inherit houses and his father’s businesses. And Jay declined it all.
“Mad—no she was pissed. She called me angry sobbing and hyperventilating,” I said, rolling my eyes. “She wouldn’t get out of bed for two months and ate nothing but key lime pie and brandy while bingeing reality shows.”
“Because she thought she’d be living the high life off me,” Kristy said, angrily. “I know she worked three jobs after dad left but that doesn’t mean I have to give her money and compromise my values forherhappiness. I didn’t choose to be born, you know.”
“I know. She just doesn’t want you to struggle like she did when our sperm donor left,” I said, covering for Mom like I always did.
“She’s money hungry and vain,” Kristy snapped. “She picked every expensive option for the wedding since she knew Theo was paying for everything as our gift.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy the luxuries too,” I said, reminding her. “What about the spa day in Paris? And the rehearsal dinner was on that yacht that took us around South America? And your dress—”
“Fine, so I enjoyed it a tiny bit,” she murmured.
“Tiny bit? You literally had Theo book the most expensive opera singer in Italy to sing tomorrow,” I said. “Stop trying to act like you don’t enjoy spending money.”
“Sometimes. I’ll admit it is fun, but I can live without it and still be happy,” she said. “Mom cannot, and….” Then she went on another rant about our mother and her money habits.
I had to admit that our mom…. wasn’t the best. She taught us from an early age to marry rich and strive for luxury and nice things, which I took to like glue, unlike Kristy who rebelled.
But I was different from Mom; she ranted relentlessly about marrying a rich man. And yes, I wanted that luxury life where I was financial secure and independent and didn’t need for anything and lived in constant overflow and abundance, but I didn’t want it from a rich man. I wanted tobethat rich man. I wanted it myself. I wanted to get it for myself, and I succeeded. I did it by designing items that I loved, bringing in seven-figure yearly.
“I know,” I said when she was done ranting and sighed, so tired of being the middle man between them. “Thank god, you’ll be married soon and everything will be fine.”
“No, she’ll still try to guilt me into making Jay ask for his inheritance back,” Kristy said in a stern tone. “But Jay and I are fine with our small condo and teacher salaries. She better learn that soon before I go low contact with her.”
“Please don’t,” I said, knowing that would crush her.
“So you’ll bring Theo his suit then?”
I sighed, rubbing my temples, my clit twitching with thoughts of the sexy billionaire. “Sure, Kris.”
“Thank you!” she sang and then paused. “I don’t know why you’re acting like this task is the worst thing ever. You didn’t even act this way when I made you eat jelled eel at the retreat.”
“I told you to never mention that horrid place again.” Trembling, my tummy filled with nauseousness at the thought of that rubbery taste slipping across my tongue.Ugh.
“Did he do something to you that I don’t know about?” Her voice lifted in suspicious at the end.
“What? Of course not,” I said a little too quickly, a piece of me hating myself for lying to her.
“Do I have to kick his ass?”
“No, nothing happened.”
“Do you want something to happen?”
“No!” I almost shouted, shaking my head. “You know I don’t date anyway.” I didn’t have the time, though lately, before I broke it off with Theo, it had been nice to have someone to talk too. To snuggle with sometimes. It made life…warmer. Easier. Lighter.
But that was over.It’s for the best. For me and my family.
“Not every man is like dad, Kammie.”
“I know that, but that still doesn’t change anything.” I coughed. “Enough about my love life—where’s this suit that I must deliver within the hour or the whole world and wedding will fall apart.”
“I’m going to ignore that since you agreed to do it,” Kristy said. “Thesuit got delivered to the front desk—pick it up from there and take it his room.”
“Which is?”
“The penthouse.”
“Of course.”
