The boutique was called Blanc, and it was the kind of place that charged more for a veil than I’d paid for my first car. But Marcus—my fiancé, the man I was supposed to marry in seventeen days—had insisted on the best. “Only the best for you,” he’d said, handing over his credit card with a smile that was kind, generous, and completely unexciting.
He wasn’t the one kneeling behind me.
Ava was my stepsister. Technically. Our parents had married when we were nineteen, and for five years, we’d been performing a delicate dance of “good morning” at breakfast and “good night” at the top of the stairs, all while pretending that the space between our bedrooms wasn’t the only thing keeping us from destroying each other.
She was supposed to be my maid of honor. The supportive sister. The one who held my bouquet and fixed my train and pretended she wasn’t the reason I couldn’t sleep at night.
Instead, she was on her knees in the fitting room, her hands on my wedding dress, her breath warm against my bare back where the lace dipped low.
“The consultant stepped out for pins,” Ava said, her voice low, completely unconcerned. “We have at least five minutes.”
“That’s not enough time to fix the zipper,” I said, though we both knew the zipper wasn’t the problem. The dress fit perfectly. Ava had just been taking her time, her fingers lingering on each hook, each eyelet, each inch of skin the gown exposed.
“It’s too tight,” I lied, looking at myself in the three-way mirror. The woman staring back at me was beautiful—dark hair pinned up, throat exposed, cheeks flushed with something that had nothing to do with bridal excitement. “I can’t breathe.”
Ava looked up. Met my eyes in the mirror. And she stood slowly, her black satin slip dress whispering against the tulle of my gown, turning me by the waist until I was facing her instead of my reflection.
“The consultant will be back any second,” I whispered. It was a warning. A plea. A last-ditch effort to remember why this was wrong.
“Then we’d better be quick,” Ava said.
She reached up and touched the pearl button at my throat. Her fingers trailed down the lace, over the bodice, stopping at the place where the dress was tightest—where my breasts were pushed together, where my heart was hammering against the boning.
“You’re not breathing,” she whispered, her thumb circling the lace, finding the nipple beneath with a precision that made my knees weak. “Because you’re waiting for me to touch you. Not because of the dress.”
Her hand slid lower. Over the satin belt. Under the layers of tulle. Finding the slit in the underskirt that was supposed to make walking easier, but was currently making it very easy for Ava’s fingers to find my thigh, my hip, the place where I was already wet and aching and completely undone.
The fitting room curtain twitched.
“How’s the fit coming, ladies?” The consultant’s voice. Muffled by the heavy velvet curtain, but close. Too close.
Ava didn’t remove her hand. She just pressed deeper, her fingers sliding inside me with a confidence that spoke of every night she’d spent listening to me through the wall, every shower we’d shared at the gym, every “accidental” touch that had been building to this moment.
“Perfect,” I managed, my voice high, strange, completely unlike my own. “The fit is… perfect.”
“Wonderful! I’ll be right back with the headpiece. Don’t move!”
Her footsteps retreated. Ava’s fingers didn’t. She was inside me, her palm pressing against my clit, her other hand gripping my waist to keep me upright in the mountain of tulle.
“Seventeen days,” she whispered against my ear, her breath hot, her voice rough. “Seventeen days until you marry a man who doesn’t know that his bride is already his sister-in-law in every way that matters. Seventeen days until I have to watch you walk down the aisle in this dress.”
She moved her fingers faster, deeper, finding a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. The three-way mirror showed everything—my flushed face, my parted lips, Ava’s blonde head buried in my neck, her hand lost in the white folds of my gown.
“Wait till I get you out of this dress tonight,” she whispered. “Wait till I show you what happens when there are no consultants, no mirrors, no excuses. Wait till I make you come so hard you forget his name.”
I came with her name breaking from my lips, my hands gripping her shoulders through the satin, my wedding dress rustling like a promise. The orgasm was sharp, devastating, completely consuming—amplified by the risk, the mirror, the knowledge that I was wearing a dress meant for another man while my stepsister destroyed me inside it.
After, Ava fixed the zipper. Adjusted the lace. Pinned the veil with hands that were steady and sure. She stepped back, looked at me in the mirror, and smiled.
“Beautiful,” she said. “But you’ll look better when it’s on my floor.”
She was right. That night, in my childhood bedroom with our parents downstairs watching a movie, Ava unzipped the dress slowly. She took it off piece by piece—the lace, the satin, the tulle—until I was standing in nothing but the pearl necklace Marcus had given me and the marks Ava’s fingers had left on my waist.
She made me come three more times. On the bed. Against the door. In the shower, where the water couldn’t wash away what we were becoming.
I married Marcus seventeen days later. The dress fit perfectly. Ava stood beside me, holding my bouquet, her fingers brushing mine as she handed it over.
“Something borrowed,” she whispered, so only I could hear. “Something blue. Something that belongs to me.”
The marriage lasted six months. I’m back in my old room now. Ava’s room is next door. The dress is in her closet. And sometimes, late at night, she makes me put it on—just the dress, nothing underneath—so she can take it off me again, slowly, like she’s unwrapping the only gift she ever wanted.
