Chapter 4: Photo booth scene
The brunch was a symphony of polished silver and relieved laughter. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows of the hotel’s grand dining hall, glinting off champagne flutes and the remains of eggs Benedict. The formal tension of the wedding had dissolved into the easy camaraderie of a morning after, stories from the dance floor being traded like currency.
Evie moved through it all like she was wrapped in cellophane. She could smell the lilies on the tables, taste the bitter coffee on her tongue, but everything felt muffled, distant. Except for him.
Liam was holding court at a table near the window, making his mother and aunts laugh with some story about the groom’s disastrous first dance. He looked relaxed, his shirt crisp, his smile easy. But his eyes, whenever they found her across the room, were not easy. They were a dark, unbroken current that pulled at the heart of her, reminding her of the door shaking on its hinges, of his voice in the dark.
She was nursing a Bloody Mary, the spice doing little to settle her nerves, when Mark, an old college friend of the groom, slid into the chair beside her.
“Evie, right? Lily’s legendary best friend.” He was handsome in a safe, familiar way, with a friendly smile. “I heard you’re the graphic genius behind the wedding invites. They were stunning.”
His attention was a warm, normal thing. It didn’t feel like a brand. She grasped at it. “Thanks. It was mostly Lily’s vision, I just made it coherent.”
They fell into easy shop talk about design. For a few minutes, Evie felt almost like herself again. She laughed at one of his jokes, leaning in slightly to hear him over the din.
She didn’t see Liam get up. She just felt the atmosphere shift. A coolness. When she glanced over, he was standing by the buffet, his back to her, his shoulders rigid beneath his shirt. The conversation around him had died.
A slow, dangerous heat spread through her chest. Not fear. Something closer to defiance.
The dares started innocently enough, fueled by mimosas and leftover wedding cake. Someone dared the groom to serenade his new mother-in-law. Then Lily was dared to wear her veil for the rest of brunch.
It was Mark who said it, his voice cheerfully loud. “I think we need to test the limits of this fancy hotel’s photo booth. I dare… Evie and Liam. Five minutes in the booth. No coming out until the strip prints.”
A beat of silence, then raucous approval. Lily clapped, her eyes slightly too wide, a flicker of confusion there. She knew her brother. She knew Evie. But she just smiled, swept up in the game.
Liam turned. His expression was smooth, unreadable. He gave a casual shrug. “If Evie’s not too scared.”
The challenge hung in the air. All eyes were on her. This was the line. She could laugh it off, make an excuse, retreat into the safe, shattered woman she was two days ago. Or she could step into the current.
She stood up, her chair scraping softly. “Scared of you? Please.”
The walk to the alcove off the main hall where the vintage-style photo booth sat felt miles long. The cheers and catcalls of their friends faded into a dull roar in her ears. He held the black curtain open for her, his hand brushing her lower back as she ducked inside. The gesture was polite, proprietary. The door clicked shut.
It was suddenly, intensely quiet. The booth was cramped, a red velvet bench barely wide enough for two. A small screen glowed in the darkness. The air was warm, thick with the scent of his cologne and her own nervous sweat.
“Cozy,” he said, his voice a low vibration in the tiny space.
The first minute passed in electric silence. They stared at the blank screen, listening to the muffled party. She could feel the heat of his leg against hers.
“You and Mark seemed friendly,” he said finally. The words were casual. The tone was not.
“He’s nice.”
“Nice.” Liam repeated the word as if it were an insult. He shifted, turning his body toward her in the confined space. His knee pushed between hers. “You like nice men, Evie? Men who talk about fonts and compliment you politely?”
She turned her head, meeting his gaze. The glow from the screen illuminated the hard planes of his face, the darkness in his eyes. “It was a conversation, Liam. Not a deposition.”
“It looked like a fucking audition.” His hand came up, his fingers closing around her chin, not gentle. “After everything. After last night. After what I did to you in your best friend’s bedroom. You sit there, letting him look at you, making him think he has a chance.”
“You don’t own me,” she whispered, but the thrill in her blood betrayed her.
“The hell I don’t.” His thumb stroked her lower lip, a rough, possessive caress. “You’re still wet for me, aren’t you? I can smell it. That sweet, used cunt smell. It’s all over you.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He pushed her back against the velvet, his mouth crashing down on hers. This kiss was a punishment. It was teeth and dominance and a claiming so absolute it stole the breath from her lungs. She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her hands fisting in his hair, pulling him closer.
He broke away, breathing raggedly. “Five minutes. They’re timing us.”
With brutal efficiency, he shoved her summer dress up around her waist. She wasn’t wearing tights. Just simple cotton underwear. He hooked his fingers in the waistband and tore them down, the sound of the fabric ripping obscenely loud in the small space.
“Liam, wait—“
“No.” He pushed her knees apart, his broad shoulders forcing her legs wide. He dropped to his knees on the floor of the booth, his head disappearing beneath the hem of her bunched dress. “You need a reminder.”
His mouth was on her before she could process it. Not a kiss. A devouring. His tongue licked a broad, rough stripe through her folds, and she jerked, a cry strangled in her throat. He clamped his hands on her thighs, holding her open, pinning her to the bench.
“Quiet,” he growled against her, his breath hot. “They’re right outside.”
Then he ate her with a single-minded intensity that bordered on violence. His tongue was relentless, circling her clit, then plunging deep inside her, fucking her with it. He used his lips, his teeth, grazing the sensitive nerve with a precision that made her back arch. She stuffed her fist into her mouth, biting down on her knuckles to keep from screaming. The pleasure was a searing wire, pulled taut, threatening to snap her in two.
He knew her body already, intimately. He found the rhythm that destroyed her, his tongue flicking hard and fast over her clit while his fingers, two thick digits, pushed up inside her, curling, stretching, finding a spot that made her vision whiten.
“You taste like mine,” he muttered, his voice thick and muffled against her. “Fuck, you’re dripping all over my face. This is my pussy. Say it.”
She was beyond words, reduced to a shuddering, gasping thing. She could hear the party, a happy, normal sound just beyond the curtain. Lily’s laugh. The clink of glasses. And here she was, in a public photo booth, being eaten raw by her best friend’s brother, her body betraying her with every pulsing wave of pleasure.
“Say it,” he demanded, sucking her clit hard between his lips.
“Yours,” she sobbed, the word a shattered thing. “It’s yours, Liam, please—“
The orgasm hit her like a systemic shock. It tore through her, silent and convulsing, her hips bucking against his merciless mouth. He held her through it, drinking her down, his tongue prolonging the spasms until they were a sweet agony.
As she floated back, boneless and trembling, he rose. He loomed over her in the dark, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes were wild, triumphant. He was painfully hard, the outline of his erection straining against his trousers.
The screen in the booth suddenly flared to life. A cheerful, digital countdown began. 10… 9… 8…
They were out of time.
He pulled her torn underwear up, his hands surprisingly deft, then smoothed her dress down. He sat back on the bench, pulling her against him just as the first flash exploded.
The camera captured it: her face, flushed and dazed, lips swollen, eyes glazed. His face, a mask of satisfied calm, his arm around her shoulders, holding her close. In the second flash, she managed a shaky smile. In the third, he turned and pressed a kiss to her temple, a gesture of devastating tenderness after the carnage. The fourth flash caught her looking at the camera, but her expression was utterly transformed. Unrecognizable.
The strip whirred out of the slot. Liam took it, glanced at the images, a faint, dark smile touching his lips. He tucked it into his inner jacket pocket.
“A souvenir,” he said.
He drew the curtain open. The light and noise of the brunch rushed in. They stepped out, blinking. A few people glanced over, smiling, expecting goofy pictures.
Lily bounded over, her smile bright but her eyes searching Evie’s face. “Well? Let’s see the damage!”
Liam slid his hand into Evie’s, his fingers lacing through hers, a display for the crowd. A claim.
“Maybe later,” he said, his voice carrying, easy and light. “Some moments are too good to share.”
He led her back to the table, his thumb stroking the inside of her wrist, a secret rhythm. Evie sat, the taste of blood where she’d bitten her knuckles still on her tongue, the furious, wonderful ache between her legs a constant, throbbing truth. She looked at the sunny room, at her best friend’s happy, questioning face, at the man beside her who had just marked her in the most primal way imaginable.
The line was gone. She had not just stepped over it. She had let him obliterate it. There was no path back to what she was. There was only the terrifying, electric freefall into what he was making her.