Chapter 10: The Wedding Night Redux
The air in the suite was still, thick with the scent of vanilla candles and the dry, mineral hint of chilled vodka. Six weeks. The time felt both vast and insignificant, like a scar that had healed shiny and tight but still pulled when she moved a certain way.
Weiss stood barefoot on the deep sapphire rug, the city lights of Vale a silent, glittering audience beyond the window. The white lace of her bridal lingerie was cool against her skin. It had been expensive, French, chosen with a flutter of traditional excitement. Jaune had never seen it. That detail felt important now, a foundational lie she built upon weekly.
“God, look at you.” Coco’s voice was a warm, approving scrape from the plush velvet armchair where she lounged, a crystal tumbler dangling from her fingers. She hadn’t taken off her sunglasses or her beret. She never did. “It’s even better than I imagined. The virgin sacrifice, but corrupt. I love it.”
Weiss didn’t blush. That reflex had been burned out of her in this room, over these weeks. She felt a distant thrum of anticipation, a low current under her skin. She kept her eyes on Ren.
He stood by the mahogany bar, rolling a heavy glass paperweight between his palms. His dark hair was loose tonight, falling around his shoulders. He wore simple black trousers and nothing else, the candlelight gilding the lines of his torso. His calm was absolute, a deep pool her chaos could splash into without causing a ripple.
“Well?” Coco prompted, setting her glass down with a click. She rose, circling Weiss with a curator’s eye. Her finger traced the lace strap on Weiss’s shoulder. “The ceremony’s over. The sacrament begins. Ren?” She stopped behind Weiss, her hands settling on Weiss’s hips. Her chin came to rest on Weiss’s bare shoulder, her voice a whisper in her ear. “What’s the first thing you want to do to her?”
Ren set the paperweight down. The soft thud was final. He crossed the room, his movements fluid and silent. He stopped so close Weiss could feel the heat radiating from his skin, could smell the clean, soap scent of him layered over something darker.
His amber eyes held hers. There was no smile, no performative lust. Just a terrifying focus.
“I want to take her apart,” he said, his voice quiet and even. “Piece by piece. Until she forgets her own name.”
A shiver, clean and sharp, went through Weiss. Not fear. Recognition.
Coco laughed, a low, delighted sound. She pressed a dry kiss to the side of Weiss’s neck. “See? Poetry.” Then she sank gracefully to her knees before Weiss, her hands sliding up the backs of Weiss’s thighs. She looked up, her sunglasses reflecting the twin images of the flickering candles. “He’s so good with words when he tries.”
Coco turned her head and pressed her mouth against the inside of Weiss’s thigh, just above the knee. Her lips were warm. The sensation was shockingly intimate, a claiming. Weiss’s breath hitched. Her gaze never left Ren’s.
He reached out. His fingers didn’t go to the delicate lace between her legs, where Coco’s breath was now a hot promise. Instead, they hooked under the thin strap of her bodice, on the side opposite Coco. He tugged, just once. The fragile lace didn’t rip, but the message was clear: this was an unraveling.
“Jaune called me today,” Ren said, conversationally.
The world tilted. Weiss’s composure cracked. “What?”
Coco stilled, her lips pressed against Weiss’s skin.
“He wanted to know if I thought you seemed happy,” Ren continued, his finger tracing the line of her collarbone. “He said you’ve been distant since the honeymoon. Preoccupied. He thinks it’s stress from the merger at your father’s company.”
Weiss’s heart was a trapped thing in her chest. Jaune’s voice, sincere and worried, echoed in the silent space Ren’s words had created. She saw his open, trusting face. The guilt she was supposed to feel was a theoretical concept, a ghost at the feast. What she felt was irritation. An intrusion.
“What did you tell him?” Her voice was tighter than she wanted.
“I told him you’ve always been intense. That passion often looks like distance to those who don’t know how to read it.” Ren’s hand slid down, over the lace covering her breast, his thumb passing slowly back and forth. “I told him he should take you away for a weekend. Somewhere quiet.”
The absurdity of it, the vicious cleverness, hit her. Ren, orchestrating her cover story with her husband, his best friend, while his lover knelt at her feet. The layers of the betrayal were so thick she could almost feel their weight.
Coco chuckled against her thigh. “You’re a monster.” She sounded admiring.
“I’m practical,” Ren corrected. His other hand came up, cradling Weiss’s face. “He believes it. He’s planning a trip to the countryside. You’ll need to act surprised.”
Weiss swallowed. The part of her that was still the Schnee heiress, the strategist, saw the brutal efficiency of it. The other part, the one that had emerged in a hallway during her own bachelorette party, was simply, wildly aroused by the control he exerted, over her, over Jaune, over the entire fragile fiction of her life.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Good.” He leaned in and kissed her. It was deep and proprietary, a seal on the conspiracy. When he pulled back, his eyes had darkened. “Now, forget your name.”
Coco’s mouth found its destination, hot and knowing. Weiss cried out, the sound muffled against Ren’s shoulder as he pulled her against him. He held her up as Coco worked, her hands gripping Weiss’s hips, her techniques unhurried and expert. Pleasure, sharp and bright, began to arrow through Weiss, blotting out thought, memory, everything.
Ren’s mouth was at her ear. “Forget his name, too.”
He guided her backward until her knees buckled and she fell onto the bed, its crimson satin cool and shocking. Coco followed her down, a sleek predator, not breaking contact. Ren watched for a moment, then knelt on the bed, his hands pushing Weiss’s thighs wider, giving Coco more room. He was the conductor.
Weiss was dissolving, coming apart under Coco’s tongue and Ren’s gaze. The orgasm that tore through her was wordless, a white-noise scream in the silent cathedral of her mind. She trembled, blind.
When she surfaced, Coco was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, a smug smile on her lips. Ren was positioning himself between Weiss’s legs. He entered her in one smooth, relentless motion. There was no gentleness, only possession. This was the taking apart.
He moved with a hard, driving rhythm that shoved her up the satin sheets. Coco curled beside them, one hand playing over Weiss’s stomach, the other toying with her own underwear, watching. The intimacy of the shared gaze, of being so openly observed in the throes of betrayal, was its own kind of violation. Weiss clung to it.
“Whose are you?” Ren grunted, his voice strained for the first time.
She couldn’t speak. He thrust harder, deeper.
“Say it.”
“Yours,” she gasped, the word a broken thing. It wasn’t true, not in any real world, but in this candlelit bubble, with his body pounding the reality of her marriage into the bed, it was the only truth left.
He came with a harsh shudder, his head dropping to her chest. For a long minute, the only sound was their ragged breathing. Coco traced idle patterns on Weiss’s damp skin.
Ren finally pushed himself up. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable. He reached over to the nightstand, picked up his phone, and tapped the screen. He held it out to her.
It was open to a text thread with Jaune. The last message, sent twenty minutes ago, read: You’re right. Just booked the Forest Lodge for next weekend. She’s gonna love it. Thanks, man.
Weiss stared at the screen, at her husband’s grateful punctuation. The fullness inside her felt suddenly cold.
Ren took the phone back. “You should text him back,” he said, his voice flat, already moving towards the bathroom. “Tell him you had a long bath and went to bed early. It’s what he’d want to believe.”
The shower turned on. Coco stretched like a cat, then swung her legs off the bed. “Drink?” she asked Weiss, as if nothing had happened.
Weiss lay still, the lace on her body torn, her skin imprinted with their hands, her mind scoured clean. She had forgotten her name. She had forgotten his. All that remained was the shape of the lie, and the terrifying freedom of having nothing left to lose.