Chapter 8: The Rehearsal Dinner
The Grand Hotel ballroom was a symphony in white and gold, a vision of pre-wedding perfection that felt, to Weiss, as fragile as the champagne flute she was holding too tightly. Thousands of pale roses dripped from crystal chandeliers, their scent cloying and sweet, mixing with the warm wax of countless candles. The air vibrated with the polite murmur of fifty guests, the clink of fine silver, and the distant, insistent thrum of her own heartbeat.
She was seated at the head table, a place of honor that felt like a dock. Jaune was to her left, radiating a happy, untroubled warmth as he chatted with his uncle. To her right was Ren.
His presence was a quiet static against her skin. He wore a tailored navy suit, his hair sleek in its low ponytail. He was listening politely to Winter, who was detailing, with surgical precision, the flaws in the hotel’s security detail. But his knee, beneath the floor-length ivory tablecloth, was a hair’s breadth from Weiss’s thigh.
Jaane stood, tapping his knife gently against his glass. The room hushed. His smile was wide, earnest, slightly clumsy in its affection. “So, um. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the lucky guy.”
Polite laughter rippled through the room. Weiss smiled, the expression feeling plastered on.
“I just wanted to say how grateful I am to everyone for being here,” Jaune continued, his voice gaining strength. “For all the support. And to Weiss.” He turned to her, his blue eyes shining. “You make everything make sense. I can’t wait to be your husband.”
It was a perfect, guileless toast. It should have melted her. Instead, it crystallized the cold knot in her stomach. As the room raised their glasses in a collective “Aww,” and a soft clatter of applause began, she felt a shift in the atmospheric pressure beside her.
Ren’s hand settled on her knee.
The touch was through the thin silk of her emerald-green dress, but it burned like a brand. His palm was warm, his fingers splayed. Absolutely still. A claim. Weiss’s breath hitched. She focused on the rim of her glass, bringing it to her lips with a hand that threatened to tremble. The champagne was acidic, biting.
As Jaune sat back down, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to plant a sweet, champagne-wet kiss on her cheek, Ren’s hand began to move. It was an imperceptible slide, an inch up her thigh. The silk whispered. Her muscles tensed, locked. She was trapped between her fiancé’s public affection and her lover’s private invasion. The duality was dizzying, a cocktail of shame and raw, illicit thrill.
“You okay?” Jaune murmured in her ear, mistaking her tension for emotion. “That wasn’t too sappy, was it?”
“It was perfect,” she whispered back, the lie smooth and automatic. She placed her free hand over Jaune’s on her shoulder, even as she pressed her legs together, trapping Ren’s questing fingers in the heat between her thighs. He stopped moving. But he didn’t withdraw.
The dinner passed in a surreal blur of courses and conversation. Ren participated when addressed, his voice calm and even. His hand remained a constant, maddening weight. He would retreat an inch, only to advance two, his fingertips now brushing the hem of her underwear. Weiss navigated talks about floral arrangements and honeymoon itineraries while her core throbbed in time with the subtle, circling pressure of his thumb.
Later, as a jazz trio began to play, Jaune led her to the dance floor. He held her close, his cheek resting against her hair. “This is it,” he sighed, content. “Our last night before the real deal.”
Over his shoulder, Weiss’s eyes scanned the room. They found Ren. He was not alone.
He was dancing with Ruby.
Ruby’s head was tilted back, laughing at something Ren had said. He spun her, the skirts of her simple black dress flaring, and she nearly stumbled into him, giggling. The sound was bright, untarnished, a bell in the smoky room. Ren’s hands were correct on her back and waist, his posture formal, but his head was bent toward hers, listening intently. He smiled. It wasn’t his usual faint ghost of a expression; it was a real, engaged smile.
A sharp, acrid heat flared behind Weiss’s ribs. It wasn’t jealousy, not precisely. It was a violent sense of displacement. That’s my secret, she thought, the clarity of it startling her. That look, that attention… that’s part of the game he plays with me. Seeing it directed at Ruby, with such easy charm, made the secret feel cheapened. Stolen.
“I need some air,” she said abruptly, pulling back from Jaune. “Just a moment. The champagne.”
“Sure thing.” He kissed her forehead, blissfully unaware. “Don’t get lost.”
She wove through the tables, the laughter and music now feeling assaultive. She pushed through the heavy ballroom door into the relative quiet of the opulent hallway. It was lined with antique mirrors and potted ferns, lit by sconces casting a dim, golden glow. She leaned against a wall of flocked velvet wallpaper, cool against her bare shoulders, and closed her eyes.
The click of a door closing. Footsteps on marble, measured and quiet.
She didn’t need to open her eyes to know it was him.
“Leaving the party early, Schnee?”
She looked. He was leaning against the wall opposite her, ten feet away, hands in his pockets. The picture of casual detachment. “I needed a break from the performance,” she said, her voice cooler than she felt.
“You seemed to be performing just fine. The blushing bride-to-be.”
“And you seemed quite engrossed in your dance partner.”
His eyebrow lifted a fraction. “Ruby? She’s easy to talk to. Enthusiastic. Not a lot of subtext.”
The casual dismissal of Ruby’s complexity, the echo of Coco’s clinical assessment from a different hotel room, ignited something in Weiss. “Is that the requirement? No subtext? Makes the seduction more efficient?”
He pushed off the wall and closed the distance between them in a few silent strides. He didn’t touch her, just caged her in, his arms planted on the wall on either side of her head. The scent of him—soap and something faintly spicy—wiped away the cloying rose.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” he asked, his voice a low murmur. “Seducing her?”
“I think you’re following a protocol.” She held his gaze, refusing to blink. “I just don’t know if I’m the objective or ambient noise.”
His calm facade cracked for a second, a flash of something dark and possessive in his amber eyes. It was the most honest reaction she’d ever gotten from him. It was more intoxicating than any champagne.
“You have never been noise,” he said, the words final.
Then his mouth was on hers.
It was nothing like the kiss from the party. That had been a masked stranger’s conquest. This was a claiming. It was hard and hungry, all suppressed tension unleashed. Weiss gasped into it, her hands flying to his shoulders, gripping the fine wool of his suit. He tasted of whiskey and danger. One of his hands fisted in the silver-white hair at the nape of her neck, tilting her head back. The other slid down her side, over her hip, and grabbed a handful of her dress and thigh, hiking the silk up in a rough, urgent motion.
Cool air hit her bare skin. His fingers, clever and demanding, slipped beneath the lace edge of her underwear. She cried out against his mouth, her body arching off the wall. He swallowed the sound, his kiss turning brutal. He found her wet and ready, and a low groan vibrated from his chest into hers. He worked her with relentless, knowing strokes, the heel of his palm grinding against her as his fingers delved inside.
“Here?” she panted, breaking the kiss, her forehead against his. “Someone will—”
“Let them.” His breath was hot on her lips. His movements grew sharper, focused. “Let them see the bride come apart on her wedding eve. Let them see you’re mine.”
The words, the blatant ownership, combined with the expert violation of his touch, shattered her. Her climax was a silent, violent convulsion, her teeth sinking into the fabric of his suit jacket to stifle her scream. Her legs buckled, and he held her up, pressing her into the wall as she shook.
As the waves subsided, leaving her trembling and hollowed out, he slowly withdrew his hand. He brought his fingers to his lips, never breaking eye contact, and tasted her. The act was so obscenely intimate it made her flush burn hotter.
From around the corner, the sound of the ballroom door opening again. Giggling. Ruby’s voice, bright and close. “I just need to find a bathroom, I think I had too much punch!”
Weiss froze, panic icing her veins. Ren, however, didn’t flinch. He smoothly leaned in, as if to nuzzle her ear, using his body to block her from view of the hallway junction. His hand discreetly smoothed her dress back down.
“Breathe,” he whispered, his voice perfectly steady. “Smile.”
Ruby’s footsteps pattered closer. She rounded the corner and stopped, her silver eyes going wide. “Oh! Weiss! Ren! I, um… am I interrupting?”
Ren turned his head just slightly, offering Ruby that same engaged smile from the dance floor. “Not at all. Weiss was just feeling a little faint. Wedding nerves.”
“Right!” Ruby clasped her hands, her concern immediate and genuine. “Oh wow, are you okay? Do you need water? I can get Jaune!”
“No!” Weiss said, too quickly. She forced a laugh, hoping it didn’t sound as deranged as it felt. “No, I’m fine. Really. Ren was just… helping. Thank you, Ren.”
“Anytime,” he said, his gaze lingering on her for a beat too long before shifting back to Ruby. “The bathroom is just down there on the left, Ruby.”
“Thanks!” Ruby gave a little wave, her eyes flickering between them with a dawning, confused curiosity before she hurried off.
The moment the bathroom door clicked shut, the air thickened again. Weiss stared at Ren, her chest heaving. He reached out and with a startling tenderness, used his thumb to wipe a smudge of her lipstick from the corner of her mouth.
“Go back to your fiancé, Weiss,” he said softly, the command in his voice undeniable. “Finish the performance. I’ll be watching.”
He turned and walked down the hallway, away from the ballroom, without a backward glance. Weiss slid down the wall slightly, her legs still unsteady. She could hear the muted jazz, Jaune’s likely worried voice asking where she’d gone. She could still feel the ghost of Ren’s touch, the sting of his kiss, the saccharine sound of Ruby’s laugh.
Pushing herself upright, she straightened her dress, smoothed her hair. She practiced the smile in one of the gilded mirrors. It looked convincing. It looked bridal.
She walked back toward the music, the taste of him and the secret they’d just forged still burning on her tongue.