My eyes swung over to Felipe and then back at my fiancé. “Roland. You can’t be serious. I don’t even know him.”
“Does that matter to you right now? Only seconds ago you wanted a threesome with him.”
I clamped my mouth shut, taken aback by his blunt response.
Roland opened the door and peered back at Felipe, who was standing in the middle of the room, clinging to his camera. “I’ll be back with that ice soon.”
The door closed behind him, and I had no idea what the hell to make of what’d just happened. Was he fucking around? Was he serious? Was he testing the both of us?
My head was spinning, my mouth tacky and tongue thick. I climbed off the bed and went for the wine bottle, pouring myself another and guzzling it down.
“Roland is crazy.” Felipe huffed a laugh, sitting in the chair Roland was in only seconds ago. “We’ll just wait for him to come back. He’s had too much to drink. He’s not thinking straight.”
“He won’t come back,” I stated, pouring myself another glass.
Felipe placed his camera down on the table next to him. “Is this a trap or something?”
“Let’s just keep taking pictures,” I instructed, turning with my wineglass. “Come on. Stand. Pick up your camera.”
Felipe stood, but not without a frown. He was in a sticky situation and I had no idea why Roland was allowing this, but he had a point. I wasn’t fully kidding about the threesome. In fact, I would have worshipped Roland for the rest of my life if he’d said yes to it in that moment. Having sex with a man I loved and a complete stranger at the same time. It was a fantasy of mine that I’d told him about often, one he said would probably never be fulfilled because he never wanted to see another man touch me.
I wasn’t ever going to be with another man again. It was only going to be Roland for the rest of my life and that haunted me in a way.
Roland forever.
Only. Roland.
The words from my childhood rattled in my head: You dirty fucking slut. You nasty bitch.
I shook the thoughts away, throwing my arms up and posing for more pictures. Felipe kept shooting. I kept drinking and drinking, drowning myself in alcohol, trying hard not to think of the past—of what this moment really reminded me of—until my actions weren’t my own.
Before it could register to me, I was pushing Felipe down in the chair in the corner again, taking his camera out of his hand, and placing it down on the table beside us. I wanted to own this moment—prove that it was mine and mine alone. That I was in charge. That this was my decision, not Roland’s or anyone else’s.
I kissed him, and kissing him felt good—reminded me of the past, back when I could kiss whoever the hell I wanted, whenever I wanted, no commitments. Back when my sexuality had peaked, and when I’d prided myself in the number of men I could make weak in the knees.
Felipe didn’t resist my kisses, and he damn sure didn’t resist when I dropped to my knees and told him to lower his pants. When we both climbed on the bed, lip-locked, gripping and grasping each other’s hair, he finally caved in to the moment.
Roland didn’t come back at all that night. I didn’t see him again until the next day, when I was walking up to the altar in the private ballroom of the hotel. Roland’s mother was there, and Dylan, who I didn’t really know so well at the time, and his agent. Felipe was there with his camera, snapping photos, but I pretended he didn’t exist because this was a new day, and I’d had my fill of him, and now I belonged to Roland. Only Roland.
Forever.
“Why did you let that happen last night?” I asked when we shared a dance beneath the stars, gliding on the marble balcony of an expensive hotel.
“Because now you can’t say I didn’t give you a night to do whatever you wanted with no regrets. Now you can only want me.”
“What did you do last night?”
“I went to my room and tried my hardest not to think about it, which was impossible, might I add.”
“Roland . . . you should have asked me first before bringing him there.” I stopped dancing to look up at him.
“It’s what you wanted, Melanie. You’ve always wanted an extra man around. You’ve been talking about threesomes since I met you. I wanted you to get whatever you needed out of last night and be done with it. And I can trust Felipe not to say a thing. Plus, we’re in Vegas and whatever happens here . . . well, you know the rest.”
“Why would you marry me if you feel like that?”