Maid of Honor | NEON LIT

Tomorrow I marry Emma Chen.

Beautiful Emma. Sweet Emma. The girl I've been dating for three years, the woman who said yes when I got down on one knee in her parents' garden, the love of my life who's currently passed out in the bridal suite after too much champagne at the rehearsal dinner.

I should be in bed too. Should be resting up for the biggest day of my life.

Instead, I'm in the hotel bar, nursing a whiskey, trying not to think about her mother.

Grace Chen is everything her daughter isn't.

Where Emma is petite and delicate—a hundred pounds of china-doll perfection—Grace is substantial. Fifty-one years old, two hundred and thirty pounds, with curves that make me forget how to breathe. Her hair is dark with threads of silver, her face lined with life, her body wrapped in a silk dress that clings to every swell and hollow.

She's been looking at me since the day we met.

And I've been looking back.

It's wrong. I know it's wrong. I'm marrying her daughter tomorrow. In eighteen hours, I'll stand at an altar and promise to forsake all others. Grace will be there, in the front row, watching me pledge myself to her child.

But right now, she's sliding onto the barstool beside me.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asks.

Her voice is low. Intimate. Nothing like the polite tones she uses at family dinners.

"Pre-wedding nerves."

"Mmm." She signals the bartender, orders a martini. "Emma's out cold. Champagne always hits her hard."

"I know."

"You know a lot of things about my daughter." The martini arrives. She takes a slow sip, watching me over the rim. "You know how she takes her coffee. What makes her laugh. How to touch her when she's sad."

"I love her."

"I know you do." Her hand lands on my thigh. Warm. Deliberate. "But that's not what I'm asking."

"What are you doing, Grace?"

"Giving you a choice." She doesn't remove her hand. If anything, it slides higher. "Tomorrow, you become family. Tomorrow, this—" She gestures between us. "—becomes impossible. But tonight, you're still just the man my daughter is dating. Tonight, we're still just two people in a bar."

"Two people who shouldn't—"

"Shouldn't what? Want each other?" Her laugh is soft. Knowing. "I've seen how you look at me, Daniel. At holidays, at dinners, at the engagement party when you thought no one was watching. You look at Emma like you love her. You look at me like you want to devour me."

My throat is dry. My cock is straining against my slacks.

"Even if that were true—"

"It is true. And I want you too." Her hand finds my erection, squeezes gently through the fabric. I gasp. "I've wanted you since the day Emma brought you home. Spent two years imagining what it would feel like to have you inside me. And now—" She leans closer, her breath warm against my ear. "—we have one night. One chance. Before we become what we can never undo."

"This is insane."

"Probably." Her lips brush my earlobe. "But you're hard as a rock, Daniel. And I'm wet enough to ruin this dress. So why don't we stop pretending we're going to make the right choice, and make the one we actually want?"

Her hotel room is two floors above Emma's.

I shouldn't be here. Every step through the lobby, every second in the elevator, every moment standing in her doorway while she unlocks the door—I have chances to stop. To walk away. To be the man Emma deserves.

I don't take any of them.

The door closes behind us.

Grace turns to face me, and in the low light of the hotel room, she's devastating. That silk dress, straining across curves I've spent two years pretending not to notice. That face, half-shadow and half-smile. Those eyes, dark and hungry and absolutely sure of what she wants.

"Last chance," she says. "You can still walk away. Tell yourself this was a moment of weakness. Go back to your room, sleep it off, marry my daughter tomorrow with a clear conscience."

"And if I stay?"

"Then we do what we've both been fantasizing about." She reaches for her zipper. "And we never speak of it again."

The dress falls.

She's naked beneath.

No underwear, no pretense, just her—all two hundred and thirty pounds of her, soft and heavy and more beautiful than anything I've ever seen. Her breasts are full and pendulous, nipples dark and already hard. Her belly is round and marked with stretch marks—from carrying Emma, I realize, and the thought makes this even more fucked up.

Her hips are wide. Her thighs are thick. And between them, she's glistening with want.

"Well?" She stands there, unashamed, letting me look. "Is this what you imagined?"

"Better." The word comes out rough. "God, Grace, you're—"

"I'm old. I'm fat. I'm your fiancée's mother." She moves toward me. "And you want me anyway."

"More than I've ever wanted anything."

"Then stop talking." She reaches for my belt. "And show me."

I show her.

I kiss her like I've been starving for it—because I have. Two years of polite hellos and appropriate cheek-kisses, two years of pretending I didn't want to push her against the wall and taste every inch. Now I'm tasting, and she's sweet and hot and nothing like her daughter.

She strips me with practiced hands. My jacket, my shirt, my pants—all of it gone while her mouth devours mine. When I'm finally naked, she wraps her hand around my cock and squeezes.

"Fuck."

"That's the idea." She pushes me onto the bed, climbs on top of me. "I've been dreaming about this for two years, Daniel. Dreaming about what it would feel like to have something young and hard inside me. My husband's been dead ten years. There's been no one since."

"No one?"

"No one worth this." She positions herself over me. "No one I wanted enough to risk everything."

She sinks down, and I enter her, and the world goes white.

She rides me like she's trying to exorcise demons.

All that weight pressing down on me, all that flesh bouncing and swaying above me. Her breasts swing heavy in my face, and I catch one nipple in my mouth, suck hard, make her cry out.

"Yes—that's it—don't stop—"

I don't stop. I grip her hips—sink my fingers into soft flesh—and thrust up into her while she grinds down. We find a rhythm that's brutal and perfect, our bodies slapping together, sweat slicking our skin.

"I've wanted this so long," she gasps. "So fucking long—"

"Me too. God, Grace, me too—"

"Don't think about tomorrow. Don't think about Emma. Just—fuck me—just this once—"

I flip us over. Pin her beneath me. Drive into her with everything I have, watching her face contort with pleasure, feeling her thick thighs wrap around my waist and pull me deeper.

"Harder."

I give her harder. Give her everything. Give her the two years of wanting that I've been burying every time I sat across from her at Sunday dinner.

When she comes, she bites my shoulder to muffle the scream.

When I come, I whisper her name like a prayer.

We lie in the wreckage of her hotel bed.

The sheets are twisted. The pillows are on the floor. My cock is still softening inside her, and neither of us has moved to change that.

"This was a mistake," I say.

"Probably."

"I'm marrying your daughter tomorrow."

"I know."

"I love her."

"I know that too." Grace traces a finger down my chest. "This doesn't change that. This was—" She pauses. "This was goodbye. To the version of us that could have been, if circumstances were different."

"And now?"

"Now you go back to your room. Sleep. Wake up tomorrow and marry Emma with a clear conscience." She looks up at me, and there's something soft in her eyes—something almost sad. "And I'll sit in the front row and watch, and I'll never tell a soul."

"Can you do that? Pretend this never happened?"

"I've been pretending for two years." Her smile is bittersweet. "What's one more lifetime?"

I slip out of her room at 4 AM.

The hallway is empty. The elevator is silent. I make it back to my floor without seeing a single soul.

At 2 PM, I stand at the altar and watch Emma walk toward me.

She's beautiful. Perfect. Everything I ever wanted.

And in the front row, her mother watches us with dry eyes and a secret burning between us that will never see the light.

Two years later

Emma is in the kitchen, humming to herself while she cooks dinner. Our daughter is napping in the nursery. Life is good—stable, happy, everything I dreamed of building.

The doorbell rings.

I open it.

Grace.

She's older now—fifty-three, a few more lines, a few more silver strands. Still the same body. Still the same eyes.

"Emma invited me for dinner," she says.

"I know."

We stare at each other. Two years of silence. Two years of family dinners and holiday visits and never, not once, acknowledging what happened.

"How are you?" she asks.

"Good. Happy."

"I can see that." Her smile is warm. Genuine. "You're a good husband, Daniel. A good father."

"Thank you."

She steps past me into the house, and her hand brushes mine. Just for a second. Just long enough to remind me.

I close the door.

And I go back to my life—the good life, the right life—with a secret buried so deep it might as well never have happened.

But sometimes, late at night, when Emma's asleep beside me, I remember.

The weight of her.

The taste of her.

The one night we allowed ourselves to be wrong.

And I wonder if she remembers too.