Seven Groomsmen from Hell Page 8

  “Anna!” I screeched and she looked down at me, but kept jumping. “What the hell are you doing? What’s wrong?’

  Anna stopped jumping and brought herself down to sit on the edge. Her eyes were puffy and red and there were pale streaks down her cheeks where her tears had washed away her makeup, lined by black from where her mascara had run.

  “This is a mistake,” she whimpered. “I’m making a huge, huge mistake.”

  “What?” I said. I walked over and knelt down in front of her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Khloe, I can’t do this. I can’t get married. I can’t be someone’s wife. What was I thinking? Do you have any idea what it means to be a wife? Like a wife wife? I’m going to have to cook and clean and push babies out of my vagina!” Anna started to breathe faster and faster, and within a few seconds I could see she was hyperventilating.

  I bolted out of the room and grabbed the paper bag that contained some condoms I decided to buy from the gift stop, and ran back into the room. I handed the bag to Anna, pushing it against her mouth.

  “Anna,” I started calmly. “You have to calm down. Breathe into the bag. Listen to my voice and breathe in,” the bag crinkled as Anna breathed in, “and breathe out,” the bag puffed out as Anna blew air into it. “In… and out.” Anna’s breathing started to return to normal, although her face was still flushed and red. “Good job. Just continue to breathe and let me talk, okay?” Anna nodded with the bag still crunching as she breathed into it. “You love Kent, more than anything in the world. You talk about it nonstop, it’s so annoying.” Anna giggled and pulled the bag away from her face, sniffling in as a few fresh tears streaked down her face. “I remember when you two first started dating, I’d never seen you that happy. Now you guys are getting married, and I’ve never seen you this happy.”

  Anna nodded. “Yeah.”

  “And you don’t cook or clean,” I said.

  Anna shook her head. “I don’t.”

  “And Kent knows that about you and proposed to you anyway!” I said.

  “He did!” Anna said, sending even more tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “It’s because as much as you love him, he loves you,” I finished and Anna’s grin grew.

  “He does love me. So much,” she said. “I do want to have cute babies with him.”

  “And you will, and I will be their aunt who spoils them and sugars them up and sends them home,” I joked.

  Anna wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug. I hugged her back and it filled my cup to overflowing. I remembered why I became a wedding planner, because I loved seeing true love first hand, and I loved seeing people happy, most of all my best friend. I used my thumbs to wipe the tears off of Anna’s face and then grabbed my makeup bag and handed it to her.

  “Now go fix yourself, you look ridiculous.” I winked and Anna gave me a kiss on the forehead and then stood up and disappeared into the bathroom.

  As I waited, I realized that I’d become a wedding planner because I loved seeing true love first hand, but I’d never experienced it for myself. I’d never had someone love me the way Kent did Anna. I’d always wondered what it was like. When I thought about the situation with the guys, it made me wonder if there was any room in an arrangement like that for true love and happiness, or was it bound to crash and burn?

  I saw Anna off to relax at the Spa and clear her mind from the breakdown she’d had and then I decided to head down to the beach. I hadn’t really gotten to enjoy it the first time around because I was so stressed about Luke and the other groomsmen, but now that the situation with them was totally different, I could actually kick back and enjoy the wind and the water. I didn’t put on my bathing suit, because I had no intentions of getting back in the water, but I grabbed a book to read and enjoy under one of the provided beach umbrellas.

  I was just settling into my book when someone came and sat on the edge of my lounge chair. I looked up and Bram was sitting there smiling back at me. His looks were understated. The kind that made you think from a distance that he was just a plain, attractive enough guy, but the closer he got to you, the more you could see his cut jaw and mysterious, gray eyes. He was actually quite beautiful.

  “Enjoying a book by the water?” he greeted.

  “I am,” I responded. “Managed to pull away from your buddies?”

  He chuckled. “You’re not the only one who enjoys some quiet time every now and again.”

  I marked my place in my book and set it aside. I wondered if Brett was really on the mark when he said that all the guys wanted me. Inquiring minds want to know; is Bram the accountant mixed up in all this sharing business as well?

  “What’s your relationship with all these guys? You don’t seem like them,” I asked.

  Bram seemed slightly taken aback, but also intrigued. There was a twinkle in his eyes that made it very clear that he was attracted to me as well. His gaze scanned my form meticulously, as though he was trying to memorize it. I took his body in as well. It was clean, but ripped. Even through his t-shirt, his biceps bulged out of the sides, and his calves were defined and sharp. I couldn’t help but think that he’d have no problem holding me up. He could probably do all kinds of stuff with me.

  “Kent hired me to drag him from the brink of financial ruin,” Bram started. “He’s a smart guy, but he’s not good with money. Thank god Anna is. The first thing I’m doing once those two are legal is getting all of his assets transferred into his name.”

  “Not a bad idea,” I said, knowing Anna had a degree in Economics and was stellar with numbers and money.

  “He was so convinced that I was going to be this stuffy guy, that when he realized I wasn’t he wouldn’t let it go. Apparently he bragged to all of his friends that he’d met 'the only cool accountant’ and when they didn’t believe me, he made me go out with them to prove it,” Bram continued. “I actually got along with them really well, we had a lot in common, so they kept me. When they discovered that my romantic life was basically me hiring prostitutes whenever I had the chance, they decided to introduce me to their concept of sharing women for mutual pleasure. I loved it.”

  I continued to exchange stories with Bram over lunch and ended up enjoying his company much more than I thought I would. Surprisingly, he was something of a romantic, and told me all about how he would enjoy falling deeply in love some day, the same thing I’d just been reflecting on earlier that morning. He told me that he wasn’t an easily trusting guy, so it had been hard for him to fall in love at all. He hoped that someday he would form a close enough bond with someone that he would actually feel comfortable letting his guard down and being open to love. In that instant I oddly hoped that I might be that person, and the perk to his smile told me that he hoped so too.

  “So, did you just hate us all as subsets of Luke?” he asked after a while.

  “Of course not,” I responded even though it was an out and out lie. “I mean… Not entirely.”

  Bram laughed. “If not for Luke, would you have disliked me?”

  I thought about it for a second even though I knew the answer. “Honestly, no. You two were so close that I thought you probably shared his attitude towards me.”

  “Well, I do,” Bram admitted. “It’s just not as sinister as you thought at first.”

  “Right,” I replied. “I was wrong about Luke, so I guess that means that I was probably wrong about all of you.”

  In an instant, Bram was across the table and had his lips on mine. As he parted ways from me, he offered me a warm, sincere grin. “Maybe that means that you need to give all of us a try.”

  I nodded back at him. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  16

  Cody

  The rehearsal dinner

  I glanced at myself in one of the floor-length mirrors in the hallway outside the rehearsal dinner space. It wasn’t wedding time just yet, but I still dressed up for the occasion. I was in a pressed, navy blue suit with a light gray shirt and pocket square. I had my dark hair
slicked back and had my light goatee shaved down and clean for the wedding. I pressed my jacket down, making sure I looked as good as I could, and then I entered the hall.

  There weren’t many people in Puerto Rico for Kent and Anna’s wedding, by design. They wanted it to be small and understated, so it was just close friends and immediate family. Only a handful of the guests for the wedding weren’t at the rehearsal dinner, which was just made up of Kent and Anna’s parents, Kent’s grandmother, Khloe, and us groomsmen. I walked in and noticed that Luke was on one side of the room murmuring to himself, probably practicing his best-man speech, and another scan revealed Khloe was clear on the other side of the room from him. There was a light hue to her face, and her eyes were darting everywhere but at him. She looked nervous, but not the ‘I hate these guys’ way she was typically acting, more like she was trying to hide a true nature.

  On occasion, I would catch Luke glancing over at Khloe and a warm smile would cross his face. He would lock eyes with Khloe for a moment and then she would look away, but more in a coy way than frustrated. As the dinner proceeded, I noticed that a couple of the other guys, Brett and Bram, were making eyes at Khloe too. When her gaze would land on them, they would wink or smile at her, and she seemed receptive to it. She didn’t seem as shy about them as she did about Luke, but things had definitely changed.

  Son of a bitch, she slept with Luke. She slept with Luke and Brett and Bram know. Luke had earned ‘The First One’ fair and square, but we swore we would wait until after the wedding. My blood boiled, but in both a good and bad way. If Luke had broken the rules, the rest of us could as well… right? Brett and Bram were probably already planning their ways to rack up some points.

  Once the dinner was over, Khloe immediately slipped out of the hall. I glanced around at the rest of the guys and when I was confident no eyes were on her or me, I followed after her. I noticed her some distance down the hallway, leaning against the wall and fanning her face. I approached her with a grin on my face, zeroing in on her like a shark to bloody waters.

  “You bolted out of there like the police were looking for you,” I said.

  Khloe looked up at me and then rolled her eyes. “Leave me alone.”

  Ouch. Things seemed better with Luke, Brett, and Bram, but evidently that had not yet passed to me. “Well that’s not very nice.”

  “I just wanted to get some air,” she said.

  I looked around and then back at her. “You do realize we’re still inside, right?”

  Khloe scoffed. “I didn’t realize that, thank you, now go away.”

  I stepped even closer to her until I could put a hand against the wall on one side of her head. “I will not. At least not until you tell me how things went with Luke.” Khloe opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “No, he didn’t tell me, I’m a doctor, I know the signs of sex.” I used a finger to flick a piece of her hair aside. “Besides, there’s a hickey on your neck.” Khloe’s hand flew to a spot on her neck and I let out a loud laugh. “There’s no hickey, but you confirmed my suspicions, so thank you for being utterly predictable.”

  Khloe’s eyes narrowed at me and she looked as though she was ready to chop my head off. “Why do you always do that? Why do you have to look down on me and make me feel stupid and insignificant?”

  I recoiled a bit. I had no idea she felt that way. I had just assumed that we were all guilty by association with Luke, it was a shock to find out there was an actual reason she disliked me. “I didn’t know I was doing that.”

  “All the time. I get you’re a doctor and super smart, but I’m smart too, and there’s no shame in an atypical career path. Just because I’m a wedding planner doesn’t mean my job is any less important than yours,” she spat at me.

  I blinked a few times and then bowed my head. “N-no, I would never suggest that. I honestly did not realize I was making you feel that way. I’m sorry.” Khloe looked up at me with annoyed disbelief, but I held up my free hand and set it to her cheek. “Truly. I didn’t mean to make you feel stupid or insignificant. I believe quite the opposite to be true about you. Truthfully, I just don’t think I learned how to flirt with women or really impress them in any way.” I looked around and then leaned in a little more. “That’s why I became a doctor. It tends to impress on its own.” Unless, of course, the woman was Khloe, a perpetually difficult to impress kind of woman. “I’m still stuck in the preschool, pull a girl’s pigtails, stage of flirting. I’m sorry.”

  Khloe’s expression softened a bit. “That’s okay. I don’t think you’re the only guy in this group who thinks that’s the best way to flirt.”

  I thought of Luke and smiled. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well.” I looked into her eyes. “Since I’m not good with indirect, I’ll go with direct. I’m attracted to you. I have been attracted to you for a long time, but if you just want to be with Luke, I’ll back off, but we all want you.”

  Khloe gazed into me, the expression of curiosity shackling me to her space. “Luke told me the same thing,” she admitted. Her lip curled between her teeth. “Is it wrong for me to want all of you too?”

  In terms of a green light, that was all I needed. I pressed Khloe against the wall and let my lips find hers. She grabbed my waist and pulled me against her, and I wasn’t about to deny her any closeness. I pushed against her until my rapidly hardening dick was poking at her, and laced my tongue into her mouth. Hers danced with mine, while Khloe herself snuck a hand between us and started to massage my dick through the fabric of my pants. I grabbed onto her breasts through her dress and started to squeeze and knead them myself, loving the way I needed to take them into full fists. She was a well endowed woman, and I had every intention of glorifying her breasts as much as they deserved. I was a breast man after all; it was only right.

  Khloe moaned against my lips and I smiled realizing she had sensitive breasts. I imagined getting her nipples between a set of clamps, or wrapping some rope tightly around her boobs until they were red and begging for attention. I had plans for them, and god willing, some of those plans would be acted on before we left Puerto Rico. I pushed my knee forward, and Khloe didn’t hesitate. She started to rub herself against my leg, and I felt relieved that I had gone with black for the night.

  “Damn!” Khloe and I looked over and David had stumbled his way out of the party and happened upon us. “Looks like the real fun is out here. You keeping her all to yourself Cody, or could you two use a spare set of hands?”

  I pulled myself back from Khloe and stepped to the side. I pinned her hands above her head and she didn’t argue as David moved forward, clawed his hands up her legs and slid her thong off. He brought it to his nose and took a huge inhale and then he shoved them into his pocket. He dropped down to his knees in front of her, lifted one of her legs over his shoulder, and then his head disappeared beneath the skirt of her dress. A moment later Khloe let out a loud yelp.

  “Shh,” I said. “Someone will hear you.”

  I closed in on her and kissed her again, swallowing her moans as they left her mouth in a steady stream. I popped the top of her strapless dress down and started again at playing with her tits. I took her nipples between my fingers and pinched them, eliciting even louder moans from Khloe. She’d be a good bondage partner one day.

  She melted apart in our hands as David and I worked together to pleasure her inside and out.

  17

  Mason

  The wedding

  I was doing my best to appear really excited that someone else was getting married. I was happy for Kent, but a wedding was a wedding. There was one thing that helped. Khloe looked stunning in her peach colored, strapless dress with a ruffled skirt that stopped just above her knees. Her hair was curled half up/half down and she looked good enough to eat. All I could think about was that the wedding was nearly beyond us, which meant we could officially start making our bids for points once Luke made the first move. I expected everyone else to be in the same mode, but Luke and a few of th
e other guys seemed oddly at ease. In fact, the more I looked around, nearly all of them were at ease. Maybe it was just knowing it was almost over?

  When it was finally time for the wedding, we all paired off. Because Anna only had one bridesmaid, Khloe, the guys were set to walk down the aisle in pairs, with Luke and Khloe leading the way as the Best Man and Maid-of-Honor. Luke was a lucky son-of-a-bitch to get to walk with her, but I was expecting Khloe to be in low-spirits that she had to be anywhere near him at all. To my shock, however, she looped her arm through his with ease, and even had a bright smile on her face.

  What the fuck was going on?

  I looked over at Christian, and he seemed par for the course, but all the rest of the guys were behaving as if they’d just won the lottery. We got in line to prepare to walk down the aisle, and Christian was paired up with me.

  “Hey,” I whispered to him. “Are you seeing anything weird? Khloe doesn’t seem as full of contempt as normal and some of the other guys are on cloud nine.”

  Christian shook his head. “I think it’s just the wedding vibe,” he said. “Khloe’s probably so happy she pulled it off without Luke fucking it up, that she’s actually being pleasant to him.”

  “Hm,” I responded. It didn’t seem right. Luke and Khloe weren’t acting at all towards one another as they normally would. Something was up.

  I had to put my suspicions aside as the wedding got underway. The ceremony was beautiful. Kent stood before a marshmallow white arch intertwined with vines and a pink and white calla lilies, with the magnificent Puerto Rican sunset as his backdrop. A pink runner led the way to the arch, and Kent and Anna’s family and closest friends sat amongst a couple of dozen chairs on either side of the runner. Anna’s cousin initiated the ceremony by playing live violin, and then Luke and Khloe were off down the aisle. After they went, Cody and Bram went, and they actually linked arms to be a little cheeky, and then David and Brett went after them. Finally, it was up to Christian and I, the last ones to walk the aisle before the bride.