Chapter 9
Roman
I enter the bungalow and quietly place the items I’ve brought back for Iris from the hotel’s breakfast buffet—muffins, fruit, bacon, and coffee—onto the kitchen counter. From there, I creep into the bedroom to see if Sleeping Beauty has awakened yet, but nope, she’s still dead to the world.
When Iris initially crashed last night, I went to the hotel bar for a couple hours to watch the basketball game.
I figured Iris would be awake when I got back and ready for round two, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Iris was still fast asleep when I got back.
And so I sat on the couch in the bungalow and scrolled on my phone.
Finally, when my eyelids got too heavy to stay open, I crashed on the couch, feeling a bit disappointed for my own horny self but also genuinely happy for Iris to get the rest she obviously needed.
Man, Iris really must have let loose with her friends the night before coming here.
Or maybe her friend cancelling on her at the last minute is the larger culprit—the real reason for her bone-deep exhaustion.
If that’s the case, then good for Iris for going outside her comfort zone to come here by herself.
Man, I’m itching to slide into that bed with Iris now, eat her out, and ask her to stay the whole week with me.
Why not? She’s got nowhere to go, and I’ve got nothing on my calendar but golf with Coach Hardy on Friday.
It’s not every day a guy has supernatural sex out of nowhere, and what better way to distract me from my current stressors than enjoying a scorching-hot fling in paradise?
Fuck it. I’ll do it—I’ll invite Iris to stay here with me. But I won’t wake her up to do it. I’ll let the poor girl sleep.
My mind made up, I scribble a quick note on a hotel notepad: Going out for a run. Left breakfast for you in the kitchen. I leave the note on the nightstand next to Iris, grab my earbuds and running shoes, and quietly slip out the bungalow door.
About an hour later, just as I’m finishing a pleasant jog along the shore, my phone buzzes with a text from Cameron.
When Iris slipped into the shower yesterday, I nabbed her driver’s license from her purse and sent a photo of it to Cameron with a request for a background check.
Nothing too detailed, I wrote to Cameron.
Just make sure she’s the sweet preschool teacher she appears to be.
I’m not going to win any awards for restraint in this situation, obviously, since I went ahead and fucked Iris before getting the results back from Cameron.
But considering the raging boner I had for my bungalow crasher by the time she slipped into the shower last night, not to mention the buzz I had going from those rum punches, I’m amazed I was clearheaded enough to do any due diligence at all.
Cameron: Iris Eugenie Benedetto. Age 26.
Preschool teacher at St. Luke’s Preschool in Denver, Colorado, for almost the past four years.
No criminal record. Strong credit score.
Graduated from UCLA, summa cum laude, with a degree in childhood development & psychology.
Won a bunch of Podunk regional horse-riding competitions as a teenager throughout Washington and Oregon.
All in all, I’d say she’s squeaky clean and a refreshing change from your usual, other than the one glaring exception which you can find at the link below.
Watch the video right fucking now and then call me ASAP.
And whatever you do, don’t fuck her, Roman!
I’m flabbergasted.
Is sweet, shy, angelic Iris Benedetto a porn star?
I begin typing a reply to Cameron with anxious fingers, asking him where the fuck is the fucking link to the video he’s referenced, but before I’ve pressed send on the message, a link magically appears underneath Cameron’s text for a video entitled, “Horny Runaway Bride Destroys Cheating Groom on Wedding Day.”
Horny Runaway . . . What?
My breathing shallow, I click on the video, and there she is. Iris. Looking breathtakingly beautiful in a traditional white bridal gown. She’s in a church—standing with a guy in a suit who’s clearly her groom, while bridesmaids and groomsmen stand on either side. What the fuck? Also, when the fuck?
My heart thrumming, I check the date on the video and my pounding heart stops on a dime.
That can’t be. If that date is accurate, then Iris was a bride mere days ago—on the same day Marco married Nicola.
Could it be this is an older video that only got uploaded the other day?
Either way, it’s already got over a million views in a matter of hours.
I click to start the video, and Iris the Bride says to her groom, “You’ve always been so much better with words than me, Brandon, so I’m going to use some of your own words to express myself now.
” She pulls out a cell phone from her bra, making everyone in attendance titter and chuckle at her cuteness.
Unlike everyone else, however, the groom doesn’t titter or chuckle. On the contrary, the second he sees the phone in Iris’s hand, he looks downright panicked.
“Where’d you get that?” he blurts. “Iris, wait. Stop. Give me that.”
The groom attempts to grab the phone out of Iris’s hand, but she whirls around and holds the device to her chest like a running back protecting the rock. In a flash, two men dressed in suits—an older gentleman and a young, fit dude—flank Iris and warn the groom to keep his distance.
“That’s not mine!” the groom shouts to the crowd, pointing at Iris. “Whatever she’s about to say—”
“It’s Brandon’s secret burner phone!” Iris shouts above him, holding up the device. “I found it last night in Brandon’s toiletry bag, and—”
The person behind the camera recording, or maybe someone sitting very close to them, asks, “Is this a joke?,” so I can’t hear whatever Iris says next.
Nor can I hear the groom, who’s throwing up his arms and saying something to the two men in suits.
A moment later, however, I’m able to hear Iris again, at which point she’s saying, “. . . a text to a woman identified in his contacts as ‘Allison with the Big You-Know-Whats.’”
A collective gasp rises up in the church, and the groom lunges at Iris again, this time shouting, “I swear, that’s not my phone!”
The two men in suits physically restrain the groom while two feisty bridesmaids leap into action and stand in front of Iris, creating a human barrier between bride and groom.
“You know it’s yours, Brandon!” Iris shouts. “Besides all the photos in all your dating profiles, I recognize all the photos of your privates you sent to countless women!”
A collective gasp. Chaos surrounds the person taking the video. A young man from the audience races up to help the two guys in suits. It’s sheer pandemonium.
“That’s enough!” the pastor booms. “Whatever’s happening here, it’s going to stop right now.”
The young, fit man in a suit who first leaped into action with the older one yells, “Not till Iris says her piece! Go on, Iris! We’ve got him.”
Visibly trembling, Iris faces the crowd, her beautiful face ablaze. “Brandon wrote to ‘Allison with the Big You-Know-Whats,’ and this is a quote: ‘I’m so horny for you, baby, I practically bleep in my pants whenever I think about bleeping you!’”
The church erupts like Iris set off an atomic bomb—so much so, our trusty cameraperson loses control of their phone for a moment, causing the scene to bobble and whirl.
“And to ‘Katarina from da Strip Club,’” Iris screams in the background of the whirling, bobbling video. “And yes, he wrote ‘da’ in place of ‘the.’ He wrote—” The scene stabilizes again. “‘I got out of my meeting earlier than expected, baby, so get ready to gag on my bleep!’”
“Enough!” the pastor shouts. “Let go of Brandon and stop this right now!”
Whoever’s recording zooms in on Iris’s face at this precise point, just in time to capture an expression of such unadulterated, homicidal fury, my skin breaks out in goosebumps at the sight of her.
Holy shit. She’s practically engulfed in flames up there.
It’s heartbreaking to see. I genuinely feel terrible for her.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit she’s also hot as hell.
Add Iris Benedetto looking like a murderous maniac to my list of kinks.
There’s a flurry of chaotic shouting in the church, and in the midst of that, Iris defiantly holds up the phone to the crowd, like she’s showing them a photo or video.
I can’t make out her screen, unfortunately, but whatever’s on it makes a woman in the front row scream like she’s been stabbed in the heart.
“How dare you bring that filth into the House of Lord!” the officiant shouts. “John, get your disgrace of a daughter out of here.”
Iris is the disgrace—not her cheating, lying, dick-pic-sending fiancé? That’s rich.
I’ve no sooner had the thought when one of the feisty bridesmaids shouts exactly what I’m thinking, in so many words, while the older man in a suit—Iris’s father, obviously—shouts, “The only disgrace is what Brandon did to my beautiful, kindhearted daughter!”
Iris shoots a look of gratitude at her father before shouting to the crowd, “If you’re one of Brandon’s clients, check your bank records! There are weird bank notifications on this phone, too!”
“She’s mentally unstable!” the groom shouts, pointing frantically at Iris. “She’s having a mental breakdown, just like her mother did!”
Oh, shit. Iris’s father loses it. With the other two guys still holding onto the groom, he stomps over to him and punches the bastard in the face, at which point pure mayhem ensues.
I shouldn’t do it, since I’m genuinely heartbroken for Iris, but I can’t help laughing at the chaotic scene unfolding before me.
No wonder this shit is going viral. It’s impossible to look away.
“Screenshots of everything have been posted to my Instagram!” a bridesmaid shouts, as she and another two bridesmaids lead a sobbing Iris toward a side door. “Check it out before it gets deleted!”
With her bridesmaids flanking her, Iris shouts, “Anyone who supports me, come to the reception to celebrate me not becoming Mrs. Brandon Gladstone today!”
“I never wanted to marry you!” the groom screams back. His cheek is bright red from the punch he took. His eyes are wild. “My parents made me propose to you, but who would want to marry a frigid bitch like you?”
Iris was just about to walk through that side door when the groom dropped his final bomb.
But now, without warning, she whirls around and sprints at full speed toward the groom, screaming with furious rage and flailing both arms. Luckily for the groom, one of the groomsmen intercepts Iris’s rampage.
He picks her up, kicking and screaming, literally, and physically drags her toward the side door again.
“Don’t you dare get on that flight tomorrow!
” Iris shouts to the groom. “I’m going on our honeymoon by myself to try to heal from all the lies you’ve told me!
” She grips the doorframe, halting the groomsman’s exit long enough to scream at the top of her lungs, “And when I get to Hawaii, guess what this ‘frigid bitch’ is gonna do, Brandon? She’s going to get herself ‘railed’ and her insides ‘scrambled’ by some random hot stranger—someone who actually knows what he’s doing in bed, unlike you, so I can finally—”
Iris doesn’t get to finish her sentence before the groomsman wrangling her successfully loosens her grip on the doorframe and yanks her out the side door.
For several seconds, chaos reigns in the chapel. Until, finally, the screen goes black and the video ends.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, looking up from my phone in a daze. No wonder Iris needed so much sleep last night. Mere hours before she crashed into that bathroom, she got provoked into flying into a homicidal rage, mere hours after getting her poor heart shattered into a million tiny pieces.