One Night Stand with My Stepdad

Elena’s POV

The ivory silk of my wedding dress was supposed to represent a beginning.

In exactly seven days, I was scheduled to walk down the aisle of St. Jude’s Cathedral to marry Julian. We had been together for five years. Five long, quiet years of polite family dinners, scheduled phone calls, and a relationship so sterile it felt more like a business merger than a romance.

I wanted to surprise him. I had picked up the final tailored fit of my gown early, and instead of heading straight home, I had the cab drop me off at his luxury townhouse. I had my own key, a quiet privilege I rarely used.

The house was deathly quiet when I stepped inside. The air was thick, carrying the faint, heavy scent of expensive cologne—but it wasn’t Julian’s usual cedarwood. It was something sharper, musky and unfamiliar.

“Ah… God, Julian…”

The sound shattered the silence. It was a low, breathless gasp, vibrating through the floorboards from the half-open door of the master bedroom.

My breath caught in my throat. My heart gave a violent, painful stutter. A woman. He had brought a woman into our bed. Clutching the garment bag tightly against my front, I forced my numb legs to move toward the hallway. I wanted to scream, to tear the door off its hinges.

But as I pushed the door open just an inch further, the words died in my throat. My entire world tilted on its axis.

It wasn't a woman.

In the center of the bed, under the dim, amber glow of the bedside lamp, were two men.

Julian—my clean-cut, perfectly composed fiancé—was entirely naked, his face flushed and his hands gripping the headboard. Kneeling behind him was a tall, heavily built man with dark skin and a tribal tattoo stretching across his shoulder blades.

I couldn't move. My boots felt like they had been cemented to the floor.

“Julian,” the stranger murmured.

“Yes… Damon,” Julian whispered, his voice thick with a passion I had never once heard from him.

Seeing them together felt like a physical knife twisting in my chest, but what hurt the most was the sheer, agonizing contrast of what I was witnessing.

Five years. We had been together for five years, and our sex life had been an absolute joke. Every single time we climbed into bed, it was the same clumsy, rushed routine. He would roll onto me in the pitch dark, barely touching me, and thrust desperately for a minute—maybe two, if I was lucky—before collapsing and rolling away. I had spent half a decade convincing myself that he was just stressed, that he had performance anxiety, or that some men just didn't have stamina. I had spent years feeling undesirable, wondering what was wrong with my body.

But watching them now, the truth laid itself bare in the most humiliating way possible.

Julian wasn't bad in bed. He just didn't want me.

With this man, Julian was completely different. His face held an openness and desire I had never seen directed at me. They were so absorbed in each other that the world outside that bedroom seemed not to exist.

And they hadn't even noticed me.

Then, Damon's dark eyes flicked toward the doorway.

His expression changed. His eyes widened slightly as they locked onto me, standing there with my mouth half-open, tears finally spilling hot and fast down my cheeks.

"Julian," Damon muttered, his voice gravelly as he pulled away and reached for the silk robe at the foot of the bed. "We have company."

Julian blinked, dazed and flushed, before turning his head. When his gray eyes found mine, there was no panic. There was no immediate rush of guilt or shame. He slowly sat up, resting his forearms on his knees, completely unbothered by his nakedness.

"Elena," he said, his voice flat, almost annoyed. "You should have knocked."

"Julian..." My voice was a broken whisper, a pathetic, ragged sound. "What... What is this? Who is he?"

Damon wrapped the silk robe around his waist, though he kept his gaze on me with a cold, mocking amusement.

"This is Damon," Julian said, standing up and pulling on his boxers with agonizing calmness. He didn't rush to me. He didn't reach out to comfort me. He stood by the bed, his posture rigid and defensive. "And you need to calm down. You're overreacting."

"Overreacting?" A hysterical laugh bubbled up in my throat, choking me. I threw the garment bag onto the floor, the pristine white silk of my wedding dress spilling out onto the dusty hardwood. "You are fucking a man in our bed! We are getting married in seven days, Julian! You’re a lie. Your entire life is a lie!"

"Watch your mouth, Elena," Julian hissed, his eyes narrowing. "I am not a liar. I am a businessman, and I have a reputation to uphold. Damon is my partner. He has been my partner long before my mother forced me to look at you."

The words felt like a physical blow.

"Your partner? You used me! You used me as a cover-up so you could keep playing the straight, perfect son while you—"

"Enough!" Julian stepped forward, his voice rising, cutting me off with a chilling authority. "Damon is ten times the partner you could ever hope to be. He doesn't demand my time, he doesn't whine about emotional connections, and he actually knows how to satisfy me. You? You're a chore, Elena. A trophy I have to display to keep my family happy."

Damon let out a soft, mocking chuckle from the bed, crossing his arms.

"Don't take it personally, sweetheart. Some men just require a firmer touch than you can provide."

The disrespect, the sheer, disgusting arrogance of it, broke something inside me. The sadness vanished, replaced by a blinding, scorching wave of rage.

"You disgusting, pathetic excuses for men," I spat, marching toward the bed. My eyes locked onto Damon's smug face. "You think you can mock me? In the house my family helped pay for?"

I raised my hand, my fingers curling, pouring every ounce of my betrayal and fury into a swing aimed directly at Damon's sneering jaw.

But I never made contact.

Before my hand could connect, Julian’s hand shot out. His fingers clamped around my wrist like a steel vice, halting my swing mid-air. The grip was so tight my bones ached.

"Don't you dare touch him," Julian growled, his face twisted in a sneer.

Before I could even process the threat, Julian’s other hand swept across the air.

CRACK.

The force of his palm striking my cheek echoed through the bedroom. The impact spun my head violently to the side, my knees buckling as the sharp, burning sting of the slap radiated across my face.

But he wasn't done. Before I could even recover from the shock or pull away, his hand whipped back in the opposite direction.

CRACK.

My head snapped back the other way as he slapped me across the face a second time, the double impact sending me crashing hard against the floor.