Straight Bridesmaid, Bent Vows
Sapphic Bi-Awakening Romance
by Aurora North
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Pairing: FF (Sapphic)
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Bi-Awakening, One Bed, Forced Proximity, Wedding Romance, Best Friend’s Sibling, Praise Kink, Slow Burn
She kissed the groom’s sister. The wedding is Saturday. The only way out is through.
Claire Powell has spent twenty-nine years being the perfect friend, the perfect daughter, the perfect straight girl. She’s the maid of honor with a binder, a timeline, and a smile that never slips. She’s never questioned the life she’s been performing — not seriously, not out loud, not where anyone could hear.
Rae Ellison is the groom’s openly queer sister — tattooed, sharp-tongued, and quietly in love with Claire since the engagement party two years ago. She has a rule about straight women: don’t. She’s been broken by one before. She won’t do it again.
When a room mix-up at the Outer Banks wedding house forces them to share one bed for seven nights, the accidental spooning, late-night porch confessions, and one devastating kiss that Claire can’t take back start a chain reaction that threatens to blow up the friendship, the wedding, and everything Claire thought she knew about herself.
But Rae refuses to be anyone’s secret. And Claire has to decide — before the ceremony — whether she’s brave enough to choose desire over safety, honesty over performance, and the woman sleeping next to her over the life she’s been pretending to want.
You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
✅ Bi-awakening sapphic romance with maximum heat
✅ One bed + forced proximity during wedding week
✅ Best friend’s sibling with two years of secret pining
✅ A heroine who discovers herself and a love interest who finally gets chosen
✅ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Graphic, explicit, emotional heat (five full scenes)
✅ Laugh-out-loud banter and ugly-crying tenderness
✅ HEA guaranteed
⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic FF scenes), strong language, bi-awakening themes, identity anxiety, and depictions of compulsory heterosexuality. Intended for readers 18+.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter One: The House
The house smells like salt air, sunscreen, and someone burning toast.
I pull into the gravel driveway behind Sophie’s parents’ Volvo, kill the engine, and sit for exactly five seconds doing the thing I always do before a high-stakes social event: I inventory myself. Hair — down, beachy waves, acceptable. Outfit — white linen pants, fitted sage tank, gold hoops. Expression — warm, capable, ready. I’m the maid of honor. I have a binder in my passenger seat with color-coded tabs, a garment bag hanging from the oh-shit handle, and an emergency kit in my trunk that includes everything from double-sided tape to a travel steamer to Advil to a tiny bottle of whiskey labeled BREAK IN CASE OF BRIDEZILLA.
I’m ready.
I’ve been ready for six months, since Sophie called me at eleven p.m. on a Tuesday, shrieking so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear, and said the words I’d been waiting for since freshman year of college: He proposed, Claire, he proposed, will you be my maid of honor, say yes, say yes, say yes.
I said yes.
Of course I said yes. I’m the girl who always says yes.
The Outer Banks house is gorgeous in a slightly weathered, old-money way — three stories of cedar shingles and wraparound porches and windows that catch the last of the afternoon sun. There are seven bedrooms, a kitchen the size of my apartment, and a view of the ocean from the second floor that probably costs more per night than I make in a week. Drew’s parents rented it for the whole week. “A proper wedding week,” his mom said. “None of this fly-in-fly-out business.”
I grab the binder and my duffel and head for the front door, which is propped open with someone’s flip-flop.
Inside, chaos.
Sophie’s cousin is trying to wrangle a golden retriever that apparently wasn’t supposed to be here. Two groomsmen are arguing about the best way to set up a cornhole board on uneven ground. Drew’s mom is unpacking groceries with the focus of a woman who has opinions about cheese. Luggage is piled in the entryway like a barricade.
“Claire!”
Sophie barrels into me before I can put my bags down. She’s tan and glowing and her ring catches the light as she throws her arms around my neck, and I hug her back with the full force of thirteen years of friendship.
“You’re here, you’re here, oh my god, I’ve been dying. The florist called and the ribbons are wrong, they’re ivory and I ordered champagne, and I know that sounds insane but they’re completely different colors, Claire, they’re —”
“I’ll handle the ribbons.”
“You will?”
“Sophie. I will handle the ribbons.”
She sags against me like I’ve just offered to donate a kidney. “I love you. I love you so much. You’re my favorite person on this planet.”
“I thought Drew was your favorite person on this planet.”
“Drew is my favorite person to marry. You’re my favorite person to survive on.”
“Soph.”
“Yeah?”
“This is a one-bed room.”
“Right. You’re sharing with Rae.”
I turn to look at her. “Rae.”
“Rae Ellison. Drew’s sister.” Sophie says this like it’s the most obvious room assignment in the world. “She’s not a bridesmaid, so I couldn’t put her in the bridesmaid room, and she doesn’t know the groomsmen well enough for the bunk situation, and she can’t go with Drew’s parents because she told his mom she’d rather sleep in the car, which — honestly, fair. So it’s you two.” She beams at me. “You’ve met her. You’ll be fine.”
I have met her. Three times, technically. Drew and Sophie’s engagement party. A family dinner at Thanksgiving. A birthday brunch where she showed up forty minutes late in a leather jacket with charcoal on her fingers and said, “Sorry, I was drawing” like that was a perfectly normal excuse for an adult human.
She’s Drew’s younger sister. Twenty-seven. Freelance artist or designer or something. She has short dark hair and tattoos and a nose ring and she’s — I know she’s queer. Sophie mentioned it once, casually, the way you mention someone’s job or their dog’s name. “Rae’s gay, or bi, or — I forget what she calls it. She dates women. She’s great.”
And now we’re sharing a queen bed for a week.
“This is fine,” I say, because it is. I’m a twenty-nine-year-old professional. I’ve shared beds at bachelorette parties and on group vacations and once, memorably, with my college roommate Natalie during a snowstorm when the heat went out and we —
I don’t finish that thought.
“It’s totally fine,” I say again, dropping my duffel on the right side of the bed. I always take the right. “When does she get here?”
“She said ‘later.’ Which with Rae could mean six p.m. or midnight. You know how she is.”
I don’t, really. But I nod like I do.
Rae Ellison walks in behind it.
She’s wearing cutoff jean shorts and a black tank top and beat-up white Converse, and her dark hair is pushed back off her face like she’s been driving with the windows down. She has sunglasses hooked in the neck of her tank. A leather cord around her wrist. The tattoo I’ve seen pieces of before — the half-sleeve on her left arm, flowers and geometry, ink and skin — is on full display, and I notice it the way I notice art in a gallery. Objectively. Appreciatively.
Objectively.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says to no one in particular and everyone in general. “There was a thing with a bridge.”
Her gaze sweeps the room, landing on people in quick succession — Drew’s mom gets a wave, Sophie gets a hug, Sophie’s cousin gets a nod — and then she sees me.
“Claire.” She says my name like she’s confirming something. “We’re roommates, apparently.”
“Apparently.”
“Fair warning: I steal covers.”
“Fair warning: I have a very specific pillow arrangement.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “This is going to be fun.”
Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
The Ceiling Fan — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon
Three months later, Claire and Rae return to the Outer Banks rental house. Same room. Same bed. Same ceiling fan. No wedding party. No one down the hall. And this time, nothing is quiet.
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