Mafia Boss’s Arranged Bride by Bella King

Chapter 20

Annika

My bones are frozen to the point I’d fear they’d snap like icicles if someone were to push me to the floor. My nipples stand at such tall peaks that the skin hurts as it’s desperately pulled up higher and tighter.

I place my arm over my bare breasts, slightly crossing my legs over my shaven mound to hide it from Nikolai as he enters. I wanted it to look nice for Michail should he see it on the wedding night, but I doubt at this point he’ll be seeing it at all. Nikolai is receiving that pleasure. I wonder if he cares.

“I need something to wear,” I say as his eyes sweep me.

“There’s a towel right there,” he says, his eyes flashing up to a dirty rag that hangs over the metal pipe that doubled as a showerhead just moments ago. It’s so crisp and stiff that even when I pull it off the pipe, it maintains its rounded shape.

Nikolai’s expression apologizes to me even though he keeps his mouth closed. He watches me in silence as I attempt to pat the cold droplets of water off my shivering body with the stiff rag, his eyes wandering over me, exploring me without shame.

“You’re not very respectful, are you?” I say, turning away from him slightly so that he can’t see me run the rag over my pale tits, making my nipples even firmer from the roughness of the fabric.

“I don’t have to be,” he replies.

“You should be,” I say, looking over my shoulder at him. His eyes have now found my ass, and it’s as though he’s cupping it and squeezing it, pulling it apart to look at parts of me he shouldn’t see without even touching me.

I close my legs tighter, so hard that my knees ache, but I’m the one who invited him in. I’m confused as to whether I want him to see me like this, or I want to be left alone to mourn the wedding that was never allowed to flourish the way that it should’ve.

“You can wear this,” Nikolai says, unbuttoning his wrinkled white shirt and thrusting it out to me as a peace offering.

I smile at him as I take it, attempting to show that I’m thankful for what he’s done for me, even if he’s from the side that committed such a horrible atrocity. I haven’t been granted enough time to process it yet, and perhaps that’s why I don’t hate Nikolai. He’s still a hazy cloud of uncertainty, floating just out of emotional reach from me.

Placing his shirt over my shoulders, I find that it falls well past my thighs, the wrinkled hems brushing my knees as my fingers fight the cold numbness that has soaked into them to button it properly.

Nikolai watches, saying nothing but admitting everything with those bright green eyes. From the beginning, part of me knew that he was interested in me, but I wasn’t sure if it was as a curious spectacle or… something else.

I failed to see a point in the latter before when I was to be wed to Michail, but now Michail isn’t here. His blank, doll-like face doesn’t try to look at me and start conversations that I don’t wish to have. It’s just Nikolai, and that’s admittedly much more palatable.

We leave the closet bathroom, walkup to the loft, and slip into a shipping container that’s been outfitted to fit an old mattress, a coffee table, and a small lamp. There’s only one thin sheet covering the mattress, and it’s bitterly cold already.

“It’s been a long fucking day,” Nikolai says as he lays across the mattress, taking up the entire thing with his massive frame. His eyes run up the shirt I’m wearing, and I know that he can see underneath, yet I do nothing to stop him.

“It has been long, but for some reason, I don’t feel tired,” I say.

“Trauma,” he replies, brushing the hair from his eyes and pulling them away from my thighs. “That will keep you up for years. If you haven’t experienced it before, be ready to develop some bad habits because of it. That shit will twist you into a whole different person.”

I’m already changed, shrugging off my old and innocent self for one without a family or a home to go back to, hiding out in a gritty and hopeless place with a man who should be my enemy. If this is how the changes begin, I don’t want to imagine how they will end. What kind of a woman can I be when the world has been so crass?

I sit down on the mattress, tucking my shirt between my knees to keep it from riding up my thighs and exposing myself to Nikolai again. I can’t help but imagine that he enjoys it, but at a time like this, it’s sick to want something so selfish. Both of us are sick, I guess.

“It’s just so unfair, you know? Everyone is just… gone,” I say.

I turn to Nikolai, seeking comfort in the serious sharpness of his facial features, the calmness that shouldn’t exist in a man who has witnessed death. Tears form in my eyes, and suddenly I’m trembling again, but not from the cold. I can sense that very soon, I will be inconsolable, potentially unreachable until I’m able to begin processing today’s events.

Nikolai sits up, wrapping his arms around me and soaking me in his fiery warmth. Instantly I feel safer, able to bury myself in his chest and sob uncontrollably. My tears bleed across his skin, still mixed with the mascara I was unable to rinse off in the mirrorless shower.