Mafia Boss’s Arranged Bride by Bella King
Chapter 5
Annika
In
In my poorly-acted state of ambivalence toward my future husband, I overheard our parents discussing details of the wedding. Neither Michail nor I are involved in the planning at all, save for the few trips to venues and boutiques where my mother has so generously invited me to accompany her.
Yet again, I feel robbed. The wedding itself is unnecessary, as the marriage alone is the missing piece that is supposed to maintain our alliance. The wedding is a pageant for both families to show off their status to anybody who would dare to encroach into their combined territories.
It’s a symbol of power, a sham that’s pushing together a much older man with a woman who has barely gotten the chance to enjoy her adulthood. There is so much I haven’t been able to do that I won’t now that I’m marrying Michail.
The wedding feels more like it’s to be a funeral, laying to rest my freedom and independence.
My mother has always lamented how underwhelming her wedding was as poor immigrants coming to the States from Russia with hardly two bags of clothes between them. I can certainly admire how they’ve both thrived since then, but I picture myself crying as I hold a bouquet of white calla lilies, my mother’s favorite.
This wedding isn’t for me. It’s for my mother, but I agreed to it.
Michail rises from his little crow’s nest in the corner of the room and approaches me. My heart skips two beats, and my mouth suddenly burns like I’ve eaten a poisonous berry.
I’ve always been an anxious person, but at this moment, I wish for nothing more than to crawl out of my skin and under the carpet where nobody can see me or force me to exchange niceties.
“Annika,” he begins, his voice low but clear and smooth like glass. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come say hi. I drank a bit too much before I got here,” he says, hiding his hands in his pockets. His face tells me that he regrets opening his mouth and telling me that he got too drunk, probably terrified of being scolded by his parents.
He should be the one in power if he’s to marry me, but he sulks around like he’s afraid of his father. Maybe I should be marrying him instead.
“It’s fine,” I say lamely. “I don’t think there’s any right way to talk to someone in our situation.” I’m sickened by my sudden vulnerability.
Michail sits next to me, too close for me to feel comfortable but too far for me to feel intimate and warm with him. “Annika Ivanova,” he begins again. “How does that name sound to you?”
The name is beautiful, of course. But the name is not suited for me at all. Annika Ivanova is the name of a Ukrainian mafia boss’s spoiled daughter, someone who has never wanted for anything but suffers terribly from being the star in the movie that is her life. I have always considered myself a quieter, more academic type.
Michail places his hand over mine. My first instinct is to peel myself away from him, apologies and excuses spilling from me as I would have done to a stranger at a bar. How else should I respond? I do not know this man. He is an interloper in my home and, soon, my life.
“I’ll be back,” I say under my breath, careful to slowly slip my hand out from under his as if I regret to take it away in the first place. I walk quickly down to the bathroom on the far side of the penthouse, not the half-bath off the kitchen where everybody will be watching and waiting for me.
I lock the door behind me, letting out a sigh of relief the second the bolt blocks anyone else from coming in. I’m alone, and it feels divine.
What’s wrong with me? I might not be the most socially adept person I’ve ever met, but this single interaction could doom my future before it even starts.
I study my face in the mirror, noticing every pore and scar along the topography of my skin. My foundation is a dewy veil, applied better than even I am used to seeing it on myself. My eyelids are a smokey light brown, a slight golden shimmer catching the light of the vanity.
I relax a bit. Men don’t care about makeup; they don’t even know what it looks like, not really. They think that it’s the way we always look. Well, I have a surprise for Michail when he does see the true me. I’m not quite so… shimmery.
Despite my reassurance that I do not look like a complete mess, the hole in my stomach grows bigger. What could possibly be bothering me so much? It’s not the wine. I’m used to it at this point, so what’s the issue?
My thoughts quiet themselves as a steady little pulse in my underwear interrupts them. I’m aroused, but not about Michail. For some reason, thinking of marriage has my brain heading straight to what happens right after.
But I’m not picturing Michail hovering over me, waiting to thrust inside and claim me as his. I’m thinking of a different man, someone that I’ve cooked up in my head to be better than Michail, perhaps more rugged and real.
It’s a shameful thought, but in my current state, the only thing that can bring me down is to let myself slip into it.
The pulse grows between my legs to a throbbing need as I imagine this stranger becoming aroused by me as well. He’s much taller than me and appears physically strong, perhaps capable of picking me up and tossing me around like a ragdoll as he has his way with me.
I strip away the logic and absurdity of my arrangement with Michail and drift into a saccharine daydream of soft kisses, warm hands on my thighs, caressing and teasing closer and closer to my panties.
It’s not Michail, and it never has to be. He can’t claim the fantasies in my mind, even if he has me in reality.
I lift my dress a bit and am embarrassed to find that I have soaked through my underwear so quickly. I can’t leave the bathroom like this. The exquisite, pointed shame of being aroused in a group of people is one I have known too well.
Panic rises deep inside me. I can’t be distracted like this while Michail sits beside me. The temptation to relieve my aching grows hotter in me, the very depravity of my poorly timed arousal warming me all over.
I slip a hand down between my legs, watching myself in the vanity mirror as I lightly stroke the little wet spot on the fabric. Watching myself feels perverse in the most inescapable, delicious way. I spread my legs a bit more, standing on my toes and leaning against the cold marble countertop for stability as I pull my panties to the side, exposing my smooth, slick pussy as my clit swells.
My fingers trace along the slit, right above the most sensitive pleasure point. I imagining someone opening the door and seeing me, flushed with arousal himself at the sight of someone else’s wife-to-be watching herself masturbate in the mirror.
I project a sort of righteous anger onto this stranger, hoping he would see it fit to punish me for being greedy and pleasuring myself during an important event. One hand would hold me tight as the other tore my panties down where they sit limp and wet around my ankles.
Perhaps he would spank me.
The thought sickens me at first, but then the idea engulfs me. How bad would it be to betray Michail if someone else were to have his way with me? We’re not even married yet. He doesn’t own me.
I gently slide two fingers along my clit, gasping slightly at how my body responds to the touch accompanied by such a new and unexplored fantasy. As a virgin, every fantasy is somewhat foreign as I have no true base to compare against, but the phases and film scenes that edged me through my early adulthood are eclipsed by the white hot, almost sickly desire coursing through my body.
I can never remember feeling such an immediate and desperate need in my life.
I continue to watch as I slip my panties down just to the top of my thighs, my fingers sliding up and down along my inner lips as the fantasy takes hold of me.
I want the stranger to be angry with me. I want to misbehave and feel his corrective wrath upon me, inside of me, punishing me for doing this while my husband-to-be sits outside, shut off from my pleasure. He’d never know.
A hot stone of pleasure begins to form in my lower belly as I picture the wicked stranger sliding himself inside of me, stretching my tight pussy, making my knees weaken as he thrusts harder and faster, his own orgasm building inside him.
How horrible would it be to do such a thing? I’d never be able to live with myself, but the thought is so delicious that I hold it tightly in my head, rubbing faster as it comes to life and consumes me.
My focus shifts to something I had read about in a romance book the summer after I turned twenty-one – being bent over the counter, panties off, legs spread as a man kisses and licks between my legs until I am begging him to finish me off before I collapse.
The idea of a stranger getting me closer and closer with his mouth sends waves of pleasure through me as I stroked myself more broadly, imagining what it would feel like to have a tongue down there. The idea alone is so perverse, to bring someone to orgasm with your mouth, but the perversion itself makes the act an obsession.
Fluid drips down my right leg, a sure sign that I am climbing closer and closer to the end.
Rubbing faster, my thoughts race, and I am overcome with images and fantasies that I had never considered, now consuming me and rendering me helpless. Tiny whimpers escape me, embarrassing me as I try in vain to quiet myself.
I want a man to catch me. I want him to hear me and want me.
Just as the thought comes, a shape moves outside the window to my left. It’s not close, but it’s enough like a person to startle me. I lean toward the window to get a better look, only to realize that it is a man. He’s standing outside next to his car, smoking a cigarette.
But who is it? It doesn’t appear to be anyone that I’ve seen inside, but his height indicates that he’s part of the Ivanov family. They’re all so tall that they make regular people look comically short and meek.
My fantasies latch onto that man. He could be the stranger who barges in and catches me, the man who would bend me over and spank me hard for doing such an unholy thing to myself while Michail waits patiently for me in the other room.
The pressure inside of me builds and builds until a supernova of release and ecstasy overtakes me. A less tiny moan hitches in my throat as I ride the wave, the accumulation of slickness running down both legs and through my fingers.
My eyes never leave the stranger outside.
My vision is spotty for a few moments after I come back, sprites and shadows filling my view as I inhale shakily to regain my composure.
I listen.
The sound of my heart beating into my throat pounds in my ears, and I strain to hear what could be happening in the world around me, particularly in the room I had so politely left fifteen minutes ago. Reality sets in, and I am confronted with the possibility of being met with all eyes as I rejoin the group, perhaps catching questions that I don’t know how to answer.
I look toward the car outside again, but the man has vanished. It’s too dark to see whether he’s in the car or has come inside the house. I don’t think I’d be able to look at him if he were to be standing in the living room when I arrived.
My panties are soaked. A trip to my bedroom would create even more confusion, and my face flushes at the very thought. My dress is mid-calf length, and I wonder if I could continue the rest of the night without my underwear.
An idea that would have once filled me with shame now excites me beyond words. I will have a secret, and nobody would know. I could have a lot of them, piling them up in my fantasy world until they inevitably leaked out into reality and were discovered. Perhaps going out without panties would be too close to that reality.
But I drop my panties and leave, walking slowly, testing the feeling of being bare underneath the thin fabric of my dress.
“Anya, you are telling the story all wrong; let me try,” bellows a very drunk Dimitri Ivanov, laughing as he reaches for his fourth or fifth vodka. His voice guides me back to the room where everyone is.
“What happened was that we were taking the train through St. Petersburg, and we were approached by a group of teenagers with shaved heads and shitty tattoos,” he continues. Relief washes over me as I realize that most of the party has been monopolized by old drunk Russian men. For once, I don’t mind the male inclination toward showing off.
I approach the space I had been sitting in before. The stranger from outside isn’t here. It’s safe to sit down.
Michail is still in the same position as I left him, his legs crossed, listening intently to his father’s story, which I assume he has heard millions of times. He might be in his thirties, but there’s a youthfulness that taints his soul, as though he’ll never grow up all the way.
As I step towards the couch, I can feel the soft, warm rubbing of my thighs as they brush against my nakedness. My face flushes as I sit down.
“Are you alright, Annika?” Michail asks, noticing my shy reappearance.
I cannot even look him in the eyes, almost as if he will be able to read my mind if he looks deep enough.
“Yes, I think I need to slow down on the wine a bit,” I lie.
“I can get some water for you if you need it,” Michail replies.
I’m almost irritated at how innocent he is. He doesn’t know that I was rubbing one out to the idea of another man just moments ago, and although that’s entirely my doing, I feel that he’s somehow responsible for it.
“Yes, that would be nice, actually,” I say. Requesting water is very normal. Hopefully, the more time that passes will help me calm down a bit.
The rest of the night is an inky haze as I zone out, relaxed and satisfied for the time being. I vaguely remember being startled awake by Dimitri’s excessive loudness, only to be laughed at for falling asleep in the first place.
There is a brief flash of the moment I stumbled to sleep after Michail and his family left. I slid against the wall, giggling to myself about nothing in particular. Perhaps it was relief that this was all over, and the man outside never did come into the house.
I do wonder who he is, though.
