Reluctant Bride

She tried the dress on for the fifteenth time that month, and once again hoped that this time she'd feel different. As she stared into the full length mirror that had been moved into her room, she noticed how the whiteness of the dress seemed so much brighter against her pale skin. How her red hair and blue eyes seemed that much more pronounced by the additional paleness wrapped around her body. Her eyes traced her collarbone in the mirror, the off-the-shoulder collar having looked most fetching when she'd first tried the dress on in the store. She could almost feel the tangible pressure of her eyes against her skin. Almost. It made her tingle.

Her eyes travelled further down her reflection, caressing the fitted bodice of the gown. It wasn't a style she normally went for because she'd always felt self-conscience about showing off that much of her cleavage. She wasn't overly busty, but she had enough of an endowment that if the top was cut correctly, she was constantly paranoid about falling out of it. No, she never would've gone for the sweetheart cut fitted bodice if it hadn't been for the persuasive saleslady, not that she particularly regretted it now. No, she had regrets, but not that one. From the way the dress was cut, she could feel her breasts being pushed up, away from her body, as if they were being presented for appraisal to an appreciative onlooker. Perhaps they were. Perhaps the dress was cut that way to allow her fiancé at the alter to reconfirm that her goods were the same ones he'd bartered for when he first gave her the ring. Yes, that could be it.

As she thought more about the cut of the bodice, she absently noted how securely the material held her body. Almost like a protective lover would wrap his body around hers as he slept. Protective. Possessive. She could faintly see her nipples begin to harden through the binding material of the dress as her body registered her passing thought. Her conscious mind shrugged off her reaction, allowing her write it off to a draught in the room. She shook her head gently to herself, smiling at the idiocy of it. A draught, in an enclosed room. Granted, it was the fall, but she liked to keep things warm—remnants of her many years of living in warmer climes. She'd gotten acclimated.

Shaking her head had caused her hair to swing gently to and fro behind her, grazing her exposed back. The feathery caress caused her nipples to harden even further, but again, she ignored it. She could've ignored much in her introspective reverie, but she had always been quick to notice changes in the play of light around her, and the change in the shadows in the corner of the room caught her attention, even as on the edge of her vision as it was. As she turned to see who was in the room—because she was certain there was another body in her bedroom—her first thought was that it was her fiancé, and that it'd be just her luck that he'd see her in the dress and know all of the deepest fears it represented for her. In the split second it took her to turn around, she forced herself to compose her face into the joyful, exuberant bride-to-be she knew was expected of her before giving her fiancé cause to worry.

He was like that. Before her mother had passed, she had referred to him as A Good Man with the implication to her daughter being that she should marry him immediately and get pregnant as fast as possible so she'd have her hooks in him for life. At first, she'd thought that's all she wanted. That all the bullshit she'd put up with in her younger years was behind her; that she no longer craved the darkness she'd seen in men's souls that had ignited her passion like the headiest of aphrodisiacs. No, she'd convinced herself it was nothing but a phase, one that she had put behind her as she became more mature and had a better understanding of what real relationships entailed. She'd thought she was happy. So much so that when he'd finally asked her to marry him, after they'd dated an appropriate length of time and had progressed through all the requisite precursors in a Committed Relationship, she'd said "yes" as enthusiastically, and as sincerely, as she believed possible. As the intervening months dragged on, and the wedding preparations had mounted, the permanence of her impending reality crashed upon the shores of her consciousness with ever increasing frequency and intensity like a hurricane in the Gulf, building and building as you hope and pray the winds of mercy and good fortune will dissipate the storm, or at least swing it away from you.

As the date got closer and closer, her panic had gotten worse and worse; so much so that she'd begun having nightmares. She'd wake up screaming, tasting imaginary blood in her mouth from having chewed her arm off in her desperation to escape from her intended. Every time it happened, she'd given thanks for her fiance's goodness, that he had not insisted they live together before the wedding. She wouldn't have been able to look him in the eyes as he held her, all concern and good intentions, while she blatantly lied to him about everything being alright and there being nothing for him to worry about. No, for all the blackness in her own soul, she still couldn't bring herself to do that to him—to lie to him about something so integral to his own future, at least not if he asked her directly. In her mind, dancing around the issue was different. That wasn't lying, it was being optimistic, and she knew how much he prized her eternal optimism.

She had almost completely turned around when she first heard his voice. "The maid of honor said the dress was something else, but I'm not sure who she did a bigger disservice to: you or the designer." The surprise of it nearly threw her off balance, but she subtly recovered and continued to pivot. When she was finally facing her future brother-in-law, she replied rather saucily, "I wasn't aware you made a habit of keeping up with the latest wedding dress trends. You are, by far, a man of rare and varied talents." He gave her a look, which in her younger, more corrupt days, she would have considered "suggestive" or "knowing," but now she wrote off as her future relative's playful roguishness. Her mind lingered, unbidden, on the half day's worth on growth on his face and the slight swell of his eminently kissable lips. She could begin to feel the familiar darkness spread throughout her body, making her breasts swell and tingle as she felt her eyes grow heavier with lust. She gave herself a swift, sharp mental kick to the ass to forego the more obvious gesture of shaking her head, which she knew she'd have to explain to him.

He didn't know why he'd done it. Given her his "of-course-little-girl-wouldn't-your-grandmother-like-some-pretty-flowers-you-can-just-ignore-my-big-sharp-teeth" look. The look that clearly said he had a predator within him that would be all too pleased to play with a fresh-faced young thing like her. She was his younger brother's fiancée, and more than that, she was wholesome, from what had filtered back to him from the rest of the family. It wasn't that he and his brother didn't talk about things like that, it was more that, he knew he and his brother didn't have many overlapping...interests, when it came to women, and therefore, they were conversations that best went unsaid so's to preserve both their dignities. For a moment though, when he'd first walked in on her, silent and unannounced, he could've sworn he'd seen the vestiges of the look he got when thinking about sex, and it was certainly not a wholesome look.

In their pregnant silence, full of things to be said and things neither wanted to admit out loud, she forced herself to think of neutral things like babies and cauliflower and carpet samples. Things as far away from the cut, five foot eleven man standing in front of her as she could think of. She could feel herself being drawn into his blue-brown eyes by the almost tangible gravity of his gaze like a speeding comet whose course is forever altered by its interception with a larger astral body demanding accommodation. The back of her mind tried drawing thoughts of her fiancé to the fore like how his clouded grey eyes seemed gentler than the roiling fury she could read on the edges of irises on the man before her. It's only normal, her brain told her, to play the "what if" game, but you know the grass is never greener. She had to agree. She'd never cheated, but had had several friends who had, and their stories were always the same: it wasn't worth it. She'd never understood it before, what drove people to do it; she'd always felt safe on her moral high ground that "shaking it off" was easy and you shouldn't even notice other people in that way when you're in a relationship. In her mind's eye, she could see her own little personal devil laughing itself off her shoulder at her naiveté, at how she'd blithely boiled down one of life's messiest, complicated issues into an overly simplistic theory for no other reason than it suited her.

She could sense the minutes ticking away, and she somehow knew that if she didn't say something soon, they would reach the point where action would be required and that would not lead them down any roads to happiness. "So, it's only bad luck if the groom sees the dress then? Won't he pester you for details when you tell him you've seen it?" Logically, she knew she was just filling the air; that her fiancé could probably care less about what the dress looked like, let alone would pester his older, somewhat distant brother for details about it like a fourteen-year-old girl.

"Oh, he won't pester me, but that's only because he hasn't seen you in it. I'm actually debating whether I should tell him just so he doesn't punch me on the altar when you make your entrance," he replied genially.

"Like he'd really care," she answered him trying not to let the simple words convey the longing she suddenly had to actually see her fiancé take a swing at his brother for even potentially having untoward thoughts about her. She'd never been one to find jealously attractive, but the right degree of possessiveness and sheer male dominance had always turned her on. Early on in her relationship with her fiancé though, she'd learned it was a good thing that she'd been born with a healthy imagination because she'd frequently envisioned him possessing traits that turned her on in her fantasies that he'd never possess in a million years in real life. Like the dominant presence her future brother-in-law exuded as naturally as he breathed.

He could almost detect the longing in her voice, the longing for things that were definitely on the other side of wholesome, but he told himself that he was reading more into it than was there. He barely knew his future sister-in-law since he and his brother had been about as close as most brothers with five years and widely divergent interests between them could be, which was to say, friendly in passing. In fact, he had been considerably shocked when his brother had asked him to be best man: he was sure the kid had at least one other person who would've been better suited to the task. His brother's sincerity had sold him though, and he'd said "yes."

In a lot of ways, he wished he hadn't. It wasn't so much that he minded spending all the additional time with family, but getting to know his sister-in-law had been killing him. He couldn't explain it, but he always got the feeling when he saw her at the various pre-wedding things he'd gotten roped into that she wasn't as at ease with things as everyone else around her, at least everyone else but him. For some unknown reason, it made him want to seek her out. If he believed in "kindred spirits" and all that other metaphysical b.s., he might have said he felt compelled to talk to her, like it was Fate, but he didn't. Instead, he did everything in his power to avoid her unless it was absolutely impossible. He knew he was not a man of moderation, and part of him worried about what would happen if he got to know his future sister-in-law because he could tell he was the only one in the family who'd really be able to claim that fact.

She couldn't bear to look at him any longer in his brooding, pensive silence so she began to turn away from him. Part of her wanted him to leave immediately, the rational part of her, but the part that she thought she'd peacefully locked away years earlier called her a coward. Told her that if she was as happily vanilla as she'd attempted to delude herself into believing, then why would it matter how long he stayed in her room with his tumultuous eyes and demanding lips and his intensely commanding presence flaring off him like sunbursts since she no longer found that attractive, right? She shuddered. With two weeks until her wedding, she didn't need this complication in her life. She didn't need this type of crisis of purpose. As much as she tried to tell herself that there was nothing to fear, that he didn't have any effect on her, she knew better. She knew that her knees started going weak when she thought about his tempestuous eyes boring into her. In her mind, she could envision him running his gaze up and down her body much as her own had, appraising her assets; using his eyes to make her nipples harden and her pussy begin to drip. She didn't want to continue down this path, but it'd been so long since she'd had a real man to fantasize about that her imagination went haywire. There was nothing she could do, but go along for the ride and hope she didn't embarrass herself.

Her mind chose to linger on his lips next. They weren't the overly pouty, cupid bow kind of lips; they weren't the kind of lips that would leave pillowy soft kisses against her forehead or her eyes. His lips were the type that would demand she kiss them back, the kind that wouldn't take "no" for an answer; the kind that would latch on to her nipples then suck on them like a hungry baby desperate for milk, that would suck on her clit like a vacuum while she screamed from the mix of agony and ecstasy the intensity of it would put on her body. If it wasn't for the dress, she'd have checked to see if she was really as wet as her fantasy was suggesting she should be. She hazily thought about the fact that it'd be beyond inappropriate to do something so personal with her fiance's brother in the room, but the part of her that had broken free of its internal imprisonment thought that maybe he'd like it, that maybe if she did it she'd get to feel those sinful lips against her body for real.

He hadn't been entirely sure what to do when she'd turned away from him. The sane part of his mind told him that she probably wanted some privacy, but the devil in him kept him planted in her room. His voyeuristic curiosity led him to walk closer to her so he could get a better look at her face, although he made sure not to be so obvious as to stand in front of her. From his parallel vantage point, he'd watched her eyelids drift shut as a range of distinctly unwholesome thoughts ran clearly across her face. He couldn't imagine what could have caused her reaction. Surely not him? His dick began to harden as his predatory sexuality began to flow over him. This has nothing to do with me, he tried telling himself, to no avail. Even though he knew it was a bad idea, a hideously stupid idea in fact, he felt all of the delicate control he had employed around her begin to vanish like gossamer spiderwebs blown away by a stiff breeze as he began to appraise her as a man.

Even though the material of her dress was fairly opaque, looking at her profile with the sun behind her, he could faintly make out her erect nipples. His dick hardened even further as he thought about how easy it'd be for him to remove one of her breasts from her dress so he could chew on the growing nub. He wondered if she'd scream from the sensation or if she'd moan her appreciation. As he continued to watch her bosom strain against her dress, his hands began to ache from their desire to reach inside her dress and caress her breasts as firmly as her bodice. He could almost feel their milky softness spilling into his palms as he looked at her. You know she wouldn't stop you, his mind told him. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to believe that she'd sigh and moan as he manhandled her with a freedom he had no right to. Before his brain had caught up, he found himself standing within inches of her back, her hair acting as the only real barrier between his breath and the back of her neck. As his gaze quickly slid over her collarbone though, he noticed his exhalations had raised the faintest of goosebumps along her skin.

She'd noticed the slight shift in the air as her "fight or flight" sense kicked in. Subconsciously she knew she was trapped with a predator, although part of her wondered whether she should be more concerned about him or the fact that that knowledge had her practically panting like a bitch in heat. Without opening her eyes, she knew he was standing behind her—both from the gentle breeze his exhalations were creating against her skin and from the way she'd sunk a little deeper into the carpet as his additional weight depressed the spongy insulation. She couldn't remember the last time her body had felt so electrified, so amazingly in tune with her surroundings. For the first time in practically forever—in the presence of an animal no less—she felt safe and carefree. Her body sagged as she let out the breath she'd unconsciously been holding, and in doing so, allowed all the tension she'd pent up since she and her fiancé had gotten "serious" to flow out of her body.

He'd never seen someone go limp so quickly; he'd barely had time to register that she was falling before her soft, supple body made contact with his chest. His arms wrapped around her reflexively: both to keep her steady, but also to minimize whatever potential threat she could pose to him. She let out a particularly contented sigh, and in doing so, caused more of her weight to fall against him. He was a fairly strong man, but the unexpectedness of her downward slide gave him little time to brace himself for support, so he was left with the awkward choices of suffocating her with her breasts or sliding gracelessly to the floor with her. He bent his knees to make the transition from standing to sitting marginally easier, and in doing so wound up leaning substantially over her shoulder. Between the snickerdoodle scent of her hair and the amply unobstructed view of her cleavage, his dick hardened to diamond-cutting proportions, and it took everything in his power not to drop her from the unexpected intensity of his hard-on.

His kinks had never particularly run toward the corruption of innocents, and while he could tell she wasn't exactly lily-white, she didn't really scream submission-trained bondage slut either. She looked more like the type of girl who liked teeth and nails occasionally and thought that gave her the right to be called a "bad" girl; and perhaps in her circles it did. Such mild slap and tickle hadn't gotten him hard, especially not this hard, since he was in his early teen years and hadn't really learned what BDSM was yet. He'd never particularly been interested in "stealing" women away from other men either. It was such a pedestrian past time in his opinion, besides which, most of the girls who played those games didn't have the discipline or the attention to be properly trained. So what was the point of wasting his precious time on an unworthy endeavor? Part of him wanted to write it off to the fact that he hadn't had sex in a few weeks having recently gotten bored with his latest pet, but he had trained his body for years and no longer suffered from such unexpected incidents. It could just be that you like her, his mind errantly supplied. She's my brother's fiancee's, he mentally fired back, not to mention she's almost certainly not into my brand of fun.