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.
