Arranged Mafia Marriage

Jeanne

Hello! What’s that all about? What are you saying? You want him to propose? Where did that come from? This is a fake marriage. He doesn’t want to marry you. He has no feelings for you. All of this is a ruse to pacify his brothers, so what’s this business about having him propose to me? Is it some romantic notion that I can’t get rid of? After all, this is the first time I’m getting married.

To be fair, I’ve never given the idea of marriage much thought. I’ve been too focused on my career. I hoped, at some point, I’d meet someone, and that person would fall for me as much as I’d be in love with him, and then we’d get married. And some part of me had been sure that when that happened, it would be for keeps. Instead, I’ve ended up with a Mafia guy who’s proposing some harebrained scheme where we pretend to be joined in matrimony to fool his family. Something I’m not entirely comfortable with, to be honest. But if this is the only way for me to get back to Palermo in time for the premiere of my musical, then so be it. No reason why I can’t milk the occasion, right?

“You want me to propose to you?” He pauses half-way to plopping a chip in his mouth.

“That’s what I said.” I snatch the chip from his fingers and crunch down on it. Let’s see you try to wriggle out of this one, buster.

“As in, the kind of thing with a ring and stuff?”

“If we’re going to get married, we need to make it look genuine so that your brothers buy it, so yeah, absolutely, that means having a ring and stuff.”

He pales. The tendons of his throat move as he swallows. “You mean, I have to buy you a ring?”

I nod. “And you’ll have to go down on your knee, and we’ll have to make sure there’s a photographer on hand to capture the moment so we can share it with your family as proof.”

“No fucking way.”

“Yes, f’ing way, baby.” I reach for another chip, the last one in the packet, and bring it to my mouth, then pause. “Considering we are going to get married, here, you can have the last chip, as a show of good faith.” I hold it out to him and he glances at it with suspicion.

“No thanks.” He scowls at it as if he’d like to snatch it from my fingers and throw it on the ground, then jump on it.

“Come on, since we’re now a couple, it’s normal for us to show such acts of love to one another.”

All remaining color drains from his face. “Wh-who said anything about love?” He says the last word as if it’s a disease.

“It’s normal. If we’re going to convince your family that our marriage is not a sham, we’ll have to pretend that we’re in love, which means we’ll have to indulge in romantic gestures.”

“Romantic gestures?” He screws up his face. “What does that involve?”

“You know, like holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes, kissing on the cheek-”

“The only thing you’re going to be holding is my cock in your hand; the only thing I’m going to gaze at is your pussy, to ensure you’re suitably wet before penetration; the only thing you are going to kiss is-”

I hold up my hand. “I get the picture. And just so we’re clear, none of what you just outlined is going to happen.”

“And none of what you outlined is going to happen, either,” he shoots back.

“Fine,” I snap.

“Fine.” He smirks. “Besides, you already came on my tongue, remember?”

My cheeks heat.

“I did stop before I fucked you,” he points out.

I draw in a breath. “I meant to thank you for that.”

“You can thank me for it by dispensing with this romantic nonsense you’ve come up with.” He rolls his shoulders.

“You are going to thank me for it.” I fold my arms across my chest. “You want to convince your family that you found yourself a wife, then we have to do this the right way.”

“The only way I want to do it is with you bent over the bed, exposing your sweet little ass, so I can be the first to take it.”

A-n-d Elle Woods was onto something when she declared all masturbatory emissions, where his sperm was clearly not seeking an egg, could be termed reckless abandonment. You have no idea, Elle, no idea at all.

“Is that all you think about?” I throw up my hands.

“You mean fucking? Do I have to answer that?” The look on his face is almost comical in its earnestness.

I blow out a breath. “We’re going to have to work on your romantic manner, just so you know.”

“Balls to romance.”

“The balls come after the romance, actually.” I snicker.

“Not when you prance in naked on a man you barely know in the shower,” he points out.

I have the grace to blush. “I was pissed off, okay? The gentlemanly thing to do would have been to let me use the bathroom first.”

“I am no gentleman.” He scratches his chin. His fingernails rasp over the rough hair of his beard and the sound chafes my already sensitized nerve-endings. My nipples pebble, a pulse flares to life between my legs, and I’m ashamed to say, moisture laces my core. This is ridiculous. Am I so tuned into him that his every gesture draws a response from me? On the physical level; only on the physical level. The man is a complete asshole, and a criminal, to boot. No way am I going to get emotionally entangled with the likes of him.

“No kidding. You’re so far from being a gentleman that if you said or did anything halfway chivalrous, I’d probably topple over dead.”

“Don’t do that. I’m going to need you alive and in good health, just until we get through this pretense.”

“Gee, thanks.” I crumple up the empty chip wrapper and throw it at him. He snatches it out of thin air, shoots it at the waste basket near the wall, and does he miss? Of course not.

“So, you’re on for the wedding then?”

“The fake wedding, and only if you get me a ring,” I retort.

“Done, but I have a condition of my own.”

“Umm, do I want to hear it?” I scrutinize his features.

“Probably not.” His eyes gleam. “But I’m going to tell it to you anyway.”

“You’re going to ask to consummate the marriage.”

“How did you guess?” He has the gall to look surprised.

“Do I look stupid to you? Besides, your intentions are written all over your face.”

“You want a ring, you want to make the marriage look real, you want me to wheel out the entire romantic nonsense… It’s only fair that we have sex.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I shoot back. “I was suggesting ways to provide evidence the relationship is real.”

“What could be more real than us banging?”

I wince. “Your vocabulary really does need refining.”

“And your romantic sentiments need pruning,” he retorts.

“No sex.” I scowl.

He looks at me like I just told him he could never masturbate again. “Yes, sex. Without it, they’ll be able to tell right away that the marriage is a sham.”

“How is that possible?” I throw up my hands. “No one can tell if we’ve been sleeping together except you and me.”

“You don’t know my brothers. Don’t forget we’re the Mafia. If they couldn’t tell who’s fucking whom, they’d never have been able to survive this far.”

“You make them sound like gossiping busybodies,” I scoff.This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.

“They are observant.” He raises a shoulder. “You have to be to avoid being killed.”

Goosebumps pop on my skin. He talks about death so casually, like he faces it every day, which he probably does. How does one face the other side of life so frequently, and yet be so casual about it? Or maybe that’s why he doesn’t give it undue importance. Because he’s so conversant with it, he understands, sooner or later, all of us have to meet our maker.

“What are you thinking?” He scrutinizes my features. “Is it because I spoke about being killed?”

“No. Yes.” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it matters. If we want to, as you say, put on a show that’s genuine enough to convince my family, then we need to get to know each other.”

“Somehow, I regret suggesting that now,” I murmur under my breath.

“So, we’re doing this, aren’t we? Pretending to be married, including the entire ‘romance’-” he air quotes the last word, “and of course, the sex that comes with it?”

“I never agreed to the sex,” I protest.

“But you do agree that without fucking each other, this marriage will be a sham.”

I raise my gaze heavenward. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

“What do you have to lose? If nothing else, you’ll get lots of orgasms out of this arrangement, that much I can promise.”

“I don’t just jump into bed with strangers.”

“We’ve seen each other without clothes on, we’re sharing a bed, hell, we’re even having a reasonable conversation here. We’re well past the ‘being strangers’ phase.”

Sadly, he’s right about that.

“I can’t agree to the sex. It feels too cold and calculating. Too transactional,” I declare.

“Sex with me is anything but cold, I promise.”

My stomach flutters, and a slow beat flares to life between my legs. Tingles squeeze up my chest, and all of a sudden, my skin feels too tight for my body. “Doesn’t change the fact that, technically, we’d only be sleeping with each other to bring veracity to our relationship,” I manage to reply.

“So?”

“So, it’s not natural or organic.”

He draws in a breath and his massive shoulders flex. “Woman, you are driving me crazy.”

“That has been known to happen. Never said being with me was going to be easy.”

“No shit.” He brings his fingertips together. “So let me get this right. The only reason you won’t sleep with me is because we didn’t meet in a more normal course of events.”

“Something like that,” I agree.

“So, what if we let things take their normal course and see where it goes?”

“You mean, we just-”

“Allow the chemistry between us to dictate what happens next.”