by Loki Renard
Annika could feel his erection straining against his pants. They were so close to making love. All it would take was the lowering of a zipper, the thrusting of his hips. She was wet enough that he would slide right in, he would fill her as she was made to be filled…
A loud knock at the front door made them spring apart. “Steven?” A deep male voice intruded on the moment.
“That’s John,” Steven said, hurriedly shoving his shirt back into his pants. “I… I’m sorry.”
Annika smiled triumphantly. Sooner or later, she would have her man. He couldn’t keep his hands off her. It didn’t matter if it happened at that moment or later. It was going to happen.
“Take your time,” she said, sashaying off to the house with a swing in her hips and a smile on her face.
Chapter Six
“Hey,” John said. “Sorry if I interrupted something. You have time to talk?”
“Sure. What do you need?” Steven tried to breathe deeply. Almost getting caught had served to deflate his erection fairly quickly, but John was a perceptive guy. He’d known what was going on all too well.
“It’s not for me,” John said. “It’s for Annika. I’ve been looking into her situation.”
The men went back to the house and sat down at the kitchen table with a couple of beers. Annika was in her room. Steven could hear her talking to Mary and giggling. No doubt she was telling Mary what had happened in the vestry.
“So,” he said. “What are my options, John?”
“Not many.” John gave it to him straight. “Her visa depends on her being a married woman.”
“She has to marry that man?”
“She has to marry someone,” John said. There was a brief pause, then he made the obvious suggestion. “You could marry her.”
“Marry a woman I’ve known less than a week? What about the license? Her visa wasn’t in my name…”
“The paperwork can be fixed. All you really need to do is prove that it’s a real marriage.”
Steven ran his hand through his hair. “Marriage? I don’t know, John.”
“I know you didn’t plan to ever marry again, but you care about Annika. And she needs you. Knowing you, if she goes back to Russia, you’ll never forgive yourself—and if she goes on the run as an illegal, her options won’t be good. A girl like her… she’d be headed straight for the adult industry.”
“Don’t talk about Annika like that.”
“I’m not talking about Annika any way. I’m telling you what I know from my line of work.”
“You’re saying if I don’t marry her, she’ll become a prostitute.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying if you don’t marry her, she’s not going to have a good set of options to make choices from. And you’ll stay alone.”
“I’m okay alone as you put it.”
“You were okay. You won’t be okay if she leaves.”
“You know me better than I know myself?”
John chuckled. “I know you well enough to trust my wife staying with you when I’m gone for days and weeks. And I know I’ve never seen you look at a woman the way you look at Annika. It’s not just desire. You care about her. Deeply.”
John was right. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Annika, there had barely been a moment when he wasn’t thinking about her. Part of that was because she kept getting herself into trouble. The rest of it was because she was beautiful, smart, and spirited. She had him all twisted up, that was for sure. Lovesick, maybe.
“I’m supposed to be the one who counsels others,” he sighed, swigging his beer.
“Sometimes you need advice too, Steven,” John said. “You’ll make the right call.”
“This is crazy,” Steven said. “I can’t propose to a woman I found in my car.”
“Why not?” John shrugged.
Steven looked at him incredulously. “You’re the last person I thought would think I should marry a runaway Russian.”
“Mary likes her. Mary’s a good judge of character.”
“And you?”
“She’s cute,” John shrugged. “She seems smart. She needs help and you need to help.”
“Actually,” Steven said, “I’m going to need your help.”
* * *
“I don’t like having left the girls alone,” John said as they sat in the car outside an apartment block in Brooklyn, New York. It was the middle of the week, the first chance they’d both had to get away to run a particularly sensitive errand.
“It’s only for a day. They can’t get into that much trouble in a single day. Plus they have the entire town more or less keeping an eye out for them.”
“Is that the guy? Pedacter?”
John pointed toward a man lumbering toward the front door of the apartment block that corresponded to the address Annika had given them. The man matched her description: large with a flushed face and clothing that didn’t seem to have been laundered in some time. He moved with a side-to-side waddling motion, an indication that his joints weren’t what they once were. As John and Steven watched, he let himself into the building.
“It’s got to be him,” Steven said. “Let’s go talk to him.”
After giving their mark a few minutes to get settled, Steven and John knocked on a stained and grease-smeared door. It opened and the face of the fellow who had been downstairs peered out at them suspiciously.
“Yeah?”
“This is Inspector John Watts, and I’m Pastor Steven Soames,” Steven introduced. “We’d like to talk to you about Annika Protslovika.”
The door opened a little wider. Roger scratched his belly and gave a tentative leer of triumph. “You caught her?”
“No,” Steven said. “We didn’t catch her. We’re here on her behalf. I believe you have her passport?”
Expressions of anger and disappointment established themselves on the man’s face. There was plenty of room for them both.
“She’s mine,” he said. “If you’ve got her, you should bring her back.”
“She’s not a possession, she’s a woman,” Steven corrected him. “You can’t own a woman. Not since 1865.”
“You think you’re smart? I paid for her.”
“Again,” Steven said smoothly, “paying for a woman’s plane tickets and expenses does not make her yours. I’m just here for her passport and any other documents she might have left behind. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Well, you’re going to get trouble until you bring that little bitch back.”
Steven only barely managed to quell his anger.
“I called the cops when she left,” Roger said. “I’m going to call them again. Tell them you know where she is.”
“You want to call the police? There’s an officer right here.”
“He doesn’t look like an officer.”
John produced his badge. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, sir?”
Roger rubbed his hand across his shirt, leaving a smear of something dubious in its wake. “She was here half a day. I had a few drinks to celebrate. Had a little nap. I woke up, she’d taken my car and all my cash. Robbed me blind, then ran away. Ungrateful little slut.”
“Was your car recovered?”
“They found it parked down the street.”
“So she stole it and drove it a few houses away?” Even as Steven said the words with an incredulous tone, he realized it was precisely the sort of thing Annika would do. Just bad enough to madden a man, not quite bad enough to be an actual felony.
“How much cash did she take?”
“Fifty dollars.”
“Not a significant amount then.”
“I paid two thousand for her to come here, and another thousand in fees before that. I want my money’s worth out of her.”
Steven felt his hands clench in a way that was very unlike him. The way this man spoke about Annika, as if she were some piece of meat, a commodity to be used, was as maddening as it was sick.
“Sir, the transaction you�
�re describing is more or less human trafficking,” John said firmly. “Now I’m hoping you’ll produce the young lady’s documents and we can be on our way. Unless, of course, you’d prefer I filed charges for trafficking. Might also speak to a friend at the IRS, make sure all your finances are in order.”
“Assholes,” the man swore. He disappeared briefly inside the house, then returned with a passport, which he thrust at Steven. “This is what you want. Get the hell out of here and leave me alone.”
“Thank you, sir.” John pocketed the passport. Roger Pedacter slammed the door in their face, signaling the conclusion of business.
“Thanks, John,” Steven said once he had calmed down. “I couldn’t have done that without your help.”
“Sure you could have,” John said. “Though I’m not sure you could have done it without breaking his nose.”
“He was foul,” Steven agreed. “To think they let women come into the country and be beholden to men like that. You were right. It’s not far off human trafficking.”
John shrugged. “Sometimes it works out,” he said. “If both parties are genuine. In this case, not so much.”
“In this case, a lying scumbag almost took advantage of…” Steven felt his anger rising again. “I’m so glad she’s a pain in the ass. I’m so glad she didn’t stay with him. Imagine…” He broke off. He couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t bear to so much as think about what Annika’s life would have been like.
“She made the right call,” John said. “Flew to you like a homing pigeon.”
“She was guided,” Steven said. There was no doubt in his mind anymore. It was no accident that Annika had ended up in his car. She was meant to be there. He was meant to find her. He would keep her as long as she allowed it.
Chapter Seven
“Annika, come to my office, please.” It occurred to Steven that he should probably stop summoning the woman he intended to marry to his office like some naughty little brat, but the words were out before he could stop them. Force of habit, he supposed.
Annika started up from the computer. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “You’re not in trouble.”
“I’m always in trouble when we go to your office,” she said suspiciously. She was adorable with her green gaze and the light freckles shifting with the narrowing of her eyes. “I know what ‘come to my office’ means.”
“Fine,” Steven said. “We’ll talk here. I have a couple of things to give you. This is the first of them.” He took her passport out of his back pocket and handed it to her. “There you go.”
“How did you get this?” Annika took it, amazed. “Did you… did you…”
“John and I went to see your ex-fiancé,” Steven said. “He gave it to us.”
She gave him a sidelong look. “He just… gave it to you?”
“We were persuasive. John especially so.”
A smile spread across her face. “Thank you. What’s the other thing?”
Steven reached into his front pocket, the one where the little box had been poking itself against his thigh all afternoon. He was about to give it to her, but it wasn’t right. You didn’t propose in your living room.
“Let’s go for a little walk,” he suggested.
“I don’t want to go for a walk,” she said, turning back to the computer. “Mary taught me how to play Chickenville. I have ten chickens I have to feed.”
“You do not have ten chickens,” he corrected her. “You have a piece of code making you act like a compulsive addict. Come on.”
She rolled her eyes, but followed him out of the house. There were plenty of nice places to propose. The church itself wasn’t a bad location, but Steven thought it might be nice to ask the question a little further out into nature, perhaps on one of the forest trails that wound up behind the church grounds.
“Do you like it here in Sweetville?” He made conversation as they walked.
“Of course,” Annika said. “Sweetville is a very nice place. Is pretty.”
They stopped in a small clearing overlooking a babbling brook. It was elevated enough that they could see out over the sleepy little town of Sweetville, past the church spire and out to the green fertile lands that surrounded the town. It really was pretty. A virtual Eden, but with better shopping.
“Annika,” he said, going down on one knee.
She looked at him askance. “What are you…”
He pulled out the box and opened it to reveal the ring. Her eyes widened as she beheld the gold band with the diamond set in the very center.
“Annika, will you marry me?”
“You want to marry me?” She looked at him as if she did not understand.
“I do.”
“Why?”
It was not the way a proposal was supposed to go. The bride-to-be was supposed to clasp her hands to her mouth and gasp with surprise and throw her arms around the groom-to-be and scream yes. That was how it had been the first time.
“Because I want you to stay here with me,” Steven said, standing up. “And you want to stay here, in the United States at least, if not with me.”
“I like being with you,” Annika reassured him.
“But not enough to marry me?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I will marry you. Thank you.”
“Thank you?” Steven felt strangely deflated. He’d expected more excitement, not this almost flat gratitude.
“Yes,” she said. “It is very nice. You marry me to give me a green card.”
“Not just for your green card,” Steven clarified. “You will be my wife. In all senses of the word.”
“Oh,” she said. “You want sex too.”
It still sounded like a business deal, a very unsavory one at that.
“I’m not setting terms, Annika. I’m asking you to be my wife.”
“And I am saying yes.”
“You don’t seem happy.”
She cocked her head to the side. “If I would not need the green card, would you still ask me?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head, disbelieving his answer. “You are being nice. You are nice man. But you are not in love with me.”
The Russian penchant for plain speech could really sting at sensitive times.
“I care about you, Annika.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t think I love you?”
“How can you love someone you’ve only known for two weeks? You don’t love me. You love what you think I am. You love what you are with me.”
“You’re quite eloquent when you want to be,” Steven murmured. He felt flat, as if he might have made a mistake in proposing. Maybe it would have been better to provide her with the details of an attorney, move her off to a shelter, let her make her own way. But his heart would not allow that. Whether she understood it or not, he did love her.
“I am sorry,” Annika said. “I hurt your feelings. You are so nice. You have done so much for me. And I hurt you. I think… I think you should not marry me.”
Steven realized she was confused. She was accusing him of not loving her because she didn’t know how she felt about him. In many respects, she was in the same position with him she’d been in with Mr. Pedacter. It was a marriage of necessity, not of desire.
“I’ve wanted you from the moment we met,” he said, wrapping his arms about her. “And you have been trying to seduce me almost as long.”
She smiled her naughty little smile. “True.”
“So,” he said, letting his hand drift down to cup her bottom. “Is it just the allure of defiling a priest that interests you?”
“No!” She laughed at the question. “You are a very handsome man.”
“You think I am nice. You are attracted to me. You could do a lot worse for a husband.”
“But you could do a lot better for a wife,” Annika pointed out. “I am just a silly Russian girl, lost here in America.”
“You’re much more than
a silly Russian girl. You’re a smart, mischievous, very spankable little brat whom I have grown very fond of and want to keep in my life—and my bed.” He squeezed her bottom and kissed her neck in a way that made her sigh and lean into his mouth.
“You are seducing me, Pastor Soames.”
“I hope so,” he said, letting his other hand run along the inner reaches of her thigh. “Of course, we cannot consummate this until we are married.”
“Not fair,” she gasped as his fingers approached the apex of her thighs. “You will make me marry you to sleep with me.”
“I will,” Steven said. “I will have you as my bride before we join in flesh.”
“In that case,” Annika said. “I have to agree.”
“Good.” He kissed her more passionately and thoroughly than ever before. She softened in his arms, molded herself to him and played her tongue against his.
In matters physical, they were in total accord. It was only when they spoke that the cultural and situational divide made things awkward. Words were a waste of time with his tempestuous bride to be. He decided he would spare them as much as possible. Instead he let his fingers do the talking, massaging Annika’s womanhood through the barrier of her panties the way he knew she found so maddeningly arousing she could barely contain herself.
Chapter Eight
“You’re engaged!” Mary threw herself at Annika and hugged her so tight Annika could barely breathe. “Oh I’m so happy for you! Look at the ring, it’s so beautiful.”
Annika smiled. Secretly, she was just as excited as Mary was. Steven was handsome and kind and brave, everything she’d ever wanted in a man. She trusted him implicitly and felt completely safe whenever he was around—and yes, she felt love for him, the sort of love that choked her up and scared her with how intense it was. The only blemish on the whole affair was the fact she was sure he was only asking her so quickly because of the legal issues. Did he actually want to be married? Or was it just his way of helping her out? That she still wasn’t sure of, no matter how many hot kisses seared her lips.
