The Passions of Gwendolyn

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

I lived with these crude and vulgar people many months, finding as I did that their ways, as strange as they were, made sense to their roguish nature. I would never condone the raids like the one where I’d been taken, though no one that cared that I found it evil and corrupt. The reward for my cooperation was the satisfaction in my marriage bed. As rough and cantankerous as my husband could be, he came to me as an attentive lover to satisfy himself. Without fail, he granted me my pleasure as if to do otherwise would dishonor me. It was something of merit in his character to be thankful for.

At first I was timid with him, submitting easily to his every wish. The threats made before our marriage still rang in my ears as a possibility if I were to anger him; so I remained compliant, even though that is not my nature. As time went on, I became more bold with him, challenging his pursuits while we were together in our small home, just before or after we had s*x. He sparred with me in a jovial way, acknowledging that I would remain different from him.

“I’m not of your ways,” I told him once. “Surely you understand that I can never be.”

“I understand that you think too much for a woman,” he replied.

“Think too much, no,” I countered him. “I just find your manner of living contemptible.”

“It puts food in your belly and mine. I would not fault it so. And this. Surely you’ll find this pleasing to you.” He pulled from his pocket a pendant.

“Where did that come from?” I asked him.

“I come across things.”

“Like you came across me?” I shot back petulantly.

He hadn’t heard me speak this way since the day I ran away from him. He looked at me surprised by such scorn.

“I consider you my greatest prize,” he said.

“That I am a prize at all offends me,” I returned haughtily.

“Are you out for a war with me?” he scowled. “Because if you are, you will not win.”

“I’ll have nothing to do with your pendent,” I said, looking at the lovely piece with the beautiful jewels that remained dangling from his hand.

“But it would look so lovely about your neck.” He reached out to pull me close and stroke my neck and play with my long fair locks as they fell about my shoulders. He would tell me in the night how he liked them best of all my features. They made me an unusual woman in his midst, such pale hair. But then, he was quite fond of my breasts and well, and of my cunny, of course—all the time he spent there.

“I won’t wear it,” I retorted. “Give it to Lowen. She’ll like it no doubt.” Lowen, his sister, enjoyed all the baubles that were brought back from the raids. She had a horde of them that she kept hidden somewhere no one knew. Some of the women speculated that once she had enough, she would bolt the clan, make for a city and sell the items for a lifestyle less crude. She was dreamer, as much as I was, even though I was not fixing on another escape. Despite my private angers with my life, I shared too much happiness in my bed to change it for something that might well be worse.

“You vex me, woman,” Erik said, as he looked at the gleaming pendant and then at me. “This would match the green hue that I see in your eyes. But you turn aside my gifts to you.” There was even hurt on his face, a furrow in his brow that would sometimes show his despair. When it was not me that caused it, I sometimes kissed it away in the night and made him smile instead.

“You could bring me flowers you pluck from the fields,” I suggested.

“You would not think that’s stealing too?” he asked annoyed.

“I consider the wild flowers, God’s gift.”

“This is no less. But Lowen will appreciate it, you’re right on that.” Gripping the pendant tightly in his fist, he left straight-away to give it to her, as if to keep it longer would augment the offense.

Such were Erik’s and my spats. These conversations allowed my soul the chance to vent the agitations in my heart. And though they sometimes bewildered my husband, they rarely made him angry. He rather me be content in bed; and if putting up with my odd ways of thinking allowed that, he allowed me to challenge him this way.

I became bolder still with Erik when it seemed that our union was safe and secure. I found myself venturing vexing comments outside the hut, in the open air, where the company of his clan might hear. It was mostly innocent jibes that my husband would listen to with only half an ear—not unlike the churlish jibes of other women toward their men. I didn’t realized however, that I was treading in dangerous territory with my gentle protests.

On the occasion of one such innocent battle, it was after our dinner meal, when the air was turning cool and night was making the light dim. I was inspired to walk toward the stream a short way beyond a roaring fire where the men had gathered. I was called back by Erik when he saw me drift away.

“Gwendolyn, come here.” I heard him distinctly, but declined to obey.

“After I take a drink from the steam,” I called to him.

“Come here now,” he countered sternly.

I looked back at him, seeing him in the circle with the other men, talking. The rest of the women were retiring for the night; but I was restless.

“I will return, husband,” I told him in a louder voice to assure him, and then I resumed my excursion.

Such a simple thing, I thought. But what I didn’t hear were the barbs being set by some of the ruder men—the men without women that had eyed me from the beginning, and resented Erik taking me away from their bawdy pursuits.

“Woman!” he roared the next time he spoke, and then I stopped in my tracks. The ferocity of his voice startled me, but it didn’t deter my tongue.

“I’ll not be spoken to like that,” I roared back at him. And though I was about to indignantly resume my trek, Erik was at my side in seconds. The blow to my ass with the palm of his hand practically knocked me off my feet.

“Get on with you inside, and say no more,” he seethed, so only I could hear. I wavered a second to judge his resolve, but I had my answer the second later. “You go now, or I’ll whip your ass in front of them all.”

The warning shook me, and scared me enough so that I fled to my tiny home. On my heels was Erik, removing his belt, even as he followed me inside. I quivered anxiously seeing it with-drawn from his pants and ready to strike.

“Turn about and I’ll only take your ass,” he ordered.

I only had a second to comply, for as soon as I turned about, the belt was striking my bottom with a vigorous snap. Even through my clothes it burned. After a few strikes however, Erik was no longer satisfied with the effect. And dropping the leather, he tore at my clothes, much as he would have if he wanted s*x. When I was naked, he shoved my ass end up on the bed, and began to flail the leather against my bottom one more time. I cried loudly but remained so posed, knowing that except for the once I’d defied him in the beginning, he hadn’t in all these months been so angry with me. I couldn’t fathom what crime I’d committed; and with my shoulders and head pressed to the rough mattress I couldn’t ask.

The whipping commenced on my bottom side until I felt it burning hot, my skin no doubt a feast of red. When he finished the blows, he came to me before I could change positions; and with the same ruthless force he’d used to chastise me, he thrust his erection in my cunny hole, his thighs banging against my aching bottom. I cannot say I didn’t enjoy the clamoring sensations he raised in me, though I was still too overwrought to allow my body to reply. Once Erik had his way with me, he pulled out. For the first time that I can remember, he didn’t bother to see me pleased.

“Never defy me in front my kin and clan,” he declared with an angry tongue. And shoving my wounded bottom down on the bed so I could look up to see the expression of contempt on his face, he glared at me for a second and then left me.

Lying naked in our bed, I cried for some time, thinking how indeed the vision of my life would never be Erik’s vision, despite the way I tried to become part of his world. I wished for all I was worth that I could go to him and make amends, but it struck me that such an act would only diminish him more among his clansmen. They were looking for him to be strong and forceful with me, I more defiant than other wives. Such a horror to be caught in such an unequal world where, despite Erik’s regard for me, I would never be anything more than chattel.

Erik came to me hours later, bringing his naked body close to mine. He stroked my hair and kissed my brow, and with a hand cupping my tender ass, entered me again, as a husband should. His flesh was warm to me as I surrendered to it. Yielding all, I forgot my complaints to enjoy the moment of pure peace that followed. Moving eagerly beneath his passionate body, I reached to clench his ass and push him deeper into me, if that was possible. I climaxed wildly just as he did, and for that brief instant I had power and dominion over him. The power to give him the supreme satisfaction he sought. It was the only power I would ever wield over my barbarian husband. There were no tender words, no expressions of love, Erik spoke the only way he knew, through the clearly understood actions of his body.

In the morning, he was dressed before I was, and woke me to repeat the last words I’d heard from him the night before.

“Never defy me in front of kin and clan,” he said.

“I am sorry for that, Erik.”

“That’s good. Not again, ever,” he said, shaking his head. “Or I’ll have little choice but to whip in you front of the others.”

I cringed.

“You’re not in your fisherman’s world anymore. You’re in mine.”

Erik left with his words lingering in the air like a foul, pungent aroma that stays with you. Despite attempts to change it, or wish it away, it remains until you’re so steeped in it that it becomes commonplace.

I suspect, somehow I thought I could maintain my difference from the clan I was fated to be part of. In that confrontation with Erik, I realized it was foolish of me to think that way, and likely dangerous too. I also realized, that though my husband had been gruff with me, and cruel with my ass, he did show a degree of compassion. There were women in this clan, who showing some small act of defiance to their men, were taken into the woods by a husband and his fellows. Stripped of their clothes, they were whipped as Erik suggested. Straps and switches were flailed against their backsides until they howled so all could hear many paces away. I’d seen their wounds when the punishments were over. Some might never go away. That should be fair warning to keep my opinions to myself. Until the night that Erik flogged me with his belt a second time, I’d thought myself safe from such happenings. He was wise to warn me that I wasn’t, and for that I had to count myself luckier than the other women.