The Passions of Gwendolyn

Chapter One-3

Staring at me the way he did, did Erik know my thoughts? Did he wonder at my silent musing? He seemed patient enough to wait for an answer, but he didn’t alter his gaze for even a second as he listened for my response. He wasn’t anxious at all when he repeated his demand. “Tell me your name, so we can be married,” he said again.

“Gwendolyn,” I answered him at last. I didn’t smile for him, though I’m sure there was enough resignation in my face for him to see that I’d accepted this decree.

“Gwendolyn, it is, and a beautiful name for one as beautiful as you.” He seemed pleased though his expression remained grim.

Moving away from the bed a few seconds later, Erik reached into a satchel and pulled from it a dress to replace the torn one that I wore.

“I thought this a fine one for a wife. You’ll need it,” he said. “Put it on, and I’ll come for you.” He threw it to the bed so I could stare at the garnet-colored fabric that had once been some lady’s—a lady more wealthy than I had owned this fine garment. I wondered if Erik had slept with the woman, or simply pillaged it from her closet.

On his way out of the tent, he turned back to me.

“If I have your word, that you’ll not escape again, I’ll leave you unbound.”

I nodded my agreement, and watched him take note of it, and then exit the hut.

An hour later I was married to Erik, in the midst of a wooded glade, with a host of scruffy brutes as witnesses. Erik’s congenial father united us with words I didn’t understand, in a ritual from his heathen past that was laced with pagan images. When it was my time to give my word, I nodded and mumbled the words I was told to speak. With Erik answering the same, the simple ceremony was concluded—the sound of drums filling the air and pounding at my ears.

Our wedding was a cause for celebration. Other women, I’d not seen before, appeared from the huts strewn throughout the forest. All danced in their velvet gowns, head pieces of flowers and leaves from the forest that made lush crowns atop their heads. I might have called them beautiful, yet I was still in awe. As the bride of the day, I was grabbed by the others into their fest, as we circled around the fire, our bare feet dancing a jig, reminding me of the spring festivals at home. I didn’t laugh, though I did smile, seeing the light on these women’s faces.

I think I was drunk, for all the ale that was forced to my lips. I ate their feast almost unconscious of the fact, the meat, the bread all passing my lips as easily as the brew that filled my belly and made my head spin. Long into the evening I remained with the women, dancing, tending the fire, and drifting in an out of a unthinking stupor, as my wedding night progressed. The men conversed in hushed tones on the other side of the fire, at moments stopping to whoop it up in a riotous carnival display, before their revelry would die down again.

In the midst of one such moment of inebriated frenzy, I was suddenly grabbed by the hand, and pulled away from the other women. To my drunken horror, I was stripped of the dress Erik gave me, and lifted high into the air by many rough hands. I was certain that I would be raped then and there as a sacrifice, this terror to me part of their pagan ritual. Though I would have protested the act, I was too drunk to find my voice, and too weary to do anything but submit.

My fears of some savage s****l rite were groundless, however. Stripping me of my garment was simply a clan ritual, a way to prepare me for the remainder of the night. Once I’d been carried around the fire several times, I was taken to Erik’s hut. Deposited on my husband’s bed, I found him there waiting with another glass of ale to anoint my lips. I drank freely, though was soon lost in the vehement excursion he was making about my body.

“You’ll be content with me, Gwendolyn,” he said, as his lips ran the length of my body from my lips, to my breasts, to my navel, to the place of fire between my legs. I bucked madly against his face as it pressed into my s*x mound, luscious waves of drunk ecstatic joy surging through me. A magnificent climax rocked every flaming pore as if I’d been taken by the god’s into another land of bliss. So many times my dear Stuart had satisfied me, yet he’d not attained this kind of rebellious abandon Erik bestowed on my craving body. Was it the ale, the music, the beating drums and the dance? Or was there something in Erik himself that propelled me into this rapture?

As he did the night before, my new husband’s firm erection was planted deep where I still spasmed for myself. His pounding rhythm, and vigorous thrusts subdued me into a quivering likeness of myself. I begged for more, mad with the thrill awaiting between my open legs.

He climaxed once in that first fervent moment, and then twice more in the night, when we lifted ourselves from exhaustion into our body bliss again. I found myself lying as close to him as I ever lay with Stuart, and in just a day’s time, my lover’s visage had escaped me altogether, as if he was a worn and useless memory.