Robert Desmond - House of Evil

They had been married a year later, two days after her seventeenth birthday, and then her suffering had really begun. On their wedding night she had felt free to give herself to him completely and had wanted to please him as much as she could with her inexperienced body. At first it had been wonderful to be all naked and cozy together in the warmth of their honeymoon bed and he had stroked her with his hands, roving them maddeningly over the full length of her body, over her flat white stomach and then on down to the auburn softness of her pubic hair. He had stroked her there slowly, gently insinuating his middle finger between the moist, never-before-entered lips of her vagina. It had started a thrilling prickling feeling in her that she had never known before and she had squirmed around on the mattress beneath his probings. Then she had unexpectedly felt a blunt fleshy pressure digging against the top of her thigh, gouging demandingly into the tender sensitive skin there, hurting her a little but not enough to make her object and risk losing the waves of sensuality it made in her.

It had been his penis!

She had never actually felt its nakedness against her own naked flesh and the muscles of her body had contracted involuntarily at the strange touch. A rippling shock of electric pleasure had gone racing through her as he inserted his finger deeper and she had been literally unable to move. Then, Newton had taken her closest hand to place it over his rigidity, gasping as he felt her fingers clenching around him. She had never dreamed that it would be so enormous, even though she had seen its swollen length beneath his trousers that night in the car, the same stain of wetness on his pants that she had seen just that afternoon on George Blackwell's pants in the upstairs study.

At last Newton had rolled over on top of her and placed his penis between her thighs, reaching down with one hand to guide the tip up into the tiny, virginal opening of her throbbing wet vaginal passage. After the initial pain of entry, she remembered that nothing in the world had ever made her feel so good, so complete, so utterly female and worthwhile. They had tossed and moaned for what seemed ages, until eventually he had groaned louder and she felt, a hot, thick stream of liquid spurt up inside her stomach, filling her so much that it had flowed out again and drenched the sparsely growing curls of her pubic hair, covering the insides of her thighs with its slippery wetness and dripping down to moisten the sheet beneath her buttocks. He had given out a final groan and then collapsed over her body, mumbling abject apologies into her ear for having brought them to what he said was a low, indecent level of unholy lust.

It had been evident that he was unaware of her frustration that night, for he had obviously thought that they had both reached climax and he had been responsible for reducing them to what he considered to be ungodly behavior. Strangely enough, she had not told him that she had been only on the brink of orgasm. Perhaps it had been pride – she could not remember now – but she had tried to be understanding and stroked the back of his neck tenderly, consoling him with soft whispers even as she had hoped desperately that he would get hard again and do the same thing to her a second time to end the tension she felt. Instead, though, he had risen from the bed and dressed to cover his nakedness before rummaging through their luggage for the gilt-edged Bible his father had given him before he died.

Newton had spent most of the night reading verses on carnal lust, scolding himself in prayers for what he had done to his new bride on the first night of their honeymoon. The next day they had had an argument after she had come up to him to kiss and enjoy a little session of snuggling against him. Then, she had really wanted him to make passionate love to her and when he had kissed her back and held her to him just long enough to quicken her pulse and breathing, he had pushed her away and almost shouted that sex was evil except as a divine means of reproducing children.

It had been the same ever since. Newton made love to her only when he could convince himself that God really wanted him to have a son, "a strong boy to help him work the farm someday". At times he seemed almost obsessed with the idea of having a child but could not manage to overcome his feelings of sacrilege when it came to the act of sex itself, and accordingly, he had established a pattern of making love to her a mere once or twice a month. And even then, he fondled and caressed her vibrant young body only long enough to stimulate himself to the point of achieving an erection. Then, soon, too soon, without any warning or buildup of her own passion, he would pump his male sperm up into her womb and rise from her to return to his own bed.

As the result of this unrelenting moral code of Newton's, she had lived a life of total confusion during their one year of marriage, feeling always either frustrating desire for him or a sense of profound loneliness and exile. Sometimes, she even reminded herself of one of the divorcees or old maids she had read about in English translations of those saucy French novels, the books that at sixteen she had discovered and been able to sneak out of her grandfather's supposedly secret library of erotica when the old man had been living with her mother and father then. But there were crucial differences between her and those desire-ridden fictional characters – she, Nadalee, was young and alive, married, and wanted more than anything else simply to share all that she possibly could with her husband, the man whom she loved now, despite everything, just as much as ever.

She thought about the warmth of his lean body and how blissfully comforting his strong muscular arms would feel if suddenly, miraculously, he would call out for her to come in to bed with him. She knew better than to hope for miracles now, though. And yet, she could not shake off the feeling that she had been deserted and she could not help but be vaguely frightened as she contemplated the bleak prospect of the future as Newton's wife. She realized that she was not even an adult yet, not in years anyway, but she was, nevertheless, a person and had the same need for affection and understanding that any fully mature woman felt. She worked hard every day around people who were strangers to her, only to come home to another stranger, her husband. Here at Quail Lake, twenty miles from the nearest town, there was no one to talk to, no form of diversion for her, and she felt more and more imprisoned within herself as each day passed.

Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of the bathroom door slamming shut behind Newton and the soft padding of his footsteps as he headed toward their bedroom. Heavens, how long had she been sitting here letting her mind wander? Glancing over at the clock on the wall by the entrance to the kitchen, she saw that it was after ten, the time they usually went to bed. Newton was evidently terribly angry at her or he would surely have summoned her from the living room by now, reminding her of the time and that they had to get up early the next morning.

The sweet-faced girl uncurled her legs from under her and swung them over the edge of the chair, allowing the blood to prickle for a moment in her ankles and feet before she stood and then hastily moved around the room, switching off the overhead light and the several table lamps in the room. She thought of George Blackwell again as she made her way cautiously through the darkness toward the lighted hallway… What could she possibly say to him tomorrow if he renewed his interest in what she "liked" about him? She knew that she would have to lie if he cornered her somewhere in the house to torment her with the question, a question that embarrassed her even now, for she could not honestly say that she felt anything but plain fear and loathing of the man. She had never met a more heartlessly ruthless person in her life, not one who seemed to take such undisguised satisfaction in the discomfort that his very presence caused in other human beings around him. He was completely unlike anyone she had ever known among the sturdy reliable people of Oklahoma… If Newton believed that there truly was a Satan on this earth, certainly George Blackwell was the fiend himself… or at least seemed to be the most likely candidate for the position. What was worse, she thought bitterly, the wealthy man had had the gall to use her as an instrument with which to torment Braun, the bald half-witted servant who always seemed to stare at her with such open, actually pitiful hunger.