Innocent Milf Ch. 26

Warning: Depictions of non-consent in this chapter.

Chapter 26

Once the rain had stopped, we got back into our "prehistoric" clothes and stepped out into the now-soaked campsite. The river had swollen its banks, its rushing and gurgling much louder. The post-storm afternoon sun peered through the clouds in occasional bright shafts, as if not certain that it was welcome yet. Where its light suffused the still-glittering air, a vivid rainbow stood stark against the darkened eastern sky. Cary "oohed" in delight.

Trying to do anything with the fire yet was a lost cause, so I played a little more with throwing axe and spear while Cary sketched, sitting on one of the flat stones nearby. Tomorrow we'd have to pack up and hike back to the ridge to meet Jack and head home. But for now, it was easy to pretend that we could live this timeless primitive sex-retreat forever.

I asked Cary more about her life--what hobbies she had as a kid, if she was happy at the gallery, or if she had other plans. She had sold a few more illustrations as magazine covers, but didn't like the idea of commercial illustration as much. "Still," she sighed, "it pays the bills well enough. I'd still rather just paint what's in my heart. Which right now is absolutely full to bursting."

I chuckled. "I know it wouldn't be appropriate, but I kind of wish I'd brought my mandolin along so I could play while you draw or paint. It makes me feel like... I don't know. Kindred spirits."

Cary's smile flashed up at me from under her bangs, even though she was still bent over her sketchbook. "We are kindred spirits. And that's not something everybody gets to have."

About to answer, I suddenly noticed that things had gotten quiet. Quieter than it had been since we got here. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Holding the stone axe and the spear in its atlatl, I backed up slowly to Cary. "Stand up," I said quietly. "Something's not right."

I could feel her warmth press up against my back as we both stood, tense and silent. My breathing was loud in my ears, and Cary's slight tremble of tension shivered right through her to me. I could feel my knuckles tightening on the long sharpened wooden stake that I had been using as a throwing spear for practice. The word bear kept repeating itself over and over in my head.

The sound of something large moving through the brush made my heart rate speed up. "You should get in the tent," I said hoarsely, waving my back hand vaguely.

A short, anxious laugh came from Cary. I turned in wonder to see that she had drawn her obsidian knife from its dangling sheath between her breasts. "If it's a bear, a tent won't matter."

My heartbeat thundered. Just as I was sure that it would be better to make a noise and rush at whatever was coming, if only to break the tension, I saw it--huge, slow, and stately. As if somebody had taken a deer and made it twice as big. Its huge rack of antlers was multi-pointed and brushed the branches of the evergreens screening our campsite.

An elk. And not just one, but at least a couple of dozen. Cary and I sat frozen as the huge herbivores meandered without concern along the bank of the swollen river and through the edge of our campsite. Once or twice, one of them would slow and tilt its head, a single large eye pointed towards us. I suddenly wondered if the rain had washed away any sort of "human smell" that might alarm the elk.

On the other hand, if I were as big as even one of these elk, I wouldn't be worried about a pair of humans at all. Especially not armed with sticks and stones. Incongruously, I remembered reading last week about the theorized prehistoric methods for hunting large game, and how they all involved a large group of people--some of whom were not guaranteed to make it back.

I heard Cary let out a breath behind me, and her grip on me relaxed a little. Her hand wandered slowly to my chest and she leaned against my back. We stood, still and quiet, watching the antlered males escorting the core of the elk cows and calves through this part of the river valley. I felt a strange kinship with the people who had wandered this same valley thousands of years ago, leaving petroglyphs and probably hunting similar beasts.

A full minute after the herd had passed, I let myself relax and start moving again. If I hadn't been so laid back from making love in the rain earlier, my muscles probably would have been screaming with the tension. I turned to Cary and enveloped her in a bear hug. She flung her arms around me and pressed her body as close as she could. We remained in silence for a long moment.

"That was unexpected," Cary laughed nervously. She shuddered against me, and I wrapped my arm around her, still a little wary to put down the spear. I nearly poked myself on the tip of the obsidian knife she still held. We both chuckled.

"Ha. So if it was a bear, you were going to take it on with that knife?" I joked.

Cary raised an eyebrow. "You're one to talk. A wooden spear and a stone axe? We both would have been bear chow."

I let my hand wander to the hollow above her hip. "If I have to be bear chow with anybody, I choose you. But I'm glad it was just elk." I frowned. "Dangerous enough."

"Thanks for protecting me. Again." Cary ran her hands up my back. "Even if it wasn't necessary this time. You have no idea how much it means to me that you want to keep me safe. I've never had anything like that, either."

I frowned a little, thinking of what her life must have been like up to this point. Rather than reopen any old wounds, I kissed her on top of her head. "Let's see what we can do about getting the fire ready for some roasted elk."

Cary's laughter rang in the dell. "Well. How accidentally appropriate for the night."

We sang as we took the firewood out of our tent and back to the firepit, and worked to get a fire going. It was slow work--I had expected as much. Still, it didn't seem so tedious when I had somebody to play with and talk to. Working through some of our old-time folk song repertoire together, we quickly ended up singing radio top 40 hits and old nursery songs.

By the time the fire was truly going, the clouds had fully cleared away, the river had sunk back to its accustomed level, and dusk was approaching again. The days here seemed to pass both languidly and too quickly. Without the demands of a modern schedule, I felt myself much more relaxed. No school, no work--just me and Cary.

I said as much to her, and she nodded dreamily. "I'll want a real shower soon, but otherwise, this really is kind of like paradise. Thank you so much for putting this together. I'll have to think of something to do for you."

I shrugged. "More adventures with you sounds like payback enough."

After eating our roasted elk with some pine nuts and some dubious salad made of rain-bedraggled leaves that Foxfire assured me were edible, we sat next to the fire and let the night fall in bliss.

"I want to watch the stars tonight, before we go back." Cary lay back on the grass and stared at the stratified sky, painted in colors of sunset and early evening. "I've always loved the stars, ever since I was a little girl."

"I'll get the blanket and we can go out a little into the meadow away from the trees so we get a good view." I considered putting out the fire, but figured that with all the rain, a temporarily unattended fire wouldn't be a big deal. I retrieved the sheepskin blanket, and Cary and I went hand-in-hand out of our little grove to the meadow beyond.

Wary of elk--or anything that might follow a herd of elk for hunting--I also brought the spear. Just in case. We didn't need to be digested by a pack of hungry coyotes, either. We found a spot that was a little drier, and draped the blanket over both of us. Cary sat with her back against me.

I wished I had paid more attention to the names of the constellations, but Cary was able to point most of them out to me. We snuggled beneath the blanket, sharing our heat as she named off the summer constellations. Lyra, Draco, Aquila, Cygnus, and Hercules all floated above as we enjoyed each other's closeness. Cary shifted a few times, as if getting comfortable. As I moved my arms to encircle her, I realized her rabbit-fur bra top was gone.

"Oh, goodness," Cary murmured in mock-confusion. "Where did that get to, now? My boobs will get all cold. You'll have to warm them up." She pulled my hands up to rest on her breasts, and she sighed. "Better."

Of course, it didn't stop there. Even though we had just made love in the rain a few hours ago, I was more than ready for sex under the stars. Luckily, Cary was too. I teased her about ticking another box off her "list," and she buried her face in her hands, even though it was too dark for me to see her blush.

"I'll... I'll share it with you some time," she said softly. "You're the only person in the world I would share it with. Not even my girlfriends know about it. Not really."

After that, we were too busy for talk.

As we relaxed in post-coital bliss, Cary stretched and let the blanket fall from her shoulders. "This whole trip has been like a dream," she sighed. "If I didn't love my kids so much, I wouldn't want to go back."

I pulled her closer to me by her hips and she giggled. But after a long moment she turned and pressed herself against me. "Hey, you've been really great to not ask about my past. I know you have questions. And you deserve answers."

I shrugged as best I was able. "Tell me what you want. It won't change how I feel about you."

She reached up and cupped my cheek. "You're wonderful. And I think it's time I gave you a sense for where I came from. Out here with you, in this enchanted place out of time, I feel safe. Safe enough to talk about it, and to tell you the whole story of what my early marriage did to me."

"Eric," I growled.

"No," she shook her head. "My first husband. Adam."

=====

"My mom died when I was eight. Pneumonia. I was devastated, and so was my dad. It was just us for a couple of years. But by the time I was eleven, he had met my stepmother Jennifer. I won't pretend that it was all roses and sweetness between us--I was a sad, angry little girl with a lot of feelings about a new mother figure entering my life. But we got along well enough after a while. She was the one who gave me my first set of watercolors.

The problem was that my dad didn't know enough to prepare me for dating and sex in the 70's. Dads didn't really talk about that stuff back then. And my new stepmom Jennifer was so conservative and old-fashioned that she didn't really have anything useful to tell me. She once gave me this ridiculous old book called The Hygiene of Marriage from the 40's. Girls talked, of course, but half of it was gossip and rumor, and it was an unsophisticated small town. We were told that nice girls didn't talk about that. So my friends didn't really know a lot more than I did.

We belonged to a fairly conservative church, and when I graduated from high school, my plans were to go get my degree in art and start a family. I was already breaking the mold by planning to leave the town I grew up in and go to "the big city" in Sacramento. It was May 1978, and I was brand new to the world. I spent my summer on Mission in Brazil--as if Brazil didn't already have enough churches in it. In retrospect, it was a total waste of time, but we all got a lot closer-knit as a result. I feel like maybe that was actually the intention all along.

Of course, there was more to it than just trying to spread the word of Jesus to folks who spoke mainly Portuguese. It was a learning experience--and not in the way that I think that our aldermen meant it to be. First of all, it was an open secret that Nathaniel--our mission leader--got my friend Terri pregnant during the Mission. The church tried to cover it up and smooth it over as soon as we all got back, but it was pretty obvious. So that opened my eyes about a few things.

It also showed me that the world outside was bigger and brighter and more colorful than a girl from a small town in southern Ohio had ever guessed. And more dangerous. I had never done drugs, and never been drunk. Well, the drinking culture was much more relaxed in Imperatriz than in Beavercreek, and every one of us got a little more intoxicated than we intended. Miranda got molested our first weekend there by some local boys! I should have known that Nathaniel was no good when he gave her a stern lecture about sin and saving herself for marriage instead of supporting her.

And we got conned out of money at least twice as we went around trying to spread the Gospel. It seemed like everywhere we went, somebody had an angle and was trying to pull one over on us. It made it a real chore to leave the enclave every morning to try again. Pretty soon, we had formed a sort of bond over the shared difficulties and disappointments.

And it was hot. Even though it was winter down there, "winter" in Imperatriz was still only a couple of hours away from the equator, and hot as blazes all the time. That meant that I was suddenly dressing in lighter clothing--and less of it--than I had ever done before. The girls were all told to "dress modestly" (something they didn't bother telling the boys), but that was really hard to do. We tried to stick to the spirit of the idea, but still... I could see the boys eyeing me when they weren't supposed to be. And the local men weren't at all shy about it. I'd been catcalled before--what woman hasn't? But this was different. I found myself almost glad that I didn't speak Portuguese.

I chased off a group of boys once who kept trying to lift up my shirt--they were shameless!--and sent them packing. At least, I thought I did. It turned out that all I did was redirect them towards my sweet friend Alexis who was about five minutes behind me on the street. She came back with her clothes all ripped to ribbons and sobbing uncontrollably.

The next day, instead of wrapping herself up and hiding inside--and nobody would have blamed her--she went out wearing less. She said 'If they see modesty as a challenge, let's see how they handle a full display.' She broke their fingers with a bike lock when they came for her next. But she also kept dressing really revealingly. If you can believe it, she ended up disappearing now and then to go dance at a strip club.

Of course, I confronted her about it. She called me a prude, and said that I needed to grow up and learn what life was really about. The first time I was ever in a strip club was when I followed her on one of her "constitutionals" and saw her up on stage. I was mortified. But I was also intrigued by how my reserved, pious friend was holding a room full of cheering men in the palm of her hand.

That's a story for another time, I suppose. Still, you can imagine what that did to me. I mean, you've seen me when I get competitive. But I was also barely out of high school and knew nothing about the world. I was both terrified of the men's lingering glances and their calls to me, but also felt strangely like I had discovered a superpower that I never knew that I had. It was frightening and intoxicating all at once.

So another side effect was that--church mission or not--I got all sorts of wound up and hormonally excited by my time in Brazil. And when I came back and went straight into college in Sacramento, you can imagine that I was just a bundle of conflicted sexual excitement, shame about it, and curiosity.

As it happened, my roommate wasn't any more experienced than I was. At least I had left the country for a couple of months. College was her first time leaving her hometown for longer than a trip to Disneyland when she was a kid. So between the two of us, we were sort of casting about in the dark. We decided to buy a copy of The Joy of Sex, but we were both too embarrassed to do more than read little bits of it and giggle furiously.

My first figure-drawing class was when I met Adam. He was artistic, intense, liberated, and strongly Christian. He was also our first nude model. I don't know what drew him to me, but I know what drew me to him. Regardless, it wasn't long before we were seeing each other outside of class. He was very respectful, and made it clear that he wasn't going to do anything that conflicted with my church upbringing. In fact, he would occasionally cite chapter and verse as to why not.

He was a Jesus Freak. We don't see a lot of those these days--they've mostly moved on to something else. But back in the 70's, it was a pretty widespread phenomenon--especially in California. He listened to Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, which I thought made him immediately both cool and worldly, but in a safe way.

What can I say? I didn't really know what I wanted. I was emotionally defenseless. And I was convinced after my Mission to Brazil that the world was a dangerous place full of rapists and con-artists. That if you tried to repress things too much, you'd just end up dancing for cruzeiros in a Brazilian strip club. So meeting a nice boy only a little older than me who appeared to share all of my beliefs (but in a cooler and more sophisticated way) was a perfect combination.

We got engaged in October. My father was almost in a panic. Jennifer didn't know what to do, so she just froze. My great uncle--the rich one--was skeptical. They all asked if this wasn't too soon, and if I really knew this guy. I was too infatuated to hear how sensible they were. All my friends at church back home wrote letters of support or sent cards. After all, this was the dream, wasn't it? Grow up, get married to a nice Christian man, settle down and have kids. Adam even said he didn't mind me continuing my college education and trying to get an art career.

We set the wedding for December. My great uncle flew my dad and stepmother out for it. A couple of my church and high school friends even made the drive across country from Ohio (or wherever they were going to school themselves). They were all so jealous of how I was "the first one across the finish line." You're smirking, but I'm telling you--this is how it felt back then. Women's lib was something that happened in places other than small towns in the Midwest, and I had been so painfully sheltered growing up that I just didn't know any better."

=====

My butt was falling asleep, so I shifted. Cary looked up at me with anxious gray eyes, made luminous in the moonlight. I was curious--every story Cary told me about herself was like a "quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" about the woman I loved. But it seemed like so much of her past had been uncomfortable. It amazed me that she was still so comparatively innocent. At least in matters of sex and love.

"I thought it was the 'Me Decade.' The 'Swingin' Seventies,'" I said. "I guess that was only true for some people."

Cary shoulders bumped in a shrug, bringing her breasts with them. "You heard about it. But for me, that was all stuff that our church leaders warned us against, my dad was too clueless to engage with, and my stepmother was too traditional to acknowledge. Life in a small town was different than what you see in the movies. You wouldn't have been more than... what, three years old at the time?" Her forehead crinkled as she did the math. I nodded. "Anyway, in a town where cable TV was for rich folks only and we had ten TV channels tops, that all seemed really far away."

"I have a feeling this is going to get bad," I said. "Or I would have heard of this earlier." I hadn't forgotten that she had mentioned being in a foursome on her honeymoon. At the time I had assumed she meant Eric, but now... I shook my head slightly and pulled the fur blanket closer around us. The stars glimmered in the Colorado night sky, and I smiled slightly despite the mild chill from both the wind and the implications of Cary's story.

She took a shuddering breath. "It still jazzes me up to even think about it," she admitted. "I get all flustered and anxious. I sometimes wonder if I should see a shrink." She gave my hand a squeeze. "But it's over now. You'll hear."

=====

"We got married by Adam's minister. I won't bore you with the details of the wedding except to say that once we had decided on a date, Adam decided to introduce me to all of his friends. Most of them were from his church. It was a lot more... effusive than I was used to. The first time I went to his church was also the first time I heard people speaking in tongues. We sort of rolled our eyes about stuff like that back home, but everybody in Adam's church took it really seriously. A bunch of them were convinced that Judgment was coming soon. To be honest, it was a little scary.

He spent most of his time with his "brothers." They weren't related by blood--in fact, as near as I could tell, Adam had been estranged from his actual family. But his "brothers" were a group of men about his age--between nineteen and twenty-five--who constantly hung out with him. I was allowed at some of their get-togethers by special arrangement, but I very much got the idea that they had a lot of "men-only" talk about the world and the way thought it should be.

I know that they threw Adam a bachelor party, but I don't know anything more about it other than some hints and sly references that they made leading up to it. Afterwards, they all seemed to be really reticent. I got the feeling that something had happened that they didn't want to talk about--and certainly didn't want me to talk about.

My friends threw me a bachelorette party, but it was pretty tame. Nothing like what you hear about now. No strippers for our party; the Chippendales didn't even exist yet. And in retrospect, we were a bunch of children--we wouldn't have known what to do or how to enjoy anything if a male stripper had been an option. Like you heard when Samantha talked about it, I was embarrassed being dragged to a strip club at thirty-four: at eighteen I probably would have just melted into a puddle.

At the wedding itself, I wasn't surprised to see a lot of Adam's church friends and his "brothers" filling up the pews. My great uncle had paid for a nice hotel for Adam and I, and Adam had arranged the honeymoon, so all I had to do was get in shape for the dress and walk down the aisle. My father looked very proud but also nervous. I could tell he had some reservations about Adam and how quickly things had developed.

The reception was a whirlwind of my family and friends congratulating me, and soon we were off in our new car--again, courtesy of my great uncle--towards the little wine-country hotel. I knew what was supposed to come next, and I was both excited and terrified. In case it isn't obvious, I was going to my bridal bed as a completely inexperienced virgin.

When we arrived at the hotel room, I was a nervous wreck. I had spent hours getting ready--beautiful white satin wedding gown, long crystal necklace, a hairdo that made me look like Farrah Fawcett, and even expensive bridal lingerie--a collective gift from my high school friends. My makeup alone took forever before we walked down the aisle, and now all I could think of was how hard everything was going to be to get off.

Adam had been pretty jovial on the drive up to the vineyard, but about ten minutes out, he got serious. "Honor and obey," he said more than once. I nodded, but wondered what on Earth he could be talking about. As Adam opened the door to our hotel room and carried me across the threshold, my anxiety blossomed into a combination of confusion and panic. We weren't alone.

In the moonlight spread across the room in a circle stood five of his "brothers", still in their wedding formalwear. They didn't say a word as we entered, but stood like statues, their eyes reflecting the moonlight through the window. Adam put me on my feet and looked back and forth approvingly. I opened my mouth to ask what the hell was going on, but he put a finger to my lips.

"A wife shall not speak until spoken to," he said firmly. I was too shocked and frightened to reply.

"We are here to celebrate Agape," he said. "Unconditional love under God's watchful eyes. And what is mine is also my brothers'."

I felt sick, and was crossing my arms so hard I was trembling. He couldn't mean what I was afraid he meant.

"Take off your raiment," he said, sliding the straps of my wedding gown down my shoulders. "You no longer need it before your husband."

I shook my head. "In front of everybody?!" I was still hoping that this was some sort of joke.

Adam looked perturbed, and stepped closer to me. "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. If you speak again without my permission, you will be disciplined." He didn't look like he was joking. He was smiling, but it was a different sort of smile than any I had seen on his face before. Colder. "Now, disrobe, wife. Or I shall have my brothers assist you."

I was shaking so violently, I may as well have had hypothermia. I took off my high heels and stumbled to the bed, numb with shock. How could this be happening? I lay down, hands crossed over my stomach. I couldn't meet anybody's eyes. I heard some shifting, and a couple of footsteps.

The rest came without any further warning.

Adam must have given some sort of signal, because nearly in unison, the other five came over to me and started gently but firmly pulling my clothing off of me. It took them no time at all to get me down to my white bridal stockings, garter belt, and lingerie. I was feeling hot and cold all over.

Adam stood at the foot of the bed while strange men's hands held me down and brushed up and down my arms, legs, and body. It was almost tickling, but not quite. Goosebumps were popping up all over my body, and my heart was hammering in my chest. I was on fire and freezing. I felt a touch on my belly, and looked up--it was Adam. He had taken everything off and was standing next to me now--as naked as when I had first seen him.

He said something in Latin--I couldn't understand it. But his "brothers" all said "Amen." And then Adam was kneeling in between my legs on the bed. He wasn't rough, but he didn't ask me anything either--just pulled my panties aside and pushed in. It hurt more than I expected it to, and I cried. It kept hurting for a while as he slid in and out.

As I felt him twitching, he leaned forward until he was all the way on top of me. "Tell me to cum inside you," he ordered. I gasped and shook my head, but he grabbed my chin. "Do it."

"C-cum inside me," I whispered. I felt like a whore; it was the most shocking thing I had ever said aloud It didn't matter to me that my lawful husband had ordered me. Good girls didn't talk like that. He sped up his thrusting, until I felt him burst inside. He grunted, and then stood up and moved back. "Good girl."

"Why?" I asked. "This isn't right!"

But he just leaned close and said, "Honor and obey. A wife shall be as a balm to her husband. And you have spoken without my permission in my despite."

He nodded to his brothers, and they gathered around. Adam held my face in his hands and talked to me calmly and without raising his voice about how God sees all, and that this was according to His will. And all the while, his five "brothers" started peeling me out of my remaining clothes and groping me. Hands were everywhere--squeezing, pressing, tickling. I might have enjoyed it if I hadn't been so frightened. And if I hadn't felt so betrayed.

The second man grabbed my head and pulled me towards him. It took me a moment to realize what was wanted, and I started shuddering when I did. I wondered if it would hold any water with Adam to protest that oral sex was technically sodomy, but that didn't seem like it would work. Soon I was sliding my mouth up and down the hardening shaft of one of Adam's "brothers."

As I could feel some pulsing, I tried to pull away but Adam held my head in place and fixed me with his gaze. "I will tie you up if I need to," he said. "You will submit as a good wife should." I could see another shadow approaching me in my peripheral vision, and it wasn't long before two more of his "brothers" were on either side of me, guiding me to give them handjobs. I closed my eyes, but Adam put his thumbs on my eyelids and firmly pried them open, forcing me to look at him.

Adam never seemed to blink. The whole time that I was staring at him, he stared right back. And I tried. I tried to do as he said. I tried to submit and to treat this as if it were normal. But it wasn't. I was hurt, and I was scared, I was disgusted, and the man I had fallen in love with so hard it made me dizzy was suddenly a different person, and letting his friends use me like a toy.

None of the others actually penetrated me--that was only for Adam. So when their time arrived, they simply ejaculated on me, all over the place. I was absolutely covered. As they rotated through, Adam would occasionally push me back down on the bed and start pumping away again. The sex kept hurting, but gradually I began to feel some of the pleasure that The Joy of Sex had promised as well.

The five others kept rotating--it seemed that the idea was that I would give each of them a blowjob while "entertaining" another two, and the remaining two would take a break. Adam kept positioning me or guiding me, with no tenderness whatsoever but no sense of anger either. A robot would have showed more empathy and emotion. By his third time, I was already sore, but my protests had begun to be joined by moans and whimpers of pleasure as well as fear.

I tried to reciprocate a little--this was supposed to be the most magical night of my life! And somewhere deep inside, beyond my conviction that this was not how things were meant to be, was a stubborn kernel. If this was going to happen, then I would find something to enjoy. After all, the parts of the book I had read before getting too embarrassed to continue had given me some ideas.

So when Adam came for his third time, I tried to roll him over and get on top. He looked surprised, but then smirked. "This Jezebel thinks she is the man in this situation," he announced. I froze. He didn't sound happy. I started shaking again, and Adam pushed me down and forced me face down on the bed.

The last round was all of them kneeling in front of me while Adam pounded me from the back. His thrusts would essentially push me forward into them as I tried to both balance and keep from biting--I had no idea how they would punish me if I hurt them. As I received from both ends, they slapped me and called me all sorts of terrible names. Whore, slut, harlot, Jezebel. It seemed to both disgust and excite them.

It had been five rounds of oral sex and three times with Adam before they were all finished. I was exhausted, humiliated, terrified, and sticky all over. When they finished and meandered to different parts of the room to fall asleep on various furniture, I ran to the bathroom. I threw up, and then sat staring at myself in the mirror, covered with a blanket and weeping, my makeup streaked and ruined."

=====

I couldn't stay quiet for the story anymore.

"Jesus Christ!" I exploded "Why didn't you report them?! That was criminal!"

Cary shook her head. "I didn't think of it like that. I thought I was being a good wife." She hugged herself tighter, and I ached for her past innocent self. "I didn't know the rules, and even though I sort of knew better deep down, I convinced myself that it was what the Bible told me to do. Adam was so sure and confident, and he kept talking about it in religious terms. And it was a different time--if I had reported it, nothing would have happened."

"But still!" I was grinding my teeth. "Still, what a prick! What an absolute asshole!"

Cary nodded. "He was. I had never heard the term 'sociopath' before, but in retrospect I think he must have been one." She shivered. "I feel lucky every day that things ended as they did. I don't like to imagine how it all might have turned out if I had been with him longer."

"You divorced him," I said. "Good for you."

Cary hesitated. "No. No, even after all of that, I tried to make it work."

"Even after all that Jonestown shit?" I couldn't believe it.

"You're closer than you think," Cary answered.

=====

"We never had another night like that. But when I finally woke up sore, anxious, and feeling used and dirty, he told me that I was his true wife now, and that the brotherhood would accept me. It was validating, but scary. He said that the rest of the honeymoon was just for him and me, but that I was never to try to guide him in the bedroom again.

It was always just him on top of me until he was satisfied. And he expected it every day. My desires didn't matter in the bedroom, and he always finished too quickly for me to have any real pleasure out of it. When his "brothers" came over, I was expected to serve them food and drink, and not to speak unless spoken to. Whether it was for Bible Study, drinks around the pool, or watching TV, I was always on call. All of his "brothers" treated me as if I were their wife, too--at least when they were over. They would reach out and pat me, or slap my bottom, or touch my hair. It made me shudder.

If Adam was in a bad mood, he would send me out to serve them drinks without underwear. Or sometimes they would simply gather around me, pull articles of clothing off that they wanted, and send me back to serving. It was surreal and degrading.

You look incredulous. Well, I was wising up. I went back to school, but lived at Adams's apartment now. I asked just a few very innocent questions of my classmates and professors here and there, and discovered that my marriage was in no way normal--not even for a conservative Christian family. And the more I thought about it, the more I decided that I was going to have a word with Adam and try to get things back to the way they had been when we first met.

His "brother" Dale, who always liked to poke me, announced that he was engaged as well. His fiancé was a farm girl from their church. During a Friday get-together at our house when it was announced, the men all started drinking and laughing. I tried to stay away from them when they were buzzed, but this time I could hear them planning to do the same thing to Dale's fiancé as they had done to me on my wedding night.

When I confronted Adam about it, he didn't deny it or show any concern. In fact, he made it very clear that I would be participating again to "initiate" my new "sister." I could see the future unrolling in front of me as an endless series of unwilling orgies, forced to both serve as a receptacle for the lust of Adam and his "brothers" and also to witness the breaking of a new wife. I had reached my limit, and decided that I wouldn't be party to it.

But then in early February, two things happened--Adam announced that we would be going on a trip to Central America, and I missed my period. Once Adam thought I was "with child," he decided that I would stay home instead of going on the trip. Well, I had already started to get a "Jonestown" feeling, as you put it, from this whole situation. He told me that when he got back from Central America, we would be selling all of our worldly possessions and moving down there with his "brothers."

I was in a panic for two reasons. One, I couldn't stand the idea of being isolated in a foreign country with what was increasingly obviously a cult atmosphere. And two, the idea of trying to raise a baby far away from my family was paralyzing. I see the question in your eyes--if I didn't divorce him, how did I get away from it all?

Simple. His little plane crashed somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico. There were no survivors. He and all of his "brothers" disappeared. I like to think that they were stricken down by the hand of the God they swore was watching while they slapped me and called me a whore and traded me back and forth.

I miscarried the next month, and I didn't know what to think. It was honestly sort of a relief. My family and friends all treated me like a grieving widow, but I was suddenly happier than I had been in months. It felt like a vice grip had released a hold from my heart. I felt as if I had been holding my breath for days, and suddenly remembered how to breathe again.

Abuse? You bet it was. He never hit me in anger, but he was well on his way to molding me into something small and timid. Contrary to everybody's expectations, I didn't drop out of school. I attacked it with the fervor of somebody who is suddenly free. I moved back to the dorms mid-semester and flushed every memory and imprint of Adam and his psycho cult that I could out of my brain and my heart.

Of course, there will always be some scars on the inside. But I took a couple of years to find myself and get a real sense of who I was and what I wanted. I stayed over the summers and took extra classes and graduated in three years instead of four. My dad seemed happy that I was happy, and slightly bemused over the whole "marriage for three months."

Do you get it now? Why Eric seemed so normal by comparison? He might have been a selfish jerk--and he was, believe me--but Adam was scary. Worse, he was capable of turning into a completely different person on a dime. He'd be charming and eloquent in public, but sanctimonious and demanding in private. I truly believe that if he had lived, I would have been on the news along with all of his "brothers" in a similar incident to Jonestown."

=====

I sighed. Cary was shivering, and I didn't think it was because of the chill in the Rocky Mountains. I pulled her closer and let her feel my heart beat. Her body pressed against mine and I could the moment when she relaxed and the stress of telling the story melted away.

"You've been through so much," I said quietly. "I'm really sorry that all happened."

Cary made a contented sound. "I get to be with you now." She snuggled up against me, pulling her feet close to her body. "I've never told anybody that. Not all of it. Eric got a short version of it when we first started talking about marriage. But he thought it was exciting."

I snorted. "Of fucking course he did. He thought you were a sex doll that made food."

Cary reached up and touched my face. "He's gone now. They're both out of my life. But now you know... you have a better sense of who I am. How I got here."

I did. I thought back to our first night together, and her pleas to be called a 'good girl' and her request for a slow, intimate snuggle. I thought of her saying she wanted it to be 'just the two of us' and realized how many other people she was carrying around in her head.

"Do you hate me?" she asked, misinterpreting my silence. Her voice trembled.

"Hate you?" I asked. "Are you kidding? I am in awe of you. Plenty of people would have come out of that experience as a total basket-case. You may have been innocent, but Jesus, you're tough." I took a deep breath to steady myself. "I'm glad that asshole died," I added savagely.

"Me too," Cary agreed. "That may not be very Christian of me."

"And for you to be so adventurous with me after all of that?" I exclaimed. "You're remarkable. I think a lot of folks would have just retreated into their shells and never come out again."

"I'm so glad I did," Cary said. "I can't imagine not having met you. I know it hasn't been long, but you're so important to me, Matt."

I grunted. "Jondalar," I corrected in a caveman voice. "Take Ayla back to tent. Sit near fire."

We stood and walked back towards the light, carrying our fur-and-leather accoutrements and letting the cool mountain breeze carry away the anxieties of Cary's past.