Chapter 8
SINCE THAT DAY THE INCIDENT HAD RANKLED IN lean, lanky Jeff Hudson's soul and more than once he had vowed himself some sort of revenge. A goodly number of times since that fateful day he had met Prudence Goodbody about the settlement, and each time she had done her best to entice him to her cabin, but Jeff had never gone. During these chance meetings he had always been cautiously civil and politely distant-until this morning when she had found him breakfasting at Susan Crowder's home. He had received a small, token revenge then; in telling her of his night with Susan, hoping to do her hurt by informing her he had spent the night with another woman when she seemingly had tried to get him to do the same with her.
But token revenge is not enough, he told himself angrily as he threw the last of his clothes down beside hers. Not nearly enough. And now she could get as frigid and haughty as she pleased, or screamed to high heaven for all he cared. They were far enough from the settlement that none would hear her and before this day was out fiesty, sassy, teasing Prudence Goodbody would have learned the lesson never to attempt seducing a man again unless she was prepared to follow through.
Prudence had left the water for a tiny clearing on the far side of the river, and there she stood in the early afternoon sunlight, posturing and posing as if before an audience, her midnight-black hair hanging down between her shoulders. Something slammed into Jeff's belly from the inside when he raised his head just high enough for his eyes to clear the tops of the undergrowth. He felt his face go hot and full with desire as he watched, thinking to himself that the only single term which could accurately describe Prudence Goodbody was petite and ravishing. His breath became heavy and labored as he stood there in the forest, his eyes fixed on her small body flashing in the sunlight across the river, not fifty yards away.
At the moment Prudence stood facing the sun, her hands on her hips and her feet wide spread. Her plump little breasts were the size of oranges and had pink nipples. They stuck straight out from her chest, cone-shaped, and the pinkness of the tips was in delightful contrast to the milk-whiteness of her body. From her shoulders her torso narrowed down' to a waist Jeff knew, even from a distance, that he could span with his hands. Then her body widened slightly to accommodate her hips only to narrow again for her perfectly molded, tapering thighs at the apex of which nestled snugly the small black forest of her love tunnel. From the position she held: hands on hips, legs spread and facing the sun, she raised her arms high over her head and bent from the waist, touching her right toes with her left hand. Next she straightened and repeated the movement, using opposite hand and foot.
After repeating this exercise several times she stopped and stood with her head back, breathing deeply. Jeff could see her proud little breasts rise and fall each time and so fierce became his need that suddenly the great, extended cudgel, already throbbing with impatience, commenced to ache with maddening anxiety. A tightness seized him in the chest and for a moment he thought his breathing would stop as he stood there motionless, transfixed, unable to remove his eyes from her heart-clutching beauty.
When her breathing exercise was finished, Prudence stood still for a moment, then cupped both breasts in her small hands, her expression growing dreamy as she massaged the nipples. She stopped this after a minute or so and once more spread her legs, which she had closed during the breathing, moving her right hand down to the black forest of delight atop her thighs. With deft movements her fingers parted the floss. The dreamy expression was still on her face as her hand began to jerk and she walked toward the water. She was hip deep in the pool when Jeff could contain himself no longer, "Hey!" he called, working his way closer to the water's edge.
Shocked surprise flashed over Prudence Good-body's beautiful face at the sound of his voice, and because the sun was in her eyes she was unable to determine to whom the voice belonged. Without thinking she whirled, thrashed toward the bank she had just left, dashed across the little clearing and disappeared into the underbrush beyond, heedless of the fact that her clothes were on the opposite side of the river. To have been thus accosted fully clothed so far from the settlement would have startled her, but to be done so while completely naked was alarming indeed. This was especially so, and humiliating as well, since she had been in the process of trying to determine, for the first time in her young life, exactly what was the ultimate reason for male-female attraction.
She did not know this when she had become the wife of Henry Goodbody and he had never taken the trouble to let her find out.
Prudence Goodbody, nee Carver, had been born and reared to the tender age of sixteen in a small fishing village south of Port Royal. Life for her had been a routine, even monotonous , affair until that fateful day Henry Goodbody had come prancing by on his great black stallion. Even though he was twenty years her senior, the very sight of his proud, saturnine face had stolen her girlish heart and they had wed shortly after her seventeenth birthday. Being ignorant of the ways of a man with a maid, and especially of the ways of a husband with a young wife on their wedding night, Prudence had not known what to expect, neither from him nor for herself. She was aware that the relationship between married couples was an intimate something, but exactly what, she did not know.
Immediately after the wedding they had left the small fishing village for Franklin, where Henry's home was, but because of the distance had been forced to camp along the trail. And that night, her wedding night, was one Prudence would long remember. After a hasty meal, Henry had built up the camp-fire, spread their blankets, grabbed her from where she sat and jerked her erect. Without further ado he had torn all her clothes off, emitting short, squealing, pig-like grunts as he did so. Prudence stared at him in horror from the blankets where he had thrown her as he frantically took off his own clothes, his proud face now ugly and swollen with passion. When he completed undressing he snatched his heavy leather belt from his pile of garments, made her roll over to lay face down, then with fiendish gusto began to strap her naked bottom and thighs. She screamed from the agony of the beating and the more and louder she screamed the harder and faster he lashed with the belt, his short, pig-like squeals growing with each blow. And her pleading for him to stop seemed only to send him to higher peaks of vicious depravity. Only when she momentarily lost consciousness from shock and pain and ceased to scream did he toss the belt aside.
When she had fully recovered consciousness he jerked her to her back, pulled her legs wide apart and forced her knee high. It was from this position, as she lay beside the roaring fire in the forest, that for the first time in her young life Prudence saw the visible proof of the difference between male and female. She had known there was a difference, of course, but exactly what difference she did not know. Yet even as she had lain there, her body aching from the beating he had just administered, the sight of this difference sent a very tiny, yet undeniable, thrill coursing through her.
Then her new husband was atop her, his weight pressing down, his hands down between them. Again Prudence felt the thrill,, not so tiny this time, as his hands did necessary things to her, but when the end of the difference was centered and, he lunged mercilessly forward with his hips, driving the hard gristle brutally into her virgin body, the thrill evaporated and she screamed again and again. She kept screaming until he suddenly gasped for breath, a violent spasm seizing him, and she felt something hot blossom low in her belly.
Thereafter, all during their married life in Franklin and until Henry's death when the black stallion, pain-maddened by the savage beating it was receiving from the rider on its back, had reared over backwards, their relationship had been one of beatings with the belt followed immediately by his assault. And even though her existence was one endured in abject, despicable terror, before her neighbors Prudence managed to maintain the image of a happily married young woman but she knew, especially after hearing other wives talk about the treatment they received from their husbands, that something was drastically wrong with her marriage. Never once had she experienced that wonderful flight into rapture other wives whispered of. A time or two, when Henry's lashings had been less severe and he was probing among her secret places she had noticed a soft, golden glow building up in her body, but nothing more than this ever happened. He always spasmed his release too quickly and left her hanging, wondering what was next. Exactly what it was she was not sure, but she was convinced in her heart there was something more in their relationship for her.
She was almost relieved when the stallion had fallen on her husband. At least there would be no more of the savage beating, which left marks on her back for days. By the same token she would never learn what other men did for their wives either-unless she married again, which she did not plan on doing any ways soon. Yet she craved a man with an almost maddening hunger.
And this was the reason Prudence Goodbody was known among the men throughout the settlement of Franklin as a tease. She wanted a man. She needed a man. Yet when the moment came for her to give in to the hapless fellow she had built a fire in, the memory of the brutal beatings returned sharp and clear and she drove, him off one way or the other. Later she always wept bitterly because of her weakness and fear, and later she always enticed another anxious male to her cabin door, but she never let him enter. Prudence Goodbody wanted a man, but she wanted no part of the merciless lashing which, in her ignorance, she had come to believe was part of any intimate man-woman relationship.
Therefore, when she was hip-deep in the secluded pool and Jeff Hudson called to her she turned and fled instinctively, not from a man but from an agonizing whipping.
Her white body had hardly disappeared into the underbrush when Jeff hit the water in a long, low dive, surfacing on the far side of the pool. Instantly Jhe was out of the water and after her, moving swiftly and silently and able to follow her easily because of the noise she was making. Though he could not know for certain, he was pretty sure she did not know who was after her. At his call back at the river she had noted the look of shock and surprise on her face and he also noted she had turned abruptly at the first sound of his voice. This, coupled with the fact that only the top of his head was showing through the foliage, led him to believe she was unaware of his identity. As yet, anyway. But not for long, if he had his way.
The thought of ever having to force his attentions on any woman had always been odious to Jeff Hudson, but the time Prudence had led him on, then turned him down, still rankled deep. This, plus the vision of her nude lovliness destroyed any reservations he had. Then too, there was no way he could know she was not fleeing from a man, but from the beating she expected to receive if he caught her.
Prudence was leading him in a wide circle and before long he saw that she was headed back toward the river, probably in hopes of crossing it to her clothes and escaping altogether before he could reach her. When he was sure this was her intention, he cut left sharply to intercept her flight near the edge of the small meadow at the base of the ridge separating them from the settlement.
Because Prudence was speeding along the edge of the meadow and in much brighter light than that filtering through the canopy of the forest where he was she caught only a brief glimpse of him as he sped closer. And this glimpse was from the corner of her eye. It was when she turned her head a second time for a better look, as she raced frantically for the river, that it happened.
Almost directly in her path stood a thick-butted dogwood tree and from the gnarled trunk of this tree stack a limb two inches thick and hardly a foot from the grass matted earth. The limb stuck straight out for a distance of three feet, then forked. A few inches from the V of the fork a poplar sapling had sprung up, the main body of it crossing the dogwood's fork, forming a small triangle.
Now, when Prudence glanced hurriedly a second time toward the darker forest in an effort to determine who was chasing her she lost her balance after stepping on a small pine burr, and plunged headlong at the triangle formed by the dogwood and the poplar. A wild cry of despair escaped her as she lunged toward the triangle. An even wilder cry filled the air as the top of her head hit the triangle dead center, forcing the poplar sapling to one side, with her head going through. When the poplar sprang back to its normal position it was against one side of her neck, with the other side of her neck snugly within the dogwood fork, her head caught in the triangle.
Had she not been frantic with fear from the beating she expected to receive she could easily have freed herself, yet in her condition this never entered her mind. Instead, she braced her hands and knees against the grass and pulled backward, not unlike a stubborn dog objecting to being led on a leash. Her efforts were to no avail. Both the poplar and the dogwood bent with her only to spring back in place when she desisted. She was in this position, on her hands and knees with her head in the triangle, sobbing hopelessly, when Jeff stopped behind her, knowing what he was about to do.
For a full minute he stood regarding her, wondering why she did not free her head, before he realized she did not know it was possible to do so. Again she pulled against the triangle imprisoning her head and when she did her hips moved daintily from side to side, the black tuft of her bottom peeking at him coyly from beneath the center of her white, young buttocks. Jeff felt his face go hot and loose with desire as he dropped to his knees between her feet.
"Oh please!" she begged tearfully when she felt his nearness. "Please don't beat me!"
Jeff did not answer. Instead he inched his way forward on his knees until the great blunt end of the protruding, aching cudgel touched her dark forest of delight, his heart pounding with a wild exultation because she did not know who he was. It was a feeling he had experienced as a boy after successfully stealing a watermelon-the ripest, juiciest, most delicious melon in the whole world.
"Not this time!" she begged again. "Please don't beat me any more!"
A second time Jeff did not answer-for two reasons. The first: he did not know what she was talking about, and the second: he intended to remain anonymous, at least until the first act of the session was complete. With gentle fingers he parted the black tuft and securely lodged the blunt end of the massive marauder within the hot moistness of the shy little cleft. Once this was accomplished he grasped her firmly by her firm, young hips, adjusted his stance on his knees, and commencing thrusting in short, easy strokes. He continued this for some time; until he realized he was making no headway whatsoever. Prudence was quiet now, her tears of terror beginning to fade the instant the burning end of the shaft touched inside the cleft, her fears slowly giving way to a silent wonder.
Wasn't this man behind her, whomever he was, going to beat, her? Wasn't the going to punish her in some way before he took his pleasure? What manner of man was this that treated her so gently and silently? Could it be that he was going to conduct himself as she suspected the husbands of the settlement did toward their wives-make love to them with never a brutal whipping? And wasn't he going to squeal like an angry pig as he satisfied himself? All these questions were belaboring her befuddled brain when the man behind her paused in his gentle action, then thrust forward harder than before. This time she felt the hardness pressing against her begin its entry and even with her limited experience Prudence Goodbody knew she was in the hands of a man of giant proportions. Rapt in silent wonder over not being beaten and at the wonderful sesation caused by his action, she unconsciously wriggled her hips eagerly for smoother, quicker ingress.