than all the girl's I've known, and if they like getting screwed, why shouldn't you? Isn't that what love's all about – seeing that the one you love is happy? And Verna, I love you more than anybody else, except Suzie, of course.'
'Thanks, Jim,' Verna said softly, smiling tenderly at her brother. 'That's sweet of you to say. And I… I think you're the greatest, too – outside of Carl. Maybe… maybe I will try and get him to go on a picnic with me like you suggest; I think he needs a little outdoor recreation!'
Young Carl Monroe studied his black-haired bride, and despite his mixed and seething emotions, he couldn't help admiring Verna's magnificently proportioned body. She was sitting in a relaxed position on a striped blanket, their picnic lunch spread around her like an offering, and her hand was slightly stroking the stem of her wine glass. Golden noon sunlight filtered through the surrounding pines and gilded her already tanned form like an admiring spotlight from the Gods. From where Carl stood at the other side of the mossy clearing, the twenty-two year old girl was the ultimate he had ever desired in a woman, and his leanly muscular thighs throbbed with a defiant desire to once again possess all of her ripely curvaceous flesh.
But as much as he wanted to touch her, kiss her, make love to her – as much as he knew she wanted him to – he couldn't seem to make that first move. Not after last night. One half of him cried out that he was a man, her man, her husband, and should therefore enjoy all of the sweet taste of her… but the other half shouted that he was also a man of pride and integrity, and should have nothing to do with a warm sweetness that was like poisoned honey. He didn't know what to do any longer. He had hoped that coming up in the hills as she'd suggested would somehow provide the direction he should take, for having spent the morning alone in the cabin had only left him confused and wretched.
She'd tried – oh God, how Verna had tried to be nice and cheery and wifey to him! – but he was still stymied, unable to fathom the situation, much less how to handle it. The whole affair was so damned alien to him, so utterly foreign to anything he'd ever had to encounter before in his life! He'd stare at Verna and know he loved her with all his heart, and then his whirling mind would envision his lovely bride in the arms and bed of another man, and he would grow cold and sick in his soul.
Carl's inexperienced mind continually swirled with lewd pictures of Verna and her previous, unknown lovers… her curvaceous naked body displayed abandonedly for them; her svelte, tapered legs spread and her warm, moist thighs pulsing; the hair-fringed lips of her pink vagina quivering with fires of unrefined lust… Her premarital lovers were faceless in his mind, for all that Carl imagined were their hard, erect, cocks standing out from their loins, their sacs of sperm-bloated testicles swinging down between his wife's welcoming thighs as she reached out to grasp their great throbbing penises and lead them in toward her soft, urgently demanding cunt… and then the wet sluicing sounds as the no-name men wormed their virile cocks inside the spasming hair-fringed mouth between her wide-splayed legs, her pussy clasping around their meaty shafts with its own volition… the deep throbbing… the incoherent babblings as their desire-convulsing bodies reached for the magical apex of climax… and then the lewd cascade of cumming, with white-hot semen pooling in his bride's belly with her own sexual secretions…
God! Carl clenched his eyes tightly together, unable to look at Verna alone and expectant on the blanket. Trembling with his nightmarish imaginings, he swiftly turned and crouched down beside the murmuring stream again, slowly revolving a bottle of red wine that was in the cold water, placed there when they'd first arrived in order to chill it. He wished that the brook could somehow cool the jealousy and shame which raged in his heart, and wash away the hurt which burdened his thoughts…
His lovely wife found that she was near crying, and she felt warm tears beginning to form in her eyes as she watched her husband at the stream. She compressed her lips tightly, remembering her twin brother's advice and determined that Carl would not see her anguish. When at last Carl took the bottle out and came toward her with it in his hands, she consciously ignored the obvious agitation in his manner, and managed to smile weakly up at him as if nothing was wrong.
'Having a good time, honey?' she half-whispered.
'Yeah.' His voice sounded strangely hoarse. 'Yeah, a great time, a real great time.'
'I… I'm glad.' She slid nearer to him as he sat down on the blanket. 'You want me to help you with the wine?'
'No. I don't need your help.' He grabbed the bottle opener with its corkscrew attachment and started jabbing it into the cork. The inside of his mouth was terribly dry. He wished she wouldn't sit so close to him, so close that he could smell the feminine heat of her body. Jesus, it was all building up inside him like an atomic explosion, building up until he wasn't sure he could control it. He coughed reflexively, as if to swallow the words of anger and pain that were forming in his throat, trembling as Verna slid very close to him now, the twin mounds of her near- naked breasts touching his arm. No brassiere – shit, she didn't even have the modesty to cover her breasts decently. But what for? he thought cynically. How many men has she been naked for already, thrusting out those magnificent breasts to be kissed and sucked and squeezed…?
Verna reached out hesitantly and stroked his bare arm, plucking at the short sleeve of his T-shirt. Carl didn't look at her, his eyes remaining on the stubborn bottle of wine, his lips still tightly pressed while he tried to pry the cork out. He needed a drink the worst way. Why didn't the cork come out? It was like it was glued in there! He battled the bottle some more, shaking her fingers off of him, as if they were annoying insects, and then the top portion of the cork broke, dislodging the cheap corkscrew. Now he'd have to start over!
But it was too late for that. It was too late for everything, and his bitterness and self-pity welled up in his mouth till he thought he'd choke. He turned savagely to Verna, his eyes smoldering, and said in a shaky voice: 'How many, Verna?'
The tone of his voice caused her heart to pound violently. 'What, honey?'
'Don't honey me,' Carl snarled. 'How many were there?'
'Carl… Carl, please…'
'Goddamn it!' he snapped. 'How many were there before me?'
'We… we better change the subject,' she said haplessly.
'I'd hate to ruin your day with my maudlin feelings,' he replied, his words abruptly clipped. 'I must seem like an idiot to you, asking that.'
'N-No, Carl,' she moaned weakly. 'No, you don't. It's just that I love you, I love you very much, and I… I hate seeing you hurt this way. Please, can't you just forget about it?'
'Fine, just fine,' he said sarcastically. He yanked viciously at the cork in the bottle. 'My tender bride turns out to have laid everything but the Atlantic Cable, but I'm suppose to forget it. Forgive and forget it. Well, you're right, I will forget that question – I doubt you've got fingers and toes enough to count up all the men you've had before me. But answer me this: did you like it?'
In spite of herself, Verna found her mind returning to some of her boyfriends she'd known and been intimate with… to the vision of spreading her legs to them and the feel of their blood-rigid penises sawing mercilessly into her smoothly responding cunt. Had she liked it? Yes… yes, she had. She had enough to achieve her own climax, to cum in blinding, crashing waves and to cry out her own fulfillment and send their flood of milky semen deep into her belly…
'Well?' Carl asked, flinging the bottle from him in frustration. 'I asked you a question, bitch!'
'Oh Lord, Carl, honey, don't torture me this way!'
'You did like it, didn't you?'
'Yes!' she blurted. 'Yes, yes!'
'You fuckin' whore!'
'Yes! I'm a whore!' The words were like a whip to her brain, a well-deserved verbal chastisement, and she felt the masochistic need to hear more. 'Yes, I'm a slut, a tramp!'
She sobbed uncontrollably against his chest now, but he refused to touch her. 'You act like you're proud of the fact,' he said.
'Noooooo,' she walled miserably. 'No, I'm not proud. I love you, and I've hurt you deeply, but… but this all happened before we met, Carl, believe me, before we met. I didn't know… How could I know it would make this difference?'
