The Humiliation of Hannah

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  By the morning of the third day, Hannah was thirsty, hungry and chilled. Though the fire had burned through the night, her chill was not from lack of heat.

  Quite unlike his wife, Daniel showed few signs of tiring of their standoff. His calm, his steadiness, his even almost pleasant disposition scared her. She wondered for a time if he’d gone mad, this scene seemed so terribly strange.

  Awakening, she stretched as best she could while remaining well-bound, then allowed Daniel to untie her so he could escort her outside to the small latrine he’d built there.

  Back inside the shack, a river of tears began to run down her cheeks, unbidden, warm and salty tears. They opened the door to her emotions just a crack.

  Daniel noticed but seemed to pay no attention until Hannah finally shouted in desperation, “Daniel! Please!”

  “Please what?”

  “Please can we go home?”

  He shook his head. “When you’ve told me the truth.” He waited and she didn’t speak again, so he moved to the door to fetch another armful of kindling.

  “I was raped!” she shouted as he opened the door.

  He turned slowly. The sound of her voice reverberated through the room. He felt like someone had stabbed him in the gut, but he remained calm.

  “And what else?” he asked, his voice uncommonly gentle. He didn’t move.

  “They raped me … in my ass.” She could barely look him in the eye. “You were up here I guess, checking traps, while I was paying the price for Beau’s bad debts. Jolie was there too. The men came. We tried to resist and we had our asses beaten, then the three … took me like a dog humping a bitch in heat. I wouldn’t let them take Jolie and I wouldn’t let them use my … I wouldn’t let them use what’s yours… so they used my … my ass.”

  Daniel waited for more, and when she didn’t continue, he asked, “That’s all?”

  “No, it’s not all,” she said spitefully. “I was tricked into going out one night—you were gone again, I don’t recall now where you’d gone. A friend of Beau’s led me into the woods where Jarrett Cain was waiting to use me again. Then he brought me back before you returned with Jolie.” She stopped again, hoping that was enough.

  Daniel nodded, but he wanted more. “So what happened while I was taking Jolie to Springfield?”

  Hannah gazed at him wonderingly. Did he know that something happened while he was gone, or had he simply guessed? Did it matter? She hated to even think of those terrible days at Jarrett’s ranch—it was the worst of it, and the most condemning. But the inevitability of this confession couldn’t be ignored. She started, she might as well finish.

  “I wanted to protect you from this, Daniel. I see no reason to speak of this horror, but you insist.”

  “I do,” he confirmed without hesitation.

  “Well then… I suppose Jarrett Cain’s boys must have been watching for me. They knew you were gone and were waiting for Travis to leave. They rode in as I was on the road to town—I’d promised Travis I’d stay with Damien and April. Right there on the road, they roped me, bound me and took me to Jarrett Cain’s ranch.” She closed her eyes so she could say the rest. “I was tortured there, raped … repeatedly. I don’t even remember the number of days…three, four, I think … It might not have stopped, except my time of the month made Cain send me off. I suppose he’d had enough of me anyway. But that was it. They brought me home, but I couldn’t stay there, so I left. I found Miss Mamie’s a much better place for a ruined woman like me.”

  Daniel stood solemnly and unmoving by the door while she spoke. And when she finished talking, when she had no more to say, he moved toward her and sank to the floor beside her, gathering her in his arms, where she cried softly, her head against his shoulder. “You think I’m going to judge you for what you couldn’t help, Hannah?”

  “You should.”

  “I should, why?”

  “It should never have happened. How can you love a woman who’s been the plaything of a dozen men?”

  “I can because I love you, Hannah.”

  “You still love me?” She was appalled and pulled back.

  “How can you ask that? I’m not that inconstant.”

  “But I am no longer worthy of your love.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that, Hannah Crowe. You will not renounce me. You’d be renouncing yourself and the vows you made to me. Remember… for better or worse? Well, this is the worst of it. I’d rather have you as you are than not at all. You are the same to me, nothing has changed.”

  She sat up straighter and looked him in the eye. “Don’t you understand. I have changed! My heart has hardened. My loins are tainted with the dirt of those men, and my mind is stained by the disgusting memory of my own foul lust rising like some demon and taking over. Don’t you understand, I thrilled to their touch,” her eyes flashed, “I ached to have myself filled and ridden hard by those hellish men. And as if that weren’t enough by itself, when Jarrett Cain came to Mamie’s brothel, I willingly took him to my bed again. I wanted him.”

  “You loved him?”

  “No! I’d sooner spit in his face than feel love for him. But my body wanted what he gave me. I don’t deserve to be your wife. There is nothing holy left of our marriage. You can take me back, but I refuse to lie with you. I cannot. You deserve a better woman.”

  “You’re the only woman I want. What you’re feeling now is guilt. And there are remedies for guilt.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” she said dourly. She wanted to think so, but dared not.

  “Oh, there’s a way. If I’m willing to forgive, you’ll be willing to be forgiven.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Although her feet were untied for the trip down the valley, her hands remained bound. Hannah didn’t ask why. She assumed it had something to do with the ‘remedy for guilt’. She was not yet resigned to anything but submitting to the man who insisted she do. She was wary of herself, unsure anything could remove the plague Cain had wreaked. She knew she’d still resist, but she was as captive to Daniel Crowe as she had been to Jarrett Cain. She again had no recourse but to submit, to yield and wait, nurturing the faint hope that what her husband vowed was possible.

  Daniel didn’t even trust her enough to let her move freely about. The moment they arrived at the farm, he took her straight to the barn where Travis joined them minutes later.

  “Mrs. Crowe will be sleeping here in one of the stalls until she regains her sanity.”

  “This is NOT about my sanity,” she spit out. “I’m as sane as you are!”

  “You suppose we should gag her too?” he said coolly to his friend.

  Her eyes widened in shock. “How could you?

  “Isn’t this what you deserve, Hannah? Hmm?”

  She was speechless.

  “Tell me otherwise and I’ll change my mind in a heartbeat.”

  “You insult me.”

  “It’s fine to say that, if you want. But you have a lot to settle. Until you do, I think the barn is the right place for a harlot like yourself.”

  A strange sensation rekindled in her belly—it had hardly been three weeks since she was lying in a stall in Cain’s stable. The familiar feeling invading her body was reminiscent of that other time. Lust, unavoidable lust.

  Hannah didn’t see Daniel for nearly a day. Travis served her needs. While she was embarrassed to reveal so much of herself to this platonic family friend, she quickly got used to it, including the times she undressed in front of him. The rock that he was, Travis showed no emotion in the face of her embarrassing exposure.

  Hannah wondered if somewhere inside her she liked being treated more like an object than a person. Like that time before in Cain’s stable, her mind began to twist around a host of strange ideas. Her body reacted in curious ways, and the lust she’d tried to stamp out was only more titillated by the circumstances of this newest predicament. And wasn’t this of her own making? If she’d let herself be welcomed back into Daniel’s open, loving arms, she’d be
sleeping in her marriage bed with her husband at her side. But obviously, before that happened, if it happened at all, she had something to prove to herself and to him and could only wait out the result that now seemed hidden behind a veil of fog.

  Late in the day, after Daniel’s chores were finished, he had Travis bring Hannah to the house. While she’d remained naked, clothed only in a blanket while she was in the barn, she was told to put on the blue dress she made for herself the winter before. Travis had brought it to her on Daniel’s orders.

  Stepping into the farmhouse, she now had her first peek at her home in days, although it seemed like a lifetime. She was surprised to discover that it was as neat as a pin, no different from the way it was when she meticulously cared for it.

  “You wanted to see me?” she asked her husband.

  “I did.”

  He was sitting at the kitchen table eating a plate of the same stew she’d just eaten a couple of hours before. He’d made it himself. After he sopped his last piece of bread in the gravy and ate it, he stood up and carried the plate to the dishpan.

  “I want you to clean up the kitchen, tidy the house, things you usually do.”

  “Yes, sir.” Feeling thankful for something useful to do, she quickly moved to the sink and began washing the dishes with great care, while Daniel plucked his hat from the hook by the door and moved out into the night—a domestic scene that almost made her forget the great impasse that still existed between them. Within a half hour’s time the kitchen was spotless, the dishes stacked neatly in the cupboard and the floor swept clean. Just as she was giving the drain board a final swipe of the dishcloth, Daniel returned from outside, stamping the dirt from his boots. She wanted to scold him for messing the clean floor, but didn’t dare to.

  He hovered there silently for several moments, then finally spoke: “So Hannah, tell me something.”

  “What’s that,” she said, her back still to him. A nervous shill dashed up her back.

  “Tell me again what happened the day that Jarrett Cain came to the house.”

  She hesitated a few seconds, a little scared, then finally turned around. “He wanted me and Jolie, to make be the instruments of payment for Beau’s debt. It was obvious he intended to rape us. We resisted, and were both strapped, then he and the two boys with him used me… in the ass,” she ended quietly. It was still a shock to put into words that terrible scene.

  Daniel nodded, sure now what he would do. “Bend over, Hannah and raise your skirt. I want you to relive that day with me.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me, bend over.”

  Her body trembled, not knowing whether to vent relief or rage, but then, there was little time to check her confused emotions or act on them. She bent over the kitchen table and hung on as she had that other time, while Daniel raised her skirt with hands so dear to her that she could feel the love and longing pouring from them. He then stepped back and removed the belt from round his waist. Doubling the lengthy leather, he strapped her bottom hard. The sting of the belt was as vicious as any she’d endured in the past, but she sensed that her husband was more concerned with what would follow. Her heart leapt on that thought with hope.

  Once her ass was smarting meanly, Daniel dropped the belt and moved into her roughed-up behind, with his hands prying apart her rosy bottom. He toyed with the opening he unveiled and she reacted with a shuddering tremor that aroused the erotic feelings she’d being trying so to squelch. “Oh, dear God,” she quietly vented.

  “So they shoved their erections in dry?” he asked.

  Her entire body trembled as he continued to gently work the place. “N-No, sir. They used lard to grease the path.”

  “What? From the can on the stove?”

  “Yes, sir.” She closed her eyes and let that dark eroticism wash over her once again.

  Daniel moved to the stove and grabbed the can and scooped out a wad of the slick, white substance, which he smeared between her pink, plump cheeks. This was the first his hands had touched her body in a sexual manner since he’d brought her home. The simmering fire exploded inside her, and she wriggled quite lewdly but caught herself.

  “Be honest, Hannah. Did you like the way it felt?”

  His hips moved against her bottom with his throbbing member pressing at that taut gateway. Backing off, he aimed for the center, then shoved his erection into the receptive portal.

  “Ah, ah,” she gasped as his hard erection massaged her deep.

  “Did you like the way it felt?” he asked again.

  “Ah! No sir, not at first. It hurt.”

  “Does it hurt now?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And later?”

  “It stopped hurting.” Her voice became more ragged as he began to move in her.

  “And you liked it then?”

  “No, no,” she shook her head, overwhelmed, confused, loving the feel of her husband so deeply united with her, but at the same time, despising the memories it brought to mind. “No. No!” she shook her head, “I didn’t like it at all. They were cruel and disgusting…” her voice trailed off.

  “But did your body really think that?” He could feel her inner temperature starting to rise and the involuntary movement of her body, the squeezing, the milking action of her cunt and the dark pulsing channel he’d just claimed as his. He began to move in her more rapidly.

  “Oh, how my body betrayed me!” she exclaimed.

  “The way it’s betraying you now,” his voice dropped low.

  “No, I mean yes,” she spit out, being too confused to know what she meant.

  Seizing her two plump rounds in his fists, he thrust briskly now, finding her welcoming the touch. He’d been denied and this was like heaven to him now.

  “You like getting taken this way?” His voice was dark, sounding coarse like those other men’s.

  “Oh, my yes, sir,” she wriggled like a savage tart, like the saucy bride who could stay up all night making love like a common whore.

  “And you can come like this?” he wondered as he felt his own about to peak.

  “Oh, God, yes!” she practically screamed.

  He rammed himself hard into her, while she felt something inside her breaking away. Yes, this is Daniel, my Daniel, my beloved Daniel! she silently told herself, as her husband moved with the same cruel force as her captors had. “Oh my, yes, yes, yes…” she purred loudly like a barn cat.

  As his climax crescendoed, he reached down low between her legs and let the juices of her inner body pour out over his hand.

  “Harder, yes!” she screamed. No prompting needed now. Their flesh smacked together in a glorious rhythm reminiscent of their very best days. On and on, the spasms lifted them from this place to a wonderful mindless rapture, which for those few perfect moments erased the past, erased the hurt and everything that troubled them both.

  The exhausted, fainting finish left them clinging to each other over the end of the table. She could feel his warm arms around her and remember how once not so many days ago, she could melt inside that loving embrace.

  She wanted that now! Oh, how she wanted that sweet tenderness again, but her hardened heart had not relented. It remained impassively closed to the tender feelings tapping gently at its door. Maybe if it had been just that one time, but there was so much more that followed, more degrading rape, demeaning treatment and the appalling way she became Cain’s accomplice in her shameful humiliation.

  Hannah didn’t need to tell her husband the truth, for he understood. He seemed to sense the change in her, the wintry seizing up of those flaming passions when they finally broke apart and the cool chill of reality gripped them both again.

  “You can go back to the barn now.” He was as cold as she was. He didn’t even offer her anything to clean the juices that seeped from her rear. His jaw set firmly, he watched at the door while she walked into the chill of the evening and returned to the stall where Travis made her undress and tethered her to the thick wooden supports
like he would a renegade mustang.

  ***

  A day later, Daniel took her to the edge of the yard where he bound her to a tree and beat her backside with switches. It was a terrible time of year to be outdoors naked, and her exposure to the elements became the worse part of her punishment.

  “So Jarrett Cain used you in the woods,” he said as he was laying on the stripes.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And how was that?”

  The stinging branches ceased so she could speak. “He took my ass as he did before,” she said.

  When the scowling Daniel finally finished with the switching, he once again pried apart his wife’s rear cheeks and plunged inside the portal he greased with her copious female juices. He thrust deep, harder than he had before, and banged her brutally against the rough bark of the old tree until he shot his hot jism up into her rear channel. He pulled out, hardly winded.

  “And after he used you this way, what happened?” he said, turning her around.

  “I was taken home,” she said.

  “You were used brutally and then discarded,” he said.

  “I was scared to the bone and…”

  “And what else?” he asked.

  She hesitated.

  “The truth, Hannah. Tell me the whole truth.”

  “Aroused, sir.”

  He wouldn’t let her pleasure herself this time. Taking her back to the barn, he gave Travis his orders.

  “She’s needs to warm up, but no sexual contact. Bathe her with a hot rag, wrap her in blankets to keep her warm, but tie her hands behind her.”

  She slept that way, restlessly, and woke in the morning so horny that any touch at all set off the threatening orgasmic swell.

  After she’d eaten that day, Travis pulled her to an empty space in the barn. Her hands here tied and tethered to a beam above, so she was stretched taut; the strain severe. Both men then took turns with cane and switches, barking orders at her, demanding that she lift her feet high and pretend to march. They made her stick out her ass and arch her back—almost impossible to do. When she failed to please them, they struck her with the cane and switches. No matter how hard she tried, they were never satisfied, never pleased and another callous hit would bite into her tender skin and burn the flesh with a smarting wound.