Another Sin to Pay For

How better to celebrate Nude Day than to give a version of the most famous nudity story ever?

My protagonist here went in a bit of a different direction than she was initially intended to go, but that's all right. We have no evidence that Lady Godeve (or Godiva, though her actual name was the unlovely Godgifu) was as cock-mad as I've written her, but we do know she was incredibly generous to religious houses and foundations. I decided there had to be some reason for so many gifts to God, and (this being Literotica) I reckoned it was to assuage her guilt over fucking a lot of guys.

I mean no harm in the liberties I've taken with her. She's had enough libel already; the whole "naked ride" thing was probably all made up. In other words, she may not have actually been the world's most famous exhibitionist... but that's what the legend says. So.

Please read all the Nude Day contest entries and vote up your favorites!

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1: Falling

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Everyone watched Lady Godeve when she rode to St Mary's. She was the wife of the Earl, and that made her special. Plus she was a fine rider, tall in the saddle, and a beautiful woman into the bargain.

Of course, it wasn't really St Mary's yet: it was a building site, a rubble-pile of dull red stone and snowy plaster-dust, caged by wooden scaffolding. But it was moving along well, and Godeve already loved it. As well she should: she and her husband were paying for it. But the people all knew it was really her that was building it: the Lady's piety was well known all over Mercia.

They also knew that the man she'd installed to oversee the construction, a monk from wherever she came from, was her confessor. So Her Ladyship's visits to the shell of the new cathedral were, it was thought, not entirely construction-related. And that was the real reason people watched her as she rode:

They knew it meant she'd probably sinned. And more than a few of them wondered, in their hearts, what that sin might be.

The men among them probably wondered in their pricks, too, for Lady Godeve had that fresh, fecund look about her that told the entire world she was a woman in her prime: three children she'd borne the Earl Leofric, and another two before that to the odd Dane her father had found for her as a first husband. She had the smooth, sleek thighs, the fair clear-skinned face, and the proud breasts that could make a man want to fuck her, coupled with a grace and dignity that made them want to protect her, to honor her.

To love her.

She held her head high as her horse strode gently through the busy Wednesday streets of the little town, a town sure to grow once the abbey was finished: abbeys meant pilgrims, and pilgrims meant money, and money meant people. Houses. Livestock. All the wonderful things that made life good, that she'd left behind in Lincoln. People looked up at her with hopeful smiles or worried stares or wondering glances, but very few of them ever held her gaze. She was never sure why.

Before her she saw the broad shoulders of Osmer, walking with that determined air all her husband's carles had, eyes watching for any threat to her. But he knew as well as she did that she was entirely safe. And he also knew (too, as well as she did) that while she was closeted with Brother Gladbert, confessing what troubled her and receiving his penace to cleanse her soul before God, he'd be able to amuse himself with Edith the blacksmith's daughter, newly twenty and itching for a man.

Edith would be pregnant by the fall, Godeve guessed. She'd glimpsed Osmer's cock one day after he'd bathed: that thing was destined to make many babies. It had hung long and glorious, dripping from the river water, his balls full and wonderful behind...

No! she screeched at herself. Stop that! Wasn't this the very reason why she was making the trip to St Mary's today, to atone for those thoughts, the ones she'd had since before she'd been married? Those pesky, glorious thoughts of cock: hanging cock, soft cock, hard cock, wet cock? Hairy cock, smooth cock, elderly cock, younger cock? Warrior cock, shepherd cock? Even, God save her, priest cock?

Any cock? All cock?

She shook her head to herself as she noticed a woman in the road before her, sighing ruefully that she'd share the poor wretch's fate if she couldn't scour those naughty thoughts from her mind. For the woman in the road was doing a walk of penitence, barefoot in the dust, clad in nothing but her grimy ripped shift. Her hair she'd flung wildly about, uncovered in public for perhaps the first time in her life. Who knew, Godeve shuddered to herself, what horrifying sin this woman had sunk herself into, to lead to such a brutal penance.

She cleared her throat. "Osmer?"

"My lady?" He halted in the road, peering up at her curiously. He hadn't brought a weapon, not today. "Something wrong?"

Godeve, her mind savage, flung aside the thoughts of this man's remembered penis. "That woman in the road?"

He glanced ahead as he fell in beside Godeve's stirrup, eyes flickering up and down in that appraising, masculine way that Godeve tried not to notice. "The penitent?"

She nodded. "Give her some money as we pass, please. God would not want her to continue in wretchedness."

"Amen," he shrugged, his mind clearly thinking about the wretchedness in which he'd soon be helping Edith to continue. He cocked his head. "One penny this time? Or two?"

"Just one." She could see the weave of the woman's shift now as they drew near, the way the hem was neatly stiched. The woman was not poor, clearly. She was lost, though, her face showing terror, and well it should: her world had unmoored itself. No woman ever, ever appeared outside her own chambers in nothing but her shift, her hair exposed to the sky. Her feet in the dirt... "No. Two."

"As you say." Osmer plainly did not care very much, even though two pence was quite a sum; he was accustomed to Her Ladyship handing out far more for far less. Godeve wondered for a moment whether Osmer would pay Edith.

Ought to be the other way around, she told herself. Any woman should realize what an honor it was for her to take a magnificent prick like Osmer's. Or, hell, any prick...

She sighed to herself, wondering yet again how Hellfire would feel once she died. There were times, many of them, when she lost herself at the window with her spindle, dreaming of cock. And not, alas, Earl Leofric's; his was fine, mind you. God had blessed him, and her.

But she craved more. Always, always more. The craving led to sin, and sometimes the sin led to trouble, and this time? The trouble had been bad.

She pulled ahead of Osmer as the carle paid the barefoot wretch in the road, thinking idly that a truly penitent woman would take those two shiny silver circles and give them to God, for His glory, perhaps even for the benefit of the new St Mary's. But no; Godeve had never been anything but a noblewoman, but she understood with a sort of maternal bleakness that the woman in the torn shift would take that money and spend it on herself.

Couldn't be helped.

She reined up outside the half-completed archway, knowing Osmer would catch up eventually. "Meredith?" She turned, nodding regally to her maid. She tried not to notice the girl, tried not to even think about her, but the wench's beauty made that difficult. What wonderful cocks Meredith is probably riding, the Earl's wife thought glumly to herself. She was a slave, too, which somehow made it worse. "Take the horses. I'm off to seek Brother Gladbert."

"Of course, m'lady." Meredith was careful to play the part of the perfect, modest young maid, but her eyes told another story. They reminded Godeve of what her own eyes had looked like, once. Meredith was the prime young bitch Godeve would have been, had she been born to someone else.

But she was still not so different from the little wench. It chilled Godeve to think that she was doing exactly the same thing: playing a part. Being false, a good wife who was not a good wife.

Again, her mind went feral. She flung out those vile thoughts, so unworthy of her. Godeve gritted her teeth and, as usual, looked away from Meredith. "I'll return presently."

The men building the abbey stood aside for her as she swept along the half-done nave. This was high summer, her wool gown prickling under her arms through her shift, but she ignored it like everyone else did: summertime in the middle of new King Edward's England was a time of bad smells, and that was as true for the highborn as it was for the low. She looked straight ahead as she strode past a man squatting calmly over a trench, shitting.

She paused outside Brother Gladbert's hut, built leaning against the half-done western front of her new priory, and shook her gown straight. She'd known Gladbert from childhood, but she was the Earl's wife now and she needed to look the part. She twitched her jewelry into place, that tangible sign of her station, and then knocked softly on the monk's makeshift door. "Enter!" he called from within, sounding cross, but she just waited in silence.

Earl's wives did not open their own doors.

He got the message after a few moments, cracking the door open and peering out. "Oh! Shit. Well. M'lady... won't you come in?"

"Thank you, my brother," she nodded graciously, pretending she was walking into her own palace rather than Gladbert's little hovel; she stood tall and serene until he kicked the door closed, turning with his head cocked. Waiting. "I trust the work is going well?" she ventured.

"Oh, well enough." He'd been chosen to oversee the building work for three very good reasons: he was clever with drawings and sums, he was good at forcing men to their work, and his father was a reeve. "I have wine," he went on, the door safely latched, "or cider?"

"Wine, please, Gladbert." She smiled now, a sad and wistful smile as she crossed to the little chair she always sat in. He watched as she moved a candlestick and a few pieces of vellum from the chair onto his table. "You keep house abominably."

"I need a wife, probably." He watched her from the corner of his eye as he brought her wine in a clean wooden cup. "Too bad I'm a monk. Are you well?" He asked it hesitantly, taking a seat on his little bed.

"Do I ever come to see you when I'm well?" She said it softly, bashfully, staring at his dirt floor. She heard him sigh as she dragged her eyes up to his; he'd always liked her eyes. "I've done it again, Gladbert."

"Yes," he shrugged, "every time I see you, I assume you have." He waited for her to go on, and when she stayed silent, he sat back and took a sip. "Same old sin?"

"You know me well." Godeve's body buzzed and tingled, the sweat spreading beneath her shift. She knew she was blushing scarlet, the shame never far away. "It was a man who sold the Earl some sheep. Two hundred," she added, as if in justification.

He nodded slowly. "And he was as most of them are? Young and clean-limbed and lithe? With eyes like obsidian?"

"Don't tease me, Gladbert."

"I never would." He drained his wine and set his cup down. "But I'm your confessor. I need to know the nature of your sin before I can beg God to absolve you."

She looked away. "The nature of my sin." She closed her eyes, remembering: Thursday night. The shepherd had come back, ostensibly to get Leofric's next payment and bring in three sheep who'd wandered off, but that hadn't been the real reason he'd come back to Coventry. "It's the same sin I always confess. The only thing that changes is the degree."

"Lust, yes. But what degree was it this time?" he pressed quietly. He'd done this often with her. "Where did you sin? In your heart? Your eyes?"

"This time?" She shook her head, sunk deep in her own shame. "I sinned almost everywhere, Gladbert."

His eyebrows shot up. "Almost everywhere?" He did a good job, she thought, not sounding incredulous.

"Well," she sniffed, for accuracy's sake, "not my ass." She scowled, enduring his glare. "Heart. Eyes. Hands. Mouth."

"Cunt?"

"No." She blushed more furiously, as if that were possible. "Not this time. I wanted to. But... well, he came in my mouth. So I couldn't."

"Oh, well, praise the lord for that." He rolled his eyes. "I love you like a sister, Godeve, but I cannot imagine why you can't control yourself."

"That's because you didn't see his prick," she snapped, defensive now. "You'd not have bothered controlling yourself, either." She'd seen it during that first visit, when he'd come out onto the porch to piss after an hour of haggling with Leofric. She'd been sitting there with Meredith, spinning, the sun high in the sky, and he'd looked calmly at the two of them. M'lady, he'd nodded with a lopsided smile, and then he'd just whipped his trousers apart right then and there, and out had come one of the thickest, most brutal-looking cocks she'd seen in many years.

She'd heard the soft, sighing exhalation from Meredith. And from herself, as well. They'd watched, eyes pinned to his member, as he'd urinated long and hard off the back of the porch, piss from the Earl's wine spewing from that amazing penis in a graceful arc into her kitchen garden; she knew she'd think about his piss when she ate the rosemary from under there...

He'd turned insolently to face them as he'd tied himself up, nodding with a smirk; he'd glanced at them both, but his eyes had started and ended on Lady Godeve's. And when he'd come back on Thursday, she'd wasted no time letting him see her stare at his groin.

She'd been happy, no, she'd been ecstatic to go to her knees for him in the stables, her delicate noble hands pulling down his roughspun trousers, and when at last she'd leaned in and opened her mouth he'd tasted sweaty, like a man should.

"Hey!"

She blinked, coming back from her reverie to Brother Gladbert's cynical glance.

"Focus, Godeve, or my absolution won't work." He shook his head. "Not that it's working all that well as it is, seemingly."

"I cannot understand the way God made me," she growled heavily, her face properly ashamed even as her mind was remembering the taste of the shepherd's cum. The way he'd held her head. His shuddering sigh. His balls leaping in her hand. "I can only fight it, with the help of God and St Mary." She hesitated. "And you, my dear Gladbert."

"Spare me your flattery," he muttered, but he wasn't really mad. He watched as she started on her wine. "I've known you too long. Your behavior would shock me, if I was a better monk."

"It should shock you. It should shock everybody." She brooded over the cup. "I need this sin to go away."

"Forever?" He arched a keen eyebrow. "Is that what you mean? That you need to scourge this lust from your body? Or do you mean that you just want to make this sin go away?" He sniffed. "This mouth sin?"

"And hands," she said slowly, viciously, remembering the trace of his cock across her fingers. "And eyes, and heart. All that."

"You want me to make that go away? I can do that, of course, with the help of St Mary." He glanced at the beads around Godeve's neck, which she used to keep track of her prayers to the Virgin. "But I don't think you want to conquer your sin, Godeve. Not really." He waited until she brought her eyes back to his. "I think you'll be back to see me soon."

"What of it?" she cried. "I sin, you absolve, God forgives, I go. Then I do it again. And again. What's the problem?"

"The problem is twofold," he explained, his voice terse. "Problem number one: that's not the way it's supposed to work, Lady Godeve, as you must know. God does not want to absolve the same sins over and over again; He wants you to stop that sin."

"I cannot understand the way God made me," she repeated stubbornly, a chant. A touchstone. She clung to it. "I can only fight it."

"Then do so. But, of course, there's the second part of the problem." She looked away. "If your husband finds out..."

"He deserves a better wife," she snapped. "We know this. We've discussed this before, you and I."

"I think he has an amazing wife," Gladbert said quietly, and not for the first time Godeve wondered what it would be like to fuck him. She'd known him all her life. Gladbert and her brother Thoreld were close friends, and there had been times when Godeve had wished Gladbert had been her brother instead of the deeply stupid Thoreld. "I think she should learn the error of her ways and become a proper, Godly wife and mother. Don't you?"

"I think she should," Godeve sighed wryly, "and she usually is. But sometimes, Gladbert... sometimes..."

"You need strength. To fight off these desires. It's like the devil slips into your heart and mind and you become almost like an animal."

She caught herself smiling. Remembering. Leofric had gone away two years ago to smite Worcester, at the bidding of that dead asshole Harthacnut. She'd been sad to see him go; he'd been a broken man coming back, for his people had come from Worcester long before. And she'd used his time away unwisely by having vigorous sex with a visiting thegn called... Cenhelm? Or was it Cenric? Whatever. My animal, he'd called her; he'd been impressed, she recalled, by her ferocity. Her stamina, too; she did remember she'd worn him out.

Her most recent son, she assumed, had sprung from the seed of that thegn. Fortunately, he looked a lot like his mother.

"Are you listening to me?" the monk bleated.

No. "Yes, Brother Gladbert," she told him humbly. "I'm getting better. It's only a few times a year, now." She swallowed. "I used to be a right slut," she admitted ruefully.

He just stared at her. "A few times a year is a right slut, dammit," he hissed. He waited again until she turned back toward him. "Do better, Godeve," he pleaded, his voice softening. "For God, preferably, or your husband, but most especially for yourself. All right?" She hesitated, then nodded with at least a semblance of resolve. He took her hand, making the sign of the cross on her palm. "Now then. What's it going to be this time?"

She had thought about this. "Glory to God," she intoned, "and to his handmaid Mary, the ever-virgin. How about two manors? All the revenue, for this priory?" She put on her most hopeful smile, winsome, the smile that had won Earl Leofric's heart over ten years ago.

"Two manors. Free and clear?"

"No. Not for this, a mere oral sin." She shrugged. "Two manors is an anal sin, surely. Or both anal and vaginal?" His mouth tightened. "But I'll see to it you get the rents."

Gladbert's fingers tightened on hers. "What kind of revenue, Lady Godeve?" His manner had gone formal, almost automatically: they were talking business now.

"Ashow, at two pounds, and Kenilworth."

Gladbert rolled his eyes and dropped her hand. "Kenilworth belongs to King Edward."

"His forester gives me allegiance," she shrugged. "You'll have the revenue, at least from the woods." She'd done her homework; Godeve was a woman who knew what she had. "Half a league of woodland, Gladbert. Then Ashow, that's mine. I'll give it over to Thorkil. He'll pay you whatever I tell him to pay."

"Thorkil of Warwick? How do you know him?" Gladbert asked sharply, but Godeve only smiled.

"Remember that reliquary I paid for? With the pearls, all the silverwork?" He nodded. "I gave you that because I sinned, if you remember. And Thorkil was who I sinned with." She shrugged, holding his gaze now. She was back on her own ground here, the humiliation gone. The secret out. There was nothing left to be sad about anymore, just her soul's salvation to buy. The shame, she found, had disappeared like the shepherd's cum lurching down her throat.