Chapter 1

My marriage was a real mistake. In fact, it was the worst mistake of my life. The main problem wasn't my wife; she was OK in many ways. My problem was her mother, a real dragon who hated me more than anything else and never missed an opportunity to be nasty to me.

Of course, I wasn't a genuine good guy, far from it. But I wasn't a really bad guy either. Every human being has both good and bad sides. Nobody is perfect. I had never pretended to be a saint and, to tell you the truth, I have been involved in a few less than honorable matters, but I've never spent time in jail for anything. It was a very close call once, but my friend Niclas, who went to law school at the time, saved me.

Niclas and I have been friends since school. He is a small guy with thick glasses, and he always preferred reading books rather than joining the rest of us in teasing the girls. When a couple of the boys in school chose him to be the victim of their mobbing, I felt sorry for him and told everybody that I would beat the crap out of anyone who dared to offend Niclas. Two of the boys did, and I kept my word.

Today, as I begin writing this story, I am 32 years old, self-employed rock driller, which means I'm drilling holes about 100 meters deep for thermal heating tubes, and I'm making good money doing it. I've been married to Lisette for almost six years, and we have a son, who was born only five months after our wedding. We have a nice house in a small Scandinavian town and we could be your average family. But we are not because of her mother, the "dragon," who hates me so much for getting her daughter pregnant while she had a boyfriend chosen by her mother. I must say that I've lost many battles, but I hope to be the winner in the last round.

The whole mess began on Midsummer Eve some six years ago. The midsummer night is the shortest night of the year, and has been celebrated as a holy night here in Scandinavia since ancient times when the Vikings ruled this land. It is a romantic night with midnight sun in the north and a only a few hours of mild twilight in the south. Wild partying everywhere. At the time I was engaged to a lovely girl by the name of Lottie, and we were planning to move in together on the first of August, when I had been promised a three-room apartment in exchange for the two rooms I currently had. But now Lottie and I had been arguing about her going to a cousin's wedding on Midsummer Eve. I wasn't invited together with her, which was a serious breach of etiquette, because engaged couples are regarded as equal to married ones, and should always be invited together. I was sure that no other engaged people were invited as singles. Lottie also understood that it was a humiliation of me due to my old reputation as a "bad boy." I had never done anything wrong neither to my girlfriend nor to her cousin, whom I had never even met. Lottie agreed that I was right, but she refused to choose me for that great evening, and would not stay home from the wedding. If the damn wedding had been any other weekend, I would have been glad to stay away, and even if I had been invited, I'd have done my best to find an excuse for not going. I didn't blame the cousin; it was up to her to chose her guests and skip people she didn't like. I blamed Lottie for accepting such a humiliating invitation on midsummer, the most important day of the year. We got into arguing and when she left my apartment in anger in the morning of Midsummer Eve, our engagement was terminated. I told her that if her damn cousin was more important than her boyfriend, then she could stay there forever, because I didn't want her back. An hour later I regretted losing her and called her cell phone several times during the day, but it was switched off.

Lottie and I were also invited to a big party at a friend's cottage. I went there alone and I had a good time as a new single. At the party I danced several times with a rather nice girl, Lisette, who was there with her wimpy fiancé, who had problems handling the booze. I didn't know her very well at that time, but found her rather attractive. When her boyfriend had had too much to drink, I offered to help her dump him in the backseat of his car. Lisette and I went back to the party for a while, and then took a walk in the romantic twilight to a nearby lake.

We went out on the small pier, sat down and began heavy necking. I think she was impressed with my old and incorrect reputation as a "bad boy." Nobody can explain why, usually, pretty women are attracted to bad boys. Obviously, it has always been this way, because there is an old saying, "It is the naughty boys that sleep with the beautiful girls." I felt her nipples harden and her pussy moisten, as I tenderly caressed her most private parts. I succeeded in convincing her that she was the prettiest girl I had ever met, and she had every right in the world to love, and to be loved by, a real man during such a holy night as the midsummer. This was exactly how I felt at that very moment. Neither of us was very drunk, and afterwards she never accused me of using any tricks to get her on her back. She was simply in love with me, and had no objections as we went to the guestroom, which was booked by her and her boyfriend for the night. She wore a happy smile on her face when I slowly, kissing her everywhere, undressed her, and gave her pussy its first licking ever. After a while, it was she who asked me to "make real love to her." I slowly and carefully spread her legs, got in position to penetrate her, and discovered, to my great surprise, that she was a virgin. My first and only cherry, a real trophy, I thought at the time.

She did not bleed very much, and only felt a slight sting of pain in her pussy during my first penetration, and she told me that it had felt good for her. After some further kissing and hugging, she allowed me to fuck her twice more during that holy night. I wore no protection but promised her "to be very careful" and, of course, did my very best to be just that. Then we fell asleep, and didn't wake up until the next morning, when her boyfriend was yelling like a lunatic when he found Lisette and me naked in bed. Lisette's boyfriend threw his engagement ring at her, which obviously meant he dumped her at once.

When my own, now ex, girlfriend Lottie came back from the wedding, she rang me and told me she regretted the whole trip, and I had been right about her being the only guest invited without his or her significant other, which had made her very humiliated and spoiled the whole wedding for her. She had tried to call me several times during Midsummer Eve to ask me to forgive her, which I could see later on when I checked the incoming messages on my cell phone. She begged me to see her and talk about our situation, which I agreed to do. But then, when she called me again an hour later after she had found out about me fucking Lisette, she was totally mad and shouted that she was glad our engagement was history. I didn't care at first, but called her several times about two weeks later when I expected her to have calmed down. I received the same reply every time, and was suggested to take a hike to a hot place.

I even called Lisette a few times, but she refused to see me, and I had almost forgotten all about her, when she rang my doorbell two months later. She had a worried expression on her face, and wanted talk to me. I asked her to come in.

She went straight down to business, "I'm pregnant, and you are the father." Then she started crying.

We talked for several hours, and she told me that I was the first, and only, man who ever had had sexual intercourse with her. She intended to keep the baby, and asked me if I was man enough to share the consequences of what we did. What could I say? Even I understood that two parents were the best for a child, and agreed to give our relation a fair try. Lisette was a handsome, pretty and mild mannered girl with a reputation as a "family girl." Not as cute as Lottie, but not a bad choice for a wife. We decided to get married as soon as possible. Of course, love is an important part of a marriage, and neither of us could deny that there was some kind of hot love during our holy night. Both of us believed that it would grow between us again when we had a baby. Lisette spent the night with me and we made love, which meant that I fucked her twice, very tenderly. She told me that she was very happy. I had made my decision, and it was my intention to do the best of it.

The next day we went together to her parents to give them the news. It was both the first and the last time I visited her parents' home. Her mother made my visit into a real hullabaloo. Instead of trying to make the best of the circumstances, she started yelling at me, calling me "a damn hooligan who had soiled her innocent daughter." She threatened to sue me, and promised to punish me in every way possible. Her father was obviously a poor wimp who let the "dragon spit her fire" without saying a word about the matter. Not the best in- laws in town.

Her parents were the second generation of owners of the family's print shop with her mother as the feared boss. At one time, their business had been the leading printer in the whole region, but was now going downhill. The European Union, with, at the time, fifteen countries, as a domestic market meant hard competition with a lot of new printing capacity available for low prices for the most important customers. And new countries, such as Poland and Hungary, with good printing capacity were close to getting their membership in the EU, and were therefore already successfully doing business with the old members. Lisette's family had made good profits during the good old times, but had not invested much in the latest equipment and was loosing customers, which had gotten them into red figures.

I was unemployed at that time, and Lisette's mother saw her chance to get me under her control, and demanded I begin working at the print shop for a lousy pay. I refused, and preferred to live on my unemployment insurance, which gave me more money than what she offered. As I had unlimited spare time, I even did some well paid extra work for a rock driller. Lisette's mother began our vendetta by complaining to the unemployment benefit funds that I had refused to accept an offered job, which was against the rules. She had nothing for that. Then she had a lawyer write a premarital settlement in which I had no rights to anything if things got bad between Lisette and me, which was her mother's goal. I had Niclas rewrite it to be more fair, and Lisette signed without mentioning this to her mother.