"Where are you?" she screamed. Nichole stood and searched wildly through the trees. "Why are you doing this?" Another arrow zinged closer than the first, and Nichole jumped in surprise, and turned and ran on. She was crying again, and her body refused to run any further. Nichole was exhausted, and ready to give up. She set her jaw and felt her teeth chattering as she turned to walk back down the mountain. Three more arrows tried to turn her again, and Nichole cried when each one passed by her, but she did not turn around. She heard a pop, and something pinched her thigh. Little feathers were glued to her skin, and she sank to the ground.
It was dark, and there was a fire blazing in front of her. Nichole's eyes weren't focused, but she could see blurry dancing flames. She heard a man say, "Cain, she's up."
Nichole felt someone kneel behind her, and a man's arms, Cain's arms, circled her waist and pulled her back against his chest. "Just rest for a few minutes. Your head will clear up soon."
Nichole turned to look up at him. She was so confused. Her tongue felt thick and her mouth was dry, and her whole body was aching. "Cain?"
"Ssh," he whispered against her ear. "Don't scream, Nicki… or I'll have to gag you."
It was still several moments before the first tear rolled down her cheek. She was terrified, but the emotion was shot with muddied incomprehension. It was then that her mind split to keep Nichole safe, and let Nicki deal with the terror.
Cain was with her, so she thought she should feel safe. Don't scream? Why would Cain tell me not to scream? "Cain?" She was frantically sifting traits into different parts of her mind, keeping the righteous morals she had been raised in, safely hidden with Nichole.
By then, all of the girls were waking, and all of their men were holding them the same way that Cain was holding her. Her friends had the same questioning fear in their eyes that she had.
"We own this place, Nicki. We've decided to take a little sabbatical, and we're bringing you along."
"I don't understand." Nicki hated the feeling of dread in her stomach, and glimpses of the long afternoon chase were filling empty pockets in her mind. A part of her longed to sink into the darkness with Nichole.
"There's nothing for you to understand, Nicki. Just do what I tell you to do, and you'll be fine."
Nicki could hear somebody crying, but she was still trying to focus on Cain's eyes. His thumb was wiping the tear on her cheek, and the more her mind cleared, the more frightened she became. Nicki's stomach clenched and she began to panic when she saw the way that Cain was staring at her. Not her, exactly, but the tear, and even though Nichole was woefully inexperienced, Nicki recognized the look in his eyes as pure lust.
She pushed against his chest, kicking her long legs and attempting to hit him with her bound fists. "Let go of me," she cried. Immediately, the collar around her throat tightened and her head was pulled back. Nicki gripped under the leather, trying to loosen it so that she could drag in some air.
"I told you not to scream, Nicki." Cain held one hand gripping the back of the collar and twisting it so that it tightened, and his other hand held a leather plug. Nicki continued to struggle, and the Velcro straps of the gag slapped softly against her wet cheeks. "Open your mouth." Cain waited a second, and he repeated, "Open your mouth, Nicki, and I'll loosen the collar. If you don't, I'll just gag you after you pass out." The deep steady calmness of his voice was frightening, and Nicki's mind was blackness and white shooting stars.
She opened her mouth when the terrifying thought that he might choke her to death, seemed to be a real possibility. The leather was stiff and the plug lodged just short of tickling the back of her throat and causing her to retch. Oh, god. What's happening? His hand released the collar, and Nicki concentrated on sucking air in through her nose and clearing the stars from her vision. A fraction of her consciousness realized that Cain was attaching the ends of the gag to the back of her head. She felt him lift her long braid to slide the straps under it.
When Nicki regained her senses, she looked around at her friends. All of them had the leather straps digging into their cheeks and an oval black disc shaping their stretched lips into an obscene looking grimace. While Lucy, Saundra, and Nicki seemed to be shocked into stillness, Sallie was battling Dwain. He swung from behind her and sat on her legs, smiling while he continued to grip the collar and choke her. Sallie's bound hands finally dropped to her stomach, and Nicki could hear the air whistling into her nostrils when she was able to breath.
Cain stood up and walked towards the center of the circle, and Nicki raised her hands to try to untie the gag. That was when she discovered that her wrists were also tied to a rope around her waist. Cain was staring at her, and she slowly lowered her hands. Cain? Cain, please don't do this. Nicki willed her silent plea to show in her eyes. He continued to stare at her until she gave a muffled sob.
Cain's mouth lifted in a slight smile. It was more than a smirk. He was definitely pleased that Nicki had figured out the hopelessness of escaping, and that she feared him. It was as though that was what he was waiting for, and Nicki realized that the other men were holding her friends' heads so that they were also watching Cain.
Cain stared only at Nicki, freezing her with the dark blue eyes that she had thought were so sexy. Now, they reminded her of black ice, with their cold purpose causing her body to tremble. Even before he spoke, Nicki was captivated by his power. When he did speak, it was only one sentence. Nicki felt as though each word lanced through her quivering skin and lodged deep into her bones… like the arrows that had steered Nichole to this place. Fear compelled her to look at him, while Cain told them the first Rule.
"Rule number one." Cain's smile broadened and Nicki shivered. "Obey."
It really was the only Rule, though many subtexts were added to it as the days, weeks, months,… and finally, years… passed by them.
Autumn realized that a hand with a towel was wiping the bar in front of her. She looked cautiously beside her space for her drinks. Her mind was still very foggy, and she forced herself not to tremble.
"I have to close now, Autumn," Joanne said gently.
Autumn looked down the bar to see the vodka woman was gone. She was the only one left, again. Autumn rose and walked towards the door, buttoning her coat and leaving her change on the bar. It was another ten dollar tip, and Joanne scooped it up. If Autumn hung around, Joanne might be able to move before Christmas.
CHAPTER IV. DISCOVERED
Autumn walked into her hotel room, and she tossed her hat onto the dresser. The desk clerk in the office thought that she was odd, and he did not argue when she asked for the room on the end. The further away from the office and the apartment he lived in with Mary, the better. Autumn had given him a number to call, and as usual, all of her room expenses were covered.
The lawyers had tried to talk Nicki into moving to a safe hideout of their choosing. She was still nervous and distrusted their connection to Cain, and she was unsure if it was all an elaborate plan to convince her to testify against him. She insisted on her freedom to hide where she wanted to, and after Davis Merrill discussed it with Cain, he had agreed. The attorney gave her a card, and all that she had to do was go up to a machine, push in four numbers, and she seemed to have unlimited cash.
They bought her the motorcycle when she said that was what she wanted, and Benny showed her how to drive it. Her subconscious had turned the horse into the bike, and the way that she could get back to where she belonged. When the lawyer was arranging for her license, he asked her what name she would like to use. The last sight Nicki had of the mountain, were the trees and the brilliant fall colors. "Autumn Cain," she announced, and the surreal sense of her mind splitting yet again while the grains of her traits re-shuffled, did not even alarm her this time.
Autumn kept a pre-paid cell phone in her coat pocket, and the lawyer checked in on her on Monday mornings. Nothing ever seemed to change, and he kept telling her to just hang in there. Benny kept monitoring her friends in the institution. He reported t
hat since Nicki had escaped, Mike Ross had been frantically working to get the assistance of Lucy, and working on motions to stall the trial. Saundra and Sallie were useless, and after a week of badgering, Lucy had shut down and she refused to leave her room.
It had been almost a year since Nicki had seen Cain. The time was a fractured mess of mixed up memories, with the girl dressed in black cowboy gear guiding Nicki across the country. The few times she heard updates of the case on television, she panicked when her face was broadcast. What they had was the picture of Nichole on her college ID, and there was only a vague semblance of the woman she was now. Even Nicki had a hard time looking at the cheerful face, full of hope and excitement, and remembering that had once been her.
The only way that Autumn could function, was to separate herself into separate lives. Nichole was the high school and college girl, the one who Mike Ross and the doctors wanted to talk to. Nicki belonged to Cain. She was the slightly wild girl who desperately wanted and needed her Master to take care of her. Autumn was the woman in limbo, the one who was hiding and afraid to speak. She protected the others, because she was unsure if the next person she met, would drug her and drag her back to the asylum. She was Nicki's caretaker for the time being, and it was up to this mysterious part of herself, to keep Nicki safe until she could be with Cain again. Nichole must be kept silent and buried.
Mike Ross would appear on the screen, urging the public to help find her. He considered lying and saying that Nichole was dangerously unbalanced after her terrible ordeal, and that she needed the protection and treatment of the institution. Ultimately, he decided that if he was too convincing, her testimony in court would be deemed unreliable. Instead, he insinuated that Nichole might have taken part in the abduction.
Nicki would get angry with the egotistical man's lies. If Mike Ross had known how every appearance caused his witness to distrust him even more and bind her to Cain, he would cringe. As a senior prosecutor working with limited funding and help, he was exhausted from battling the battery of high paid lawyers for the defense. He had also come to the incomprehensible conclusion that after ten years of torture and eight months of treatment, Nichole Flynn still had feelings of loyalty towards Cain.
What are my feelings for Cain? This was something that continued to confuse her. There was the smiling Nichole on her college ID, the one who had planned a future teaching children back in her home town. There was also Nicki, wild and running on the mountain, while Cain hunted her down and promised some erotic torture when he caught her. And then there was Autumn, a frightened young woman, running from the enemy that wanted to confine her Master to a cage, while her thoughts battled the frustration and lost time of a systematically induced forced schizophrenia.
Nicki had a feeling that she would have been more trapped if she had followed her plan to finish college and move back to teach, then she had ever been with Cain. Mike Ross kept talking about the vile things that were done on the mountain, though he was guessing at most of it. He could never know how far it had gone. Still, when he spoke with the same righteous tone as any fine preacher, Nichole would battle to the surface and try to make Nicki feel dirty and want to help punish the men. What kind of person am I, to still long to be with Cain again?
Autumn looked into the mirror, at a reflection slightly dimmed and yellowed by the hotel lamp. She pulled off her long coat and tossed it on the back of the chair while she began her nightly appraisal of herself. There had been no mirrors on the mountain, and the reflection of the strange wild woman always fascinated her. She was on the tall side at five foot eight, and she had a thick blonde braid that trailed down her side, ending in a ragged tail.
Autumn turned sideways, pleased with the firm curved outline of her breasts against the knit top, and the way her ass filled her tight black jeans. Her fingers slipped to the buckle on her chaps. Nicki had seen them on a biker woman at a bar in North Dakota and she thought they looked neat, so she punched money out of an ATM and bought some the next day. They became as much a part of her disguise, as the rainproof duster she had found in Missouri.
The steel tipped boots… Autumn sat on the bed to take them off… had come from Arkansas. The hat had been a purchase in Texas and she bought the fingerless soft leather gloves in Tennessee. The scarf. Autumn's eyes glazed while she stood before the mirror again, and her fingers reached for the scar. The scarf. That she had bought in a small store, at the final stop before she hid the bike in the woods and walked up the mountain to the clearing.
There was yellow plastic tape, ragged from months in the elements and whipping ends that had come loose from the trees. Nicki cried when she stood in the center of the lodge, and she remembered the many years of meals she had shared with Cain and her friends. Some official had left the door open, and what the authorities had not stolen, lay warped or tossed against walls.
The cross and the wheel were gone, and one of the posts. The roof sagged where it had been removed. There was torn wood where over ambitious scavengers had pried the bolts and chains loose. The entire collection of whips, canes and floggers was gone, as was the chest with the clamps and other smaller erotic toys. Nicki was unconsciously putting the remaining items away, feeling a disparaging loneliness when she noticed another thing missing.
She closed the door on the way out, tugging hard to get it to seal. Nicki made her way slowly towards Cain's cabin, the one that they shared for so long. The one that the horrible men had rescued her from. Her plan had been to wait for Cain in their cabin, but after the sight of the stripped lodge, she was fearful about what she would see behind the door. At least it was closed, and Nicki held onto hope that they might have left it undisturbed.
It was well after dark when Nicki returned. She was curled on the floor in front of the fireplace, and knew she had lost several hours. Maybe even a few days, she thought uneasily. What the men had not taken, they had destroyed with axes or crowbars or some other weapon. The true testament of their destructive plundering, was when Nicki knelt beside the bed. The hole from the bolt was splintered and raw in the wood, and the chain and her collar were gone.
"You had no right," she screamed to the empty walls. "That was mine. You had no right." It was then that she collapsed on the floor, and the full impact of the sickening, cramping confusion of not having Cain to guide her, set in. If they had left her collar, if she could have at least that much of Cain to hold onto… but no. They had stripped her of everything that could offer her comfort, and Nicki despised them for it.
Autumn was staring in the mirror when her eyes refocused. She glanced at the backward numbers of the digital clock on the nightstand. Two hours lost, this time. She sighed and pulled her black jeans down her strong slender legs. When she pulled off her socks, she studied the faint marks left from her ankle cuffs. The gloves were tossed beside her hat, and she kissed each wrist where the skin was still pale from her leather bands.
When she pulled her knit top off, she held up a breast. The hole was still through the nipple where the ring had been removed. Nicki would wait for Cain to replace them. She stood before the mirror, wearing only the black scarf. Her fingers trembled when she untied it, and the predictable tears rolled down her cheeks while she looked at the thin scar around her neck. In the early days, before Nicki obeyed Cain's Rules, she had fought the leather strap and it had rubbed and cut in until she was left with the permanent mark of her devotion to him.
Autumn took a shower and after she had dried off, she wrapped the scarf around her neck and climbed under the sheets. The scarf was a mocking reminder of her collar, and before she drifted off to sleep, she let Nicki resurface and her dreams carried her back to the mountain and the safety of her Master.
"Obey." Nicki heard Cain's deep voice echoing. She was terrified, and her long legs pushed her away from him, digging small pebbles and twigs against her bottom. Cain walked over to her and she shook her head when his hand reached out to run down her breast. His fingers stopped on her nipple, and he stroked the
rigid protruding tip, erect and tight from the cooling night air and her fear. He pinched the left peak between his fingers, and Nicki tried to scoot back while she shrieked. Her bound hands worked to free her breast, and Cain clamped his fingers tighter. "Put your hands down."
Nicki was wracked with her sobs and she screamed in pain behind the gag while she continued to try to pry his fingers away. Cain released the bruised flesh and he grabbed her bound wrists. He pulled the cuffs down to the rope around her waist and latched them onto it. Nicki kicked out in frustration and Cain straddled her, resting his full weight on her hips. He reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved two metal clamps, and she cried when he pinched one open and approached her breast. She tried to twist away, but he grabbed one fleshy mound, squeezing the meat until she shrieked and the nipple pointed at him.
"Aaah… ah ah… aaah." Nicki's breast was in agony. She wailed when the other breast received the same treatment, and Cain continued to sit on her, feeling the stiffness of his cock pressing into his zipper.
Cain reached out and tenderly ran his hands around her breasts, avoiding the turgid nipples with the clamps, and gently massaging the soft skin. His gaze alternated between her damaged tips and her eyes, and he waited until her muffled screams reduced to mewling whimpers. "I knew that your pain would be beautiful." There was reverence and appreciation in his quiet voice, that was more confusing and frightening than the surreal situation she was in.
"Eeese. Eeese."
Cain slid down to her thighs. His hands twirled on the pale skin above her pussy. "Rule number two: You will never deny me." Cain closed his eyes and let his fingertips relay her terrified quivering. He opened them again and sifted through her blonde curls. Nicki tried to buck her hips. She tried to arch her back and reach his fingers with her bound hands. "Rule number two, Nicki." He was rewarded with a sob.
Flashback Mountain Page 4
