The clouds hung low and heavy, saturated with moisture that threatened to come down at any time, their dark gray complexion all but shutting out the light of the sun.  They obscured the peaks of the mountains they shared the sky with, and their bulk towered high above the ground, mountains in themselves.

From the ground, the mass of cloud looked featureless and still, but the air was anything but still.  Down drafts and rolls of air continually mixed the lower levels of the massive clouds, churning them around and occasionally letting loose a brief rain shower.

Under, and occasionally through this, flew a small plane.  A Cessna 182 Skylane, a light aircraft built back in the 70's.  It was a tough little aircraft, but not built to be flown in such conditions, especially in such terrain.  Most aircraft either flew above bad weather, where the sun always shone and the air was much smoother, or they flew around such huge potential storms.  However the clouds extended way above the Skylane's ceiling, and for pressing reasons, the pilot didn't want to take the time to fly the long way round.

They were supposed to have flown across the Colorado Rockies into Utah, where after a brief fuel stop they could continue on to Arizona.  But the weather was hampering their efforts, forcing them to fly through mountain passes rather than over them, and visibility was getting worse.  Buckets of rain were being dumped at random intervals on the small plane, and the pilot also had to wrestle with turbulence that threatened at any time to slam the plane down into the ground.  Many times, they had been forced a lot closer to the mountainside than was safe, trees and rocks scant yards below the extended wheels of the Cessna 182.

On board was the pilot, Dirk Tesco, a lightly built man whose muscles strained against the effort to maintain control of his aircraft.  He never would have admitted it to his passenger, but he was scared.  Every minute of flight time seemed to get worse to him, and he searched in vain through the rain-obscured windows for a place to set down.  He knew with a certainty that once the clouds above did decide to open up that they would crash for certain.  Flying around in the mountains without being able to see anything meant certain death.  He kept his mouth shut though, so not to alarm his girlfriend who sat next to him.

Shawna Michaels was already alarmed.  There was no disguising the gut-wrenching drops the plane made whenever the wind slammed down on them from above.  And she could have sworn that she heard branches and leaves brushing the underside of the plane whenever they got too close to the ground.  She had a tight grip on her lap belt, wishing there was a shoulder belt to go with it, and watched in horror as Dirk banked the plane around yet another outcropping that appeared out of nowhere.  She would have shut her eyes but she was airsick as it was and she needed the visual reference.  A wall of rain appeared ahead of them and they plowed through it like a boat.  The engine sputtered for a moment as water was ingested into it but then it picked up again.

Shawna gave a small scream and bit her lip.  She glanced over at Dirk, who had his eyes bouncing between the panel in front of him and the windows.  The wild look on his face didn't reassure her in the slightest.

"We have to go back!" she yelled!

"No way, Babe!  WAY too much law waiting for us there," Dirk answered.

"You asshole!  Is the money worth our lives?"

"It ain't the money, Babe, it's the jail time.  You ain't ever been in jail, you wouldn't know.  I ain't going back!"

Shawna was scared shitless that they were going to crash, and she held on even tighter to her only restraint.  "Well can't you land someplace?"

"You show me some nice little airport or road down there, Babe, and I'll set us down.  But until then, SHUT THE FUCK UP!  I'm trying to fly here!"  Despite her fear of the weather and the horrible flight, her fear of Dirk was greater.  When pissed off as he obviously was right now, he tended to strike out at whatever or whomever was closest.  Shawna had been close to him an awful lot of times.

She glanced back at the three sacks in the space behind their seats, their contents once the property of the Cisco National Bank of Colorado.  Close to three million in large bills.  She'd give the lot away to be able to get out of the plane right now.

Another downdraft struck the plane and Shawna felt herself grow weightless again, the lap belt the only thing keeping her in her seat.  Beside her, Dirk dipped the stick in order to gain a little airspeed and therefore lift, hoping that the ground was far below them.

The trick actually worked until another wall of water choked the engine, cutting its power way back.  The plane slowed, lost its lift in the rapidly falling air, and began to plummet once more.  Desperately, Dirk pushed the yoke full forward, still floating in his seat, and managed to use gravity instead of the faltering engine's power to pick up some much needed speed.

He didn't notice though, that one of the unsecured bags had floated up in the air behind him.  It would have dropped harmlessly back in its spot had not the plane slowed once more due to another blast of water.  The bag instead followed the laws of inertia and continued going at the plane's former speed, slamming into the back of Dirk's head.  Stunned, Dirk slumped forward and pushed the yoke all the way to the stop.  This dropped the nose of the plane completely, and Shawna screamed.  She felt like she was falling out of her seat, and grabbed hold of the copilot's yoke in front of her.

Somehow, she maintained the presence of mind to pull back on the wheel, but not only was she fighting the turbulent air around the aircraft, but also the dead weight of Dirk.

Her screaming must have helped him come to his senses though, because he woke up just as the ground appeared ahead of them.  Adding his scream to her own, he hauled on the yoke and pushed the throttle to full power.  The half-choked engine did its best to spin up, but there just wasn't time.

What saved the plane from becoming a hole in the ground was Dirk's last act.  Twisting the wheel, he managed to roll the plane around.  It was still plummeting at a steep 60-degree angle but the mountainside below them was also almost at 60 degrees.  Instead of plowing directly into the side of it, the Skylane grazed the mountainside, its wheels slapping at the tops of the trees.

It was almost a miraculous escape.  But one tree, slightly taller than the rest, hit a wing tip rather than a wheel.

The Cessna Skylane yawed over to one side, and before Dirk could correct for it, the plane hit another tree.

That was the end of its ability to fly.  The second tree took out part of the tail section, and the small plane plummeted to the ground.  Two more trees caught the wings and folded them back, spraying fuel everywhere.  Shawna couldn't stop screaming as her world whirled and rotated around her.  The noise of the crash was deafening, and she hardly felt her unsecured arms and legs flapping about and banging into things.  Then there was a shudder, and everything stopped.  Everything but Shawna's brain, that is.  She was dizzy from the spins and wanted to throw up, but her nose caught the scent of gasoline in the air.  "Dirk!" she cried out, but to her horror, she saw that Dirk wasn't going to answer her.  A tree limb had come in through the shattered windshield and had plowed through his midsection.  He lay half out his side window, pinned to his seat like a butterfly on a piece of cork.  Stunned into silence, Shawna crawled quickly from the plane and sat on the ground.  She sat a moment just staring at her dead boyfriend, before getting up and reaching into the plane once more.

Shawna was operating on autopilot, and later never could figure out why she did what she did.  But almost calmly, she pulled out of the plane all three sacks of money and her own knapsack, and began hobbling away from the wreck.  Fifty feet away, she paused and turned to look once more.  That was when she saw the fire.  The stalled, but still hot, engine had ignited the fumes of all the spilt fuel.  Fire quickly enveloped the whole plane and sent up a plume of smoke that quickly mixed with the low clouds above.  Shawna stood fascinated by the flames until the screaming began.

Dirk wasn't dead.

Trembling in horror, Shawna listened, as the man who had been her lover for the last three years, the man who had given her an escape from her brutal but rich father, and turned out to be rather brutal himself, the man who had forced her to use her skills in electronics to tease open a bank vault so he could rob it, burned to death.

She remained standing, until the screams stopped and the flames began to consume the whole aircraft, before moving on.  She did wonder about forest fires, but the obliging clouds kept opening up with the occasional squall, and while the Cessna burned, the rain-soaked vegetation around it did not.  Shawna walked a few more yards and sat down next to a tree.

---***---

How long Shawna stayed there she did not know.  Her watch had taken a hard blow and didn't work any longer.  Under it, her wrist was developing a large bruise.  She had other cuts and bruises, but the one that hurt the most was on her left ankle.  During the crash, she had slammed it into the panel.  It wasn't sprained, but it did hurt like hell.  But to Shawna, the pain in her foot was a minor matter.  Echoing in her head were Dirk's screams, and her shocked mind needed time to come to terms with it.  In the end, it just put it away to deal with later, and Shawna felt an unnatural calmness come over her.  She got to her feet, and with difficulty hid the three bags of money in some brush before beginning her descent down the steep mountainside.

She had gone maybe a half-mile before she could walk no longer.  The throbbing pain in her foot was too much for her; she had to stop.  She collapsed against a tree with a fantastic view of the Rockies spread out before her, and she quickly dug around in her knapsack until she found a small plastic bottle.

Her actions rather desperate now, she carefully took the top of the bottle, and having nothing else, tipped a little of the white powdered contents onto a finger before inhaling it.

Shawna sat for a few seconds until the drug began to take effect, before carefully replacing the top on the bottle.

Looking about her, she felt utterly alone, for there was nothing to see but wilderness.  Tree covered mountains were visible everywhere she looked, most of them reaching into the low cloud cover that had caused the crash.  She was cold and wet from several downpours; her jeans and bright yellow cotton blouse no protection from the elements.  And as the gathering gloom signaled the end of another day, Shawna was lost, and also very, very afraid.

---***---

Light female laughter could be heard through the trees, although its source was invisible to the man walking carefully through the brush.  When the laughter started, he stopped moving and cocked his head, listening quietly for the telltale sound of leaves being pushed aside or twigs breaking.  The day had dawned bright and sunny after a day and night of near stormy conditions.  The sky was still dotted with clouds, but the man, and the woman he was chasing, had thought it safe to go on their picnic anyway.  Neither one of them had wanted to spend another day inside.  Together they had climbed high up the mountain, partly for the view, but mostly for the privacy.  Community spirit was one thing, but sometimes it was nice to get away by themselves for a while.  Now they were playing a game, one they liked to play often, and neither one minded winning or losing; the outcome was usually the same.

The man heard a rustle of leaves, or so he thought, and he froze, trying to figure out where it came from.  He was a handsome man, not big, but tall and well built.  His body had, over the last two years, been sculpted by hard work in the open air, and he was as fit as he had ever been in his life.  His fitness was very visible, for he wore nothing but a rope about his waist and wide leather straps about his wrists. The rest of his belongings were in a leather sack worn over one shoulder.  With the sack, he thought himself at a disadvantage in the game he was playing, but he had evened up the odds a little, and the thought made him smile.

'There,' he thought as he heard a rustle, 'up that slope.'  As if to confirm his suspicions, he heard more laughter coming at him from above, and he wondered why his companion was being so obvious about it, it wasn't like her.  But then, knowing her as he did, she probably had a plan, and a devious one at that.

Treading carefully, his bare feet well used to walking on all types of ground, he made his way uphill, keeping an eye open for clues.  It was at times like this that he didn't know if he was the hunter or the prey, and to be honest, he didn't mind either way.  He'd happily let himself be caught if it wasn't for the fact that she'd skin him alive for making it too easy.  Sometimes he wondered if her insistence that these games be as real as possible was compensation for her leaving the outside world.  She was a strong woman with an active mind, and he knew it must be hard for her at times to slow down to the more relaxed pace of the Compound, but she never complained and never gave him any sign that she wasn't at peace here.  There had been a few awkward moments at the beginning, rough periods while she adjusted to living here; but adjust she did in her own way, although at times he saw in her eyes that something still haunted her.  He had lived with her for over a year now, and he still felt that he didn't know all there was to know about his wife.  The woman kept many secrets.

The man entered a glade.  Small, but with a wonderful view of a valley a thousand feet below them, it was layered with natural grasses and seemed fairly flat.

He dropped the sack against a tree and reached in to pull out a length of leather cord.  Now he felt he had the upper hand, and with a grin, he exited the glade and continued uphill.

A sound to his left made him pause, and he stood stock-still, examining the landscape around him.

"I'm coming to get you!" he called out with a smile on his face, and he was rewarded by the sound of swishing leaves and a flash of tanned skin.  She had managed to lure him further uphill than she had gone herself, and now she was going back down.  Her plan apparently was to circle around and take him from behind.  Yes, she certainly was sneaky.  But her run had broken her cover, and he knew he had her.  He tried not to laugh as he took off after her, but failed miserably.

She was laughing too, and as he drew closer, he could see her running awkwardly between the trees.

God, she looked beautiful.

Naked as he was, all she had on was a rope about her waist and leather bands on her wrists, which for the moment were tied back to back with a leather thong behind her back.

She turned to look behind her, and the couple made eye contact for the first time since the game began.  The man almost stumbled as her beauty hit him, the smile on her lips, the light in her eyes, the supple strength of her body clearly exposed, and the way her long hair whipped to one side as she turned.

Sometimes when he looked at her, he fell in love all over again.  But loving her wasn't helping him catch her; there would be plenty of time for that later.  He focused his mind and began to pursue her in earnest.  She led him a good chase, but having her hands tied behind her slowed her down, and eventually he caught her and wrestled her wonderfully soft and naked body to the ground.

"Hey, no fair!" she cried out amidst the laughter.  "You dropped the bag!"

"I didn't drop everything!" he said, showing her the coil of cord in his hand.

With a squeal she tried to wriggle free of his grasp, but the man was an old hand at subduing naked women, especially this one.  His fingers found a sensitive spot, and he tickled her until she was almost gasping for breath.  Then he used the cord to bind her ankles together, before standing up to survey his prize.

"I win," he said with a grin.

"You...bastard," laughed the woman.

The man chuckled and reached down to pick her up.  With another squeal, the woman was hoisted over his shoulder and carried back to the glade.  The woman felt quite vulnerable being carried naked and bound like this, but enjoyed the view, as her husband's tight ass was right in front of her face.

When they reached the glade, the man put her down and let her wriggle in the grass while he pulled a bedroll from the sack.  It was the work of just a moment to unroll it and transfer his wife to its softer surface.  He laid her on her back and dropped down next to her.  The couple became quiet as they gazed into each other's eyes, and no one watching could have missed the affection that bound them together.  Slowly, the man leaned forward and kissed his bound wife, the tender caress of his lips returned in force by the woman.

When they parted, he found his heart beating loud and hard in his chest.

"I love you, Rhianna Anderson," he said quietly.

"I love YOU, Matthew, my husband," Rhianna replied.  He bent forward and they kissed once more, this time for longer.  Matthew's hands found their way to Rhianna's soft tanned skin and caressed her gently.  Rhianna moaned as one hand slipped along her smooth mons and dipped into her womanhood.  She was already wet, for earlier Matthew had used up the last of the juice in the little vial they had been given as a wedding present.  The juice was an aphrodisiac; applied externally to erogenous zones, it dramatically increased sexual arousal for a day or two.  The vial had been small, but then a little went a long way.

Rhianna certainly felt the heat, and quite enjoyed the feelings, although before she had sometimes resented being forced to feel this way.  But Matthew had earned her trust, never abusing her vulnerability while in this state.  It allowed her to eventually relax and just enjoy it.  Sex had never been so good.

She had a feeling that her increased responsiveness wasn't all because of the vial though; just the thought of it sometimes made her wet, and when Matthew looked at her a certain way, she just melted.  Conditioned response?

She didn't care; it made her happy.

Matthew had continued his exploration of her body, using hands, mouth, and his own manhood as he pinched and caressed her all over.  At one point, he undid the cord that bound her feet together, and Rhianna was allowed to spread her legs and invite him in.

It was an invitation Matthew never declined.  With a shift of his body, he pushed and slipped into her moist warmth, and the twosome was now one.  Rhianna/Matthew moved together, familiar rhythms accelerating slowly.  They never parted, and never said a word; they didn't need to.  Their joy was beyond words, and could not be expressed in that way.  Rhianna/Matthew quickly focused beyond the outside world and the discomforts it held, as together they approached climax.  Rhianna forgot about how uncomfortable it was lying on her back with her hands bound back to back, and Matthew no longer felt the rock under his right knee or the mosquito biting his ass.  They only felt each other, and when the climax came, they came together in a wave of love and wonder.

Both cried out in their passion, not caring if anyone could hear them, although this high up the mountain no one should have been able to.  The moment was theirs, and the entire world didn't matter anymore.  Then came the afterglow, and Matthew rolled onto his back, pulling Rhianna over with him so they could get off her bound arms.  They managed this trick without him having to pull out of her, and he enjoyed how her sex kept massaging him, the stimulation keeping him hard inside her despite one mother of an orgasm.

Rhianna looked down at him, her face inches from his, her hair a shroud around them, and she grinned.

"Not bad," she said.

"Not bad?" Matthew asked in surprise.

"Yep!  It was pretty good."

"Pretty good!"

Rhianna laughed.  "Why is the male ego so fragile when it comes to sex?"

Matthew didn't want to answer.  Instead, he pulled her close and kissed her once more.

Rhianna relaxed in his arms for a little while before sitting up.  She pulled her legs forward and knelt, straddling him.  He was still inside her, and the burning passions within her demanded some more attention, so with a devilish grin, she started to pump him, lifting herself up carefully with her strong legs and then coming back down.

Matthew loved this; he loved to watch her when she was on top.  He put his hands behind his head and gazed lustfully at Rhianna's sweaty nude body as she did all the work.

One part of his mind was on the exquisite feelings coming from his groin, while the other admired the way her breasts bounced with each thrust.  Rhianna knew he was staring at her boobs and arched her back a little more.  A small part of her was shocked at her brazen attitude, but that was the old Rhianna; the new one was in love and had no such inhibitions toward her husband.

Matthew knew it too, and before long both of them were laughing and coming once more, as passion and the realization of how free Rhianna had become hit them both at the same time.

Matthew was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes as he came down, so he didn't notice at first when Rhianna stopped her sexual movements.  Only the lack of stimulus prompted him to notice that something had caught her attention.  She knelt upright, high on her knees, which had allowed him to slip out of her.  A slight breeze moved her hair to one side, and the sunshine made a dappled pattern across her bare skin as it shone through the trees.

She was staring uphill, and even with a serious expression on her face, she still looked stunning.

But something was wrong.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I thought...there, just above that ridge."

Puzzled, Matthew began to extract himself from his wife's embrace, and he stood up next to her.  He scanned the mountain above them but saw nothing.  "What am I looking for?" he asked.

"A flash of yellow.  There it is!"  Rhianna answered.

"I didn't see it," he said.

Rhianna glanced up at him.  "You might be at the wrong angle, come down here."

Matthew knelt beside her, and the couple waited patiently as the winds moved the trees covering the slope above them.

Then he saw it.

"There!" Rhianna punctuated.  "Should there be anything like that up there?  That bright a yellow isn't exactly available in the Compound."

"You're right.  Someone's up there," Matthew answered.

As good as Rhianna had just been feeling, she suddenly felt vulnerable, naked and bound as she was.  Despite the feeling, however, her spiced up sex still demanded attention, and she had to force herself to concentrate on the matter at hand.

Matthew looked very concerned at the thought of other people on the mountain, and she understood his concern.  While it wasn't fenced, the mountain was private property, and all interlopers were gently invited to leave.

Normally that wasn't a problem, except at this time of the year when the local town's school was out.  Teenagers would hike up here to spy or try to get lucky with the mountain's mostly naked population.  For the most part, the members of the Compound didn't mind the spying; if they were nervous about being looked at, they wouldn't be outside nude anyway.  But the other type of contact between the townsfolk and the young people of the compound was frowned upon by parents from both groups, so extra steps were taken to nip it in the bud when possible.

Everyone knew it was just kids being kids, but the people of the Compound were as enamored of free sex as P.E.T.A. was of rabbits wearing eye shadow.

"I'll go check it out," Matthew said.

"Untie me and I'll come too," Rhianna announced.

Matthew looked at her, and Rhianna wondered if he was going to pick this moment to have some fun maintaining his dominance over her.  She was NOT his slave or submissive, but these games usually had her on the helpless end of the rope, and oddly enough, she didn't mind that at all.  But there was a time for play, and this wasn't one of them.  Matthew nodded and moved to untie her, and once she was free, he went to the sack still lying against the tree.

"I hope you brought us something to wear?" Rhianna asked him.  In another life, she probably would have been rubbing her wrists after been bound by such thin cord, but the leather wedding bands had protected her.  Not for the first time, Rhianna wondered if that was what they were originally for.  Along with nudity, bondage was not thought of as a sexual perversion in the Compound, but as a healthy expression of affection.  It was also used as a means of punishment, but you always knew where you were with it.

"Just these," he said, tossing her a single piece of cloth.

Rhianna caught it and chuckled.  It was her loincloth; wide and long enough to cover her pussy and ass, but not much more.  Matthew began tucking his own loincloth under the rope around his waist.

"I wasn't expecting company," he said with a sheepish grin.

"Humph.  At least you get to cover up all your bits!" Rhianna said in mock anger, putting on her own loincloth.

"You'll be fine.  It'll give those kids a treat to see you like that."

Rhianna stuck out her tongue.

Laughing, Matthew pulled a knife and scabbard out of the sack and strapped it to one leg.  Rhianna looked at it wistfully and thought briefly about the gun she used to carry as an FBI agent.  It was good being armed when going into an unknown situation, but women here weren't allowed to be armed, not even with a knife, although all were required to know how to use one.  It was one of the community laws.

"Come on," Matthew said.

"Sure thing, Tarzan," Rhianna said with a smile.  Matthew grinned and began the walk up to where they had seen the flash of yellow.

Rhianna followed him, and admired his almost naked form as he moved stealthily up the ever-increasing slope.  Unconsciously, she began to pinch a nipple with her right hand and she had to force her mind off his butt and on the trail they were following.  The stuff Matthew had put on her would screw her up for at least another day.  It was the only downside to it.

Even though the flash had looked close, it was at least an hour's climb to where they thought they saw it, but when they got there, they found nothing.  Well, almost nothing.

"Someone's been here," Rhianna said, looking at the ground.  They were on an outcropping with a great view of the surrounding mountains; the kind of spot real estate agents and developers would sell their families for a chance to own.

Matthew let Rhianna have her head; he acknowledged her superior tracking abilities, and as she examined the ground, he kept an eye on the brush and the slope above them.  He thought he smelled smoke, but couldn't be sure.

"Yeah," Rhianna continued, "the ground is pretty muddy up here, and there's foot prints, shoes; it wasn't one of us."

No one at the compound wore shoes outside in the summertime.

"How many?"  Matthew asked.

"Just one.  Yes, just the one.  It could be a teenager, the shoes are small enough."

"This is awfully high up the mountain for one of the town kids," Matthew said, "it's not as though you can even see the Compound from here."  Matthew kept scanning the area until his eyes caught movement deep in the brush.  Something yellow had just made an appearance.

Matthew waved at Rhianna and inclined his head in the proper direction.

Rhianna caught on right away.

"Hey there!"  Matthew yelled.  "We know you're there, so why don't you just come out!"

There was no movement.

Rhianna thought she would give it a try.  "It's okay, we won't hurt you!"

After a few seconds, the yellow moved, and revealed itself to be a young woman, dirty, with a bright yellow shirt on and jeans.  She looked scared and confused.  Her eyes traveled from Rhianna to Matthew and back to Rhianna again, and the former FBI agent could tell the woman was wondering why Rhianna was running around in the woods practically naked.  She forced herself not to cover up.

She had been told by much of the population that it was better for her to show how relaxed she was being nude in front of outsiders, even when she wasn't.  To give in would be to give in forever, and never become used to being naked on the mountain.  Giving in would give outsiders the message that what the community was doing was wrong even to them, and that was patently untrue.

Besides, on THIS mountain, the community did as it pleased, and no one was to give the outsiders the impression that they could be embarrassed about anything.

"Hi," said Rhianna, "my name is Rhianna, and this is my husband, Matthew; are you okay?"

The woman was still trying to look at both of them at the same time.  She looked tired and wet through, but an unexpected spark of life suddenly came to light.  She straightened up a bit more and gave them both a piercing stare.

"Say, you're not cops are you?" she asked them.

Matthew was surprised, and glanced at his wife.  Rhianna's expression narrowed a little.  "No, we aren't cops."

The woman seemed to relax a little.  "I'm Shawna, and I think I sprained my ankle.  Can you help me?"

Matthew and Rhianna glanced at each other, and together moved forward to help.
 
 

End of Part One.