Secrets of Liberty Mountain (Final)

"Excellent idea; hang on, and I'll join you." Sheila threw the quilt back and climbed out of bed.

"We might as well take a shower since we're already up," the leader said as she tossed me towels and soap from the closet.

Three members of the kitchen crew hard at work preparing breakfast were the only other people up and about in the hour before sunrise. We owned the empty showers and had them to ourselves.

We dried each other after our morning scrub, and Sheila suggested, "Let's head down to the kitchen and score some hot coffee."

The custom of indoor nudity might make more sense if we were born kangaroos with built-in pockets. I stopped by my room to make up for my genetic deficiency, put an unbuttoned flannel shirt on, stuck a pack of smokes and a lighter in the breast pocket, and joined Sheila in the kitchen.

Coffee is the nectar of the gods, and Colombia's only legal drug export. It is also a natural lubricant, allowing us to slide from slumber to wakefulness with a minimum amount of friction. Java in hand, Sheila led me to a cozy nook beside the hearth in the Great Room, and we sat together next to the blaze.

"I want to talk to you about last night," Sheila said, as she sniffed her brew.

"Okay, what's on your mind?" I responded.

"Tell me something, I know I turned you on. Why didn't you have sex with me?" Sheila's concerned eyes blinked with curiosity.

Her question was both delicate and dangerous. The wrong answer could do damage to our friendship, but I had no idea of what she thought the correct response should be. I followed my grandfather's advice: "If all else fails, and you can't think of a good lie, tell the truth."

I set my coffee down on the fireplace hearth, took Sheila's hands in mine, and looked into her eyes as I spoke truthfully. "Your body said one thing, but your words were saying something different last night. I listened to the wishes of your body. You weren't ready to be that intimate with me. "

"True, but I would've consented if you had persisted," she acknowledged, as she gave my hands a soft squeeze.

"I figured you would allow intercourse if I pushed it. You would be resentful. Nevertheless, it would be a lousy start to our relationship. I would have selfishly screwed you to the floor if I only thought about my own gratification," I admitted with a guilty grin.

"I'll take your friendship if I have to choose between being a friend or your lover, if I can't have both," I further explained.

My father used to tell me the best way to learn the thoughts of another is to ask a direct question, shut up, and listen to the answer. "What about what happened, or didn't happen last night?" I cooled my coffee with my breath.

"At first I was relieved when you asked for my permission, then I was pissed. I was confused after that. I was happy in the end. Maybe you didn't think me desirable enough, or maybe you didn't like me enough for sex. I felt safe, loved, and cared for when you held me in your arms and stayed the night." Sheila whispered as she gave me a hug wrapped in a smile.

Silence filled the pleasant space between us as our conversation slowed to a stop. The colony's leader took a sip of coffee and studied me over the rim of her coffee mug for several moments.

"You're a strange man, Mr. Richards. Whatever am I going to do with you?"

Our zone of silence gradually evaporated as the sisters of the colony drifted into the kitchen for breakfast in ones and twos.

"Refill your coffee and grab a seat; we've got a group meeting in fifteen minutes," Sheila announced as she excused herself to prepare for the assembly.

I marched to the kitchen, looking for fresh coffee. Ready or not, a new day was getting underway.

One fundamental law of the universe: staff meetings seldom begin on time. The Society's assembly was no exception. Significant numbers of sisters hadn't taken a seat at the conference table. Start time came and went as Sheila kept glancing at her wristwatch and scanning the faces of the attendees for missing members.

I also glanced around the table for Darlene who was among the absent. My lady love took starting times and deadlines as suggestions rather than requirements. She had a long established reputation for always arriving at the far edge of fashionably late.

Only the light tapping of Sheila's pencil on the tabletop betrayed her outwardly calm exterior. The taps steadily increased in tempo the longer we waited. It was as if the yellow stick doubled as a Geiger counter reporting her frustration was approaching critical mass.

The giggles and laughter of several women echoed from the walls as if on cue. Darlene, Lucia, and a woman whose name turned out to be Sandra emerged from the kitchen a few seconds later. I saw the trio and almost burst out laughing. They were as drunk as skunks, barely staying upright as they staggered and wobbled toward the meeting table.

Darlene stumbled into the seat next to me and collapsed with a moan as she held her head in her hands. She seemed as if she had just come from an orgy: her hair was a mess, nipples stood like stiff pencil erasers; her shoulders, face, and chest glowed like a neon sign, her cheeks were bright with the rosy blush of arousal.

"Too much party," she groaned, as she leaned her body against me.

"Too much sex?" I patted her head.

"There's no such thing as too much sex," she said with a burp. Her hand flew to her mouth as her face took on a greenish tint. "But there is such a thing as too much (burp) brandy."

Darlene gasped, as she bent double and barfed up who knows what over my naked feet. Standing in a puddle of someone else's used dinner is over the top gross. I nearly lost my lunch before I got my gag reflex under control.

"Clean up on Aisle Five," I yelled out, as I helped Darlene to her feet.

Sheila's expression was halfway between annoyed and amused. "We'll start the meeting as soon as we've gotten these gals cleaned up and into bed," she said.

Twenty minutes later I took a seat next to Alice and her daughter. The meeting of the sisterhood was finally, almost about ready to start. The woolen shirt I was wearing gave me the comfortable illusion of being dressed even though it was open. It covered none of my vital parts.

Alice leaned over and murmured in my ear, "Is it true you spent the night in Sheila's bed?"

"We kept each other company last night," I sipped my coffee.

"Very interesting; will you keep me company tonight if I ask nicely?" Alice gave me a sexy smile as she touched her hand to my thigh and gently caressed my bare leg.

"Mom!" her daughter protested as she watched her mother's attempt to seduce me.

"Shush, little one. You'll have your turn after I check him out," her mother said.

The touch of Alice's sweating hand stroking my skin in close proximity to my genitals was enough to attract my libido's attention, and I could sense myself responding to Alice's invitation.

Part of me was amused at the turnabout in my love life since I arrived in the Society. I had always played the part of the seducer prior to my visit to the Society of Sisters. With the tables turned, I was now the target for seduction. The new state of affairs perfectly fit with my passive/aggressive approach to sex. I had always been the sexual aggressor early on, usually with mixed, mostly miserable, results in my younger days. My advances ended in failure more often than I cared to admit.

"Your place or mine?" I smiled at Alice, as I moved her hand to the relative safety of my knee.

I didn't want to sprout another public display in front of so many naked women. Exhibitionism isn't my thing, as I said.

The gathering's primary agenda item was the question of work assignments. The concept was simple: many hands make light work. Maintaining the colony required a lot of effort, and every individual of the community had at least one assigned task or duty. The cabin ran as smoothly as a Swiss watch when everyone pitched in.

I was the only person without anything to do after the sisters had divvied up the chores. Sheila called on me when I raised my hand.

"Freeloading ain't my style; I need a chore. How can I contribute to our community?" I looked about the hall.

"You are my guest until your status here with us is resolved. Feel free to help out wherever you can," Sheila said.

"Does anyone need a helping hand?" I said as I turned to face the gathering.

Silence answered my inquiry until Alice spoke. "Our sensors have picked up a deer herd about ten miles out. Lucia and I are on the schedule too bag a deer this afternoon, but she isn't in any condition to do anything until she sleeps it off. You can tag along in her place."

"I've never been hunting before," I pointed out.

"Do you know how to shoot?" Alice frowned.

"Sure. I took basic training and qualified as an expert marksman."

"Are you a member of PETA?" the Chair inquired.

"If you mean People Eating Tasty Animals, then yes I am," I said amid chuckles and snickers from the sisters.

"About time you earn your place in the food chain. Alice is extremely skilled, and she'll make sure you have all the appropriate gear. You two leave in an hour. Meeting adjourned. Happy trails." Sheila tapped the gavel.

Chapter 12

"These mountains are as dangerous as they are beautiful. They might appear to be lovely and majestic but don't let 'em fool you. The beauty hides the heart of a killer," Brenda explained as she dug through her inventory, looking for a pair of gloves in my size.

"Got 'em!" she yelled as she held the object of her search aloft, a pair of insulated gloves joined the rest of my new wardrobe.

A slim and attractive woman in her mid-thirties, Brenda served as the colony's quartermaster. Medium sized, well-tanned breasts protruded from her chest, and a pageboy haircut framed her freckled face. The dented, circular scar of a long healed bullet wound adorned her left breast, a few inches below her collarbone.

One wall of the armory displayed her honorable discharge from the US Army along with a citation awarding her the Army Commendation Medal for heroism, a Purple Heart for wounds received in combat, and an Iraq Campaign Medal. Ex-Army and combat tested, she was the real deal.

The brand new garments still carried tags from LL Bean. I let out a long whistle when I did a tally in my head. The camouflage Gore-Tex hunting jacket and matching tactical cargo pants carried a hefty price north of eight hundred dollars. Gore-Tex is some amazing shit. The fabric is a lightweight, waterproof, and breathable membrane that repels liquid water while allowing moisture and vapor to pass through. A pair of Gore-Tex lined winter hiking boots I had brought with me turned out to be the only article of my clothing which passed muster with Brenda.

"The secret of staying alive in the wilderness is to stay warm and dry, and the proper clothing is your first defense," Brenda commented as she rummaged around for headgear.

"Is it true that we lose most body heat through our heads?" I questioned Brenda.

"We lose heat from any part of the body exposed to the air, but the head is a special case. For example, when hands are unprotected and exposed to severe cold, the human body tries to maintain core temperature, and sometimes our bodies will shut down circulation to the hands to conserve heat," Brenda replied.

"The rapid loss of hand function is the net result. Eventually, they become useless popsicles. Our bodies will sacrifice our hands to save our lives. The head is different. Our bodies will never shut down blood flow to our heads, but it will sacrifice everything else to maintain our brains at a functioning temperature. Folks succumb to hypothermia and die from cold without ever realizing they are in danger," Brenda spoke as she produced an adjustable thermal fleece Balaclava Winter Face Mask.

"Is all this really necessary? We're only going hunting. We're not climbing Mount Everest," I grumbled.

"I use the 'parachute principle' when it comes to gear," Brenda said as she examined the facemask. Gear is like a parachute. It's better to carry one and not need it than it is to need one and not have it," she said with a laugh.

After a few adjustments and additions, Brenda smiled with satisfaction. My wardrobe now met her minimum standards for survivability in extreme conditions.

"You can't go hunting without a weapon."

The quartermaster laid a Kimber 84M Mountain Ascent rifle on the counter for my inspection. The rifle weighed in at less than five pounds. Fitted with a four round magazine, it fired a .30-'06 bullet with a muzzle velocity of a bit over three thousand feet per second. The rifle's two thousand dollar price tag was the heaviest part of the Kimber. Apparently, when you win the lottery, money is no object.

Brenda positioned me in front of a full-length mirror and, like a tailor, stepped back to admire her handiwork. "Very nice. Now you look like a hunter. The deer will take one look at you and die of fright," she noted with pride.

"More likely Bambi will die laughing. I feel like an escapee from an LL Bean fashion catalog," I said with a silly grin.

"Either way, dead is dead, and Bambi is dinner." Alice smacked her lips in anticipation of venison stew.

Unloaded rifle in hand, I followed her to the underground garage. A somewhat dented 2009 Kawasaki Mule retrofitted to run on hydrogen fuel would be our transportation. We spent the next fifteen minutes doing a pre-trip safety inspection.

I read out the items from our pre-trip cheat sheet, and Alice reported the status of each. Tires? Check. Fuel? Check. First aid kit? Check. Radio? Check. Emergency rations? Check. And so it went until we had checked each of the vehicle's systems.

Satisfied our pre-trip checklist was complete, Alice took her place behind the wheel. I climbed in next to her and rode shotgun, and we sped down the tunnel toward the exit. Our Kawasaki Mule abruptly decelerated the moment we hit daylight.

"Why so slow? I can walk faster than this," I said to Alice.

"This is our exit protocol. We reduce speed when crossing the meadow to minimize damage to the grassland." Alice kept our speed to a crawl.

It was all rather clever. The colony's survival strategy was to do nothing to alter the visual footprint of the valley. The likelihood of someone accidentally entering the valley at Liberty Mountain was modestly remote. However, it was a virtual certainty on any given day dozens of Google Earth's armchair explorers loaded images of the valley into their computers. Dirt trails left by vehicles exiting the mountain would attract unwanted attention.

Once we crossed the meadow and entered the forested area, the air temperature dropped like a rock as our rate of travel increased to a more reasonable twenty miles per hour. The ground was littered with splotches of sunlight mixed with delicate patches of sparkling frost feathers left over from last night's deep freeze. The ecosystem of the valley and the mountains idled between fall and winter as plants and animals braced for the arrival of winter and the season's first major snowfall.

"The herd we're hunting should be about fifteen miles ahead of us. We'll need to cross a steep ridge and two valleys to get there," Alice said.

Thanks to the modifications to our ATV's exhaust system, we journeyed westward in near silence. The sound of our tires on the rocky trail was louder than the whispering purr of our engine. As we topped the crest of the last ridge between our deer herd and us, Alice let the ATV coast to a stop.

The top of the rocky ridge offered a spectacular view of the snow-capped summits all around us, and the clear, chilly air gave the illusion distant mountains were much closer than they actually are. High overhead, the bright indigo sky of the morning now had a hazy white tint and high altitude streamers of wispy mare's tails and cirrus clouds smeared across the heavens from the west.

"Time for lunch and a potty break," she said as she secured the vehicle, killed the engine and dismounted.

"Great idea! I gotta go water some moss."

Turning my back on Alice, I used my body as a modesty screen. As I was busy unzipping my fly, Alice moved next to me and stood at my side.

"Do you mind?" I protested.

"Don't get your knickers in a knot. Just pretend I'm not here," Alice responded with a wink. "Besides, you weren't very shy when my daughter and I were playing with you in the shower," she reminded me.

Despite some major boundary issues, I was both amused and flattered by her interest in my equipment. Since our shower episode, she flirted with me and teased at every opportunity. As much as I hated to admit it, I enjoyed the attention. It was a weirdly major turn-on.

My bladder was so full I started to leak and dribble. I gritted my teeth and tried to stem the flow. I didn't have time for an argument. I raced to pull Harvey out of hidings as quickly as possible. It was a photo finish. The floodgates opened just as the head of my dick cleared my fly.

My knees trembled in relief as urine drained out of me. I am at the age where my early warning system is a bit out of tune. The interval between the sensation of needing to urinate and uncontrolled release was razor thin.

I turned to rebuke Alice for her bad manners. She was intently following every movement of my man parts with her eyes. They might just as well have been super glued to it.

"Oh, crap, I gotta take a piss," Alice said as she succumbed to the power of suggestion.

"Would you like some privacy?"

I made a point of drawing out and embellishing the final word of my question with extra syllables for dramatic effect. My version of "privacy" sounded like a blurry "Pretty-City."

"Thank you for asking," Alice said as she unbuckled her pants and let them drop to the ground. She lowered her blue cotton panties to her ankles. She squatted down, wiggled a bit for balance, and looked me in the eye as she smiled and pointed to her neatly shaved crotch. She grunted and grinned as she let loose a thickening stream of golden yellow.

I frowned at Alice for her exhibitionist behavior, and she burst into laughter. "Don't be such a prude. I caught you spying on me while I was spying on you. I could tell you liked what you saw," she blushed.

"So I gave you a show for the fun of it."

"Lady! That ain't no show, it's the whole 'effing circus," I growled as I pretended to be annoyed. My stern demeanor crumbled when my shoulders started to shake with suppressed laughter. I couldn't stop the smile as my mouth broke into a grin.

"One day a voyeur and an exhibitionist walk into a bar and," I took a breath as I tried to remember how the joke went, but my mind went blank. All I could recall was the punch line. "Here's looking at you kid."

An interesting fact of life: it is nearly impossible to stay pissed-off at someone while sharing a laugh.

After the show-n-tell piss break, we got down to the business of lunch. The thermos we had filled in the kitchen prior to our departure produced two steaming hot bowls of the colony's legendary venison stew.

I studied Alice as I dug into my serving. Despite our shared laughter, there was something about Alice's sexual advances and continuous flirting that didn't ring true. Why would a hardcore lesbian like Alice suddenly decide she needed a man in her life?

There was a frantic, almost desperate desire for us to engage in sex, so much so that she was even hinting at bringing her virgin daughter into the action. Even though they were both hotter than a Texas parking lot in August, I held my libido in check. Until I had a better understanding of the mother/daughter dynamics involved, I decided to make haste slowly.

Years of social trial and error had taught me the best way to clear the air between two people was to speak plainly. I liked to think of it as playing poker with my cards face-up on the table.