Identities

Hello friends! Many apologies for the long delay between this part and the last. What can I say – working 14+ hours a day, 7 days a week doesn't leave a lot of time for other projects or pleasures. I have slightly more stability now than I did this summer, so I hope to spend more time with this.

Continual thanks to LaRacasse for sticking with me and giving me feedback and encouragement. First attempts can be tricky.

DISCLAIMER! I said it at the beginning of the first installment, but it bears repeating: This is not a reluctance story. It is most definitely non-consent. And in this chapter we start getting into it. Please be warned that some parts of this chapter are quite abusive (although never gory). I don't want anyone to be traumatized. So if you think that reading about forced sex will be distressing to you, please – go and play in the other, lighter halls of this wonderful, giant online palace of obscenity. No hard feelings, I promise.

***************

Mark saw the girl collapse against Michael, whose arms shot out to catch her. His threatening expression became a look of impatience as he gathered her to his chest, holding her slumped against him, her arms bound behind her by the plastic tie. She appeared to be not entirely unconscious, but simply too weak to stand on her own. Michael addressed the other three over the top of her head as a stray wisp of her soft brown hair fluttered in front of his face, lifted by the winter wind.

"I have to go in to town to get something. I'll be back in a while."

Before either Chris or Daniel had moved, Mark stepped forward and reached for Nadia. He did not much care about whatever it was that Michael was going to get. At the moment, he was entirely preoccupied with getting Nadia out of the cold. Taking her from Michael, he lifted her into his arms, turned towards the house, and made for the door, not waiting to see what the others were doing.

Her skin felt icy against his hands, and her entire body vibrated with the force of her shivering. She mumbled something incoherent as he turned sideways to pass through the front door, cradling her close to his chest to avoid knocking her limbs against the frame. He heard Chris and Daniel entering the house behind him as he went down the hall to the kitchen, where he sat her on the edge of the big wooden table, her legs dangling over the edge. She swayed precariously, eyes half closed, and he grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling off. The other men entered the room as Mark held the girl at arm's length, looking her over.

She was a mess, he thought grimly. The array of bruises left by Chris and Michael on her arm, wrist, cheek and collarbone had now been joined by a contingent of scrapes and cuts that crisscrossed her body in angry red lines where tree branches had lashed her skin during her flight. Most of her lower half was streaked with dirt, and beneath the mud congealing on her feet, he could see her toes were bloodied. They were also a livid, purple-red. Stepping closer and peering over her shoulder to where her hands were still bound behind her back, he saw that they too looked raw and damaged.

"Pass me some scissors," Mark said, looking over at Chris, who was nearest. Nadia's head fell forward against his shoulder as he spoke. Standing so close, he could feel the over-quickened rise and fall of her chest from her laboured breathing.

Chris did not move, but instead looked back at Mark, his eyebrows raised.

"We can't treat her for frostbite with her hands tied," Mark said roughly.

"Serves her right, for trying to run," Chris said. His eyes were hard as he met Mark's gaze.

A streak of anger flashed through Mark, but he held it back. He knew that Chris and Michael, and perhaps Daniel too, thought he was too generous with their captive. It had been he, after all, who had given her a window of opportunity – literally – by taking pity on her and leaving her untied. He couldn't afford to lose the trust of the other men. But he also didn't want to see Nadia suffer.

"Von Bauer isn't going to want her with her fingers and toes missing," he said through gritted teeth.

There was a strained silence as Mark and Chris stared at one another. Finally, Daniel let out an impatient grunt and opened a nearby drawer. Pulling out the scissors, he handed them to Mark, who took them without a word and bent his head over Nadia's shoulder to snip through the plastic band cutting into her wrists.

"Not go'n ... him..." she said into his shoulder as the plastic fell away. "Ssss-na m'fault." She sounded like a drunken person, he thought, her words slurring together and skipping at random.

Mark took her discoloured hands into his and cupped them against his own chest, trying to press warmth back into her. He could not get over how cold her skin was. He saw with dismay that even though she was now indoors, she did not seem to be recovering. She still shivered – a constant, relentless shaking that came from deep inside her and seemed almost malevolent in its force and persistence. Her breaths came in short, shallow pants that he felt sure were insufficient in oxygen. She seemed only partly aware of his presence, the blue of her eyes half hidden beneath shuttered lids.

Making up his mind, he gathered her into his arms again, and headed for the bathroom. Once inside the little room, he deposited Nadia on the edge of the bathtub, propping her up against the adjacent wall. Satisfied that she wasn't going to topple over, he twisted the taps, releasing water into the tub, and then stood to close the bathroom door. As his hand reached the handle, he saw Daniel pass before the door and pause. He glanced into the bathroom over Mark's shoulder. Then he looked at Mark again. Mark wondered if the other man was going to challenge his intended treatment of their prisoner and braced himself, his justifications held at the ready. But Daniel only nodded once, and then turned. Mark thought he detected a look of worry on his face before he moved out of sight back up the hall.

He closed the door and returned to the bathtub, where he bent to feel the temperature of the water now gushing from the old faucet. How warm should it be? Hadn't he once read that frostbite should be treated with lukewarm water rather than hot water? Or was that the treatment for hypothermia? Mark paused, painfully aware of his limited medical knowledge.

He decided on lukewarm. She was so cold; he didn't want to shock her system by switching her from one extreme to another. If necessary, he would increase the temperature later. He stoppered the drain and the tub began to fill. Then he turned to Nadia.

Without pausing to let his own doubts take hold, he clasped the girl under her arms and drew her to her feet. Then he bent and caught the hem of her dress. He quickly pulled the cold, wet fabric up her body, over her head, and down her arms. She seemed to realize what was happening when his hands found the clasp of her bra and undid it. She was too far gone to fight him; her only protest was a small, fearful noise as the clothing left her. Next, her underwear. Mark slid it down her legs, trying not to think about what he was doing, and put it with the rest of her clothes. She cradled her injured hands in front of her body defensively, head bowed, and tried to back away from him, but he stepped forward, scooped her up, and then knelt by the tub and lowered her into it.

At once, she let out an anguished cry of pain and tried to lift her hands out of the warm water. He caught her wrists and pressed them beneath again, hating himself for doing it, knowing it had to be done.

"It hurts," she said in a strangled voice.

"I know," he soothed. "Just hold on. It will get better."

But would it? She was shaking harder than ever now, making the water around her body tremble in a flurry of ripples, and her breath rattled shallow and fast. He wondered if he had made the wrong decision. He reached to increase the water temperature, but as his hand touched the hot water dial, she jerked forwards.

"No!" she said harshly. She spoke with such force that his hand fell from the dial automatically. He looked at her in surprise. She screwed her eyes shut, her face twisting with pain as she held her hands to herself underwater, just beneath her breasts. Mark felt his doubts subside. Although she was obviously suffering, she was also returning to consciousness. The malignant lethargy was lifting.

Silent tears ran down her cheeks from behind her closed lids as she sat there, trembling like a leaf. He knew the thawing of her skin was excruciating. For a moment he studied her face, wondering where her strength of will came from. It was bewildering to him that she would endure this kind of pain in the hopes of achieving her goal. He remembered the wildness in her eyes when he had caught her again outside the woods, remembered the feel of her heart's manic pounding when her chest was pressed to his, and the trembling of her limbs, pushed to the point of collapse. What kind of person drove themselves to such extremes? What kind of person ran nearly naked for almost an hour along the Atlantic coast? In December, no less?

His gaze moved from her face to rove over the rest of her body. Her elegant shoulders arched gracefully into slim, muscled arms, still pressed close to her quaking sides. His eyes lingered on her full breasts, the peony-pink nipples half hidden in the water now. They were larger than he would expect to find on her slender frame, but not disproportionately so. He felt warmth spreading through him as he imagined how they would feel cupped in his hands, silky and supple beneath his fingers, the nipples stiff and aching. Without meaning to, he glanced down further, trying to see through the water to the apex of her thighs.

A swift pang of guilt made him wrench away his gaze. She had not chosen this, he knew. He had never had a sexual encounter with any woman who was less than one hundred percent enthusiastic. With an effort, he ignored the arousal building within him, and refocused his attention on treating his captive.

"Let me see," he said, somewhat hoarsely, pulling her hands into his. He was as gentle as possible, but she still whimpered at the contact. The skin on her hands had turned from a bruised purple to a bright, angry red, which he took to be a good sign. Dropping her hands, he lifted a foot out of the water – she clutched the sides of the tub clumsily to keep from falling backwards – and saw that it too was a lighter shade than before. Looking at the rest of her body again, more clinically this time, he noticed for the first time mottled red patches upon her thighs and belly where the skin had been superficially damaged by the cold.

Reckoning that enough time had passed for her to adjust to the tepid water, he twisted the hot dial again. He also pulled the stopper to drain some of the current bathwater, which had become murky with the mud encrusted on her body.

Careful not to let the water get too hot, he placed one hand on Nadia's shoulder and began sloshing the warm water up her back, trying now to raise her core temperature. She gasped and shuddered as the water ran down her skin. Shuffling sideways along the bathtub rim to get in a better position behind her, Mark noticed several bloody scratches running down her back. For a second, he could not think where these had come from, but then he remembered that she had crammed herself through the bathroom window, and that the old wooden frame was likely bristling with chipped paint and splintered wood. He tightened his grip a little, an unconscious extension of the tightening in his gut, and continued to draw water over her. Slowly, her shivering began to subside.

As the water was at last getting to proper bath temperature, the girl stopped shaking and her breathing began to slow. Mark rested his hand on the smooth skin of her back, his fingers filling the space between her shoulder-blades, and was pleased and relieved to find that she was no longer cold to the touch.

More alert than before, Nadia shifted uncomfortably beneath his hand. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped one arm around them, keeping her other arm crossed protectively over her breasts. She was obviously nervous to be next to him in her nakedness.

Mark picked up the bar of soap sitting in the built-in tray, and gently pulled one arm away from her body to wash it. She let out a soft "No," and tried to pull away, but he kept his hold on her and started to clean her skin of mud and blood, paying extra attention to the scrapes where the skin was broken and at risk of infection. Despite the heat of desire now pulsing in his groin, he kept his touch deliberately professional. She seemed to notice this detachment, and by the time he had finished one arm and moved to the next she had stopped straining against his grip. She sat still and rigid beneath his hands, except for when he came to an open scratch, the touch of which made her twitch with pain. When he reached her first foot, she wiggled her toes experimentally and he saw her wince, fresh tears leaking from her eyes. He worked carefully and thoroughly until he was satisfied that each cut had been attended to.

Finally, he released her and sat back. She drew her knees to her chest once again and clutched them to her, folding herself into a tight ball. Her face was turned away from him, but he knew that she was still crying with the pain of her thawing hands and feet. He looked at the ridge of her spine and the fanning lines of her ribs, clearly visible beneath her pale skin, sweeping up to meet her jutting shoulder blades. For the first time since he had known her, he found himself thinking that she appeared small, fragile. The angry red lines crisscrossing her pale skin only reinforced the impression. He felt a kind of miserable frustration swell inside him at the sight of her hugging herself, weak and wounded.

"Fucking hell, Nadia," he said finally, unable to help himself. "Why did you do it? Why did you put yourself through this?"

She turned, slowly. Her eyes seemed twice their usual size, huge and haunted. Mark's heart sunk, the last traces of his arousal draining away as he looked into those blue pools, swimming with pain and despair.

"You're

selling me

, Mark." Her voice was low and shaky. "You're selling me into a lifetime of slavery and abuse."

He stared back at her tormented eyes and could not respond. In that moment, it hit him fully what she was facing. What he was doing to her. The pain of her frozen skin and the danger of hypothermia were as nothing to the pain and danger she faced at von Bauer's hands.

Mark stood up abruptly, unable to sort out his head with her wretchedness laid bare before him. Turning away from the bathtub, he found himself face-to-face with his reflection in the mirror above the sink.

He stared, trapped by the image of his own face and the truth he read there. He did not want to go through with this. He could no longer deny it, could no longer pretend. His unwillingness was written across his features for him to see, undeniable, insistent. All of his previous justifications – his half-formed dreams of using his ten million to somehow somehow reclaim his father's property – they now seemed weak and foolish against the force of Nadia's suffering. Whatever good he may have been able to do for his family, it was not enough to outweigh the harm he was doing to this girl, whoever she truly was.

But he didn't know how to stop it. The pieces were already all in motion. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was nearly 4:30 in the afternoon. Von Bauer's men would be arriving to take the girl in just over sixteen hours. There were too many other players for him to counteract.

Out of nowhere, he heard again Nadia's voice in his mind.

You are smart, hardworking, and you have a passion for bettering the world around you

.

And what about the other three – Daniel, Chris, and Michael? Could he convince them to change their minds, last-minute? Instantly, he knew the answer to that question. But if he couldn't persuade them, and couldn't fight all three of them...

You are going to have the power to do good

.

Mark looked fixedly at his reflection, and sensed that he was standing at a crossroads. There was hardly any time left. He had to pick a direction. Right or left?

A loud knocking on the bathroom door jolted him out of his thoughts.

"Mark, you're going to want to see this. It's from von Bauer." It was Chris' voice. Confusion filled Mark at his words; they had not, as far as he knew, been expecting anything from the German.

He bent hurriedly and scooped up Nadia's wet and muddy clothing. "Wash," he told her curtly, without looking at her, and then he exited the bathroom.

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Arley sat still for a minute or two after Mark left, wrestling with the emptiness that was expanding inside her, threatening to swallow her. Never in her life had she felt so utterly alone. She instinctively reached for the hot water tap, trying to drive out the chill that had settled deep in her bones. She watched the steam rise from the gushing water and wondered if she would ever feel warm again.

The voices of the men came through the door to where she sat, but she couldn't make out their words. As though pulled by a magnet, her mind kept swinging back to the feeling of Mark's arms pinning her against him, to how easily he had lifted her up and carried her away, both in the alley and in the field. Arley knew, of course, that men were physically stronger than her. But until now, she had only understood this concept in the abstract, as a scientific principle that had no immediate relevance to her life. Gravity was stronger on Jupiter than it was on Earth, wolves targeted the weakest deer in the herd, and men were larger and had more muscle mass than women. She knew this to be true, but she had never personally

experienced

the truth of it.

All of her previous interactions with men – both professional and personal – had always been courteous, respectful, tame. Modest, even. In the back of Arley's mind, she had always held on to the unspoken belief that, if push came to shove, she could hold her own against most men. And why not? She was tall, she was fit. She could run twenty-one kilometres and could hold the flying crow pose for five whole minutes. When cars had to be pushed out of snowbanks, she pushed them. When heavy things needed lifting, she lifted them. Her body had always been a source of empowerment. Accustomed to looking men in the eye, she had never before felt powerless in femininity. Until now.

Mark's body, Chris' body, Michael's – they all were able to overpower her with an effortlessness that terrified her. She thought again of how easily they had caught her, held her down, carried her off. It was not merely that they were able to overcome her resistance, but that her resistance had almost no effect. Her strength was nothing compared to theirs, and she was shocked by the disparity.

Arley turned the hot water tap further, feeling the pain of the water on her skin and relishing it. If only there was some way to wash away her desolate thoughts. If only there was some way to get warm.

She heard Mark's voice raise angrily in the hall and looked nervously at the door. Worried that the men might enter the room, and not wanting to be caught naked in front of them, she climbed out of the tub, fumbling somewhat because her hands and feet were still tingling painfully. She wrapped herself as best she could in the one white bath towel, the only covering in sight, and tried to dredge up some small drop of courage for whatever was coming her way next. She stepped to the sink and looked into the mirror.