In His Command

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This is such an exciting time and there are so many people to thank for helping me on this massive journey that is the Don’t Tell series. My gratitude goes to the team at Grand Central Publishing Forever Yours for their skill and know-how. Latoya Smith, my fabulous editor, is an unbeatable story groomer, guide, and all-around support system.

My crazy band of critique partners are with me from the time I start bouncing around the wildest ideas until the minute I write
The End
. Kat Asimos, Jenna Barton, Nicki Firman, Rowan Moon, Tracey Porcher, Claudia Storheim, and A. D. Wayy are the women I laugh with, rail at, and who rally me when I’m at hair-pulling-out point. My love and appreciation belong to Gillian Littlehale, who reaches across miles of virtual space at least five times a day throughout the entire story process, which goes on long after I’ve typed
The End
. Many thanks to Ron McAuley, my go-to guy for all things weapons and military tactics.

Last, but most important, I give my thanks and love to my husband, daughters, and my parents. Their support is as invaluable as their understanding is irreplaceable.

T
he song started softly, lilting high notes saturating the air. The pretty tinkling bells—or some such shit—got real dirty real fast, rapidly descending into rough bass that blasted through the soles of my boots, winding up to my balls. The grinding beat joined raunchy flickering strobes, light like the flashes mounted on relic cameras used only by hard-core black-market dealers in explicit art. The kind of camera that once turned on me so long ago I thought I’d put a cap on that crap.

Investing more time in that line of thinking was gonna end in a massive headache and a revisit to heartache. There’d be none of that. Not here. Not now. Not ever.

I focused on the open archways, where the crowd of dancers writhed in sinuous movements. Illicit lovers moaned from shadowy corners and against the massive brick columns of this repurposed sanctuary. Sweat poured from half-naked bodies.
Flash-pound.
Necks thrown back.
Flash-pound.
Hands curling around tits, curving over cocks.

Flash-pound.

My heartbeat.

Shit, with the amount of feedback coming at me, it felt like the Company would find us by the sound waves alone.

I was on leave outside the barricades of Alpha Territory, which was a mighty feat in itself. Definitely not in my barracks, aka my two-roomer with exactly one bed—standard single, two sheets, one flat pillow—a two-burner cooktop, a mini fridge, and a standing-room-only shower. Mildew included.

Twenty-three hundred hours. September 15, 2070. But who the frig cared anymore? The months added up and washed away like so many waste-paper products recycled in the toilet. This day marked my twenty-eighth birthday, and I was celebrating it in the anonymous arms of the Amphitheater, so called as a dig against the cold, urban Company.

Hell, the Amphitheater was the closest thing I had to a home. The common link I shared with my fellow revelers was that our
perverse, dirty
desires were outlawed. We were shoved so deep underground by the new world order, the Amphitheater moved one step ahead of the Company, keeping off the grid, cropping up in the Territory outskirts and occasionally outside. It was a close, closed community—as much as possible given that no personal info was exchanged, no matter how familiar the face.

No tomorrows here, just next time. Unless you got hauled in for homosexual crimes.

Happy fucking birthday to me.

Since I spent most of my time on duty—and in the closet—I needed to throw some enthusiasm into my attitude. Be a peach and all that. Another drink might help me get my chipper on.

The bartender was as round as a cask of contraband hooch herself, pulling a rare bleak look as she passed me a bottle. “You hear about Jax?”

Jax wasn’t the real name of the recently captured lesbian, but one she’d gone by on account of her spirited personality.
Jacked-up Jax.
Bright as a brass button and energetic to boot. A real popular pal with the gals.

“Yeah.”

“Her RACE trial, what a goddamn waste of a good woman all because she wasn’t a breeder.” The barkeep planted her elbows between us, her gray spiked hair leaning left with the suggestion of grief.

Taken into custody for fucking a woman, Jax had gone through enforced rehab, her only way out to perform a straight sex act before the RACE Tribunal. Repopulation and Civilization Enforcement.

Laughs all around.

I nodded over my drink. “At least she went down fighting.” She went down because she refused the terms. Now Jax was one of many put in the ground.

“Damn straight…so to speak.”

Commiseration came in a shared stare held with painful understanding, not flappy-mouthed conversation. Our bottles clinked, and I exhaled in relief when she buttoned her lip. I was unwilling to discuss anything remotely related to my line of work.

Unlike Jax, we weren’t underground this time, and we weren’t in a cavernous warehouse; this place was open air, care of the loving touch of whoever had taken TNT to the Civil-War-era church belonging to Old History. Beautiful brick walls were half blasted away so the lamplights and halos shimmered with eerie shadows from the last, aged, live oaks caped in tendrils of Spanish moss.

Arched recesses gave way to mounds of grass—that vibrant green, fragrant left-to-grow stuff not seen inside Alpha Territory walls. The delicate church construction was guarded outside by massive stone mausoleums and great granite gravestones with the names of Wannamaker and Heyward and Rice. On arrival I’d cased the location before stepping one foot inside.

I was horny, not stupid.

Tipping back my beer, I scanned the ruins packed with hot bodies, measuring up possible threats. No such thing as a secure night off in my line of work. My reconnoiter came to a halt when I got a bead on the big blond male quaffing a longneck across from me, his back to a corner, same as mine. His eyes scanned between a couple of the arched openings until our gazes clashed and held.

He was noted from before and very much on my radar. He didn’t drop my stare or shift his feet. He had some kind of presence that tipped my guns. Including the one in my pants.

I knocked back my drink and kept my aim on the cocky man rasping two fingers across his lips. His razored hair hung straight past his chin with ends that licked a strong jaw and slanting cheekbones. He was a dirty blond, the dirty was a given from the gimme-some glint of his blue eyes and the flirting line of his full lips. His golden-tipped stubble would leave a good burn on my face, chest, and between my thighs. His shoulders filling the width of the corner he guarded, and every so often his eyes ranged around the place, scoping it out. For security, not sex.

I understood that impulse.

The Purge happened two lifetimes ago, when history was sketchy and intel questionable. Beginning with environmental hazards such as acid rain, global warming, the ice cap melting and ignored by all but the most gung-ho scientists, the Purge slowly steamrolled across the world. Unable to sustain the seven-billion-plus population, our earth finally reached maximum capacity, triggering an environmental downward spiral. The catastrophic earth-wide event was a done deal by 2020. The rest didn’t matter all that much to me anyway. What did matter was it left a huge hole in important things like leadership and government, and it did one hell of a number on democracy. The Purge ripped a new asshole right through the hands-holding, back-to-earth, for-the-people ideology of the early twenty-first century.

The Plague that followed later rounded out the destruction detail. I could calculate the damage from that one firsthand. It had cost me my family. My mother, father, and sister. I was still waiting for the next episode to hit.

Shit always comes in threes.

After the Purge, the remaining populace—the refugees—didn’t have to wait long for wake-the-hell-up time, except there weren’t all that many of them left to wakey-wakey. That’s when the Company took control. Fat corporate cats stabilized the crumbling continents by dividing them into identical pie pieces. Their solution? Cultivate the dwindling pop through legalized procreation and industrial division of labor. Democracy gasped its dying breath.

The CO’s reach? Worldwide. The number-one wage earner? Reproduction. What would get you a good old-fashioned hanging in the Quadrangle? Homosexuality, and/or any other unapproved sexual activities or proclivities.

Greed and avarice were the new rulers, freedom of worship going the same way as freedom of choice. Whatever, the CO were equal-opportunity ass-maggots.

Who just happened to pay my wage.

For people like me, love was folklore, sexual release fought for, and let’s just get rid of that whole cross-your-heart idea of lifelong mates. At least I had my military training, my Corps troops, and my weapons to keep me warm at night.

And this.

Did I say happy fucking birthday to me? Oh yeah.

Add the Class-A asshole at my back doing the breathe-heavy routine—a mere twink compared to the rugged man still watching me—and it was so not party time. Man, I was tired of babysitting. I didn’t have my fatigues on, but I was so fricking fatigued. I did have a Saturday-Night-Special throwaway tucked against the small of my back. There were a lot of things I could do without but a weapon? Call it a security blanket, the only kind I liked tucked against me.

I threatened, “You better back off, pretty boy, before I get trigger happy.”

Yeah, I had charming down pat.

I inventoried the hedonistic gasps, moans, music. The more the better, every fetish fulfilled for at least one night. Looking around the destroyed church, I took a little bit of heart that there was worshipping of the sexual kind going on.

My arm brushed against the hand of a woman lying on a bare plank of wood. Her legs were limp, her body relaxed, her neck rolling from side to side as her Dom plinked one more clothespin to the tissue of her breast. Her tits bloomed from the hard wooden fetters. Drugged up on endorphins, the girl didn’t move a muscle when his palm meandered under her short skirt and up her thighs until her sudden gasp meant his fingers hit home.

Barkeep served the recognizable mouth breather behind me while he tried to help himself to me. Gripping my beer bottle so tight it was a wonder the glass didn’t shatter, I barely moved my lips as I spoke. “Go get yourself another daddy to play with, boy.”

As always, the kid had a death wish, because he continued to hang on my back like a damp rag. I ignored him to sweep the scene, stopping at the regulation fucking going on west of me. A top-heavy brunette presented her nipples while she bounced up and down the dick that had escaped the fly of her man’s trousers. He clamped over those popped-out buttons like his life depended on it. Probably did.

Her gray spikes perking up with her eyebrows, the barkeep gave a low whistle that sucked in her round rosy cheeks. “Back in the day, I used to have my pick of the fillies. Nice rack on that one. But she ain’t your style.”

I confirmed with a nod.

She chortled and bent her head close, mentioning the hanger-on practically drooling down my back. “Neither is he, huh?”

He sure as hell wasn’t. Neither was getting flogged, roped up, or—in general—groped. But I did come to get fucked. I simply wanted to find a man, never ask his name, find us a nice private bit of hillside, and make like a jack-off curtain. Get laid. Then get on my way.

That was all the relief I could expect.

The whole hypocrisy thing was carving a canyon straight through my chest. Putting down the few unorganized rebels when I should have been one of ’em. Thing was, my job was the only way to stay out of the breeding program and keep my feet firmly on the ground instead of buried underneath, because no goddamn way would I go before RACE to prove myself a hetero by doing a woman. Just…
no
. Besides, only way to bring the Company down was from the inside. And since that wasn’t gonna happen either, I made do with the lose-lose situation.

The swish of a flogger sounded; fat slaps of soft leather landed on flesh. The blindfolded man on the cross shivered; tears of sweat tracked down the indent of his spine, dripping into the cleft of his ass, gorgeous taut globes crisscrossed with pink welts. Thrown into a sharp relief of shadows and light, his muscles bunched and relaxed, bunched and relaxed while his low moan was promptly quieted by the precise smacks of the flogger’s handle against his heavy balls. Resuming his strong balletic strokes in a
left, right, left, right
rhythm, every once in a while the Dom dipped to his ear and caressed the heated marks on superior muscle.

Working around the St. Andrew’s Cross, another station of wanton worship, I regained the vision I’d lost. Still shouldering up the corner, still on the same beer. Pencil Dick was my steady shadow, but I was so into the other man—hard-core into him—PD and his heavy panting just became more background fuzz.

I was staring at the attractive piece of fuck-me across the way with no subtlety at all when fingers slid over my hips, planted on my crotch, and stroked my big hard one to pole position.

Big Blondie across the way took it all in without a wince.

His blatant disregard combined with the boy’s hands on my dick flipped my switch. “Fuck, Leon!”

The insolent bastard pulled me back to his groin. “
Mais
, I never tought I’d hear dem words from you. That an invitation?”

His voice was girlish but his dialect guttural, an accent he put on with the same ease as his inevitable come-ons. The distinct mother tongue a holdover from his ancestors, most of whom had been wiped out during the Purge when it hit the southern deltas of the former United States.

I caught his wrists in one hand, pinning him against a column. “The only invitation you’re gonna get is the one to your own funeral. Now, keep your hands off me.”

He did that ridiculous bullshit. Dropped his eyelashes, pouted his lips, and nagged like we were the Mr. and Mrs. “
Mais
, I get it. You still hankerin’ after dat tall drink of jizz over dere?”

That got my back up.
Hankering?
Not in this lifetime. “Fuck off.”

No way was I all het-up because Blondie had made his first appearance in two months. Not that I was counting. As for pining, only one guilty of that was Leon.

“I only see you at the T’eater every month or so. You walk da big walk, but you never let loose.”

Again with the whiny wifey routine. I cranked the neck of his shirt in my fist. His eyes were soft, as if he thought I was about to kiss him. I cursed and let him go. “Listen. You’re cute but too frigging young for my tastes. And I don’t do brunettes.” I stalked away, grumbling, “You need to lose the desperate, boy.”

At the bar, I made a damn point to stop the massive observation of Captain Cock Hardener in the far corner. So when a voice came across in a deep southern drawl right beside me, I went haywire inside.

“I hate bein’ hit on.”

I glanced left and confirmed Blondie’s stance. Hands loose on his hips, leg cocked, me in his line of fire. This was the man I went home to, fucked my fist to, climaxed long and loud to since I’d first laid eyes on him five months ago. And yeah, even though I’d frequented the Theater a few times since then, the only thing I’d picked up was a beer bottle. I hadn’t had a blow job in ages, given head for longer than that, and I’d deflected all the “let’s-fuck” invites with the same one-liner I’d just played to Leon: You’re not my type.