In His Command (14 page)

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m
your
charge.”

Goddamn him! He got me again with his Company words.

I paced, blowing off steam until I was deflated. “Well, they need less talk, more action.”

“Double that.” He clasped his hands behind his neck, a gesture that said the storm was over.

Deep in my bones, I knew it was just beginning. Never mind his breathy words or bedroom eyes. The too-good-to-be-true was gonna end so fucking badly. The sooner, the better. “We’re leaving tomorrow, heading north to the Outpost. Enough of this lying low shit.”

“Okay.” His agreement was way too easy, figured he had to follow through. “Give it one more day.”

“Screw that.”

“It’s smart to see if any other info comes in from Alpha.”

“Fine.”

The meeting adjourned, the Freelander volunteers and Revolutionaries made for munitions, and I wanted to tag along, grab a new gun, maybe a bayonet. That was a no-go, so I made do with second best. “Can I at least check out their maps?”
Ammo is off-limits, but aerials should be on the table, right?

“Think I can manage that, so long as you stay put while I arrange it.”

I pasted a smile on my face. “Where am I gonna go without you?”

I tore up more ground than the tractor, watching all the comings and goings, waiting for Blondie’s return. A few minutes later, he beckoned to me from across the dirt-trodden road.

Inside a damp, dug-out basement lit by flickering outdated lightbulbs, a table was laid with crumbly old maps in pastel colors and bleeding ink. I pulled up a chair, my fingers drawn to the fine paper with jagged edges. This was so much better than the untextured flat screen of my D-P.

I marked our start point in Alpha and followed the circuitous path south and west before our trek had taken the northern route that landed us here. Smoothing out the paper, pinpointing the Outpost, I measured the clicks in my head and memorized the final jag. All the while, Blondie watched me. The back of my neck heated just as sure as his lips had licked a trail to my ear. Because it didn’t matter how dire the situation was, with him I always thought with my dick first, heart second, and usually never my head.

Maybe it was how close we were, every day.

Maybe it was the life-and-death thing.

Maybe I didn’t give a shit for a change.

The raised formations were bumps beneath my fingertips. I closed my eyes and hung my head, hearing our breaths chug in slow, sexual exhalations. Running my hands over his sculpted body, trailing the pads of my fingers to his sacs, waiting until he asked me to suck him into my mouth,
I thought of all the things I wanted to do to him.

My hands shook when I rolled the maps. I shuttled the chair from the table and stood, my back to him. My voice rumbling, I asked, “What do you wanna do now?”

“I got some plans, Caspar.”

Jesus Christ.
My temperature soared and shivers spiked up and down my spine.

On the walk to our caravan, we didn’t talk or touch or intimate anything about the future, our future. We had none, so why bother?

What we did have was at least a couple more weeks.

Tension of a different kind mounted when we stepped inside and I got a load of the claw-footed tub that, besides the giant bed, dominated the scant space.

Wisps of steam from the water whispered damp tendrils around us. I licked my lips. “Plans?”

He tore off his shirt and found a bottle. “Bourbon and a bath, big man.”

“Drink first.” I held out two cups.

“Before kink?” His eyebrow arched.

I sank the shot and got one more, kicking off my clothes. Lowering myself into the warm water, I hung my arms over the sides. “How’d you manage this?”

My cock filled about double size when he undressed lazily, his thatch of blond curls flashing from between the unzipped panel of his pants. “Flat-out bribery and good old-fashioned coinage.” He dropped a kiss to my lips.

I knocked back the rest of my drink and watched him so hard I didn’t blink. When his pants hit the floor, so did my mouth. I almost lost my grip on the glass. His shaft rose in a rigid dark pink totem straight to his navel.

He pushed forward on my shoulder blades. “You gonna let me in?”

That’s the damn question, isn’t it? And how much is letting him in gonna cost me?

I bent my knees and scooted up for his entry into the tub. In the small of my back, his erection arched, and his hands slippery with soap found my chest. I gave my sore muscles and my mind over to his foamy massage.

“Harvest festival tonight,” he mentioned

“
Hmm
. They’re still gonna celebrate?”

“Gotta give thanks to the earth. You’ll like it; won’t hurt a bit.”

“Heard that before.” I drove my ass against his ramrod cock, chuckling when he gasped.

“Comin’ with me?”

“This a date?” I asked, my heart halfway up my throat.

“Yeah, I’m askin’ you out, Caspar. Come with me.”

I tilted my head and scraped his jawline with my teeth, taking a light bite of his chin. “Always.”

His eyes slid shut and he sidled back. “You might regret that.”

Spilling bathwater all over the floor, I turned around. “Don’t mess with me. Not tonight.”

A hoarse whisper came from him when I hefted him from the water. “I won’t. Fuck. What are you doin’ to me?”

I was patting his lower back where the deep dimples mirrored those on his cheeks, brushing his buttocks with one end of the toweling and using the other to stroke his thick cock inside the textured cloth. “Drying you off. Shut up and take it like a man.” I rolled the towel and sent it flying against his ass, landing with the lash of a whip.

Since it was a date—likely the first and last I’d ever have—I relented on the whole hand-holding deal on the way to this harvest fest. It was either grab his hand and weave our fingers together, or grab his ass, clothed in a fine old pair of jeans that clung to his form. While he’d reinvented himself again wearing his long hair loose and soft, face stubbly, I’d stuck to my tried-and-true fatigues.

People wandered toward the meadow’s call of music and the bonfire beating off the incoming hoarfrost. Night was falling, blackness challenged by the twisting red and orange flames. The late October moon was a huge yellow orb constellated by bright stars.

Makeshift tents had been set up, and inside them floors of straw were strewn with cushions; flags of fabric glowed in the light from stands of candles. A circle of men and women were dancing and singing off to one side; another group had gathered in a tight ring, their conversation punctuated by beats of loud laughter. The Territorian refugees stood alongside them, immediately gathered into the fold. I’d gone out earlier, tracking each one down and asking if anyone knew the whereabouts of a lean youth named Leon or a Corps lieutenant by the name of Liz Grant. No one had any info, and the two had not turned up at the commune.

Drawn into one of the tents, Blondie slid down onto a pillow and settled me inside the V of his wide-open thighs. Jonquil, Lyra, and a few other young women held court, wantonly writhing around each other, their arms raised with tiny finger cymbals, sending a hypnotic ringing over the audience. Their gauzy garb was sheer enough to show the deeper color of their nipples and the sinuous movements of their hips.

Forward as ever, Jonquil beckoned to me with her curled fingers making a seductive tune. Bystanders encouraged me with whistles and hollers. I shook my head to decline her invitation, but she wasn’t left wanting.

“I’ll dance with you, Jonquil.” A slim young man with black hair that dashed across his forehead fell in time with her, and soon other men danced, their musculature offsetting the femininity of the women.

Blondie settled me closer, slipping his palms up and down my forearms, raising goose bumps. Vibrant, exotic, foreign. That’s what this place was. Full of life and purpose. My impulse to call the commune hell compared to my usual bare-bones, party-line existence was on the losing side of a civil war with the idea of the Freelanders, their lives out here, and what they stood for.

Blondie’s fingers sweeping up and down the back of my neck made it impossible for me to throw my usual guard up. I tilted my head, kissing him deeply while he clutched my arms.

“Is this the singing-around-the-campfire part?”

A grin formed on his lips. “This’d be it.”

Jonquil raised her fingers in a bell-like salute when we left, and Blondie asked, “You got a girlfriend now?”

I deflected by pocketing his ass and asking, “Where are the kids?”

His smile went downright sinful. “Oh, they ain’t allowed at this type of celebration.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He winked and backed away. “You’ll see. Lemme go get us some drinks. Stay away from that woman, mind.”

Before I had time to process being dumped on my first date, Micah ambled over, giving me a hearty handshake. “I wanted you to meet my wife. Kamber, this is Cannon.”

The voluptuous red-haired woman greeted me with an easy smile. “Micah’s been tellin’ me all about you.”

Suspicion strolled up my back and settled on my shoulders like an old familiar jacket.

Micah squeezed my arm. “No need to be shittin’ your pants or pullin’ out your machete, my friend.”

Machete?
I needed to pick up one of those, too.

“Just told her about your first time out on the tractor and how you didn’t drop the clutch, like most Terries.” He prodded me forward. “C’mon, let’s go get you a tipple or two. Take the rake handle outta your ass.” He brought me and his wife across the field, cutting through singers and dancers, talkers, and so many strangers whose only reaction to our intrusion was calls of, “Hey there.”

At a brace of casks laid shoulder to shoulder on wide planks, he accepted a glass for his woman, then asked, “What’s your pleasure, besides that Rice fella? And where’d your date get to, anyhow?”

The blazing bonfire was well at my rear, so I knew that wasn’t what heated my face. I coughed into my hand to cover up the impulse to deny he was my date. Rubbing a palm over the top of my head, I eyed the barrels. “I just call him Blondie.”

Micah’s laughter boomed and Kamber giggled while I cut loose with a grin.

“Blondie, huh? Guess that suits him. Now, what’ll you have?”

While I pressed a tankard to my mouth to stop any other disorderly admissions, he took a glass in one hand and accepted a pipe in the other. Inhaling deeply, he spoke through a cloud of thick, sweet-smelling smoke, “Want a toke?”

“What is it?”

“Just a little homegrown,” Kamber said.

The marijuana smelled good, but I needed to keep my eyes peeled, my thoughts straight. I declined.

The press of a tall body behind me made me close my eyes and inhale a different, more welcome scent. “Thought I’d lost you, but I see you’ve been in good hands.” Reaching around me, Blondie clasped Micah’s hand and brought Kamber’s to his lips. “Micah, Kamber, what do you think?”

“Think it’s startin’.” Micah’s white-blond eyebrow lifted and his chin jerked toward the fire.

Blondie bent his lips to my ear. “’Bout damn time.”

I
followed his gaze and saw why the kids were put to bed early. Inhibitions rendered to intimacy as bodies meshed in a tangle of limbs, searching fingers, and searing kisses. This orgy reminded me of the Theater, except it wasn’t contrived by lack of time or threat of capture. It exuded warmth and welcome and was 100 percent tantalizing. Especially the trio who formed the centerpiece of carnality. A large ebony man stood naked with a fair woman and a lean young man writhing against him.

His arms wrapped around me, Blondie mentioned their names. “That’s Darke, who had you all fired up at the meetin’ earlier. The other man is Wilde, and the woman is Tammerick.”

Now I knew what he’d been up to. Getting in good with the people while I’d gotten the lay of the land. “They’re all together?”

“Good as married, in the eyes of the commune and their gods.”

Wilde’s voice was low. “I wanna suck your release from Tam, Darke.” His hands were white against the other’s brawny black chest.

“Tam.” Darke barely managed her name when the slimmer man got to his knees and slithered his tongue up Darke’s wide shaft. “Bring our woman to me.”

Wilde lifted her against Darke until she coiled her arms behind his neck and her legs around his huge thighs, her pussy spread above his cock. A spear of black flesh working into a tight pink tunnel. Massaging the swollen meat, Wilde helped his lover enter her. Tam moaned, the wet slink of Darke’s aroused shaft pushing into her flushed lips.

Blondie’s teeth tugged my earlobe. “I want you spread above me, Caspar, your cock in my face.”

Tam’s breasts thrust up, and Wilde buried his face between his lover’s legs, suckling her clit. He slipped lower and slurped her essence from the hard pumping piston, down to Darke’s slapping black balls.

I was shaking inside Blondie’s hold, shoving my fingers into his hair, when he bit my throat.

Darke grunted, “Yeah, Wildeman, feels so fucking good.”

Wilde sat back on his heels, handling his long shaft, tasting Tam’s cock-filled cunt and the cock itself.

“You want him?” Tam whimpered down at Wilde.

He pressed his face against Darke’s thigh—the pale against dark beautiful—and panted, “Yeah. He feels good in you? Gonna come, baby?”

He pinched her labia together, a slant of a smile spreading over his lips when her pelvis undulated. She orgasmed with a scream, and Wilde went to work on Darke’s balls, bathing them in his saliva and her heavy cream.

Darke held Tam up in his arms. “That’s right. You want my cock? You want it too, Wildeman?”

Wilde attacked the pulsing veins of the dick before him. “Lemme lick our baby’s cream off you, sweetheart.”

Tam arched back when Darke withdrew, his cock dripping with her. He kept Tam against his body with one hand and grabbed Wilde’s hair with the other, planting his throbbing cockhead between his man’s parted lips just as jets of white come propelled out.

I was sweating, my muscles tensed, Blondie swearing behind me. When I looked back from attacking his lips, Wilde had lined up behind Darke, his hands running over the straining muscles.

Blondie pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and cursed when someone across the field shouted his name. His hands dragged from my chest as he answered the call with, “Comin’!”

No shit, him and me both.

The cold reinforced my loneliness when he pulled away. “Come with me. I gotta do this one thing; then we’ll dance.”

I was at my breaking point and wasn’t sure how far I could walk, dragging my hard dick between my legs. “Don’t dance.”

He grinned at me. “You will.”

I stayed back when he crossed to Miss Eden. He sat on a stool matching hers, their knees almost touching, their fingers plinking the guitars on their laps in time with each other. Firelight danced off his dark blond hair, skimming the guitar strings, striking the ring on his finger.

His hands mesmerized me, fingers tapping out a rhythm before they began singing. Then…Jesus. His voice was like the high-rising birds he sang about, a revelation. I hung on to every word, and he watched me all the while he strummed and let the words flow:

His singing was as vibrant, clear, and strong as the man himself. I snagged a bystander. “What’re they singing?”

“I don’t reckon I’ve ever heard this’un before, but Hills might know if you catch up with him.”

Beautiful and seductive, the words hit so close to home. Their song ended slowly, softly, his sultry eyes mesmerizing mine.

In the cheering crowd, all I saw was a bunch of men and women starting forward to congratulate my man—or ask to suck his cock. One guy in particular was jerking up his pants and making way to center stage.
Not gonna happen in this lifetime.

The compulsion to get to him first was instinctual. Going rogue on everything I’d ever ascribed to before, I plowed forward, lifted Blondie’s guitar from his lap, looped my arms around his hips, and hauled him to his feet. I shut everything down but his words still singing inside me and the feel of him in my arms.

Swaying with Eden’s new melody, he drew me closer, hands whispering to my face. “Thought you didn’t dance.”

“Only with you.” We didn’t glide so much as grind, and that was fine with me. “Besides, I don’t take well to competition.”

“That so?”

The bend of his neck was an open call to suck. And suck I did until he crushed his cock against mine.

I took a handful of hair and made love to his luscious mouth. “You remember this: You’re
mine
.”

“Fuck, Caspar.”

“That’s right, we’re gonna.” No Liz, no Erica, no family. No robo-fish or damn dog and not even my Harley. But here, now, with Blondie—
Nathaniel
—I could have him. The sweet rush of realization made me deep voiced. “Let me take you to bed, lover.”

We couldn’t reach the Love Hovel fast enough for my liking. But once inside, everything slowed. I wanted to do this right. I wanted this to mean more than a one-night stand. I wanted to fuck him beautifully.

The caravan hit me with sensory overload, the sizzling kind when Blondie opened his shirt and unbuttoned his jeans. And that bed? The best sort of sexual torture was gonna happen on it tonight.

I lit a match and the candles illuminated our caravan, no longer claustrophobic but a cozy lovers’ den. The walls and ceiling were covered in a hedonistic array of wavering images, our bodies in silhouette. All the textures were sensuous beneath my fingers, none more so than his shirt dragged from his shoulders beneath my hands. I left him shackled in his shirtsleeves and walked around the room, lighting the last tapers.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s a bed; let’s not waste it. I want to be with you.”

His breathing sped. “In the Biblical sense?”

“Depends on whose translation, probably not the CO version.” The sardonic twist of my lips gave way to a lusty smile. “I wanna be with you in the way a man is with a man.”

With his back to my chest, I divested him of his jeans and drew his shirt all the way off. “Lie down for me?”

While I undressed, he stumbled to the bed, all his grace forgotten. His tone gravelly, he said, “Jesus, Caspar, I never thought—”

“
Sshh.
I never thought you’d make me feel like this.” I hunted along his body until I was on top of him.

His head racked from side to side as I lowered my chest to his, my abdomen covering his stomach, my shaft curving against his. “Caspar?” My name came out in a wrenched whisper.

His hands held within mine, I scooped away the two tears from the corners of his eyes with my lips. “You’re mine, Nathaniel.” I hadn’t realized how important it was to him for me to say it, just his name, not a nickname or an endearment. To take possession of him and claim him as mine.

I took possession of him again with my mouth on his for long sensuous minutes before gliding my lips and tongue down the center of his body. My fingers drawing along his chest to his nipples, I sucked the beautiful emblem of his cock inside my mouth.

His heels slammed onto the bed as he bent forward to watch me. “I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you.”

“Me too.” I touched the tight rope of skin between his sacs and his ass, drumming it. “Wanted this so much. Need to be part of you, inside you.”

Painted in a sensual snarl, I lowered my face to the wiry gold bloom framing his cock. I said his given name again as I lapped the base of his shaft because when I called him Nathaniel instead of the usual Blondie, his thighs shook and he groaned louder.

At his breathy moans, I spread his legs and nipped back up to his stomach, ignoring the heathen’s song of his erection dancing in front of my face. My fingers slick with lube, I kneeled in the apex of his legs, slicking his shaft and tight sweet hole. Pushing his knees to his chest, I added my lips to my finger work.

Drizzling more oil, I jackknifed his legs closer to his chest. Rounded up, hard globes of perfect male flesh spread for me, his ass taking my tongue and fingertips, he was sex just waiting for me.

I pulled my fingers out, hefted onto one arm, and kissed him hard. “Wanna come?”

The pulsing pink tip of his dick spurted a burst of preejaculate. I gripped him until the come swelled back down and he sweated and shook within my arms.

“Wanna come with you inside me.”

Good man.
I quickly unrolled a condom over my shaft. He slung his arms around my neck and his muscled legs over my hips, and we both watched the ingress of my cock into him.

Straining to contain my orgasm with every move inside him, I pressed the flat of my palm to Nathaniel’s belly. “Too much?”

“Faster!”

I hung my head against his pecs, then swooped up to his ruddy lips. “Don’t tell me that, lover.”

He buried his face against me. “Love the way you feel.”

My cock curved in and out, pumping into his snug channel. A look of awe blanketed his features, and I had to kiss him. Wet, hungry lips met mine, our tongues coiling and our teeth colliding.

Then there was just the blur of my hips pounding, the rapid sound of my balls slapping his bottom, the view of his chest bunching, and the cords of his throat in sharp relief.

His hands running all over me, his mouth slid up my jaw line to my ear. “Feels so good. Your cock’s so damn big. Deeper, honey. Yeah,
yesss.
” He hissed, taking my earlobe and twisting it in his teeth until I yelped. “Gonna make you scream.”

Yeah, we’ll see about that
. At my next hard lunge, he cried out between gritted teeth, “Yeah, fuck me hard!”

“Baby…” I choked on the emotions rolling over me as much as the velvety purchase of his ass. Skating my thumb from the bridge of skin behind his sacs to the engorged head of his cock, I dipped my fingertip into the slit and took a fistful of cock. “Come for me. Come for me, Nathaniel.”

The jerk of his hips, his gorgeous ass sinking over me again and again, he reared up, wildly clutching my hair and clinging to my lips. “Jesus, Caspar. Ah goddamn!”

His fingers gouged into my shoulders, setting off the time bomb of both our orgasms. The final rough tugs of my fist at his tip completed the chain reaction. His semen splashed both our stomachs, and his hoarse yell roared like the blood in my ears.

His ass squeezed me, drawing out my orgasm. Beating inside the condom, my cock grew bigger and come burst out of me. I sank my teeth into his throat and sucked hard through moans I couldn’t contain. I hugged him against me, shuddering and shouting, “Nathaniel. Fucking beautiful!”

My heart pounded. It wasn’t just the exertion of our glorious sex.

On my back, I pulled him down with me. I didn’t want to let him go, because motherfucking hell, our lovemaking was supposed to be a beginning, but it felt so damn final, my stomach knotted and I slammed my eyes shut.

“Honey?” He rumbled against me, lazily caressing my side.

I tugged on his hair, then smoothed it down. “How is it you’ve gotten out of being married so far?”

His chin rested on my chest, eyes dark with sadness. “They haven’t found the right Company female for me yet.” His index finger had been randomly twiddling along my torso. Now we both watched as he traced around my heart, joining our hands there.

I’d been thinking about Micah’s ring all day, the significance of union and a symbol of togetherness.

I reached beneath the bed to retrieve a waxy paper package, placing it in his palm.

Lying against me, he swallowed hard.

The covers pooled in his lap, he sat up, handling the package with such care my words came out gruff. “It’s not that I don’t think about you, Nathaniel.” I scraped my hands across my eyes. “I…yeah. Could you open it before I change my mind and realize what a phenomenal pussy I’m being?”

I pretended I didn’t see the way his hands shook when he peeled the paper off the bulky bundle. His eyelashes lowered, the leather cuff was cuddled inside his big palm. Bringing it to his nose, he inhaled the scent of fresh hide.