In His Command (27 page)
We stayed that way for a long time, until he rubbed his hand across my chest. “What do you wish for now?”
I could wish for a million things, but none of it mattered then. Not with my husband in my arms and his head on my shoulder, his love filling my soul. “Not a goddamn thing. I got it all with you, Blondie.”
“Me too, Caspar. Me too.”
A Yankee transplant via the UK and other wild journeys, Rie happily landed in Charleston, South Carolina, with her English artisan husband and their two small daughters—one an aspiring diva, the other a future punk rocker. They’ve put down roots in the beautiful area, raising children who meld the southern “y’all” with a British accent, claiming it’s a comical combination.
After earning her degree in fine arts, Rie promptly gave up paintbrushes and canvas for paper and pen (because she decided being a writer was equally as good an idea as being an artist; of course it was). That was fifteen years ago that her writing career started. With a manuscript of super epic proportions! Safely stored under a lace doily in a filing cabinet. Possibly in England…
Since then she’s done this and that, here and there, usually in the nonprofit arena, until she returned to her dream of being a writer. Even though Rie basks in the glorious southern sunshine as often as she can, she’s mostly a nocturnal creature, adjourning to her writer’s atelier (spare bedroom) in search of her next devious plot twist or delicious passionate tryst.
No matter what genre or gender pairing she’s writing, she combines a sexy southern edge with humor and heart—and a taste of darkness. Enjoy!
Look for the next sizzling novel in the Don’t Tell series!
See the next page for a preview of
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Chapter One
February, 2071, Chitamauga Commune
L
iz Grant, are you the daughter of Robie Grant?”
I held the polished doorknob in my hand, straining to see the young trooper’s eyes hidden beneath the low brim of his cap. I nodded, my heartbeat knocking around my chest.
“Your father, First Class Medical Officer and Chief Geneticist Robie Grant, is dead.” He sped through the details of a gruesome killing at the hands of Nomads, speaking like an automaton, no emotion on his face, no inflection in his voice.
I stared at the badge on his chest until my vision swam and what was left of my heart sank to my knees, knees that buckled. The gleaming metal of his insignia winked when he turned toward the corridor. I stood in the open doorway, watching his retreat, tears spilling down my face.
“Lizbeth?” Mom called from behind me.
Bending in two, I retched, shoving an arm out to ward her off as her cautious footsteps came closer.
“Lizbeth?” She hurried forward, pulling my face around. “Lizbeth, what’s happened?”
Vomit stained the carpet, curdled under my tongue. I spoke the words I never thought we’d hear. “Dad’s gone.”
“Your father’s—” A tall woman with black hair, so elegant and refined she could sweet-talk any Company stuffed suit, Mom backed away from me, her hand shaking, her finger pointing. “Don’t you dare say that.”
“Mom?” I rose to my feet, and my stomach heaved again. “Mom!”
Stopping halfway down the hallway, she crumpled to the floor, wails breaking from her as she beat her head against the wall. “No, no, no, no. He said we’d be safe! He said he’d make sure. Rob told me not to worry.”
I crawled to her, sliding her head into my lap, my world falling apart with each of her fragmented cries. “Mommy?”
Jesus and Christ!
A litany of swears sped past my lips as I jumped off the bed, hefting one of my Desert Eagles in a shaky grip. The sensation of all-seeing eyes watching my every move didn’t stop just because I was in the Freelanders’ Chitamauga Commune, somewhat safe from immediate danger. Scanning the moon-saturated surrounds of my borrowed caravan and coming up clear, I put the safety on, rubbing the barrel against my cheek. Sweat-soaked sheets pooled around my hips. My thin top clung to me, and perspiration slid in icy trickles between my breasts, brought on by the habitual nightmare of my dad’s slaughter.
I was a hard-ass. The Revolution, the deaths I’d witnessed, and the kills I’d caused, not even the Company itself, with its aggressive worldwide lockdown on so-called aberrant sexual behaviors, could break me. The only thing that terrorized me each and every night was my dad’s murder. He’d been mutilated, the blame placed on a Wilderness Nomad tribe, people we’d been brainwashed to believe were bloodthirsty savages. I didn’t buy that particular feed anymore either, not after I’d ended up in Chitamauga, where the people had proved themselves to be exactly what they purported: Freelanders, not vicious, ignorant Nomads.
I lay down on the bed, snuggling my pair of pistols under a pillow, close at hand, just in case. I kept my hand on the butt of a gun instead of the firm bottom of a petite blond spy who’d become my playful pastime and a fond friend far too quickly for my liking. Rolling onto my back, the smile gathered from remembrances of Farrow was replaced by a grimace when I shut my eyes, thoughts of my father spinning back to me.
Sleep off the roster for a second night running, I tossed the pillow aside and lit one of the old-fashioned lanterns, its warm glow nothing like the cool halos powered by Territory electricity. I ripped several pages from some ledger Farrow had left behind and located a stilo-pen. After my dad’s death, I’d ransacked the condo searching for his personal digi-diary, coming up empty. This was one connection I still had with him. Distilling my thoughts and fears into mere words on a page I’d later destroy meant I didn’t have to truly face them. Some hard-ass I was, all right. I gave a dry laugh and set the pen to paper, scribbling quickly.
Heading up to Beta in a couple days. My mind hasn’t been on straight since finding out about the cover-up on Dad. Eleven years and it feels like yesterday I answered that knock on the door in Beta. I expected a mandatory quarantine order because of the spread of the Gay Plague or another CO soiree invite for my folks. Judging from the sharpness of the knock, I should’ve known it was neither. The trooper outside couldn’t have been much older than me. The cap he wore shaded his eyes from view until he pushed it up, revealing scathing snapdragon-blue irises.
Looking down at the paper clenched in my hand, I saw the wet blotch of a tear making an even bigger mess of my words. That my father had been sent into the field should’ve been my first tip-off something wasn’t right with the bullshit palaver my mom and I had been force-fed. He was high ranking and a scientist, not a frontline medic. But I’d been only eighteen at the time, and watching my mom fall to pieces with the news hadn’t left me with a whole lot of thinking space.
The Company, the CO—the Cunts—remain oppressive to the core. Pumping us with a dawn-to-dusk spin for the good of mankind during day-long doses of pro-CO promos filtered in on our handheld, government issued Data-Paks for two generations running. The thing is, I used to believe in them. It was how I’d been raised, all I’d had left. Now I feel sick about all I’ve done to keep them in power. This regime with their so-simple manifesto: Maintain order, recoup the InterNations population, and execute anyone who stands in the way of their brainless breeder politics.
Maintain order; that’s one thing I’m good at.
Too fucking bad for the CO a few million civilians teamed up with a massive wave of Freelanders from every InterNations Territory and the surrounding pockets of Wilderness to finally lay some beat-ass on their homophobic, homogenous hate-filled regime.
Too bad for them, but good for me, for us. I’d finally done the right thing, something I could be proud of, and I hoped my dad would’ve been, too. I’d dropped my first lieutenant rank, dropped out altogether from the Corps—the military branch of the CO—and skipped off their grid, joining up with the Revolution that had begun only seven months ago.
Blindly searching the bed where Farrow usually slept, I flattened my palm to nothing but a bunched-up pillow. She’d left two days ago, a spook for the Revolutionaries and the best babe around, care of her CO connections and the way she made me come, fingertips traipsing over my clit, her puckered lips slipping up and down my slit. I shut my eyes, my body pulsing with memories, far better memories than deaths dropped on my doorstep or bullet holes I’d plugged into possibly innocent tangos on both sides of the war. I should’ve been worried about Farrow, but she could take care of herself and so could I.
Shaking my head, smiling, I started writing again.
I’ve been taking care of myself since the minute that knock sounded on our door. Took care of myself in other ways, too, hardly lingering over a handful of infrequent lovers. Hitting It and Heading Out: a little insider Corps motto, and we’re not just talking about sorties. I’ve never been sweet to anyone but Farrow and she knows it.
My first affair with a woman and probably my last, since I’d figured I was incomplete in a way even she hadn’t satisfied. I’d never had the time or wherewithal to explore my femininity, my sexuality, and Farrow’s nightlong erotic escapades hadn’t filled the aching hole.
Jesus, if Cannon could see me now. I remember one afternoon in Alpha, the two of us sitting side by side on the pavement, tinkering with our motorcycles, spending silent hours on the endless maintenance he called “twat to tit.” He popped me on the shoulder. “Beats journaling, right?” Because we’d never be caught dead doing that. I came back with, “Maybe, but not as good as getting laid.” He turned so red, for a minute I thought he took my remark as a come-on. Nah, I was only digging for a little truth about the commander, even back then.
Ah, fuck this. Maybe I should blame my mental masturbation on him. Cannon’s infected me with his lovefest. It’s no joke he and Nate go at it like rabbits. I knew about his illegal activities long before he made a clean cut from the Corps, but I never let on until he gave me the send-off last September. Pulled from his duties as commander of the Elite Tactical Unit in Alpha, ordered to escort Nathaniel Rice, the Company head of technological acquisitions, to the Outpost, he didn’t deny my suggestions then, but he didn’t affirm them either.
I pressed the slim stilo against my temple as I had the barrel of my gun earlier. A grin tugged my lips. Cannon would murder me if he ever read this.
Nathaniel Rice, known to his lover as Blondie…I’m not even calling him Nate anymore, preferring Cannon’s fuck bunny. He’s proven himself a worthy asset, and more than that, the major mastermind behind the Revolution, setting off InterNations-wide assaults on the global water plants so the regime ran around with their asses to the wind, giving rebellious civilians a reason to incite war.
Cannon’s love for Blondie makes sense. He never had any women around, just his boyfriend, the Fist. It doesn’t matter to me which way he swings his club. But I wish they’d left their caravan—called the Love Hovel by Cannon, me, and everyone else within hearing distance—in its honeymoon position on the edge of the Chitamauga meadow because Blondie the Fuck Bunny is a screamer.
Eyeing the pages in my hand, I placed the stilo on a stand beside the bed. The potbellied woodstove in the corner burped out faint gusts of smoke as fire ate through wood, warming the one-room caravan. The small door whined when I opened it, ash blazing blue. I shoved in the papers, waiting for the edges to curl and combust. I burned the evidence of my late-night weakness.
Leave no trail behind.
My head slightly clearer, I returned to bed. I checked my rounds, hilled a few quilts to buffer my body, and closed my eyes. This lying-low-and-hiding-out gig had gotten old. It wasn’t my style. I had some work to do, in the name of freedom…and for my father.
* * *
Leaving my caravan behind the next morning, I hastened through the snowy network of the wagoneer neighborhood. The caravan itself was another surprise I liked more than I cared to admit. Its brightly patterned fabrics put me in mind of the Alpha digs I’d filled with colorful, luxurious black-market finds. Works of art, books that were banned, the feminine touches had been more than decorations to me. They’d been cherished treasures speaking to a side of myself I tended to ignore and kept hidden from all others, except for that nosy sumbitch Cannon.
Once freed of the forest, I crossed onto the commune’s main street, crunching snow beneath my high-laced boots, securing my Corps cap to my head. I passed the mess hall, the trade stands, and the schoolhouse. Inside every silver-wooded structure, fires blazed and men, women, children, and animals milled, working off the winter’s cold in this thriving back-to-the-earth community.
The usual undaunted mutt hightailed it after me, his owner’s gray bleak face and growly voice the same as his dog’s when he snapped an order to the mongrel and a slightly less irate G’mornin’ to me.
Brought up a Corps brat, I preferred the war room—aka the meeting hall—to the women’s hour that took place every morning, noon, and night within the open-air kitchens. Stepping into the town hall proper, I was greeted by a round table filled by the usual group of down-home councilors including Hills, Hatch, Darke, Eden, and Fuck Bunnies one and two.
Maps were splayed on the table, real paper things we could touch and handle. Before exploring the commune’s well-maintained archives, I’d never seen a nondigital representation of the Territories, thanks to the CO destroying our history and replacing it with neat and tidy readouts easily digested from our D-Ps. Around the table, Hills and Eden carried on a murmured conversation while Nate winked at me and Cannon perfected his fear-inducing glare from deep brown eyes. One day before I departed for Beta Territory, he wasn’t happy.
Surprise.
Cannon’s finger struck the green landmass at the upper-right quadrant of the InterNations map of the former United States, an area just outside Beta. He didn’t even wait for me to take a seat before high-handing me. “Tell me what happened again.”
Fuck.
I mutely went about making myself a cup of coffee from the fixings in the center of the table, ignoring the hulking giant across from me.
“I won’t stand for your insubordination, Grant.” Cannon addressed me with a growl in his voice.
Holy hell. Clearly someone woke up on the wrong side of the caravan this morning.
“I don’t think you have the brass to tell me what to do anymore, Caspar.” Smiling sweetly, I took him down a notch by refusing to address him as Commander, Cannon, or sir. I loved Caspar Cannon like a brother, but sometimes he needed to be slapped, and Nate was probably too soft on him to do it.
Leader of the commune’s well-organized militia, Darke matched Cannon’s size kilo for kilo and came in a couple years older at an even thirty. From down the table he didn’t seem too fond of listening to us spar. “Now, I know y’all two don’t need to fuck it out—pardon me, Miss Eden.” He apologized to the fair-haired healer, Nate’s mom. “You need a fighter’s ring to square your pube hairs away, we can sort that out right quick. I’m sure Micah would be more than happy to call our people in from the fields for a little Corps entertainment this morning.”
I guessed he’d rather watch us duke it out.
“Jesus.” Cannon pressed his knuckles to his temples.
“Christ.” I sank into the last open chair.
We grinned at each other.
“I’m not shitting you, Liz,” Cannon said as his grin evaporated and his expression became troubled.
“I know. I get it. Have my back, I’ll have yours. I just didn’t think you’d be riding my ass the whole way, too.” Mug of hot coffee in hand, I took a sip before launching into an abbreviated version of what went down during my evacuee-escort detail from Alpha to Beta at the outbreak of the Revolution for the umpteenth time.