In His Command (7 page)

The hot sun had fallen behind the trees by the time we called it a day, settling into a hollow of soft moss with tufts of green grass, surrounded by a ring of old-growth pines. A clear stream gurgled like the water pipes of my single shower, and beside it a mound of purple-blue wildflowers nodded their starry heads. They were the same shade of blue as Blondie’s eyes. I bent to one knee, lifting a blossom to my nose.
Fresh, fragrant.
I shut my eyes to savor the clean scent.

When I opened them, he was staring at me. My cheeks warmed, and for once I wished I’d grown a beard to hide the pink stain on my face.

“You just gonna stand there, Company Man? Or help me set up camp?”

His eyes narrowed in challenge. “You’re gonna keep pretending nothin’ affects you, big man?”

“Fuck you.” I stormed to the Land Cruiser, kicking the crust of mud from a tire.

Beside me, he reached into the back of the vehicle, pulling out supplies. “Gladly take you up on that offer, but I usually like to have a decent conversation with my lovers first.”

“Guess you’re out of luck. I don’t do idle chitchat.”
Should have remembered that when I opened my big mouth earlier.

Busy unpacking the essentials for the night, my mind backtracked to the day’s journey. It was a good thing we had fresh water to clean up with, after Blondie’s antics once he took over driving. With him at the wheel, I’d been vigilant. The rebellion was contained within the environs of Alpha—the insurgents concentrating on seats of power—leaving me on the lookout for possible Nomad tangos. I’d been heedful of the unrecognizable landscape and more than a little fixated on Blondie.

He’d draped a wrist over the wheel, and a whistle, of all the goddamn things, had parted his lips.
How the hell can he be so relaxed?
He’d dropped his CO makeover the same way he’d switched his package-hugging suit for ass-cupping camos.

After the Purge, the roads had been blown up, making any to-and-fro almost impossible. The Cruiser’s struts bounced over ruts in the nearly invisible dirt track, getting a good workout. I was getting a workout, too, restraining my eyes from his thighs shifting with every press of clutch and gas, biting back my moan as the scorching sun sent a trickle of sweat from his temple to jaw and down the ropes of his neck.

Performing an all-points check, I’d pressed my foot down to the running board, hoping to hit an imaginary brake. “You’re not driving through that.”

That
was a wide well of brackish water, scummy with a yellow sheen on top.

“The great Commander Cannon scared of a bog? Ain’t gonna hurt you none. I’ve done it before.” He gave me a sideways glance and a halfway smile.

It wasn’t a bog. It was a damn swamp, and we had no idea how deep it ran. In no mood to lose our transport on the first day out, I glared at him. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“Maybe. But this is gonna be fun. I promise you.”

He’d motored right into the swamp, shouting a whoop-holler when mud cascaded in thick fountains on either side of us. The Land Cruiser stuttered, and he’d eased it smoothly out of the suction, slicing left and right. His boyish delight pressed a dimple into his cheek. By the time we’d reached the other side, I was grinning, he was laughing, and the commissary vehicle was coated in the same oily muck splattered up our arms to our faces.

Bumping along, sun drying, I’d asked, “You’ve been outside Alpha before?”

“’Course I have. You know that.” His wicked look seared through me, tightening my groin.

I’d brushed away immediate hunger, hulking against the door. “Not talkin’ about the Theater, Blondie.”

“I have a name, y’ know.”

Yeah, Nathaniel. It’s etched on my brain.
The first time I said it was gonna be when I slid inside that perfect ass of his. “I meant, have you been out here for official business…or family?”

His mercurial face closed up shop. That’s why I had one expression in my repertoire. The fuck-you look.

He’d stopped the vehicle to face me. “Yeah, I got family. And yes, I been out here before.”

Bounties were paid for gays turned in, a new kind of headhunter for Team RACE. I’d met his eyes. “I still think you’re screwing with me.”

“Do you? Maybe I’m just more adept at hidin’ what I am; I’ve been indoctrinated and brought up in the Company way, after all. Now, you? You show your desire every time you look at me, Caspar. Don’t believe for a second I don’t see it.” He’d leaned in, whispering, “Don’t think for a moment I don’t want you on top of me, inside of me.”

I inhaled at the implication when he added, “I wanna fuck you, too.”

“You’re playing me.”

The snap of my fatigues came loose under his fingers. “I want to.” His face was carved with sharp longing. His mouth slipping across my stomach had my cock fueled for a fuck. “I did take notes on you. Not for work, but for pleasure.”

No matter how much I shouldn’t believe him, the pressure of his lips, the sound of his voice, damn near hypnotized me. He was pulling all my strings, pulling them taut until I was stretched by desire.

Toying with the shelf of my cockhead still battened down inside my pants, his breathy words bathed my hips and wetted the line of hair bisecting my abdomen. “I saw you five months ago. That twink was all over you.” His hands ran below to my ass, pulling me up. “Leon.”

The material covering my erection tugged into his mouth, he’d snarled, “I wanted to punch that boy in the face when he dared call you
cher
. I’ve been poundin’ my fist in time to your name all this time. I don’t want anyone else touchin’ you.”

I’d seized him by his hair, hauling him up to my face. “Get off me.”

“You’re a big guy. Make me.” Blondie smiled when I smoothed the knots of hair I’d made at the nape of his neck instead of pushing him away. “You don’t trust me.”

Arching into his hips, I’d aligned our stiff cocks. “Not one bit.”

Except he wasn’t the only one who’d wanted for months. Bet my palm was more chafed than Blondie’s, all because of a hundred filthy fantasies starring him. This was a take-what-you-could-get kind of world for gays, then make a quick getaway. There was no getting away this time and maybe I didn’t want there to be. Besides, I could always fuck Blondie with a capital F, after I fucked him, of course.

His lips had touched my ear. “You think you’re always in charge. I pursued you. I knew who and what you were the first time I saw you at the Theater. Think I didn’t notice you swaggerin’ around the Quad?” He bit the tendon linking my shoulder to my neck, causing a thrill to race down my body. “Yeah, I watched you. I followed you to the Amphitheater. I almost came in my pants when I got your voice over the D-P, that night I warned y’all about the attempt on Cutler’s life. I’ve wanted you for such a damn long time.” Moving his lips back to my ear, he rasped, “I requested you as my escort.”

“Bullshit.” I was knotted up inside, trying to maintain my bluff, but desire was getting a good stranglehold on disbelief.

“Bullshit, huh?” He’d held my thighs in a hard grip. “Think about this. I’ve had ample opportunity. I had the evidence of what you are in my mouth last night. Why haven’t I turned you in already, collected my bonus?”

“To lull me into a false sense of security before you knife me in the back.”

“So damn pigheaded. I’ve studied you, not to report you, Caspar, but because I want a relationship with you.”

The stranglehold was cutting off my oxygen, which I deemed the only way to make sense of the fact I was considering his words at all.
Studied me.
Sure as fuck I’d made a point of watching him too. As for a relationship, well shit. That kind of thinking was just pipe dreams easily blown up by pipe bombs. I should know. My personal life was even more high risk than my job. Yet here I was, with Blondie in my lap, my heart rate rocketing because of his proximity. His confessions. His sensual overload doing a number on all my well-laid suspicions.

Hitting back with the truth of our fragged situation, I said, “You realize what kind of fucked-up antifaggot society we live in, right? You understand we both work on the side that will always keep us apart?”

I’d expected him to push away, but he just stared at me, his broad palms running up and down my thighs until my muscles bucked in time with my throbbing dick. Until I said, “Studied me, have you?” Jerking my chin, I asked, “Learn anything useful?”

His full lower lip between his teeth, his look smoldered along my body, but the words that left that lush mouth made my chest bounce in laughter,
the fucker
. “Yeah. You don’t really have a goldfish.”

I peeled his hands off my lap. “I’m not gonna get caught.”

“Neither am I.” He scooted back to the driver’s seat. “You’re detrimental to my plan, you know?”

“Ditto.” I’d curled my fingers over the armrest to keep myself completely away from him as my heart got sucked into my gut. “What if I call you Major Head Fuck from now on?”

He’d gnawed on a downturned corner of his mouth before turning his face out the window. “I’d sure prefer it if you called me Nathaniel, but Blondie’s good too.”

Remembering the important shit, I’d looked dead ahead into the forest. Assignment, delivery, good riddance. Not get my jock off.

He’d interpreted my body language correctly. “How can I get to you?”

“You can’t. No one can.”
Not anymore.

“You’re gonna lie about this?” He drew me to him, a hand cupping my shoulder.

Betraying my own need, I went willingly. He’d hesitated when our lips were so close I could make out the tip of his tongue waiting inside his parted mouth. We’d leaned toward each other at the same time, joining in a furious tangle of tongues, wet lips, and widened mouths to suck it all in. When I’d strained to connect our bodies, he broke away.

I struggled to breathe, fisting my hands on the seat between us.

“You gonna lie about what we have?” His voice was hoarse.

I pushed off the seat to my side of the vehicle. “It’s only because there’s no one else.”

His face bleak with emotion, he’d assured me, “It doesn’t matter where I am, or who I’m with…
God, Caspar
. I’ve dreamed about being with you.”

The rest of the ride had been uncomfortable, culminating in him catching me sniffing fucking flowers.

Just a day in the life.

I washed the memories from my mind and the mud from my face, dipping my head underwater, cooling off. When my ears cleared, I heard him whistling again. Music was a major illegal item. Proven to incite riots, the airwaves were filled with the Company’s monotonous propaganda pipeline. The only time I heard tunes was at the Theater, heavy thumping bass with no lyrics. Mostly it was a luxury I didn’t miss, along with everything but the most basic amenities, yet listening to Blondie was strangely soothing.

Wiping my chest with my shirt, I knew it was a sound I’d yearn for when this was all over. “What’s that song?”

“My momma had this device called an MP3 filled with songs from back in the day. She hung on to it like a lifeline and hid it whenever we had Company
company
.” He winked. “She used to curse that thing out. It was so old, it was pre-Purge. It couldn’t hold a charge half the time. Once I started gettin’ good with wires, I made all sorts of peripherals for it. Man, could she dance, too. Cut a rug—that was the term she used.” He peered up at the sky with a grin parting his lips. “She had a thing for this one singer, name of Van Morrison. Song’s called ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’”

I joined him, and we passed poles through the open-sided tent’s loops, another throwback instead of the pump-up pup tents the Corps used on excursions.

“Well, your eyes are blue.”

He smiled over at me. “Didn’t think you noticed.”

Oh, I noticed and have been polarized by the first bit of blue matching your eyes that nature provided.
I glanced at that clump of flowers, glad they couldn’t tell on me. “Yeah, well, blue is blue.”

“That’s right.” In a couple steps, he was in front of me. His extra two inches in height made me knock my head back to see just how blue his irises were. “My momma used to sing it, but not about me. She knew my type of man. She’d say you were just the right amount of dark
sugah
I needed. That sleek black brush cut, those big muscles. Those dark brown eyes with little flecks of gold when you grin, that darken when you’re worried.”

I pushed through his seduction with a forced laugh. “Too bad the song’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ not guy.”

“I can improvise.” He shrugged.

I wanted to make a smartass remark about him being a momma’s boy, but I couldn’t do that. Not when I had my own demons, in quadruple form. “Where is she now, your mother?”

“She’s safe.”

“Anyone else?”

“Yeah.”

I swallowed fast and let it fly. “A lover?”

Raising his hands, he held his hair back, his gaze hitting mine. “No lover, Caspar.”

I cleared my throat of the way it tightened to think he was available. “Think we oughtta get our shit sorted for the night?”

“You askin’ me on a date?”

“Nah, I’m telling you to haul ass before we go darkout.”

His chuckle was broken up with a murmured, “Wouldn’t mind fumblin’ in the dark with you.”

We worked side by side, and I was surprised by his speed and agility. His methodical motions matched mine as we laid a boundary of dry twigs and wrangled the night’s rations inside the circle we’d booby-trapped.

While Blondie started the fire, I watched his hands. It was almost dark and I was unseen in the shadow of the trees. “Had you pegged for a suit,” I called as I stepped into the clearing.

Crouched low, he looked up. He brushed that dirty-blond hair from his face, leaving a trail of soot on his cheek. “Had you pegged for a succinct sonuvabitch. Guess I win.”

I handed him the warm furred rabbit I’d snared. Scrutinizing his slick skinning of the animal, I was closer to flirting than I’d ever dared. “A
stiff
suit.”

His hands halted. “Caspar?”

K
eep going. I like a man who knows how to handle a knife.” I could have crowed at the way his hands shook. Instead, I steadied his wrist inside my fingers, then traced his forearm over the hill of his biceps to his shoulder.

The sticky blood made the knife slip, and he let out a gritty laugh. “You’re makin’ me fuck this up.”

“I’ll leave you to it.”

“No, don’t.”

Determined, he bared meat from fur, halting when I drove my fingers into his hair. It filtered through my fingers until I tugged his head to the side, baring his neck. I licked a line to his Adam’s apple and rubbed my cheek up and down his throat. “I’m hungry, Blondie. Gonna feed me sometime tonight?”

“Ye-e-es.”

I liked his breathy exhalation more than I should have. “Go on then.” I bit his jaw, right on the hard edge, laughing when he leaped forward.
Perfect for a smack on the ass.
I hauled back and slapped, chuckling over the control I had of him. Squeezing that tight butt, I eased the sting. “Think I better leave you to it.”

As I sauntered to the tent, I heard him say, “I’m not just a Company suit. I’m a survivor.”

That makes two of us.

Unceremoniously digging through his gear, I found his secret stash. “A survivor who brings a seventy-five-year-old bottle of bourbon on a Wilderness trek?”

“A man must drink.”

Placing the heavy bottle aside, I rummaged further.

“You happen to find the cigars?”

My fingers ran over something familiar. I bent forward, exploring what I’d found.

Blondie spoke real softly. “Find somethin’ else, big man? You’re not the only one who has plans.”

The foil of condom wrappers crinkled as I whipped toward him. Through a hot blush and the fierce rush of arousal, I willed my voice to be steady. “Like what? You plan on deep-throating one of these?” I held up a cigar.

His low laughter bounced off the trees while he went back to work. After he’d cooked and I’d been cooked in my skin—watching his hands in action, his wide wrists turning, his forearms flexing—he commanded, “Take a seat.”

I grabbed a piece of ground beside him, and he arranged a plate in front of me. “Eat.”

“What the hell’s that?” I pointed at my plate, circled by a real glass, authentic silverware, and a cloth napkin. The man traveled like a pasha, used to his luxuries and gadgets.

“Rabbit. You caught it. I cooked it.”

“What’s on it?”

“Spices.”

“Spices?”

“Flavor. Stop being so goddamn ornery.” He held a chunk between his fingers, offering it to me. “Open up. It ain’t gonna kill you.”

He guided the juicy meat inside my mouth, his fingers lingering. I lapped all around his roughened fingertips, shooting a look to his lips, watching his tongue stroll out to make them slick and wet.

“Goddamn. You are a sexy man, Caspar.” He smeared the grease over my lips and licked it off before giving me another bite.

The food was delicious. A hundred times better than the fried bread and mashed-up meat I was used to.

“You gonna feed me now?”

My eyes shot from his mouth to his eyes and back again. “Don’t think so.”

He spoke with a lover’s low, slumberous voice. “C’mon, Caspar. I know you’re no monk. What you did to me last night, the way your body’s reacting to me right now. You like sucking my fingers, I think almost as much as sucking my cock. So gimme somethin’ to eat. I’m starving.”

“You’re a persuasive motherfucker.” I held a bite above his lips, keeping it just out of reach when he stretched up.

He panted, “So I’ve been told,” before he caught the piece between his teeth, taking my fingertip inside for a hot swirl of his tongue.

My breath came so hard, it felt like my chest was gonna rip out of my shirt. Once he swallowed, I followed in with my lips, brushing them back and forth over his. His mouth parted with a deep moan, and he touched the tip of his tongue to mine before pulling back so only our wet lips clung to each other, exploring.

This wasn’t the fast have-to-fuck kiss we’d shared before. The kind necessary when capture loomed in the background. It was something a hell of a lot deeper and a lot more fucking scary.

His forehead tipped against mine when our mouths separated. “Best kiss I’ve ever had.”

I could only gulp, waiting for my pounding heart to calm the fuck down. I backed up to a tree and cracked my knuckles in Liz fashion, staring up through the canopy of leaves. I used to have my head screwed on so tight there was a roadblock going in both directions. No entry. No exit. My shit had been stirred up by seeing Leon strung up. It’d gotten another good shakedown at Mrs. Cheramie’s house, creating a damn hole through which memories continued to bum-rush me.

Add our tender kiss and something else was opening. For once it wasn’t a scarred old battle wound. I worked my shoulders against the rough bark. “I can’t remember the last time I shared a meal with someone. Sitting down and making small talk.” At Blondie’s huff of laughter, I looked over. “Yeah, I know. Not a big talker, am I?”

Man, sometimes he made me feel so easy, and he could turn me on like no other, with just a look or a quirk of those sensual lips. I caught his smile across the fire and stretched out my legs, placing my hands behind my head. “Sharing food, you know?”

He nodded, stirring the fire with a twig.

“I guess the whole sit-down dinner idea went out the window with the Plague when I was a teenager, up in Epsilon.”
That was before things went bad.
“I should’ve figured something just as disastrous would come after the Purge.”

“What’d you hear about the Purge?” Blondie tossed the stick aside and leaned forward.

“Hell, probably the same as you, being a second-generation kid. There was never much in the CO-authorized history books at the institute where I went to school. Most of what we learned was a life lesson in why we had to trust that the Company had our best interests at heart.”

His smile wry, he asked, “You got the whole
The world’s resources were tapped to extinction level by your predecessors
spiel too, huh?”

I’d gotten that and more, although I didn’t know how much was the truth and how much was Company spin. We were told water had become the new oil, a shortage that leveled humanity with schools of fish dying as the shorelines shrank. Birds dropped from the sky in flocks, and crops were blighted by bio-diseases created by man and gone rogue. By 2020, billions of people were dead.

“Oh yeah. What they really meant to say was our ancestors left us with the fuck-end of the bill.” I rephrased the CO’s maxim to my liking.

“You’ve got a way with words I’m sure they didn’t teach you at the institute.” He chuckled.

The Purge led to civil and cross-country warfare among the survivors and caused famine, disease, and drought. “You ever hear this one?
The survivors needed a good
strong hand, leadership, guidance,
” I intoned. “What the Company really meant to say was they needed a good swift kick in the nuts.”

Blondie’s grin smothered, he said, “We really shouldn’t laugh about it.”

“I know. There’s not a whole hell of a lot to laugh about anymore, is there?” We both went quiet.

Blondie made his way closer. He sat across from me with his back to the fire, the orange light drawing sparkling fingers along his hair. “What about the Plague?”

I could’ve shut down, probably should have. But coulda and shoulda were little bastards that skedaddled into the underbrush along with my tendency to keep my trap shut.

The Purge was Old History, but the Plague was an epidemic I’d lived through. I raised my knees, settling a final barrier between us. “What a heartless bitch, that plague was. Know what I mean?” I asked.

“What happened, Caspar?”

I tufted my fingers against the soft moss. “I used to be a real good boy, taking to the policies the way I was supposed to ’cause structure grounded me. Guess that makes me pretty fucked up, huh?”

“Nah, I can see the two sides to you.” He scooted closer, the toes of his boots resting against mine.

I tried to inch backward, only that goddamn tree blocked my retreat. “A good boy, that was Caspar Cannon. Making stellar marks at the conformists’ institutes. Our parents were pretty damn proud of me and Erica, the perfect Territorian youths.”

“Erica?”

I rubbed the moss hard enough to expose the soil underneath. “My sister.” The words tumbled out. “I hit my teens, and right about when I was supposed to be looking for my lifelong female mate, I figured out girls didn’t cut it for me. Tits were just completely fucking surplus to requirements.”

Blondie chuckled, running his palm up my calf.

I smiled at him, shook my head a little. “Yeah. I liked hard bodies, lean hips, and big shoulders. We both know the problem with that. Tolerance wasn’t taught in any household. Homosexuals were bad people, criminals whispered about, blamed as freaks deserving every punishment they got.”

“I wish like hell you hadn’t gone through that, honey.” His hand made another foray over my leg, the heat generated from his touch gentling my anger.

“I’d been a pretty popular guy, probably an arrogant prick too. A shining example of CO values in a strong young man with a bright future in the Company’s higher reaches.

“The more I got all hotted up over men instead of women, the less my hotshot future seemed possible. Nothing I could do about that.” I met his eyes, knowing my pain showed.

Quiet, so quiet and calm, Blondie moved beside me, where he could wrestle my fingers free from clumps of moss and twine ours together. It stole my breath the way this man could reassure me with a touch, or make my body ache with his kiss.

“I ditched my friends. I didn’t want to implicate anyone because I was a dirty, wrong homo. There wasn’t much I could do about my family though. That’s brutal, being ashamed all the time. The understanding I’d never fit the square peg the Company Constitution had custom-made for a man of my talents. Worrying any little lingering look might get your family fucked.”

Another one of his tugs on my fingers held me in this place under the stars instead of letting me slip all the way back into those shitty final years in Epsilon. “Nightmares about my own Marriage Testimonial used to make me scream awake. That wedding-night performance between husband and wife—first fucking observed by a select few—including one or two representatives from the RACE Executive Committee. Before I knew what it all meant, I used to joke about it with my friends: doing the Marriage Testes in front of the Execution Committee.”

“Jesus Christ.” Blondie’s expression was as stark as I felt.

I tried to pull my hand from his. “You’d know all about it, right? The Testimonial? Just the CO keeping shit legit and aboveboard.”

He shook his head. “We had our own particular traditions, not that one though.”

“Just an extra-special bonus for us up in Epsilon, I guess.” My grin fell flat, and I still wanted my damn hand back from his. “I don’t like talking about this.”

“I know.”

“I don’t even know why I’m telling this to you, of all people.”

His lower lip made a downward curve. “I know.”

“That’s it? That’s all you got to say?” I couldn’t believe he wasn’t trying to wriggle more secrets from me.

“No, that ain’t it. I wanna know everything. I’m interested in you, not for a fast fling, not to turn you in.”

I regarded him with wariness weighing me down. “Then why?”

His arm slowly curling over my shoulders, the hush of his words made a direct hit with my heart. “I wanna take some of your pain away.”

I blew out a long breath. “My little sis, Erica, was only two years younger than me, which was perfect timing for siblings in the Territories. She was so goddamn intuitive. Well, they all knew, but she was the only one who talked about it, about how I was…different. Mom and Pop encouraged me to join the Corps since it’d be some kind of safety net. But Erica.” I laughed. “Oh, man. She was such a shit-stirrer. Always pushing me to go outside, to live with the Nomads. She was the daydreamer. I was the ‘yes’ guy, except for that one damn thing I couldn’t control.”

Go on, Cas. You can make it out there. I’ll come with you. Mom and Pop only want you to be safe, y’ know?
I could still hear her excited whispers.

“I couldn’t leave them any more than I could drag her along on some freaking soul-searching quest that would end in the hands of savages. I figured I’d do the Corps thing, or I don’t know…one day get turned in. Always the yes man, but that one time I’d told her no.

“She stood up for me, and I was supposed to be her strong, older brother, but I wasn’t strong enough to keep the Plague away.”

His hands roved down my arms, pulling my fingers from their knuckle-white clasp on my knees, joining them back with his. “Caspar…”

I pressed on, doing a lot of blinking. “Your lot called it the Gay Plague. Thing is, I don’t recall it hitting the homosexuals that hard. It was the moms and dads, the children. My sister. I was seventeen that summer.”

“I was fourteen.”

“You sure shot up the ranks fast.”

“So did you.”

I caught him in the crosshairs of my glare. “That CO spin of yours worked well, didn’t it, Blondie? Took the civilians’ minds off the fact whole families were obliterated by the gut-rot eating their intestines and pulverizing their organs, spreading with airborne toxicity. That pandemic wasn’t a sexually transmitted disease. There’s just no way. Erica was only a kid!”

My voice cracking, I took a hard tug of air. “She was a good girl, goddamn it. After Mom and Dad died, when I had to leave their bodies outside wrapped in bedsheets to be picked up by the bod squad, I went back inside. To Erica’s bedroom. I held her all night, her sweat soaking through my clothes. I fucking prayed, man. I would do anything, I’d fake being straight. Just let my sis live. Did they?
Did you?
”

Blondie didn’t flinch, and he wasn’t holding back the tears either.

I wiped my nose on my sleeve and pinched my wet eyes shut. “That night, she was unconscious but still crying. Her body seizing in pain, her face screwed up, so small. The kicker was when blood started running from her ears. Where was the Company then? Where was the FUCKING CURE?”