In His Command (9 page)

His pupils dilated, he flushed.

“Now,” I demanded.

I took zero time following him as he bent over, as I’d ordered.
I could get used to this.

Just once, I swiped my hands down his back, raising goose bumps.

Braced on his arms, all his muscle showed: his big biceps, his flexed forearms, the fan of sinew spreading from his spine. “Very nice, lover.”

He sucked in a breath and arched his back.

“Even better.” I stepped into the lee of his legs until my cock pointed skyward against his ass. “Not gonna fuck you yet, but here’s an idea about what it’ll be like when I do.”

I nipped the nape of his neck and parted his ass cheeks. When I slowly let them go, his rear hugged my dick. I was so swollen, a glaze of release made his cushioned home slick for my taking. From the balls of my feet to my thighs, I rammed between his tight, clenched ass over and over again. “But you’re gonna be good and wait, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.
Yes!
”

Fuck, he was hard again. The pump of his hips backward and forward timed with mine; his hand was at work down in front. Our sacs slapped loudly while my dick sawed up and down, and my head was so sensitive, it was gushing more come every time I crested between the hot domes of his ass, never penetrating.

“Good. Now I’m gonna come all over this ass.” I grasped his hips, hauling him with me until I balanced both of us on my thighs, gritting out,
“Aw fuck!”
I exploded in a pounding rhythm, sandwiched against his ass.

Each furious lash of come made me groan and made Blondie jerk. Placing my palm on his back as his body seized in another climax, I lowered his chest to the truck, coating him in another white whip.

Then I covered him with my body, the hot wetness clinging between us, running down his ass to my cock. His skin was warm from my slaps, his back sticky from me.

My mark was all over him.

I loved that.

It took a good few minutes to come around from seeing stars to seeing the actual stars, bright in the black sky above us. It sounded so quiet after our shouts and gasps and yells. Quiet, like a big blanket had fallen over us.

We heaped together and I groaned, “I’m fucking wiped.”

“
Mmm
, me too, big man. You just…” He rubbed his face over my hair, whispering, “That was amazin’.”

All my damn muscles relaxed from the day’s rage against myself, and I smiled. “Yep.” Steadying myself, I hefted Blondie into my arms, carrying him toward the tent.

“The hell, Caspar?”

“Figured it’s the considerate thing to do, since you let me come all over your backside. And I’m just letting you recover so you’ve got enough energy to bring me some food later.”

That was partly true. The man built up an appetite in me for something bigger than sex or food. It made me want to take care of him, too.

For a few more days, it was all birds and flowers and fucking, but not exactly.

Fucking with my mental gear.
Most definitely
.

We’d completed the southern route and now headed northeast into a place that used to be called Tennessee. Distant mountains marched one behind the other in a bleary blue terrain.
Mountains
, just in time for hoofing it. The upcoming weeks of physical exertion better take me out of my head space, because it was getting crammed in there.

The day we ran out of gas was the day I got my ass handed to me. We were reconfiguring our supplies for the on-foot portion of our trek when Liz’s com came in.

Throwing down the duffels, I punched the buttons on my D-P. “Liz? Liz!”

She came across in full static. “Commander, do you copy?”

“Status, Lieutenant?”

“Can’t…hear. Rebellion has gone…Revolution level.”

I cupped the D-P to my ear, reeling when the crack of gunfire sizzled across our transmission. “Fuck! Liz?”

She suddenly came over clear-voiced. “Sir. The attack on the water supply in Sector Five was replicated internationally in all sixteen Territories. It was internally synchronized by digital remote.”

I narrowed my eyes at Blondie, the head of technological acquisitions. This intel wasn’t simply Nomad plus rebel work.
Right.

“Dire all-Territories-wide situation taking place, Commander. Gotta embrace the suck.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, her having to make the best of a shitty situation. “What are your orders?”

“Continue to Beta with evacuees, but they’re in trouble too, sir.”

“Keep the civilians safe.” I hoped Leon and his mother were with them. “Defy the chain of command if you have to.”

An electronic squeal shorted her words. “Contaminant…chemical released…a hoax.”

“What?” I shoved a finger into my ear, deafening the buzz of daytime’s loud insects.

“Forty-eight hours after…” Shouts crackled across the squawk box. “Water clean. Enough time for CO control to slip.
SHIT!
”

Holy
shit. “Lieutenant,
alpha23bravo06SITREP.
”

“That was a close one. Almost got me by a cunt-hair.”

I couldn’t even manage a chuckle, seeing her curled in a ball, examining the crosshairs of her scope, not her crotch.

“Sabotage. A flash point. Some fucker out there’s a real smartass. Manipulating the control of essentials to create chaos.”

A screaming whistle made me drop the D-P. When I picked it back up, she was speaking in chopped-up sentences again. “Need to…tell…my dad…the Nomads—”

Hunkering on my heels, I pressed my head to the hot metal door of the Cruiser. “Liz, you get hit?”

There was no smart-mouthed retort. Static followed the silence.

I lost her. I bent over and breathed heavy. In, out. In and out. I stowed my D-P in my pocket, straightened up, and went back to work stripping the Land Cruiser.

When I raised the hood, disconnecting wires and leads, planning on putting a bullet in the head gasket, Blondie lifted my finger from the trigger. “You don’t want to do that.”

“I need to shoot something. So, the Cruiser or you?”

He turned his back, a tall blank emblem as I recocked and fired.

All afternoon, we wound through foothills picking our way though untrammeled brush and brambles, and I thought about Liz.

After we set up camp in a forest glen, Blondie went off on his own, equipped with his portable sat system, the sophisticated Company version of the D-P.
Confusing SOB.
It was probably a good thing he left me alone because I was a grouchy motherfucker and I still wanted target practice on something or someone.

I grabbed the ax from the loop on my backpack, laid it across my shoulder, and tromped into the woods in the opposite direction. Bastard might have made it his life’s work to spy on me, but I had better things to do, like taking something down, building up a sweat, and backing away from the precipice I’d been teetering over since Liz’s coms cut out.

I picked the biggest tree I could find and gave a few practice swings. Pressing the blade into the bark, I tested my aim, swung back and…stopped. I placed my forehead against the papery white bark before backing off. I was still gonna chop some damn wood, just not that particular tree; thing was too noble. With its fragrant bark curling back, the pink undersides were too close to the color of Blondie’s goddamn lips.

Fucking ridiculous, sparing a tree because it reminds me of him.

I toed up to a maple and sliced into it before I could notice the way the leaves had turned from deep green to the same red as the head of Blondie’s…
Yeah. Not thinking about his cock, either.

Ripping off my sweat-soaked shirt, I hacked over and over again. Wood chips a maelstrom of grenades raining over me, I watched the trunk weave left with every huge blow.

Yelling, “Timber!” just because my pop had told me about that tradition once, I gave a satisfied laugh when the behemoth wavered to the left, suspended for a few seconds at an impossible angle, then crashed to the forest floor with ground-shaking vibrations.

For the next hour, I chopped wood until I had to wipe the perspiration from my eyes and use my shirt to dry my stomach. The scent of sweet sap filled the air, instead of me being the sap for a change. I humped the loads of wood camp side and was busy stacking it all neat and tidy, orderly, the way I liked shit, when Major Head Fuck ambled into the clearing, hitting me with another slug of mistrust. He’d been gone for more than two hours, no doubt reporting to the CO, quite possibly about my sexual deviancy.

Exhaling with finality, I slammed the ax head into my chopping block one last time, raising my arm to wipe my forehead. He leaned down, inspecting my afternoon’s work; then he swerved over to gather a bead of sweat from my shoulder with his tongue.

My nostrils flared, my fingers curled, and I fought to hold my neck steady rather than tilt it sideways, offering my throat for his kisses.

He tapped the teasing curve of his bottom lip and arched an eyebrow. “If you needed a workout, you could’ve waited for me.”

“Fuck you,” I growled.

His other eyebrow shot up in surprise. “That’s what I meant.”

That response raised my temperature another notch. “Where the hell were you?”

“Had some business to take care of.” His loose grin aimed at my groin tightened my nut when he said, “See you do too.”

No brainer.
Soon as I saw Blondie, I busted a boner no matter the circumstances.

“You get a report on the rebellion?” I ignored the blatant situation in my pants.

One eyebrow remained high in a silent question, which went something like,
What’s your fuckin’ problem this time?
“Sure, what I’m entitled to. Goes along the lines of what your lieutenant told you.” He shrugged. “The rebels are in league with Nomads, and they’ve amassed international unity in high proportions. And, of course, the upgrade to Revolution.”

“Why don’t you look worried?”

“Why do you look like you wanna shoot me?”

“Probably the same reason as always. I don’t fucking trust you, Company Man,” I sneered. “Every time you traipse off into the trees to hit your knees with InterNations cock shoved down your throat, I sit here and think about all the traitorous tidbits you’re describing to your CEO.”

The cunt-ass Cutler in question still held a black ball against me because he’d been dumb enough to get caught with his pants down while his assailant slipped past my troops.

His tone turned brittle. “How about we fight it out and get it over with.” Dropping his shirt, he raised his fists.

“Give you more ammo by assaulting a Company executive? Don’t think so.” I couldn’t look at him when I quietly admitted, “Besides, I’ve gone down heartbreak road before, and I don’t plan on a return trip. So you do what you gotta do. Hit me; turn me in. It doesn’t matter. I’m done.”

He came at me, his hands raised, only to take my face between them. At my reactionary flinch, he inched away, whispering, “Damn it, man. You still think I’m gonna work you over?”

“Second nature.”

Dejection sank his shoulder. “Will you ever believe me?”

“Your kind isn’t in good standing. Once you’re Company, you’re a lifer. Just like your children will be after you, and on and on. You were born to it.”

My harsh words had the desired effect. He retreated a couple steps, saying, “You’re a goddamn hypocrite, you know that?”

Blondie was right, and it was better that he believed I was an asshole rather than good relationship material, so I swallowed down the truth of his words without even trying to dispute them. After a few moments of nodding, he lifted eyes that were resolved. “It was your birthday that night at the Amphitheater.”

There was no one to remember it anymore except Liz, not since the Plague had taken my family. “That’s right. You’ve seen my file.”

“What did you wish for that night?” Blondie asked.

“Huh?”

“You haven’t heard of it?”

“Birthday wishes?” I’d heard of the odd cake, a lighthearted spanking to toll every year. Those were nice dreams but nothing like what I’d experienced. And I had no recollection of this wishes bullshit.

“In the old days, they used to blow out candles on their cake. One for every year. Makin’ a silent wish, and if all the candles went out, it was said their wish would be granted. You don’t know this?”

I lined up the shelves of wood. “Nah. We had a real special tradition in Epsilon; maybe you haven’t heard of this one. We presented ourselves to the Tribunal for a nice committee viewing, just to see how we were coming along year after year. Questions were asked and answers recorded to measure intellectual aptitude; physical trials were performed so our future work roles within the Territory could be identified and redefined. In later years, we got to answer a battery of questions based on sexual orientation.”

Blondie’s face flushed with anger. “That doesn’t happen in Alpha.”

“Seems Epsilon was full of fun surprises. Anyway, I had a cake once. It was an experience I don’t want to repeat.” I smiled at the memory. “Sis baked it. Let me put it this way: I’m a better cook than she is. Than she
was.
”

He stroked the back of my hand. “If you’d had a wish that night, what would it have been?”

I turned my palm over, joining our fingers. I went balls to the walls. “You. I would’ve wished for you.”

“Same thing I wanted.”

“Blondie—”

His fingertips dusted across my mouth. My breath stuttered when he said, “I can give you me.”

I started to step away, but he encircled my hips. “I know you can’t trust me, Caspar.”

That statement was so loaded, it made my head spin as much as his slow caress over my abdomen.
Can’t
, because he truly was untrustworthy?
Can’t
, because he finally understood my hard limits? Or why not both reasons, for bonus points? I saw one truth through it all when I delved into his eyes. He was sad that I would never trust him.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “And I’ll take what I can get. But understand this, big man. I want more. I want all of you.”

Before I could retreat, he tilted his head and let loose with that sensual, breathy drawl. “Lemme love you tonight.”