In His Command (8 page)

I could barely make the words come out. “Erica died at exactly 17:39 on August sixth, 2059. I will never forget that, because for the last two hours of her life I held her through the seizures, watching the minutes on the D-P count up with every glug of her lungs, wishing her breaths would speed up in time with the clock instead of slowing down.

“I couldn’t put her on the doorstep to be carted away. I washed her up, and…I sang to her. I don’t know what it was, some tuneless crap probably. I put her in her favorite outfit, not that there was much to choose from. I kissed her, right below the little peak of hair she’d always complained about, where I used to flick her forehead when she pissed me off, and her hair was shiny, brushed the way she liked.”

My fists punched the ground. My head hanging, I rasped, “I tore apart the shed, used the planks to make a coffin. Probably wasn’t pretty. I put a locket around her neck that held a tiny picture of all of us, and I buried her.

“I buried my little sister.”

Using my shirt to wipe my face, I sat back, facing the sky again. At least the stars were visible out here. Erica had been right. I did like the Wilderness. It was better than the stomach full of hurt and my heart overflowing with grief. At least there was a sky and trees and flowers.

“Then I joined the Corps. End of story.”

“Why do I get the feelin’ there’s more to it than that?” He huddled next to me, running one firm hand up and down my arm.

“Well, that’s all you’re getting from me.” I pretended to yawn and stretched out, knocking his hand away in the process. “Never knew how tired spilling my guts’d make me.”

“You get used to it.”

“I’ll make a note not to.” I unrolled a blanket and lay down, flat on my back.

He took the hint and retreated to the tent, where he tacked down the sides. “Why don’t you come in here?”

“Used to roughing it.”

“Just because you’re used to it doesn’t mean you have to.”

“Yeah, it does.” Because my lack of creature comforts was my own personal torture device, like the horsehair shirts I’d read about once. My reminder I was a hypocrite, doing the Company’s dirty work when every part of me was disgusted by them.

Still, my fucking motormouth decided it wasn’t time to turn in. “Erica always thought there was something better. I couldn’t afford to think that way.”

Stepping around the hot coals of the fire, Blondie stood over me with his hands on his hips. “Maybe you can.”

I rolled onto my side, lifting my head to meet his gaze. “You suggesting you’re that something?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggestin’.” He was defiant. There was no smile to relieve the seriousness on his face. His dimples had been MIA all night long, and I wondered if I’d ever see them again. “I’ve been beaten by the same stick, you know? Guess I’m just an idealist.”

He turned back to the tent with a shrug, leaving me with a few words that were nothing near the good night I wanted to hear. “But I understand where you’re comin’ from.”

Where I was coming from wasn’t a place I wanted to revisit. This thing unfolding inside me was taking up a lot of space. It felt like hope, hope I hadn’t tasted in a long time, and I wasn’t willing to give that up yet. Leaping to my feet, I followed him into the tent. His shirt was halfway over his head, his back to me.

Perfect.

I ran one knuckle down his spine, watching chills rise and collide along his sides. His motions halted with his head still stuck inside the shirt.

I peeled it all the way off, his jaw captured in my hand while I brushed his ear with my lips. “I’m looking for something better tonight.”

Shudders coursed from his shoulders to those lean hips I was growing to love. I spun him around and yanked his pants lower until a peek of pubes and the cliffs of muscle showed.

With my forearms grasped in his hands, he drove his tongue along my collarbone. “That’s right, big man. Take what you need.”

Shoving him on top of a sumptuous bed of blankets he’d arranged inside the tent, I towered over him. “You sure you know what you’re saying?”

His wink set off the crinkly corners of his eyes. “Sure as I am of anything.”

I toed off my boots, staring at his mouthwatering torso, the sloping pads of his pecs. “That’s not real reassuring.”

“Fuck reassuring. Take those pants off and get down here, honey.” He grinned.

Mmm. Hello, dimples. I’ve been waiting for you.

I knew when I broke the rules people got hurt. Well, there was no one left to hurt out here but me…and him. What the hell else did I have to live for? Maybe the Corps was a bust and this mission was a trap. Maybe I’d never been allowed to have what I wanted. That was gonna change now.

Then he arched in such a sinuous way that my mind was totally made up. My fatigues quickly shed, I kicked his legs wide. I tore through the button and zipper of his pants, bringing his cock into my hand.
Fuck, he was gorgeous
. His penis was a thick solid length drizzled in precome. His body shifted and bucked in time with my caresses as I stroked him in and out of my fist.

I felt the beat of his dick under my lips when I sent slow wet kisses up and down his shaft, nibbling the thick veins, lapping at the soft triangle of skin under the head until his thighs jerked beneath my hands. His cock batted my abdomen when I stalked higher, biting and bruising his nipples with hard pinches. And true to form, Blondie was a talker.

“Fuck, yes,” he hissed. Hiking up his hips, he hit his cock to mine, letting out a dirty laugh when I moaned. “Like that, big man? Like to feel my cock sliding against yours?”

I mashed my mouth to his, planting my hands beside his head as I rose. I brushed his hair aside and sampled his earlobe. “You’re damned right I like it. What about this?”

I slid our throbbing weights together, propelling him up while I fucked down until we made a magnificent rhythm of balls slapping, cockheads tapping, hands kneading. His ass in my hands, I sat back on my heels, our shafts sliding and grinding together.

“Look at that,” he gasped, lunging his hips.

I slapped my hand down on his abs, controlling him. “You wanna come?”

“Yes!”

Our cocks crushed between our stomachs, I let go to the hungry rush ricocheting inside me. I spread his thighs so I could get right between them, nipping his lips, sucking his tongue into my mouth.

Blondie lent a slick hand to my balls. “I’m gonna suck you so good down here; have these plums inside my mouth until you come right down my throat.”

Thrown into ecstasy, I yelled, “
Ahhh
, yes, baby!” Lightning raced down my spine and up through the tip of my cock, and I jetted come up his chest, jerking like a puppet on the strained strings of my orgasm.

Choking on groans I couldn’t contain, I tore my fist up and down his dick, watching his pulse kick, his blood race, his face cave in as his muscles screamed for release.

Knocking his knees farther apart, I brought a fingertip damp with my seed to his lips. “Taste this while I drink you.”

I swooped over his cock, taking it down until all his long dense arousal was beating against the back of my throat and his sacs rested under my chin. Then I lashed low upon his delicious testicles with my tongue. His cry billowed out the same as his come did, unending satisfaction rending the night, rippling in a warm gush down my throat.

I gathered him in my arms. A job-well-done grin spilling from my lips, I nuzzled the shaved side of his hair. “Next time, you’re gonna come same time I do.”

His stomach jumped under my hand. “That an order, Commander?”

“Get used to it, Blondie.”

The hell is that earsplitting noise?

Completely awake in .5 seconds, I cocked my Glock, confused by the sounds of shrieking all around me. Looking left, out the open sides of the tent, I saw them. Swarms of screeching low-fliers. Aiming, I was ready to take the closest one out when I shook from my disorientation.
Birds.
Dozens of birds. More than I’d ever seen congregated in one place. Not swarms, but flocks. Brightly colored, red, sky blue, glistening brown sleek bodies, acrobats of the air, swooping on spread wings, singing to one another.

Wild and natural, birds didn’t stray into the barren compounds of the Territories, not in this number, not enough to wake me up with their trilling song. For that matter, I never needed a wake-up call. I was used to doze-time, not deep sleep. I’d slept right through daybreak. Lowering my sidearm, I lay down, stretching from the tips of my fingers to the soles of my feet.
Huh.
I felt relaxed, replete.

Fuck it. After last night with Blondie, I was smug as hell.

Blondie
. Obviously my inner guard dog was making big old puppy eyes at the man, trusting him enough to let my back down. Make that surprise number whatever, but who was counting anymore?

I didn’t see him when I rolled over. Good thing, considering I’d almost gone ballistic on a pack of vociferous, oh-so-scary feathered friends. What I came face-to-face with was flowers, of all the goddamn things. A bundle of those blue ones from down by the creek were right next to me, where Blondie had slept in my arms.

A token from Mother Nature I’d been starved of in Alpha.

“Mornin’.”

His husky whisper punched me up straight, the delicate blooms all but strangled in my big fist. His hair was wet and loose, his eyes so frigging soft. In his hands he carried a couple plates of food. Shit that smelled heavenly.

My voice was rusty from disuse when I returned, “Morning.”

Nodding at my hand, he smiled. “They’re called forget-me-nots.”

Of-fucking-course they are
.

F
igured it wasn’t bullets that got me into trouble. No, it was those forget-me-nots. When Blondie wasn’t looking, I’d flattened them between the soles of my spare boots after carefully wrapping them in one of his fancy napkins.

Jesus
.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that damn dog I didn’t own, and how if I did, I wouldn’t have spewed all that truth about my mom and pop and Erica. Then again, I wouldn’t have woken with Blondie’s pillow held to my chest and the singsong of birds—cardinals, he called the scarlet-feathered ones—instead of the usual fugue of my nightmares.

I was supposed to regret having laid all my pain out in the open for Blondie to witness, but I didn’t. It’d been a long time since I’d spoken about my sister and then only with Liz because the woman knew how to keep a secret. It was those rare moments that had cemented our friendship, along with our daily target practice sessions.

We’d sat side by side on the cross-country route from Epsilon to Alpha, when I’d started out at the bottom of the Corps food chain, sharing a hard bench under a canvas awning. We’d both ignored the jokes of the other recruits and the jostles of the road.

One day we planted asses outside on a pit stop, raking the stench of body odor from our noses and stretching the cramps of enclosure from our muscles, when she said, “Penned up again, huh?”

Chewing on a piece of grass, I’d looked at her short cap of hair and shrewd eyes. “Yup.”

“You don’t say much.”

“Neither do you.”

She held her fist up for a bump. I hit it hard, waiting for her to wince. She blew across her knuckles. “Don’t hold back or anything.”

“Not a problem.”

The clouds wandering across a limitless sky had put me back on the shore of the northern ocean with my sis when Liz mentioned, “Never thought this was for me, but my dad got offed by Nomads and my mom went suicide right after. I ended up an instant orphan. The Corps gotta be some kind of family, right?”

I’d repeated the Company credo by heart.
“Regeneration, Veneration, Salvation.”

“You believe that?”

“What’s not to like about a perfectly tight slogo?” I grinned.

She’d looked at a group of Corpsmen with their jocks out, seeing who could hit a seed head with piss, but she was paying real close attention to me. “What’s your story?”

“Same as you. Nothing else for me. No other redemption in this world.”

Liz was my junior, tight in her aim, ready for a fight, relentless when needed and not just a hard-core grunt. When I gave the bad news to a civilian family, she did the cleanup. I’d seen her comfort everyone from rebels to lifers in the Corps.

She’d consoled me too. Not in a
let’s-exchange-spit
way and not in a girly
gotta-have-you
way either. The best thing about that woman was her heart, and she didn’t show that to anyone. Liz kept her feelings tucked away, but even out of sight they ran deep. It came out in actions, not emotions.

The time she gave me robo-fish was the first time I stepped into her apartment, following a trail of feminine perfume through stark hallways as bleak as my place until I reached her bedroom. Brightly colored with worldly comforts, some of which were smuggled items, her room was a hidden haven full of pillows and lit candles, artwork hanging on every wall. She’d backed me out, shutting the door behind us. “Pretend you never saw that.”

That was our motto, right?

Three days after the forget-me-not fiasco, driving farther into the Wilderness, I still hadn’t received any coms from Liz.

Blondie must’ve been inside my head, a space already crammed with too many people. “You’re worried.”

I composed my face, becoming a blank image. “Better?”

“No.” Touching the corner of my mouth, he drawled, “What are ya’ thinkin’ about?”

I placed his hand back where it belonged, on his side of the Cruiser. “How about all those people we left to rot back in Alpha, for starters?”

“I wouldn’t worry about them.” He kept his eyes on the unfriendly woods we slowly drove through, tree limbs and leaves slapping the windshield.

“The fuck’s that mean? They have no water!” I hit the brakes and turned to him. “You don’t give a shit about the casualties of this war, do you?”

Dragging his eyes back to me, he snapped his teeth together, the muscle in his jaw bulging. “You think I’m nothin’ but a monster anyway.”

“Moot fucking point.” My finger stabbed his chest with every word. Damn right I did. Part of me did. Sometimes. But, Christ, I was the same as him, working to keep a repressive regime in power. Even out here, I was proving myself to be a grade-A hypocrite and a dickhead to boot.

I pushed the driver’s seat back another hitch, glaring ahead.

“Fine. Believe what you gotta. But don’t think you can keep getting away with playin’ me two ways. You want me; you hate me. And I’m the one head fuckin’ you?” His arms crossed over his chest presented me with a stalemate.

He was turning me inside out. A roiling knot invaded my gut. “Liz. She’s the one I’m worrying about most.”

He braved a tentative touch to the back of my hand. “Your second?”

“She’s not just my second, and I’m not talking about her.”

A flicker of hurt dimmed his eyes and pressed his mouth closed. He snatched his hand back.

“What? No snappy comeback?”

His answer was low. “Not this time, Commander.”

Fuck. I hate this. This…this…feeling bullshit.
At the start of the journey, I’d had no reason to apologize to him. There’d been nothing between us, except that very first top-mark blow job after months of wanting. Now there were names, nicknames, hell, sometimes there were even endearments when we were bedding down for the night. This shit scared me.

I drove; he sat.

I sulked; he moved next to me until our forearms rubbed. I clasped his hand in mine, making sure to slide my fingers all the way between his, rubbing the hill of his palm just the way he liked it.

I relaxed into the ride the very moment he started to whistle, tapping his heavy signet ring in time on the armrest.

During the day, I tried to maintain my distance as the kilometers from Alpha grew. The bogs became bayous. Through low-lying ground, the jumble of tree roots, the sharp smell of soil and slow-moving water, we pushed farther into no-man’s-land.

Nomads’ land, to be very fucking precise
.

When the way became impenetrable, Blondie would jump out to cut through the clog of prickles and brambles, slashing at interlocking tree limbs that looked like they’d been hugging one another for a century or more. He always found the route, always on the other side of some wild scree.

The first time he’d ambled to the back and pulled out his badass machete, I almost jumped him on the hood of the truck. It was one hell of a weapon, wielded by one hell of a man.

I’d waited until we set up camp that night to pounce on him.

My latest battle had nothing to do with the Company, the rebels, or any other faction. It was out-and-out warfare between my head and my heart. Keeping it cool during daylight, versus nighttime, when I unleashed my passion for him.

So far our nighttime escapades outranked everything else. Sundown found us scrambling, desperately tearing at clothes, gasping, grunting, lunging, coming. Committing every single Company sexual crime except outright fucking, because I was saving myself for marriage apparently. Though, knowing he’d lusted after me for months made it damn near impossible to shut down the sheer intensity of desire I felt for him. Add in our solo vacation from rules, I was determined to make full use of our downtime.

Turned out the Wilderness was a lot more hostile than me.

Blondie stood on a shallow bank on the fifth night. In the dim lighting, I saw he’d tossed off his boots and socks, working his toes into the cool mud. His shirt was sent the same way as his footwear, his fatigues slung low so his skintight white briefs caught on the rounds of his ass. Shoulders curling inward, his arms worked, and he sighed.

He’d pushed his pants below his cock. He was getting himself off.

Fuck.

I left the fireside, stalking beside him. He was bathed by the orange glow of the moon, his erection strapped to his abdomen, the veins a highway to the darker head.

Releasing his bottom lip from his teeth, he glanced at me with half-mast eyes. “No baths tonight.”

“I’ll clean you up.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely.” My voice lowered, my cock was turgid. I needed to get my hands and mouth on him pronto. Starting with firm laps all down his torso, I kissed his nipples until they puckered tight and hot for a nibble of my teeth.

“Sweet hell, yes, honey,” he whispered.

My fingers took over the torture of flicking and twisting the satiny nubs until his hips rolled and his head kicked back. I tickled his sinewy sides with my tongue, then wet the soft curls that sliced through his rippling abs, following to the money spot where his glorious cock grew from a base of dark blond hair. I bit near the top of his dick, right on the spot he was widest. If he was ever inside me,
Jesus
, he’d stretch me more than any man ever had.

“
Ahh
, fuck yeah. Your mouth is so hot. Suck me. Suck me hard.” His head was thrown back, but his eyes focused on me.

My palm slid up the velvety weight and all his veins throbbed. Trapping him against his stomach, I soothed,
“Shhh,”
before taking one ball into my mouth.

“Oh yeah!” Thighs trembling under my hand, he chanted, “Yeah, baby, yeah. That’s better…That’s…”

He lost his voice when I moved my head further between his legs, my short hair rubbing the root of his cock. I lapped and licked and suckled his other sac until they were both shiny pieces of fruit I rolled inside my fingers. When I let his cock go, it stood in a broad arch, distended, glistening, moving in a tempting dance.

Blondie’s hands found my face, pulling me away. Looking down over his rugged body, his breath chugging, he said all breathless and sexy. “I need to be in your mouth.”

“Not yet.” I slapped his ass with a smart blow, smiling when he hissed and a droplet of precome drizzled from the tiny lips of his dick’s slit.

Now that, I was having.
I scooped it onto the tip of my tongue, roughly turned him around, and went to work on all those bundles of muscles of his back. He flexed and groaned and swayed into my fingers, my mouth, crying out when I hit the sensitive joints of his spine. My forefinger trailed the line of sweat trickling down to his ass. Those goddamn beautiful globes fit into my hands, and sure enough the twin dimples at the base of his back were just begging for my tongue. Diving in to lap and lick, I gripped his crescent-shaped buttocks hard.

He reared away on a moan and thrust back with a guttural, “
Oooh
, your hands, man.”

I swatted him again, and he shivered. I made wet paths all over his rear until I reached the sweet divide. His ass was so fucking tight, I had to squeeze my tongue into that steamy clasp, and that was exactly where I wanted my cock the next time I came.

“
Mmm
.” I hummed when the tip of my tongue traced the warm line that led to his gorgeous pink bud. I didn’t use my hands to spread him, enjoying the way his ass clutched my tongue, grinning when he swiveled his hips to get me deeper.

His hands fell to his cock. I captured his wrists and cuffed them behind his back. With one, two, and three stabs against his starred flesh—reveling in the taste of man and musk, sweet and dark—I ordered, “You. Don’t. Touch.”

His fingers curled, his hips wiggled, and he gasped when my stiffened tongue dove inside. “Then you better, ’cause I need to come, Caspar.”

Removing my face from the sexy heaven of his ass, I swiveled him around. “Then you better ask me politely.”

He stole his dick across my cheek, down my chin, up my throat. I strained backward. His hands quivered before he yanked me to his balls, but I held off, lashing a quick spiral of my tongue to the throbbing length. For damn sure I wasn’t gonna suck anything until he said please in that low southern drawl.

“I could just fuck my hand.”

I leaned back. “Go for it.”

His fist around his dick, he pleaded in a husky tone, “Fuck. Please, Caspar, you’re killin’ me.”

My hand wrapped around his, I took his long, leaking shaft into my mouth, tonguing under his deep red head, closing my lips around him, pushing my throat down until he pulsed all the way inside.

He shouted to the stars, widening his stance. I slurped back, leaving a wash of saliva all down his cock, laughing when he grunted, “More.”

I opened my mouth, watching his face collapse in pained arousal when he pushed himself inside. “When are you gonna fuck me, big man?”

My face was turned to the side, the heat of his cockhead stretching my cheek in a manly caress. Fingers tenderizing his ass, slipping down and in, I let go with a rough pinch. “You’re not ready for me.”

“The hell I ain’t.” Pushing onto my fingertip until it squeezed inside him, he pitched forward, catching himself on my shoulders.

My finger plunged inside that clenching passage, my throat impaled by him. It took only one more deep suck before he blasted inside my mouth. His fingers convulsed in my hair as his ejaculate washed down my throat.

With a final press, his muscles released, and his mouth opened on a shout. “Yes, Caspar! Swallow it.”

I rose to my feet and kissed his plump lips, stroking my tongue inside, thrusting my hips when he bit the tip and soothed it gently. I burned my mouth against the whiskers on his chin, kissed his dimples, and put my cheek to the soft razor-shorn side of his hair, holding the longer strands in my hand.

I admitted against his ear, “I’m not ready to fuck you.”

My shirt shredded in his fists, he shoved my pants aside, running the pads of his fingertips from my scalp to my ass and back up again.

He turned his head and took my lips. “What do you need, honey?”

Slamming my eyes shut over his endearment, I croaked, “Go to the truck and bend over for me.”