In His Command

by Rie Warren

  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?”

  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, ni
pping 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.