by Rie Warren
His singing was as vibrant, clear, and strong as the man himself. I snagged a bystander. “What’re they singing?”
“I don’t reckon I’ve ever heard this’un before, but Hills might know if you catch up with him.”
We put out some papaya to see the best ones fly
Like anything that matters, unbidden you came by
And danced upon my landscape. I hope you don’t blame me
For breathing in your goodness and leaving nothing free
It’s like a war here and there are minefields everywhere
And there are no war heroes, only senseless fear
And we’re the cowards, doing what we can to survive
And there are no war crimes
’Cause here no one, no one, no one, no one’s fine.
I hope you don’t blame me
For breathing in your goodness and leaving nothing free.
Beautiful and seductive, the words hit so close to home. Their song ended slowly, softly, his sultry eyes mesmerizing mine.
In the cheering crowd, all I saw was a bunch of men and women starting forward to congratulate my man—or ask to suck his cock. One guy in particular was jerking up his pants and making way to center stage. Not gonna happen in this lifetime.
The compulsion to get to him first was instinctual. Going rogue on everything I’d ever ascribed to before, I plowed forward, lifted Blondie’s guitar from his lap, looped my arms around his hips, and hauled him to his feet. I shut everything down but his words still singing inside me and the feel of him in my arms.
Swaying with Eden’s new melody, he drew me closer, hands whispering to my face. “Thought you didn’t dance.”
“Only with you.” We didn’t glide so much as grind, and that was fine with me. “Besides, I don’t take well to competition.”
“That so?”
The bend of his neck was an open call to suck. And suck I did until he crushed his cock against mine.
I took a handful of hair and made love to his luscious mouth. “You remember this: You’re mine.”
“Fuck, Caspar.”
“That’s right, we’re gonna.” No Liz, no Erica, no family. No robo-fish or damn dog and not even my Harley. But here, now, with Blondie—Nathaniel—I could have him. The sweet rush of realization made me deep voiced. “Let me take you to bed, lover.”
We couldn’t reach the Love Hovel fast enough for my liking. But once inside, everything slowed. I wanted to do this right. I wanted this to mean more than a one-night stand. I wanted to fuck him beautifully.
The caravan hit me with sensory overload, the sizzling kind when Blondie opened his shirt and unbuttoned his jeans. And that bed? The best sort of sexual torture was gonna happen on it tonight.
I lit a match and the candles illuminated our caravan, no longer claustrophobic but a cozy lovers’ den. The walls and ceiling were covered in a hedonistic array of wavering images, our bodies in silhouette. All the textures were sensuous beneath my fingers, none more so than his shirt dragged from his shoulders beneath my hands. I left him shackled in his shirtsleeves and walked around the room, lighting the last tapers.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a bed; let’s not waste it. I want to be with you.”
His breathing sped. “In the Biblical sense?”
“Depends on whose translation, probably not the CO version.” The sardonic twist of my lips gave way to a lusty smile. “I wanna be with you in the way a man is with a man.”
With his back to my chest, I divested him of his jeans and drew his shirt all the way off. “Lie down for me?”
While I undressed, he stumbled to the bed, all his grace forgotten. His tone gravelly, he said, “Jesus, Caspar, I never thought—”
“Sshh. I never thought you’d make me feel like this.” I hunted along his body until I was on top of him.
His head racked from side to side as I lowered my chest to his, my abdomen covering his stomach, my shaft curving against his. “Caspar?” My name came out in a wrenched whisper.
His hands held within mine, I scooped away the two tears from the corners of his eyes with my lips. “You’re mine, Nathaniel.” I hadn’t realized how important it was to him for me to say it, just his name, not a nickname or an endearment. To take possession of him and claim him as mine.
I took possession of him again with my mouth on his for long sensuous minutes before gliding my lips and tongue down the center of his body. My fingers drawing along his chest to his nipples, I sucked the beautiful emblem of his cock inside my mouth.
His heels slammed onto the bed as he bent forward to watch me. “I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you.”
“Me too.” I touched the tight rope of skin between his sacs and his ass, drumming it. “Wanted this so much. Need to be part of you, inside you.”
Painted in a sensual snarl, I lowered my face to the wiry gold bloom framing his cock. I said his given name again as I lapped the base of his shaft because when I called him Nathaniel instead of the usual Blondie, his thighs shook and he groaned louder.
At his breathy moans, I spread his legs and nipped back up to his stomach, ignoring the heathen’s song of his erection dancing in front of my face. My fingers slick with lube, I kneeled in the apex of his legs, slicking his shaft and tight sweet hole. Pushing his knees to his chest, I added my lips to my finger work.
Drizzling more oil, I jackknifed his legs closer to his chest. Rounded up, hard globes of perfect male flesh spread for me, his ass taking my tongue and fingertips, he was sex just waiting for me.
I pulled my fingers out, hefted onto one arm, and kissed him hard. “Wanna come?”
The pulsing pink tip of his dick spurted a burst of preejaculate. I gripped him until the come swelled back down and he sweated and shook within my arms.
“Wanna come with you inside me.”
Good man. I quickly unrolled a condom over my shaft. He slung his arms around my neck and his muscled legs over my hips, and we both watched the ingress of my cock into him.
Straining to contain my orgasm with every move inside him, I pressed the flat of my palm to Nathaniel’s belly. “Too much?”
“Faster!”
I hung my head against his pecs, then swooped up to his ruddy lips. “Don’t tell me that, lover.”
He buried his face against me. “Love the way you feel.”
My cock curved in and out, pumping into his snug channel. A look of awe blanketed his features, and I had to kiss him. Wet, hungry lips met mine, our tongues coiling and our teeth colliding.
Then there was just the blur of my hips pounding, the rapid sound of my balls slapping his bottom, the view of his chest bunching, and the cords of his throat in sharp relief.
His hands running all over me, his mouth slid up my jaw line to my ear. “Feels so good. Your cock’s so damn big. Deeper, honey. Yeah, yesss.” He hissed, taking my earlobe and twisting it in his teeth until I yelped. “Gonna make you scream.”
Yeah, we’ll see about that. At my next hard lunge, he cried out between gritted teeth, “Yeah, fuck me hard!”
“Baby…” I choked on the emotions rolling over me as much as the velvety purchase of his ass. Skating my thumb from the bridge of skin behind his sacs to the engorged head of his cock, I dipped my fingertip into the slit and took a fistful of cock. “Come for me. Come for me, Nathaniel.”
The jerk of his hips, his gorgeous ass sinking over me again and again, he reared up, wildly clutching my hair and clinging to my lips. “Jesus, Caspar. Ah goddamn!”
His fingers gouged into my shoulders, setting off the time bomb of both our orgasms. The final rough tugs of my fist at his tip completed the chain reaction. His semen splashed both our stomachs, and his hoarse yell roared like the blood in my ears.
His ass squeezed me, drawing out my orgasm. Beating inside the condom, my cock grew bigger and come burst out of me. I sank my teeth into his throat and sucked hard through moans I couldn’t contain. I hugged him again
st me, shuddering and shouting, “Nathaniel. Fucking beautiful!”
My heart pounded. It wasn’t just the exertion of our glorious sex.
On my back, I pulled him down with me. I didn’t want to let him go, because motherfucking hell, our lovemaking was supposed to be a beginning, but it felt so damn final, my stomach knotted and I slammed my eyes shut.
“Honey?” He rumbled against me, lazily caressing my side.
I tugged on his hair, then smoothed it down. “How is it you’ve gotten out of being married so far?”
His chin rested on my chest, eyes dark with sadness. “They haven’t found the right Company female for me yet.” His index finger had been randomly twiddling along my torso. Now we both watched as he traced around my heart, joining our hands there.
I’d been thinking about Micah’s ring all day, the significance of union and a symbol of togetherness.
I reached beneath the bed to retrieve a waxy paper package, placing it in his palm.
Lying against me, he swallowed hard.
The covers pooled in his lap, he sat up, handling the package with such care my words came out gruff. “It’s not that I don’t think about you, Nathaniel.” I scraped my hands across my eyes. “I…yeah. Could you open it before I change my mind and realize what a phenomenal pussy I’m being?”
I pretended I didn’t see the way his hands shook when he peeled the paper off the bulky bundle. His eyelashes lowered, the leather cuff was cuddled inside his big palm. Bringing it to his nose, he inhaled the scent of fresh hide.
Plain and sueded on the outside, the softened band was the same dark fawn as his hair. Between two fingers, he felt the engraving on the inner surface. With the wide strap bent inside out, he rubbed his thumb over the words.
Not an assignment. C.C. 2070.
I started talking when a couple tears plopped onto the band, and he held himself rigid, the wet clicking of his throat closing off his words. “Got Hills to do it. Heard he was handy with his swivel knife cuts. I’d seen some of his work in the bartering hall yesterday.”
When he stayed silent, I asked, “Gonna put it on?”
After he snapped it over his wrist, he rushed forward, driving his lips to mine. “Never gonna take it off, Caspar.”
I’d dropped the last of my guard by calling him Nathaniel instead of Blondie, by giving him a gift that showed I cared for him. That night, what felt like our first and last night together all rolled into one, I kept my own vigil over him, watching him sleep. Later, when he began thrashing in the bed from the deep hold of a nightmare, I gently kissed his forehead and stroked his back. His fists loosened, hands finding me. Pulling him on top of my chest, all the while sending a hand up and down his back, I comforted Nathaniel. His breaths steadying with mine, I closed my eyes, filled with a sense of rightness, wishing this could last forever.
* * *
There was no fanfare or hell-yeah feeling in the morning. It was cold, cloudy, and the frost didn’t lose its brittleness as the day wore on. Blondie stroked his cuff and sent me a smile over breakfast, but he also spent a lot of time examining his biscuits and gravy. Before I could collect my scythe and head for a final day of fieldwork, the slow leak of stragglers from Alpha became a new flood of bum-rushed refugees.
“Mr. Cannon, Mr. Cannon!” a shrill voice called across the mess.
I rose quickly, in search of the girl shouting my name. Strawberry-blond hair curled over her cheeks, the same child I’d noted a couple days before. Her eyes were earnest when she grabbed my hand with both her tiny ones. “My daddy, Micah, told me to get you.”
I tripped over my feet, trying to limit my steps to her small ones. She braided us in and out of the melee just like her father had. “Right over here, Mister.”
Fuck me.
There was Leon, holding his mother’s hand and wearing a half smirk, not the full grin he used to bear. The fading bruises, the way he hugged the left side of his ribs, and the new maturity to his expression made my shoulders bend with the weight that I hadn’t been able to stop his torture by CO tactics.
I’d never been so happy to see the little fuck in my life, probably because I’d never been happy to see him before. Despite his shitty appearance he was alive, and Mrs. Cheramie, too, so my perma-grin battled my scowl.
“What’d you do, boy?” I pulled him inside my arms, patting him down, making sure all his parts were connected by the right pieces.
“Mais, I set off dat tornado alarm at the Amphitheater.”
“You stupid dickhead.” Understatement.
He shrugged. “Bought y’all some time, yeah, cher?”
“And yourself a trip to the RACE brig. Don’t you ever try to play the savior again, hear me?”
His new wisdom lasted only so long. With his hands on his hips, Leon suggested, “Add to my bad-boy appeal. Makes me hot hot, for when you get tired of dat big handsome glaring over there.”
Evangeline smacked him with a “Tête dure.”
I swiveled my neck and once-overed Blondie. “How’d you break out?”
“Reckon your boyfriend had somethin’ to do wid it.”
I couldn’t stand Blondie hanging back. I took two steps toward him, until we were side by side.
Now that Leon was safe, I had another concern. “Where’s my bike?”
“I stored her. She safe in Alpha, waiting for you.”
“Yeah, I was thinking you could keep her.”
He cocked his head. “Why would you want me to do dat?”
It was a pretty safe bet I’d never return to Alpha, never find out what happened to Liz or her dad. Never water my dead plant or any of that shit. I wasn’t going to make it farther than the Outpost, if that far.
“You take care of her for me.” By her, I meant all of them. Evangeline, Eden, Kamber…Jonquil. All the children.
My man drew in a sharp inhale, and Leon’s brown eyes flipped open in surprise before narrowing with the shrewdness I’d first seen in Alpha when he was beaten black and blue. “Mais oui bien sûr, mon petit, do I rate a blow job for my efforts?”
Blondie cut between us. “No way, boy.”
“He your mouthpiece now?”
“His name’s Nathaniel.” I put my arm around his waist.
I could feel Blondie’s gaze boring into me, but before I could say anything else, we were swept up in the tide of bodies. What had been a trickle became a waterfall with shouts called overhead.
“Corps!”
“Coming our way!”
After our hang-free-and-easy time, it looked like the shit had finally caught up with us. Everyone was fixed on Darke, who stood beside Micah on the tractor that had throttled from the barn to the middle of the main street. “A division of Corps scouts found the trail from the latest batch of newcomers. My militia is leaving within the hour. We’ll cut them off. Rangers and Revolutionaries, we’re going to make it to Alpha. We will win this war!
“You all have a job. This is our land. The Company will not take it from us without a fight. Fortify the meeting hall with food and munitions. Women, children, and elders who are not fighting will regroup there with a contingent of guards. The rest of you warriors take to the forest and guard Chitamauga.”
Handing Evangeline over to Miss Eden, I worked our way backward out of the crowd. “This what you were waiting for?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
“We’re gonna head off the Corps troops?”
Blondie gave a grim nod.
For the remainder of the day, we worked beside the Freelanders. Off and on, I caught Blondie having quiet words with Hills, Hatch, or Miss Eden. I wanted to have words with someone, too, and tell them that I didn’t know what Blondie had up his sleeve, but we were going to make sure they stayed safe. I wanted to allay the fears of the children and elders, gloss over the realities of war with some reassuring words.
We set up blinds in trees for the scouts, handing weapons out to them. We secured the meeting hall so it would provide protection
for the innocents when the time came. I taught offensive moves to a group of able young men and women, many of whom showed tenacity and talent in the tactics of warfare, having been brought up on it. Leon had a flair, too, so I made sure he received a weapon and adequate ammo, although I wasn’t afforded that fucking privilege, again.
I got a lesson in explosives made from their homegrown cotton, a little lightweight combustible called guncotton. We laid a perimeter of the projectiles around the entire commune.
Night fell with its own bleak promise.
At the caravan, we packed with the usual precision and stacked our gear by the door. My ammo had been returned, so I spent a fair amount of time cleaning and loading my weapons. The Glocks, my SIG P229s, the beautiful M4 rifle. I polished my brass knuckles and swept a cloth over my knife, keeping the extras out of sight. Sitting beside me, our asses to the floor, Nathaniel did the same, his arms and armament having been freed up intact.
All set and ready to head out, that just left Nathaniel, me, and a few hours of downtime. All day I’d sensed something was afoot. Maybe even since the moment I’d come to in the caravan. Whatever it was, he wasn’t as sneaky as he thought. But neither was I as smart as I used to give myself credit for, since using his given name at a time like this played dangerous games with my heart. Calling him Blondie had been my final barrier against intimacy.
I was sick and fucking tired of the fences I put up, the furrows I buried my shit in, the falsehoods we told each other. Tonight I wanted to feel.
I spun him toward the bed, both of us tearing at clothing. We were greedy, sloppy, shoving at each other’s arms, legs, and bodies until we were panting and naked.
I fell into bed, reaching for him. When my heels butted his hips, I crashed him down on top of me. “Can you take me now?”
In answer, he turned to his side and lifted his thigh, peering at me through that curtain of hair with wicked eyes. “You. All I need is you.”
Scrambling for the lube, I smeared it over my cock, using two fingers to warm and wet him, biting the nape of his neck to hold him still.
He shoved my hands away, spreading himself open for me. “I’m ready. Inside me, now.”
