The family name is Cutler.”
Holy shit. “Commander Cutler…Beta Commander Cutler is your twin!” I could barely breathe, let alone pronounce the words.
He assented, spreading his hands around my sides as if to hold me in place while the entire goddamn universe toppled to a new axis. Linc Cutler—his goddamn brother—was the man overseeing the recon unit out to get us.
“Your fricking family’s got a hard-on for us?”
“It looks like they do now.” His chin took on that stubborn tilt.
The double whammy followed so fast, I was glad Blondie’s hands kept me solidly on the ground because the bottom of my world fell out.
Nathaniel Cutler, Linc Cutler…and fucking CEO Lysander Cutler.
“Motherfucking hell!” Because it wasn’t bad enough the famous commander was his twin brother; the supremacist Alpha CEO just had to be his dear goddamn daddy, too. The man who already had a toe tag picked out just for me.
I almost puked up my left nut, reliving that very first oh-shit moment at CO HQ when I’d been made to stand stone-faced while his cunt of a father promised a demotion for Liz. When I’d been ordered by the head of Alpha Territory to escort his son safely to the Outpost.
Goddamn it! When I screwed up, I did it from the top and got ass-fucked from behind. It didn’t get much worse than this.
“I’m gonna kill your father.”
“Not if I do first.”
“Why have you stuck it out with the Company?”
“Linc’s a Cutler through and through, but I have to believe I can save him.” I recognized his closed-book look when he said the next. “And I got other reasons.”
“Jesus, thought I had it bad.”
“Oh, you did.” Sitting beside me, he shrugged. “We all do, in one way or another. It ain’t a competition though, ’specially since you don’t like that shit.”
It was hard to keep a straight I’m-so-fucked face when he made me laugh. “You remember everything I say?”
Blondie pulled me close, lightly kissing my lips. “Everything you say, honey, and everything you’ve done since I first saw you.”
His statement could’ve been dangerous to me. Instead it sounded devastatingly romantic. I had to have his lips, his tongue pressing against mine. I needed his body. My hands shaking—for once not from cold—I tugged at his pants, battling the snap and zipper. “I need you inside me.”
When my palm found his cock, he ground his forehead against mine, his voice cracking. “What?”
“You. I need you inside of me, Nathaniel. I want you to take me, have me.” I stroked up, catching my thumb on the lip of his hard, broad head and slipping slowly all the way back down. His beautiful tumescent cock filling my fist with virile flesh and pulsing veins.
“Oh hell. Caspar.” He yanked his pants down his thighs, kicking them off his feet. Moaning into my mouth, he ripped through my clothes until he got to my chest, twirling my nipples, then pulling them between his lips.
A rush of laughter came from me. I’d never seen him move so fast. As my chest rumbled, he peered up and soothed the skin he’d been nibbling.
His voice low and gentle, he asked, “You ever had a man inside you, honey?”
A memory slammed into me—skin the color of the milky coffee I’d had at the commune, brown eyes above me, deep words with a foreign lilt, Mi corazón, Caspar—and my head whipped aside.
“Caspar?” His hands stilled, my shaft half revealed to the night. “Did someone hurt you?”
I met his eyes with all the honesty I could muster. “Not like that. Not with intent.” Wriggling free of my fatigues, I linked my fingers with Nathaniel’s and brought them to my mouth. “I haven’t let anyone in for a long time.”
Kissing his fingertips, taking one inside for a long, slow suck, I shoved the memory away, concentrating on the man I had right here. “I want you.”
“I won’t hurt you ever,” he whispered.
My lips shifted with a smile, one that fled when his mouth trailed from my earlobe down the middle of my torso, wetting the thick line of hair until he buried his lips at the base of my shaft. Sucking me deep, he loved my cock with his tongue until I rode his lips.
I writhed to go further, shouting when his throat opened and all I knew was the tight cavern of his mouth and tongue. “Oh Christ!”
He went all the way down on me so many times. I fisted his hair and forced my fingers to relax before I hurt him or bludgeoned him to death with my dick.
Finally pulling up, his lips were swollen and my cock was a deep red. “Mmm,” he murmured, licking at me, spreading our moisture up and down my shaft.
The click of the lube bottle preceded the glide of a solitary finger slipping over my sacs, running tight circles over my pucker. I jerked when his finger worked inside me, my hips bearing down, my breath coming fast.
“Can I add another, honey?”
I nodded quickly, spreading my thighs. On my elbows, I watched this sexy man between my legs, his mouth drifting up and down my cock and his fingers threading into me. His head moved the same way it did when he kissed me. In and out, up and down, side to side. Counterpoint moves that kept me on edge and so erect tremors racked my entire body.
He slurped my cock with obscene noises and chuckled every time I snuck up for his lips and down for his fingers; his torrential tease made me smack my palms to the ground, groans leaking past my lips.
He licked straight between my cheeks stretched by his hands. “Gonna fuck this sexy ass.”
He pulled out a condom, but I grabbed his wrist. “Come in me, please. Fill me, Nathaniel. I need to feel you.”
“I’ve never been with anyone like this before.”
I swallowed hard. “Me neither. I’ve never wanted to.” I’d never made love before with no protection, no pretense.
That set him off. On his knees in front of me, his features were stern in sensuality, locks of hair falling forward as he surveyed my body and returned to my face. “I’ve wanted this. I never thought you’d let—”
“Enough talking, babe. Fuck me.”
He was so erotic above me, holding my thighs back, watching the thick ridge of his cock enter me. I groaned when the head disappeared inside me. Jesus, he’s a big boy.
His fingers found my face. “Okay?” he panted.
“Fuck yeah.” I lifted my hips and he slid farther in.
His cheeks flushed, eyes feverish, he hardly spared a look from my ass parting for his cock, but when he did, a sheepish grin flashed over his lips at getting caught staring. His moan was long and low as he sank all the way in.
The feel of him rocking into me made me grunt. His big cap and wide shaft hit me just right. I was stripped down to the essence of being fucked by my lover, his hands at my hips and mine rooted in his hair.
Every kiss, every caress, every endearment and gasped curse was precious.
He hit his stride, chest heaving as he stretched over me. From that angle, he smacked my gland, sending a full-body thrill through me along with a ragged groan.
“Hell yeah. You like that, big man?” Blondie lunged again, and the feel of him was making me insane. His shiny, slippery cock poised at my entrance, he demanded, “Tell me you like it. Tell me you want me to fuck you.”
“Ahhh, fuck!” Squirming to get closer, I considered throwing him onto his back and sinking right down on his dick to get him back inside me. “Fuck me. Fuck me like that, babe.”
Sweat glistened on his chest, each thrust driving me wild with lust. My balls ratcheted high, cock stretched up from my belly, beating against his abs. When he kept spearing into me, my back snatched off the ground and my head swerved from side to side.
“You gonna come, honey?”
“Yeah!”
He licked his palm with that delicious pink tongue and curled it around my cock, grinning when my erection leaped and I bucked beneath him. “That’s right. Come for me, Caspar. Come on my body.” He concentrated on the head, strumming it fast, his eyes low-lidded and his piston hips pushing, fucking.
I doused his chest, shoulders, throat as I cried out, laughing because I had no fucking idea how he could still be talking. I was barely breathing, more like moaning.
His mouth ran away with him. “Aw yeah. Feels so good, goddamn tight, honey. Fuck FUCK!” My orgasm, my joy squeezed him inside and he practically screamed, coming inside me. “I love you! I LOVE YOU!”
I stopped laughing then.
Dropping onto me, his hands ranged over my face and his lips found mine. He said it again. This time quietly, tenderly. “I love you, Caspar.”
Not exactly the way I thought it would go down but…damn. My stomach clenched, and my heart crowded my chest. Our mouths met in a soft kiss.
“Shh, honey.” He swiped under my eyes, staying against me, a jumble of arms and legs. The pounding of our hearts slowed to a gentler pace.
Those words, in his voice, replaced the fear, the huge hole of hate and hurt that always left me hungry and haunted.
Curling around him, I tucked my lips to his neck, blowing away strands of hair until I met his skin. I kissed the little divot there for a long time, listening to his deep breaths, the ones pulling my arms tight across his chest.
I couldn’t say it back yet even though I felt the words swelling inside me. All I could do was hold on to his love, hold on to him.
* * *
A blast of wind sheared across my face the same time as Blondie said, “We’re not gonna make it.”
We’d pushed ourselves to the limit, tromping over bleak mountains, splashing through icy streams, staying one step ahead. The love we’d shared two nights ago was the only thing keeping us warm anymore. Lack of food added to hardly sleeping had taken its toll.
“They’re gainin’ on us.”
The cold teeth of a gale-force wind spat fat plops of rain over us. And fuck you very much, Mother Nature.
Breaking from the headlong run, I clasped my knees, squinting at him. “What did you say?”
We couldn’t outrun anymore. We might outlast, but it was imperative to get to the Outpost, still another two days’ travel away, before them, before rumors—or real truths—wrecked our reputations.
“We need a plan.”
“Well, you’re handy with strategies.”
“You’re the commander,” he volleyed.
As I clasped the back of my head, the steady beat of rain pissed on the very last shred of Holy fuck. Nathaniel “Blondie” Rice loves me.
And it wasn’t the normal kind of rain we had in Alpha. It was a pelt of ice forming rivulets down my face and into the neck of my jacket. “Odds ain’t bad.”
His smile cantered, dimples showing. “Ain’t?”
“You’re growing on me.”
“Odds ain’t in our favor, either.”
I stamped my feet. “It’s all in the prep work.”
Our hearing split between the incoming storm and the oncoming recon troops, we kept ahead until nightfall, gaining a couple hours.
No plastics, no explosives. Our guns were loaded and we had ample knives. I didn’t know if Blondie had any experience slicing and dicing, but I didn’t have time to show him the ropes. Maybe during all the character building atrocities his fucker of a father had put him through, he’d learned the right grip, stance, and thrust.
I took his direction when he found a deep pool of mud. It was chilly enough my nuts thought about taking a walk off my body and sending me a message on my D-P from warmer climes.
While we slathered up, going dark as night in deep-cover camouflage, he gave me a little lesson in the Freelanders. “They’re classic Fifth Column in the Revolution.”
“Fifth Column?”
His neat white teeth shone amid the black mud. “It’s Old History.”
“New history to me.”
Sleet painted our black-out clothes to our bodies like a shitty second skin.
Checking his weapons, he said, “Fifth Columnists are saboteurs. Sympathizers.”
“With the rebels, the Revolution?”
“Yeah. There’s an underground movement goin’ on, Caspar. You saw the Freelanders fighting with the rebels in Alpha. The same thing’s happening throughout the InterNations; the two sides have joined up against the Company.”
“You have anything to do with that?”
He settled against a tree trunk and looked me over top to toe. He didn’t say a word.
“We’re not gonna report them.”
“Nah.”
“Ever.”
“Nope.”
“They’re your family,” I added.
“Part of it.” He slunk forward, only his eyes and lips uncovered. He rounded my waist with his forearm and brought me up sharp. “Half my life. You’re the other.”
“How’d you get Leon out?”
“I used the ‘Cutler’s mah daddy’ card.”
“Why the hell would you take that risk?”
“For you.” He bent toward me. “But if I catch that boy askin’ to give you a blow job one more time, all bets are off. I’d do the same for you.” He held my face in his hands, coming away caked in more mud.
Again with the gut check. “I don’t want you saving me.”
“You worry too much.”
“You don’t worry enough.”
“So, we gonna stand here until our dicks fall off and fight about it? Or are we gonna do somethin’?”
“You ready?”
“Affirmative.”
We doubled back. It took us twenty minutes to catch up with the first crew of Corpsmen, the ones most uninjured by our little TNT tête-à-tête a week ago.
I signaled the numbers—five—and we circled to their rear.
The pouring shitstorm worked in our favor, rendering night visors null and void and noise undetectable. They were spaced out beautifully—at least they’d been taught that much—scoping back and forth through the thick woods.
At the end of the column, I tackled the rear guard without a sound, cold cocking him into oblivion and dragging him into the underbrush.
Blondie leapfrogged ahead and pulled the same number on the next soldier, his actions impressive and dangerously choreographed.
By the time we got to the lookout, we’d left a trail of his four comrades scattered behind. Tapping him on the shoulder, I flashed him a white smile amid the sea of black that was my warrior face, bringing my hand down on his wrist before he could grip his pansy-ass blaster.
Blondie’s palm smothered the trooper’s mouth while I asked, “We gonna have a problem with you, soldier?”
He shook his head, as much as he could from its position inside Blondie’s heavy forearm.
“Good, because I need you breathing and talking.”
He went over Blondie’s shoulder like a rag doll, and I took one of the knocked-out douche bags on each of mine.
Blondie made our prisoners all nice and comfy with their hands and feet bound, their eyes blindfolded, and their mouths gagged while I fetched the last two twats.
Once everyone was tied to his own deluxe tree trunk, I hunkered in front of soldier number five, pulling a corner of the gag from his mouth. “Name?”
“Rast.”
Fitting. Rast had a rat face. He looked exactly like vermin, the kind I had in my apartment, instead of a big blond dog or a goldfish.
“How many approaching, Rast?”
“Seven.”
Pulling my KA-BAR along my palm, the metal pearling under freezing drops, I repeated the motion across his cheek. “That wasn’t the original number. You need a mathematics lesson?” I flicked my blade over a few body parts he probably wouldn’t miss—an ear, his nose, a finger—counting as I went.
He stuttered, “Twenty-five in total, b-b-but now it’s twelve. Twelve took a hit. One of them had other orders.”
“Twenty-five’s an odd number.”
“We were joined by a latecomer.”
My eyes narrowed, but I didn’t have time to question further. His D-P blared, “Need your position, Rast.”
My forearm collared his neck and I sank beside him. “You give these coordinates and not one bit more and I won’t slit your throat from ear to ear, soldier. You know your numbers now?”
A quick learner—even if he couldn’t count for shit—he relayed the position, and I replayed the same move I’d started the night with, a crunching blow to his head sending him to la-la land.
The echo of heavy boots beat toward us. Things worked so well the first time, we went with the same welcome-party greeting.
One, two, and three down.
That’s when things got a little hairy. Guns swiveled back, the sheen of wet bayonets showed up ahead, and the remaining four fuckers descended on us. I used my beloved KA-BAR in defense, knocking back gun barrels and slicing aside stabbing attempts.
Hand-to-hand got real fun as Blondie and I stood back-to-back, offering hurt with our hurtling fists and the hard heels of our boots. The sleet didn’t roar loud enough to mute the meaty blows. Taking a massive fist to my cheek, I staggered sideways, spinning away from Blondie.
A foot crashing into my chest threw me onto my back and far above a face distorted by rain looked down on me. He wasted no time pulling his firearm, one of those useless plastic blasters. I wasted even less wrapping my arms around his thighs and pitching him over my head like I was tossing a bale of hay onto a pallet. His short flight ended in a disjointed landing, headfirst into a tree. Bonelessly, he dripped down to the forest floor and lay unmoving like a sack of soiled shit.
Jumping to my feet, I whipped the water from my eyes and halted with my hand half across my brow. Right then I rethought our decision to engage but not to kill.
Our old friend the lieutenant held his blade to Blondie’s throat, steadily exerting more pressure until a drop of blood welled over the sharp edge, joining the rain in a red-colored river. “You wanna save your boyfriend?”
I focused on Blondie, the knife, and the cunt’s intent. I nodded.
“Throw your knife down, kick it away, and lose the weapons.”
Done deal.
Only thing was, Lieutenant Unlucky wasn’t counting on my left-handed trick. While he pulled Blondie toward my KA-BAR, I lifted the extra strapped behind my back and sent it whizzing toward them. The point made contact, spiking Lieutenant’s neck. He gurgled while Blondie ducked from his arms, came up behind him, and jacked my knife clean of the cut to another agonized scream.
Blondie aimed the blood-splattered shaft to his jugular, held my eyes, and sliced another clean line, dropping the man dead.
Cool, in control, and utterly lethal.
Fucking hot.
The rest went down like limp dicks.
Confiscating their supplies and weapons, we sorted through what was usable and secured the rest in a hidden location. Their D-Ps we destroyed. Blondie got his operational long enough to contact Hatch at Chitamauga, sending the details of the prisoners and their whereabouts. Whether or not the soldiers survived the next week or so out here, I didn’t give a flying fuck.
His eyes pinched shut between his thumb and forefinger, Blondie shook his head. “Nah. No, not a good idea, man. Just tell her I love her. Yeah. Tell her Cannon’s okay.”
He ended the transmission, pulling me close, his cold nose against my throat. “We gotta go.”
Running again, this time to warm up, I was hoping to outpace the foul weather, maybe find some frigging shelter or sunshine or something other than the howling rain making waterlogged soup inside our boots.
Muscles burning and eyes blinded, I had to take my mind off this hell. “You were good support back there.”
I caught the blue tint of his eyes when he winked. “Not bad yourself. Told you I was more than a corporate whore.” He panted beside me, feet pounding in time, but his next words were tender as his caresses. “Needed to have your back this time, big man.”
Rain matted his hair and ran into his mouth with every word spoken. My heart wheeled in my chest as I slowed down. “How do you come up with that stuff?”
His arms rounded my shoulders, and I walked into his hug. “It’s all you, Caspar.”
I ducked my head from his intensely personal stare. “I’m not good enough for you.”
“Got that right. You’re better than me.” The brush of his lips along the side of my throat was the only heat to be found in this godforsaken forest. “’Sides, can’t believe you threw your precious knife into the mud like that.”
“It was either that or watch you get your throat slit.”
“Glad you’ve changed your priorities.”
“You got no idea,” I whispered into his neck,
We forged through the sleet until it made a dark mane of Blondie’s hair. Our clothes were heavy, and we could no longer speak through clattering teeth. Finally, we broke free of the forest and faced a huge, squat building enclosed by two rows of pitchfork iron fences. “Fort Knox,” he breathed.
I stopped short, revisited by nightmares.
My teeth started a new rhythm, chattering with more force.
Walking on, Blondie tested the iron barbs, eyeing the fence as if he were about to vault over. “C’mon, big man.”
Along the square roofline speakers sat at even two-meter intervals. Rusty with age and disuse, they were the same as the ones that had once rung with the execution announcement. The placement of the dimmed halo lights was similar, too, to those radiating around the Quad in Epsilon. It had been a nighttime event, the Quadrangle opened to the public and filled with the ferocious atmosphere of brainwashed hate.
My knees buckled. “I’m not going in there.”
Blondie returned to my side. “Didn’t hear you, honey. What?”
Words stuck in my throat. “No. I can’t.”
“Can’t what? Look, you’re turnin’ blue, for Christ’s sake. It’s been abandoned for a long time.” I filtered out all but a few words. “Safe…shelter…rest…”
Close to passing out from pain, I reeled to the ground. All my running from the past and living with a barricade of razor wire between me and my feelings—me and life—had been pointless. One look at this place brought back a ghost I’d never laid to rest.
All it took was Blondie beside me, shaking me, grabbing my face and shouting at me. He seemed to have a way to make my heart crack apart with the eye opener that this mission, this trek was gonna end down the same heartbreak road as before, despite my best defensive maneuvers.
Here I was, face-to-face with the one damned memory I’d been running from, combined with the fucking thing I had no control over.
My heart.
I gagged. “I cannot go in there.”