Page 6 of Act of Command

He unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out. He’d officially become one of those sick fucks who masturbated in public. He wasn’t sure how he’d fallen so far in an evening, but he’d ditched his date, wanted to bed a woman in a yellow dress and was now stroking his prick in a parking lot.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Chapter Three

Paranormal Security and Intelligence Division B Headquarters, classified location

Two weeks later

Corbin turned, placing his body in the ready position again as he prepared to run through theWankankata once more. It wasn’t a widely practiced form of the kata, but he liked it all the same. His mind was clear, focused, and his body took each step, each motion as if an opponent was truly there in the martial arts training room with him. He wore only a pair of loose-fitting workout pants, nothing else. His bare feet swept over the foam-tiled floor mats of the dojo. The pattern upon them was wood grain, giving the feeling of a wood floor, but the padding was required to train properly. The other portion of the oversized training room had actual wood scraped floors, providing options for the men who used the room.

This time of night, there weren’t many left at headquarters. Most were either at home or deployed on missions, as was the standard. Corbin preferred to use the martial arts room when it was nearly empty, and it wasn’t as if he had anyone waiting on him at home, so he was free to spend his time as he wished. He enjoyed the tranquility of the room—one of the elements it had been designed with in mind. He welcomed the time to reflect.

To focus.

To be alone.

While able to function easily in social situations, he wasn’t one who normally sought them out. Too long ago he’d been forced into them—forced to wine and dine aristocrats, every word spoken holding double meaning and everyone out for themselves. He didn’t miss the vapid women with their arrogant men. Even worse were the women who had been angling to ensnare a wealthy man to wed them.

He shuddered, thinking back on the women of old. Some tried just about anything to land a husband, even stooping so low as to try to put the man in a situation that made it seem as if he’d compromised their virtue. Corbin had seen it all. He’d been in their sights more than once and had taken off to fight for his country—something his mother still wasn’t keen on, though she’d had centuries to get used to the idea. What he had hated most at the height of his forced socializing was the outfits. The bloody footwear. Squared toes, heels, even for men. He didn’t miss the breeches or justacorps either.

And he didn’t miss the wigs.

The horrid wigs.

He fucking hated wigs.

That fashion couldn’t have died quickly enough for his liking.

He hated it nearly as much as he’d disliked the bellbottom craze that seemed to have happened only yesterday, but upon closer reflection was decades ago. Time tended to get away from immortals. All he knew was every fifteen to twenty years he had to reinvent himself in the eyes of the human world and vanish on paper for a while before reemerging under an assumed name—to the humans.

To the supernatural community he was Corbin Jones. That did not change, no matter the fad or craze. And Corbin was not much of a trend chaser. No. He liked his hair to be long, despite modern standards and what was considered normal for nowadays. His long, blond hair was pulled up in what he’d heard someone term a man-bun, though it was a style he’d worn long before the name had been applied to it. A style many men he knew in the paranormal community wore, before hipsters decided to covet it.

It kept it out of his face as he trained. That was all that mattered. He’d surprised himself lately by not shaving. He did keep his facial hair trimmed and maintained—he was a fan of looking orderly. His newfound rugged look probably had something to do with his mother’s revived kick of trying to find his mate. Without realizing, he had staged his own version of a protest. He’d stopped shaving his face clean. His beard was not as long as Striker’s. The damn Scot had given up shaving, and at the rate the man was going, he’d be nothing but a giant head of red hair. Evidently, the online forums Striker was so fond of were composed of women who thought beards were sexy—therefore, the man refused to get rid of his. Looking that unkempt wasn’t something Corbin could willingly do.

His mother, notwithstanding all her bluster, was a hopeless romantic at heart. In her mind, she’d be the one to seek out that one perfect person created just for him and bring them together to live happily ever after. His father no longer attempted to intervene on Corbin’s behalf. He simply allowed his mother to do as she pleased whenever she got in the mood to see her son with a woman—which seemed to be every ten or so years. And she was in the height of one of her moods now—spurred onward by his canceling of the date she’d set up for him.

He repeated each step of the kata and was midway through his fourth time when his concentration began to waver, his latest mission vexing him. He generally prided himself on his ability to compartmentalize, to push down and store for another day anything that wasn’t relevant to the task at hand, but the mission had gotten to him. It had gotten to all his men. Nearly as much as when they’d helped to shut down breeding centers for what the government had now termed the Asia Project. That had been just over twenty years ago.

It wasn’t until Corbin had run through the kata twice more that he realized he was no longer alone in the training room. Dr. James Hagen, a fellow operative and a member of Corbin’s team, stood near the entrance, silent, waiting to speak with Corbin. James was reserved, and Corbin liked that about the man. They had that much in common. Corbin continued with his training, and it wasn’t long before James had kicked off his boots and was joining in, following step by step in the kata.

From the haunted expression that passed between the men, Corbin knew James’s thoughts were where Corbin’s had been—on their latest mission. Paranormal Security and Intelligence Ops Team Five, headed by Corbin, had just returned from the Middle East where they’d taken down a sex trafficking ring. One of so very many that existed. This one dealt primarily with supernaturals, though a few humans had been victims as well. Humans were food for some types of supernaturals. There to be sold, sexually assaulted, and then killed for the food they provided. Some were to be sex slaves and blood banks for certain supernatural elements.

The supernatural victims had numbered high. Some had been thoroughly abused already by the time the Ops got to the facility, and others had been traumatized, but not sexually assaulted. Corbin now knew more about human trafficking than he’d ever wanted to, and it was keeping him up at night. He’d been somewhat familiar with it prior to the mission, but not to this extent. He’d had a brief encounter with traffickers just over twenty years ago. The memory of how horribly the ordeal had ended still haunted him to this very day.

Corbin’s stomach twisted at the thought of what they’d uncovered on their newest mission and just how deep it all ran. He and his men had barely spoken on the plane ride home, their normal banter gone, each soaking in the reality of what they’d just broken up. The looks on the faces of the victims, mostly women, but some men, had nearly broken his spirit. Even Striker, the team’s smartass, had refrained from making lewd remarks or jokes. He had torn apart three of the men who had been bidding on a young woman. Striker had then taken off his gear, removed his shirt and put it over the girl, shielding her body from the view of others, taking her directly to the female PSI-Agents who were on site, ready to render assistance.

The world was full of sick bastards.

Thankfully, nearly seventy of them were detained and no longer a threat, and almost twenty more were too dead to be an issue again. Those who were detained were being pumped for information in hopes of breaking up more trafficking rings.

One more thing PSI had on its plate. The list was never-ending.

The bust had taken down of a large number of bad men, but that didn’t minimize the damage the bad guys had done. The lives they’d already ruined. And it would never make things right for the victims. That was something he’d witnessed twenty years back. That trafficking ring had been one that focused on supernaturals as well—all women though. All seriously mistreated and most, by the time Corbin had gotten there, were in various stages of pregnancy that none had been willing participants in.

The memories of it all washed over him. One of the women who had been held captive and offered up for sale had been heavily pregnant. Corbin had burst into the small holding room she’d been in all those years ago and had nearly vomited at the state he’d found the young woman in. It had been uncovered later that she’d been first held in a breeding facility that he later found out had ties to the Asia Project, but at the time he’d been unaware of such overlap. The woman, who he took to calling Jane because her identity was never figured out, had been force bred and then sold on the black market to traders. Jane and her unborn child had been up for grabs. Available to whoever had the deepest pockets—no questions asked on what use the buyer had for them. Nothing.

By the time Corbin and his team had happened upon her and the others being held, the woman’s mind and spirit were long broken. He’d sat by Jane’s side while she lay in the infirmary under the watchful eyes of PSI doctors, a shell of herself. Corbin had even found himself holding the woman’s hand, though she didn’t acknowledge his existence. He hadn’t been able to walk away from her. A strange, almost feral need to oversee her condition had been all consuming. He’d been so obsessed with her child that someone had even asked if the child might have been his in some way. It wasn’t. He justhadto see to the child’s safety. He couldn’t have explained it if he tried, so he’d not bothered trying. He’d not wanted to leave the pregnant woman’s side, but duty had called and he’d had no choice.

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