by Selena Scott
Ilya’s smile had saddened. And Danil knew that this was when he had to be the one to protect his family. They were all too sweet. Sometimes Danil had to be the asshole to make sure they were safe. That they were making the right decisions for themselves.
He crossed the room in two strides. He held his hand out to Dora. “Ms. Katsaros,” he said in a tone just teetering on the edge between icily polite and flat out rude.
“Danil!” his mother scolded him from the doorway of the living room, where she’d just entered, drying her hands on a rag. She didn’t like to see him being so abrupt with a visitor. But Danil didn’t care; let her scold him later.
Dora’s eyes narrowed, but she obviously knew that her welcome had officially been worn out. She eyed Danil’s hand for just the breath of a moment, before she wiped the frustration from her expression and gave him a sweet little smile. She rose, taking Danil’s hand as if he were offering it kindly, not as a way of pulling her out of the room.
Both of them froze at the first contact. Something hot and zinging burst between their palms like a child’s Technicolor bubble. Danil’s chest contracted painfully, but it was her breath that whooshed out, between her teeth. She cut it off mid-exhale and covered the noise with a little cough, a bright smile.
“Nice to meet you all,” she said over her shoulder as Danil tugged her from the room.
He’d gotten the feeling back in his hand and he’d remembered that he needed her off his mother’s property as fast as possible. But then they were out the front door into the fresh, fragrant spring air, striding toward her car in the driveway, and Danil knew he’d made a mistake when he’d come outside with her. It was much harder for him to be cool and civilized when he was outside.
Her citrusy scent mixed with the pine of the forest that pressed in on them from all sides. Danil got a flash of what it would be like to peel that jacket off of her like an orange. He wanted to taste her fruit.
“So it’s Danil, huh?” she asked him as she struggled to keep up with his quick pace as he basically dragged her to her car.
“Da,” he replied. “My real name. The men at work call me Dan.”
“I prefer Danil,” she told him as he paused at the driver’s door to her car.
“I don’t care,” he replied.
She cocked her head to one side and leaned up against her car like she hadn’t a care in the world. “You don’t like me much, do you, Danil?”
“I do not care one way or another,” he said, inwardly kicking himself as he heard his accent grow a little thicker. It only did that when he was agitated. But she was just so damn exquisite, standing there in the azure twilight. Her cheekbones were two stunning slashes and her hair fell across her forehead in a jagged chop that highlighted her huge, round eyes.
“I think you do, Danil,” she said, her eyes narrowing a tiny bit. “I think my question just struck a nerve. And I think you care very much.”
Shit. She was right. He’d given away his hand in his urgency to get her out of there. He cursed himself. He needed to throw her off the scent. She was smart. Annoyingly smart. How to make her stupid?
There was one way that he knew how. And it worked every time.
“It wasn’t your question that struck a nerve,” he said, shifting his weight infinitesimally into her space. Her eyes tracked the movement. “It was this face.” He intentionally raised a hand like he was going to stroke her cheek but dropped his hand. She tracked that movement as well. “These eyes. Your legs. I find that they’re striking all my nerves.”
It was a calculated move. He’d meant to discombobulate her, confuse her, get her thinking in circles. But when her pink little lips fell open and the tiniest flash of arousal zipped through her eyes, it was the first honest expression her face had made since he’d met her. And Danil realized that he was as disoriented as he’d meant to make her.
Suddenly he was completely in her space. His hands on the hood of her car on either side of her curvy little body. He could feel the heat her skin was kicking off, he could scent it in the air. Her eyes had fallen to his lips and she wetted her own.
It was just the tiniest little glimpse of her delicate tongue, but Danil felt it like a punch to the solar plexus. He leaned down, their lips both tasting the air between them. Her warmth caressing over him, just a breath away.
“Oh, crap. Sorry, Danil,” a voice said behind them which had Danil straightening up and turning. It was AJ, a family friend who lived a few blocks away. She was 25 years old and like a sister to them. They’d known her since they’d moved here ten years ago. And right now she was looking more uncomfortable than he’d ever seen her. Pink in the cheeks.
“That’s alright, AJ,” he told her in the characteristic sweetness that they all used with her. “Dora was just leaving anyways.”
Before he could turn back to her, get lost in that moment again, Danil reached behind Dora without looking, and opened her car door.
“Oh, okay,” AJ said, obviously still very uncomfortable. “Well, nice to meet you, sort of. I’m just gonna go inside and die now.”
AJ scampered up the front walk and only then did Danil turn back to Dora. She’d obviously regained any composure she may have lost a few moments before.
“Apparently I’m leaving,” she said to Danil, one eyebrow raised.
“Goodbye,” he said, without any more explanation. He stepped back from the car.
“Hmm,” she said to him, her eyes giving him the full up and down as if she were still trying to figure him out.
Right when he thought she was going to slip into her car and drive away, she leaned over the top of the door. The light from his mother’s porch dusted her skin gold. “You hang out at the northwest precinct a lot, Danil?”
His eyes searched hers. “Why?”
“I just want to know where I can find you,” she said, a little half-smile on her face. And then she ducked down, started the car, and reversed away.
Danil refused to watch her taillights disappear into the night. His heart was stupidly clenched, his skin was too tight and he was literally about to scream. The night called to him and he could smell his brothers on the air.
He skirted around the side of the house, pulling off his shirt and belt as he walked. He spotted the pile of his brothers’ clothes on the back porch and he added his. And then he was running, first as a man, on two legs. And then Danil stretched his arms out before him and they just kept stretching. And he tumbled forward, running on four legs as fur sprouted over his skin. His haunches bunched and expanded, his head grew three times its size and his teeth severed the air as he gave an appreciative huff.
Danil lumbered through the woods, quickly leaving the sparse trees behind and following his brothers’ path up the mountain. He could follow their scent easily, but when they were in bear form, he could also hear their voices in his head, as if they were calling out to him.
With a last, galloping run, Danil burst into a familiar clearing, where they often met after they’d shifted. And there they were, his three brothers.
“Did you kiss her?” Maxim asked. His humongous bear was larger than the other three and a light, honey brown. He wasn’t the most vicious fighter, but his weight and creativity made him a formidable opponent.
“Of course not,” Danil snapped.
“Why of course not?” Emin asked. His bear was smaller and darker, and he was the fastest and had the keenest senses of the brothers. “She was a beautiful woman. Why wouldn’t you kiss her?”
“Because you heard her,” Danil said, his patience thin after the almost-kiss with Dora. Not even the running or the shifting had taken that edge off. “She was asking about Anton.”
Anton stood in the shadows. His bear was almost identical to Danil’s. Chestnut brown and big, they were both vicious fighters, ruthless. Except Anton had a series of scars across his back, and a thatch of bone-white fur down one side. They didn’t like to talk about how he’d come by those features. And now there was this wom
an, come into their lives and stirring it up.
“So what,” Maxim said, sniffing at a tree. “She can ask questions about the white bear all she wants, it’s not like she knows that it’s Anton.”
“Of course she’s not assuming we’re bear shifters,” Danil said, frustrated. “But I don’t like it. I met her for the first time down at the precinct today. She’d been arrested for trespassing for the second time in two days. And now she comes here, happening to ask about Anton? That’s suspicious to me.”
Anton was quiet in the underbrush. He was as still as a statue, absorbing the refreshing, wild calm of being in bear form. He hated when his brothers worried about him.
Emin looked up at the sky, noting the arc of the moon through the clouds. “We should get back. We’re gone too long, and Mama will worry.”
The brothers agreed with him, though none of them wanted to shift back to their human forms on such a beautiful night. Danil knew that Emin and Anton shifted any chance they could, and were often alone in the woods. But Danil and Maxim typically only shifted once a week at Sunday dinners, when they were all together. He cherished that time.
But they didn’t want their mother to worry, so they lumbered back down the mountain. Sometimes chasing and racing. Sometimes pausing to scent something in the wind. For animals of their tremendous size, they moved as quietly as cats through the pines.
They shifted back at the edge of the tree line, under the cover of the shadows. There weren’t any other houses for a few miles in any direction, but just in case, they wanted a little privacy. Although none of them had any problem walking naked back across the lawn, laughing and shoving and snickering.
They pulled on their clothes on the back porch. Anton froze, sniffing the air.
“AJ is here?” he asked in Belarusian.
“Yeah,” Danil replied, remembering her entrance in vivid detail. How Dora had looked in the tense, pulsing seconds before AJ had interrupted them.
Anton whipped his shirt on. “She walked here alone in the middle of the night?”
“It’s 9:30 on Sunday night,” Emin said, raising an eyebrow at his brother. They were all protective of AJ but none more than Anton.
Ten years ago, Anton, in his bear form, had been the one who’d found AJ in the woods, about to be attacked by a mountain lion. Unsure of what to do after he’d scared off the cat, Anton had brought her home to his mother. And AJ had been like a sister to them ever since. She was the only human in their lives who knew they were bear shifters. But her dramatic entrance into his life had always made Anton sensitive about choices she made.
“Yes, but she’d have had to cut through Shear Woods.” Foregoing his shoes, Anton stalked in through the back door of his house, obviously off to give AJ a piece of his mind about walking in the dark though the woods.
Maxim tugged on his own shirt and shook his hair out of his eyes. “He’s too hard on her.” He hurried after Anton to soften whatever harsh words were sure to be thrown AJ’s way.
Emin watched his brothers disappear into the house before he turned back to Danil. “I don’t know what to think about this woman asking questions.”
Danil shrugged. “I’ll figure out what she’s about and I’ll handle it.”
“Just like always.”
“Just like always,” Danil affirmed, a little smile on his face.
“That wasn’t a compliment,” Emin said, before he turned to go into the house himself.
He left Danil scowling out at the dark night, the ghost of a kiss on his lips.
CHAPTER TWO
Dora grinned at the night as she tossed one leg over the fence and then the other. “Damn,” she muttered as her pant leg snagged and tore a small hole. “These were good pants.”
But she didn’t let it slow her down. Despite a few setbacks, namely two arrests, she was finally making some headway.
For the first time in the four years since her father had passed away, she felt like she was in the right place at the right time. She had some leads, some momentum, some ideas. For the most part, her old panache was back. And that felt good. Like going for a stroll after getting a cast removed.
She jumped down, quiet as a bird, and landed in a three-pointed stance on the ground. She knew there were motion sensor security lights about fifty feet down; she’d cased the place out earlier. So she treaded softly in the opposite direction, knowing there was an outbuilding back in the woods on the edge of the property. Based on what she’d seen before, that’s where the real magic was done.
Dora froze for just a second as an owl hooted in the trees overhead. The noise skittered down her spine like ice, but she grinned with the thrill of it. She didn’t scare easily. And when she did, she liked it.
As she crept along the edge of the fence, keeping in the shadows, Dora realized that it was the second time in one night that she was feeling that zipping thrill. The first had been standing in the Malashovik’s driveway, with 6 plus feet of 200-pound man leaning into her. Good-smelling man, she recalled. Like pine trees and morning, before the sun burns the mist off the world.
But ornery. Jeez. He had not wanted her around. Except for when he’d leaned down like he was going to lap her up like ice cream. But Dora knew that had started out as a way to distract her. And boy had it worked. She was only glad they had been interrupted or else the two of them might still be distracted, tangled up in the sheets somewhere.
And as nice as a little playtime might have been, Dora had a job to do. Some puzzle pieces to put together. She was about 90% sure that Danil and his family were one of those puzzle pieces. So, it was probably better that they didn’t get involved. Objectivity and all.
Not that Dora ever really had a problem staying objective about the men she slept with. They were a means to an end for her. Hopefully a really fun or interesting or talented means to an end. But a means to an end no matter what. There had only ever been one person in her life that Dora had loved: her father. And after he’d passed, she’d made herself a little deal that she wasn’t going down the whole love road again. Not without some real nice insurance. Like a signed and certified contract from God himself saying she wouldn’t be putting that person in the ground any time soon.
She was a strong person, both emotionally and physically. In fact, creeping up on the edge of the outbuilding, Dora scaled the brick wall and crouched on the roof as effortlessly as a monkey. But even she had limits. She wasn’t going to get tangled up in somebody right now. She had her job to do, a mystery to solve, and that was as good as rose petals down the aisle for her.
She put every other thought out of her mind as she crawled along the edge of the roof. She knew that the lights were off inside the building, with the exception of some security lights burning low over the doors. If there was anyone inside, she didn’t think that they were working right now. So, gripping hard on the downspout of the roof, Dora leaned over the edge and slid her head down to peer through the window.
There were test tubes and beakers. Syringes tossed haphazardly over the gleaming metal counters. A layman might have thought it was some kind of meth lab, but Dora knew better. She saw the leather restraints on the walls. The scratch marks. The clumps of thick fur on the ground. With a sick twist of her stomach, she saw the cattle prods on the wall. It matched all the other sites she’d found over the past year. An animal testing facility. But they weren’t testing makeup or a new kind of lotion on the poor creatures. They were testing something else, something that Dora hadn’t been able to figure out yet. But it looked damn close to torture to her.
And with an even further plummet of her stomach, she realized there was a coating of dust over everything. Smashed beakers on the counters and animal droppings on the floor. All signs that this particular operation had been out of business for months.
“Shit,” she murmured, swinging down from the roof and landing quietly on the floor. At least she didn’t have to be in complete stealth mode anymore. But she was deeply frustrated. Every time she got
a new lead on where to find these assholes, catch them in action, they’d already moved on, months before her. It was the opposite of a high speed chase.
Dora leaned in the window, peering to see if there were any clues she’d missed when a stick cracked in the woods behind her.
Dora froze, knowing full well that she was currently backlit by the dull glow of the security lights inside the building. It suddenly occurred to her that she was standing in the dead of the night in the middle of the Washington State wilderness. Though the reasons she’d gone to ask the Malashoviks about bears had been subterfuge, they now suddenly stood up. She supposed she would rather not meet a bear in the flesh right now.
Turning slowly, her back against the brick wall behind her, Dora peered into the woods, knowing with a crawling of skin, that whatever was in there could see her a hell of a lot better than she could see it. Well, worst came to worst, she could swing back up onto the roof. Hopefully whatever it was couldn’t climb.
A light night breeze ruffled the pines, throwing deep shadows through the already dark trees and Dora saw a glinting green for just a moment. A primal terror raced through her, lacing her blood with zinging adrenaline as she realized there was a large animal not fifteen feet from her. The breeze came again, tossing shadows, and Dora saw them again. Twin points of reflection. Two big, green eyes staring at her. And the flick of a tail. She blinked hard. Saw a flash of orange. It was ridiculous. Not possible. But Dora could have sworn she was looking right into the eyes of a-
No. Couldn’t be. Dora blinked and the night shadows swirled around, swallowing up whatever it was that she thought she’d seen. Her eyes couldn’t see it anymore. But her body could feel it. Something raced up her spine and for the first time since she’d hopped the fence, she felt real fear. She hadn’t been scared when she’d thought she might run into whoever was running that lab. But she was worried now about whatever had just slunk back into the forest.