by Zoe Chant
He undressed her slowly, marveling at every inch of skin he revealed: her full rounded breasts, the soft curve of her stomach leading down to her rounded hips and solid thighs. Helen squirmed a little under his gaze, her hands coming up as if to shield herself from view. Tom caught one hand, kissing the soft skin at the underside of her wrist. "You're gorgeous," he said. He kissed her shoulder, the sensitive curve of her neck; felt her shiver with desire. "Beautiful," he whispered.
He kissed his way down her body, letting her reactions teach him what she liked: soft kisses on the side of her breasts, just a hint of teeth when he kissed and sucked her nipples. She liked a firmer touch on her sides, where she was ticklish, but just the gentlest touch of the tips of his fingers on the sensitive insides of her thighs made her gasp, her legs parting to let him in. He kissed his way up her thighs, so close to her that he could almost taste the scent of her in the air, the heady, delicious wetness between her thighs.
When he finally bent down to kiss her clit, Helen's entire body arched, and she gave a low breathless cry. Tom licked and sucked and stroked, burying himself in her scent, her taste. His cock was a throbbing pulse of heat beneath him, but it hardly seemed to matter compared to how good it felt to be able to give her this.
Helen fisted both hands in the sheets. Her hips pushed against him in a hungry, every-faster rhythm. Tom sucked harder, letting her sounds and movements guide him. He slipped one finger inside her, felt how wet she was, felt her muscles fluttering around him. Helen gasped, her body tightening, all her muscles tensing at once as she came with a cry.
She went limp and boneless when it was over, a hazy, blessed-out smile on her face. "Come here," she said. She pulled him up into a slow, languid kiss, her hands roaming over his shoulders and back.
His cock brushed lightly against her stomach. Tom gasped, locking his muscles, trying desperately to resist the impulse to rub against her.
There were condoms in the nightstand, because Tom was a SEAL and believed in being prepared; not that he'd needed them in a long time.
He leaned over and pulled one out, and Helen immediately plucked it out of his hand.
She ran her hands down his back and over his hips, and then finally she was curling one hand around him, holding him steady, while she smoothed the condom on with the other hand. She squeezed down once, lighting all his nerves on fire. Tom gasped.
Helen wrapped her thighs around his hips, her hand still on him, guiding him down between her legs. Both of them moaned when the head of his cock brushed against her. Helen's thighs tightened around his hips, pulling him in.
Her body enveloped him, slick and unbelievably hot. Tom panted, curling over her, fighting for control. He started moving slowly, picking up speed as Helen moved to meet him, her hips thrusting up to meet his. He could smell her arousal already ramping up again, rising fast. He was so close it hurt already, but he held on to his control, kept his thrusts smooth and even in the rhythm her body told him she needed. When he could feel her getting close again, he slipped his hand down between them to rub his thumb over her clit.
Helen threw her head back. Her body tightened in ripples around him as she came for the second time.
Tom felt his careful hold on his control snap like a thread. He gave a few more quick, desperate thrusts, and then pleasure rushed through him like a flood.
He collapsed on his back by her side, his entire body warm and sated and content. Helen curled up against him, resting her head on his shoulder.
Tom dozed for a few minutes, but came awake when Helen started moving, pulling her shirt and pants back on. His chest tightened anxiously—was she going to leave? But Helen immediately snuggled back down against him once she was dressed. Tom wondered if she felt self-conscious about her body. If so, he'd be happy to spend the rest of eternity reassuring her how gorgeous she was.
It felt weird to lounge about naked with Helen fully dressed. Tom stretched out a hand, fished his jeans off the floor, and pulled them back on. They chafed a little uncomfortably, but on the other hand he didn't feel like moving one inch more than he had to, and his boxer briefs had landed somewhere on the other end of the room. He had no idea where his shirt might have ended up, either.
The bandage around his upper arm had come half untucked. He pulled it tight again.
Helen ran her fingers across his chest. She followed the line of the jagged scars running from his shoulder to his chest. "What happened here?" she asked quietly.
"Helicopter crash," Tom said. He twisted so he could look at her. He hadn't talked about this in years. He avoided taking his shirt off in public these days, just to make sure the topic wouldn't come up. But Helen wasn't some curious paparazzi. For the first time, he found that he did want to tell the story.
"We were on a mission in Afghanistan, Alan and me. They were flying us in by helicopter. There was a weapons storage facility we were supposed to take out, a warehouse in the middle of nowhere."
The pilot had been flying blind, the thick brown clouds of a dust storm roiling below them, nothing but the instruments to guide him. Haboob, the locals called that kind of weather. It confused the radar and made it impossible to see anything. At least the GPS was working fine, though—or so they'd thought.
And then the clouds tore open beneath them, the dust blowing away in the crosswinds, the air clearing within minutes. Tom had seen it happen before, but it still surprised him how quickly the weather could change out here. Suddenly they were completely exposed, the cloud cover gone, flying over a village that shouldn't have been there at all. The GPS had failed. They'd ended up sixty miles off course, in the middle of a stronghold of the insurgents.
"There were a dozen guys with RPGs in that town—you know what an RPG is?" he interrupted himself.
"Those big grenade launchers you put on your shoulder?" Helen asked, lifting her hands in an impression of someone holding one.
"Yeah," Tom said. "Those."
He could still hear the sound they'd made, the shrill whine of a missile missing the helicopter by inches. He'd watched the pilot dodging and weaving, wishing it was him on the controls.
They'd gotten hit.
He only vaguely remembered the next few moments after that: the juddering pain of impact, a blur of flying shrapnel, the roar of the damaged engine. Their pilot had been killed. Tom had taken his seat, fought to get some semblance of control over the wildly spinning helicopter. All he'd known was that they couldn't go down there, not in the middle of a town, with civilians around.
It had taken every bit of his skill to keep them in the air long enough to get to open ground before the helicopter crashed.
Alan broke his leg; Tom had ended up with shrapnel in his arm. They'd more or less carried each other out of there, seventy miles through enemy territory, shifting to bear form whenever they dared, both of them bleeding, half starved by the end. It had taken them three weeks.
They'd been in the service for years by that point, both of them increasingly disillusioned, increasingly exhausted.They'd taken the honorable medical discharge they were offered, and taken it gladly. Neither of them wanted to get back out there; neither of them wanted to point a gun at another human being ever again.
"That's when we founded NavTec and started working on our software," Tom said. "I'd always done some programming as a hobby, but that's when I got serious about it. That hadn't been the first time the GPS let us down. The program the military used at the time was a mess. Alan comes from a rich family, so he bankrolled us. We just wanted to make something pilots could actually rely on—neither of us thought it'd get as big as it did. Almost everything with a GPS in it uses NavTec software, at this point—cars, phones, planes…"
"That's amazing," Helen said. But then she frowned. "Wait. So you guys had the idea together, Alan put up all the money, and you did most of the work—and then this Mr. Glenn comes in and takes all the credit? How on Earth did that happen?"
Oh damn. Tom winced. The moment of truth; now he de
finitely couldn't put it off any longer.
"There's something I need to tell you," he said.
An explosion shook the walls.
Helen screamed. Tom rolled to his feet, reaching for the knife, which—wasn't on his bedside table anymore, damn it—placing himself protectively in front of his mate as black-clad men stormed the room. Inside him, the bear was roaring to get out. They were threatening his mate. He'd kill them, he'd kill them all—
Tom clenched his teeth, hanging on to control by a thread. He couldn't shift now. They were surrounded by a ring of mercenaries, all of them wearing body armor, all of them bristling with guns. Even as a bear, he couldn't take them all. If they panicked and started shooting, there'd be no way to make sure Helen was safe.
Slowly, reluctantly, rage boiling inside him, he raised his hands.
Helen got up from the bed. Tom shifted to keep his body between her and the men's guns.
"What do you want?" Helen asked. Her voice shook. Inside Tom, the bear roared in helpless fury. His mate was scared. He should be fighting, he should be rending her enemies limb from limb…
"You're coming with us," one of the men said—the leader, by the way the rest of the men deferred to him. "Mr. Amodeo wants to see you."
Helen flinched, shifting closer to Tom. He tugged her more closely behind him. "Leave her alone," he growled.
The leader pointed his gun right at Tom's face. "Don't try anything stupid," he said. "Mr. Amodeo wants her alive. Be quiet and come with us, and no one has to get hurt."
He turned to his men. "Take him, too."
"What? That wasn't in the plan," one of the men said.
"So we improvise. Don't you recognize him? That's Thomas Glenn. Do you have any idea how much ransom we can get for a billionaire CEO? Amodeo isn't paying us enough to pass that up. We've got enough chloroform for two people."
"What?" Helen asked. Her voice was quiet enough that Tom didn't think any of the men heard it. Her stricken tone cut at him like a knife.
One of the men was coming towards them, the rag in his hand exuding a sharp, sickening chemical smell.
"I'm sorry. I was going to tell you," Tom said miserably. There was no time left to explain. The man pressed the rag over his face, the smell of chloroform flooded his nose, and the world went black.
***
Helen woke up slowly. Her head was pounding. She opened her eyes with an effort, blinking against the spots swimming through her vision.
"… you okay? Helen? Helen! Are you okay?" Tom was asking.
Something was holding her arm pulled back at an uncomfortable angle. She yanked at it, irritated.
"Ow," Tom said mildly, which was when she realized they were cuffed together, back to back. They were locked in what seemed to be some kind of basement room, dank and cool, illuminated only by a single bare light bulb swinging from the ceiling. There was a heavy steel door between them and freedom, and presumably guards beyond it. Helen shuddered. Oh God, what are we going to do?
"You okay?" Tom asked again.
"Yeah," Helen said, feeling warmed at the tender concern in his voice. Her protective bodyguard.
…But no, that wasn't right, was it? She frowned as the events of their capture slowly swam back into focus. That's Thomas Glenn. Do you have any idea how much ransom we can get for a billionaire CEO?
Tom had been lying to her from the beginning. He wasn't a bodyguard; he wasn't the man he'd claimed to be.
Hot tears stung at her eyes. It was all just too much, all those horrible events of the past few days. And now the one man she thought she could trust had turned out to be a liar, too. Helen sniffled, then swiped her face against her shoulder, wiping her tears away as best she could with her hands bound. She wasn't going to cry about him of all things, dammit, not with everything else that was happening. What was one lie compared to everything else that had happened to her?
And yet somehow his betrayal hurt worse than anything else.
"I'm sorry, Helen," Tom said. He sounded miserable.
Good, Helen thought angrily, You should feel bad, and then immediately felt guilty; whatever else he was, he'd saved her life, he'd gotten hurt defending her, and this kidnapping hadn't been his fault in any way.
"We've got to get out of here," Tom said. "Do you have anything in your pockets? A paperclip, anything—"
"I've got a pen," she said. There'd been a pad of paper and a pen by the phone when she'd called Isabella. She'd fidgeted with the pen while she was on the phone, and pocketed it without thinking.
"Perfect. Give it here," Tom said.
It took some contortions to get at her pocket, the way they were cuffed together. Tom had to twist his shoulder awkwardly backwards to let her reach at all. He drew in a tight breath.
"Your shoulder—" Helen said anxiously. That was his wounded arm.
"It's fine," Tom said quickly.
But when she twisted her head back to look at him, she could see a new spot of blood darkening the bandage around his upper arm. She winced. He might be a liar, but there was nothing fake about his courage.
Tom worked the thin point of the pen into the cuff's lock, swearing under his breath when they resisted his effort. "I'm way out of practice with this kind of stuff," he muttered.
The lock finally popped open. Tom pulled his hand out of the cuff. With one hand free, the other lock went much faster—just in time, too. Helen could hear the sound of raised voices outside the door, getting closer— "He's the only one who's worth any money alive. If Amodeo says he wants her dead, I'm not going to argue," one of the men was saying.
An icy shudder ran down Helen's spine. Tom growled, a low sound that vibrated deep in his powerful chest.
"Do you trust me?" he asked, his voice urgent. He'd placed himself between her and the door, shielding her with his body the way he'd done in his bedroom. His broad shoulders made a reassuringly solid wall between her and the men coming for her.
"Yes," Helen said instinctively, her thoughts only on the oncoming danger. But that wasn't quite true anymore, was it? "…Yes," she said, more slowly.
Tom winced. "Can you trust that I'll try to keep you safe?" he qualified.
"Yes," Helen said immediately. That much, she was completely sure of. He'd already risked his life to protect hers twice, after all.
"I need you to trust that whatever happens, I'm never going to hurt you. Can you do that?"
The sounds outside the door were getting louder, heavy boots pounding downstairs.
"You're not the one I'm worried is going to hurt me here!" Helen said, baffled by this whole line of questioning.
"You might be in a minute. I'm sorry. There's something else I haven't been telling you."
"Oh my God, Tom, now's not the time for heartfelt confessions!" Helen yelled.
The door crashed open. Men with guns flooded the room. Tom let out a wild, inhuman roar, a battle cry—no, it really was a roar. She'd never heard a human being make a sound like that. His body seemed to be changing in front of her eyes: his broad shoulders growing wider, a shimmering haze rising from his skin.
There was a bear standing where Tom had been a second ago, an enormous polar bear. When it rose on its hind legs, its head brushed the high ceiling. The roar it let out shook the walls.
The men staggered to halt, staring. Helen's breath caught inside her chest.
The bear lunged.
The men went down like bowling pins under the bear's enormous paws. Helen's heart soared. It was terrifying and yet strangely beautiful to watch the bear fighting, a force of nature as powerful as a hurricane. Tom had fought like that as a human, too, the same speed, the same grace. With the bear's strength backing him he seemed unstoppable.
But there were a lot of men, and more crowding down the steps every second. And even a bear couldn't stop a bullet.
Helen watched in horror as one of the men ducked past Tom while he was distracted, getting behind his back—raising a machine gun at the back of Tom's head—
>
Time seemed to slow down. Everything in the room seemed suddenly brighter, sharper. Light glinted off the barrels of the guns, the bear's slashing claws, a knife on the floor, lying forgotten where one of the mercenaries had dropped it—
Helen picked it up in a shaking hand, flipped it around the way Tom had showed her. Like this. Stab down, not up.
The knife was solid and heavy in her hand. The edge glinted, deadly sharp.
"Hey, you!" Helen shouted, kicking the mercenary in the back of his knee. He staggered, whirled around, the gun that had been pointed at Tom's head swinging towards her.
She rammed the knife into his leg.
The man screamed. He went down on one knee, but he was already recovering from the surprise, lifting his gun—
The bear was there, one huge paw swinging out like a battering ram. The mercenary went down.
Around them, things had gotten quiet. Men were sprawled out dazed or unconscious on the floor all around them. No one else was coming down the stairs.
The bear nosed at her anxiously.
"I'm fine," Helen said. Her voice shook.
She was talking to a bear.
She was probably having a psychotic break.
But she'd seen what she'd seen, and she wasn't going to doubt her own mind. Tom had turned into the bear, and the bear had protected her.
She reached out, touching its side with a tentative hand. The bear's fur was warm and dense, softer than she'd expected. More real than any dream could possibly be.
Even standing on all fours, it came up to her shoulders. But despite its size, despite its ferocious claws and fangs, it didn't frighten her. Its blue eyes were warm and gentle, full of concern.
"It's you, isn't it? Tom?" Helen asked.
The bear nodded.
"Wow."
She was probably going to be really freaked out about this at some point in the future. Right now, there were more important things on her mind.
"Are there any more men up there?"
The bear tilted his head, listening. After a moment, he nodded again. He started walking towards the door.