“But, being underground with only one access was what made you feel so safe in your den!” she protested.
“And I’ll still feel safe in my den,” I assured her. “This way, though, I get to share some of it with you. If it’ll help, I’ve figured out a way to put skylights in the other parts, but let’s see how you do in this room first, okay?”
She nodded. “Okay, but can you go in first, so I’m coming towards you when I go in?”
And so she could turn and run without me to stop her, if she freaked. I didn’t point out the obvious, and went in first to stand under a light so she could easily focus on me.
She poked her head in and looked around first. “Oh, this doesn’t look like a cave!”
“No, Gabs,” I said with a smile, “it’s all framed in like a house. I’m a shapeshifter, not an actual bear.”
She blushed as she walked in. “I know. I guess I just figured you’d turned a cave into your living space.”
“No, I used a bulldozer to excavate, and built it as one would any basement – I just put dirt back on top of it once I was finished.”
The edge of the hill was mostly a cliff face, and I’d chiseled through it and tunneled the ten or so feet to my bedroom. I’d borrowed from the architecture of some old castles, so while the outer window was one foot by six inches, the inner opening was three feet by three feet. I’d worked the vines already in the area over the opening to camouflage it from outside, though this was private property and there was no reason for anyone to be out there. Still, she had to look through the vines to see outside, and I hoped it would be enough.
She stood by herself several feet away from me for several long minutes. I didn’t smell fear coming from her, but I still worried.
When she finally turned to me and threw her arms around me, I breathed easy. “It’s perfect! I never would’ve asked you to do this to your house, but thank you so much!”
I pushed her hair back from her face, happy it was down and not up on top of her head all prissy as shit. “I want you to feel comfortable in my space, Gabs.”
“My name was Avye, before. Avalyn Lepori. My mom called me Avs. No one has ever called me Gabs, and I’m glad you do.”
“I’d love to hear about your mom, but only when you’re ready to tell me.”
“I’ve pieced it together, but there are still questions. I’m pretty sure he killed her when I was four or five.” She shrugged, uncomfortable. “The official version of my new identity has her dying when I was a teen, but I was little when I lost her.”
I sat in my large wooden rocking chair and pulled her into my lap. If she wanted to talk, I wanted to listen.
“My mom was born a slave, my dad was minor royalty.” She shook her head, “I’ve gotten used to thinking of him as Dwight. It’s easier than calling a monster daddy.”
“Then call him Dwight.”
“Dwight apparently fell in love with my mom when she was young, but his parents insisted he date society girls of his station. Mom was owned by a kind man who believes happy slaves are easier to manage, and she was treated well. It sounds awful to say she started working in what amounts to a brothel before she was ten, but it’s normal for rabbits to become sexually active that young, and you know we need sex to survive once we’ve had our first orgasm, so…” She shrugged. “From what I gather, from talking to her friends and family, she was happy.”
She was quiet for several long minutes and I didn’t urge her to continue. She’d tell me in her own time.
Finally, she said, “My dad went to see her several times a week, and apparently paid to have her all night at least once a week. A few times, he paid to take her on vacation with him, so she was his the entire time. When she was thirteen he came of age enough he could act with a little more autonomy, without so much of his parents’ influence, and he bought her outright, though he didn’t set her free. She still belonged to him.” She sighed and leaned into me, and I snugged her in a little closer. “The royal family wouldn’t let him marry her. He moved her in with him and they lived together a couple of years before he moved them to this realm, where he married her in Vegas, of all places.”
“How did he come up with enough human money to get new identities and start a life here?”
“No one knows for sure, but everyone seems to want to believe he stole it from humans and didn’t kill anyone at that point in his life.”
“You said in the meeting today he made sex toys?”
“Yeah. Dildos and vibrators and butt plugs and such.” She chuckled. “What else would a rabbit shapeshifter trying to make a living in this realm do?”
She stood, paced back and forth a half-dozen times, and climbed back into my lap. “My mom wasn’t part of the sex-toy business, and it sounds like he kept her home as much as possible. Rabbits aren’t monogamous and don’t get jealous, but my dad seems to have gone off the deep end with her and felt the need to keep men away from her.”
Her speech got faster, as if she wanted to get through the story and be done with it, and my heart broke for her. “Rabbits get pregnant in rabbit form, not human form. The gestation period is months shorter, you have more kids at once, and if they’re born as rabbits and you wait six months before changing them to human for the first time, you end up with preschool sized humans instead of completely helpless infants. It’s just the way it’s done. Rabbits never get pregnant in our two-legged form. However, my dad decided he wanted her to get pregnant as a human, so as far as I know, I’m one of the few rabbits ever born as a human, and the only one currently alive.”
She drew in a quick breath and kept going, even faster now than before. “It seems that the process of getting pregnant changed my mom’s figure in ways he hadn’t anticipated, and she no longer turned him on as she had as a young teen. She was seventeen when I was born, though her fake identity listed her as twenty-four. The FBI believes he started killing about fourteen months after I was born, but there are some brutal rapes they’ve attributed to him starting when my mom was still pregnant with me.” She closed her eyes and kept talking. “Hundreds of rapes, once they knew what to look for — by someone who fucked the girls for hours until they barely had any skin left inside. Girls from nine to fourteen who looked like my mom. All over the country, with no way he could’ve made it from one place to another without a jet airplane. In some cases, no way even with an airplane. He’d rape someone in California and then someone else in New York two hours later.”
She’d covered her face with her hands to get the last couple of sentences out, once again showing me the shame she felt for her father’s actions. I wanted to tell her — again — she wasn’t responsible for his crimes, but I knew this wasn’t a logical reaction, so rational arguments weren’t going to help. However, she needed to talk about it and I needed to hear it, so I asked another question to keep the conversation going. “But the human authorities don’t know about Faerie, and I’m guessing your dad could teleport through Faerie and come out another door?”
She nodded. “I can, too. Because I’m the child of a slave I’m not officially royalty, but I have most of the powers and abilities of royal Rabbits. I’m my father’s daughter and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Not even me.”
My heart broke for her, but while she was willing to talk, we needed to get as much out in the open as we could. “You said your dad kept your hair cut as if you were a boy?”
She nodded. “Aaron Drake got me pictures and information from the government’s files, and the psychiatrist who spoke with Dwight determined that as I grew older and became the spitting image of my mother, he had to fight the urges he felt towards me, which apparently weren’t so fatherly. He tried to convince himself I was his son, though he didn’t tell me that part. He bought me sports bras and made me wear them anytime I was outside of my bedroom, and he never came to my bedroom. He cut my hair once a week, and he bought my clothes. He constantly preached to me about how humans feel about those who are outwardly sexual, a
nd without telling me I should hide my sexuality, he let me know I should. He made me ashamed to be a girl.”
She sat back and met my gaze. “Aaron said that if you’re up to it, he’ll get you an invitation to Faerie so you can see how it is for Rabbits, there. Sex is a celebration of life, and we do it with each other as often as humans hug, I think. It isn’t a big deal there, like it is here. Not for us, anyway. It’s just… I don’t know. It’s how we are. We fuck. A lot. Men and women marry and raise kids together, but they still have sex with whoever they want. There’s kind of an unwritten rule about not having sex with someone your spouse doesn’t like, but otherwise, anyone’s fair game.”
“How can a man be sure his wife’s kids are his?”
“I told you I had a procedure done in Faerie that will keep me from getting pregnant for a year. All rabbits have it done before they have sex for the first time, and then every year until they’re ready to become a parent. Males and females, so there’s double protection. If a couple wants to get pregnant, they have it reversed and then don’t fuck anyone else until she’s pregnant. We’re quite fertile, so it usually doesn’t take more than a couple of days.”
“If Aaron can get me a proper invitation, I’d love to come with you to Faerie. I have obligations with the gun shop, so if it’s to be soon then it can only be for a few days, but if we push it out a month or so, I could be gone longer.”
“I don’t know that they’ll let you stay overnight. The Fae are pretty nervous about certain predators — especially bears and wolves. I’ve never understood why they’re okay with leopards and lions, but for some reason they don’t freak over the cats.”
Chapter Fifteen
Gabby
I’d never intended to tell anyone my story, but Horse had been there for me so much in the past two days.
Ghost had taken me to safety because he knew I was important to Horse, and then Horse hadn’t left my side once he’d gotten to me.
I’m not sure I could’ve talked to the wolves with a brave face today if he hadn’t been right there beside me, making sure I was safe.
I mean, sure, I knew The Dragon King would keep me safe, but his obligation was to my aunt in the beginning, though I believed now his wife was insisting he look out for me. Sophia had turned into an unexpectedly good friend. Nevertheless, Horse cared for me, and gave me moral support as well as physical backing.
Horse sighed now as he pulled me closer and said, “I have something I have to do tonight. I agreed to do it weeks ago and I can’t pull out. You can come with me if you want, and Dawg and Ghost will stay with you while I’m fighting… or you can stay here, or upstairs, and wait for me to come home.”
“Who do you have to fight?”
“It’s an organized fight, Gabs — in a ring with a referee. It isn’t a fight to the death or anything, just until one of us goes down or is forced to shift.”
* * * *
So much testosterone in one place, I wasn’t sure I could stand to be in the building if I wasn’t at Horse’s side. The crowd parted for him as we walked through. I could feel and hear them smelling me, but he walked us past them and to an area behind a chain link fence.
“I have three people on my team tonight,” he told a large, gnarled man who smelled of big cat, though I couldn’t place which.
Horse nodded towards me. “She’s mine. I trust she’ll be safe behind the fence.”
The old man sniffed my direction and shook his head. “She’s safe from me but I can’t make guarantees beyond that.”
“Just keep everyone out of the fenced area that isn’t supposed to be back here and my guys will handle it from there.”
The man dipped his chin in what I assumed was agreement, and Horse pulled his shirt and sweatpants off to reveal the loose shorts he wore beneath.
I love seeing Horse naked. He’s six and a half feet of heavily muscled man, and you can almost see the bear in him even when he’s in human form. I hadn’t expected my libido to kick in at seeing him in shorts, but Dawg groaned beside me when it did. “You aren’t going to make this easy on us, are you Gabby?”
“Sorry. What can I say? He does it for me.”
“So I can smell, but if you could dial it back a notch before the other shapeshifters smell it, that’d be great.”
Right, because I’m a helpless rabbit, and the audience was made of all predators, from what I smelled as we walked in.
Two people were fighting in the center of the large barn already, and there was a lot of blood on the floor. A few sniffs told me a hawk and eagle were fighting, and it looked like the hawk was winning.
I cringed every time fist met flesh. The violence of the sound, the energy of the building, it was too much, and yet I couldn’t look away. Dawg had his arm around me protectively and I leaned into the security of his embrace. Several long minutes later one of the fighters went down, and when he began to rise he did so as a majestic eagle. The referee lifted the hawk shifter’s hand as a bell dinged several times, and some of the crowd cheered while others booed.
Ghost was working with Horse a few feet away, holding his hands up so Horse could hit them, so I looked to Dawg for an explanation.
“If you shift, you lose. Humans have to be vetted at least a week ahead of time before we can bring them to watch, and if any are here they’re on the upper level behind chicken wire so management can be sure they don’t get any blood or saliva on them. Everyone here knows about shapeshifters.”
Dawg stayed with me while someone ran a mop around the ring to get the majority of the blood up, and Horse stood at a fence waiting to go in. I wanted to kiss my big Bear before he went in there, but there wasn’t an opportunity.
Just before he stepped in, he looked my way and mouthed, “I’ll be fine.” He spent several seconds looking at Dawg and Ghost, his expression clearly saying he expected them to keep me safe, and then the announcer was giving a dramatic introduction that made it clear this was the main event of the night.
The other fighter was also a bear – a Kodiak. According to Dawg, it was a packed house tonight and tickets had been sold out for a while. Horse hadn’t been kidding about not being able to bow out — this was a big deal. All of these people had come to see a Grizzly fight a Kodiak.
Dawg stood behind me with his arms around me as the fight started. I now associated him with safety, but it was still almost too much for me, even in the comfort and safety of Dawg’s strong but soothing arms. The combination of all of the wolves and other predators surrounding the combat cage, all of the testosterone because of the fight, plus having to watch Horse in an all-out brawl… it was too much. Horse had known it might be and he’d tried to warn me, but it sounded like this was an important part of his life so I’d wanted to come.
Partway through I turned and buried my head in Dawg’s chest, sure I couldn’t watch.
Until the next time the crowd yelled and I needed to know what happened, and I turned back around.
The two fighters were evenly matched, and basically beat the living hell out of each other. Horse ended up winning, but it was a close call and the final knockout punch could’ve easily come from either of them.
But it didn’t, and as the referee held Horse’s hand over his head and the bell dinged and the crowd cheered, I wanted to throw my arms around him no matter the sweat and blood.
And that’s exactly what I did when he finally made it to us. Dawg chuckled as Ghost stood beside Horse and put his arm around him for support.
“Okay big guy, let’s get you into the other room so you can change.”
I’ve seen him in bear form once, and only for a few seconds. I asked to see and he showed me, but then went right back to human form when he smelled my fear. I didn’t mean to be afraid but he’s a damned big bear.
Now, however, when he shifted into a gigantic bear he didn’t scare me at all. He still smelled like Horse, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he’s my protector and he’ll never hurt me.
I wa
lked up to him and stood inches in front of him, my neck craned to see his face. He touched my cheek with a bear claw — so gentle, and then he morphed back into his human form.
His claw turned to a hand without leaving my cheek, and he curled his warm fingers around my head in a gentle embrace. “This is why you need to wear dresses, Gabs, so I can run these guys out of the room and bend you over the back of a chair and take you when you go and do something like that. You weren’t afraid at all, and I don’t think you have any idea how much that means to me.” The emotion in his eyes told me how much it meant, and I leaned into him as he put his arms around me.
I could also smell his arousal, his need, and I turned to look at Dawg and Ghost and said, “Out.”
I pushed my jeans down as they walked out the door. I had the motorcycle boots on Horse had bought me and it takes forever to get them off, so my jeans would just have to be okay down around my knees.
He knows me well enough by now to be assured his words were all the foreplay I needed, and yet he still fingered me a few seconds from behind, just to make sure I was good and needy.
He pressed his hard length to my opening and chuckled when I groaned. “Love it that you’re so needy for me, Gabs. Love that you aren’t afraid of me anymore.”
He slid in and I pushed back, and our low moans filled the room. He went all the way in slowly, and I could smell his arousal. He’d told me many times now how he’d never been able to bury all the way in someone’s pussy, and how much it meant to him that I could take all of him.
We’d had one quickie, when I’d had about five minutes before I needed to leave for class and he’d bent me over and made use of the time. This was our second quickie and he was once again done in a matter of minutes, but as always — he gave me everything in him during the orgasm, and he timed it so we came together. I got the thrill of the fight, the feeling of being alive when his fist hit the other man’s face, and when his own head was rocked back from the impact. I got the energy of the crowd as they cheered, and I got how much he cared for me.
Horse (Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Club Book 6) Page 7