Texas was a strange place. So dry and so dusty, yet wide open, with an incredible amount of space in between highly built up areas. When she’d seen one of the highways in Houston for the first time, she’d found it incredible that so much land was given over to driving. In her village, this would have been farmland! But that aside, the roads had been crazy—like a bowl of noodles or some kind of labyrinth that everyone native to this area seemed quite at ease with.
Raising an arm, she hailed a cab. When one pulled up beside her, she climbed in and gave the address.
As the taxi took her back to the clubhouse, she kept her eyes pinned on the view outside and ignored the driver who kept flashing glances back at her. She didn’t like the look buried in his gaze, so she sat primly, drew no attention to herself, and watched the world pass by. She marveled at the wacky races that were going on around her as they crossed over to Channelview.
“Did you buy anything nice?”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“At the mall. Did you buy anything nice?” He stared at her through the rear-view mirror, that banked heat in his eyes that she’d seen so often before. Why was it men looked at her that way? Why didn’t she get looks of respect or warmth?
It wasn’t fair. She hated feeling like prey.
“No.” She kept her answer curt, turning back to the road to discourage further conversation.
“You don’t have many bags,” the man persisted.
“Because I didn’t go there to shop.” She clenched her hands tightly together in her lap.
“Did you go to meet friends? Was it your boyfriend?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” Her words were sharper than she’d have liked, a little more defensive too. As she caught sight of a landmark she recognized, she realized they’d made it to the small township where the clubhouse sat on the outskirts, and unease hit her at how isolated she was now with the driver. She cleared her throat and said, “You take the next left here.”
She looked at him cautiously, hating the fact she was alone with him. Why hadn’t she realized she’d be alone with a man on this drive? On roads that were solitary, where a man could easily overpower a woman.
Mischa felt her heart start to pound and her stomach began to churn with terror. God, she was sick of viewing each and every man as a potential rapist, but with her past, it was a belief that was hard to overcome.
She’d known her attackers. They’d known her. That hadn’t stopped them. Why wouldn’t a stranger attack her when they felt no connection to her at all?
But just when she could feel sweat start to make her face clammy, she realized the tables had turned, yet she wasn’t sure why. He was the uneasy one. Tension filled him to the point that she could see the hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention. She peered around the road, seeing no reason other than the clubhouse in the distance. The side wall was scrawled with graffiti, but she was used to seeing it by now and didn’t think anything of it. She realized he must know the name merged into the designs. The club name, The Nomads, was part of a large pattern involving fiery blazes and bears, of all things. They all had a thing for bears though.
Kiko had them on his arms, and most of the brothers had a paw print or some variation on their bodies—not that she’d been looking or anything.
Knowing the shoe was on the other foot now, she could relax a little. She could enjoy his discomfort, as horrible as that sounded.
There was definitely a perk to lodging with people most of society was terrified of. And the irony was, those people, these so-called outlaws, had been utterly kind to her and the women she’d been trafficked with.
The car swerved around a bend, shooting up a spray of dust. The land was one big puddle of dust around here. As they drove down the road carved out over years of bikes riding on it, huge clouds of it rained down over the car, making it hard to see through the fine silty layer that covered the windshield.
By the time they’d made it to the gates of the clubhouse, the driver looked more anxious than ever. She studied him, curious as to why he was so nervous, but she felt his relief when he braked to a halt and told her how much the fare was.
The distance back was a little longer than she’d anticipated, and she handed over a chunk of the notes Kiko had given her with a guilty smile. It had been an expensive rebellion, but it was worth it.
Mischa wanted her feet planted firmly on the ground.
Girls in her village had imagined life in America to be one long round of parties, shopping, and getting their hair and nails done in beauty salons.
It wasn’t like that at all.
Jobs weren’t difficult to find—if you had papers and didn’t mind doing the jobs Americans didn’t want to do. Only trouble was, Mischa had no papers. Nor did any of the other girls. So, menial jobs were all that were available to her, and on the predictably low wages, she could probably afford to get one hand’s worth of nails manicured. If she was lucky, and if she didn’t mind walking around with one set of gel nails on the right and a bare hand on the left.
The gate to the clubhouse was wide, but there was a smaller gate that opened if you had a key—something Kiko had given her a while back. As she peered back at the desolate land around her, Mischa chuckled to herself at the speed in which the taxi was driving back toward civilization.
The speed confirmed her belief that he knew of the biker gang, and he must have been frightened by their reputation. Though the MC members had been nothing but kind to the women in their care, they were big, and they looked rough. Violent. Even Kiko, who treated her like spun glass, looked rough around the edges, more comfortable in a bar brawl than the bar itself.
Still smirking to herself, enjoying the man’s fear, she opened the gate and slipped inside. The front courtyard was empty, which had her lifting her brows in surprise.
Normally, the men parked their bikes out here, and most of the riders spent hours tinkering with them, cleaning them up or fixing parts that as far as she could see—she’d repaired farm machinery a time or two—had nothing wrong with them. Because of this tinkering habit, there were usually more men outside than in during the day. At night, they came in, congregating in an area that had a bar and a pool table, as well as dozens of tables and chairs.
Now, however, the bikes were here, but the men were not.
In fact, this side of the house, facing north, was quiet—so quiet that as she peered around, she was a little spooked out by it. Had the cartel been here and attacked while they were out? Had the trip to the mall been for a reason?
No. Of course the cartel hadn’t attacked. The bikes wouldn’t be here if something had happened. The men would be out riding to God knew where, not here like sitting ducks.
They’d be taking action, not waiting for something to happen.
Regardless of her reasoning, she was perturbed by the quiet. And then she heard a roar. It wasn’t the roar of a crowd or even a man’s bellow of rage or satisfaction. It belonged to an animal, and it had her rearing back in stunned surprise.
Then came another roar, and she heard a slight deviation to it. It was huskier, deeper... a different bellow belonging to another animal.
Two roaring animals in the backyard?
Was that possible?
Well, she’d learned that anything was possible in America, but whether it was likely was another matter entirely.
Another roar came and another. Mischa realized she had to find out what the source was. Were the men doing what some of the guys in her village had done—put two males together and let them tear each other to pieces? She’d seen that happen with dogs, cocks, and when two poor bears had been caught, they’d been put out to fight too.
Shuddering in disgust, she peered up at the clubhouse, wondering if the best way to look out at the yard was to go inside. But if someone saw her standing at a window, they’d know she was watching. The men had obviously gone out of their way to get the women off the premises, and though Mischa was
grateful to the MC for all they’d done to her, she didn’t trust those noises. They were up to something. So, once she’d decided that staring out the window would make her too visible, she decided instead to head for a passageway down the side of the building. Parched grass lined the walkway, but down the center, there was a well-trodden, half muddy, half sandy path.
As she approached the backyard, she stopped a step or two back, and then, clinging to the wall, she peered around the side, making herself as small as she could.
She blinked at the sight before her, then blinked again.
And when no amount of blinking made a blind bit of difference, and she still saw what had to be thirty or bears clambering around the backyard, she could contain emotion no longer.
She screamed.
And she screamed.
And she screamed.
***
Kiko rubbed his ass against the dry, spiky grass, loving how the texture dragged at his fur. Christ, it felt good, like one big scratch that went to the root. Nothing was more satisfying… well, that was because his mate hadn’t gotten her hands on him yet. Until that day, this was as satisfying as his life got.
He felt like groaning at the idea of his mate’s small fingers grabbing a firm hold on his cock. Those limpid eyes of hers, so soft and sultry in their hazel coloring, yet capable of such sharp intelligence, made his level of horniness shoot through the roof. He started to picture her jacking him off, lowering herself to her knees to take him in her mouth, and then decided to stop killing himself.
It was a slow torture being with her yet not being with her, and this was his moment to be his base self. Thoughts of his mate were always wonderful, but they were also painful. In his bear form, he couldn’t handle the pain so well. It tended to make him aggressive, which wasn’t good because it had been too long since he’d shifted—far too long. In fact, it had been a few weeks before they’d saved the women from the cartel’s clutches, and boy, had he regretted that when they’d brought the party of terrified females back to the clubhouse.
They’d been scared enough of the men in their skins, only Christ knew what their reactions would be if they’d seen them in their furs.
It wasn’t that humans didn’t know Shifters existed. On the contrary, humans were well aware they did. Without their contribution to the Second World War, a time when Shifters revealed themselves and their strengths to the Allied commands, the world today might be a very different place.
Kiko had been one of the few in the club to fight on the front lines back in the day. Some of the guys had been around back then—most of them were well into their early hundreds around here—but hardly any had chosen to fight.
Though those days were when the Shifter community had revealed themselves to the world at large, many had refused to fight in the human war, not out of cowardice, but out of fear of revealing themselves to be different.
And they’d been right.
If he could do it all again, he wouldn’t have signed himself up for battle. No fucking way.
He remembered the carnage, the hell of battle.
He’d have to be insane to volunteer for that again, especially as humans always had such a unique way of showing their appreciation, cutting them up and experimenting on them as part of their ‘tactics’.
He shuddered at the thought, trying to force his mind down other, less gruesome paths. He’d been spared from the experiments by an explosion near the base he’d been on. If that bomb hadn’t landed at that precise moment, Kiko didn’t know if he’d even be around to wriggle joyfully on the grass.
It was fucking shit when an American had to give thanks to the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, for saving his ass.
It had never set well with Kiko, and as a result, he was more cautious about their dual identities than most. His presence on the Council had been instrumental in insuring the Ukrainian females were kept fully in the dark as to their abilities. Mars wasn’t as anal about it as he was. All Shifters were wary, but he was uber cautious.
And who could fucking blame him?
When the war had taken a turning point, when it looked like the Nazis were going to win, he’d stepped forward to help out. When many had gone to ground, he hadn’t. And for his thanks, he was locked up and used as a fucking lab rat.
Letting out a huge roar, one that released his anger and tension into the air rather than letting it build up inside, he clambered onto his feet before rocking back onto his butt once more and wriggling around like a happy cub.
His bear was feeling playful today, mostly because its world was starting to go right for once.
His mate, while not here at the moment, was known to him. Even the beast understood why Kiko was taking their courtship of her slow. The bear recognized the trauma Mischa had been through because it too had been traumatized.
As long as she didn’t leave the clubhouse like some of the other women had, running as though the bikers would change their minds and decide to use them as the cartel had intended, he was fine. His animal could keep on the downlow, and as far as Kiko was aware, Mischa was the most settled of all the women, so he didn’t have to fear she’d run off.
A part of him hoped that it was because of his presence. She might not have known she was his mate, might have been too scared to even let her soul open up and acknowledge the fact she had found her other half, but deep down inside, she could at least feel more at ease, comfortable in the knowledge that she was safe.
Because she was.
Kiko would kill to protect her. Hell, any of the men would kill to protect any of the females at the clubhouse.
Shifters, Bears, in particular, could never understand why human males treated their females like shit. Females were rare in their culture, and the mate bond was revered. Even the old ladies, the women who stayed at the clubhouse and, to be frank, earned their keep on their backs, were treated with decency.
Mars had recently turfed a lot of them out, not because he was a dick, but because the Prez before Mars, the real dick called Jackson, had been using them as spies—using the guys’ pillow talk to his own advantage.
He was glad Jackson was dead. He only wished it had been by his hand and not Mars’s. Although, Mars had deserved the kill. Jackson had put Mars’s mate in danger. Annette had almost died thanks to round after round of bad business decisions that had put the club not only in troubled waters financially, but had put them in danger too.
Well, no more. Mars was running the club, was keeping it as straight and narrow as a biker gang could possibly be when they were at war with a cartel and had enemies left, right, and center.
When his bear wriggled at the thought of his mate being in danger, rage starting to flood him at the notion that one of those South American bastards might go after his mate, and he could feel himself start to bristle. But before he could get mad and challenge one of the other men to a fight to burn off his wrath, a scream sounded.
It was loud and piercing, enough to make his bear wince at the sharp pitch of it. All the bears, close to three dozen, sought out the noise, and it was the worst thing they could have done. Hell, he’d have screamed if he’d been at the center of thirty-odd bears’ attention.
Then, when he saw who was doing the screaming, catching sight of a sliver of white blond hair that glinted and gleamed in the low sun and those sparkling hazel eyes that made his heart skip a beat, he winced.
There was no nice way to do this, no easy way to prepare her.
He shifted.
The instant the magic held and he stood there in his skin, quiet reigned. Mischa stepped out from the side of the clubhouse and headed toward him. She babbled some shit in Ukrainian, her voice becoming louder and louder as she raged at him. He didn’t have a clue what she was saying, and for the first time since he’d met her, was fucking glad for the language barrier.
KIKO (MC Bear Mates Book 3) Page 2