Her Russian Bears

by Sinclair, Ava

  “It does not matter what you will or will not tolerate.” He cut her off. “You may find this hard to understand, given the circumstances, but what I did last night was as much about protecting you as correcting you.”

  Jordan turned to Ivan, appealing to him now. “You’re a man of science. How the hell can you condone something like this?” She shook her head. “Think about your career! If any of this gets out, you’ll be kicked out of your field. You’ll be…”

  Her words trailed away. It was clear they weren’t having an impact. Jordan put her hands over her face and took a deep breath. Then she turned back, attempting to reason one last time.

  “Look,” she said. “If I’ve stumbled onto some research project, some top secret government DNA experiment… I won’t tell.” Jordan searched first one handsome face and then another for signs of compromise. “I won’t.”

  She held her breath as the men looked at each other.

  “Jordan Rowe,” said Mikhail. “Come with us.”

  Did she have a choice? The only other option was to refuse and stay in the room. The men flanked her as they walked back through the house. The sun was streaming through the windows, filling the huge house with light. She looked up as they walked past the picture of the crowned bear.

  A bear king. Was there a connection? There had to be, but what?

  Her jacket hung on a peg by the back door. Ivan took it and held it almost cordially as she slipped into it. Her boots were there, too. She put them on.

  It was not as cold out, but it was still colder than anything she experienced at home this time of year. Home. Would she ever see it again? If Ivan was telling the truth, everyone she knew would think she’d changed positions without a word. She wondered about her partner, sweet but airheaded Cliff Barnes. Half the time she had to hold his hand; he wasn’t exactly the kind of person who’d go tracking her down.

  The men were still walking one on either side of her. They were silent as they led her down the slope, and Jordan realized now that they were heading toward the patch of woods she’d entered the night before. She halted—a subconscious fear reaction, she realized, and felt a hand on either side of her back, warm and reassuring, but persistent as they shepherded her along.

  Had she asked for this? She’d been foolish to take this path the night before. But she’d wanted so much to win, to trick these men she was sure were hiding something. The woods looked different by day, more ominous somehow. The shadows were deep, and the path was narrower than it had seemed the night before.

  Jordan could see the building now. It was concrete, with a metal roof. And yes, those had definitely been bars she’d seen on the windows. She noticed the door as they approached. It was metal and heavy, with a huge, old-fashioned padlock affixed to the front. Mikhail moved ahead and unlocked it, then stood back and pulled the door open. There was another door behind it, made of bars.

  Mikhail stood aside and gestured her forward.

  “You wanted to know,” he said.

  Jordan looked up at him, then reluctantly looked through the bars as she moved closer to the door. The interior of the room was solid concrete. There was a metal toilet in one corner and a simple wooden bunk, although whatever bedding had been on it was shredded and now covered the floor.

  A naked man sat on the bunk. He was large, although not as large as the two men who stood at her side. Jordan’s heart hammered in her chest as the man in the building slowly raised his head to look at her with his single eye. He was wearing an eye patch now, but the look of hatred in his lone eye chilled Jordan. It took all her resolve not to run.

  The man rose from the bench. He seemed either unaware or unconcerned about his nakedness. He was not an attractive man. He was bull-necked and very hairy. Coarse dark curls covered his chest and sprouted from his shoulders. A huge, uncut cock swayed from the triangular thatch of hair that sprouted between his legs. His head was down, but as he walked toward her, he kept his one eye raised to focus on her.

  He stopped a foot short of the door and said something in Russian, then spit on the ground.

  “What-what is he saying?” Jordan asked.

  “He’s saying you’re an outsider, that you don’t belong here,” Ivan said.

  “That is exactly what I say.” He spoke in English now, surprising Jordan. He leaned forward, lifting the patch to reveal a ghastly hole where his eye had been. “This,” he said, “is what outsiders have done to me.”

  He put the patch down and gripped the bars. “If only I’d come upon you alone last night. I’d have ripped you apart, buried your remains for later.”

  The words chilled her to the bone.

  “Is he mad?” she asked, looking at Ivan. She thought of the video, but what she thought she’d captured could not be real. There had to be an explanation. “I’ve read of people who thought they were animals. Mentally ill people who…”

  “Is this what they tell you?” The man laughed and smiled to show his teeth. Jordan blinked. Was it her imagination or did his mouth seem larger? The man looked over at Mikhail. “Are you so ashamed of your own kind that you lie?”

  “You know that’s not true, Viktor.”

  “Marina’s grandfather is right,” he said. “The time for our kind is over.”

  “No, Viktor. It’s not. You must gain control.”

  “How?” he asked. He was continuing to speak English as if he wanted Jordan to understand what he was saying. And Mikhail was replying in English. “You know there is one way to stop this,” Viktor said. He reached through the bars, clutching at her. Jordan stepped back, unnerved.

  “Give her to me,” the madman said. “Give her to me. Or I’ll change.”

  “I can’t,” Mikhail said.

  He looked from one face to the other. “Is that how it is now? Do only the rulers get mates? Is this one yours? Give her to me first!” He lunged for her, and Jordan screamed. The hand that came within inches of her was changing, the nails claws now, the fingers thick.

  She backed away, and so did the man in the cage. He’d begun to shake as he sank down to all fours.

  “What’s happening to him?” Jordan asked. But it was a rhetorical question. She knew what was happening and tried to tear her gaze away. But she could only stare in fascinated horror as the man in the cage morphed and swelled as brown fur sprouted from his pores and his head grew in girth, his ears shifting to peaks atop his massive skull. The band of the eyepatch popped off, and he was the one-eyed bear now that had loomed over her in the dark.

  “No.” She backed away, looking at the bear that had been a man called Viktor, and then looking at her captors. The secret they protected was worse than anything she’d ever imagined.

  Jordan turned and ran, but only got a few steps before her legs gave way. But she didn’t hit the ground. Instead, she was swept up by two strong arms.

  “Sssshhh.” The warmth of the body against her and the strength of the arms could not stop her from shaking, and she realized she was in shock as she allowed Ivan to carry her up the slope and back through the woods to the house.

  By the time Ivan reached her room and sat her on the floor, she was coming out of it.

  “Why?” she asked, suddenly starting to cry. “Why did you show me this?”

  “Because you already knew,” he said.

  “I didn’t!” she cried. But she knew this was a lie. She’d known. She just couldn’t rationalize it until she saw it with her own eyes.

  “You did,” he said. “And if we’d let you go, you’d have just asked more questions.”

  Ivan Kolov took her by her upper arms and looked down at her. “Jordan Rowe,” he said. “It is okay to not understand. It is okay to be afraid. We cannot always be strong.”

  Had he pulled her to him, or had she fallen into his embrace? Jordan could never say for sure. She only would remember feeling something unfamiliar at that moment—an overwhelming desire for protection against a reality that had betrayed her by being something other than she kn
ew.

  The arms around her were strong, and the mouth that found hers was warm and demanding, but also sensual. His tongue found its way past her lips, sweeping seductively around hers, tasting her as his hands moved under her parka to map the soft curves of her trembling body.

  “No,” she said, but the word was as weak as her legs, which buckled when his hand found and squeezed a breast, the possessive grip prompting the nipple to harden against his palm.

  He worked the shoulder of her parka over her left shoulder, and she shimmied it off her right as he stepped back and pulled his jacket and shirt off. His chest was smooth, chiseled, and rock hard, his arms corded with muscles she knew could hold her against her will should she try to escape. The thought of that, of being merciless to his power, made her pussy throb.

  No . This time she said the words to herself, trying to rein in the flaring attraction that was threatening to blaze out of control.

  There were so many reasons to resist. She’d been stripped of her will. She’d been traumatized. He was taking advantage of that.

  So why was she letting him pull her shirt off? Why was she throwing her head back so his mouth could blaze a line of fire up the column of her throat with his lips? Why was she arching her back as his hands slipped into her tight yoga pants to discover her pussy swollen and soaked?

  He pulled her bra, snapping the back of it. It came free, releasing her breasts. Ivan sank to his knees, pulling her pants down as he went. Jordan gripped the post of the bed for support as he pulled her boots off. She stared into the eyes looking up at her. She’d had men look at her before. She knew lust. But what she saw in Dr. Ivan Kolov’s eyes was something deeper. It sent a shiver through her, being wanted this much by a man she inexplicably ached for.

  His hands clutched her buttocks. He squeezed them rhythmically, and her pussy clenched with need, exuding another flood of arousal.

  She had her first orgasm when he buried his face in her labia, his teeth grazing it as he growled against the fleshy petals of her womanhood. He pushed two fingers into her, driving her up on her tiptoes. Jordan lost her balance and fell forward onto his back. He picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder as if she were a doll. The next thing she knew, she was flat back on the mattress and he was pulling her pants the rest of the way off. She was naked, in daylight, with a man. This, too, was new for her. She’d always had sex in the dark with men who felt their way around her body. Ivan Kolov looked at her hungrily.

  “You are stubborn, beautiful woman,” he said. “And you are still strong,” he added. “But you will be soft with me, no?”

  She almost came from his words alone, spreading her legs to him eagerly as her eyes fell to a cock so large and erect that it almost made her gasp. He chuckled low in his throat when he saw her eyes widen.

  “You will take all of me, Jordan Rowe. And you will scream with pleasure.”

  And she did, her cries filling the room as he drove himself hard into her eager pussy. She was tight from her long period of self-imposed abstinence, and the sweet pain of being so completely claimed awoke something primal in her. Jordan’s arms went around Ivan’s broad shoulders, her soft hands clinging to the ridges of his muscles as he pumped into her with brutal thrusts that she met with mindless abandon.

  “Look at me,” he said, and she did, and found him searching her eyes.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes…”

  Was he answering an unspoken plea? He smiled down at her, pulled her close as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

  Ivan’s hands moved to her buttocks, squeezing.

  “You are mine,” he said, pulling her buttocks apart, and Jordan gasped as he pushed a finger against her bottom hole, testing its resistance as tempered his movements to thrust into her pussy in long, slow strokes.

  I’ve only just met you , she thought, but it felt so right, so natural.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yours. I’m yours.”

  He tensed then, and came with a cry as her velvet channel gripped rhythmically on his cock, teasing out every drop of hot seed that flooded into her.

  “You will rest now.”

  It was a command and Jordan felt her body relax as if hypnotized. She tried to remember the last time she’d napped during the day and couldn’t. But it was because she’d never give herself permission to stop, never give herself permission to slow down in her pursuit of advancement.

  You will be soft with me.

  His arm was still around her, and she could feel his breath against her back, the last sensation she felt before drifting off to an exhausted sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  Mikhail knew he had no right to be jealous. Yes, he was the larger and more dominant cousin. But he considered Ivan an equal. Over the years he’d been grateful that Ivan did not defer to him. He provided a necessary balance in leadership, and they’d agreed that given the shortage of women, when the time came, they would share a mate.

  Neither expected that mate would present herself in the form of an American wildlife agent with more persistence than either of them had counted on. But even during their testy exchanges, both men had picked up on the subtle chemistry of mutual attraction, and the night of the spanking only confirmed Mikhail’s suspicions that Jordan Rowe had all the makings of a receptive mate.

  Still, that gave them no right to keep her. But both men worried that despite the fact that she was shaken by what had happened in the woods, despite the fact that she promised not to divulge what she’d seen, any change of heart on her part would not just put them in danger, but her. The Russians knew what she knew, and if she returned home, she’d be targeted.

  The BearKynd clan of the Kamchatka Peninsula was one of Russia’s most closely guarded secrets, with its roots running deep in Russian culture. Misha the bear was synonymous with Russian strength, cunning, and power. But only BearKynd knew it went beyond symbolism, and that the BearKynd had aided the Russian army during battles fought as far back as the reign of Peter the Great.

  Still, BearKynd remained a secretive clan, affecting an easier existence with the humans they lived among than other shifter clans, such as the wolves who competed with them for food. In Kamchatka, the bears ruled, ever mindful of keeping a delicate balance between both their worlds.

  Hunters were always a threat. For years, Mikhail and others had seen to it that a portion of their diplomats and leaders kept hunters limited to areas outside of shifter territory.

  But the greater threat—the one most likely to upset the balance and cause chaos—was emotion. Anxiety and anger could cause uncontrolled shifts that risked exposure that threatened their existence. Bears that shifted randomly were at risk of becoming Rogues—huge, rage-filled bruins that lacked fear of humans.

  Only males shifted, and young males were urged to take mates. But as younger, greedier politicians came to power, the respect and even belief in BearKynd fell away. The clan’s territory shrank, and the first wave of Rogues occurred in 2008, beginning with a widely reported attack on miners.

  But Yuri Adanov’s betrayal had led to a new wave of hunters, and with a shortage of young women willing to remain in the villages, young males were succumbing to the stress.

  To Mikhail’s distress, he realized that he and Ivan were no different. Both had found a stronger desire to shift, and more difficulty in shifting back. Both knew they were the only ones who could negotiate a solution to the increase in hunters, but Mikhail had only made it worse. A mate was necessary. They’d found her. And Ivan, his cousin, had taken her first.

  He knew it. He could sense his cousin would claim the woman when he carried her away, and realized it was probably for the best. Mikhail had casual sex from time to time, but until Jordan Rowe, he had not found a female he’d considered as a mate. He was an authoritative lover, rough. He considered sex an act of conquering, and left his partners weak and trembling from his dominance. Would this American woman be afraid of him after experiencing his gentler cousin? Despite what she’d seen, Mikha
il knew she’d not made the connection that he and Ivan were shifters like Viktor. Could she handle being their mate once she knew the truth? Could she handle the Bear King?

  * * *

  “Sergei’s not coming back, is he?”

  To take his mind off of Jordan, Mikhail had traveled to one of his mines to meet with Alexei Gregor, his most trusted foreman. Like Mikhail, Alexei was of the BearKynd clan.

  Alexei was Sergei’s father, and the pain in his voice cause Mikhail’s heart to twist in sympathy.

  “Ivan saw him in the forests on the Western slope,” he said. He paused. “He did not respond. They fought.”

  Alexei nodded. “It’s for the best,” he said, strain in his voice. “I know Ivan steered him away from the danger.”

  It was all they could do now when a young male went Rogue, to head them away from habitation, away from the land frequented by outfitters. If Mikhail had his way, he’d protect every bear—even those that weren’t of his clan. But the hunters were here to stay, and the best he, Ivan, and the other elders could do was to keep the Rogues confined to more remote regions.

  “I’m sorry,” Mikhail said.

  “No need,” Alexei sighed. “You do the best you can. I started my grieving when I realized that my son was giving in to the fear.” He looked up at Mikhail. “I got good news. From Sasha.”

  “Oh?” Mikhail allowed himself to feel hopeful. Alexei’s daughter, Sasha, who’d moved away from the village, now worked for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

  “She tells me that Yuri Adanov has personally recommended that the ministry decline the latest batch of applications for import permits. He’s also asking for a decrease in the annual allotment.” He shot him Mikhail a small smile. “Your doing, my friend?”

  Mikhail gave a small chuckle. BearKynd did not function as WolfKynd. For the most part, they kept to themselves, although they recognized a common interest in maintaining the integrity and secrecy of their clan. It wasn’t uncommon for Mikhail to act on their behalf without consulting them. It was good to know that the risk he’d taken to shake up Yuri Adanov had worked, despite the trouble it had caused.