Page 10 of Taming Her Bears

Darkhorse began kissing me at the ankles and working upwards, each kiss a lightning bolt traveling up my inner thighs to that fountain exploding with desire. He had gotten between my legs, his thumbs working ahead of him, kneading and pushing against the tender insides until my thighs opened wider, letting him in.

Sweet wine, how you speak to me! I was rolling shamelessly on waves of bliss. My hands slid over their taut, beautiful muscles. I tasted their salty flesh, felt it press urgently against me. I gathered them to me, bringing them inside me. I came, over and over, with each man, exploding in exquisite delight.

The night sped drunkenly on its way. One by one, we fell asleep from pure exhaustion, our arms wrapped tightly around each other. Once again, I dreamed I was covered with furs. They were the most luxurious furs imaginable, so plush, I sprawled on my stomach and pressed against the soft hides, savoring the plush feel against my nude body.

I woke slowly, curious that my dream had carried over into consciousness. I still felt I was enveloped in a pile of furs. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, then froze, paralyzed with fear. I was in a pile on the floor with four large, wild animals. I screamed and tried to scramble to my feet, but my legs were too wobbly. I sat in the pile and screamed some more.

The four bears woke up and looked at me sleepily. As they became fully awake, their eyes widened in absolute astonishment. They rolled away from me and sat back on their haunches. I waited for them to dash forward and eat me, every bone in my body rattling and quaking. Instead of lunging toward me, though, they crouched with their heads lowered and began quivering, as though ashamed. As they quivered, they groaned and whimpered, and suddenly started to shrink. Their hair disappeared. Where there had been four bears, there were now four naked men—the same naked men I had made love to the night before.

“I am never touching wine again,” I announced firmly.

Captain Josh hastily pulled his pants on and began stoking up the fire in the stove. “I’m sorry. We should have told you before things happened.”

“That you’re bears?” I asked weakly.

“That we’re shapeshifters.”

“You shift into animals.”

“Only bears.”

They were clearly all very embarrassed. They put on their clothes without speaking, boiled water for coffee and cooked oatmeal with generous amounts of sugar. “We’re going to have to do something for the owner to make up for all the stuff we’re helping ourselves to,” observed Roy.

Captain Josh scanned our meager belongings. “We’ll leave him the medical kit and the flashlights. And the Bunsen burner. We won’t need them once we get off this island.”

None of them made eye contact. I couldn’t really be angry with them; they had been nothing except respectful and helpful. The whole naked party had been my idea, after all. I busied myself with cleaning the ransacked kitchen. “You know,” I said, putting away a box of unopened corn flakes. “We need to talk about this.”

Captain Josh gave up pretending he had things to do and sat down at the table. “I’m sorry. We didn’t know how to tell you. Then, all this happened… if I had been in my right mind, I would have stopped it. We don’t take advantage of women. That’s not who we are.”

“You can begin right there,” I said. “Who are you, exactly? Or what are you? Are you mutants?”

“Mutants? No!” Josh looked offended. “My parents were both shape-shifters. It’s passed on genetically and it’s not exclusive among bears.”

“Like Sasquatch and wolves?”

“Among others. We are protectors. We are members of the bear clan, and our faces have been carved into the totems. Don’t you ever wonder why our military insignia is the bear and not some other animal?”

“I’m Russian; I’m a pragmatist. Russians like bears. Alaskans like bears. Canadians like maple leaves. That’s the way the world turns.”

“So, you like us?” asked Lee, with the eagerness of a young boy.

I looked at him with as much annoyance as I could gather for one so guileless. “You only scared the shit out of me three times. This last time, I nearly had a heart attack.”

Lee shook his head mournfully. “Fermented cranberries will do it to us every time. We stop thinking. We turn into bears to stay warm. We over-sleep.”

“I saw three brown bears and a white one.”

“I’m a grizzly,” volunteered Darkhorse, who always seemed pleased with delivering information about himself. “I’m from the Rockies, but I spent most of my growing years in Seward. The Alaskan Coast Guard broke up the Russian-Canadian-Alaskan fishing wars when I was a kid. I knew right then that these guys were bad asses, and that was where I wanted to be.”

“I’m a brown bear,” said Lee. “I was born and raised just outside Fairbanks. It was while I was studying at the University of Alaska that I decided I wanted to become a Coast Guard. I like ice breaking.”

“I’m a Kodiak,” Josh put in. “My people have always guarded the Aleutian waters. We helped make America safe during World War II. “

Roy blushed. “I’m a polar bear. My ancestors came over as prospectors two hundred years ago. They settled in Nome. I’m like you, Natalia—I’m native to Alaska, but I’m not a Native.”

Josh waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “We can’t all be perfect. How do you feel about us now—as a group, I mean? Are you going to choose one of us as a boyfriend, or do you just want to forget anything happened?”

Forget? I gave a short laugh that sounded more like a bark. It was impossible to forget the juiciest night of my life—and the most shocking morning. But choose a boyfriend? In Alaskan society, it was common for a woman to have more than one boyfriend. Single men were as plentiful as snowshoe rabbits, but single women were as difficult to find as gold nuggets. A lot of single women worked out their romances on a rotating basis. When the guy she was with fucked up, he went to the back of the line and number two became available.

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