Page 25 of Taming Her Bears

That’s how Roy made ensign before I did. It didn’t bother me, because I reminded the captain of Darkhorse when he was younger. Yeah, I said it. Darkhorse and Josh have been good buddies since they were cubs, still shuffling around in caves. They worked the same fishing boats together in their teens, signed up for Coast Guard training at the same time. Darkhorse earned his bars more slowly than Josh for the same reason Roy advanced over me.

None of us were really that ambitious to make rank, but we’re bears. We liked having a pecking order and challenging it. We liked lording it over each other but it was all for show. Secretly, we loved each other as much as an older brother loves his siblings.

I was hurting that night. We all were. Despite our bravado in front of the crew, our feelings were so scraped and raw, we were all struggling hard to keep from shifting. I was really going to miss McCarthy. He was an excellent man. I had pushed aside the image of his death when I saw the little girl, all trussed up like a pig for the barbecue. Her image, I have never been able to filter out.

There was the bitter question Natalia had asked once during our lovemaking. “How is it animals can be so human, and humans can be such animals?”

Darkhorse took her hand and answered her. “That’s why there are shapeshifters. We are here for the balance.”

The captain had the largest room. He also had the largest bed. All of us had specially-constructed beds with an extra half-inch of reinforced steel for unconscious sleep-shifts, but his was large enough to fit all five of us comfortably and to withstand the strain if one or two of us accidentally popped out our bear skins. It was reassuring and soothing.

Sweet, funny Natalia. She tucked each one of us in, kissing us lightly on the forehead. I closed my eyes and felt her hover over me. I hadn’t let myself think about McCarthy until today, when I saw his beloved cutter. I had shoved him back as far as he would go, thinking only about women, beer, and prey. The boat made his death real. He never would have abandoned theChristina. He would never have left her anchored helplessly on a lonely, uncharted beach. His spirit had returned to haunt theChristina, crying to take her home. It felt like two red-hot coins were sizzling behind my eyelids.

Natalia smoothed back my hair with cucumber-cool fingertips, dissolving the burning spikes of anguish. We would avenge McCarthy. We would avenge Natalia. We would avenge them all. Josh had promised.

Her breasts brushed up again my bare skin. They were covered with a thin garment that rustled silkily over her swollen nipples. I remained still, letting myself fall under her spell. She was doing something to me, to us. She was lulling us. She was putting all our bear quarrels to sleep. I breathed her in—wildflowers in the spring, the bright scent of spruce needles, liquid sunlight. I breathed her out and I felt my clan breathing with me. We rode on her sweet, bright, liquid touch.

Her smooth, cool garments slid across me, the curves under the soft folds caressing my skin. The same soothing touch she had used to calm me, she used on Josh, kissing his knotted brow until it smoothed, and softening the lines around his mouth with her fingertips. The silky fabric rustled again. I laid quietly, feeling her movement, feeling her circle around to include us all, the animal part that wished to roar in anger and despair subsiding.

When she returned to me, I was half-asleep, feeling like I had just received a Swedish massage. This time, when she kissed me, her hand moved down to my crotch and curved underneath my balls. I moaned with bliss. Teasingly, it moved upward until it circled the shaft. I held my breath as she stroked it, her hand moving languidly up and down, finding every pleasure point. My Johnson stood at full attention. I was pulsing hot and ready to burst. Straddling my hips, she guided my cock inside her. I didn’t have to do a thing. I couldn’t do a thing. I was completely at the mercy of that honey sweet triangle grinding and pressing against my own short hairs, her breasts brushing against my chest as she hovered over me. Up and down she glided until, with a final heave, I felt the last bit of tension and agony explode, leaving nothing but a moment of ecstatic pleasure.

None of us really slept. The closeness of each other was better than the closeness of our dreams. Natalia was the kind of babe that brave men longed for on cold, Arctic nights, but she was also a reminder that she, too, could have become a disappearance and a murder. This reminder made us hold her the way she was meant to be held, like a precious jewel.

At the crack of dawn, we heard the engines turning. Even though this was the day we had all waited for, there was something sad about it. I was almost reluctant to see it begin. Once we busted Denisovich, we could all go back to our normal jobs. Natalia would be patrolling the highways of the South/Central coast. We would be patrolling the oceans. There would probably be so much distance between us most of the time, she would forget us. Women married to coast guard men had the same kind of lives as women married to fishermen. Sometimes, they waited for months at a time for their men to come home. Sometimes, the sea claimed their men, and they didn’t come home at all. Natalia was a desirable woman. She would want more than we could offer her.

The cook had fixed a whopping breakfast, complete with fat sausages and piles of scrambled eggs. We should have been wolfing it down with gusto, yet nobody had much appetite. I don’t think we ate more than a half-pound of sausage each and a dozen eggs. Natalia pecked at her food like a bird. “You’re quiet,” I said, sitting next to her.

She shrugged and stirred sugar into her coffee. “Everybody’s quiet. It’s a big, quiet conspiracy.”

“The others are quiet, busy. You’re quiet, brooding.”

She cradled her cheek in one palm while she sipped the coffee. “I received an e-mail from the state troopers. They’ve begun an undercover investigation into the motorcycle clubs. They thanked me for my service.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“As of today, I’m on unauthorized leave. I was supposed to remain in Ketchikan and take a plane back to Valdez.”

“Why didn’t you say something while we were there? We could have left you at the hospital or given you a ride to a hotel.”

“I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave any of you.” She looked out at the dull, slowly awakening day. “And I want to see this fight to the finish, even if it means losing my job.”

“If the Canadians find us, they might impound our vessel.”

A roguish smile snaked across her face. “That might be the cherry on top. State trooper dismissed for illegally crossing into Canada in a Coast Guard vessel whose team records from birth to present date are full of redacted files. I checked, if you want to know. The ship has a nice computer. I’m officially a mystery woman. I could even become a vigilante.”

She said it dryly enough to sound half-serious. I filled my mouth with toast to stifle my growl. “You couldn’t. There wouldn’t be enough criminals left over for us.”

She chased a piece of egg across her plate, then popped it in her mouth, sighing. “If I had brought my gun… if I always kept my gun on me.” A tear trickled down her face. “I wish I was a shape-shifting bear. That would have put them in their place.”

“Hey, now.” I dabbed at her tears with a paper napkin. Usually, I could get people to lighten up by saying a lot of dumb shit, which came naturally to me anyway, but it clearly wasn’t going to work this time. I fumbled around for something to say. “My mom can’t shapeshift, but she’s still the most kick-ass woman in the village. She rescued two small children from a flood when she was sixteen. The village was so thankful, they gave her a snow machine.”

She appeared thankful for the diversion. “How did she meet your dad?”

“That’s where it gets interesting.” I got up and walked her to the window. The open sea stretched out on one side, a tangle of water and land on the other. We clung to the canopied coastline. It would take at least six hours to close in on the yacht. There wasn’t much to do except pass the time getting to know each other, keeping our eyes peeled for snipers. Those bastards were clever. I wouldn’t put it past them to send someone out to swing around and keep an eye on things.

I listened to the low mutter of the engines. “Since my mother had a snow machine, she went out with the others who searched for missing people. It happens a lot in remote areas. Kids stray on their way home from school. Somebody runs out of gas on the trail, leaving them stranded. Fishing and hunting accidents. Sudden storms. Anyone with a snow machine joins the search. Usually, they find their missing people and bring them home, although sometimes it’s too late.”

A diffused sun brightened up the top of her head, where soft curls of hair were making an escape from her barrette. She looked like one of those sea maidens hanging off the bow of a ship. A grown-up Goldilocks. I touched her hair. “This time, they were searching for a hunter. He was twelve hours late coming home, and the wife was getting worried. My mom found him. His leg had been badly mauled by a bear and he was speaking gibberish. They got him back to the village and fixed him up. But they were puzzled. Why didn’t the bear kill the hunter?”

---