The coarse brute had his hands on Gabriella’s neat waist. He was grinning down into her lovely face as if he needed his eyes putting out. Roman’s chest swelled and his nostrils flared.
“Easy, hero,” said his cousin Douglas Enright. “Gideon is only dancing with her.”
Roman put out a hand and shook with Jack and Will’s older brother. Cousin Doug had a little beauty on his arm. “I don’t know if you remember Madeline St. Clair,” Doug said proudly.
Roman swallowed. “Indeed I do,” he said heartily. He bent and kissed Maddie on both her rosy cheeks, Continental style. “I understand congratulations are in order.”
Doug’s grin got wider. “Yes,” he said with satisfaction. “We haven’t made a big announcement, because there are already altogether too many festivities attached to Mom’s Ukrainian extravaganza. And it is Hannah and Martha’s big day. But Maddie has agreed to marry me.”
The music came to an end. Gideon Bascom tempted fate and tried to hand his prize off to his equally loutish brother Asher. Roman abandoned Doug and Madeline and marched across to Gabriella. “This is my dance,” he said.
Gideon and Asher Bascom’s big, handsome faces split into welcoming smiles. Hands like hams extended to Roman. “Well, Rome, it’s good to see you.” His back was pounded in hearty glee. “See you’ve got more fruit salad on your chest since we met last.”
Gideon’s own Air Guard uniform held a goodly array of medals. “We gotta sit down and catch us up,” he said. “Thank you for the dance, Miss Gabriella.”
Roman nodded curtly and swept Gabby out onto the floor to the sound of another Ukrainian country dance. “You look beautiful tonight,” he said.
Gabby’s amused eyes met his nearly on a level. “Don’t you like the Bascoms?” she asked softly.
“They’re all right,” Roman said curtly. “They are Jack’s cousins on the Enright side.”
She bit her lip and her dark eyes twinkled. “How have you been?”
He told her a little, a very little, about his last mission. Special Forces expected their personnel to be able to keep their mouths shut. “It was a bit touch and go,” he said. “But I got back in time for my leave, so it’s all good.”
* * *
“Let’s go for a walk in the woods,” Roman suggested the next day.
“Why not?” said Gabriella. She was feeling hemmed in. The moms had been growling between themselves all morning about Roman.
Principally, they were muttering darkly about Vanessa Grishin who had been introduced to the moms by either Jack or Will as their cousin. Vanessa was a shy young woman. Gabriella had seen her dancing happily most of the night with Hannah and Martha’s brother Robert from Wesheno. They made a nice looking couple, him so dark and her so fair.
Gabby didn’t think that if Roman was involved with a clan member, he would be acting so interested in her. But what did she know about men? Some bears were boars, as Ma liked to say, and her own experience with men was limited.
Roman was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt like the ones Jack and Will favored. He had a little backpack and carried a rifle. His dark hair was close cropped and he looked crisp and ready for inspection even as he proposed a hike.
“Do we really need guns?” Gabriella asked.
Roman nodded. “Could do. Lots of critters in the Enright Preserve and not all of them are afraid of people.” He led her purposefully away from Jack and Hannah’s house where she and her family had been staying.
Before they had gone a hundred yards she was unable to see the two story log house. “These are some thick woods,” she exclaimed. “I thought this whole area had been logged.”
“Twice. But the Enrights have always planted three trees for every one they cut. And these woods are reserved for the family. Not much lumber gets taken out of here. And we do precious little grooming. It’s not a park.” Roman looked at Gabriella. “I won’t let you get lost or injured,” he assured her.
“Never crossed my mind,” she replied truthfully. “Where are we going?”
“To the river.”
It was a glorious August afternoon. Roman’s backpack contained a blanket and a picnic lunch.
“These are good,” Gabby told him, wolfing down sandwiches on the banks of the idle river.
“My Aunt Klara made them,” he admitted. “She thinks I’m still a skinny little boy who needs to be looked after.”
“What about your mother?”
“Aunt Klara is about all I have in the way of a mother. She and Uncle Van adopted me when I was five.”
“Oh. What happened to your parents?”
Roman distracted her with a long slow kiss. He put his arm around her waist. He turned her into his hard body and kissed her. The kiss blew up on them. Their mouths clung and their tongues fought for supremacy. When they pulled away from each other at the raucous sound of whiskey jacks laughing at them from the trees, their clothes were disheveled and they were both panting.
Roman recovered first. “Too soon?” he asked swallowing hard.
Gabriella shook her head. “No,” she said. Blood roared in her ears and she could barely breathe with unaccustomed arousal. Roman was so plainly the bear for her, she wanted to be as close as possible to this handsome officer.
“I know a place where we won’t have to worry about bears or other critters. If you’re sure.” He paused and spoke crisply. “ I can wait. Whatever is happening here is serious and I don’t want to spoil it.”
“We’ve been waiting a month,” Gabriella reminded him. Her brown eyes were luminous with love.
The tree house could not be seen until you were directly underneath it. And even then it was the same grey as the oak tree in which it sat. Roman scampered up overgrown rungs that were set deeply in the bark of the trunk, and threw down a new rope ladder.
He climbed down and steadied the ladder for Gabriella and followed her up. The platform was ringed by a neat railing. Roman lifted up a tarp and exposed a mattress, a blanket and some cushions.
“Have you brought a lot of girls here?” Gabby asked, suddenly apprehensive. What did she know of men?
“None at all. This is Jack and Will’s tree house. I guess Jack must have fixed it up lately, because it’s been recently repaired and this stuff stored here.”
“Will they mind?”
“Never going to know,” he told her. He hesitated. “There is something though that might make a difference to you.”
Gabriella looked at the serious young man before her. His lean face was agonized and his amber eyes glowed fiercely. “Tell me,” she said. Was he going to confess about cousin Vanessa?
“I’m not a real bear,” he said and his sharp cheekbones blazed red.
“How do you mean?” Now that made no sense to her sensitive nose. He smelled like more bear than she could handle. Had done from the first time he took her hand in Wesheno.
He took off his shirt. His skin was honey colored with his summer tan and the thick pelt of black hair that grew from his collar bones to his belt curled deliciously. He moved his hands to his belt buckle and shed his jeans and briefs. His cock jutted from a nest of black curls and dripped life. His long legs were furred with black curls. He certainly looked like a bear to her. But, on the other hand, this was her first naked adult shifter.
She blinked a little uncertainly. Should she tell him that she was a virgin? Her mouth felt dry as she stared at his masculine charms. Even his long feet enticed her. Her pussy swelled and grew damp. She was sure Roman could smell her arousal as sharp as she could detect his. She blushed rosily.
Before her curious eyes his forearms became the burly, black, muscular forearms of a bear. His hands stayed human for a little longer and then slowly became the heavy clawed paws of a bear.
His human face showed the pain of his transformation until it too began to morph. His heavy human jaw and square chin became the elongated golden muzzle of an American Black, and fur grew all over his face as his ears too took bear form. He cli
cked at her and she began to remove her own tee-shirt and jeans.
He should have looked ridiculous, this half-man half-bear hybrid, but he didn’t. He looked magnificent, virile, his scent had intensified with his change, and her panties were instantly soaked. She lifted the hem of her tee-shirt without taking her eyes off Roman.
When she was down to bra and panties, his clicking grew more intense and his huge jaws opened in a deep mating moan. Gabriella drew off her bra so he could see her breasts. Her nipples were stiff and aching just from looking at this half-bear. She slowly pulled down her panties so he could look at her tidy triangle. Then she took bear.
Her transition was rapid and complete. Within seconds she was a small American Black with a pale muzzle and brown tinged ears. She whuffed at her mate and watched for his reaction. He was a bear in this at least. He made it obvious that his attraction ran the spectrum from human to bear form.
His moans intensified and his cock twitched as though it had a mind of his own. She moaned back at her mate, and took her human form just as swiftly as she had taken bear. Roman struggled with his change, and it was evidently painful for him.
“Well?” He was anxious—totally unlike the confident officer she was getting to know. Obviously her answer was all important.
Gabriella shrugged. “I don’t care. Your cousins are married to ordinary women. It doesn’t worry me.” It was true, her inner bear was certain Roman was the one.
“Truly?”
“Cross my heart,” she said and leaned forward for his embrace. He pulled her soft pink and whiteness against his hard maleness. His mouth sought hers in a deep soul kiss. He pressed his throbbing cock into the delicious cushiony flesh of her belly. She squirmed closer and let her tongue slide along the length of his in imitation of the oldest dance.
He moved her away from him and whispered, “I should set the cushions out.” He turned the naked mattress and old stadium cushions into a trim bed with the fleece blanket for a sheet. He looked up from his job to see her face turn serious.
In a flash he was before her. “I’m rushing you,” he said remorsefully. “I can wait. This has to be right for both of us.”
Gabriella shook her head. “That’s not it. But what about Vanessa? Your aunt keeps talking as though you guys are a mated couple.”
“Only in Aunt Katy’s fondest dreams. Really,” he told her skeptical face. “We were two lost souls when we first came to Hanover, and we are best buds. But Nessa is my sister and I’m her brother. We’re not the least bit interested in each other as mates.
“Aunt Katrina thinks that because Nessa can’t shift, and I’m not much of a bear, that we’re made for each other.” His voice was bitter. “Two misfits to make a whole.
“I owe Aunt Katy a whole lot—my life probably—America for sure—but I’m not marrying Nessa to please her.”
“Okay. You’re free. I’m free. But you should know, this is my first time.”
“Me too.” He laughed into her surprised face. “Not my first time having sex. My first time making love.”
“Oh.” Gabby heart clenched with the force of her love and passion. She was scared and eager. Anxious and excited.
Roman claimed his bride with a hunger that had been building since he first set eyes on his mate. “In this I am a bear,” he told her as he picked her up and laid her down on the makeshift bed to demonstrate his unbounded passion.
His eyes worshiped her bounteous breasts and his hands reached to trace the delicate veins that lay under the pale skin. His long brown forefinger circled her nipples reverently until their pink flushed red and they were even stiffer.
His lips took one and then the other into the hot recesses of his mouth to be laved and sucked until delight shot straight from her aureoles to her passage which pulsed with intense arousal. While his kisses delighted her breasts, his hands roamed over the plushy softness of her belly and hips, caressing and lightly squeezing her abundant flesh. He slowly learned what pressure pleased his woman, and where she liked best to be touched.
His cock was an iron spike that kept oozing onto her stomach. He wiped off the drops of life and turned to his backpack and came back with a handful of condoms. “You aren’t ready for babies,” he said.
“Nope.”
“Want to do this?”
“I never have.”
“You’ll never learn any younger,” he said and put a packet into her hands.
Slowly and a little uncertainly, she unrolled the latex sack over his twitching shaft and pulled it down to where his balls were pulled tight and hard against the base of his cock. He moaned like a lovesick bear and made her giggle.
He slipped one hand between her velvety thighs and probed with his forefinger. The slickness of her unfurled flower was an invitation, as was the wanton swivel of her eager hips. She spread her round thighs wide so he could look his fill at her glistening, red lips.
He bent to kiss her bud, exposing it with gentle fingers. He lapped all around it before sucking hard. She stiffened and spasmed and her cream flowed out of her passage. Her lover licked it up before spreading her labia and easing the broad tip of his cock into her tight sheath.
Mindful that she was new to this, he rocked slowly so she could soften and admit his thick, long sword into her untouched sheath. The effort of this deliberate pace showed on his strained face. But at last he was inside her to the hilt.
Gabriella felt full to bursting. Her vagina had expanded to take in his enormously engorged penis, but she felt that she might split. Her excitement and pleasure had turned almost to pain as Roman pushed into her depths. But once he was inside he stopped. He was sweating as if he had run a long way and he was obviously highly aroused. But still he held himself a little off her.
He kissed her deeply and let his tongue mate with hers until her passion caught again and she began unconsciously to move beneath him. He moved a hand between them and two fingers flicked gently at her clit and tugged.
Her climax squeezed his love rod until he thought he must explode. But he managed to resist temptation long enough to introduce her to the dance of love. He matched his thrusts to the love play of their tangled tongues and his heart quickened when his darling caught the rhythm of the dance and met him lunge for lunge. This time their crescendo arrived at the same moment and they fell together into the little death of lovers.
“Oh, wow, she said a little later, lying against his hard body in the dappled light that filtered through their leafy roof. The intensity of their bond was a physical presence in her body. She was flooded with joy and tenderness. United heart and soul with this bear forever.
“Woo woo,” he said. “We better be getting back before they send out the bloodhounds.” His take charge voice resonated with triumphant male satisfaction
“Hmm.” Gabby was a little disappointed at Roman’s response to the most earth shattering experience of her life. But men always had a harder time than women talking about emotions. Didn’t they?
CHAPTER THREE
“Hi, sweetheart. What’re you up to tonight?”
“Comparison of ductile strength of metals. Term paper in Mechanical Engineering 4003.”
“How’s it going?”
“Pretty good. Browning mostly wants us to regurgitate what he says in his textbook. How was your mission?”
“Dangerous.” There was a shrug in Roman’s voice. “Same old, same old, my darling. I don’t think I can get away to see you before Thanksgiving. I told Lenny and Joey I’d give them a hand to roof that dump they bought in Portland.”
“I thought you didn’t like the bears of French Town?”
“Nah. I was just jealous that you were dancing with Gideon and Asher. Bascoms and Benoits are good buddies of mine.”
Gabriella’s soft giggle told him that she was winding him up.
“I miss you,” he said.
“Me too.”
“If you were here I could show you how much. I keep remembering how beautiful you are n
aked and then I remember how beautiful you are clothed, and I get all hot and bothered.”
“Are you in bed?” she asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“I’m in the middle of California Memorial Stadium,” Gabriella informed him deadpan.
Roman’s gasp of horror made her chortle. “I’ll get you back,” he warned. “Where are you really?”
“In my bedroom, sitting on my bed with my trusty laptop.”
“What are you wearing?”
“My oldest sweatshirt and a pair of leggings with holes in them.”
Roman chuckled. “Are the holes anywhere interesting?”
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