MARS (BBW Bear Shifter MC Romance) (MC Bear Mates Book 1)

by Becca Fanning

  It was like heaven, and it was exactly what he needed, exactly what he’d craved all day and night.

  Reconnecting with his woman after the hell he’d seen today was the only thing that had been on his agenda when he’d finished, and now he was doing that, man and bear were extraordinarily content.

  He settled himself into the hilt, and was content not to move, to simply lay there, filling her fully and being surrounded by her wet, clinging walls. She rocked her hips underneath him, bucking a little, twitching and clenching her muscles as she tried to get herself off. But he didn’t budge, intent on marking her throat as much as he could without biting her.

  “Fuck me, Mars, please,” she begged, her words low and husky, deep and sultry.

  “I am, sweetness,” he told her, finally releasing her throat. Even in the darkness he could see the red patch there, the faint swelling, and as his bear was satisfied, he smiled at his handiwork.

  Reaching down, he grabbed her knees and dragged them up against his sides. “Hold on, Annette,” he whispered, brushing his lips against her cheek, before he gave her exactly what she wanted.

  His thrusts were hard and deep, and each time he curled his hips up, seeking her G-spot, needing her to scream out her pleasure, to glory in her release for his own sense of satisfaction.

  He fucked her, claimed her, made her his once more. She screamed and begged, bucked against him and clawed at his back. She fucked him right back, reminding him exactly of why she was perfect for him, why she was made expressly for him.

  As release poured through his veins, it shimmered through hers. She was incandescent with the power of the pleasure he gifted her, and in his advanced eyesight, it made her glow and shine with its power.

  “I love you,” she whispered, her voice close to a whimper. The words slammed into him like a punch to the gut, the best punch to the gut he’d ever had.

  For the second time that day, a woman brought him close to tears, except this time, it was his woman, and she was laying claim to him, giving him a place in her heart.

  He could do no less than honor her similarly, by gifting her in the same way. “I love you too, Annette,” he murmured, meaning every word, as he lowered his head and rubbed his nose with hers.

  The tenderness of the moment didn’t escape him, and with anyone else, he’d have felt like a tool, but not with Annette. Never with her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I need your help.”

  With the glow of sharing their first ‘I love yous’ still warming her veins, Annette had to admit to being close to sleep.

  It was a trust thing for her, but the only thing was, Mars didn’t know that yet. The more content she was, the more at ease, the easier it was for her to sleep. Since they’d come together, even with the relative chaos of the past week, what with challenges and shootings and injuries, she’d slept more than she had since… ever.

  Okay, tad exaggeration. But it felt like forever since she’d first shipped out to a war zone and that was when shit had gone south. Safety, after being in the thick of air strikes and bombings as well as IED blasts and the regular firefights between US infantry forces and insurgents, was a relative concept.

  Sure, they were safe here, on US soil, but somehow, her head never seemed to understand that. It was like that part of her mind refused to accept she was here, back home, and secure once more.

  With Mars though, she could relax, and the truth was, that was why she could admit to loving him so early. With no one else did she feel such inner peace. After seeking that for months with the shrink from hell, she knew exactly what she was feeling when she was with him.

  And so, she had to blink back sleep to blearily squint at him in the faint light filtering through the window. They were at the back of the compound as Mars’s quarters had yet to be restored to full working order, and fog lights which illuminated the yard bled into their room like a grand scale night light.

  It meant the play of shadows was more intense, but everything within the room was close to visible. She liked that. It also added to her level of comforts.

  Around a yawn, she mumbled, “How can I help?” She turned on her side, snuggling into him by resting her cheek on his chest and sliding her leg over his thigh to pin him down to the bed.

  “We need to get those bastards,” he half-whispered into her hair.

  “We will, we will,” she reassured him, patting him on the chest. When another yawn escaped her, she pressed her face into his side and breathed him in; the scent of her mate. A complex man. One capable of breaking and making laws to suit himself, while living to his own code of ethics. In her own way, she worked to a similar code. “The minute I saw the first lot of women climbing off the bus, nothing was going to stop me from writing about the Martinez cartel.”

  His chuckle was husky. “What if I’d forbidden you from writing it?”

  She snorted. “I’d have done it anyway.”

  “That would have been really great for morale.” He grunted, then curled a piece of her hair around his finger. “A Prez who can’t control his mate.”

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it? You want me to write the article.”

  “Ah, but there’s a principle involved.”

  She groaned, but heard the teasing note in his tone. “It’s too late to tease.”

  “It’s never too late,” he immediately countered, then reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers; the equivalent of wafting a white flag in the air. “You’ll have to be careful what you write.”

  “Of course. I’m not an idiot. You can read it before I send it over to the editor, anyway.” She peeked up at him, saw the look of intent on his face, and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think we frightened them enough to back off, but I doubt if we expose their ring they’ll leave us alone. There will be retaliation. War.” He sighed. “I don’t want my leadership to start on that note, but…”

  “The honor of those women deserves no less.”

  He nodded, slowly. “That’s exactly it. How did you know what I was trying to say?”

  Annette shrugged. “It’s what I do all day, every day. And in this instance, I feel the exact same way. Those bastards treated the women like animals. In fact, scrap that. They were treated worse than animals. Nothing and no one deserves that kind of treatment.” Feeling her anger levels start to increase, she inhaled deeply and carefully breathed out.

  Like he sensed her inner struggle, he began to stroke a hand down the length of her arm. The simple touch was all the more poignant for its absentmindedness. He did it simply out of a need to soothe her when she knew full well his mind was engaged elsewhere.

  “I don’t know how to hit them where it hurts without having them engage with us. I don’t want to lose any more men, Annette.”

  She pressed a kiss to his chest. “I know. We’ll figure out a way. Now, we need to rest. We have a lot on our schedules tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered, squeezing her a little.

  “For what? Being an Ursu?”

  He snickered at her wry tone. “Yeah. For being Ursu.”

  “You really need to give me a checklist of everything she does and doesn’t do.” Annette cleared her throat. “Joking aside, I don’t want to mess up.”

  “Honey, some of these guys have never even met an Ursu. I wouldn’t worry about messing up; you already have half of them thinking you can do no wrong.”

  “Hardly,” she chided.

  “Seriously,” he countered, then sighed. “Look, we’re not matriarchal, but we’re not like humans. We value the female above males.”

  “Why?”

  “Mostly because female children are so rare.” He shrugged. “Also because some of our greatest legends revolve around female Ursus.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. We all grow up hearing the tales, even if we don’t have an Ursu in our Clan.”

  “Tell me one of the legends.”

  He groaned. “I th
ought we were going to sleep.”

  “Hey, I need to know what I’m up against in the Ursu department.”

  Mars huffed out a laugh. “So, there was this Ursu called Andrea. She was the female leader of a Clan back in the eighteen hundreds, and the sole woman among a brotherhood of close to five hundred.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Yeah,” he said on a laugh. “I mean, there were the equivalent of the bunnies; there always are. Just with different names and labels.”

  “You know, that reminds me. Do the bunnies know you’re all shifters?”

  “It’s kind of an open secret. They never see any of the ceremonies, and if they do know, it’s more a case of they found out rather than one of us telling them.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that they’ll tell the locals?”

  “Tell them what? People already know shifters exist, Annette.”

  “Yeah, we do but I mean, we don’t know where you are.”

  He chuckled. “If they try to run us out of town, I’m sure we can handle ourselves.”

  She tapped him on the belly. “Don’t be a jerk.”

  Mars nuzzled his nose into her hair. “I’m not a jerk, I’m simply saying it how it is.”

  “That’s the equivalent of being a jerk.” She grinned against his chest, then wrinkled her nose when some of the hairs on his muscled pec tickled her there.”Anyway, you were saying about Andrea.”

  As he let his fingers trace up and down her arm, he began to speak. His tone was faraway, and she knew, deep down, this tale had been passed down through the generations. It made her smile to think someday, their child would hear this tale as Mars had probably heard it from his father, as he’d heard it from his father before him.

  Before the notion of children could take root and petrify her, Mars said, “She was strong, beautiful. They said she spoke with the Gods and they talked back. They gave her wisdom, advice, and made her Clan and mate renowned.

  “Back then, we were isolated and happy to remain that way. We didn’t know there were other types of shifters; when humans discovered our existence after the Second World War, we learned about all the different kinds of Clans. It was news to most of us as well. But back then, we could lead more solitary lives among our own people. Whole towns consisted of nothing but shifters, all living together.

  “But one day, an eagle flew into Andrea’s territory. It was injured; it had been shot and the bird’s wing was damaged. The instant it landed, it lost consciousness. Her men told her to put it down, that it was cruel to let such a bird live maimed—they never imagined the creature would fly again after such an injury.

  “As she tended to the wound, she spoke with our Goddesses, conferred with them, and when they answered, she ignored the men. They grumbled, but were used to her ways. When the bird didn’t wake up, they thought they were in the right, and two nights later, one of her men sneaked in, intent on putting the bird out of its misery. But when he went into the room where the Ursu had put the creature, there was a man, lying amid the straw.

  “The bear shifter cried out for the Ursu, stunned to see a man where there’d been a bird only hours before, but when Andrea saw the man, naked, his arm injured with a bullet wound as had been the bird, she bestowed a smile upon her brothers and said, ‘I told you so.’”

  Annette barked out a laughter at that. “She really said that?”

  Mars shared a chuckle with her. “Supposedly.”

  “What happened then?”

  He shrugged. “The eagle shifter got better, and he and Andrea’s Clan were some of the very first to know about the other kinds of our people.” He let out a soft laugh. “She was my great, great grandmother.”

  That had Annette rearing up onto an elbow to gawk down at him.”Seriously? One of your peoples’ legends is about a relative of yours? Or is that story just known by your family?”

  “No, she was famous among our people but for other things. Her Clan kept the eagle shifter a secret.” He pursed his lips. “I don’t know why; they just did.”

  “Wow, it’s no wonder the guys here respect you as a leader even when you wanted to stand back in the shadows.”

  He grunted. “My family line is a pain in my ass.”

  “So said every kid ever.” She patted him on the stomach. “If what I’ve seen so far is a glimpse at the way you’re going to lead this Clan, then you have nothing to worry about, sweetheart. You’re doing just fine.”

  “You say that now, and I’m about to lead the Clan to war because I’m disgusted on behalf of a bunch of human females.”

  She glowered down at him. “Hey! Your mate is human. There’s no need to sound so disparaging.”

  He clucked his tongue. “I didn’t mean to. I’m just saying… we might lose a lot of men for a cause that has nothing really to do with us.”

  “Jackson made it so that isn’t the case, Mars. He involved you and yours in this and you need to help sort it out. What Martinez is doing is beyond wrong, and we need to make sure the truth comes out.”

  Mars scraped a hand over his jaw. “If you write a piece, I don’t want your name attached to it.”

  She blinked at that, opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. It didn’t matter who got the credit; the fame or the infamy. All that mattered was that the police looked into the Martinez cartel and that public outcry urged them into doing a good job of the investigation. From what she’d managed to glean from Major, the MC had ties with some of the local cops who’d been looking the other way while The Nomads had been running for Martinez.

  That was why this story had to go public. If they just leaked info to a precinct, there was no telling if those detectives would be dirty and if the women currently bunking down in the prospects’ bedrooms would ever get any justice.

  She snuggled deeper into Mars side and said, “Okay. I’ll write it, but I’ll let them use the Staff Writer tag line.” Even as she conceded to him, she tried to imagine her editor’s reaction. Bobby would undoubtedly think she’d gone crazy, but he could think what he wanted to.

  Mars wanted her to be safe, and she wasn't going to argue with that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Annette turned to Dickie and said, “Ask her why she’s still here if she’s afraid of the men.”

  Dickie eyed her a second, then looked at Mischa warily. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the questions he’d translated for Annette would make one of the Ukrainian women cry. He’d even been slapped twice for questions she’d had him ask.

  Spying his caution, Annette had to withhold a small smile. It wasn’t funny, but his reaction to the women was.

  The way the men treated the bunnies had led her to believe they treated women like shit. But the way the brothers had handled the Ukrainian women had blown her away.

  They were deferential, careful not to speak too loudly. After Jackson had died and Annette had been settling in,she’d noticed it wasn’t unusual for there to be at least two or three minor fights among the men on a daily basis. She’d heard the roar of bears more times than she could count. Now, while the women didn’t know the bikers were shifters too, which would account for the guys keeping their bears hush hush, it shouldn’t have stopped the other fights. Yet it had. Not a one of them could speak English, and yet, the guys rarely swore or cursed around them. They didn’t raise their voices, and if they had to come into contact with the females, they did so gently.