She looked and she saw it. The man was gone, but a bear was closing in on her, and she could see its one eye glittering in the moonlight. What she didn’t see was the root that tripped her. The phone flew from her hand and landed on the ground. She tried to scramble to her feet but something hit her on the shoulder, knocking her onto her back. The bear was looming over her, its hot, fetid breath in her face. Then something hit the bear, something larger, and it rolled away from her.
Jordan staggered to her feet, slightly disoriented as the two bears fought. The larger bear had a distinct advantage.
Her phone. She needed her phone. But another cloud passed over the moon and she couldn’t find it. Her shoulder was sore. She reached for it, expecting to feel blood, but the bear had hit her with the flat of its paw.
“Stubborn woman.” An arm flew around her waist, yanking her up and back against a hard chest.
“I…” She tried to speak, to explain, but Mikhail Barinov cut her off.
“Quiet,” he said, and there was a growl in his voice as he led her away. The moonlight came out again. She craned her neck and looked back down the hill to where she’d seen the bears. But there were no bears. Now there were just two men—a large naked blond man leading a smaller man back toward the building. The smaller man was talking in a pleading tone.
What the hell was happening?
She wanted to ask Barinov, but the words wouldn’t come. She could feel the anger coming off him, along with heat, and she realized she was nearly as scared of this large, angry Russian as she was of the bear.
Mikhail Barinov walked quickly, his long legs covering the ground in quick steady strides. Jordan’s breath puffed from between her lips in jets of steam as she struggled to keep up, the physical activity keeping her from being as cold as she might have been otherwise. Still, the cold was nearly unfathomable within itself, and she was grateful, at least, for the warmth of the house.
But her host’s demeanor was still ice cold. Taking hold of her upper arm, he led her up the stairs to her room. Once there, he grasped her by the forearms and looked her up and down.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
She was stunned by the show of concern.
“N-n-no. He… the bear. It hit my right arm. But I’m okay.”
He didn’t respond, only unzipped her jacket without permission and pulled it off. He squeezed her upper arm, his large, warm hands feeling for injury, his face stern.
“Not broken,” he said.
He let her go then.
“What happened?” Jordan backed away. The events in the forest were scattered in her mind, like pieces of a child’s puzzle thrown on the floor. A one-eyed man. Mikhail Barinov. Dr. Kolov. A one-eyed bear. Another bear, larger. It had saved her.
“You were told to stay in this room,” he said. “You disobeyed. And now you must be punished.”
Punished? She stared blankly up at Mikhail, but had little time to ponder the word before being dragged over to the bed. The huge Russian sat down, pulling her across his lap. She screamed in outrage at what happened next. She could feel his warm fingers looped in the waistbands of her pajama pants and panties, could feel them being jerked all the way down to the tops of the boots she still wore.
“Let me go, you fucking animal!”
If he was going to molest her, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. In her draped position, her head was level with his calf. She reached for the hem of his pant leg, raised it and sank her teeth into the side of his leg as her fingernails scored his skin.
She was rewarded with a word bellowed in Russian, but then came the crack of a slap and an accompanying searing pain that seemed to suffuse her entire bottom. Jordan screamed but kept her grip, but not for long. The Russian was spanking her. Hard. The blows were strong and sharp. They both thudded and stung, the pain burrowing into the deepest layers of her skin.
Jordan heard the sounds of crying and realized the pitiful wails were her own, but her punisher was unmoved and unrelenting. Through her peripheral vision, she could see his hand rise and fall, and she began to cry out for mercy. But Mikhail Barinov remained stoic. His face was a disciplinarian’s mask—his thin mouth a grim line, his dark eyes cold and unsympathetic. The fullest part of her bottom felt as if it was on fire, and her agony was only compounded when he continued the assault on the softer skin lower on her buttocks. It was worse here, and Jordan kicked and writhed and rocked back and forth, vaguely aware that her wild bucking motions were making for a tawdry display.
When her struggles became too exhausting, and her bottom cheeks were so sore that she could not even clench them without pain, only then did the hard, punishing hand come to rest on the throbbing surface of Jordan’s bottom. She was limp over his lap, aware now of the thickness of the hard thighs she was draped over, of how petite she was compared to him. What the hell had she been thinking, coming back here? What the hell had she been thinking, snooping around?
Her ass felt like it was on fire, and she could see the floor under her face was wet with her own shed tears. And then Jordan was aware of how quiet it was, save for her own pathetic hitches of breath. And she was aware of something else, the sensation of the Russian’s huge hand resting on her freshly spanked bottom. She froze and slowly looked back at him.
“You will behave now, no?” The question was accompanied by a light but proprietary squeeze to her right nate that sent an unexpected current of warmth through her body—an unexpected sensation that condensed to an embarrassing throb between her legs. Pleasure. She could not deny that was what she felt, and the shame of this was almost worse than the spanking.
Am I wet? The thought horrified her, for she was sure she felt the dampness collecting in her pussy. She squeezed her legs together, lest he somehow sense it. That only made the feeling more acute.
“I asked you a question, Jordan Rowe.” There was steel in his voice.
She took a deep, ragged breath. When she tried to answer, she realized her voice was raspy from crying. Jordan cleared her throat.
“Y-yes,” she said. You have no choice , she told herself.
“And you will submit?”
She looked forward, taking several deep breaths. His hand—that huge hand—was still in place on her bottom, cupping one stinging cheek.
“Answer me.”
Jordan closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said quietly, although she didn’t know what she was submitting to.
You told him what he wanted to hear , her defiant inner voice counseled. It’s what you had to do. You don’t mean it.
But as Mikhail Barinov told her she was a good girl and lifted her to a sitting position on his lap, the tears began again. They weren’t from pain this time, but from a renewed fear. Jordan always knew when someone was lying. This time, she feared it was her inner voice.
Chapter Seven
Ivan Kolov and his cousin were family. They were also BearKynd and shared the same powerful build, strength, and moral code of an ancient, secret lineage that lived in delicate balance with the bears and humans whose world they shared on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
But they were also very different. While both men were naturally dominant, Mikhail was stricter, a quality that served him well as a business owner. When Mikhail walked into a room, peers took notice and those brave enough to challenge him backed down. It was much the same when he shifted.
Ivan blended his steel with understanding. Where Mikhail was shrewd, he was more intellectual. Where Mikhail relied on force, Ivan relied on reason to a degree. As a scientist, he understood both were necessary at times.
As he entered the room where his cousin was keeping Agent Jordan Rowe, he knew this was a time to be both stern, but also understanding.
He found her sitting on the edge of her bed, an uneaten plate of breakfast food sitting on the tray table beside her. He’d knocked before entering, and her response of “Come in” had sounded soft and defeated.
Ivan pulled a chair from by the fireplace and moved it
over to the bed. She looked at him; he could tell by the flush on her face that she wondered if he knew what had happened the night before between her and his cousin.
Of course he knew. Mikhail had told him that he’d spanked her. She was indeed a stubborn woman, and had earned the punishment. Ivan had not disagreed. It was the way of their kind to correct females, but usually those females were mates. Jordan Rowe was not their mate, but one thing was clear after what had happened: their relationship with her had suddenly become very complicated.
“I want to leave.” Her voice was flat as she spoke, and she didn’t look at him. “I won’t mention any of this. I won’t mention…”
“The punishment?” he asked, and saw her flush deepen at confirmation that he knew.
“I need you to take me to the airfield,” she said.
Ivan leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “Is not that simple now, Jordan Rowe.” He paused. “Not after what you’ve seen.”
Her large blue eyes widened with fear and disbelief. “But I don’t know what I saw,” she said.
Ivan sighed and reached for his back pocket. He pulled out Jordan’s iPhone, which he’d found on the path. Pulling up the video app, he hit play on her latest recording, studying her face as she listened to the sound. He and Mikhail had watched the video that morning. Jordan had not captured audio of the conversation; she’d been too far away. But the phone had picked up the sound of the pebbles, the sound of the ensuing chase. The footage was choppy, but it clearly showed a one-eyed man, and then a brown blur as that man became a bear. When she’d tripped, the phone had fallen beside her face-up, and captured the off-center view of the one-eyed bear’s face and then the powerful body blow of Mikhail, who’d shifted in time to save her.
Ivan watched her reaction to the audio, saw the fear surge in her eyes at the memory, the disbelief.
“Agent Rowe,” he said when the video ended. “You cannot leave.”
Disbelief turned to anger as she rose from the bed and turned to face him, her arms folded across her chest.
“Do I need to remind you that I’m an employee of the United States?” Her voice was quaking with indignation. “If you and your cousin were worried about smuggling charges, you should know that kidnapping a federal agent is much, much worse.”
“You haven’t been kidnapped, Jordan Rowe. You were… reassigned. My cousin… he is wealthy man, influential. He has friends in Moscow. He has… how you say? Called in favors. So far as anyone knows, you are working on extended assignment.”
He could tell she didn’t want to believe him. “My boss, Bowman…”
“Ah, yes. The old man. He was given early retirement. It was quite sudden, but he no longer works for your government, which is very helpful when we call these days. They are… incurious.”
Her lower lip was trembling. She was blinking rapidly in an obvious attempt to hold back tears. She looked like a vulnerable child. Ivan ached to comfort her, but now was not the time.
“My family…” she began and now he walked over to her and tipped her chin up until she was forced to look at him.
“We know all about you. We know you have no family. No husband, no siblings. Your parents both died when you were in college,” he said. “Mikhail and I, we are your family now.”
She was shaking with fear and anger as he turned away. He picked up the phone where he’d laid it on the bedside table.
“Watch video,” he said. “The answers you came for are there. We will return to talk to you.” He glanced back, nodded toward the food on her tray. “And eat. Food in this household is not wasted.”
“No,” she said through gritted teeth. He looked at her, could see her clinging to her defiance.
“I suggest you do as you are told,” he said. “My cousin is not the only one who believes disobedient females should be punished.”
Chapter Eight
Jordan ate her breakfast. She told herself it was because she needed to keep up her strength if she was to get out of her current situation, but deep down she knew the real reason she capitulated. The steel in Ivan’s tone, the coolness of his warning… she had no doubt that the seemingly mild-mannered scientist would do as he warned.
There was little else to do after breakfast than to get dressed. Her duffle bag was still in the room, but she wasn’t surprised to see that someone had taken her computer after she’d cried herself to sleep following the humiliating bare-bottom spanking.
She’d not expected to be in the region for more than a few days, and given that Jordan had always been a light packer, she’d not brought more clothing than she thought she’d need. Now she pulled out a pair of yoga pants and fitted shirt she’d imagined wearing for the morning workout she’d been hoping to fit in. If she was going to be held prisoner, at least she’d be comfortable.
She didn’t remember pulling her boots off after the spanking, but they were gone. Had he come back and removed them? She looked down, realizing that the pajama pants she wore now bore smudges of earth from where she fell. She stripped them off, along with her panties and pajama top. Jordan stood in front of the bathroom mirror and took a deep breath before turning around.
She gasped to see the distinct traces of Mikhail Barinov’s fingers. He’d spanked her hard, hard enough to leave bruises. She thought back to how it felt to be trapped over his knee—to the fear, the pain, the helplessness. She remembered another sensation, too, and felt a flush rise from her chest to her face as she laid her fingers over the prints his had left. His hand was so large, it had nearly covered the expanse of her bottom.
She turned back, trying to ignore the soft throb of her pussy. It had been over a year since she’d felt desire of any kind. Jordan wasn’t a people person, and throwing herself into work provided an excuse for avoiding the inevitably disappointing game of hookups and the inevitable awkward partings that had become the pattern of her limited social life.
The men she’d met… images flitted through her mind, friends of casual friends who’d set her up. Men in suits or polos. Average men.
She thought of Ivan and Mikhail. Her captors. That’s what they were. They were not average men. They were… something else. They were something different. Her nipples tightened, aching. A tear spilled from her eye and ran down her face. She felt like an idiot, thinking of them as anything other than chauvinistic criminals who’d gotten one over on her.
Jordan bathed, washed her hair, changed her clothes. If she’d been in the inn, she may have prepared for the day with a bit of exercise, whether it was yoga or running. But not today. Her eyes kept moving to the phone Ivan had left on the table by the door.
The answers you came for are there , he’d said. But was she ready for the answers?
She took a deep breath and walked over to the table. She picked up the phone. It had been charged overnight. She walked back to the bed and sat down. Her heart was pounding as she clicked on the video.
She could almost feel the cold as she watched, could remember the way she’d felt as what she was watching played out on the screen in real time. The one-eyed man was being apprehended. They were trying to get him into the building. She could see now that there were bars on the windows. Who was this man?
There was a clattering noise. She didn’t remember moving the phone down, but it caught the image of pebbles clattering from under her boots. There was a yell, and the next shot was of the men. The one-eyed man sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring. There was less than a second of his running toward her until the footage became shaky as she ran.
But still the camera recorded, and she realized that she’d held it by the middle as she fled, and with each backswing of her arms, it caught glimpses of her pursuer. The man was running wildly, his coat flapping. Then the coat was gone and he was on all fours. And then there was a blur and the one-eyed man was gone. She could hear her own cries of panic, her rapid breathing. The man was a blur, then she fell, knocked down. And it was a bear that loomed over her, its face captured by
the phone she’d dropped. She remembered how surreal it had all seemed. It had happened so fast, but that split second that she’d looked into that one furious eye seemed like so much longer.
The last recording was of something massive knocking the one-eyed bear off of her. After that the footage was just of the moon above the trees, with the audio of animals fighting. Bears. There had been a second one. Where had it come from? She remembered two men below her on the slope, but had no time to process that before Mikhail Barinov had pulled her to her feet and dragged her away.
She started to replay the video, but put the camera down. Jordan dealt in facts, but what she’d seen defied anything that was rational.
There was a rap at the door. She stood silently staring at it. The rap came again.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened. Jordan took a step back as both Mikhail Barinov and Ivan Kolov walked in. Ivan shut the door behind him.
The men stared at Jordan. She stared back and tried to summon the tough-as-nails persona that had served her so well as an agent. But the sense of power she felt from the two men facing her was like a fourth presence in the room; Jordan felt herself fighting not to yield to it.
“You watched the video?” Mikhail was the first one to speak.
Jordan ignored his question. “Let me get something straight,” she said, drawing on every reserve of her nerve to stare him down. “Right now, you obviously have the upper hand. I don’t know what the fuck is going on here. And at this moment, I don’t care. But you need to understand something, Mr . Barinov. I’m not a goddamned child. And I will not be treated like one.”
“And you have not been.” He arched an eyebrow. “You have been treated in the same manner we’d treat any woman who disobeys.”
“If that’s how you feel, you should have kidnapped a woman from a less civilized part of the world,” she said. “Because I won’t tolerate…”
Her Russian Bears Page 6
