“Okay. I know that you didn’t want to do this interview. I think you’re a little too used to getting your own way.”
“I didn’t get my own way about this.”
“Well, you must have, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
“Now you’re confusing me.”
“Less than an hour and I’ve confused a genius.”
“Don’t say that, or I shall have to start disliking you a lot more.”
“Is disliking someone a choice, then? Isn’t it automatic whether you like someone or dislike them?”
“Sometimes it’s automatic, and sometimes it’s a choice.”
“So you could choose to like me, then.”
“Yes, I could. But why would I do that? Anyway, never mind that now. Can we stop talking about me and start the interview, please.”
“The interview is about you. And you can relax because I’ve started.”
His voice hardened, “You can’t have started because you haven’t given me your word yet.”
“You haven’t told me anything more interesting yet.”
“But I told you that I will.”
“And I think that you will. But I don’t know yet. Not until I know what it is.”
“Are you trying to play a game with me, Ms Cuddles?”
I stopped and thought about that one for a moment. Carefully I said, “You don’t strike me as a man for playing games with.”
“You mean that I’m not fun.”
“That’s something I don’t expect to find out.” I had meant it to be a light, throwaway remark. Playful. That wasn’t how it came out. It sounded pouty, even a bit resentful.
The door at the end of the room opened again. Bernhard’s double rushed into the room. Again. I assumed it was Benjy, but there was a certain economy of movement and a seriousness of purpose that made me unsure. Bernhard told me, “This is Mischa. My other brother. Mischa, Maxi Cuddles.”
Mischa said, “Benjy told me.”
Bernhard’s eyelids drooped and his lip tightened. “You know it isn’t anything reliable. We don’t know if it means anything at all.”
Mischa came near. His nostrils flared. He stood behind my chair and leaned forwards, inhaling through his nose in long, deep breaths.
It was disconcerting, feeling him so close. The expression on his face rapidly changed, I felt it as well as seeing it from the corner of my eye.
His voice was low and hot, close to my ear. He said, “It’s true, Bernhard.”
“I know, Mischa. But is it really worth it? All over again?”
Mischa scowled. “You can’t be serious.”
“But will it really ever work?”
“Little in this life is guaranteed, Bernhard.” Mischa’s voice quickened. “Our fate is a certainty. There isn’t any doubt about that.”
The two men’s eyes locked. Mischa’s lip tightened.
“You know I don’t relish the prospect any more than you do. But you surely can’t pretend that we have a choice, can you?”
Bernhard looked down for a moment, then back up at Mischa.
Mischa said, “You’ve put her in the picture, of course.” He took a breath. “What are you thinking, Bernhard?”
“No, Mischa. I was putting it off.”
Mischa’s face softened. “Of course. I understand.”
They both turned to look at me.
Mischa was very close and my head was swimming. I stood. I needed to get up. Move around. His bulk, his nearness unsettled me.
I stumbled against him. My hand went up automatically, to stop me falling. My fingers stretched towards his open shirt. Through the thick hair of his chest I felt the heat of his skin. As his pulse beat in his breast, a powerful jolt shot through me. “Oh!” I exclaimed.
Nothing had prepared me for what happened next. He growled, a low, rumbling rasp. While I was still reeling he sprang backwards, fast, and his chest swelled. I lurched forwards and his hands were reflexively out to catch me but simultaneously a sparkling mist enveloped him.
Dark, acrid wraiths curled around him and sparkles like stars or tiny firecrackers lit and burst inside the mist. Beneath the smoke and the crackles, he rose. Grew. Expanded. The sound of fabric tearing mingled with crackles and a wet, sinewy, wrench.
The ripping burst of the seams of his shirt and his pants was like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. As his face contorted, his nose protruded. Through the swirling fog I saw a thick coat of fur spring up over his whole body.
His neck stretched and his head lifted. His whole frame grew. On his belly and between his legs the fur sprang thick and dark. Before he was fully coated, I saw at the top of his thighs, in his groin, an impossibly massive cock stretched forward, arced and swung.
Up on his hind legs, the bear lifted his huge front paws. They waved towards me and he snarled. Long, lethal claws cut the air in front of me so fast they swished like a mass of swords.
His eyes held me and his muzzle twitched. I cowered back, but I knew there would be no point in running. He was huge and powerful. If I turned, he had only to fall forwards and I would be caught in his long furry arms, held by his heavy, wide paws. Pinned and impaled by his razor-sharp claws.
“Mischa!” Bernhard’s voice was urgent.
The bear lurched towards me. A huge paw came towards my face. Long, sharp claws were near my cheek, my eye. I rolled to the side as fast as I could.
“MISCHA! Not that way!”
The bear growled. His eyes held me. His hot breath was on my face. I felt his panting on the tops of my swelling breasts. From my head to my toes, my whole body trembled. The force of his breath rose as he growled.
My body shrank as my elbows and knees pulled together. If he swung at me, just once, I could be maimed for life. Or worse.
The bear rose. He turned to snarl and glower at Bernhard. As he swayed away, back to the door, he fell to all fours and lumbered out.
Finally Bernhard Grarr asked if I was alright, and offered me something to drink. When he leaned towards me to ask, “Are you okay?” I felt a swirling well rise inside me, but I took a deep breath. The look in his eye had warmth and it touched me.
After what I’d just been through, I really wanted something strong, but I was determined to hold myself together. I asked him for a fruit juice. Between the billionaires and the bears, not to mention the transition of one into the other, there was already more stimulus than I could easily cope with.
Bernhard fetched a silver tray with a jug of juice with ice and two tall, straight glasses. He put the tray on the table, poured juice into a glass and set it near to me.
I thanked him and took a gulp.
“I see now why you like your privacy.” His eyes were soft on me. Searching. I went on, “The thing that Mischa said. About you putting me in the picture. What’s the picture, Bernhard?”
He bowed his head and shook it slowly then he looked back up at me. His strength and a fierce pride beamed out of his eyes but along with it there was something else. Something in the way that his head inclined, in a twitch in his lips. Something in the way that his eyes crinkled at the corners, something felt like a connection.
Since we met outside in the grass, I had felt like an unwelcome invader, a clumsy gate-crasher in Mr Grarr’s personal domain. Now he seemed to look at me in a different way. As though he was seeing me for the first time.
Benjy had said that I was beautiful. He called me ‘gorgeous.’ And Bernhard had agreed with him. There was something of that light in his eyes now.
“The picture is that we’re a dying breed.” Bernhard said, “Literally. We three are the last of our line. If we don’t find a way to produce a litter or two of cubs, our clan will end with the three of us.”
“I’d have thought three great looking billionaires could find girls willing to help out without too much trouble.”
His brow knotted with pain, “But you’ve seen what can happen. That happens if we come in physical contact with almost every human.”
“That would hamper the reproductive process.” I sipped my juice. He still hadn’t taken anything for himself.
He said, “There are very, very few human women who could be compatible for us. It really is less than one in a million.” He watched me intently. “It’s possible that you are one.”
I dropped my glass. The juice seemed to rise up as it fell, like it clamored to escape the plunging vessel. A spray of thick drops above the lolling orange tongue reaching above the high rim.
Bernhard watched as the heavy base hit the stone floor and bounce. Intact and rising up to catch the errant juice, the glass rapidly flipped over and fell, bursting into fragments. Gobs and drops of juice sprayed out in arcs.
I was still looking at Bernhard. My mouth must have been wide open. He leaned forward, “Are you okay?” his voice seemed to carry genuine concern.
“I’m…” how was I? Was I okay? I really didn’t know. Just to stall him, I said, “Yes. I’m fine.” When I heard it, I knew that I wasn’t fine. Whatever I was, ‘fine’ didn’t get near it.
“Did it get on your dress?”
Automatically I said, “It doesn’t matter.”
“Really, I can get it cleaned…”
“I AM NOT TAKING MY DRESS OFF!”
Okay, that may have been a little over the top, but I was feeling hemmed in at that point. There were a whole lot of things I needed to process right then, and whether there were spots of orange juice on my dress was not among the top fifteen.
Whether my dress was wet on the outside couldn’t have mattered much less right then. I was bothered about how wet I was on the inside of it. I was particularly squirmy in my panties, which were drenched.
The door opened and Benjy’s head poked round. I said, “It’s okay, Benjy. I dropped a glass.”
Bernhard stared at me, his mouth open. “What?” I looked around and Benjy was staring at me too. I got up. The featureless walls were making me feel penned in.
Benjy said, “You can tell us apart.”
“Sure,” I said, puzzled, “It’s easy.”
“Only for someone who’s tuned in to us, who’s intuitive, instinctively receptive to us.”
“But it’s obvious.”
Glass crunched under my foot. I stepped back quickly. Benjy came closer and I held up a hand. He stopped.
He asked me, “How?”
“You’re, I don’t know, younger somehow. Mischa is more thoughtful. More mature.”
“And Bernhard?”
“Bernhard is the live wire. He’s the brains.”
Bernhard stood, “You’ve got us exactly.”
Benjy laughed, “On the nose. Three bullseyes.”
“But,” Bernhard spoke softly, “You can’t see any of that. It’s all in how we act and how we speak.”
“Well, sure, but so what?”
“So,” said Benjy, “for one thing, hardly anyone can do that. At least not with us they can’t.”
Bernhard came nearer. “Even researchers who work with twins and triplets. They always say we look too alike.”
Benjy grinned, “I bet you couldn’t do it if we stood still in a line.”
I looked at him for a moment. “I think I could. I can tell from your eyes.”
Bernhard and Benjy turned to each other, their eye wide. Looking back at me, Bernhard said, “Then you really are intuiting. Empathizing.”
“She’s ours, Bernhard, she’s our mate.” And he looked at me imploring, His eyes drifted down over my curves. Slowly. Then flicked back up to mine, “You’ve got to be.”
My heart pounded. It was an absurd idea. And I couldn’t consider doing it. Obviously. I wasn’t considering it then, I refused to. In particular I did not muse over the great swinging heft of Mischa’s gigantic cock. Nuh-uh.
Benjy fetched a cloth and a brush to clear up the juice and the glass. My dress was feeling constricting and my breathing was labored. My hand went to my throat. Feeling hot, I dragged my hands up through my hair.
I asked Bernhard, “In this huge glass house, isn’t there a deck, or at least room with a window where we could talk?”
We sat, the four of us, in a room two stories up. One wall was all curved glass and gave a panoramic view of the whole green scoop of the valley. Around a pine table, we discussed how and why the three billionaires needed me. Me and nobody else. And why they needed me so very badly.
Mischa told me, “We are the last of a line. There are no females in our clan. There hasn’t been a female cub in a very long time.”
Bernhard said, “Not in our generation, nor the one before. And now only we three remain.”
“Thousands of years of heritage,” Mischa mourned, “dwindle down to us.”
“And,” Bernhard continued, “If we don’t find a way to reproduce, we’ll snuff out like candles.”
I asked him, “Is that why you need to raise money?”
Benjy said, “Exactly, of course!”
I said, “It’s a shame one of the three of you didn’t study genetics.”
Benjy made a face, “Do you have any idea what that would have been like?”
Bernhard told me, “We tried.”
Benjy’s head shook, “Life science students are so gregarious and sociable,” and he shuddered, “Unbearable.”
Benjy’s was comical and I couldn’t resist a tiny chuckle. I thought it might relieve the tension but Mischa said, “I’m glad that our plight amuses you.”
And Bernhard added, “Yes, we’re going to be extinct, but at least we gave someone a laugh.”
Benjy joined in, “A lovely little student who’s not even a real journalist.”
“Benjy,”
Mischa rebuked him, but he went on, “Not even a journalism major.”
Bernhard was firm and a tight not of anger propelled his voice, “Alright Benjy. That’s enough.”
Benjy said, “Some genetic research is headed in the right direction, but it’s making very slow progress. It won’t be ready soon enough to help us.”
“That’s the reason for the IPO,” Mischa chipped in, “And why we want it so urgently. The money will be used to fund more research.”
“We know that the chances of it working out in time for us are slender,” Bernhard’s voice was quiet. “And, major pharma companies are not motivated to find gene therapies for a clan of three shifters.”
“A mate would be our ideal solution.” Mischa leaned over the table, “But we never found one who’s compatible with us.”
“Not until now,” said Benjy.
“But it couldn’t work.” I said, “What happened when I touched Benjy, my fingernail barely made contact with his skin…”
Bear Mountain Clan Brides: romantic bbw werebear menage Page 3
