The Grizzly's Tale Excerpt

The Grizzly’s Tale A Pantharian Story

Nara Malone

Are they strong enough to be her men?

Cunning. Everyone uses the word to describe Katy. In Quarterz, the virtual reality world where men and women compete as hunter or prey, Katy has never been captured. At least, not until the bear clan arrived in the game. Powerful, smart, and straight out of her fantasies, Katy can't always outmaneuver the tests they create.

When the clan challenges her to take their team on in a real game of hunters and prey, she can’t resist the lure.

Is she strong enough to be their woman?

Grizz, Oso, and Kodie are Pantherian bear shifters, born into a culture where men have learned to share and protect their species’ most limited resource—females. They’ve accepted they will never have a Pantherian female as their shared mate. But can a human female handle a Pantherian, mating trio. If so, will she still want them when she knows what they are?

Are any of them strong enough to outsmart fate?

When the game puts hearts and lives on the line, taking a loss is the only way to win.

www.trollriverpub.com The Grizzly’s Tale A Pantherian Story (Book 3) Copyright © 2016 Nara Malone ISBN: 978-1-946454-02-7 No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, with the exception of a reviewer who may quote passages in a review, without written prior permission from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, events, incidents and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

WARNING: The author and publisher would solemnly advise you not to attempt any of the sexual or nonsexual actions of any of the characters in this book. Any damage physical, mental or emotional is the sole responsibility of the person/persons attempting such actions. Please be aware that this is a work of fiction and you are responsible for yourself and the consequences caused thereof.

Dear Reader, Nara has worked very hard on this particular piece of entertainment. This book was brought to you by hard labor and love. Please respect an artist’s work for the enrichment we try to bring you. I humbly ask that you don’t outright steal this child born on paper and brought to you by love. If you come by this book by nefarious means, and you are simply unable to give the change in your pocket for the purchase price, then take it with my blessing. But if you can purchase it and would like Nara to continue to bring you great books, please purchase a copy to support this author.

Thank you, Troll River Publications

Join the fun with Author Nara Malone for giveaways, updates and new release opportunities at: http://eepurl.com/bApcwD

Prologue In the beginning, all of the Mother’s children could move between the mortal plane of the earth’s body and all of the bodiless dimensions above. In the beginning, all beings were therianthropes, both human and beast. In the beginning, all creatures could shift between both forms at will.

In the beginning, all the Mother’s children lived in harmony, feeding not on each other but from the fruits of her garden.

And it wasn’t long, a millennium or two, before the true ones lost their way. Their dual natures fought for dominance.

Some decided the beast body was superior to the human and refused to spend time nurturing a naked, finless, wingless, furless form. Lost in the pursuits of physical excellence, they neglected their creative gifts.

Some decided the human form was superior and preferred spending time creating alphabets, numbers, music, art, stories. Lost in the pursuits of mind, they neglected the power of the beasts within.

Many of the True Children were lost, forgot the way into the shifting dimension. And in subsequent generations the unused side of their nature atrophied and vanished. Soon the earth garden included humans with no beast nature and beasts with no human nature.

Humans and beasts turned to cannibalism, killing and consuming each other for food, killing and consuming Therians as well. Human numbers grew until they outnumbered Therians, until humankind overran habitats, leveled forests, ravaged the earth, driving many species of beasts and Therians into extinction.

At the dawn of the industrial age, a high council convened. Elders from the eight remaining Therian tribes (Canidae, Felidae, Ursidea, Ungulae, Cetacea, Hominidae, Aves, and Reptilia) determined survival required separation from humans. The elders called for an exodus to the Dragon’s Triangle of the Pacific Rim. The True Children took the name Pantherian as a symbol of a new, unified nation and called their new homeland Pantheria. Shielded from human eyes and human invasion by magnetic forces so disruptive to navigational instruments that humans couldn’t explore with their boats and later with their planes and satellites, the population flourished.

Then came the years of the wasting sickness, a disease that killed three of every four female babies. Just when Pantherians resigned themselves to looming extinction, the first Wildlings were discovered by males who migrated back to human-controlled regions of the world when there were no longer enough mates to go around. Wildling Therians, raised in a human world that had forgotten Therians existed. Wildlings who didn’t know their true nature, but carried unique genetic traits that could reverse the Pantherian slide toward extinction.

That is the history, as recorded by the elders, of all that came before the Wildlings, before the great struggle to determine if the welfare of the few should be sacrificed to ensure the survival of the species.

Chapter One KatyDid Everything’s a lie. And nothing is…

The shadow cast by a branch above was a lie. An unnatural bulge shackled my attention, drew my gaze up into the golden stare of a coal-black panther.

My heart made a leap for my throat. As if it could escape its tether of veins and cartilage.

Escape fate waiting behind gleaming teeth. Escape that impossibly long tongue already sweeping across the cat’s lips in anticipation. I imagined that tongue scooping out my heart the way a toad scoops a fly from the air.

By the time you see a big cat, it’s already too late. You’re dinner.

At five feet two, I wasn’t much of a dinner, so I pointed that out. “I’m skinny prey. More bones than meat. Not worth your trouble.”

The tongue swiped back in the other direction. Staring death in the eyes, my primitive brain and instinct fought to take over.

To the primitive brain, every lie is truth.

Thousands of years of evolution had taught human bodies wisdom that didn’t require thought.

The urge to run sent adrenaline surging, burning in my veins. I gripped a length of vine that brushed my elbow, clinging with both hands, as if that might somehow anchor me to life when the cat leapt.

Losing is only guaranteed if you give up.

My weight on the vine shifted the bough. The cat’s tail rose, going from a gently curved “J” to exclamation point. The tip twitched. When the twitching stopped, he would be on me before my brain registered the change.

My heart kicked up to triple time. Sweat seeped from my pores. Even my knees were sweating.

KatyDid was about to die.

Fuck.

Dying was such a time suck, and I had so little time left. This wasn’t fair. Nothing about the rules governing life in Quarterz Swamp was fair. That’s what I loved about it.

Somewhere above us, a raven called out a warning, drawing the cat’s attention for the split second it took me to launch from the rock where I was perched. I sucked down enough air to fill my lungs halfway before I let go and disappeared beneath the thick, bubbly water of the bayou.

Double fuck.

The splash and turbulence near the opposite bank could only mean one thing. Gator.

Knotweed carpeted that side of the channel. I could barely see through the fog of rising bubbles, but that huge log drifting toward me against the current had to be a lie. The stretch limo of alligators was heading my way.

Now I had three predators after me—panther, gator, and hunter. Two of them wanted to eat me. The other wanted to own me.

I should have let the panther have me.

I’d known the hunter was there even before the raven called. A sixth sense that always sent an electric tingle down my spine when Grizz was near.

The gator’s tail swished back and forth as it moved in.

That cat wouldn’t follow me under the water, but my lungs already burned with oxygen denial.

If I crawled out on either bank, the panther’s teeth and claws would peel the wrapping off its supper before I’d drawn a full breath. I couldn’t go down stream either, not with the gator blocking my way. Upstream, I’d cross the sim border, a looming blackness I’d been warned to steer clear of.

Possible death seemed a way better option than certain death.

I surfaced to guzzle enough air to fuel a swim for the border. Before I could dive again, a bigger splash knocked me back. A bear-sized man landed between me and the gator. Grizz in all his glory—muscles gleaming, long dreads, and loincloth swaying sexily as he clambered onto a submerged boulder, knife in hand. His attention was on the cat.

Did he see the gator?

I watched, my attention leap-frogging between the contenders. The panther’s muscles bunched as it prepared to leap. The gator’s tail whipped around as it turned and landed a solid thwack behind Grizz’s ankles.

The force sent Grizz sailing into me. We hurtled backward across the sim barrier into blackness. Even through the chaos, his arm hooked around my waist, securing his prize.

I managed to draw a breath as we sailed through darkness, and had it knocked out of me when we landed. This time, the water was waist-deep and the bottom solid rock rather than slime and silt.

Grizz had twisted so he took the force of the landing. “F-u-u-uhhh-kkk.” The strangled expletive exploded from him when I landed on top, punching the air from his lungs.

My elbow slammed against a stone, and stars swarmed behind my eyelids.

I groaned and shifted; that swirl and spin through the cage left me slightly nauseous. “If you let me go, I’ll throw up somewhere other than on your chest.”

“Light,” he gasped.

Uh-huh, sure, because it’s always wise to look at what you’re hurling on before you hurl.

I pulled a moonstone from a pouch on my belt. Milky blue light cast a circle around us. The spinning sensation eased.

“Be still,” he said, and amazingly, it sounded more like a suggestion than an order. More amazing, he dropped his arm from my waist.

The shock of our landing had cut my health reading in half. Holding as still as possible might conserve the remaining fuel in my metabolic tank, but as you might have noticed, water was not a good place to linger.

I scrambled onto a ledge.

Grizz followed. Crawled actually. Then collapsed in a heap, but retaining enough command to hook an arm around me and snatch me against him.

I tried wriggling away, angling the light to determine how much damage he’d sustained.

He rolled over, trapping me under him. Lips pressed to mine, his groan vibrating through my body in waves.

I dropped the moonstone.

Blue light rippled in waves over the opalescent cave walls. Desire rippled through me when his tongue found mine. His hands skimmed up my sides, under my top, thumbs homing in on my nipples. Circling. Circling.

Mmm. “Prey arousal increased ten percent,” the prey meter on his belt announced in a robotic female voice.

“She lies,” I mumbled when he broke the kiss.

Grizz pushed up on one elbow, his expression half grin, half grimace. He turned off the meter.

“I don’t need that to tell me what’s happening inside you, KatyDid. Your voice gets all warm and whispery when you want me.” His fingers tangled in my hair, smoothing it, curling a long lock around his finger, a band of gold against his dark skin.

I swallowed. I had no words to fight with. My body answered by intensifying the ache between my legs, arousal making me slick and ready. Thank the coders that prey meter was off. But he did know what was happening inside me. Grizz always knew.

He lowered his head and kissed me again, slower, as if I were something worth savoring.

With his big hands cupping my face, I felt as substantial as a whisper. When he drew back again, I savored him in the soft light. His mocha skin, slick and gleaming from the water, his thick dreads caressing my breasts when he angled his head. I captured one, curled it around my wrist. I didn’t require a meter to gauge his response, to tell me he wanted more, that he was ready to take it.

His hands moved from cradling my face to fisted in my hair.

“You can’t,” I whispered. “You took the full force of the gator’s strike and the landing here in the cave. I can’t believe you’re still alive. Sex now will kill you.”

He grinned. “Can’t think of a better way to go.”

“I have three days until I have to leave. You can’t die yet.”

He pressed his face to my neck, his teeth scraping skin. An animalistic whimper vibrated in my throat. I fought to hold it back. His teeth nipped my shoulder, setting the sound free.

“Careful, Katy.” His voice was a husky, bone-melting murmur. “I’ll start believing you’re getting fond of me.”

“I’m fond of beating you at your games.” Everything’s a lie. And nothing is.

He settled over on his side, his back to the water, his hand trailing down my stomach, parting my clenched thighs. I wasn’t leashed. I could have fought him and won. He wouldn’t have enough power to take me by force, which was every hunter’s right in the Quarters. My presence here was my consent to those terms. He was a hunter, and I was prey. Once caught, prey submitted to whatever the hunter desired. Safing-out was an option if anything he wanted was intolerable to me. The penalty for safing-out would be shared by both of us and, like dying, would put him out of reach for the remainder of the time I had left.

Officially, I wasn’t caught until he’d collared and leashed me. Why was he waiting? Why wasn’t I taking advantage of the opening he left me?

My looming departure from this world held me in place. That’s what I told myself. It wasn’t those obsidian eyes. Or the crooked smile he got when his gaze roamed my body. Or fondness.

While I might love this sexy web of lies we wove, erotic deceptions that could reach beyond time and space to make us believe, I was enough of a realist to know that when I was gone, Grizz would find new prey to take my place on his most-wanted list.

He yanked off my skirt, a makeshift garment fashioned of animal skins laced together and strung on a cord. It barely covered enough to qualify as a micromini. More skins, laced into a cropped vest, completed my outfit. His fingers hooked the lacing between my breasts, and he snapped those cords too. Skins fell away to expose quivering breasts and erect nipples.

“Mmm, the prey’s arousal level is climbing,” he said.

His voice goes to bass when he’s aroused, a vibrato that played over my skin and shattered my focus. I should safe-out. I’d never safed-out to save myself from the consequences of losing a hunt. It was a point of honor for me that I fulfilled my end of the bargain and served their fantasies on the extremely rare occasion a hunter bested me. Yet, here I was considering doing it to save him.

He was a big boy. A very big boy.

I hooked my fingers under his loincloth and smiled at the twitch of his cock against my palm.

He thought he’d won. He should have known better. He taught me better than that the first time his leash wrapped around my neck. He’d only been in the Quarterz a month. Hunters who had been there years hadn’t been able to catch me. When I’d pointed that out—I was miffed at losing my uncaptured status—he’d simply shrugged and said, “Everything here’s a lie, baby. And nothing is. Don’t forget that, and you’ll never get caught.”

He was right.

His hand drifted back between my legs, his fingers sliding inside me delivered an electric jolt.

I couldn’t push him away. Couldn’t get a breath. I might as well have been leashed. It felt as if my legs were locked in place. Held in place by the force of his will. The sex was hot those times we played rough. I’d resist so he’d immobilize me. Then, I could only watch helpless as he used my body, fucking me so long and hard I’d go to mist in his arms.

No way he’d survive what he intended to do to me. We played chicken. Both waiting for the other to blink.

Playing this way, where I could escape if I wanted, where it was just the force of his desire and mine pinning me in place, was even hotter.

And scarier.

I blinked first, pushed his hand away, pressed my legs together.

“Be still!” This time, it wasn’t a suggestion. His dominant tone sent tingly shivers all through my pussy.

“If I take the top, you’ll last longer,” I said. “I can watch you go to mist while I fuck you into oblivion.”

He smoothed some wet locks back from my face. “I’m not sure I should be flattered by the way that makes your eyes light up.”

He wanted to go out fucking me. What else should I say? I’d ride him to the finish. He thought he could last, consummate a third catch that would allow him to mark me as owned by him. I had other plans.

I’d have sworn he was about to say yes, but a movement caught my eye. A long tentacle rose from the water, suction cups aligned along the length of its underside flexed with anticipation as it arched over Grizz.

“Trouble,” I whispered.

His gaze followed mine. “Fuck, this is Waster’s region. I wonder how pissed he’ll be if I strangle one of his cave monsters.”

As if it understood, the creature made a sharp keening sound. Another tentacle and then another and another shot up from the water. As the creature rose and more arms emerged, Grizz scooted backward across the rock ledge, dragging me along with him.

“I’ve got you, KatyDid. No worries.”

A rubbery purple arm reached toward us, tapping the ground with its sensor cups, slinking along like a hound with its nose to a rabbit trail.

The piercing beep of my play timer called me back to reality. “I’m out, Grizz. Gotta go. You should quit too. I don’t want you dying.”

“Really?” He grinned. “I knew you cared.”

“Well, I don’t want you dying at the hands or arms or whatevers of that beast. When you get zapped into oblivion, I want to be the one doing it.”

“Whoa, it’s starting to sound like love.”

I punched my teleport button and went to mist. He was on his feet facing off with the cave creeper, knife in hand, when I dematerialized.

When it came to dying or defending me, I knew there was no way he’d leave and let me fight the beast alone. Maybe with me out of the way, Grizz wouldn’t fight to the death.

Die with honor or run like prey and live to fight another day?

Even as I thought it, I knew which choice he’d make.

Chapter Two Katya She slipped VR goggles from her head and disconnected the amplifier that translated sounds into sensations. Unplugging her KatyDid persona and returning to Katya as she unplugged the wires.

Faded wallpaper replaced the opalescent walls of the cave. Stuttering air, pushed through vents by an aging furnace, replaced the melodic babble of water. Thrift-shop furniture supported her patchwork computer system. A lopsided venetian blind covered her window, and a shabby chic patchwork quilt covered her lumpy mattress.

No photos or personal trinkets adorned her dresser.

It wasn’t much, but even when she was here, she wasn’t really here. Her room, her home, couldn’t match the Quarterz in all its post-apocalyptic grunge glory. Oddly, the core philosophy still applied.

Everything was a lie.

Should anyone go digging, they’d find more reality in KatyDid than there had ever been or could be in Katya.

Carefully, she disconnected the delicate control wiring that linked her laptop to the sensory bra and peeled the glittery fabric away from her skin. Nerve endings twitched under the change from heated vibrations to the cool air.

Her hands shook. Adrenaline lingered in fevered skin and racing heart.

Virtual reality tricked the mind into believing it was real by responding to her actions as the natural world would. When she stepped into a pool, water rippled in wide rings around her. When she turned her head in the real world, the rotation occurred in-world, shifting her viewpoint.

Five minutes after rezzing in the Quarterz, she forgot the woman sitting in the chair at a computer. She was her avatar, navigating through another dimension. Living her fantasies.

It took longer than five minutes to come back to herself.

Catching her breath, she eased the vaginal probe from inside her. She skimmed her fingertips over her swollen pussy, the ache pulsing deep inside. She eyed the bed, contemplating finishing what Grizz had started.

The phone rang before she was out of her chair.

She knew who it would be even before Grizz’s baritone purred in her ear. “I hate the new rules,” he said.

“You died.”

“Let’s not be so negative. My avatar has been deleted. In three days, I can upload him again, rebuild his inventory, and life goes on.”

“It goes on without me.”

“More reason to hate the new rules.”

“You don’t need all the rules in your favor to get what you want. The only thing standing in your way was death by predator. You could have logged off. You could have stayed alive and been back in a few hours with your health meter topped off.”

She couldn’t bring herself to point out there were plenty of women who would throw themselves in his capture nets for the chance to give him what he wanted. They would when his avatar was reborn. No changing that.

“You could safe-out when someone beats you. Have you ever?” he asked.

“It’s not been an issue all that often.”

None but a member of the bear clan could catch her. And it was rare enough they did. There was always a moment when they’d face off, when she would know the thrill of checkmate, aware they had her and any minute the leash would come out. She’d stare back, defiant, gaze locked with the hunter, heart hammering, butterflies in her stomach.

A burning sensation spread in her chest. She missed that already. How could she leave this?

Him? Them? Silly, wanting a game and pixel people so much that it hurt physically.

Grizz brought her focus back to him. “Nothing gets your motor purring like a chance to do the impossible.”

“Guilty.”

“Same goes for me.”

“I know.” Leaving Grizz, Kodie, and Oso felt impossible. She’d do it. Had to. She picked up the thread of what he was trying to say. “The lurking beasts don’t discriminate. They kill prey and hunters alike, so it’s like taking it up a level for me too. The balance is still, is always, in the hunter’s favor.”

“You played top level today, baby.”

“Thanks. You too.”

“And with all that said, you still need fucking.”

He said it simply, the same way he might say she needed milk in her coffee.

She pursed her lips to hold off the smile that would creep into her tone if she let it reach her lips. “No comment.”

“Still wired up?” he asked.

“Um…” “I meant that literally, but figuratively works too.” She could tell he was smiling too; it washed through his voice like sunshine.

“No to the literal.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need wires to make you feel me.” He blew a soft kiss into her ear. Even his phone kisses gave her shivers.

“I can’t,” she said. “I have to pick up my roommate.”

“Thought you took her for her driver’s license last week?”

“I did, but we only have the one car, and I keep it when I’m working. I had to go out on a call this morning.”

She’d shared only the vaguest details about her work life with him. Nothing detailed enough to make her stalkable, such as her expertise in wildlife rehab. The caretakers at the rescue center would rehabilitate the bobcat kitten she’d rescued. After next week, she’d spend her work days bundled in a snowsuit chasing seals across ice flows. The best thing about that being that no one who might still be hunting her in the real world would think to look in Antarctica. Even if they did find her, getting to her would be impossible.

“I really do need to get going, Grizz.”

“Take a minute for yourself, okay? We don’t have many minutes left.”

“Grizz—” “Just listen. Let me finish; then tell me no. If you still want to.”

Bedsprings shifted under her with a creaky sigh, signaling her submission. He knew. He kept talking.

“The guys and me, we’ve been working out a little surprise. A goodbye present. A different style hunt. A mancache.”

The name of their game set her fantasies spinning. Mancache. Hmm. She waited for him to expound on the idea.

“What’re you wearing?” he asked.

“What has that got to do with a mancache?”

“If you want to know what a mancache is, you have to be a good girl.”

“You’re up to something, Grizz.

“Your trust, like everything you give us, is hard won. We don’t take it lightly. Don’t mistake sex play for playing you.”

She wasn’t quite as trusting as he believed. She’d rented a PO Box using a fake business name and given him the address, preserving her identity while giving the bears a way to reach out to her.

She protected her real-world fake identity from her virtual-world fake identity. Even the phone number she gave him was one rented from a service that forwarded his calls to a number that forwarded them to another number that forwarded them to her private number.

“What are you wearing, Katy?”

She fingered the rough cotton of a man’s blue work shirt. “The shirt you sent me.”

“Mmmm. What else?”

His shirt was big enough to fit a bear, the shirttails falling below her knees. “Nothing.”

“There’s something about you in my shirt…” A wordless rumble, part arousal, part approval, hummed against her ear.

It put her off balance, how pleased he sounded. “I sleep in it.” She wanted the words back as soon as she said them. He’d get back to insisting she was fond of him again.

The Quarterz was an invitation-only game housed on a private server local to their community.

That meant Grizz was in the same town she was. Moved in the same circles she did. It made playing the games they played more dangerous. At least for her.

She found herself looking at men who might gaze a little too long at her in the grocery store or at the coffee shop, wondering if one of them was from the game. If one might be Grizz. She

kept looking for the man who might fit the shirt. It was giving her a shoulder fixation in the same way Cinderella’s prince must have been fixated on feet.

“You sleep in my shirt? Tell me why, Katy.”

“Let’s not get off track.”

“And now,” Grizz said, his tone dropping back down, low and sexy as blues on a sax, “we interrupt all that detestable, emotionally sticky stuff for sticky sex.”

“Mmmm.”

“That’s my girl. I love the way your breathing changes when you want me.”

Her phone chimed an incoming text. Virginia said she was getting a ride from friends. She now had a few extra minutes whether she wanted them or not.

She wanted them.

Anticipation fluttered in her stomach. The sexy beast aroused in him called to everything primal in her. Awakened that secret part of her that loved it when a hunter could catch her, take her right where he found her. Not polite. Not proper. Primitive. Tooth-and-nail sex.

“You’re so responsive, baby. I can hear in your sigh how wet you are. I think I could make you come just talking, without you touching yourself.”

“Grizz—” “Shhh. Lay back. I can picture you, baby. All that silky blonde hair falling on your pillow.

Hazel eyes, like a forest, greens, golds, and blue sky. Wild. A little glint of worry because you’re used to being in charge. You like it though. When someone else is strong enough to be in charge.

You like that.” His whisper had gone soft as a hiss of water on a hot griddle.

“Sort of.”

“Want me to stop?”

“No.” “Then see me there. Naked, straddling you. Lowering my weight to cover you, pressing you down into the cool grass of a riverbank. I love the way you squirm and wriggle under me. It’s not just pretense. You try to get away physically. That’s not what you want. You only have to safeout to end it, but you never safe-out. Because the part of you that wants me is stronger than the part that is afraid to want me.”

She’d thought she was already naked. Grizz wasn’t satisfied with that, stripping away invisible layers, the rationalizations she wore like armor. He wanted naked that ran bone deep. He wanted authentic naked.

“You want my hands in your hair, don’t you, baby? You feel that pull down into your scalp, and it makes your whole body come alive. You feel the zap even without wires. You’ve felt it so many times. It can be real without being real.”

She was shaking her head from side to side. But she did know.

“It’s like when you’re in the swamp,” he continued. “There’s no way to convey smell or taste there, but I swear when I slide down the length of your wriggling body, to part your thighs…when I look at that sweet pussy blushing, glistening.”

He inhaled a slow intake, as if he were breathing perfume. “When we’re together like that, I can smell you. Taste your scent. And the honey flooding my tongue when I bury my face in your heat.”

He made a sexy sound, like lips smacking, lick-licking that had her pussy clenching and her body writhing. She crossed her hands over her stomach, the way he would capture them if he held her.

“Your thighs come together with the first swipe of my tongue. Close around my head. Clamp over my ears. Tight. So I can’t pull away.”

She had her thighs clamped together. Much like KatyDid could lose herself in-world, totally separate from the typist at the computer, Katya in the bed was gone. Her shoulder blades pressing deep in cool grass on a riverbank while Grizz’s tongue, thick and hot, kept lick, lick, licking.

“Tell me what you see, baby,” he said.

“I…I can’t. Not like you.”

“Just close your eyes. Tell me.”

“You lift your head to look at me. Your gaze burns through me like good whiskey. Heat spreading through my veins, it burns a trail right down to my pussy. You keep me locked in on you, baring your teeth.”

He interrupted with a predatory growl. Scary in its intensity. So realistic she froze.

“Breathe,” he reminded her gently.

She did and resumed before he could ask questions.

“My juices glisten on your chin. I don’t know if it’s seeing that or that I know what’s coming.

I’m hotter. Wetter. I’ll dissolve if I don’t get away. When I wriggle to get free, you still me with your teeth. Sharp nips on the insides of my thighs. Sharper when you part my pussy lips with your thumbs. You stop. You’re just looking at me. Watching my pussy weep. The longing—” She broke off.

“Long for what?”

She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

He blew a long, slow breath. The phone was on the pillow next to her ear. But she swore she felt that breath glide over her skin. The scent of her need perfumed the air.

“Feel my teeth, baby, when I cover that hot little cunt with my mouth. Teeth-caging you.

Every breath a tease. Sweet friction. It’s not enough, is it? Not enough when you want my tongue.

When you want my dick.”

She was shaking her head again. Shaking inside. It wasn’t enough.

“What do you long for, Katy?”

The thought was there. Something real. She could never say it. Could never have it.

“I can’t.” A tear escaped, rolled down her face into the same ear catching his whispers.

“Shh. It’s okay. We’re okay. We may not make it into what you want now. We’ll get to what you need.”

Could he hear her silent tears? She couldn’t tell. It was the nature of Grizz’s game, fucking her with words. Thoughts that painted pictures, evoked reactions, thinned the boundary between real and imagined.

“Use your fingers, baby. Your fingers are mine. Put them where you feel me when you’re wired.”

She slid a finger on either side of her clit, recreating the forked friction of the clamp she’d attach there. Her breath went ragged when a buzzing sensation flared, slid around and over her clit. Fingers inside her pussy, pressed tight against her G-spot, holding there, not moving, deepening the pressure as pleasure sparked and fired a reaction. Her muscles clenched and released as they would if his cock were driving into her.

She had no words to tell him what he did to her. No thoughts to paint a canvas for his pleasure.

Nothing left to give but her body responding to the reality he conjured.

“I want to hear that tiny whimper in the back of your throat grow, baby. I want you singing like a wild thing. Sing for me. Go off-leash, Katy. Be who you are.”

His voice, low and heated, crawled over her skin, made her sing and moan like an animal. She scrabbled to retain a thin grasp on logic, something to hold back the animalistic need clawing through her.

Clawing to get out.

His voice joined hers, a baritone entwining with hers, peeling away her grasp on sanity.

“Tell me,” she begged. “Tell me what you want.”

His answer was the glide of his hand up and down his dick. She could hear him fuck his fist with his cock. The beast in him lacing his voice with the edge of a growl.

“Please, Grizz.”

“I want to hear you come,” he said at last, his voice so gritty she felt the texture of the sound.

Sandpaper running over nerves stretched to the limit. His need driving her fingers back into her pussy. She fucked herself to the rhythm of his words. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He caught her in the rhythmic beat of one word, their primal bond. Taking her up, taking both up to hovering.

“Now, baby.”

She shook her head, too far gone to talk but not gone enough to embrace that final plummet.

“I said, Now!” The orgasm exploded at his command. Shattered her. Sent her into free fall.

She was curled on her side when her room solidified around her. Her cheeks were wet with tears, body quivering.

“Katy?”

She took a couple breaths, turned her attention to the clock and then back to him. Still too raw and vulnerable for words, she stalled, “Hmm?” “What do you long for, baby?”

“To be someone else.” Something else.

There was a long, heavy sigh. “I can’t say I haven’t wished the same.” A long stretch of silence followed before he added, “You’re beautiful.”

“I think you need more data before you can say that.”

“I’m working up to it. I can’t make you into someone else. But would you settle for being with people glad that you’re who you are?”

“I need more data.”

His chuckle had a hint of nerves underneath. “A mancache is like geocaching, only with men.

Us. We’d play a reverse sort of hunter/prey for real, the three of us and you. We have a place, private and safe. A little fun and some warm memories to take the edge off those arctic nights ahead of you.”

He waited a beat, as if letting the idea sink in. Maybe encouraged that she couldn’t seem to say anything. Not even no.

“Think about it,” he said. “Be good.”

“Always.”

The phone clicked, and he was gone.

His words left her hungrier, needier than she’d been when they’d started.

“Beast,” she muttered sitting up and punching her pillow. No way would she ever play with Grizz, Kodie, and Oso for real. Not even if they let her be the hunter.

How do you explain to your lovers that orgasms make you disappear? ***** Grizzly The setting sun cast the grizzly’s coat in gilded shades of late autumn. He loped up the mountain trail with grace that belied his size. Amping up the pace, he surged on, as if burning the excess energy could burn away the cravings.

He wanted to believe it a victory run, a charge into a better future, into hope.

The rich scent of sun-baked grass filled the air. Gusting wind rattled leaves, showering him with reds and golds and browns. As if the forest were cheering him on. An omen? If only he believed in such.

The craving of a sharp mind, a mating dance with a female—his equal—rode him as hard as the craving for his next breath. He’d been born into a species where that fundamental biological need could never be met.

Scents rose from the forest floor, clamoring for attention. Little mice bracketed behind the blackberry hedge, feasting on the dried clusters clinging to the vines. A squirrel burying an acorn.

A pair of does startled, leaping away when he burst into the mountaintop meadow.

Here he rolled in the tall golden grass, pushed away the longing for the finer-boned, soft body of a female to tumble in the meadow with him. He’d understood, long before he was of mating age, that you had to be someone politically special or genetically immune to the wasting to be chosen to take one of the increasingly rare ursine females into your mating trio. Neither he nor Oso or Kodie met those criteria.

Like many male Pantherians from the most endangered tribes, they’d left the homeland. Their destiny lay outside Pantheria, away from constant reminders of all they’d been denied.

He stood and shook his coat as dusk gathered around him. Shook off the past. Closing the door on that dead-end life. He ambled upward to the crest, rose on his hind legs looking out over the rolling blue ridges stretching out to the west like a great frozen sea. The fading light cast it in deep shades of blue and purple. Landscape that mirrored the shadows and hollows of his spirit.

He called out, his roar echoing back from the hollows. He’d made his peace with fate. Until now.

When they’d met Katy, her allure pulsed at them even through the electronic devices bridging the distance between them. She wasn’t Pantherian, but her sharp mind and strong will were easily equal—and then some, to every challenge they dreamed up.

With the possible exception of the one he’d thrown down today.

He dropped back to all fours as the sun slid from view in the western sky and trotted down the mountain. Instead of craving any female at his side, he longed for Katy, straddling his broad back, fingers fisted in his thick fur, thighs clamped tight to keep her seat as he ran.

That would never happen.

Asking a human to accept the beast inside wouldn’t be fair. He would never ask her to understand or burden her with the knowledge he’d sacrificed half of who he was for her. Ripping reality as she knew it from underneath her by turning into a bear was no way to launch a courtship.

Instead, he’d give up this part of himself, live only as a man. He’d give up anything for her, even if it meant she chose only one of them to be hers. Their fate in her hands. All choices hers.

Whatever the cost of Katy’s heart, they would pay it.

He slowed briefly to sniff the scratches and fur left on a bent pine by a female black bear. Her rubbing-tree along the trail, warning others this was her territory. Tracks of a single cub evident in a sandy spot not far from the mother’s mark. This older female, safely outside the compound fence surrounding his home, didn’t worry him.

He trotted from forest into the compound, the electronic gate system verifying his identity, allowing entry and locking securely behind him. In the ancient stone circle fashioned in the center of the garden, he rose again on hind legs and vanished.

And rematerialized a minute later as a man. ***** Heavy black robes, in an assortment of sizes, hung on hooks just inside the screened back porch. Grizz found his and dragged on the weighty warmth, wishing already for the superior qualities of fur to clothing. Though he had to admit, the heightened sensations of going skin to skin with a woman made losing the fur well worth the sacrifice.

Hearth and home. The warmth enveloped him. Blackberry pie simmering in the oven, and Oso’s Wildfire Chili simmering in the slow cooker on the table.

He snagged a chair between Oso and Kodie, who were already working their way through steaming bowls garnished with crushed tortilla chips. Grizz paused, inhaling the rich goodness in the air nearly as satisfying as filling his belly with its heat.

Oso ladled his liquid fire into Grizz’s bowl. Kodie scooted a basket of cornbread, tucked in a red-checked kitchen towel, his way.

Oso wasted no time getting to the topic foremost in all their minds. “How’d it go with Katy?”

“She didn’t say no.”

“Nor yes, I take it,” Kodie said before blowing softly on a spoonful of chili.

“Well, see that’s where you come in, Kodie. I set up the idea, get the mind simmering. You swoop in this evening and close the deal.”

“There’s not much time to convince her. I’ll give it a shot though. Maybe I can offer something less threatening as an intermediate step. We meet first in a neutral public setting.”

“She’ll come around,” Oso said. “A chance to test herself against us for real isn’t something she’ll be able to put out of her mind.” Sharp electric beeping from the kitchen timer summoned him then.

Measuring just over seven feet, Kodie could reach behind Grizz and snatch a cooling rack from the kitchen counter without stretching. So he beat Grizz to it, snagging the honor of plunking the rack right in front of his spot, leaning in to inhale the intoxicating scent when Oso set the pie down.

Grizz chased a spoonful of pure fire with a glass of milk. He swallowed, nodded, blew out a breath. “Phew, that’s good stuff, Oso. I feel the burn in my ears.”

Tossing oven mitts on the counter, Oso rejoined them. “As I was saying, if she doesn’t run screaming at the sight of us from the first meet-up, she’ll play.” His gaze skimmed Grizz.

“I don’t know,” Grizz said. “We clean up pretty good. Do you think she’ll find us ugly?”

Overlooking their height, their human appearance wasn’t all that far off the norm. Oso, the smallest of them at six feet, had the gold-tipped cinnamon hair and cinnamon skin tone typical of red grizzlies. Snug-fitting black slacks and dress shirt were his preferred dress, as tight clothing helped him cope with the exposed feeling of going furless as a human. With sleeves rolled up and the first few buttons of his shirt open, the scar patterns left by cobra dragon venom stood out like decorative branding.

“I don’t know about the ugly. Human tastes in a mate baffle me. But intimidating? Yeah,” Kodie said.

Kodie, the tallest, indeed might overwhelm, but the long silver-blond hair and creamy skin tone softened his impact. His eyes, pale blue as an arctic sky, had the aura of a smile that tended to put people at ease. A preference for faded blue work shirts and jeans contributed to the whole gentle-spirit bear persona he had going.

Both Kodie and Oso were studying Grizz now, gazes skeptical, as if he were a candidate for employment not quite measuring up to standard.

Grizz put down his glass. “Oh, come on. I’m not that menacing.”

Ever the peacemaker, Kodie, rushed out a reply before Oso could respond, “It might not hurt to polish the edge off that carefully crafted sense of menace you project.”

“A suit jacket and a T-shirt,” Oso suggested. “Maybe some black jeans rather than the usual ragged camo.”

Grizz buttered a thick square of cornbread, intending to shove it in his mouth before he said something he shouldn’t. Grizz’s coloring matched the more typical western grizzly, wild hair tipped with silver, skin the darkest brown. Maybe he didn’t so much cultivate menace as allow the projection to grow unchecked. It served them well in the security business. In courtship, he had to admit, it might be off-putting.

Kodie slid the honey jar toward Grizz, as if it might sweeten his next suggestion. “Maybe gather those braids and tie them back so you project more control.”

“Fine, after Kodie arranges a meet with Katy, I’ll polish up. Then we can get a picture to send her. It’ll give her time to get used to our looks.”

“Or scare her so bad she catches an early flight out of town,” Oso muttered more to himself than them, but Grizz heard.

“Sorry. I hadn’t realized you two had become such fashionistas.”

Kodie shrugged. “Humans. It’s important to them.”

“Plenty of women found our Quarterz avatars attractive. Quite a few expressed interest in me, menacing and scruffy as I am. Those avatars are close enough to our appearance that she won’t have that big of a mental adjustment to make when she sees us.”

“Now, for the game,” Kodie said, calmly redirecting the conversation to less divisive territory.

“Any ideas on that?”

Oso plated a slice of pie and handed it to Grizz. Another peace offering? “We should stick close to Quarterz rules. That’s her game, and she finds it compelling.”

Freeing a fat blackberry, Grizz popped it in his mouth and debated whether to share his project.

Knowing Katy, what he had planned would be essential to reaching beyond sex and leveling up to love. “I’ve been working on ritual items to incorporate, some erotic body jewelry to facilitate the emotional bonding. She wears the shirt I sent her all the time. Having something special from each of us helps maintain our connection to her. We can cache each object and make it part of the hunt.”

“Sounds good,” Kodie said. “We can give her GPS coordinates for a totem cache, and if she gets it first, then she wins the round. If we get to her first, then she submits to the fantasy we’ve each prepared. If she stomps us on every level, we’ll submit to whatever she has planned for us.”

“We can hide caches and set traps in each other’s levels. So the hunter guarding a cache won’t know where it or the traps are.”

“Um…” Oso leaned back. “We really need to scroll back to that part about submitting.

Submitting to her was never part of the in-world play.”

Grizz chuckled. “Chicken?”

“We’re big guys,” Kodie said. “We can’t take what KatyDid lays down? Besides, that added incentive will fire up her imagination.”

“Telling her she can be the hunter will definitely lure her in. I’ll wait until she is here to reveal that we have just as much opportunity to take control as she does. If you want to be really honest, we have the odds stacked against her,” Grizz said.

Oso snorted. “Dude, she’s smart as shit. Odds against her have never slowed her down. If it weren’t the three of us working together, we’d be no challenge at all.”

“She’ll expect trickery,” Grizz said. “She told me today that she loved the Quarterz game because it wasn’t fair, and she could still win. No way will she walk in here assuming this game is different. We’d disappoint her if it was.”

“And you don’t think that little bit of bait-and-switch in explaining the game will earn us the wrath of Katy if she wins?” Kodie asked.

“She’s sly, but underneath it all, she has a marshmallow heart. I’m not worried,” Grizz said.

“We won’t have to grovel too much. Just don’t lose sight of the real goal. This isn’t about winning a game. It’s about winning the girl. When you make a choice in gameplay, keep that in mind.”

Kodie and Oso nodded.

Grizz continued, “I’m not the only one here who’ll lose his mind if she gets on that plane Monday morning headed for Antarctica. It’s too dangerous. I want her close by where we can keep her safe. Where we can keep her. And while we haven’t talked about it, I assume we all agree we can’t tell her what we are.”

“That’s the part I have trouble with, keeping who we are from her,” Kodie said.

“We’re not keeping it from her. We’re giving that life up. Absolutely no shifting in-game, no matter how certain you might be she can’t see you. We take Katy as ours, and we give up that side of ourselves. I said goodbye to that side of myself tonight. I will never shift again. That’s the only honorable way to do this. If she chooses us to be hers, we should have the procedure to cut the genetic switch that allows us to switch from human to bear.”

Oso lifted his head and looked from Grizz to Kodie. “That’s a really dangerous operation.”

He was rubbing the scars on his chest as he spoke. “We put our lives on the line to prove to the high council that we’re worthy of a mate. That didn’t turn out so well.”

“Could you live with the duplicity of hiding that ability from her?” Kodie asked.

Oso looked back to Grizz.

Grizz struggled to shutter the memory, but the scent of sandalwood and the soft chanting of the shaman’s voice were pulling him back into a smokey hut. Curled in fetal position, clawing at his head, as if he might penetrate his skull and drag out the demons the cobra dragon’s venom had unleashed in his brain. When hours of screaming had left him voiceless, he could hear Kodie wheezing, his lungs so ravaged from inhaling venom mist that each breath was a death rattle. Oso thrashed a few feet from Kodie, whimpering, his voice gone too. Through it all, the young woman who’d lured them to the quest painted designs on Oso’s skin. The colorless venom etched like acid and contained a virus that, if they survived, would morph the organs attacked, binding dragon DNA with their own. Branded them dragon kin and unappealing as a food source.

They’d survived the inoculation only by exchanging bodies, their souls moving from one form of hell to the next, the shift in agony from one form to another, the only way they managed to cling

to the earth plane. The high magus had used his formidable power to hold them earthbound, preventing the shifting that would have healed them and ended the agony.

They’d prevailed, had captured the last of the cobra dragons living near the rim of a volcano on the verge of eruption. They’d delivered them to Pantheria. But saving an ancient race had not won them a mate. The council deciding after the fact that dragon DNA injected and fused with theirs to help them save the cobras might be passed to their offspring, and who knew what that might yield.

Kodie’s hand on his shoulder brought Grizz back to the present. “We have lived in each other’s skin, have endured the worst this life could throw at us, knowing exactly what the other endured,” Grizz said. “It’s that bond we bring to a mating partner that makes us worthy, despite the council ruling.”

“What we do here is different in that we don’t sacrifice to gain something—we sacrifice to give,” Kodie added. “This time, we have chosen a woman we are all drawn to on a level that almost defies explanation. As close as I can get to explaining is that I see us in her. She is ever trying to prove herself worthy. She comes to these games to show herself that she can overcome despite the rules designed to ensure she loses. When she does lose, she is driven to prove herself equal to anything we ask. All I want to do is give her a life where she knows she is worthy of my love as she is.”

Oso nodded. “Well said, my brother.”

Grizz held out a fist. “With every thought.”

Oso placed a fist on top of Grizz’s. “With every heartbeat.”

Kodie nodded and topped Oso’s fist. “With each breath.”

“By mind, by body, by spirit, it will be done,” Grizz concluded.

The rumble of their growls sealed their verbal commitment to the pact.

Grizz spooned more chili, hoping the burn would chase away the hollow feeling that decision left in his belly. He wished he could be all he was and have a woman accept that. He was practical enough to understand that was impossible. Wrong to ask it. KatyDid had wriggled her way into their hearts to a depth that they would all swear off shifting to their inner beast for eternity if it meant keeping Katy.

And they would keep her.

Chapter Three Katya There were always reasons to feel not good enough. Fifty reasons descended on Katya as the afterglow faded and reality crept back in. Fraud checked in at the top of the list.

She rolled out of bed and buttoned the shirt Grizz had sent her. Even under the scent of laundry soap, she could detect the faint imprint of male.

Wrapped in Grizz, a wry smile twisted her lips. As close as she dared let herself get wrapped up in a man. Inevitably, intimacy demanded a sharing of secrets.

One of the things she appreciated about the bears—they never asked her questions. She reciprocated. Of course, they likely had their own secrets.

She slipped her cell into her shirt pocket.

Harsh blue-white light from her laptop screen illuminated the room. Katya closed the lid and her eyes, allowing her pupils to adjust before navigating the soft gloom of deepening twilight.

Silence beat gentle wings against her eardrums.

Silence. Solitude. Shadows.

When she had a steady diet of all three, with nothing on the outside to silence the whisperings of her mind, would they still bring peace?

How would she stand up to the silence and dark in the South Pole if she couldn’t do it here?

At least there, there’d be no one to lie to. She would have six lie-free months.

So much of her life rested on a fabricated foundation that she kept a spreadsheet on her phone to keep track of it all.

Genetic hybrid, freakoid who’d helped create an unknown number of freaks like herself before she was even old enough to drive—that truth was easy to remember.

In a few days, for the first time in her life, she’d be free. No fear and no guilt. Nothing but her, the animals, and the research. Good research. Clean research. She loved the fresh-washed, airy sensation honesty imparted.

Which would mean giving up the bears, she realized. She had nothing to give them but lies, even if the relationship stayed in cyber. With the ability to connect to them almost nonexistent where she was headed, her upcoming departure provided an opening to say goodbye. For good.

A fresh start in a safe place. That might be as close to authentic as a year in her life could get.

Pounding at the front door glued Katya’s arms to her side and her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She’d heard a car pull into the drive; the off-time ping and dieseling marked it as Virginia’s college friends. Which meant Virginia was home. But she had a key and didn’t need to knock.

“Katya, open up,” she called. “I forgot my key.” Virginia, who could recall every action, thought, word spoken—for any given hour of any day of her life—did not forget her key.

Moving soundlessly on bare feet, Katya crept to the door. Listened. Only annoyed shuffling of feet and the irregular huff of Virginia’s breath were evident. No unexpected scent, save the tantalizing aroma of hot pizza—spinach, mushrooms, and black olives. Pizza trumped nerves, and she opened the door.

Virginia came in with a blast of cool autumn air swirling around her and the faintest scent of a woman and perfume clinging to her hair.

“Heya,” she said, dropping pizza box on the coffee table, coat and backpack on the floor at her end of the couch. “Have you seen my house key? I looked everywhere for it. I always keep it in that glass dish on my dresser.”

Katya tensed. That was more than annoying. It was worrisome. Virginia was obsessive about where she put things. Having them always in the same place made it possible for her to operate on autopilot when she was in deep-mind mode solving a complex problem. Even if she had put it down somewhere else, she could roll back that inner videotape her mind recorded and find the key.

“No, I haven’t seen your key, and I didn’t borrow it. Do you think one of your study buddies might have borrowed or moved it?”

“I don’t think one of the guys would have. Cherry has been hanging around a lot lately. She might have.”

“Cherry, the dark-haired girl who waits tables at the Java Forum? She hangs with the nerd club?”

“Well, she’s been hanging around recently. Asks if she can go along and such. Or for help with her homework. I think she might have a crush on one of the boyz-z-z.”

“The boyz? As in Calvin, Ely, or Stanley?” She couldn’t imagine a girl like Cherry, lingeriemodel material, pining for any of the geeky boys Virginia liked to hang out with.

Katya opened the pizza box and they both paused to inhale. Her stomach rumbled.

“I asked for all your favorite toppings,” Virginia said, digging in her backpack and fishing out two bottles of cold green tea and a stack of napkins.

Katya scooped a slice of warm pizza from the box, plopped it on a napkin, and passed it to Virginia. She did the same for herself and sat back on the couch, nudging the remote toward Ginny with her bare foot. “I just can’t see Cherry as any sort of threat. The key thing is worrisome, though.”

Ginny flipped through channels with sound off. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t want you worrying, Sissy.”

Again, a misstep, out of character. Virginia was more a stickler for protocol than Katya. “You should stick to the program even when we’re alone. We’re roommates. If we live as sisters, it’s too easy to make mistakes in front of others if we don’t stay in roles alone.”

“Fine. I didn’t want to worry you, Katya. When do we ever get to have a normal life? It’s been ten years now, and no one has come looking. When do we get to stop looking over our shoulders, suspecting every missing sock as being a threat?”

Katya licked at the spicy sauce oozing from under cheese and pondered. She didn’t have an answer. And socks didn’t go missing in their house. Maybe Katya’s impending departure had Virginia stressed. It marked the first time Virginia would be on her own. Just because Virginia didn’t make a big fuss about her attachments and feelings didn’t mean she had none.

They watched the channels flipping by in silence. Katya angled for a way to ease into what she needed to ask her sister. “I’m sorry for snapping. It’s not just about keeping you safe if you

aren’t related by blood to me, but that on paper we’re not related. It’s just a creepy feeling nagging at me. Probably last-minute nerves.”

“Mmm-hmm. Wonder Woman okay?”

“Perfect.” Katya finished her slice of pizza, wiped her hands on a napkin, and stared out the sliding glass door that opened onto the deck. Moonlight cast long shadows across the yard. When she looked back to her sister, it was into a thoughtful stare.

“What?” Katya asked.

“You tell me.”

Katya looked down at her lap and twisted her shirttails through her fingers. “Do you ever sort of disappear, go to…”

“Vapor?”

Katya nodded without looking up.

“Only when sex is involved.”

Really bad idea asking her little sister that. Virginia was always too… Electric panic sliced through Katya’s belly. “Tell me you’re still a virgin.”

“Tell me you’re not.”

Katya crossed her arms over her chest and turned her attention back to the show. The sound was still off. Not like they hadn’t both memorized every word of every episode. They were both adults. She should be able to discuss sex as easily as Virginia did. She couldn’t. Katya needed a strategy for getting Virginia to dish about her sex life without having to reciprocate.

Had a lover watched Virginia disappear?

Or had Ginny found a way to remain a solid body during orgasm?

Virginia was still giving her the side-eye when realization dawned. “Ohhh, wait a minute,” Virginia said, practically bouncing on the couch. “I get it. You want to have sex with a guy as opposed to a computer. Maybe a goodbye romp with someone special?”

That was too perceptive for comfort. Katya jumped up. “I have to pack.”

“Oh, no, no, no. Katya, you come back. Talk to me.”

“Brat.”

Virginia was up and trotting after her, and because evidence of Katya’s last digital sex adventure was still sitting on her desk, she had to veer off toward the kitchen. She snatched open the refrigerator door, keenly aware of the cold air against flushed cheeks. She tried to think of something to pretend she wanted. Eggs, a jar of mayo, and coconut milk weren’t offering inspiration. She knew better than to open the vegetable bin, which was likely a solid block of bluegreen mold.

“Would you talk to me about it if I told you about a way I found to control the vaporizing?”

Katya straightened so fast she hit her head on the freezer door handle. “Fuck.”

“Here. Sit before you hurt yourself.” Virginia pushed her into a kitchen chair. “Let me see.”

Her fingers probed Katya’s scalp. “No cut, no bump. I think you’ll live.”

Katya covered her face, trying to hide the tears the head bump unlocked.

“Hey. Hey, there.”

She pushed Virginia’s hands away.

“I’m sorry, Sissy. I shouldn’t have teased you. It so sucks we can’t have a normal sex life.”

She didn’t have the heart to correct Virginia again. “It’s not that.”

“Right. You think I don’t know how much it hurts? Being us, not banging your head.”

She brushed Katya’s hair back from her face. “I meant what I said about a fix.”

“I don’t know if I can talk to you about this, Virginia.”

“What? You wanna call one of those TV psychologists? What’s the guy’s name? Dr. Fool or some such?”

A smile snuck onto her lips. “Okay.”

“Okay which? Dr. Fool?” But she caught Katya by the hand. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Katya hung back. “Um, really, Ginny. You can just explain.”

“Sheesh. I said I’d show you the hack, not that I would demonstrate.”

Katya let herself be led along, down to the basement lab. It was probably a bad idea to even have a lab given their pasts and the need to conceal their involvement in research that was illegal up until a year ago. Even now, their possession of some of the equipment might land them in trouble. What they could do with it would likely be illegal if anyone knew such things were possible.

Still, neither of them could entirely give up the drive to ask why and then find an answer. At least where it concerned what they were. Their father had counted on that. Their last identity transition landed them on the doorstep of the house he’d made ready. A fully outfitted basement lab, which included his journals and a cryogenic freezer with their cord blood on labeled vials inside. Their stem cells carefully preserved along with the cells of many other creatures he’d brought to life. Angry as she was at both parents, she’d never been able to dismantle the lab and do away with the contents.

Florescent lights flickered; the scent of cedar shavings and food pellets perfumed the air. Her father’s labs were always full of cages and creatures. Always located on secluded farms where prying eyes wouldn’t see the pets and inhabitants at the “Creepstein’s” household as Virginia had dubbed them.

This one, tucked away in a small residential community, could only be intended for the research that would unlock answers to questions his grown daughters would ask about themselves.

When he was alive, governments sent operatives to take his research. Their goal—to take what he created and use them against each other. Once he learned of their schemes, he stopped making his menagerie of parahumans. She didn’t know, didn’t want to know, what had happened to them.

A wide velvet case lay on the lab bench. She rested her hands on the lid. Energy, or perhaps just memories she didn’t want to set loose, vibrated under her palms. “Mother’s jewelry box? I left that in the safe-deposit box.”

“I’ll put it back in a few days. We assumed it was jewelry, but did you ever actually take the pieces out and examine them? Or see that there was a false bottom to the box?”

“No.” And she didn’t want to examine them now. Or open that door into the past. Katya chewed her bottom lip, counted backward from a hundred by threes as her palms skimmed over

the soft black velvet. Neither prevented the image and scent of her mother, naked with newborn Virginia in her arms, from filling her mind.

Nagendra had just come through a portal in the lab, dark gypsy hair falling round her shoulders to her waist. Katya had been seven then. Visits from her mother were always rare, always treasured.

When Nagendra pressed feverish lips to Katya’s forehead, there had been the a shimmer of love and taste of fear in the air.

“Look at you, up so late. Where’s your Daddy?” Her tone was hitting consonants, high and hard, as if she were working hard to sound cheerful.

“He’s got guests.”

“Ah. Well, best you stay here then until they’ve gone. I brought someone to meet you. This is your little sister.”

As if she understood the conversation, the baby turned her head, big blue eyes meeting Katya’s. Her tiny fists batted the air.

“Listen, sweetums,” Mother said. “We need to wrap her up, and I’ve nothing for her.” Her gaze kept darting around the room and back to the portal as if she expected something to leap at her any moment. “Could you lend her your sweater?”

Katya slipped out of her soft red hoodie, goosebumps spreading up her arms in the chill of the basement lab. Together they’d wrapped the baby, and then her mother had her sit on the little wooden stepping stool Katya used when helping her father at the lab table.

“You hold your sister. That’s my girl. Careful of her head. Yes, just like that.” She stopped a minute, stroked Katya’s hair. Kissed her cheek and then the baby’s. Her mother’s eyes were so shiny, like polished glass.

“You look out for this little one for me. I’m sure Daddy will be down soon.”Nagendra slipped the red hood back and stroked the few golden threads of hair. She’d hugged them both too tight.

Warmth filled Katya, sending a glow and sense of love spreading through her, a joy she’d never experienced before or since.

“You’re sisters,” she said when she let them go, guiding Katya to hook her pinky finger in the baby’s tiny fist. “You are never alone in this world from this day on. Treasure each other.”

Katya didn’t know then, when her mother stood and walked away, that she should have latched onto her. Refused to let her go.

“You be good girls now.” Nagendra stepped through the portal and disappeared from their lives.

No matter how many times Katya had examined the mirror, knocked on the glass, inspected the frame, she’d never been able to unlock the secret that might bring her mother back. Even when she had pressed her naked body to the glass, she’d never been able to open it. The portal went with her father the night he left them, ending any hope of ever unlocking its secret.

Years later, Katya discovered an old newspaper clipping her father had tucked in one of his journals. Her mother, also known and much maligned by the scientific community as the parahuman Pandora, had died in a house fire the day after Virginia’s birth.

The tightness the memory left in her throat resisted all efforts to swallow it away.

“Katya, are you okay?”

Not trusting herself to speak, Katya nodded and lifted the lid, gently laid bracelets on the table.

There were two full sets of the jewelry, earrings, necklace, and bracelets. Each identical. The central feature of each piece an obsidian disk, a gold inlaid dragon and triangle. Each disk edged with a ring of crystal.

She ran her finger around a pendant’s crystal edging. It glowed red. The color could change with their moods, one reason they didn’t wear them. The other reason, the symbol might be recognizable to someone seeking “Pandora’s” daughters.

Virginia removed the tray and with some exploring applied pressure to the spot that released the bottom, exposing a hidden compartment. Dividers held a larger disk, two inches thick and six inches diameter, in place. Next to that, compartments with three more of the dragon disks, about the size of fifty-cent pieces.

“I’m slowly deciphering one of Dad’s journals,” Virginia explained, lifting a heavy, leatherbound volume from a cabinet drawer.

She’d only had a driver’s license a week, and she was already crossing the safety boundaries Katya had set down. “We agreed—” “No, you decided how things would be and gave out orders. The journals stay in the safedeposit box, you say. We never go near the bank, you say. But we need answers, Katya. The only ones left to us are in his journals. I didn’t bring them all home. I snapped pictures of crucial pages in a couple volumes.” She slid some printed pages across the counter.

“It has taken me a while. First, I had to learn Cyrillic script. He uses quite an old form. Add to that, his handwriting was terrible, and you have two layers of encryption. The science he discusses is complex and often related to research he and Mother alone had generated. In places, the handwriting is quite different and the form of Cyrillic even older than he used.”

“You think those entries are Mother’s?”

“Probably. He scattered results and entries across the volumes. So there are gaps in this.

Sometimes there was a reference to another journal, and when there was, I followed that. Often, the reference is not listed. I got lucky and found a couple by accident. I made notes on his pages, maintaining the use of Cyrillic. With my handwriting, it’s safe to say you might be the only other person on the earth who could make sense of any of this.”

Katya nodded, rubbed at tension knotting between her eyebrows. Time to accept Virginia was grown up now and not willing to agree to every decision Katya made. She riffled through the pages, without really looking.

“What I have figured out so far is that this giant disk is a power source that can be charged by the sun. Solar cells here and here.” Virginia pointed. “The smaller disks or the jewelry pieces light up when you lay them on the power source.” Which she demonstrated. Crystals glowed, going through a color change that moved from one color to the next in the order of yogic chakras.

“Wireless charging?”

Virginia nodded.

Katya held her palm just above one of the bracelets, asking, “Do you feel the energy, like a vibration?”

“Yes,” Virginia said and then whistled softly. Hamlet the hamster came scampering to her, and she lifted him up to the counter. He immediately ran to Virginia’s iPad and scrabbled at the cover with his paw. He managed to lift the cover just enough to send the stylus rolling onto the countertop, but not to get the cover open.

“Hamlet is a Candy Crush addict. In fact, when he really gets excited, he disappears.”

“Nooo. Really? Disappears?”

“Yes. Just like us, you know, when we’re excited.”

“Hamlet,” Ginny said, lifting him so she could open the cover, “let’s play.”

He was already so excited his body seemed to vibrate. When she launched the game and put him down, he sat back on his haunches, head tipped, eying the colored jellies. Then he went to all fours and pressed his nose against the screen, sliding a jelly into place. Chirping his pleasure when the game registered three in a row, and his points ticked up.

Virginia slid one of the coin-sized disks under the tablet.

Katya had engineered Hamlet at the embryonic stage to have parahuman traits. While she knew she and her sister were parahuman, she wasn’t sure what aspects of their engineering were combined with another species. She hadn’t even been able to determine what other species they contained.

None of the experiments she’d tried earlier demonstrated any difference between Hamlet and an ordinary hamster. Okay, except that he was extraordinarily intelligent and was fond of playing pocket games on her phone. Now as he scurried back and forth, sliding pieces and racking up points, the more excited he became the less substantial he appeared.

He grew more transparent until he disappeared, an apparent replica of the change of state Katya went through during orgasm.

Virginia pointed to the disk she’d set at the opposite end of the counter just as Hamlet rematerialized there.

“Whoa.” Katya reached for Hamlet, but he scurried away, heading back to his tablet. She captured him and cradled him to her chest, where he scrabbled to get away for a minute before relenting, investigating her shirt pocket, and deciding to burrow in.

“You tested on Harriett too?”

“Yes.” Ginny slid her lab notebook to Katya.

Harriett, Hamlet’s twin, preferred mahjong. According to the notes, there were no successful attempts to get Harriett to disappear.

Hamlet poked his head out of her pocket. Katya stroked his silky fur, studied dark liquid eyes full of intelligence.

“I know what you’re thinking. Don’t put your mind there, Katya. We do what we have to do.

We didn’t ask to be who we are.”

“Neither did Hamlet. And I keep thinking, this could have been us. By the luck of the draw, we landed in a petri dish destined to yield a human form. Figuring out who we are and how to control it shouldn’t mean we manufacture more freaks like us. These are the last. Promise me that.”

Virginia moved in, hooked her pinky finger around Katya’s. “Look. It totally sucks that our survival means making the hybrids so we can figure out what we are. I would make a hundred more if it would keep you safe. If it could give you a more normal life, but I will never ask you to make another.”

“Neither of us should make them. It’s not just wrong, but dangerous. It could lead the past right to our door.”

Virginia stepped back and tapped the composition book. “I noted everything I have done so far.” She made no promises.

Hamlet tried to climb Katya’s hair and wound up entangled. Virginia extracted him while Katya skimmed through her sister’s notes. The last page turned her blood to ice. “Fuck, Ginny.

Have you lost your mind?”

Virginia continued calmly untwining hair from Hamlet’s grasp. “It had to be done. You would have done it if I hadn’t.” Having freed him at last, she tucked Hamlet back in Katya’s pocket.

“I can’t leave you alone. How am I supposed to go to the bottom of the world, knowing you do crazy shit like this?”

“Actually, you haven’t gone anywhere yet, and I do crazy shit, so using my irresponsibility as an excuse to duck out isn’t going to fly. I’m twenty-two and you treat me as if I were two. You can’t control me any longer. It doesn’t matter where you are.”

It would figure Virginia would pick up on how nervous Katya was about the trip. Use it now as a diversion. “You can’t test this stuff on yourself. Sex isn’t worth dying for.”

“How would I know?” Virginia was losing her temper now, voice rising, a tremor signaling she was at the edge of control. “How will we ever know?”

At last, she had the answer she’d been digging for. Virginia hadn’t been having sex. “It’s not worth it. Trust me.”

Virginia opened her mouth to argue; then a flicker of light in her eyes bloomed to full blaze, realization dawning. “You!” Katya shrugged. Slammed the book shut.

“How?” Virginia pulled up a stool and sat. “Don’t even think about going anywhere until you tell me.”

“If I had known about the vanishing thing in advance, I wouldn’t have tried sex. With the first guy, it just pretty well sucked anyway—awkward, messy, not fun. So, no orgasm, no going poof.”

“The first guy? How many? And here I thought you were the repressed one.”

“The second guy…” A blush heated her skin at the memory; she turned away and hugged herself so tight Hamlet squeaked. “Sorry, buddy.”

And to Virginia, “Let’s just say it was good, but we were both drunk. He passed out right after. I doubt he remembered. We moved a couple days later. I never tried it again.”

“You are such a faker. All Miss Prim and Proper with me. What happened to ‘trust no one’?

Or ‘every friend is a risk that could get us killed’?”

“Killed or worse. There’s much worse than killed when it comes to us. But I didn’t know sex would make me disappear. There’s the difference. You do things you know are dangerous.”

“Fuck all that. I want details. Who? Where? When?”

Katya rolled her eyes and shook her head in the negative. God, this conversation was going way beyond the TMI zone. She moved to answer the safer question. “Senior year in high school.

With a guy who was always copying off me in math class.”

“You think Dad knew?”

“Yes. But we were moving every few months by then. Past deeds, and who knows how many state-sponsored and corporate-hired investigators, were too close to catching up with him.”

They were both quiet. Six months after Katya graduated, he passed her guardianship of Ginny, new identities, money for bus tickets, and a key to a safe-deposit box in a town 2,000 miles away.

Then he’d packed the family car just the way he did every other time they had run off in the night.

Only this time, instead of his daughters beside him, there were mannequins, dressed and sized to look like them.

He hugged them and drove away. Never kept his promise to join them when it was safe. His death made the national news. That was when the sisters learned what he ran from, what they likely were, and that the hiding would never be over.

Back to the matter at hand.

“So, you wrote here that you tested this on yourself? Tested it without having sex?”

“Not with someone.”

Katya decided to leave that statement alone.

“Besides, this is more than about us having sex. Think about it a minute.”

Katya flipped back to the pre-experiment notes. “You mean, why would Mother have these teleporting things?”

“Right. Ask yourself what this does.”

“It can control where a body in a highly charged, excited state materializes.”

“But she wasn’t like us,” Ginny said. “She was born before the ability to create genetic hybrids like us was possible. And this doesn’t work on normal animals.”

“How do you know? What did you test it on?” Katya asked.

“Neighbor’s cat.”

“God, Virginia.”

“Well, he’ll stop running into the shed every time I open the door, won’t he?”

Shaking her head, Katya pulled a stool up to the workbench and sat to read the notes and conclusions of the experiment her sister had summarized on the printed pages.

The situation with teleporting spontaneously seemed to be an issue of loose DNA. And it kinda sorta could make sense in a spooky science way. Virginia’s thesis rested on the fact that, with them, it might be a mutation caused by some aspect of the genetic engineering process. Their DNA was not as tightly wound as it should be, and in an orgasmic state, a situation where

procreation might occur, they came apart completely, which eliminated any possibility of procreation.

But it got weirder.

The basis of the jewelry, as far as Katya could discern, involved teleporting DNA. Where DNA placed in a beaker containing a special solution was able to teleport to another beaker when stimulated with electromagnetic energy. This happened when the second beaker was primed with DNA and then the DNA extracted, leaving only a faint trace. It created something like a vacuum needing to be filled, so that the DNA in the first glass, when stimulated, went seeking its mirror.

“This theory is like one percent science and ninety-nine percent hocus pocus,” Katya said.

“Yeah, I know. But watch it work. She took a hair tie from her hair. The tumble of blonde locks spilling free across Virginia’s shoulders, giving Katya a pang as she remembered her mother.

Virginia had her wavy hair though they both had their father’s blond coloring.

Ginny slipped the tie around Hamlet’s neck and attached an earring to the makeshift collar.

“The earrings, all the pieces in fact, have chambers inside. I filled them with a solution created from a recipe in the journal. The entry is one of those I believe was in mother’s handwriting. I think the crystal Pantherite, which I have never heard of, influences the electrical energy. The big base charger contains several crystals and magnets. Any physics explanation, or biological explanation, surrounding this is way out in the twilight zone.”

“Virginia…”

“Look, whatever and whyever, this stuff works.”

Virginia put Hamlet back down to play on the iPad and set the earring with his DNA mirror next to him. They both watched as he seemed to get less substantial, like a hologram, and then snapped back to himself.

When he started to fade the second time, Ginny scooped him up and held him. “Mother was like us,” she said. “Why else would she have this jewelry? It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“She couldn’t be.” Katya slapped the notebook shut. But she remembered, on more than one occasion she’d seen her mother wearing the earrings or pendant. “Genetic research would not have been advanced enough when she was conceived.”

“That only says she was not the result of genetic manipulation.”

“Right…” Katya had lived with the anger at her parents so long. It was hard to comprehend they might not be guilty of everything she thought they’d done. As for the rest, did it make it any better they might have been doing it for the exact same reasons their daughters were? “So, she was a natural mutation?”

Ginny shrugged. “We can only speculate.”

Katy removed the hair tie from Hamlet’s neck. “When you wore the earrings…” she sent Virginia a quick glance and then ducked her head. “They kept you grounded?”

“Better than Hamlet. I didn’t even go misty. It works better the closer the objects are and the more balanced the energy field is. If I were to wear just a necklace and put one of those marker disks in another room, I would move between them, but I go to mist like he did.”

“That could be useful in a lot of ways.”

Virginia dropped the pair of earrings in Katya’s hand and folded her fingers tight around it.

“These are yours. I filled the chambers for you. Left is your DNA. Right is your empty mirror. Try it yourself when you feel up to it. Trying it with whoever you are all glum over might be a good place to start.”

“Shut up. Can I take your notebook? I want to study what you’ve done here.”

“Sure.” Virginia closed the notebook and went still. “Hey, did you see what happened to my tablet stylus? Wasn’t it right here by the tablet?”

“Um, I don’t know.” Katya stooped to look under the workbench. “Maybe it fell and rolled away somewhere. I don’t see it.” Virginia’s uncharacteristic absentmindedness bore watching, but questioning her about it would only add stress, so Katy let it go.

Virginia shrugged. She carried Hamlet back to his playpen in the far corner of the lab. Closed him in with Harriett. “You know,” she said, as she straightened and punched on the music system.

“You should try experimenting with the personal route first. Going solo’s safest.” The opening notes of She Bops had Katya snatching up the notebook and throwing it at her sister who caught it, laughing, and tossed it back.

“Go play in the danger zone,” Virginia said, and settled at her desk with its stacks of papers and books teetering in piles around her laptop. “I have studying to do.” The signs of her slipping into a working trance that could swallow her for hours were already evident.

Katya left her to it. She carried Ginny’s composition book upstairs. Volk, their wolf hybrid, scratched at the door, and Katya let him in before curling up on the couch to read.

Volk sniffed her, then the pizza box, eying her expectantly. Katya caved, and he carried the piece she gave him down the steps to join Virginia.

“Oh, right,” she called after him. “Get what you want and abandon me.”

She went back to her reading. Virginia had actually tried long distance teleporting. Zapping herself back home from a friend’s house in town. Katya didn’t want to contemplate how she’d managed to reach the “excited” state. Some things her sister did were best left out of her imagination. Yet, curiously, the hop had left Virginia’s clothes behind, delivering her naked to the back deck. She’d materialized standing on top of the patio table.

Do I dare? Katya wondered. Obviously, teleporting required some preplanning.

Chapter Four Kodie Leave it to KatyDid to show up in the last place I expected to find her—in-game, right in the center of my den.

I materialized just outside the cave, watching her sleek body move in and out of the liquid curtain tumbling along with shafts of sunlight from an opening above. She shimmered, all gold and glitter. My tongue ached. Craved a long swipe along the liquid-jeweled inside of her thigh, along her taut belly where glittery pearls tantalized, over gently swaying breasts that had my hands clenching and unclenching. I wouldn’t stop until I’d licked every droplet from her body.

Slim feet dipped and retreated in the ankle-deep waters of the meditation pool. Ripples spread, framing her like rings around a target.

She’d woven a crown of flowers for her hair, the air fragrant with the scent of spring water and honeysuckle.

Bait to lure the bear she was after?

I was the hunter, but I had the uneasy feeling our roles had changed when I wasn’t looking. I even did a quick scan of the area for a trap or net of some sort.

Fish chased each other around her ankles. The waterfall’s gentle music was already pulling her into a calmer place. Her motions graceful, smoothing the jabbing style I had noted on arriving.

A simple tai chi routine I’d taught her in the afterglow of our first hunter/prey tango.

God, she’d made me work for it. Sweat for it. Even tried to turn me into a lion’s dinner. That was the first time she’d seen me shift into the towering magnificence that was the Spirit Bear. Here in a make-believe world, no one blinked when a man turned into a beast. Katy had blinked. I could tell something changed. I didn’t need the prey meter to tell me KatyDid thought bear shifters were hot.

She could have run when I took on the lion. She didn’t, and when I sent the cat scurrying back to the jungle, I snapped up Katy and hauled her back here to my den, barely resisting the temptation to take her where I caught her. Resisting just long enough to make it through the door, we fucked in a wild tumble of teeth and nails and growling, the minute I shifted back to human. Right in the middle of the meditation pool. I only avoided drowning her by rolling onto my back and having her ride me. The memory had me rock hard in both worlds.

“You coming in, or you just going to stand there all day?” Katy asked, breaking into my thoughts.

With a last scan for a trap, I moved in and behind her, far enough back that we could both still move but close enough that she might feel my mirroring movements as a potential embrace that begged connection of body to body.

Without a word, and with no attempt to capture her, I synced with her motion. Left it to her to forge a mind link. Which she did with a soft chant.

I dared close my eyes, my voice joining hers in harmony. Vibrations flowing between us, minds entwined. It should have eased my erection. It didn’t.

For a few minutes, we stepped and turned through a meditation routine that was fast turning toward a mating dance. I waited on the edge of patience for her to explain why she was suddenly willing to step into the jaws of the spirit bear.

“God, this is sexy doing this with your cock standing out at attention,” she said, breaking the silence at last.

Much more of this, and I’d drag her down to fuck first and ask questions later. No one could break through my control like Katy. I took a breath to leash the hunger that would turn my voice to gravel and managed to ask, almost gently, “Why are you here, Katy?”

“I…” There was a soft static, and I guessed she was pushing the headset mic up to conceal her noisy swallow. More static. “I’m—” She broke off on a sigh.

I left off the tai chi, pulled her back against me, and wrapped my arms tight around her. We swayed together.

“I’m afraid,” she said in a whisper that almost got lost in the sound of the falls.

The wriggle of her bottom against me had me wincing. I had a physical reaction to every visual her avatar created. I felt the depth of her emotional pain, too, a tight heat growing in my chest.

“Then simply say no, KatyDid. This is all about your pleasure. None of us wants anything more.”

“It’s not just about the meet-up.”

“The trip?”

“The list is long and getting longer.”

So much for dragging her down and fucking her.

“Come.” I caught her hand. No sensation passed from her hand to mine. “Not wired little one?” I was only just realizing this. That was how entwined our spirits were. I sensed a connection when the electronics were turned off.

“It’s easier to talk without the distraction of the wires.”

“Wires do more than facilitate sex.”

“I know.” She wound a lock of her hair around a finger, then unwound.

“Explain to me.”

“I need some distance to think straight when you’re around.”

Her admission sent sensation as warm and sparkly as sunshine rippling through my solar plexus. So much for needing wires.

I led her to the blanket beside the pool. Reclining against a heap of pillows, I drew her onto my lap, cuddled her against his my chest, wrapped in the folds of my fur robe. “If you weren’t afraid of this trip to Antarctica, I would doubt your good judgment.”

She pressed a palm to my chest, resting her cheek against her hand.

“I don’t know if I’m good enough. I don’t feel strong enough to tackle anything facing me.”

“Isn’t it always like that? It’s why you come here. This makes you feel strong.”

“The danger here isn’t real. It doesn’t count.”

“Soldiers, police, pilots, astronauts, and surgeons train in simulators. And while this game is not a simulation of the hazards you’ll face in the arctic, or even your real life, I hope it is a simulation of the elements that build character.”

“A sex game builds character? That’s a stretch even for you.”

“Think it through.” I nipped her shoulder. She couldn’t feel it physically when she wasn’t wired to an interface, but her breath caught as if she had. Which demonstrated the point I was trying to make. “That other world we live in is as much illusion, maybe more, than this one. And it doesn’t matter what your definition of real is; this world changes you in real ways.”

“Maybe.” The soft static of the microphone again. What was she concealing?

“You play this game like it’s real, Katy. Coming here to do tai chi and learning to center yourself, the tantric sex teaching self-control. The pain-play with Oso. The mind games with Grizz.

You always treat it seriously and play out our fantasies with respect. You deny that practice has crept into real life, made you mentally and emotionally stronger?”

“No. You’re right. This blue mood has me doubting everything. I’m homesick for the Quarterz already.”

“Ahhh. That’s a challenge to be sure. We may be able to help with that somewhat. No worries.”

“How?” “That’s a surprise for later. For now, know this. You will stand up to each of those things you feel have you cornered. You will find a way around, over, under, or straight through.”

“I don’t see how, Kodie. Honestly, I don’t.”

“The how is easy, hamnafas. You won’t quit until you find a way. It’s who you are, coded in your DNA.” “Hamnafas? What does it mean when you call me that?”

“My breath. Or more accurately, a companion so much a part of me that we share each breath.”

She hit the mute button on her mic. Was she gone?

The mic clicked on. She sniffed. She coughed and cleared her throat. It didn’t quite conceal the tremor in her reply. “That’s so sweet, Kodie. I’ll miss sharing breath with you.”

“We share breath wherever you go, Katy. That’s not something distance can change. But for now, let’s make meeting up a touch less stressful?”

“That’s possible?”

“I want to believe so.” I rested my chin atop her head, hugged her tight. “I’m gonna miss you, KatyDid. We’re all gonna miss you.”

“Where are the other guys?”

“They wanted to give me time to talk with you about something.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Now, there you go. You don’t even know what I’m gonna say, and you’re already suspicious.”

“Oh, right. Prey shouldn’t be suspicious of hunters.”

“I’m not talking to you as a hunter now. Think of this as out of game, but I’m not going to log out and use the messenger because I just want to hold you while we talk. Okay?”

She tensed in my arms, the “uh-oh” internal but as clear in my mind as if she’d spoken it. I was rubbing her back. Even without being wired, she responded, her breathing slowed. Her body was so accustomed to living as an avatar that it reacted the same way it reacted to a dream.

“Mmm,” she moaned. The resonance of arousal in her voice stirred my cock again.

We were lying spooned together on our sides. I propped up on one arm, rubbing her back. The other hand slipped around under her arm to cup a breast, one thumb lazily flicking back and forth over her nipple. There was a delightfully soft hitch in her breath with each flick.

“It will be strange, at first, adjusting the reality of us to the image you’ve built in your mind.”

My palm skimmed her taut belly in a circular motion, a hypnotically slow pace that had her going boneless. Subtle whispers signaled shifts in posture, the creak of her chair and subtle vocal cues she barely realized, all drew my attention.

“You are so attuned to my voice,” I murmured, “to my spirit. We’ve learned to know each other from the inside out and that’s a much deeper knowing than the usual way hu—uh…people get to know each other.”

“It makes it more a risk meeting you, this way of yours. You melt me with a sigh.”

“Risky only if we were anything other than what we say we are. But you would know that.

It’s why you are so good at these games. You can smell a trap, a lie, even when it’s simply painted in pixels.”

She sighed and snuggled against me. I took it as a sign to shift her thinking to a happier topic.

My hand slid lower, fingers skimming her pussy lips. “You’re close to the edge now. No wires. No toys. I think you could come without touching yourself, just watching me finger you.”

I took control of her computer screen then, zooming in so she could see. The deepening color of her avatar’s labia glistening with moisture. A programmed response to their interaction. The trick lay in how closely Katy identified with the avatar.

Completely.

At that moment, Katy was her avatar. The typist at the keyboard had ceased to exist. I knew every cue, from wriggle to whimper, that signaled that was so.

I pushed my cock between her thighs. She made a mewing sound deep in her throat, rubbing her slick heat against me.

I kissed her neck, her pulse beating underneath her heated skin. A sign of how far gone I was.

Feeling what it was impossible to feel, tasting salt in her sweat when I gave her neck a slow swipe with my tongue. I dipped my fingers in the honey she drizzled on my cock and licked my fingers one by one—looking up into the camera as I did.

Her breath shredded as easily as a gauze gown.

“That’s it, baby. Squeeze that cock with those sweet thighs, mmm. Drip all over me.”

I dipped my fingers back between her thighs and pushed one inside her. Her whimpers picked up a rhythm and I knew it would be soon. I smeared her juices on her lips and watched her lick them clean.

“No touching, baby,” I said. “You don’t need that to get there. Watch me touch you. Watch what you do to me.”

“I don’t think this will work, Kodie.”

“I think it’s working, Katy. Stay with me.”

Slowly, slowly, my finger circled her clit, while I shifted my hips and buried myself inside her. Her strangled whimper set the pace faster. I’d swear I felt those strong muscles in her pussy clamp tight around me, contracting in response with each thrust.

“You feel the electric pulse, don’t you girl, the sweet sizzle running over your skin, the tightening and relaxing down in your pussy. Just like you do when you’re hooked up. That’s how in tune we are, baby. How connected we are.

“Noooo.”It wasn’t denial, but her resistance. Something she always said right at the edge.

“I can’t,” she panted, her voice raw and smokey, licked at my control.

“I can. Watch us.” It’s the best feature of virtual sex that you can watch your avatars making love in a third-person view. Judging by the frantic edge in her breathing, she was watching.

“Fuck,” she said, the tightness in her voice coiling around my cock.

“That’s it, baby. Come for me, come all over my cock.”

“No. No. N—” Odd, there was always a moment of complete silence when Katy came, either some electrical interference of cable, or possibly her muting the microphone for a minute. But this time, it didn’t happen. I heard every shuddering breath, whimper, cry.

The sound of her coming ripped a response from me, pleasure shuddering through me. Her cries milking my cock.

After a few more minutes, the soft return to sanity revealed itself in whispery shifts of position.

And finally, her avatar shifted as well, to cuddle against my chest.

“What happened to ‘I just want to hold you while I talk,’” she asked a lifetime later.

I nuzzled her neck, one hand skimming up and down her arm. “You. You make everything happen.”

“I make hunters catch me and fuck me silly?”

“It’s what you wanted. You want someone you can’t always predict or beat. Your desires created the men you want. That’s why it’s safe for you to meet us.”

She was quiet a long time. “It’s such a big step, Kodie.”

“I know. We’ve talked about that too. The guys think we should meet on neutral ground, someplace you’re comfortable. You name it. We’ll be there. If you don’t want to take it further, it ends there.”

“I don’t know…” She turned to face me, both palms pressed to my chest.

“I know it’s scary, baby, but I think once you’ve connected with us, a whole lot of this other scary that’s haunting you will go away.”

“Right.”

“No, really. Knowing you like I do, I know you’ll own that game. You’ll own us. And I mean that in the gamer sense of the word.”

“Damn straight, I would.”

“See there.” I rolled her under me and kissed her nose. “And this may be more than you are ready to believe, but it’s something I believe bone deep. We are meant. We all fit. When we are together in real life, you will see that, know it. It doesn’t matter where you go; we have a connection and you will never lose that.

She pressed a finger to my lips but didn’t deny what I said.

“The Java Forum coffee shop. You know it?”

“I’ll find it.” I promised.

“Tomorrow morning at nine.” ***** Katy pushed away from the desk. It had worked. She took the earrings off and slipped them inside her desk drawer. There’d been a moment when she had quivered on the edge, certain she would break apart, but she had stayed in place. In place solidly enough that her shirt remained on.

She pondered that, the idea of having someone always there. Not having to fight every battle and make every decision alone. It was not going to happen for her. It was a nice idea though.

Something she might be able to hold close for an afternoon before reality took it away.

“No more pondering,” she told herself aloud. A hot shower and a long sleep were all she wanted to think about. Yeah, like sleep would be possible with meeting the guys looming.

She felt around under the desk with her feet for her slippers. She was sure she’d been wearing them earlier and kicked them off when she’d been battling gators and panthers with Grizz. While she might not have Ginny’s total recall, she didn’t lose things.

She crawled under on hands and knees and bumped her head when a message chimed on the laptop.

No slippers.

She was still rubbing her head when she dropped into her chair to read a message from Grizz.

Her brain skidded to silence. Sages and seekers spent years fasting, twisting themselves up like pretzels, chanting and meditating to obtain inner silence so complete. For her, it took just six words. A challenge thrown down in pixels on a screen.

Prepare to be taken and owned.

She blinked. Still no coherent thoughts. She had to pinch herself to be certain she hadn’t turned to vapor. That was how fast he could make her want him when she thought herself satisfied.

The picture included in the message finished downloading and filled the screen. While she waited for blurred pixels to sharpen, she responded to the IM. As if you could. I will own you three boys five minutes in. Prepare to be stomped.

The picture sharpened.

Katya couldn’t breathe.

They were everything their sexy avatars promised. Even more magnificent in the flesh. She was in over her head.

She’d always been the problem solver, the one everyone looked to for answers. She was destined to spend the next year in Antarctica in a coveted research position because of her gift for troubleshooting and her extensive knowledge of genetics. Yet, in the social world, in the world of men and women, her brain was a liability. In the slow circling dance of mating, she had four left feet. Or no feet. Almost zero real experience. It was like thinking you could fly a Hurricane Hunter plane into the eye of a storm when all your prior flying experience was in a flight simulator.

“I can fix this,” she muttered as she logged off the chat and rubbed at the back of her neck.

She could make the meeting go away.

She studied their picture. Trouble was, she didn’t want it to go away.

There was a moment in a chase when she was in full prey mode, running with all her heart and might, blood pumping, heart pounding, adrenaline scalding her veins. And abruptly, as if a switch thrown transitioned her from one track to another, it all ended in a corner with no way out.

It was that moment, when strong arms went round her and hauled her in, tumbled her to the ground. She’d look up into eyes sparking with the feral gleam of victory.

For just that moment, their gazes locked, hunter to prey.

Then she would lift her chin, angle her head just slightly, signaling submission. It always earned her their teeth, sinking into an earlobe, her shoulder, a breast, turning her bones liquid with desire.

She craved that moment.

A soft ping from the computer signaled mail. Another message from Grizz.

I know you, KatyDid. You’re sitting there trying to talk yourself out of this. Don’t do that, sugar. Think of it as a going-away party. One last fling to keep you warm through a winter that lasts a year and a night that lasts for months on end. You’ll need it. Trust me, you’ll need it. We’ll agree to whatever restrictions you lay down.

The bedroom door swung open behind her, and while she grabbed for the mouse to close the picture, she wasn’t fast enough.

“Hey, who are the hot guys?” Virginia’s teasing reeled her back into reality. “Oh wait, is that the visual stimulation you were using in your experiment? Should I have knocked first?”

Katya grabbed a pillow from the bed and swung. Virginia grabbed another and it was war.

Katy never did find her slippers.

Chapter Five Katya Virginia and Katya did their Saturday morning run through a Rockwell painting, along a winding road through foothills where autumn color spread like a crazy quilt over farms and thickets of white clapboard homes. Tin roofs gleamed in the morning sun, and here and there, a church steeple poked through the coverlet. Virginia, who usually took the lead and could win just about any race, was lagging back. Sweat glistened on her forehead despite the cold, her eyes red-rimmed.

The rhythmic slap of sneakers on pavement and their panting were the only sounds breaking the October stillness.

It might have been peaceful but for the nagging anxiety, a sense something was off. Trouble was brewing in her sister’s life, or maybe Katya was worried about her meeting in a few hours. Or was something more substantial stalking them? Only one of the possibilities was available for investigation.

She took the opportunity to narrow the field and slowed to match Virginia’s stride. “What gives, Sissy? Long night?”

Ginny stifled a yawn and swallowed before answering. “Remember protocol.”

“Right. Now, I’m worried.”

“It’s personal.” She kicked up the pace.

We’d just hit a hill, and it wasn’t until after we’d topped it and gone a quarter mile down the other side that she slowed enough for me to catch her—and my breath. “When you run away from the conversation, it does not reassure me all is well.”

Virginia pulled a bottle of water from the zipper pocket of her fleece vest and handed it to Katya. “Drink before you drop.”

Katya was dying of thirst. They hadn’t planned to run so far, so she hadn’t brought water. She looked over her shoulder to gauge how far they’d traveled, but Virginia picked up the thread of the conversation.

“You really don’t want to know why my ass is dragging this morning. Believe me you don’t.”

Katya dropped the cap she was trying to screw back onto the bottle, and Virginia kicked into high gear again. Katya wasn’t a slow a runner. She’d even won her age group at a couple of charity races. Virginia, however, was the wind.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Virginia said and slowed to a walk.

When Katya caught up to her again, she was gulping air like she’d collapsed a lung or was in need of an oxygen tank. Even with Virginia walking, she had to jog to keep up, clutching at the stitch in her side.

“Okay, okay,” Virginia said. “If it will save me having to carry you the rest of the way, I’ll dish.”

Katya should have had a snappy comeback for that, but her brain cells were too oxygen deprived.

“Well, about what you said yesterday, about sex not being worth the trouble?”

“Well, I may have over—” Katya stopped, caught her sister’s shirtsleeve. “Ohhh, wait…you didn’t?”

“We’re already going at a crawl; could we at least keep inching along?” Virginia yanked her sleeve from Katya’s grip and started running again. “And yes, I did,” she called back.

Breathing was overrated, Katya decided, and raced after her sister. “Yes what? How?” Even more important, with who, but she was afraid to find out.

It wasn’t long before Virginia slowed down again. Katya handed her sister the water, and she uncapped the bottle while filling in far too few details. “Yes, I tested your theory.” Ginny took a swig of water. “At length.” Another swig and a drop trickled from her chin and down her neck.

“And…” Virginia recapped the bottle and fiddled with getting the bottle back in the rear pocket of her vest.

“Brat,” Katya said, jogging behind her, tucking the bottle in and zipping the pocket shut.

“And you were right,” said with a huff. “Satisfied?”

“Um?” “God, don’t be such an old lady. You’d think we had seventy years between us instead of seven. Does it help to know I’m technically still a virgin. I think. I’m not sure where the line falls on that one.”

“Technically? How could you not know?”

She sent Katya a sideways glare.

“Okay, okay. Best you keep the details to yourself but for one…”

Ginny answered while Katya was trying to decide how to ask. “Cherry.”

“What? Whoa. Why? Uh.” That explained some details.

“Uh-huh.” Virginia laughed. “Yeah, that’s pretty much where my head is.”

“Okay, I think I need more data to process this, just not intimate details.” They moved to the shoulder, jogging slowly to let cars pass. “A pot or two of coffee might help too,” Katya added.

“We aren’t a couple or anything. We’re just friends. As Cherry puts it, gender isn’t a deciding factor in whom she’s attracted to. I think the same goes for me. The attraction was totally physical, kind of a heat-of-the-moment thing after watching a movie I probably shouldn’t have watched with her.”

“I thought you said she was interested in one of the guys.”

“I was wrong.”

The pace picked up again, but Katya was determined not to die before finishing the conversation. “Hey.” She gave Ginny’s shoulder a squeeze. “So, why the blues?”

Ginny shrugged Katya off, and Katya fell in behind her, aiming to keep up just enough that they could still talk.

“What you said, Katya. You were right. I always thought sex would be this stellar thing.

Everyone makes such a big deal about it. It wasn’t awful…”

“Well, the theory is that it is much better with someone who matters a great deal.”

“Really? Where’d you get that line from, a parenting website?”

“Will you cut me a little slack here?”

Virginia shrugged again and even slowed down a little bit.

Admittedly, Katya had relied on more than a few parenting manuals and websites in an effort to keep Virginia alive long enough to reach her twenty-first birthday. Not easy playing mom when she was still growing up herself.

“I can only say that’s true in regards to cyber,” Katya said. “It matters more if your partner matters. For the real thing, I don’t know either.”

“You planning on testing that with one of the guys in that pic?”

“That’s really not relevant.”

Virginia stopped so fast Katya had to jump into the center of the road to keep from running into her. “Oh, my sex life is an open book and yours is top secret?”

“Let it go, Virginia.”

They were face-to-face, panting, locked in a stare-down. Mutual annoyance zapped through the air between them like an electron wind.

“Will you let mine go?”

Katya blinked first and looked away. “Yes.” A car honked, and they both moved toward the shoulder. Only instead of her foot hitting gravel, Katya’s ankle hit the curb, and she realized they were in town. An October morning, edged with frost, proved so irresistible that they were at the edge of town before they realized their threemile run had turned into six. Or maybe it was the scintillating conversation about their pseudo love lives that kept them distracted. Either way, Katya was looking at a six-mile return trip, all uphill.

Katya sank to the curb and sat staring at the beginning of that long, long climb on the road home.

“I guess we got a little carried away,” Ginny said, squatting beside her as if they hadn’t just been ready to strangle each other. She tapped the button on her fitness tracker, flipping through screens to get to the time. “Java Forum isn’t open for 30 minutes yet, but Cherry’s opening today.

I can probably wrangle us a couple cups of coffee.” ***** “Hey there,” Cherry said when she opened the back door to Virginia’s knock. The look on her face as she took in their appearance made Katya feel like something a dumpster diver would throw back.

Fortunately, her sister tended to miss the nonverbal details in a conversation. She simply said, “Coffee smells good.” And they were in the door.

Cherry stepped back to let us in. She was trying to get Virginia’s attention, give her an elbow.

“I can wait outside if it’s a problem,” Katya said. “I don’t want to get you in trouble with your boss.”

“Oh no, sweetie. I just want to talk to Gin a minute. But you can wait in the shop. I’ll be right out with coffee.”

Dismissed, Katya pushed through the double doors out into the café.

She heard their whispered spat as she left them.

“Did you forget what day this is?” Cherry asked.

“No, it’s Saturday.”

“And…” “Oh fuck. That’s today?”

“When else?”

The conversation faded into nothing, and Katya nabbed her favorite booth, last one in the back, an equal distance from the employee entrance and the customer entrance. A painful twinge sparked in her temples. She rubbed at the tension with her fingertips, elbows propped on the table.

“Just nerves,” she muttered.

Wasn’t meeting lovers supposed to generate giddy thoughts and butterflies in the tummy?

Instead, the twinges of a tension headache fired up, as did a heaviness in her stomach. This felt more like flu setting in than desire. Though given her sister’s description of sex, maybe they just weren’t wired like everyone else. Maybe intimacy would never be sparkles and butterflies.

Except it was for Katya. At least when it had been virtual, it was. Could real life live up to fantasy?

Virginia came out, carrying a tray with muffins and two mugs of coffee. She pushed a mug toward Katya and flopped into the booth across from her. “I have a confession to make, and I need you to play along with something for me.”

Katya didn’t trust muffins on her uneasy stomach. Peeling the lid off a creamer container, she poured, stirred coffee, and waited for Ginny to speak.

Virginia opened her mouth and snapped it shut again.

Katya’s spoon clinking against the side of her cup the only sound to fill the silence. “This must be bad.”

“You’re so gonna hate me, Katya.”

“Probably, but I usually get over it fast. Best spit it out and get it done.”

“There’s sort of a surprise party for you in about thirty minutes, and I need you to act surprised.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Katya jumped up and headed for the front door, but Virginia caught her wrist and hauled her back.

“Will you shh.” She glanced back at the double doors and stabbed a finger at the booth. “Sit and listen.”

Stunned, Katy sat. Virginia, who spent most of her time lost in the black hole of some theory she was trying to prove, never got this riled about anything. She could drift through whole days without speaking, lost in thoughts and theorems.

She was babbling now.

“It’s my fault. I honestly thought I’d shot this idea down effectively. It must have cropped up again when I was distracted, and I agreed.”

“You don’t forget things, Virginia. Even when you’re on autopilot, some part of you knows what you’re doing.”

She jumped up and whirled away. “I know!” She’d shouted the last, looked cautiously at the kitchen doors and slid back into the booth. “I know,” she whispered.

Katya sipped her coffee. It scalded her tongue—but not as much as watching her sister melt down scalded her on the inside, heart deep.

“But here’s the thing,” Virginia said. “A lot of people have worked hard to put this together.”

She glanced over Katya’s shoulder at the sound of rattling dishes and lowered her voice. “Just…”

She stopped and scrubbed her hands over her face. “Look, your boss and all the people you work with will be here.”

Crap. Not now. Not today of all days!

Katya checked the clock. The guys would be here in an hour. What were the chances the party would be over before then? Zero.

She looked down at her clothes and back up to Ginny. Not that she had never looked worse, working at the wildlife refuge and all, but for Grizz, Kodie, and Oso… “I can’t—” Virginia held up a hand. “Look, there’s a shower back in the employee locker room. Cherry has some stuff you can wear. We can clean up. I dropped a duffle bag there yesterday, because I was planning to go over to the physics lab at the college with Ely after our run.”

“You’re going? You did this, and you’re going?” Panic clutched at Katya’s chest.

Virginia shook her head. “I want to go. Worse than you I want to go, but I’ll hang here with you for this.”

Cherry bustled through the double doors, carrying a plastic tub of freshly filled sugar dispensers and salt and napkin dispensers. She was one of those people skilled at discerning what was going on just by looking at faces. “Uh-oh. You two at the roommate wars again? Sisters don’t fight as much as you do.”

Katya winced.

“I was giving her hell for hiding the patio table,” Ginny said. “But we should get moving, get out of these sweaty clothes before we catch cold.”

Neither of them had ever had a cold in their lives.

Virginia grabbed Katya’s arm and aimed her toward the back where they could get ready.

“Wait, what about the table?” Katya asked, when they were in the locker room.

“I don’t know. I was using it to climb in my window until I found my key. Now it’s gone. I thought you did something with it.” Virginia opened a locker and pulled a towel from her duffle bag. “We’ll have to share.”

“I didn’t move the table.” Katya peeled out of her clothes and dropped them in a plastic grocery sack Virginia tossed her.

“It ran away by itself?” Virginia asked, adding her clothes to the sack and throwing them in the locker.

“Maybe someone else ran away with it?” Katya turned on the water in the shower, adjusted the temperature. “We might as well share the shower too.”

Virginia wound her hair in a bun and fastened it to the top of her head. Katya did the same.

“Why, would someone run off with it?” Virginia asked. “What sense is there in stealing a beat-up old patio table?”

Really. It wasn’t much. Certainly not worth stealing, but maybe to someone who didn’t have a table, it was. Or the other option: Virginia had moved the table and forgotten about it. She was misplacing a lot of things and just as soon as a few of the immediate issues of surprise party and bear clan meet were out of the way, she’d have to confront her sister about it. Virginia followed Katya into the glass stall.

Katy squirted green shower gel from a bottle into her palm and handed her sister the bottle.

“Are the chairs still there?”

“Yeah, but too rickety too climb on. I went out last night to meet Cherry and didn’t want to wake you when I got back. I had to give her a boost through the window and she let me in.”

Why steal a table and not chairs? Virginia had to be at the root of the issue.

But rather than say so, Katya lathered, rinsed, and stepped back, careful to keep her hair dry.

While Virginia rinsed, she stepped out and dried off. It was a thick beach towel, so she tried to only get one half soggy, leaving the rest as dry as she could for her sister.

True to her word, Cherry had left clothes folded on the bench by the lockers. A pink mini sport skirt and a white sweater with little hearts embroidered on it.

Virginia offered a sympathetic smile when Katya held up the clothes. “It’s all stretchy and stuff, so it should fit.”

With no underwear, Katya would have to stay seated and remember to keep her arms folded across her chest.

Katya had just finished dressing when Cherry came back. “Oh, you look sooo cute. Sit,” she said. “I’ll fix up your hair for you.”

Cute not being a look Katya ever went for, she thought it best not to look in the mirror. Cherry did something amazing with dry shampoo that left Katya’s hair sleek and glossy. A slender lace hairband and a bit of fluffing made Katya feel like a Barbie doll. “You have such beautiful skin.

And those lashes,” Cherry said. “I’m so jealous.” She stepped back, studying Katya, tapping her finger to her lips as she pondered. “Maybe a touch of lip gloss.”

She rummaged in her purse and handed Katya a fresh tube of strawberry lip gloss.

Deciding it would be over faster if she complied, Katya obeyed.

By the time Katya returned to the front of the café, a transformation of a second sort had taken place. Balloons and banners hung from the ceiling. Virginia’s friends from college were there— Stanley, Calvin, and Ely. Java Joe, the owner, was behind the counter, whistling and filling the pastry trays. When Katya appeared, the front doors swung open, and coworkers streamed in.

Everyone shouted, “Surprise!”

Stunned was more the word for it. She hadn’t realized she knew so many people or had left enough an impression on them that they would feel compelled to attend a party for her. The thought left her queasy.

Nevertheless, Katya threw her hands up and laughed as if she hadn’t expected a party and wasn’t wondering how she could escape. ***** Oso The air was thick with scents of coffee and warm cinnamon. Katya had sent them a picture the night before, but he was still surprised to see her there. She’d slipped through their fingers so many times he never quite knew when they had her.

“She doesn’t look all that thrilled to see us early,” Grizz said.

Oso pulled his shoulders back, wrapped himself in an air of calm and confidence. “That surprises you?” He snagged two chairs on his way to a lone, empty table near the front window.

He kept the extra chair for Katy between him and the window. Kodie and Grizz grabbed empty chairs from other tables and joined him.

Now he could finally study her at close range. Amid the tangle of aromas—coffee, perfume, humans—one scent called out, made his cock twitch, and had him clamping his teeth around his tongue. All scent had a taste, and this was wild honey. If he were to follow, he bet it would lead him right to her. She looked good enough to lick. Glossy golden hair fell just below her shoulders.

A tight sweater and pink skirt fit like skin. Nothing underneath, he realized, when she bent slightly to whisper into the ear of a younger, dark-haired guy with glasses. Gut-twisting lust and jealousy forced him to look away.

“She’s not into him,” Kodie said.

“And hard as it is to wrap my head around,” Grizz added, “I don’t think he’s into her.”

Kodie and Grizz were feasting on the site of Katy. That didn’t turn Oso’s gut inside out.

Mating Bonds were so much a part of his culture that he’d never questioned them until he lived among humans. But to him, his partners were essential to keeping Katy safe and healthy. Four strands of the same braid. Any other man touching her, as the boy did now with a hand on her elbow, made his skin crawl with the primal urge to shift and drive off the intruder.

How had it come to this before he’d ever touched her or kissed her in real life?

“Somehow,” Kodie said, “I hadn’t figured Katy for the cotton-candy-girl look.”

“I doubt there’s much she could wear that wouldn’t make my mouth water,” Grizz added.

Oso could only grunt an agreement. Too bad he couldn’t just scoop her up and take her someplace where he could spend an hour licking her from her toes right up to those pursed, pink lips. In that other reality, that was exactly what would have happened by now. Humans made mating too complicated.

Even in the “girly” outfit, Katy didn’t strike him as soft. There was an edge, a wary watchfulness. The kind of watchfulness you learned in a life that landed too many sucker punches, be those punches literal or real.

His hunger for her to meet his gaze rippled in the air. He would bet she was aware of them watching, anxiety expressed in the quick dart of tongue between lips as she nodded in response to

a woman beside her, pushing her hair back over her shoulder. Those almost-looks, sideways glances, head turning and then veering back just before her gaze landed on their table.

He was so focused on Katy that the loud pop of a balloon just above their heads nearly sent him out of his skin and into fur.

He gripped the table and willed himself to stay anchored to his human form. He sent Kodie a glare, certain a mental push from him had burst the balloon.

They had her attention now.

Grizz waved.

Kodie crooked a finger. His smile was gentle, patient.

Katy didn’t smile back. She looked more like a rabbit surrounded by wolves. Oso had the impression the bears were not the only predators worrying her. Still, she played the gracious hostess and called to the waitress behind the counter before joining them.

Oso stood, pulling out a chair for Katy and steadying her with a hand at her elbow as she maneuvered around his chair and into hers. That wild honey scent was hers, not perfume, but a natural fragrance her body exuded. Human concocted perfume tormented a Pantherian’s heightened olfactory senses. Katy’s scent worked on him like a drug. He needed more. He wanted to burrow his head under that tiny skirt, breathe her in, her pussy fragrant and oh so wet.

He inhaled like a diver preparing to leap.

As if she sensed his thoughts, Katy crossed her legs. Grizz fired a glare Oso’s way. He released the breath he’d been planning to hold for an hour. Slowly.

The waitress arrived and planted a plate heaped with donuts in the center of the table.

“Welcome to Katya’s going-away party.”

“Sorry if we’re crashing. We didn’t know,” Kodie said.

“No problem. I don’t have it in me to toss three such perfect hunks of handsome out without coffee,” she said with a flirty smile before adding, “even if you weren’t friends of Katya’s.” A carafe of coffee and four mugs joined the plate on the table.

“Absolutely, we’re friends of Katya’s.”

She took a second to top off Katy’s coffee, chatting as she did. “I’m Cherry. Aren’t you the guys beefing up security at the new data center on campus?”

“That’d be us,” Grizz said, sliding his mug next to Katy’s and winning a fill up with a smile.

Oso noticed a slight waver of the girl’s hand and a tightening of Katy’s lips. He slid his cup next to Grizz’s, and she tipped the pot to fill his, still chatting.

“Katya, I didn’t know you had friends—” Cherry broke off long enough to make it obvious she was scrambling to cover her mistake. “That didn’t come out right. Well, you know, amazing friends like these.”

Katy didn’t even try to force her grimace into a smile. “Can’t blame me for keeping them to myself, right?”

Cherry nodded, already backing away in retreat. As soon as she was gone, Oso reached for Katy under the table. He cupped her fist in one hand, stroking his thumb back and forth over her inner wrist.

Honestly, Cherry’s confusion was understandable. Katy couldn’t be getting out much, given how much time she spent online in the Quarterz. Oso lifted his mug and sipped, wondering what that silent tension between the two women was about.

She looked up into his eyes at that moment. Hers were a blue-gold-brown mix of color that brought to mind a woodland pool. Suddenly all he could think of was Katy. Under him. Naked.

Looking up at him just like that.

“We can’t stay here.” She glanced around, as if she were scanning for an escape route. “I didn’t know they were going to do this.”

Grizz shrugged. “Can’t blame folks for doing something nice for you. Looks like we aren’t the only ones who will miss you.”

The double doors to the kitchen banged open and Oso saw the little waitress pinch a blonde goddess on the butt as she slid past her into the kitchen. She was taller, broader of shoulder than Katy, built like an Amazon Warrior princess with a golden tumble of wild hair falling to her hips.

She paused between the doors, ; banter exchanged had the princess tipping her head back, a throaty laugh floating over the drone of voices around her. A laugh that brought to mind Katy’s laugh. He looked at Katy then back.

The princess had ducked behind the counter and reappeared as the opening riffs of classic rock added their heavy base to the symphony of sound in the tiny space. The dark-haired boy with the glasses tried to pull her into a dance with him when she came around the counter. This, no doubt, was the woman he was into. She laughed again, let him twirl her, bumped hips with him, and moved on. Straight toward them.

“Katya, you going to introduce me to your friends?” Her smile was easy. The intensity of her stare promised, I will slit your throat if you so much as muss her hair. A promise she believed she could make good on, Oso noted, which was why he believed her.

“Guys, this is my roommate. Virginia, this is a bunch of guys you’ll want to stay far away from.”

“Oh, really?” Virginia snatched up a chair, spun it around backwards and plunked down between Grizz and Kodie. She straddled it and settled in, chin propped on hands, elbows on the back of the chair.

Virginia was Katy’s sister. Suggested by the voice similarities. Obvious in her scent imprint.

It was even somewhat obvious in their physical similarities. The main difference being Katy was smaller, finer boned, with straight hair.

Why lie about the relationship?

Her sister didn’t protest the designation, as though it were truth settled on long ago. Grizz and Kodie had picked up the same, awareness clear in their puzzled glances. Oso itched for a telepathic exchange, but honored the promise that from here forward they would use no power but those available to humans.

“So, how did you all meet?” Virginia asked.

Katy leaned toward him, and Oso bent his head to catch her soft plea. “Could you just steal me away now?”

He might have complied, but two more young men around Virginia’s age poked their heads inside the front door. “Ely, Gin, time to go,” the redhead with freckles hollered.

Virginia looked to Katy, who nodded. Virginia was out the door so fast Oso half believed she teleported. ***** Katya How unlikely was it for one guy to show up in real life looking better than his magnificent avatar? To have it happen three times over in one meeting was beyond the laws of probability.

Even though they’d sent a picture, it could have been a lie. It could have been a picture of what they looked like 20 years ago. The only thing that varied from their representations of themselves in virtual was that they couldn’t shift into bears. And really, given their size, she wouldn’t have been all that surprised if one of them did turn into a bear.

There was no polite way to hurry along a party in her honor, especially when Cherry kept passing out donuts hot from the cooker. Coffee and laughter flowed. A fire, the first of the season, crackled in the hearth.

Grizz and Kodie mingled. The very idea gave her chills. Not that any of the details they would gather about her life were real, but she would like to protect the details of her fake identity as long as possible.

New identities were expensive. They had one set of new identities secure in the safe-deposit box. The pile of cash their father had left there for them had seriously shrunk over the years, but the need to dip into those funds was rare now they were older. And Katya hoped, with the doors her new assignment would open, she’d soon be adding to it rather than taking away.

She didn’t want the bears out of earshot. Yet, having them all glued to her attracted more attention than having just Oso as a shadow.

Then Leora Carnegie, her boss, breezed in and zeroed in on the guys. Before Katy could think up a way to head her off, she’d rounded up the two strays, and they were right back at a table with Katy and Oso. And didn’t Leora look smug. Almost as if she were trying to help Katya keep the guys under wraps?

Katy had always suspected the Quarterz invite she’d found on her desk had come from her boss. Having landed the job with really shaky credentials and then a research position in Antarctica, Katy wasn’t going to screw it all up by asking questions it wouldn’t do any harm to forego.

Occasionally, she pondered which of the women she saw in-game might be Leora. Her money was on the leader of the female rebels living in the caves under the Wastelands. In the beginning, Katy had wondered if Leora might be one of the bear clan, but moving to voice role-play removed that worry.

“So, you’re in security,” Leora was saying to Grizz. “I have several properties that could use a security update.”

His gaze assessed Leora but not in a sexual way. Not hard to miss the wealth and privilege Leora wore like a badge. A sleek black leather pantsuit that gleamed softly. Silk blouse, real diamonds at her throat. Leora knew how to flaunt it, but at the same time, her charities—especially the wildlife center and other wildlife projects she contributed to—were a force for good in the world.

“Maybe we can drop by and discuss it in a couple weeks,” Grizz said.

The thought of Leora with the clan tripled the anxious weight that had settled in Katya’s belly.

Yet, what had she expected? She lived in a small town where half the residents were part of a secret game played on a local server. Participation was invitation only. The existence of the Quarters was the community’s worst kept secret, though the identities of the characters playing were still carefully guarded. Any player would recognize these guys outworld. Which meant they didn't fear any professional repercussions because of their sexual kinks. Anyone telling on them would be admitting to playing the game themselves.

“Well, Katya,” Leora said standing up, “as I likely won’t see you again before you go, good luck on your trip. And…” Her gaze slid over the guys. “I hope you’ll take time to enjoy yourself a little before you head off into the cold alone.”

Katya couldn't look at the guys as Leora departed. She didn't know where to fix her gaze.

Sitting at the table surrounded by the bears, she felt like Goldilocks from the fairytale. She could imagine Goldilocks waking up from a dream and realizing she’d screwed up letting herself get cornered by three bears.

When she shut her eyes, it was as if she was in the swamp, and the friendship and trust that had been growing between them slid around her like a warm blanket. They were familiar. But they shouldn’t be. That was an illusion. Yes, they’d spent hours sharing fantasies, but in the end, there were huge holes in what she knew about them, holes time had filled in with what she wished for, rather than facts. The real guys couldn’t possibly live up to the fantasies she’d built in her head.

Under the table, Grizz’s hand found her knee. Oso had worked a finger inside her clenched fist. Kodie caught the other hand. Her nipples went to hard little peaks, the tight sweater only emphasized. It didn’t take Grizz long to make that journey up her thigh and discover the absence of panties. His smile had a mischievous tilt.

Beyond them, she could feel the eyes on her, hear eyebrows rising. Questions unspoken hummed in the air. It wouldn’t take much perusal to notice all three had hands on her, attention on her. Intentions toward her.

There were still avenues for escape. She was sure of it. If she could just keep herself from getting lost in Grizz’s heated stare long enough to reason one out. They had her simmering now, Kodie’s finger drawing a circle on her inner thigh, Oso shifting to drape his arm over the back of her chair and leaning in to whisper in her ear.

“You know you want this, Katy. You know you’re ready for us to be real.”

She did. She wanted to tip her head back and surrender. Let their teeth roam her heated skin.

Their breath shudder over her. Feel the weight of their bodies covering her as they took turns.

She was breathing so fast it made her dizzy.

She’d spent her life on the run. It was one of the reasons she was so good at the games they played online. When she was cornered, instinct kicked in. It took over now.

“Excuse me just a minute,” she said.

Katya, threaded through the gathering of coworkers and friends, chatting as she went, not even sure what she said. Her mind separating from the situation so she could see herself worming her way to the kitchen door, toward safety, the same way she might scroll back with her mouse ingame, to watch her character navigate through a maze.

Only after she was out in the autumn sunshine did her mind rejoin her body. All she had to do was walk. Calm and steady. Down one block, and then a quick right into an alley.

Katie leaned against cold brick, waiting for her heart to slow. Squeezing her eyes shut didn’t stem the hot flow of regret seeping from the corners of her eyes. Things she could never voice wedged in her throat. Regrets too big to swallow. Would going to the bears prove to be another such regret?

She pushed away from the wall and started walking again, knowing she’d need distance.

They’d follow. They were hunters to the core. She took a breath and marched down the alley, across the next street, and past the yoga studio before her bottom lip started to quiver. She managed to make it all the way to the bench in front of the computer shop before jelly legs forced her to sit.

It was still early. Most of the shops wouldn’t open for another hour. Katya propped her elbows on her knees and pressed her face into her open palms. She tried counting backward from a hundred to regain control. She made it to 79 before the tears retreated. At 69, Oso found her.

“Aww, chica. What’s this about?” He sat beside her and slid his arm around her shoulders.

“Talk to me.”

“It’s not about you. Really, it’s not.” She leaned into him as they sat back, head resting on his shoulder. An easy pose they’d shared a hundred times. Only now it was real. Skin to skin.

“Then tell me, Katy. Tell Oso what it really is.” He dropped a backpack he’d carried with him on the ground by her feet.

“The crowd. A hundred other things going on. The trip.” She shrugged.

Something’s off. I feel it even though I can’t see it. It’s there under layers of lies.

Like the princess who just couldn’t get to sleep with that pea under her many mattresses, Katya felt the hidden threat. Her life so fictitious she was trying to reason it out with fairytales.

None of this was something she could tell Oso. Not even when he put his arms around her, and butterflies replaced anxiety in her belly. Not even when he bent his head to rub noses with her.

She kept her fears to herself. The bears were her escape from reality, and she wouldn’t ruin that by bringing them her problems.

She let her forehead rest against his. “I guess I was overwhelmed. All the people. I never meant for my real life to collide with my virtual life. Bad timing and bad choice for a meet-up.”

He pressed his lips gently to hers, a kiss that offered no more than a promise. A promise that made her forget tears. He tasted like truth.

She could tell he was holding back. Desire leashed so tight he shook with it.

He set her away from him, took a deep breath, and held it for an eternity before he dug a folded paper from his pocket. “When you aren’t feeling strong enough, chica, we’re here to be your strength. You know that. Grizz and Kodie didn’t want to overwhelm you more. They left me to bring you this alone. He lifted the bag he’d brought. “These are presents we brought for your journey and some things you might need for the game. Instructions are in the note. We’ll be there from noon to dark.”

He drew her in for a final kiss. Slow, hot. Demanding. Then he rose and tucked her hair behind her ears. “For what it’s worth, and for all that it pains me to say it, I don’t think you should play.”

And with that, he turned and walked briskly away.

She was left holding the bag.

Nothing made her want to do a thing more than being told she shouldn’t do it.

Yes, she was afraid. She was always afraid. She was always hiding and running away from something. This game was a chance to level up, could be her turning point, the proof she could stop flinching from every shadow. Paranoia had shackled her for too long.

She rose and slung the backpack over her shoulder. If she could do this thing with the bears, easily safer than traipsing across Antarctica for a year, then she could handle anything the South Pole could throw at her. And if she could take on the South Pole, then the rest of the demons that came skulking in the night might prove to be so much vapor as well.

She’d started up the sidewalk back toward the café when a black Cadillac slowed and pulled to a stop at the curb beside her.

Katy’s heart stopped too.

An electric window slid down with a whisper.

Thank you for reading a sample of The Grizzly’s Tale. If you would like to continue reading, please purchase a copy at your favorite major retailer.