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In reality, it’s a good bit fatter than normal, but probably only slightly longer. Certainly plenty to work with, butginormouswas a stretch. I mean, Bran had made me lean over and be fucked by men with cocks bigger around than Coke cans. It seems part of my payment for having him civilize me wasn’t just that he had a live-in bear-shifter sex slave for his use, but one to loan out to those he owed favors to, or to those willing to pay for time with the new shifter.

I scented vampire, and looked to see Marco and Julian looking at each other, and I was certain they were having a telepathic conversation. I glanced at Dawg. “Marco?”

“Seems he’s a big fan of Mythic Beast. He asked Dozer to get him and some of his people tickets, which of course we did.” Dawg glanced at them and back to me. “I saw Julian and Silver talking earlier. Not sure how I feel about that. Julian bugs me.”

I glanced at Julian again, nearly seven feet tall with a body that didn’t look like it fit together right. I learned a lot in mytime with Bran, and I absorbed everything I could pick up. One of those things was the knowledge Julian had been a castrati in Italy when human, one of the kids they castrated so they’d have a high-pitched singing voice all their life. Julian had a case of giantism as a result, where you just keep growing, so he’s really big but the proportions are kind of off. He stopped growing when he was made vampire, and I guess his dick works again, but he’s still a sex slave, currently owned by Marco.

Julian spent four nights at Bran’s place while I was there, and I watched Bran fuck him several times without allowing an orgasm, but Bran didn’t torture him, which meant Marco had put restrictions on his use while in Bran’s household. Also, it’d seemed Julian had been there more as a party planner than as a sex slave.

“Marco keeps Julian pretty busy,” I told Dawg. “I don’t think we have to worry about the two of them.”

“Worry?” Will asked. “Something about Julian I should know?”

Dawg shook his head. “Julian’s cool, but Micca’s right about Julian’s job. He’s Marco’s main assistant and he’s with him nearly twenty-four/seven. I can’t imagine him finding time for a relationship.”

I’d meant we didn’t have to worry about the giant vampire taking an interest in Silver and creating complications, so I was thankful for Dawg’s save. “Yeah, that’s what I meant. Nothing wrong with them spending time together if Marco gives him some time off, I just can’t imagine him having a whole lot of free time.”

Will leaned in and put his mouth to my ear. “How much attention do you want from the media? I need to move around the room a little, do you want to come with me? Or do you want to leave with Dawg and get out of the spotlight?”

I aimed my mouth at his ear. “I like you, so far. I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere, but I’m not in the habit of hiding who I am.” I mean, other than the fact I can change into a giant fucking grizzly bear who was bitten and turned by the most powerful grizzly bear on the planet.

Without another word, he wrapped his arms around me, bent me backwards, and kissed me like we were in private. I only hesitated a second before I wrapped my arms around him, stood us up, pulled myself up so my legs were around his waist and I was tall enough to kiss him back, and I took control of the kiss a good ten seconds before he wrestled the power back, and I let him take control again.

When the kiss ended, I was still wrapped around him, and the smile he gave me was deliciously salacious. “You’re fun. C’mon, let’s go talk to some influencers, but no more talk about my dick. It was fine with Matty, and thank you for that, but I find an air of mystery is better with the gossipers.”

I mostly stayed silent while Will talked to people, and looked to him when people asked me a direct question I wasn’t certain of how to answer. Once, I tried the politician thing of answering a completely different question than they asked, and I was amazed when it worked.

But then someone asked if I was part of his security team, since I guess they’d looked me up somehow and found out I work for Drake Security, or maybe it was just a guess, and I realized I needed to give the line Aaron would want me to give, and not the one Will would probably prefer.

“I’m not sure where you got your information, but it’s incorrect.” I gave them the name of the lab I get my paychecks from, which Aaron and Nathan also own, but through so many corporations no one knows it’s affiliated with Drake Security. Or, they aren’t supposed to.

“So, you work with law enforcement.”

“I’m a forensic specialist. A lab geek. My job is the opposite of exciting.”

Which of course isn’t true at all. I hadn’t planned to become a shapeshifter, but I was exposed to a weaponized virus that would’ve killed me in the next seventy-two hours. Aaron had some wolves available to bite me, to save my life, but I told him I didn’t want to be a wolf. I mean, I like Cora, the main werewolf alpha for our area, but I didn’t want her to be able to give me orders I’d have to follow. I told Aaron I wanted to be a bear, and I wanted Horse to bite me.

I’d had to listen to all the arguments about how I would almost certainly live through thechangeto wolf — a greater than ninety-percent chance — while Aaron’s personal success overseeing the change to bear wasn’t quite seventy percent, and his numbers were better than most.

I’d told him I understood, but this was my choice.

I’d called Horse to explain the situation and ask if he’d bite me, and Horse had told me how powerful he is, and warned how much harder it might be to gain control of my bear if he bit me instead of someone else.

But I hadn’t cared. I knew Horse. I trusted him. I’d wanted it to be him.

So Aaron had put Horse and me on high-speed jets headed towards each other. I’d been in Taiwan, so we’d met in Hawaii for Horse to bite me, though Aaron had wanted to give me the best chance of living through it, and I guess if you die from being bitten by a bear before the saliva has a chance tochangeyou, that’s bad, so they didn’t have him actually bite me. First, they’d taken blood from Horse while he was a bear and injected it into my arteries in both legs and both arms, and then they’d collected about a shot-glass worth of his saliva, sandpapered my back all over until it was raw, and then rubbed the saliva into the skin.

And then the bear had been so big inside me, she’d overtaken the human parts of me and I’d lost weeks before they could bring me back. After that, I’d lose days at a time before the human could claw her way to the top of the two psyches again.

I guess I should’ve listened to Horse, but the thing is, now that I can control the bear, I have so much more magic than I sense from other bears. Was it worth it, having to spend those months with Bran to gain control, so I’m nearer the top of the bear hierarchy now? The jury’s still out on that, but I have a feeling it’ll eventually pan out.

Also, I’d frequently been the only human with the Drake team on outings, before, and they’d had to put extra protection on me while I worked. Now that I’m a bear, I’m worth more to Drake Security, which means a pretty big pay raise since I can go out with a single well-trained operative now to collect forensics, rather than having to go out with a team of three to five people to guard me.

But here and now, I had to deal with this influencer, who had her camera out while asking us questions. Will tried to change the subject by telling her the band had already began the process of writing new songs while on the road for this tour, but she wasn’t finished asking me about Drake Security.

“My information is that you work for Drake Security. Are you denying that?”

Before she asked the second part of the question, Cora jumped up on a table and ripped her shirt off so she was in a lacy black bra with her ripped abs showing. A few seconds later, the influencer’s camera moved off of us and onto Cora.