Baby For The Bear

“Well, for you I have to stay tough,” said Reese, his trainer. “Nothing less than my toughest for you.”

“I appreciate it,” Ken said. “Next week, same time?”

“You got it,” said Reese, and turned and walked to the side of the training room where he had left his clothes.

With a satisfied breath, Ken strode over to the mirrored wall by which he had left his own gym shorts upon transforming for his sparring match with Reese. He slipped them on, checking out his body in the mirror, confident as always of being in shape. Being a werebear had its advantages. He was more naturally given to a well-muscled frame than a human male, but male Ursines who didn’t pay proper attention to their form could start to become round and stout with age. Just on the other side of thirty years old, Ken was not yet at the point where that would become a concern, but the time would come. He had made up his mind long, long ago that if he were to go soft and round it would not be until he was an old, old bear, and he would fight it with all his strength every step of the way. The girth of age would not have him without a truly epic battle. As a matter of pride, Ken wanted to keep himself in his best shape for what he liked to do best—which required a different kind of partner than the one with whom he had just been sparring.

*****

After a shower, Ken put on a suit and took the elevator down from his penthouse which housed the private gym where he’d been working out to the executive office level of his building.  In the outer office of his business suite sat short-haired, brunette Pamela, as always, tidying her desk to go home at the end of the day.

Lifting her glasses from the bridge of her nose back to her eyes, Pamela acknowledged her boss. “Mr. Brecker, I’ve just finished collating those E-mails from the ad that you placed in The Central Square Weekly. I forwarded them to you a few minutes ago.”

“Thank you, Pamela. You might as well take off now. I won’t need you while I’m going through those.”

Rising from behind her desk, Pamela smiled at him and stepped out to cross the room to where she’d hung her coat. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

In spite of their professional relationship, Ken idly wondered what Pamela thought of what he was doing. The two of them knew only the generalities of each other’s personal lives, for the most part. But for his latest undertaking, he had necessarily had to let her in on something private, which she of course would not share with anyone outside of this suite where they worked. She needed to understand exactly what it was that she was doing for him, receiving and collating E-mails from applicants not for a job, but for a wholly different and most unusual kind of position. She had never voiced an opinion about it and had never made any sort of suggestion of judgement about it. Still, in some corner of his mind, Ken had to wonder what his human receptionist thought of his search for a female, human or Ursine, to carry and give birth to his cub. Did she think the whole thing was cold, sterile, and unromantic? Did she find it inhuman?

He had to admit, it did not seem like the most human thing in the world. But then again it was not particularly Ursine either.

It was, however, the way Ken preferred things. His hard work and dedication to his family business had earned him the position of CEO of Brecker American, and as such he was an independently wealthy werebear from his salary alone. That was a matter of pride. But the family fortune was his heritage and he would not be cut out of it for want of producing an heir. Ken had no desire to take a wife. He never lacked for females to enjoy in bed, but the ties of matrimony—just one female as a partner for life—were outside of his interests. He was prepared to be a bachelor father and looked forward to the experience of raising and loving a cub. He had thought long and hard about the whole thing and found an unexpected space opening up in his heart for a little man-bear—he hoped for a boy—to care for and play with, to teach, to guide, and to love. He was sure he could give a cub not just his obligation to blood and money, but the love that only a father could give. He simply saw no need of taking one mate for life to do it. Ken had always been interested only in mounting females, not marrying one. He saw no reason for anything else, not even fatherhood.

Which is where the E-mails that Pamela had received and gathered up for him came in.

Stepping from the reception area to his spacious inner office, which was furnished as much like a luxury apartment as like a workspace, Ken made his way to his desk and his computer. He would conduct the search for a mother for his cub with the same businesslike efficiency as he did everything else. Well, almost anything else. When acquainting himself with a female and taking her to bed, he could afford to be playful; in fact the casual s*x he enjoyed required a casual approach. But for this endeavor, for which he would take the woman only to a fertility center and not to bed, he would keep things on a business level. He would treat her kindly, respectfully. He would be mindful that she was a person, not just an incubator, and be attentive to the needs of a prospective, and later expectant, mother. He would show her the appreciation that she deserved for the admittedly monumental thing he was expecting her to do for him.

But there would be no attachment and no s*x, and none of the complications that those things would bring. On that score he was clear. S*x was for other females, not for the one that he hoped to find in this collection of resumes and photos.

Seating himself at his desk and turning on his computer, Ken located the files that Pamela forwarded him and began methodically to open them and pore through them. He found the expected assortment of candidates. Some were prettier than others, which was a distraction. There were some that made him think, motherhood and his family fortune be damned, he simply wanted to peel the clothes from them and himself, lay them down, move into them, and conduct the kind of transaction that he most enjoyed. These candidates he wanted to set aside to offer them a position between the sheets, but he dismissed the idea as less than ethical. It was a pity, though, for there were a few faces in these files that Ken would very much have liked to see in person, under him, moaning, “Don’t stop…don’t stop…”

Nevertheless, it brought up the point that whoever it was that would carry his cub, she would have to be up to his usual standards. She would need to be someone that he would actually want to fu*k, and someone that he would actually want to marry if he were in the market for a wife. The mere fact that he was not going to sleep with or marry the mother of his cub did not mean he wanted just any female. She was going to help him produce an heir to the Brecker empire. Only the best female he could find for the job would be suitable.