Free A Pair of Bears: Bear Shifter Menage Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant

across his head, then catapulted to the next guard. He tried to duck, flinging up his arms to protect his face. She landed on his shoulder, digging in all her claws, and sank her teeth into his ear. He screamed like a cat with its tail slammed in a door.
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Eli jerk free of the two guards holding him, and take down one with a punch to the jaw and the other with an elbow to the chin. Before they even hit the ground, he’d lunged forward and punched out one of the armed guards that Paisley hadn’t clawed yet.
    As she leaped on to the last unclawed guard still standing, Jackson rolled aside, jumped up, grabbed a heavy quartz paperweight off the desk, and slammed it into the head of the first guard she’d clawed. He crumpled to the floor.
    Paisley clawed and bit the final guard, easily dodging his grasping hands, then spotted Reed, his jaw still dropped in amazement, yanking his cell phone out of his pocket. With a keening caterwaul of outrage, she launched herself at him. He was too far for her to reach, but she thumped on to the floor at his feet, then climbed up his legs. He yelled in pain and kicked out, but she held fast, clawing her way upward to sink her teeth into his hand.
    He flung her off, but she landed on her feet in time to see the cell phone go skittering across the floor. Jackson stopped it with his foot, then stomped on it with a satisfying crack. Eli grabbed Reed and slammed him into the wall with an even more satisfying thud.
    Paisley looked around the room.  All the guards lay unconscious on the floor. Jackson sank into the desk chair, panting, shoulders slumped. Eli, his forearm across Reed’s throat, wasn’t even out of breath.
    “What the hell?” Reed burst out, sounding half-strangled and all-outraged. “A cat? An attack cat? No one can train a cat to attack people!”
    “A Navy SEAL can do anything,” Eli said. “Except survive a bullet to the heart.”
    Even Reed had no reply to that.
    “I’ve got the data back.” Jackson swept a flash drive off the desk and into his pocket. “Let me just make sure no one else is coming.”
    He typed rapidly, then looked up. “Coast is clear. We can leave whenever we want.”
    Paisley jumped into Jackson’s lap. He reached down and petted her. She purred and licked his hand.
    “You’re making fools of yourselves,” Reed said. “Have you looked at the data? You’re breaking the law and ruining your own lives over a flaw within acceptable bounds—”
    Eli’s forearm pressed harder into Reed’s throat. Reed choked and gasped.
    “Let him talk,” Jackson said.
    Eli let up the pressure. Reed coughed and went on, “The flaw only affects one in a million vests.”
    “One in every four thousand,” Jackson put in. “According to your own secret product testing reports. Two bad vests in one SEAL team— what were the odds of that? But hey, usually they work. Make back all the money you put into it, and a big profit on top— so what if you’re risking soldiers’ lives? Odds are, the defective vests will never be hit, and no one will ever need to know there’s anything wrong with the armor.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with the armor. No product is perfect.” Reed glared at Eli. “You’re a Navy SEAL. You should know about acceptable risks.”
    “So acceptable that you set traps to murder anyone who tries to investigate your product?” Eli shook his head in disgust. “Well, let’s test out these acceptable risks.  Have you ever been shot while you’re wearing body armor?”
    Reed let out a contemptuous snort.
    “I’ll take that as a no,” Eli said. “It’s not like in the movies. It hurts. It knocks you down. You get a huge bruise, and sometimes you break ribs. It’s no fun. But it won’t kill you.”
    Without taking his eyes off Reed, Eli backed away from him, then picked up a fallen guard’s pistol.
    “Jackson, you’re recording all this, right?” Eli asked.
    “Every sleazy word.”