Big Gator: A BBW shape shifter paranormal romance (12 page)

             “
You
did?” McEvans asked.

             “
Yeah,”
Brandy said.

             “
Well,
she took right off.”

             “
That's
okay.  We'll come back.  But now you know she's here.”

             
Brandy
and McEvans walked back to their vehicles.  Brandy pulled a
towel out of her car, throwing it on her shoulder.  She wound
her long hair into a thick rope and then squeezed water out of it.

             
It
was an unexpected, unintended and understated sexy move.

             
McEvans
had to admit she had gorgeous hair.  Healthy, dark and thick. 
And he also had to admit that this woman had some real
cajones
–
metaphorically
speaking, of course – jumping into an alligator-infested swamp like
that.

             
He
had a strange urge to kiss her just then, as she continued to towel
dry her hair.
 
Where
did that come from?
He
shook it off.

             
It
was true that McEvans had underestimated Brandy at first.  She
didn't look like an outdoorsy type of girl. But she had proven him
wrong now at least a couple of times.  Now he began
to
believe
that
maybe her parents really
did
take
her swimming with gators when she was kid, as sick and twisted and
dangerous as that had to be.   And if she was right about
this unknown species of alligator, that alone was epic.

             
McEvans
knew, however, that a slight change in bone structure and difference
in behavior wasn't enough to prove the evolution of an entirely
separate species.

             
That
would take DNA testing.

Chapter 13

             
Jenny
Guyette was a splash of gasoline on a grill when she lost her
temper.  She had Ray McAlister by the collar over the bar top,
with a fist raised and pulled back, ready to punch.

             
The
two of them froze, sizing each other up.

             
Then
Ray bust a gut.  He started laughing uncontrollably.  Jenny
was a 22-year-old, five-foot-two-inch little squirt and he was
six-feet-four inches of prison-aged, grown-ass man.

             
He
put his hands up in mock surrender.

             “
Just
calm down, Jenny,” Ray said. “I've never hit a woman.”

             “
I'll
do it!
”
Jenny
hissed.

             “
Go
ahead, if it makes you feel better.”

             
Jenny
clocked him.  It had the effect of a feather instead of a strap
across one's backside.

             “
Wowey!
That woke me right up!” Ray yipped, mocking her.

             
Suddenly,
Ray grabbed her under the armpits and hauled her over the bar top. 
Jenny tried to fight him, but there was no use.  When he set her
upright on his side of the bar, she tried to scramble, but he grabbed
her by the waist. He buckled her in with his left arm, while he
dialed her cousin with his right. 

             
He
got voicemail, which he usually expected, since Brandy avoided his
calls whenever possible.

             “
Brandy,
honey, get your juicy ass over to my bar ASAP,” Ray said. “I've
got a little hell-raiser here who says she's your cousin. I'm going
to lock her in the storeroom until you get here.”

             
Jenny
tried for liftoff, with her legs flying in the air and the rest of
her weight supported by a very patient Ray.

             
Brandy
showed up within 30 minutes.  Jenny was, indeed, locked in the
storeroom.  When Ray unlocked the door for Brandy, Jenny flew at
him jaws-first.  She had shifted, and she had been lying in wait
for him.

             
Ray
was too quick for her.  He flew around, grabbed her by the tail,
taunting Jenny a couple of times before jumping.  He straddled
her from behind and sat down, clamping her jaws shut with his meaty
hands.

             “
Hand
me a rubber band, Sugar, will ya?” he said to Brandy.

             “
Although
tempting, I'm not going to let you tape Jenny's mouth shut,” Brandy
said.

             “
I'm
not taping it,” he said.  “I said I just wanted a rubber
band – not duct tape!”

             “
Fine.”

             
Brandy
fished around the storeroom and found a thick, large-size rubber
band. Ray stretched it around Jenny's jaws. 

             
Yes,
this was all it took to put a gator's jaws out of commission. 
The muscles that allow an alligator to open its jaws are very weak,
so a rubber band really can do the trick.  The problem is when a
gator clamps its jaws shut.  The muscles that allow a gator to
clamp down are excessively strong.  Thus the jaws can exert over
1,000 pounds of pressure when crunching on someone or something.
            
 
“
It's
sort of like a woman's thighs,”  Ray had once mused. “You
know – there's a James Bond movie where some Russian chick can
strangle a man to death by trapping him between her thighs.  God
that would be a good way to die.”

             
By
contrast, even a lightweight person can keep an alligator’s jaws
shut closed fairly easily with two hands. So, there’s sort of a
muscular imbalance there.

             
Now
that Jenny had been successfully wrestled, Ray had her totally at his
mercy.  The Catch-22 was, if she shifted back into human form in
this position, then Ray would be riding her naked.

             “
What
the hell happened?” Brandy asked.

             “
She
just got into town, came in for a drink, and we all know why she's
here,” Ray explained.  “So I told her
point-blank
that
most of us are perfectly happy being shifters, and why does she have
to go ruin it for everybody.”

             “
And?”

             “
And
then SHE said that being a gator was miserable stuff  – funny
how she herself just found it convenient to shift – and that we
were all like alcoholics or drug addicts who couldn't see that we had
hit rock bottom.”

             
Brandy
sighed.

             “
Jenny,”
she said.   “Is this your version of the conversation as
well?”

             “
Yes,”
Jenny said.  Her tail threatened to swing again, but she was
pretty stuck.  She was a small gator, only about five feet
long.  She was shorter as a gator than she was in real life, for
some unknown reason.

             “
Then
what caused things to turn violent?” Brandy demanded.

             “
He
threatened me!”

             “
I
did not!” Ray protested.

             “
He
threatened you how exactly?” Brandy asked.

             “
He
said that if I – and anyone who I was working workin' with –
actually found a LaBelle and did whatever it was we were hoping to
do, that I'd be found in a ditch somewhere and no one would know who
did it.”

             
Brandy
was livid.

             “
Did
you really say this to her?”

             “
Yeah,
I did,” Ray said.  “But I didn't mean that
I
would be the one to do it to her
! 
I was only WARNING her about what we all know – that a lotta folks
out there are gonna want payback.  OR – they're gonna get her
before she succeeds.”

             “
So
in your version of things, you were warning her, not threatening
her,” Brandy clarified.

             “
Yes
– exactly – YES!”

             
She
eyeballed Jenny.

             “
If
you promise to calm the hell down, I will make this lech climb off of
you and promise not to touch you again.”

             “
Why
should I calm down?”

             “
Do
you want this man riding you all night?”

             
Ray
looked for a moment like he would actually consider this
proposition. 

             
You
see, Brandy was the only woman he would ever marry, and he repeatedly
asked her, usually when he thought she was drunk enough so that maybe
THIS time she might say yes.  But he also had an active
imagination and creative fantasy life.  If he married Brandy, he
thought that maybe with time and patience and careful planning, he
could finagle his way into gaining access to various female friends
and family members – never without Brandy as part of the equation,
of course.

             
When
Ray first propositioned her for a threesome with Marianne, Brandy was
too relaxed to be offended.  She was always up for a good joke,
and to her Ray was just that – ONE BIG JOKE.

             “
Get
off my cousin, Ray.”

             “
Okay,
fine.  But no more violence.”

             
Ray
stood up, dusted himself off, and walked out the door.

             “
Later,
Gator,” he tossed back at Jenny.

             
As
soon as he was gone, Brandy closed the door most of the way. 
Jenny shifted back and put her clothes back on.

             “
Tell
me,” Brandy said. “What makes you think that this time you've
really tracked down a LaBelle who’s a bona fide descendent from
Madame Eve?”

             “
The
Mormon genealogy database was updated.”

             “
The
what?”

             “
The
Mormons,” Jenny said.  “They keep the best genealogical
records of anyone on the planet.  They're obsessed with
genealogy.  You can search the LDS database and find anyone. 
If something's not there, that means no one has found it yet.”

             “
And
your saying the Mormons found Eve LaBelle's descendants.”

             “
Yes,”
she said.

             “
How
and why?”

             “
The
only thing we can guess is that one of her descendants did, in fact,
convert to Mormonism, and they must have supplied the LDS database
with information.”