Cinder's Wolf: A Shifter Retelling of Cinderella (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 2) (2 page)

Then there was the matter of his face. While his clean-shaven jaw should’ve looked non-threatening, it was male-model square, and his cheekbones were high and sharp enough to cut glass. Only his hair was slightly messy. Its sandy locks rebelled against his attempt to slick it back. The hair was the thing that gave him away as just another grade-A douchebag.

But damn it if she didn’t want to run her fingers through it.

Cynthia frowned and crossed her arms.

The man pushed off the tree and began to stroll toward her, sizing up her as he went. “So what are you doing in the woods?”

Cynthia refrained from rolling her eyes at his obvious interest. She pointed at her T-shirt.

“Camp Kick-A-Canoe?” he read, staring openly at her chest while not going completely slack-jawed. It was a feat most guys rarely managed.

“Camp Ki-Ka-Noo.” Her hand traced over the each syllable like the bouncy ball on a musical sing-along. “I’m a counselor.”

“Lost your campers?” He stopped about a foot away from her. It was still too close.

“Campers left yesterday. Now I’ve just lost my friend. Brown hair, glasses—seen her?” Cynthia gestured to the forest around her vaguely, as if she and Bel were playing a game of hide-and-seek and she was just asking for a friendly tip.

“Can’t say I have. Although I do wonder why you went on a search and rescue mission in these?” He raised an eyebrow and held up her shoe, glancing dolefully at the one remaining rhinestone that glinted in the dying light.

“I’m not the one going on a hike in a sport coat that hasn’t even been officially released in stores yet. Are you interning at Zachary Prell?”
It’s so not fair that he knows how to a raise an eyebrow.

“Nice guess, but no.” His second eyebrow joined his first, and his gaze dipped to survey her waist, lingering where the camp T-shirt rode up to reveal her tanned, but very much present and convex stomach. It was the one feature Cynthia was self-conscious about, but his pupils dilated as he took in her naked skin.

Cynthia tucked her shirt into her jean shorts to keep it from rising up again. “What are
you
doing in the woods?”

He smiled, showing a line of white teeth. They didn’t look like veneers. If anything, his canines seemed just a tad too sharp. The back of her knees went stiff.

 “I live nearby.” He pointed casually in a direction that Cynthia would’ve sworn was the way back to camp. As he turned, a sunbeam caught on his dark eyes, revealing the hidden blue color beneath them.

He caught her staring, but kept smiling in that way that should have been gentle. “I heard yelling,” he continued, “so I thought I’d investigate.” He looked her up and down once again, and this time, his eyes did linger on her chest. For a while.

Cynthia crossed her arms, although the barrier of her limbs felt flimsy. “How do you live nearby and not know about Camp Kikanoo?”

“We keep to the farmhouse.”

“The farmhouse?”
Oh no.
“You live in the farmhouse?”

“Yes.” He took a step closer, his footsteps eerily quiet even with the wet leaves. “I commute between here and New York for my… well, I suppose you could call it an internship.”

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

All the warmth drained out of Cynthia’s cheeks, but she didn’t run. The best thing she could do for Bel right now would be to stall this guy so he didn’t go home. Assuming Bel had made it to the greenhouse and wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere.

His blue eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Cynthia said too quickly.

As the man neatly dodged a tree root, Cynthia felt for the first time that maybe arrows weren’t such a ridiculous idea. Not when he moved like
that
. Like a predator.

She tripped backward, and her shirt scraped against the rough bark of the tree.

The man stopped, clearly satisfied with their positions. A breeze filled with the last lingering warmth of day rifled through her hair and then his, sending a whiff of his scent toward her. Herbal aftershave, the tang of fresh leather, and something else. Something darker. Something she wanted more of.

He was more than some jock posturing at being a man. If it weren’t crazy, Cynthia would’ve said he was more than a man. She remembered Bel’s stupid classic movies, the ones about the werebeast emperors of Rome invading Egypt and capturing Cleopatra. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Sweat pooled between her breasts, and her nipples stiffened against the soft fabric of her designer bra. Damn it.

“Your boyfriend lets you wander out in the woods by yourself?” he asked abruptly.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Cynthia answered, too off-balance to lie. “If I did, I certainly wouldn’t let him decide where I get to wander.”

“Good.” He cocked his head, staring at her as if she were an alien species he couldn’t wait to examine.

“Is that good because you’re glad I’m single, or good because I don’t let guys walk all over me?”

He didn’t reply. Instead, he slowly, so slowly she had more than enough time to get away, stepped onto a nearby root and put his hands on either side of the trunk, caging her in.

Her heart thrummed fast and loud like a helicopter’s blades, but she didn’t try to slip under his arm and escape.
If I move, he’ll think I’m scared of him. I’m not.

His sensual mouth parted, his tongue slipping out to moisten his lips.

Cynthia tilted her head, lips pursed.
Kiss me, I dare you.

He leaned in and dropped to his knees.

“What are you doing?” she asked, blushing as she heard how disappointed she sounded.

“Giving you back your shoe, obviously,” he said, his voice smooth. His position at her feet should’ve made him look weak, but the way he never broke eye contact was anything but. Through the rogue strands of his sandy hair, his blue eyes burned with such intensity it was like they were trying to carve a hole in her heart.

He reached out and cradled her bare foot.

She sucked in a breath. His touch set off sparklers in her blood. Her knees buckled, and she was glad for the tree behind her. She couldn’t look away as he gradually slid the flip-flop back onto her foot. When her toes reached the separator in the middle, he pushed them apart. His motions had the soft certainty of a master craftsman. An artist whose medium was her body.

Cynthia shivered against the tree, the friction of the bark against her arms the only thing distracting her from the sensation of his hands. Her ankle, in particular, throbbed.

“This is the part where you thank me,” he said as he stood.

“Thank you, but I do have to get going.” Before they were eye level, Cynthia ducked away and started off in a random direction. Flirting was one thing, but this clearly was another. What it was, Cynthia didn’t know, but she knew finding out would be very messy.

“You know; usually it’s not polite to run away midway through a conversation.”

“Usually it’s not polite to stalk people through the woods like a serial killer.” From the decreased volume of his voice, and the fact that she couldn’t hear footsteps behind her, Cynthia guessed he wasn’t following her. She was wrong.

A hand—a now
familiar
hand—brushed her shoulder. “You make a good point,” he said evenly. “It’s getting late, and you’re all alone in the woods. It’s not safe. Which is exactly why you shouldn’t go wandering off.”

“I have to find my friend.” Cynthia paused, telling herself she wouldn’t turn around, that she wouldn’t listen. But each of his silky syllables was like another one of his caresses, and it stoked a burning inside of her, making her lips feel numb and her limbs heavy. This was not normal. This was not even sane.

“Please,” he said in a ragged whisper. “Come with me.”

“O-okay,” she said, the word out before she even understood what it meant.

 He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into him. She went like a rag doll, landing on his chest with a thud. Her weight was not insignificant, but he took it like it was nothing. Then he hooked a finger underneath her chin, tilted it upward and… growled?

The sound should’ve been yet another odd thing to compel her to run away, but instead, her reaction was just the opposite. Her trembling fingers rose to run through his hair. As she did, she noticed something about his expression had changed.

His face wasn’t contorted into a snarl, like the growl might’ve suggested. Instead the sharp lines of his cheekbones and controlled clenching of his jaw had given way to a slackness. His eyes were wide, lip slightly curled in an expression Cynthia almost couldn’t read. It was one she had seen before.

On her mother, when Cynthia was six and had ripped her mother’s fabrics.

“
I can’t work in a house when you’re so sloppy, Cynthia!”

On her first ex-boyfriend when she dumped him to date someone more attractive.
“I always sort of guessed you were a bitch, but I never knew you were a slut too.”

Or her father, who never said anything at all. The few times he did emerge from his office, he’d wander about the house wearing a frown like a folded page, as if he was earmarking his disappointment to come back to later.

That was the look on the man’s face. Disappointment. Confusion. Complications. Mess. She wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out if she was the cause of it or he was. Thankfully, just as she was about to push away, something zinged through the air and slammed into the tree trunk only centimeters away from the back of the man’s head. As Cynthia screamed, she turned to see an arrow lodged in the bark, the shaft broken in two.

The man started back, confusingly fast. His hands balled up as he placed himself between the direction of the arrow and Cynthia, just as a figure stepped out from behind a tree a hundred paces away.

Red’s hoodie was only half on, so it hung from her left shoulder like a cape. She had drawn the string so far back on the bow that the gears strained and her right bare bicep bulged. A second arrow was already notched and waiting.

“Cin. We’ve got to find Bel. Now.”

“Do you know this girl?” the man snapped. Even though Red was clearly aiming at
him,
he still puffed out his chest like some kind of human shield
.
The gesture might’ve been sweet, but with the distance between them and his scent not everywhere, Cynthia’s body was finally catching up to her mind.

Her skin felt sweaty, and in her ears, she could hear the buzzing of mosquitos. Worse was that familiar guilt in her stomach.
Bel. He just growled at me, and I forgot all about her. I was going to go with a strange man I met in the woods back to who knows where. Holy hell!

Cynthia jumped down from the root system and around the man, landing on the one last patch of dry trail with a shaky smirk.

Red rolled her eyes, but thrust out her hand. “Here, idiot, come on.”

Cynthia was just about to grab it, but the stranger made that sound again. The growl. Reflexively, she glanced back.

Cynthia wasn’t sure what she was expecting him to look like now that the haze of desire had worn off. Maybe his suit jacket would be too small, or his cheekbones would seem hollowed out like a drug addict’s instead of a model? But the moment her eyes caught his captivating blue ones, the intensity of her need for him, the wildness of his hair, his arrogance, his danger, all of it, overwhelmed her caution.

Whatever magic he had that made her want him in spite of reason and sense wasn’t temporary. And that was more than enough to convince her to grab even Red’s hand and
run
. 

“
I
’ll go with you
,” Cynthia whispered into her pillow, caught between a dream and the reality of her stepmother’s basement. “Please. Take me.”

Behind her eyelids, trees blurred into a face of a young man with blue eyes so piercing they bore a hole in her heart. He reached out his hand to her, and she reached back, her fingers about to graze his. The dream ended there.

Cold crept up her toes, but her ankle burned. Concealed by a Band-Aid she only removed to shower was a small patch of fur. The mark had grown almost twelve years ago, and every doctor had a different explanation for it, although none of them could tell her how to get rid of it for good. Shaving only worked for half a day.

“Hey, babe,” a nasally voice rumbled near her ear. “Where do you want me to take you?”

“Ugh.” Cynthia rolled over, smothering her face in the mattress, not wanting to face her bedmate yet. Or his morning breath.

What was his name? She had picked him from a line-up of hot and boring bankers at the bar for her monthly one-night stand. Maybe it was Daniel? No, definitely not Daniel. Darius? She’d pretend to be asleep until she could figure it out, except she needed to get him out of here before Lucille, her stepmother, decided to bother her about breakfast.

A large hand cupped her ass and then fingers began to tiptoe between her butt cheeks. “How about I take you here?”

Instantly, Cynthia rolled over, completely awake, clutching her sheets to her chest. “D—” She stopped herself. “No. Sorry, I’m not in the mood for that today.”

Or ever.

D-man looked crestfallen for all of two seconds. His gaze met Cynthia’s boobs, which were spilling out from the worn, if freshly laundered comforter. Her body wasn’t every man’s wet dream, but the ones it got going—it got
going.

Cynthia slunk out of bed and trotted to the dresser, hoping the eyeful of ass she gave D-man would distract him. A two-year-old pair of too-tight designer jeans and a polka-dot blouse was laid out on her dresser. Like her clothes, her furniture was all high quality and well maintained, if more than a few years out of date. Above her dresser was a cork board filled with pictures of everything from extravagant wedding dresses to vacation homes to, of course, a skyscraper in the city with her company’s logo plastered over it ala Photoshop. Her vision board seemed all the bigger cramped in a bedroom so tiny her Stepmother had previously used it as storage closet. Cynthia’s old bedroom her stepmother had converted into a home gym.

“Babe?” D-man whined from the bed. “That sounded like a pretty sexy dream you were having. Why don’t we keep it going, huh?”

“I wish, hun, but I’ve got to get to work.” Cynthia rolled her eyes. Muscle-head banker over there had no idea where her dream had been going. Good thing too. He didn’t need to know how close she had come to probably being raped and murdered in the woods somewhere.

Red really had saved her ass in the end. Bel’s too, for that matter. After they ran away from hot stalker guy in the woods, they found Bel in a similarly awkward situation in the greenhouse with one of the other owners of the farmhouse. Later, they had all laughed about it and decided it was more funny than scary. But that didn’t stop the dreams from coming. Every single damn night. Not that Cynthia ever told anyone about them. Even Bel. Talking about it would’ve made it real.

Instead, Cynthia flipped through her emails on her phone with her right hand and did up the buttons of her jeans with her left. Her personal inbox was empty, but her cleaning and organizing business, Boxes & Broom, had thirty unread messages. Already.

“Come on,” D-man whined again.

“You really want my stepmother to catch us getting frisky?” Cynthia glanced at him over her shoulder to see if her message had sunk in and to admire his six-pack. It almost made up for that sarcastic comment he made about her vision board last night. Almost.

“Your stepmother?”

“I’m living with her while I re-launch my company. I’m not paying myself, until I make sure that I can pay everyone else and turn a profit.”

“Oh,” D-man said, and like Cynthia thought, the idea of having to confront a parental figure of any kind got him moving, thumping and groaning as he got dressed. He was so loud that Cynthia missed the knocking on her door.

“Cynthia.” There Lucille was. Right on cue. “What’s going on in there?”

Cynthia would’ve smiled if she didn’t hate her stepmother. As it was, she whirled and gestured wildly at D-man. “You’ve got to go,” she mouthed.

D-man looked around haplessly, and Cynthia sighed with annoyance before gathering up his phone, belt, and T-shirt. Then she herded him toward the door that led to the belowground exit. He gave one last mournful glance her way and made the call-me sign before she closed the door on him.

At the same moment, Lucille opened the door on the other side of the room.