The BBW and the Beast: A Shifter Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 1) (4 page)

He became very still; so still, Bel wondered if he had discovered what a horrible idea all of this was. But a moment later, she realized that his quietness hadn’t been the end of the storm, but the eye of it, and he was on her once more.

He pushed her onto the table. Bel tangled her fingers into his luscious mane of black hair. He captured her wrists and pinned them together above her head. That gave his other hand free access to her body. He took full advantage of it, reaching underneath her shirt and bra to cup her breasts. His knee rose up between her thighs, spreading her legs.

Bel felt her throat start to close up, even as the rest of her opened for him, readying herself to be taken. Claimed. It was all happening too fast.

“No,” she whispered, so softly she didn’t think he’d hear.

He stopped his ministrations immediately and drew back from her, his pupils dark with lust but eyes wide with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“I-I can’t,” she said, louder this time.

He let her wrists go, and though she could tell he was trying to regard her dispassionately, his teeth gritted. “Why not?”

Bel scooted to the other side of the table, pulling up her t-shirt and turning her back to him. “You’re my boss!”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t want this. I tasted— “

Bel hopped off the table. “And you’re only my boss because you bullied me into it.”

“Bel,” he whispered.

She flinched when his fingers grazed her shoulder. “Don’t.”

She waited for him to apologize, telling herself she wouldn’t turn around until he did. As more and more moments passed, her chest constricted further and further, until she couldn’t stop the tears from rising up and spilling onto her cheeks.

“Oh, beauty,” Samson said.

Bel sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve, not caring how gross she looked. It didn’t matter now anyway. “Just go,” she said.

And when she finally got the courage to turn around a few seconds later, she found that this time, Mr. West had listened.

F
or the first
time in his life, Samson found his enhanced senses a curse. Each of Isabella’s pounding steps up the stairs to her room was like a shotgun blast to his chest. His wolf whimpered, wanting to do nothing more than curl up his tail and follow Bel’s example by retreating to his own room.

Instead, he stared at the dinner table. Shards from the last of his good china littered the floor, and the juice of the deer was trickling between the floorboards like blood from a murder.

How could he have lost control? He had tried so hard, from his foolish human formal wear to shaving his beard after Rex had said that females might find his unruly facial hair intimidating.

He closed his eyes, wincing when she slammed her bedroom door. But it was the softer sound he heard next that worried him most. The sound of clothes rustling.

She was packing. Her leaving wasn’t just a hypothetical.

He bounded up the stairs three at a time and had to stop himself from pounding at her door to demand that she come out. Instead he took a deep breath and knocked once, lightly enough that even Rex would’ve called it dainty.

Isabella didn’t answer, and the rustling got louder.

He knocked again.

Still nothing.

“Isabella?”

“Please just go away.”

He sidled up closer to the door, pressing his ear to the warped wood. A whiff of her scent had snaked through the crack, and having smelled its comforting dustiness, he needed more. He needed to feel close to her.

“Let me speak to you.”

“No.”

He stroked the door, wanting to warm the coldness in her voice the way he had warmed her skin with his hands. “Let me speak to you…please.”

Footsteps.

He stepped away from the door just before it began to open a crack.

Bel didn’t peer through the opening, but judging from the heat her curvy body was emitting, she was on the other side.

“Well?” she asked.

He fought the urge to say that he regretted nothing. That he would kiss her and touch her and please her again and again until she finally saw the sense of it, until she understood that she would never be anything else but his Isabella now.

He clenched his fists. “I’ve been cruel to you.”

“You promised –“

“I did,” Samson interjected. “And it was wrong of me to break my word. It will never happen again.”

He hoped she wouldn’t realize that he meant the breaking of his word – not almost breaking the dining room table as he ravished her.

But she heard what he hadn’t said anyway. “Why did you hire me, Samson?”

A bolt of pleasure shot right to his groin when she said his name, and his wolf perked up for the first time since her escape.

“And please don’t bullshit me about cleaning. You saw the mess I made of your house.” She opened the door a bit wider and peered around it enough that Samson could see her eyes framed by her ridiculously large glasses.

He gave a gruff chuckle. “Trust me when I say I’m as good at messing things up as you are.” He leaned in, not enough to make her nervous, but enough that his wolf stopped yipping at him to take her in his arms. “In the end, I was actually the one who ruined my last piece of china,” he whispered conspiratorially.

Isabella snorted.

He smiled wistfully, the hint of her happiness only making him want to hear more, feel more, to taste the grin on her lips as he told her some silly joke. But Bel still hadn’t emerged. He’d have to coax her out by opening his own door.

“I’ve been lonely for a long time.”

“That I don’t believe.” She snorted again, louder. Her nose peeked out around the door.

“Why not?”

He could feel her blush even through the door, smell the blood rushing to her apple cheeks. “Come on. Don’t make me say it,” she said.

Samson decided he wouldn’t. Just that she was willing to be vulnerable enough to even hint at it was a good sign. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Isabella, but I’m a hermit.”

“You do have that ‘Hey, kids, get off my lawn’ vibe down pat. But what about your brother, Rex?”

“My brother does not feel comfortable around me. He’s only here briefly to take care of some business, then he’ll be back to New York.”

Slowly, so damned painfully slowly, the door creaked all the way open. Isabella was fully visible, leaning against the frame, trying far too hard to look casual. Her guarded gaze gave her away.

“Getting angry with you, the bargain. All of this was a mistake.” The truth left a bitter taste in his mouth, but he was running out of ways to express the intensity of his need for her.

Isabella leaned against the door, the whine of its hinge her only reply at first. Although her plump pink lips did loosen, she didn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t think I can work here anymore.”

Samson’s wolf howled, its claws digging into his chest even as he tried to push it away.

Bel risked a glance up at him, clearly waiting to see if he’d explode. When he didn’t, she continued, “Of course, I don’t want my father to go to court, and I understand he stole something from you, but…”

Her hand nervously twisted the fabric of her ill-fitting pants. It was a gesture that would’ve worked better on one of the dresses he’d bought for her. He wished she had worn one. The dresses were designed to show her curves instead of hide them, and all Samson wanted was for her to feel comfortable enough to show herself as she really was.

He hadn’t realized that fully until this moment. He wished he had understood it sooner. Keeping her here against her will was like cutting a rose. Eventually, she would wilt.

“I won’t force you to stay here.” The words hurt less than he’d expected them to.

Her brow furrowed. “Mr. West –”

“Isabella — “ He wanted to ask her to call him by his first name since she knew it now. He understood now what an idiot he had been for keeping the barrier up in the first place.

“And I won’t make you clean,” he said.

An idea flashed through his mind, perhaps the only not-immensely stupid one he had had in her presence. Gently, he grabbed the handle and opened the door completely until it lay flush against the bedroom wall.

“Let me show you something.”

Bel took a step toward the doorway, but then sidestepped to grab the handle. “What?”

Samson made sure to give her plenty of distance. “Just something you might have expertise in, because of your writing.”

He couldn’t help but smile as her eyes glimmered with curiosity and her hand fell away from the doorknob. Yes, he was trying to be better, but his wolf was still a hunter at heart. And it growled playfully as it realized it had ensnared its prey.

She smiled nervously at him, and it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I only have a couple of minutes. I’ve got to call a cab to pick me up.”

Samson answered her tentative smile with one of his own, which softened his whole face and made his body feel light and twenty again. “Of course,” he said, his old confidence returning.

A couple of minutes? He could have her laughing and promising to stay with him forever in thirty seconds.

I
t was
one of the house’s strange miracles that even after living in it for almost a week – the snows hadn’t let up – there were still hallways Bel had never set foot in. She and Samson were walking down one of them now in awkward silence. The only noise was the floorboards creaking.

Bel made sure there was always at least a foot of distance between them while trying not to lose him in the dim, narrow corridor. All it would take would be another one of those flood-my-panties French kisses, and she would stay in his mansion forever. Her body craved another taste of woodsy, chop-down-a-tree-and-throw-you-over-his-shoulder-to-ravish-you Samson.

This situation couldn’t be healthy.

“Isabella.”

“Hmm?” Bel looked up just in time to swerve and avoid colliding with Samson. Instead, she ran into a wall. Her hands flew out and kept her from breaking her nose. Cynthia sometimes insisted that the real reason Bel always ran into things wasn’t because she couldn’t see them, but because she was too busy imagining the world as she wished it to be, to pay attention to how it was. Bel has a signed note from her eye doctor disagreeing.

“We’re here.” Samson opened a small door to the right and ducked through it.

Bel followed instinctively, expecting nothing of consequence. What she found was quite different.

Knick-knacks of every kind and from every possible era lined shelf after shelf. Books were the most numerous, followed by the most stunning wood carvings Bel had ever seen, although there were plenty of other doo-dads. Animal skins covered the floor like wall-to-wall carpeting, and figurines loomed from above like miniature gargoyles. As a vegetarian, Bel was mildly horrified. As an author, she was completely enthralled.

There were so many different types of things, it took Bel a moment to find the common trait they all held. But the moment she did, she couldn’t imagine how she had missed the connection in the first place.

“Werebeasts,” she said. “You’re interested in werebeasts.”

She knew her first reaction should’ve been excitement that someone else shared her passion for long-dead myths. Instead, her discovery made her feel uneasy, like there was something important she was forgetting. Or trying not to remember.

He strolled casually over to a shelf and plucked out a book that was next to a wooden stake used in the pre-industrial era, before the silver bullet had been invented. As he got close enough that even Bel’s poor vision could make out the title, she groaned.

The dark cover showed a giant moon framing the heavily shadowed face of a sultry-looking male teenager.
Mates of Darkness
was written in a script with so many flourishes it was almost illegible.

God, Bel hated that cover. “Please don’t tell me that you’re keeping my book in here,” she whined.

He smiled and opened it.

Bel’s eyes widened, and then she snatched it from his hands. “Nope.”

He held out his now-empty hand innocently, although the look in his eyes was anything but. “I was going to share my favorite passage.”

Bel blushed, embarrassed that he had read her YA novel, and strangely grateful to be embarrassed about something that didn’t involve vivid daydreams about him slamming her up against a wall and screwing her so hard that his collections flew off their shelves.

Time to change the subject.

Bel plucked an item at random from above. From the feel of it, she guessed it was a wooden carving, and when she opened her hand, she discovered she was right. It was a figurine of a deer mid-jump. She had meant to ask him about it to start a conversation, but instead, she found herself staring at the animal.

“I carve them all by hand,” he said, with no small amount of satisfaction.

“You carved this?” Bel repeated dumbly, turning over the figurine with wonder. Her fingers found so many little details, from the grooves etched in the creature’s hooves to the curves of it’s spindly legs, stretched out mid jump. As a visually impaired person it was startling to find someone with full eye-sight able to capture the world so well in a medium that could be felt. “Your strokes are so long. It’s as if you didn’t whittle the deer at all, but just scooped it out of a river of liquid pine. Do you sell these? Is that how you and your brother afford million-dollar roses?”

“I see why you’re an author. You do have a way with words.” Samson gave a gruff chuckle. “My brother is an investment banker, like my father. And no, I don’t sell them…” He trailed off, and Bel could see the germination of an idea behind his normally unreadable eyes. Or maybe she was just finally becoming Samson-literate.

“But what if I did?” he asked.

“Did what?” Bel asked, still fascinated by the carving.

“Sell the carvings. You could help me.”

“Samson…”

“I’d need a website and descriptions for my products. I’m sure that’s closer to your skill set than dusting.” He stroked his chin with the motion of a man who missed his beard. Why had he shaved, then? He hadn’t done it for her, had he?

“I’d pay you, in addition to dropping the suit against your father immediately.”

Bel closed her mouth, the taste of the dusty storage room lingering on her tongue. “It-it was a million dollars.” Only a day ago, she would’ve done anything to have him drop the charges, but now… somehow, his forgetting about all that money was scary. It meant their dining room adventure had been more than a few sips too many of scotch.

“Honestly, I could give less than a damn about the money,” he said. “I value your…friendship.”

Bel’s stomach lurched. Slowly, she placed the deer in his palm. She waited for his fingers to reach out and stroke her wrist, or for his gaze to meet hers and crackle with lust, but he took the deer with economical speed. Bel didn’t let herself admit how much she wished he had lingered.

Once he had the deer back, he placed it on the highest shelf, far away from prying hands. “And you’ll make the website.”

“I’ll get a room at Henderson’s Bed and Breakfast,” Bel said.

“Henderson’s has closed,” Samson said in such a neutral tone that Bel swore she was imagining the downward slope of the corners of his lips. “But,” he continued, “I’m sure you can stay with your father.”

Bel shifted from foot to foot. Her father thought that she had gone back to New York for a couple of weeks. If she returned so soon, he would know something was up. “My father only has an air mattress,” she lied.

“My house is open to you,” he said carefully.

It was that carefulness that convinced Bel that perhaps staying here wasn’t the worst idea in the world. If Samson could be that professional, then why couldn’t she hold herself to the same standard? After a moment, she nodded and said, “Here, then.”