The BBW and the Beast: A Shifter Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 1) (8 page)

C
ynthia was no private detective
, but as an aspiring fashion designer, she knew her shoes, and a half mile down the trail back to camp, she spotted a pair of tracks that were definitely from Bel’s discount-store sneakers. Unfortunately, the footprints had wandered right off the path.

Following them instead of going to get help from a more experienced counselor had been almost as stupid as expecting her father to remember her birthday. On the bright side, at least the sun hadn’t gone down completely. Although the light hadn’t stopped her from accidentally stepping in every puddle known to man.

Her flip-flops squelched as she landed in the latest one. A few rhinestones were left on the thongs of her shoes, but the rest sparkled behind her in a trail like the Upper East Side version of Hansel and Gretel.

“Ugh!” Cynthia kicked the air, trying to get the slime out from between her toes, and sent her blue flip-flop flying through the forest end over end in the process.

It went almost fifteen yards. Impressive. Even more impressive, it didn’t snag on any of the low-hanging leafy branches. Most impressive of all was where it landed. In a man’s hand. He plucked it from midair as easily as if time had stopped before leaning back on a nearby oak.

“Nice kick,” he drawled in an accent that was all old-money prep school. He was so not from Michigan.

Cynthia’s eyes widened. “Nice catch.”

He gave her a too-charming grin. “Thank you.”

The first thing that struck her about him was his clothes.

Any self-respecting aspiring fashion designer would recognize the sharp silhouette of a deep blue Zachary Prell sports jacket or the gleam of bespoke cobbled oxfords. His silk navy tie had to have been custom made to match the coat. That alone was enough to grab her interest.

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?”

“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 in the underbrush. “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 all together. 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 mid-way 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. It’s getting late, and you’re all alone in the woods. 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. Although 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.