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