The BBW and the Beast: A Shifter Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 1) by Sylvia Frost Read Free Book Online Page B

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.”

9
    A s November melted into December , so did the snow, allowing Samson and Rex to go hunting for Luther more frequently. It was a stretch to call it hunting, though. They hadn’t found so much as a track in weeks. Samson knew Rex was beginning to question the point of it all, but for Samson, even if they never found Luther, the point was very clear.
    Avoid Isabella.
    Now that he had tasted her, keeping his distance was proving hard – even with his newfound realization that forcing the issue would only drive her farther away.
    She would have to come to him.
    For her part, Isabella spent most of her time in his collection room, fiddling with her laptop and taking pictures of his carvings. It would be sad to see some of them go, but it was worth it to buy time to impress her. And he could always buy them back at triple the price if need be.
    His strategy of winning her over had to be done with stealth. If she got so much as a whiff of his real intentions, she’d run. Since stealth was far from being Samson’s strong suit, he relied, to his annoyance, on Rex’s advice.
    Some of Rex’s ideas had been foolish. For example, rescuing a stray puppy and giving it as a gift to Isabella. Isabella didn’t even like dogs, Samson had found out.
    Other ideas were extreme, such as sending their family’s personal doctor to do a “pro bono” checkup on Isabella’s father to ensure that the sick smell Samson had scented on him all those weeks ago was only a mild flu. (It was.)
    Samson actually appreciated one or two, such as buying Isabella a new computer and installing a higher-speed Internet connection for the house.
    He hated the Internet, but Isabella’s squeal of joy when she discovered that she wouldn’t have to reset the router every five minutes – whatever that meant – made it worthwhile. Not to mention that with the faster connection, she completed her work earlier each day. The few times that Samson allowed himself to talk with her, she was free.
    The conversations were torture.
    Not because she was boring. Far from it. Every day Bel managed to find some new insight into the house or explain the history of one of the trinkets she had found in the storage room. The way she saw the world was fascinating. Perhaps because saw wasn’t the quite the right word. Imagined was closer, although not quite right either.
    It was strange. Samson was a creature most humans would’ve considered magical, if monstrous. Yet he had never felt that way . Bel, however, was able to sniff out mystery at every corner. After explaining excitedly, hands flapping, that some of the old cellars of 18th century farmhouses had artifacts from Native American sorcerers, she went spelunking in the dark basement. Hours later she emerged with a pebble she saidan arrowhead used as markers for the sometimes mile-long burial architectural spells. She was so sure for a moment he almost believed that sorcerers were real.
    But every werebeast knew the portals to the real magical land, Astrum had been sealed millennials ago. Any magic besides shifting had long since died out.
    The irony was, the magic that was real, him, Bel seemed completely oblivious to. Once she plucked his first edition copy of Beasts, Blood and Bonds , and read it aloud to him, reveling in correcting all of her previous misconceptions about his kind. She even moaned how unfortunate it was that they were all extinct, although there was always a strange twinkle in her eye when she did. Perhaps, there was some sadness in a dream coming true. In some ways, magic could only be magic if it wasn’t real.
    Still Samson, too, found himself opening up. He told her about growing up with a rich, often absent father who was so