Big Gator: A BBW shape shifter paranormal romance (24 page)

             
McEvans
stepped in a minute after her.   His plan was to soap
Brandy up from head to toe, but he never got the chance.  Once
the water hit him, the world as he knew it altered forever, and the
floor seemed to fall out from underneath him.

             
First,
he fell backward, but managed to steady himself.  Then he
started to fall forward, but he managed to break his fall. He
crouched in the shower, with Brandy hovering over him, frantically
worried.

             “
Jake,
what the hell is going on?!  Do we need to get you to the
hospital?”

             “
No!”
He snapped.  Instinctively, he knew that was a bad idea.

             
Then
they both heard his jaw pop.

             
McEvans
looked startled, but Brandy had heard that sound before. Her eyes
widened in shock. Could this be happening?
 
How?
She
answered her own question within seconds.
Rachel
LaBelle. 

             
The
first shift was always the hardest, and it could take awhile. 

             “
What
do you remember about going over to Rachel’s?” she frantically
asked.

             “
What
– ah – nothing – I just picked up my stuff,” he said. 
His voice clearly indicated that he was having a hard time breathing.

             
The
skin on his back started to crack into scales.  He wasn't aware
of it yet, but Brandy could see it.

             “
Don’t
panic,” Brandy told him. She was trying not to panic herself. “I
don't know what happened exactly, but you’re shifting.”

             “
I'm
what
?”

             “
You're
shifting
–
you're
shifting like me.”

             
McEvans
look at her astonished. He couldn't fully absorb the implications of
what was happening.  His whole body was convulsing.

             “
How?
Why
?”

             “
Let's
get you out of the shower and back to bed.  This could take
awhile.”

             
Once
they got out of the water and Brandy dried McEvans off with a towel –
he was too weak to do it himself – she noticed that the process
slowed.

             
So,
we've learned one thing about the spell,
she
thought.
It
activates for the first time when a victim gets wet.

             
Brandy
explained to McEvans that Rachel LaBelle was descended from Madame
Eve LaBelle, and that she must have cursed him for breaking up with
her.  This was definitely a step above a mojo bag and a love
spell. Brandy had underestimated Rachel. And McEvans was in too much
discomfort and too distracted right now to actually be angry about
this the way he was over the love spell.

             “
It
will get better,” she told him.  She was trying to stay calm
for him. “It’s not always like this.”

             
McEvans
passed out a couple of times, and he had brief dream snippets taking
him back to the campfire in Africa where he had first heard about
shifters. In Kenya, some believed that men could turn into lions or
leopards.

             
Just
before dawn, McEvans fully shifted.  Now there was no longer
room for the two of them in bed, so Brandy got up and let McEvans
rest in his shifted state for a bit. He was a big gator, too, just
like Brandy. Bigger actually. He measured at 13-feet-7-inches. 
Brandy guessed he was about about a thousand pounds, and his jaws
were four feet long. This was pretty impressive.

             “
Let’s
get you to the pool,” she ordered.

             
McEvans
crawled down the stairs easy enough on his newly sprouted, stubby
short legs, but he found it awkward rounding tight corners with such
a long body, trying to walk down the hallway through the den to the
backyard without banging his tail into every wall. 

             
The
in-ground pool in the back was lavish and huge.  Brandy shifted
and both of them slipped in for a swim.

             
A
lot would come naturally to McEvans in terms of basic instinct. 
But how he would respond to this psychologically, she wasn't sure.

             
They
swam around, and Brandy tried to distract McEvans from panicking over
his altered reality by opening up to him more about her family
background.  She had no reason to keep secrets anymore. She
explained Jenny's plan – backed by the Powells – to reverse the
curse even though most of them didn't want to.

             
They
stared at each other, beady-eyes to beady-eyes right above the
waterline.

             “
I'll
have full control of this, right?” McEvans asked her.  “Like
you?”

             “
If
it's the same curse, then yeah – the results should be the same.”

             
After
two hours in the pool, suddenly, McEvans felt euphoric. All his life
he had been studying animals.  Now he actually WAS one. 
This wasn't a
curse
he
realized– not for him.  This was a miracle!

             
McEvans
libido responded to this elation by going into overdrive.  He
swam over to Brandy and started circling her.  Then he moved in
close and started nuzzling her, cheek to cheek.  He slowly
angled himself so that he was now side by side with her.  Brandy
hadn't realized what was happening until he slowly slipped over her
and started pushing gently down under water.

             
He's
trying to mate!
Brandy
thought with a panic

             “
No
– stop!” Brandy thrashed and pushed him away before it was too
late. She swam to the other side of the pool, then circled back to
face him.

             
McEvans
now was worried.  And very upset.  Not with her – with
himself.

             “
What
did I do wrong?”

             “
We
can never have sex when we've shifted into alligator form,” she
told him. “I'm serious.  Never means NEVER.”

             “
Why
not?”

             
She
explained to him how reproduction worked – and the guarantee of at
least 20 children automatically.  She told McEvans about
Marianne's gator rescue project, and the real purpose that it served.

             “
Crap
– I wouldn't have even thought about that,” he said. “You'd
think I'd have been smarter.”

             “
You're
running on instinct,” Brandy told him.  “I guarantee you'll
be tempted to try it again before you can stop yourself.”

             “
No
– I won't – I'll make sure of it.”

             
Poor
McEvans wasn't used to his reptilian brain yet.

             “
You'll
try it again, trust me.”

Chapter 25

             
Rachel
LaBelle knew that she would have to disappear for awhile since Jenny
and the bounty hunters would come after her for not fulfilling her
end of the bargain. She called her mother and told her she had hit a
dead end.  Then she booked herself a seat on a flight that left
for Paris that night. 

             
Let
Sylvia deal with the shifters,
Eve
told her
.

             
At
the same time, Jenny received a call from the Powells immediately
ordering her to fall back on her assignment.  The Powells had
changed their mind for some reason about reversing the curse (at
least for the moment). They refused to offer any explanation. 
Beau and Paulie were furious, but the Powells called the shots and
made sure they got paid according to plan to appease them.  And
everyone knew there was no use fighting the Powells on this. 
The Powells always had the upper hand on everything.

             
Jenny
and the Cliburns then told Sylvia LaBelle the deal was off. 
They had been authorized to pay Sylvia and Rachel $50,000 for her
trouble, just to keep Sylvia and Rachel from causing a stink. 
Sylvia told them to make the check out to just her, and that she
would take care of her daughter.

             
Brandy
and McEvans didn't have to sneak around anymore.  McEvans and
his own descendants – with Brandy if things worked out the way he
was hoping – would be the eighth family now in the shifter
community.  He had a lot to learn, but most folks around Escala
welcomed him into the fold.  All but Ray, who quickly realized
McEvans was more than competition when it came to Brandy.

             
One
evening, back in the swamp where they had spent their first night
together, Brandy had an idea that she wanted to run by McEvans. 
She'd been thinking this for awhile, but hadn't brought it up yet.

             “
You
know, it might be fun to play a little role reversal,” Brandy told
him.

             “
How's
that?”

             
They
were relaxing after a shifted swim in the back of his pickup truck,
gazing up at the stars and drinking a couple of beers.  The only
sound around them was the chirp of crickets and the occasional soft
splash of something or someone that made the swamp its home.

             “
Well,
you know, I've given you a pretty good show as 'Shirley',” Brandy
said.  She ran a finger across his bare shoulders, trying to
sell the point. “But I'd like to see how it goes if I'm the
wrestler and you're the wrestlee.”

             “
Oh
would you now.  Let's see it,” McEvans teased.  “I'm at
your mercy.  You can wrestle me right now.”

             “
Nuh-uh,”
she said. “I'm being serious here. I think the visitors at Animal
Sphere would like to see a lady wrestler.”

             “
I
bet they would!” he said with wicked grin.

             
McEvans
had to admit, he was learning a lot from swimming around undercover
in his own manmade alligator swamp at Animal Sphere and hanging out
in the gator pit, in shifter form.  Maybe it would be
interesting to get wrestled himself.

             
Brandy
never told McEvans that he had killed another shifter that awful
night when she attempted to finish off the Cliburns. That night
seemed so long ago now.  Right after the incident, she had
snatched the bloody machete and took a sample before McEvans came
back for it and cleaned it off.              
Good thing, too, because when she discreetly ran some tests on the
blood, it turned up definitely human.  McEvans discovered this
about both of them later himself.  They took mutual blood
samples while in a shifted state, and there was no indication that
their DNA was inhuman, which made absolutely no sense. How does a
reptile not have reptilian DNA?