Cinder's Wolf: A Shifter Retelling of Cinderella (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 2) (16 page)

“Care to enlighten me, prin—darling?” he corrected at the last minute, but she didn’t notice. She was too caught up in her epiphany. Both man and wolf admired her dedication, but both also craved her attention. His man wanted her to listen to his goddamn business experience instead of trying to reverse-engineer another solution, and his wolf…

Well.

The hard-on in his pants was about as articulate as his wolf got.

Rex cut the distance between them from inches to centimeters. The way she was bent over made her jean-clad ass painfully visible, and he wasted no time grinding himself against it. His hands came to either side of her waist, gentle enough to not startle her, but firm enough to let her know he wasn’t going anywhere. And until he got what he wanted, neither was she. “I asked you a question.”

“R-ex,” she stuttered, twitching, sending the strand of hair back into her eyes. As she reached out to tuck it back, he stopped her, putting it behind her ear himself.

“Darling, answer me.”

“Hours,” she said softly. Her body weakened against his own. Just as all the chemicals in his brain were commanding to take her, hers were trying to convince her to give in, to let herself be taken.

“Hours?”

“Yes,” she said throatily. “If we can find a way to cut the hours required to clean and organize a single house, we can have each of our organizers do more houses, while still charging the same or a slightly lower fee to the consumer.”

“That sounds like a good plan.” This close to his mate, Rex couldn’t help but nuzzle into her mass of golden hair. “You just have to figure out how to streamline your process.”

“Uh-huh.”

The smell of her wetness in the air distracted him from the obvious truth that no matter how much she streamlined her process, it still wouldn’t be enough to save her company unless she cut salaries. Only yesterday, he might have had the arrogance to say this aloud. But not anymore. She deserved the chance to make her own mistakes. He had said his piece. Now he was done with words.

The one hand still on her waist could feel her legs, shifting, spreading. Conscious of it or not, she was preparing herself to be fucked by him. He knew he was already ready for her.

He squeezed her right hip, guiding their bodies closer together so that she could feel how stiff he was for her. Not just for her body and the bond, but also for her determination. The other hand crept closer to the button of her jeans. He undid it with a flick of his thumb. “I’m sorry. I can’t control myself around you.”

“Oh,” she rasped.

His wolf roared with excitement at the idea of bending her over the conference table. The human side of him warned him that the table was expensive, and not exactly sturdy, but this only goaded his wolf on.

Pushing her hair away from her shoulders, he trailed a line of kisses up her neck, until he reached a small, purple bruise left over from where he had nipped her last night. He had to have her. But not if it meant hurting her.

“Cynthia…” He breathed over the bruise, stroking it with his nose like he was a pup, brow furrowed like he was a man with the weight of the universe on his heart. “Are you ready for me again? I know—”

“Jesus Christ,” she hissed.

His heart clenched.

Her hand reached back around for his zipper, and she pulled it down with a graceful motion of her wrist. “Just take me already.”

Rex gave in, letting the heat of the mating take them both. Her jeans went first. He peeled her out of them just delicately enough not to rip the denim. Once that was done, the scent of her thickened even further. By the third sniff, he could do nothing else but flip Cynthia back to face him and fall to the ground to bury himself between her thighs.

She hopped up onto the table, neither of them caring as it whined from her weight. Now with him half-kneeling and her up on the table, her clit was just about level with his nose.

He shuddered, inhaling, and then forced her legs apart further. Taking a fistful of his hair, she moaned, pulling at his scalp. Normally, Rex liked to take his time when eating pussy, to consider the anatomy of a woman to make her come as quickly and as deeply as possible in the minimum amount of time. Now there was none of that.

Rex dove in and began sucking at her clit, trying to slurp all the sweetness out of her he could. When she tried to direct him by wiggling her thighs, he grabbed her by her now-naked ass, squeezing her in a wordless command to let him take what was his.

She relaxed, her legs stretching further apart until her opening gaped in front of him as she rocked backward. He plunged his tongue inside of her, staking swirling claims on his territory. As he did, he couldn’t just taste her, but he felt her as well. The promising tremors of her coming orgasm vibrated against his mouth.

He gave no thought to trying to prolong her pleasure. He wanted her coming. Now. For him.

With the heel of his palm, he pressed down on her clit, rolling it around with such force it might leave an imprint on his hand.

“Ah!”

It was her first orgasm of the evening. Smiling, his wolf was if not sated, than certainly pleased. Rex kissed the place on the inside of her thigh right before her pubis. Her landing strip was so straight and even that he could’ve used it as a ruler. Rex never had a preference for particular brands of female pubic hair before, but now he found he liked how vulnerable and plump her labia looked with only a wispy line of hair to obscure it.

Before she could make any other suggestions, he hoisted her up around him, carrying her in a kind of front piggyback over to the glass wall. The office on the other side was dark. Thankfully, Rose had gone home. Not that it would’ve mattered either way. Let the world see him take her. She was his.

He slammed Cynthia against the glass wall, enjoying the way her curvaceous, full ass smashed against the glass. Gods, there was so much of her and he wanted to devour it all. Snarling, he ripped her shirt over her head, a button popping off.

Panting from surprise, Cynthia’s hands flew to cover her breast, even as she lunged toward his lips, nipping at him like an overexcited pup. It was time to show her who was dominant. If the wall hadn’t done it, maybe the floor would.

Rex took them both down to the ground. The carpet would’ve been scratchy on his mate’s back, but her scattered clothing cushioned the landing. When she tried to scoot her hips closer to his, he pinned her in place with his hands at her wrists and his dominant gaze. She obediently calmed.

Obeying his own instinct, he leaned down, meaning to kiss her neck, but he ended up biting it to press the point of his dominance. Even as lost as he was to his wolf, the moment his teeth let go of her delicate skin, he realized he had made a mistake.

She whimpered.

“Cin…” he tried to say, but words felt like rocks between his teeth. His cock, still constrained by his boxers, pulsed toward her entrance. “Cin.”

Shocking him to his core, her whimper turned to a growl of her own, and she nipped him back.

His wolf screamed, howled, in a combination of delight, anger, and pure, unbridled hunger. Grabbing her hands, he placed them over the band of his boxers. He grunted in a command, and she ripped them downward. Her human, female strength meant that she couldn’t get them all the way over his muscled thighs, but it was enough to free his member.

Just as he was about to thrust himself inside of her, she reached for his cock. Her plump fingers wrapped around the head. Man and wolf in unison shivered and he threw his head back, dangerously close to coming himself. Without his usual ironclad restraint, he might not be able to hold out much longer.

He watched in wonder as she guided him to her entrance. There was something soul satisfying about the way her lush, curvy body opened to his hard cock. This was home, and she wasn’t just letting him in. She was welcoming him.

Rex felt the orgasm tightening behind his balls, and with another grunt, he pushed away her hand and thrust the rest of the way inside of her. Her velvety hot walls closed around him, squeezing him tight. Fuck, he was coming.

He got in one good last thrust before he began to spill his seed inside of her, long and hard. His wolf howled in pleasure, secure in the knowledge that this mating would make her bear him many strong werebeast sons. She would look even more beautiful swollen with his child. This thought alone had him still hard, even as he unsheathed himself from her.

Words were beginning to return to him, just enough that he was able to bark out, “Again.”

His mate shook her head in wonder, certainly about to agree, but then her body let out the strangest sound. She grumbled. But not from her mouth. It was her stomach. It was moaning. In hunger.

Second by second, more human coherency returned to him, along with unease. He had forgotten all about dinner! He frowned. How could he ever be trusted to claim his mate if he couldn’t handle as basic a task as making sure she was well fed?

He nodded at her once, feeling slightly helpless and adrift, like a man washed ashore after a storm. His throat was dry. “Maybe dinner first?”

C
ynthia would’ve never guessed
that her stomach would be the one cockblocking round two of the best sex of her life. Let alone that it’d be doing it in an office so fancy it could qualify as porn for a corporate interior decorator. Yet here she was, sprawled out on the scratchy carpet, looking and feeling like she had gotten flattened by a runaway sex train. Her stomach pooched out, vocally grumbling.

Rex looked worse than she felt. The sleek, blue pinstriped suit he had changed into after leaving her office was now so wrinkled it’d give a dry cleaner nightmares. His hair seemed more like an explosion of sandy locks than any kind of coherent style, and then, of course, there was his mouth. His normally thin, sensuous lips were swollen from licking her, and they kept opening and closing, as if he wasn’t just lost for words, but had forgotten what language was all together.

Only the room had escaped semi-unscathed. Despite their vigorous activities, the very expensive teleconference table remained unbroken, and other than a few scattered pieces of clothing, the rest of the room seemed to be still in one piece. Her paper bag of takeout had remained upright underneath one of the leather overly ergonomic chairs.

Cynthia’s stomach groused another melodic gurgle. “Food does sound like a good idea,” she said finally, unsure of where to start in the clean-up process. She settled for patting down her own hair first before gathering her pants, bra, and underwear from around the room.

Rex said nothing, just watched from the corner of the office in a way that made her wonder if she’d have to lock him in the conference room if she wanted a chance to eat in peace before round two.

Thankfully, Rex still seemed to be in shock from the force of their coupling. As she finished dressing by slipping on her flats, he stayed put, breathing heavily. Cynthia guessed it wasn’t from physical exertion, because Rex’s face was pale, not red. Plus, the man had a six-pack for goodness sakes.

Clothes on and some semblance of order restored, Cynthia gave a long, considering look to the glass conference table. There were no smears from their juices on it. None that she could see. “Rex, do you have any cleaning supplies?”

“Eat. You can clean later,” Rex grunted.

“I’m not going to eat on top of a table I was just having sex on.” Cynthia fumbled in her pockets, searching for a hair-tie for at least thirty seconds before remembering that she had chosen to go without one today. She relented and settled for grooming her hair back behind her ears. “No matter how good it was.”

The thought of sex clearly resonated with Rex, if the suddenly predatory hunch of his shoulders was anything to go by.

“You should put on your pants.” Cynthia gestured at his boxers still around his ankles.

He looked down, back up, down again, and only then decided to listen to her, hoisting up his underwear over his still-hard member. Clothing his cock must’ve returned some blood flow to his brain because he said, “We can eat outside in the reception area. I’ll have the janitor clean this up tomorrow.”

“Rex—”

As he buttoned his pants, he gave her steely stare. “Cynthia, I understand your need for order and cleanliness, but, if I stay in this room with you, I can promise you we’ll only make more of a mess, not clean it up.”

Every instinct in Cynthia wanted to argue. One didn’t just leave sex residue, no matter how invisible, on a public space. And yet, what choice did she have? It wasn’t like she had her caddy of cleaning products with her, and even if she did, couldn’t cleaning at least wait until she took care of her own needs? After not eating all day, her stomach was running out of patience.

She gave a sigh that sounded surprisingly good-natured and said, “Fine.” Grabbing the bag, she swung it behind her enticingly as she pranced outside to the reception area. “Come on then!”

Funny, after having sex with Rex in his penthouse suite, she had been left hollow and empty, but after being bent over an office desk and pounded with primal rigor, Cynthia felt like she was the most powerful woman on the planet.

***

T
here is
something off about the reception area for Rex’s office
, Cynthia thought as she took out the black, plastic boxes of carryout and set them on the low, circular table surrounded by egg-shaped swiveling chairs that, much like the teleconference table, seemed to belong more to the idea of someone’s vision of a high-tech office than the reality of it. It wasn’t that the furniture choices were impractical exactly; they just didn’t fit the picture she was beginning to assemble of who Rex West was.

His house with its dark masculine wood and art-gallery amount of paintings made sense. With his wine knowledge and penchant for throwing actual masquerade balls, Rex was clearly a man who appreciated culture. Crazy animal sex was a little harder to explain, except that she had always sensed something lurking underneath Rex’s debonair dance skills and quick comebacks.

But this sort of space-age modernism? It didn’t fit.

It was too… artsy? No. New? No, that wasn’t right either.

As she arranged the boxes so that the fifth container of teriyaki chicken could fit on the table—gotten just in case Rex wasn’t a sushi kind of guy—Rex emerged from the conference room. He didn’t so much walk toward her as prowl. Looking at the way he moved, Cynthia was amazed she hadn’t made the connection between Rex and the boy in the woods earlier.
When Rex reached the cluster of egg-shaped chairs, he glanced between the takeout and Cynthia, as if deciding which to eat first. It was then that she realized what it was exactly about the office that didn’t fit.

It all seemed too human for Rex. If werebeasts weren’t most definitely extinct, she would’ve said that Rex was acting exactly like one of the princes in the old movies Bel loved, royal and sophisticated in his own way, but uncomfortable with some of the stranger trappings of humanity. With their tribal, pack-like customs centered on strong family bonds, usually werebeasts scorned civilization all together. Only a rare few integrated into human society, and they usually lagged behind the rest of the human race’s taste in pop culture.

And what about that patch of hair on her leg? Weren’t werebeast’s mates supposed to have some special mark? That was what Naomi, the character in Bel’s book,
Mates of Darkness
, had. Cynthia had never really considered it before because the whole thing was, after all, impossible, but…

No
.

Cynthia grabbed the chopsticks and unwrapped them with a neat tear. She was acting crazy. Just because Rex screwed like a beast didn’t mean he was one. What would she guess next—that he was a literal dinosaur? The thought was equally plausible. Anyway, the mark on her leg had stopped hurting so if it was some kind of sign, what did that mean then?

Cynthia pinched a roll of sushi between her chopsticks and offered it up to the still-standing Rex. “Here’s food, as promised!”

Rex peered over the array of containers, like a little boy looking into an aquarium, wary that the fish might jump out and nip his nose. “Sushi.”

He was trying to sound enthusiastic, but instead of finding Rex’s obvious disinterest in her meal annoying, Cynthia found herself choking back a breathy laugh. “Jesus, you’re looking at it like you’ve never seen sushi before. Don’t you have a branch in Tokyo?”

Rex spun around an egg chair with his foot and slipped into it, not taking his eyes off the fish. “I’m sure it will be delicious.” His voice almost cracked from the effort of sounding excited as he picked up a roll with his hand, forgoing chopsticks.

Cynthia pushed her lips together to keep from smirking. “Not only does it look delicious, but it’s also compact and organized by flavor, see. Here’s the crab, avocado—” Cynthia stopped, unable to keep from smiling. “It’s okay if you’re not a sushi person, Rex. I got teriyaki chicken, too, if you’d rather have that.” Cynthia pushed the third box toward him. The bottom of the plastic takeout container left a tiny trail of condensation in its wake, and she snatched a napkin to wipe it up.

“Thank you,” Rex said, placing the sushi roll back among its fellow pieces. “Usually, I have a much broader pallet, but tonight, I’m in a very singular mood.” He still hadn’t picked out the chicken, only gazed ravenously at her.

“No problem.” Cynthia shrugged and delicately bit into the sushi roll in her mouth before even a single grain of rice fell from it. “More for me.” As she chewed—with her mouth closed, of course—she felt Rex’s eyes once again running over her body.

“So, what did you think about my note?” he pressed.

Cynthia stopped chewing, the fresh, spicy flavors of the crab and ginger tasting suddenly stale. After she had received the text messages, she was so sure she would be the one to bring up his cryptic way of telling her they had met before.

And yet, somehow, during their discussion of how to fix her business, her brain had stopped trying to poke holes in the plausibility of them working as a team and started trying to fill them. If she was completely honest, she had totally forgotten about anything except for Boxes & Broom for the past hour. Well, that and sex.

Cynthia covered her mouth, finished chewing, and swallowed.

“It seems like a funny coincidence,” she carefully said. “But what really freaked me out was the shoe. I threw that into Central Park. How did you get it? Did you sleep there last night or something? Is that why you…?”

She trailed off, not wanting to state the obvious about the hot mess he had been when he interrupted her meeting.
Rex finished cutting a large square of the chicken surprisingly quickly with only the use of the flimsy plastic fork. Spearing it, he gobbled it all up in one bite. He even swallowed it in a couple of seconds and answered. “Do you know Bane Stilskin?”

“Yes… Big money angel investor, owns Spinning Wheels ride-sharing company, among other things.”

Rex wiped a streak of sauce from the corner of his mouth. He must not have shaved that morning because the beginning prickles of stubble had begun to sprout on his chin. “Angel is not a word I would use where Stilskin is concerned. But yes. Apparently you had a conversation with him?”

“I did?” Cynthia’s brow furrowed as she chewed the inside of her mouth. “When?” But just as she asked the question, she smacked her thigh with her hand. “Oh my God, don’t tell me he sometimes likes to drive his own car to answer ride-share requests like some kind of undercover boss.”

“I won’t tell you, as you already seem to know.”

“That is absolutely insane.” Cynthia laughed. “And he’s how you got my shoe? You know he was right—billionaires play some seriously strange games.”

“You don’t know the half of it, darling.” Miraculously, Rex had devoured the entire dish of chicken in only minutes, and he snapped the top back onto the empty container. “But if you don’t have any more questions, I think we have a more pressing problem to deal with than Stilskin’s meddling.”

Cynthia looked down at her still-full box of sushi, lips scrunching to the side. She was still hungry. “We do?”

“It’s almost nine o’clock and you need a place to stay.”

Suddenly, the remaining sushi didn’t look so appetizing. “Oh, right.” Her shoulders tensed, blades almost touching, waiting for him to order her to come live with him at the Plaza again, using the late hour as an excuse, but he just waited expectantly, still, but not rigid like he had been when she first met him.

“Well,” she offered finally, “my stepsister said she was going to move out, too. I suppose we could find a place to sublet not too far from my office. The only problem is that will shrink the window I have to fix Boxes & Broom because it will mean paying myself a salary to cover rent.” Cynthia's nostrils flared. The thought of raising her own salary while the company was in trouble made her want to slap herself straight. “But I guess I can spring for a hotel room somewhere tonight.”

The restraint Rex was exercising in not offering her a chance to stay with him was so palpable Cynthia could taste it. Although he was hardly a burly guy, his presence pushed out against the constraining cocoon of the egg chair. He scooted forward, leaning into the space between them. “Cynthia?”

“Yes?” The sleeves of his button-down shirt were undone, Cynthia wanted to reach out and fix them. She also wanted to reach out and smooth his unruly hair. There was so much she wanted to do for Rex. With Rex.

“Would you stay with me?” he asked, low. “Just for tonight.”

Although his posture, spread legs and gleaming eyes, was all masculine dominance, there was no mistaking his question for anything other than the request of a lonely man. One who had been lonely a long time without even realizing it.

Just like her.

Some people said falling in love was like being swept away in a flood, and sex with Rex definitely fulfilled the natural-disaster levels of passion, but there was also another sensation that crept through her as she gazed warmly at him. Because if love could be a tsunami, it could also be a trickle, eddying through the constraints and challenges of reality instead of tearing them down. That trickle could be damned up with enough force of will, or dry up in the scorching heat of anger and misunderstanding. That kind of love wasn’t fate or destiny. It was a fragile kind of forever. It was a choice.