Shifterella And The Billionaire Bear: A BBW Shifter Paranormal Romance (The Shifter Princes Book 1)

by Sable Sylvan

  The closed toed shoes glimmered shades of blue, shades that matched Eleanor’s eyes, which were the color of the sea at times, of whitewater rivers at others, but which were always the most pristine shades of blue possible. Eleanor turned her foot and the shoe shined, each flat face of the faceted shoe casting a special light. The shoes had a strong heel and Eleanor didn’t feel wobbly on the shoes like she had when she’d tried on heels at the discount shoe store. The shoe was cut like a diamond but still retained the soft curves that made it flattering and look like something out of a fairy tale rather than like something from a stripper’s closet.

  “Mrs. Asher...are you sure I won’t look, well, ridiculous?” asked Eleanor, looking herself over in the mirror. She’d never looked this gorgeous in her life: her stepmother hadn’t let her go to either of her proms, not that she’d had a date, and that had been her last chance at wearing something gorgeous, although she’d always fantasized about wearing a beautiful gown like this whenever she saw a beautiful dress in one of the boutique windows by the preschool where she worked. “I’m just a catering girl...what if I don’t fit in?”

  “You look amazing,” said Mrs. Asher, brushing a strand of Eleanor’s long hair back behind her ears. “But I’m not paying you to sit around while I pay you compliments: my dear girl, there’s a party to attend, and your job is to let me know if anything goes wrong.”

  “How will I find you?” asked Eleanor.

  “Ask my son, Aspen, and he’ll text me,” said Mrs. Asher, pulling a slim smart phone out of her amethyst encrusted clutch purse. “Go! I have to put on my makeup now, and a lady never does that in front of others.

  “Yes, Mrs. Asher,” said Eleanor, and out of nowhere, for the first time in her life...she curtsied, just like a real princess.

  Chapter Two

  Eleanor headed down to the ball. She’d worked shifter functions before but never anything like this: the ball’s themed was “Midsummer Night Dreams”, and the already immaculate ballroom was decorated with wildflowers and ivy. Men turned to look at Eleanor, tall men who she recognized as shifters from their marks: tiger shifters had marks on their arms, while bear shifters had marks on their paws, cat shifters had face marks, and so on and so forth. Humans and shifters didn’t mingle much in Seattle, although Eleanor had worked some shifter parties before as part of Be Our Guest catering. Shifters tended to prefer more rural places, like shifter towns such as Port Jameson, down in Oregon, but there was a significant population of mercantile shifters in Washington, who had bridged the divide between the human and the shifter communities back when the state was first getting settled. Eleanor didn’t know why the men were staring at her: was she overdressed? Underdressed? Or were they undressing her in their heads? The thought made her almost snort. The thought of one of those hunks wanting to bed her was ridiculous: why would they want a chubby human when they could have a tall thin shifter like one of her stepsisters in their bed?

  A full orchestra was set up, playing light background music, and various cliques were chatting in corners of the room, mostly split by sex and shift type. Eleanor made a note to avoid the female group of cat shifters, a group she was sure would include her awful stepsisters, and noted the group of large male bear shifters that was standing by one of the bars sipping cups of stout. Over the ballroom floor, which was relatively empty, as dancing music wasn’t playing yet, a large crystal chandelier glistened and glittered from the light it cast, and the dome like ceiling was painted dark blue, with fake stars embedded in the ceiling, LED lights that glittered and glistened seemingly at random, with shooting star animations programmed in.

  Eleanor made her way over to the buffet: there were many savory goodies available. Deviled quail eggs with bacon and spiced mayonnaise caught her eye, as did miniature quiches with small shreds of jalapeno on them. There were larger appetizers available as well, meant to cater to the shifters, including large cocktail meatballs with cheese sprinkled atop, sliders filled with hamburger patties, meatballs, and pulled pork, and caprese salad kabobs with mozzarella balls and cherry tomatoes blanketed in fresh basil leaves. She tried one of the kabobs: the cheese was excellent, the mozzarella fresh and moist, a perfect compliment to the tomatoes, which tasted farm fresh.

  “Eleanor? Is that you?” asked a voice. Eleanor turned: it was one of her buddies from the catering company, Mandy.

  “Mandy? Hey,” said Eleanor.

  “What’s with the getup?” asked Mandy. “I only signed up for this because I heard you were working it...but you’re all tarted up like a princess!”

  “I know, don’t I look ridiculous?” asked Eleanor with a laugh. “I’m actually Mrs. Asher’s woman on the inside: I’m supposed to let her know if there’s anything wrong with the vendors so she can have it fixed.”

  “Then you came just in time,” said Mandy. “She hired a dessert company, and they had to throw everything away because one of their workers is sick and coughed on the desserts.”

  “So there’s no desserts?” asked Eleanor.

  “Not unless Mrs. Asher gives us the go-ahead and tells us to prepare ice cream or something,” said Mandy. “You better go let her know.”

  “I will,” said Eleanor. “Thanks Mandy!”

  Eleanor looked out into the crowd: she had no way of telling who Aspen Asher was. While he might have been the most eligible bachelor in the state of Washington, Eleanor wasn’t one to read the society pages, and she had no idea what he looked like. While her stepsisters probably had his picture as their wallpapers on their phones, it was up to Eleanor to do some good old fashioned researching to figure out where the rich boy was.

  “Excuse me,” said Eleanor to a group of men she recognized as bear shifters from not only their thick, broad chests, but from the pawprint marks on their hands: bear shifters had marks on their palms that denoted the species of bear they shifted into, and these men were grizzly bear shifters, with large brown spots in the shape of a bear paw on their palms. “Do you know where I can find Aspen Asher?”

  “Isn’t that what all the girls are asking today?” said one of the men in a designer suit to the other, before putting on a falsetto. “ ‘Where’s Aspen?’,‘Is it my turn to dance with Aspen yet?’. You’ll just have to wait your turn, missy...although I’m sure that one of us would be more than willing to dance with your curvy self.”

  Eleanor frowned at the lecherous shifter. “His mother told me to find him.”

  “Mrs. Asher? Well, I wouldn’t want to mess with her,” said another man. “You see the tall man in the white suit? That’s Aspen.”

  Eleanor looked in the direction the shifter was pointing. A man in a white suit was on a balcony overlooking the gardens. Two beautiful women were chit-chatting next to him. Eleanor walked along the edges of the ballroom dance floor and made her way to the tall open doors.

  Eleanor tapped on the tall man’s shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said. “Are you Aspen Asher?”

  “Can’t you see he’s occupied?” said one of the girls, who was wearing a bright pink cocktail dress which matched the one of her twin who was on the other side of Aspen. A typical shifter pair: most shifters gave birth to litters, most commonly consisting of twins, but triplets, quadruplets, and even quintuplets were anything but rare in the shifter world.

  The man turned to the blonde. “Ironic, given that you seem to be intent on annoying me as much as possible tonight. How many times do I have to say no for you to get the message: I’m not interested?” He turned fully around to face the new woman, expecting that she’d be another girl sent here by her parents to find a husband.

  He looked her over: with luscious curves, she was unlike any of the stick-thin shifter women at the party. He almost didn’t recognize her: he only remembered one woman with a body like that, fit for bearing shifter litters...and she was the only woman there that had even got him to think about litters. He felt something else to, not in his loins, although those were twitching, but over his chest, and he instantly knew he h
ad to be on his best behavior, because in the off chance that she was her, after all these years of searching for a fated mate and the hours between the last time he’d seen her at the lake, he didn’t want to blow it again. How his mother had found the girl from the lake again, he had no idea, but here she was, in front of him, and although he wanted to kiss her, to hold her and take her then and there, he hushed the bear inside him.

  The tall hunk gave Eleanor a bow, staring her straight in the eyes while he pressed his firm forearm to his waist. “I’m Aspen Asher, how may I be of service?” he asked the woman in the blue dress as the two girls in pink dresses left in a huff, whispering to one another about Eleanor.

  “My name is Ella...” started Eleanor, but before she could finished her name, she found herself at a loss for thoughts. From what she’d heard at the dining table with her siblings, she’d expected Aspen to be some skinny rich kid dork, but Aspen was all man, and even though he was wearing a white tie formal white tuxedo coat, his jacket white with black lapels and his pants jet black, that looked like it belonged on a polar bear shifter, not a grizzly shifter, Aspen looked kind and caring. It was his eyes: his hazel eyes seemed to be smiling, there was no other way to explain the way they’d flashed at her with a light from within.

  “Ella, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Aspen, lifting Eleanor’s hand to his lips before pressing his soft lips against the back of her hand softly while looking into Eleanor’s deep green eyes which reminded him of the woods.

  “Your mother said...that is to say...” said Eleanor, losing her ability to actually talk and think normally. This had never happened to her before. She’d never paid much attention to boys or men, nor them to her, and now...something inside of her was growing. “Uhm...wow, I sound dumb.”

  “Lose your breath? Or was it...taken away?” asked Aspen, whispering into her ear, the heat of his breath sending a burst of sexual wanting into Eleanor’s body. Aspen pushed the bear in him back into its cave, luring it with promises of pleasures to come, if the bear could, for the love of God, let the man handle the relations with the human woman the bear and the man both felt a primal connection to.

  “Your mother said to contact her if there was anything wrong with the party,” said Eleanor, remembering why she was coming up to Aspen in the first place. It had been so much easier to talk to him before she’d learned ten seconds in that he was the handsomest man that she’d ever seen, in person or in a magazine or on TV. “And she said to find you, so you could text her.”

  “Of course,” said Aspen, pulling away and pulling a phone out of his sky blue cummerbund, which happened to match the top of Eleanor’s dress. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “The dessert caterer’s employee had a cold and that sabotaged the desserts,” said Eleanor. “So now there’s no dessert.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” said Aspen, texting his mother. Eleanor stood there while he tapped away at the phone. Aspen wasn’t like the other rich people she’d worked for who would have pitched a fit if they learned that there was a problem with the foods.

  “Well, that’s all, I’ll let you know if there’s anything else that goes wrong,” said Eleanor, not sure what to say to the tall, handsome man whose kiss had sent a shudder down her spine. There was no way that she had a chance with him, so why wasn’t she able to tell her legs to walk away?

  “Or...you could join me for a walk,” said Aspen, hoping Eleanor would take him up on his invitation so they could get some alone time to talk. “I’m sure you could use some air after spending your time in that smelly ballroom.”

  Eleanor looked at Aspen and then back at the ballroom, “I didn’t smell anything...”

  Aspen caught Eleanor’s hand, holding it in his palm gently. “That’s because you’re not a shifter,” he said. “Shifters...well, we have an enhanced sense of smell.”

  “And what do you smell in there?” asked Eleanor, walking back to Aspen and leaning over the balcony to admire the gardens, which reminded her of pictures of Versailles, with flowers in miniature fields and rows.

  “I apologize in advance, for my bluntness, but, I’m able to smell the pheromones of every shifter in that room, and each of the smells is unique. On their own, they’re fine, but there’s hundreds of shifters in there, and all kinds of shifters, which means it smells...a little strong,” said Aspen. “And shifters release more pheromones when they’re...looking for a mate.”

  “A mate?” asked Eleanor. “I’m sorry, I don’t know much about shifters.”

  “No, it’s fine,” said Aspen. “Most people don’t, and shifters, well, you know that bear shifters in particular can be a little...grizzly. Shifters call their lovers ‘mates’, because we mate for life.”

  “Mate for life?” asked Eleanor. “Don’t you guys get bored? Besides, you could have any woman you wanted, whenever you wanted: you’re Aspen Asher.”

  “When a shifter finds their mate, they don’t want anyone but their mate,” said Aspen.

  “And how do you know if you’ve...found your mate?” asked Eleanor.

  “The first time a shifter makes love to their mate, they know that their lover is the one,” said Aspen. “And while shifters may have needs, and may have relationships before they find their mate, all bets are off once they find their special someone. It’s a race to the altar once a shifter turns eighteen.”

  “Eighteen?” asked Eleanor. “That doesn’t seem like a whole lot of time to find your one and only...and there’s so many people in the world, how on Earth do you find your mate?”

  “At eighteen, our mate marks appear,” said Aspen. “Those marks tell us something about our mate, and they help us find them.”

  “And what’s your mate mark?” asked Eleanor.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Aspen with a laugh. “Eleanor...would you care to dance?”

  “With you?” asked Eleanor. “Shouldn’t you be out finding your mate?”

  Aspen clasped Eleanor’s hand in his and leaned in to whisper into her ear. “That’s exactly what I intend to do...and my mother would never forgive me if I don’t have at least one dance at this ball,” said Aspen.

  “Who are you going to dance with?” asked Eleanor.

  “The plan is still to dance with you,” said Aspen.

  “Wait, what? You were serious? No frikkin’ way, I’ve never done ballroom dancing before,” said Eleanor, pulling away from Aspen. “Maybe you should choose another partner.”

  “I’ve chosen a partner, Ella: you. There’s no other girl I’d rather dance with,” said Aspen, pulling Eleanor back. “So Eleanor...may I have this dance?”

  “Fine, but only to save you from your mother’s wrath,” said Eleanor with a sigh.

  “That’s the spirit,” whispered Aspen as he led her into the ballroom. All eyes turned towards Aspen Asher and the woman who was wearing a dress that matched his suit perfectly. The music changed as the orchestra started to play a waltz, and Aspen led Eleanor to the ballroom floor.

  Chapter Three

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” said Eleanor, holding Aspen’s hand as they made their entrance. She half expected men with trumpets reading a list of names to introduce them, and she cringed at the thought of Aspen Asher being introduced as the date of Eleanor Albertson, janitor and waitress extraordinaire. “Everyone’s looking at you.”

  “Not to make you feel any more self conscious, but you’re attracting a lot of looks yourself,” said Aspen, giving Eleanor’s hand a comforting squeeze. “And trust me, I’m not exactly big on the whole ballroom dance thing. The song they’re playing right now is a waltz: it’s easy, perfect for beginners.”

  “I don’t know how to waltz,” said Eleanor, looking up at the tall bear shifter.

  “That’s fine: you’re a lady,” said Aspen with a small smile.

  “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” asked Eleanor crossly.

  “Merely that you don’t need to lead,
but to follow,” said Aspen. “Just do the opposite of whatever I do, and...trust me.”

  “Okay,” said Eleanor. “But if I break an ankle, I’m going to sue you.”

  “I believe the traditional idiom is, break a leg,” the bear teased right back. He started to slowly move, looking Eleanor deep in the eyes. Eleanor looked away, down to her feet, and wobbled. “Look into my eyes, Ella. Trust your feet...and dance with your heart.”

  “Dance with my heart?” asked Eleanor. “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “And yet, you aren’t tripping now,” said Aspen as he led Eleanor into him, the dance like a game of tag in which Eleanor would never catch up to him, although it was Aspen who was actually the one chasing Ella. “You’re doing it, Ella.”

  “I’m just following your lead,” said Eleanor. She looked around: the relatively empty dance floor had filled with couples, as they were following Aspen’s cue, dancing when their host started dancing.

  “Which is exactly what I told you to do, isn’t it?” teased Aspen, moving one hand from Eleanor’s waist to her hand and holding it out properly. “I usually don’t like dancing...but with you, it’s actually kinda fun. Don’t tell my mother I said that, or she’ll hold more of these things.”

  “These balls?” asked Eleanor, her skirts swishing around her as her shoes glimmered in the light of the crystal chandelier.

  “Yes, these God-awful parties,” said Aspen with a sigh. “She’s convinced I’ll find my fated mate at one of these things...and every time there’s a ball, I have to come back to Seattle.”

  Eleanor was barely listening: out of the corner of her eye, Eleanor saw the two people she dread more than any others whispering. She looked away. “You doing okay?” asked Aspen. “We can slow down.”