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?
Then again, shifting itself made no sense.
The curse that Rachel had placed was meant to enact revenge against McEvans for leaving her. What Rachel never realized is that the curse had made his life seemingly complete.
As for Brandy, the curse meant she could be with McEvans without sneaking around and without their relationship inevitably falling apart because of the impossibility of a shifter being with a non-shifter. She had the man of her dreams, and she was the woman of his. They were safely compatible now, spending a lazy, romantic night in the Florida swamp.
Almost as if he had read her mind, McEvans spoke up after a long period of quiet.
“I think we need to make a toast,” he said.
“To what?” Brandy ask.
McEvans clinked the neck of his beer bottle against hers.
“To Madame Eve LaBelle.”
THE END
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Big Gator: A BBW shape shifter paranormal romance Page 13