Romance: Chosen By Her Bear: A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance Standalone by Ashley Hunter Page A

walking, the cold biting my skin like a sharp teethed animal. The thought of finally reaching home, in my warm cozy bed was all that kept me going. If only I had somebody to cozy up to. Hmmm. Wouldn’t that be nice?
    I mentally shook myself. This wasn’t the time or the place to think about such thing; though I couldn’t help but playback the lyrics of the famous song in me: Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain. Truer words had rarely been said.
    Maybe this was the reason or maybe it was the water pummeling the leaves of the trees and the streets and the buildings that I didn’t hear anything whistle by near me.
    If it had been a quite night, I surely would have noticed something. But this being the night that it was, I didn’t feel someone walk up behind me. I didn’t feel when they pressed a cloth over my face, the smell reminding me of hospital rooms and oddly, bars.
    My scream was muffled by the cloth over my mouth and the strong hand that was wielding it. Had I been able to scream properly, I doubt my voice would have carried over more than five feet, given the extraordinary din that was being created.
    Soon I was oblivious to the noise around me, the water falling from the sky, the cobblestone giving off that strong smell it always does after being washed. Soon, I was engulfed by darkness.

The Awakening
    It had to be a dark room.
    My eyes opened and at first nothing seemed to make sense. One moment I was wet and walking down the street, the next I am kidnapped and wake up in a dark room. This is right out of a Saw movie. I was shaking. It was weird. I didn’t remember giving my brain the message to quake my body.
    Then the reality dawned on me: I was scared out of my mind. I wasn’t just shaking; I was trembling. Despite the cold rain falling outside, the deafening thunder still pounding away in the heavens, I could hear my heart beating, no thumping, against my chest.
    It was a wonder my ribcage was holding its shit together and not letting my heart pop out. There was a storm of questions in my mind, not least of which was: will I live to see the light of the day? Will I see the light of the day? Who kidnapped me? Why? Where am I?
    I was still trying to figure out the answers to this question that I tried to stand up and immediately I realized that my feet were tied to the bed post.
    I tried my best to get free, without making any sound, but my efforts rang loud and clear. I stopped, so that I could hear if someone was coming and sure enough there were heavy footsteps outside. I immediately lay down on my back.
    The door opened and a sliver of light entered the room. A man carrying a candle stick entered the room. He was holding the candle in such a way that his face was lit up in one of those Hitchcockian thrillers.
    “You are up,” he said. It was not a question.
    I was too scared to say anything. His face didn’t look too frightening, for a kidnapper. If I had to be honest, it was quite attractive, that face. I mentally punched myself: too early to develop Stockholm syndrome!
    “Sorry about the light. It’s the rain,” he said.
    Why was this fella apologizing to me? I didn’t complain about the dark. If I knew my getting kidnapped rules, the kidnapee didn’t have much choice in what happened. So, I remained silent.
    “For a minute I was afraid that the chloroform was too strong,” he said and just as he finished the sentence, light sprang back up, throwing everything in sharp clarity.
    I shielded my eyes; going from immense dark to sudden light wasn’t a picnic. After a few moments, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I opened them slowly. The room was plainly decorated, rather drab. There was a window (so I was going to see the light after all) and another door which presumably led to the bathroom.
    Then my eyes focused on my captor and I gasped. He was the hottest guy I had ever seen. He was tall, muscular and his eyes were a color I had not seen before. What to call this color: bottle