Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love (Melissa) BBW Werewolf Romance (Hope Valley BBW online dating app romances Book 3) by Ariana Hawkes

stepping out of the car. He looked at her, glints of amber flashing in his eyes.
    “You don’t remember me, do you?” he said.
    “Remember you? From where?”
    “I grew up near Ridgley.” Melissa stopped walking.
    “That’s where I’m from,” she said. “But you didn’t go to Ridgley High School? I don’t recall seeing you there.”
    “I was there,” he said. “But only for six months.”
    “Why such a short time – ” she broke off. His body language had changed. He no longer carried himself confidently. His head was drooping a little, and he had his hands in his pockets.
    “I was asked to leave,” he said, after a long silence. She looked at him until he met her eyes. They were full of an emotion she couldn’t pin down. Is he angry? Regretful? The question she was about to ask died on her lips. Threads of memory were beginning to seep out of the box in her brain marked ‘high school’. It was him. He’d changed a lot over the years, as guys did when they went through adolescence, but it was unmistakably him; the one who’d hurt her and almost done a lot worse. He was the new kid. No-one knew where he was from; he just appeared one day. The stranger who had vindicated everyone’s belief that outsiders only brought trouble. He was cooler than everyone else. He used to wear a leather jacket, and people said he had tattoos, which, in that small, rural farming community, was unheard of. There were rumors that he took drugs, and did plenty of other things besides. He always seemed to be involved in fights in the schoolyard. He was hard to miss in that leather jacket, pounding the other kids to a pulp. People began to say that he was the devil, because he could never be beat. Then one day, something had happened. She’d been walking through the hallway between classes, and someone had jumped her from behind. A big, hairy hand clamped down over her mouth, stinking of that home-made liquor all the kids used to drink, and it prevented her from looking around or calling out. The arm that was around her waist lifted her completely off the ground. There was laughing, and the usual fat-girl taunts. She’d been almost unconscious with fear as she was hauled across the corridor and dragged into a dark storage room. Her head had been held back, and her nose pinched, and some of that nasty liquor had been tipped down her throat. She’d coughed and choked, trying not to swallow it, but it burned its way down, and very soon she felt weak and woozy. Rough hands had pulled her t-shirt off and her skirt, while the taunts and insults continued. She was so terrified, but so sleepy at the same time. She was only aware of the barest snatches of things – the sound of zippers being undone, sudden loud voices, the sweep of black leather on her bare skin, a yell of pain. And then it was over. She was lying on a bed in the nurse’s room. She didn’t have any panties on, and a nurse was peering between her legs.
    “She’ll be praising God that he didn’t get to have his way with her,” the nurse was saying to one of her colleagues. Melissa clapped her hand over her bare crotch, her face flaming.
    “What happened?” she said weakly.
    “Billy-Joe and Earl caught that monster, James, attacking you. It’s a good job they came along when they did, or he would’ve done a lot more than strip your clothes off of you,” the nurse said.
    “They made me drink alcohol,” Melissa said.
    “Not they , honey, he . It was James who did this to you. Those boys rescued you.” She chuckled. “Looks like you put up quite a fight though. You scratched his face good. He was bleeding like hell when they caught him.”
    “I did?” She felt so dazed. Would she go scratching anyone? Maybe if they were attacking her. But all she remembered was her hands being held tightly while her clothes were being torn off.
    “I’ve called your momma. She’s going to bring you some clothes, because that animal ripped yours to shreds, and then