Shifter

by Jennifer Reynolds

  Chapter 14

  ~~~Dimitri~~~

  Weeks have passed since my body has tried to shift on its own. I’ve tried numerous times to bring on a shift, to no avail. On the plus side, there has been a slight increase in my magic. I’m now able to move small things around the room. This has come in handy a few times when Sebastian has tried to play with me. I have fun sending him sliding across the floor when he tries to sneak up on me.

  I can also manipulate my food. Now I can eat actual hamburger patties, Mac and Cheese, and other simple things instead of Friskies Seafood Blend cat food or Fancy Feast miscellaneous meat with gravy, not that I have actually tasted any of that since I’ve been able to alter their taste, but being able to turn those tiny little bits of dry, hard food into actual food is a plus. I’m not sure what human food will do to this body, but I’m hoping I’ll be human before I find out.

  I don’t have a problem slipping in and out of human heads either. I can’t communicate with them, yet, unfortunately. Abby is starting to notice that something is off about me. Thankfully, having the ability to enter her head and see what she is thinking has helped me hide myself a little better. My plan had not been to act like a common house cat, but apparently, I’ve been acting too human, according to her thoughts.

  Devan hasn’t been around at all. I thought this was going to upset Abby, but she is way too pissed at him to care that he hasn’t been by the house. Even if she begins to feel the slightest bit depressed by it, one of her friends or her sister, all of whom were informed about Devan’s search warrant bright and early the next morning, are more than willing to remind her of how much of a jerk he is.

  We haven’t heard much out of Mave either. She tried to come by the house the day after Devan showed up with the warrant. Abby didn’t see her, but I did. I was up in the living room window staring out at a world I really wanted to rejoin when she walked up the front path. She left quickly after seeing me watching her. I guess she wanted to find out if I was still here or back with my brother.

  “No sweetie, I don’t want to meet him,” I hear Abby tell her sister for the third time in the last five minutes. With the small amount of weight she has lost and the debacle with Devan, everyone she knows is trying to set her up on a blind date with their coworker, the guy in their kicking boxing class, and their neighbor’s husband’s forth cousin twice removed. It is getting out of hand.

  “But he is gorgeous. He’s divorced,” Carrie informs her in a pleading tone.

  “Carrie, you know my rule.”

  I didn’t, and this comment brings me fully out of my reverie and into their conversation.

  “Screw your rule. You’re not going to find a single, thirty-year-old man in the south that hasn’t been married and doesn’t have at least one child.”

  That bit of information is helpful. She wants someone who is completely unattached. I fit the bill completely.

  “Devan was unmarried and childless.” Before her sister can say a word, she continues. “Wrong guy to bring up, but it is true. I know I’m asking for too much. I just figure that since I have never been married and don’t have any children, I would be better off with someone more like me. I’m not saying those other men don’t deserve someone. They do. I just don’t want to be that someone. I want it all to be the first time for both of us. Plus, I don’t want to have to deal with ex drama, especially not baby-mama drama. I don’t have the patience for that.”

  “You are asking for too much, and Devan is a prick. That is why he is unmarried and childless,” Carrie says with a hint of a snarl in her voice.

  “His younger brother fits my criteria, too.”

  “Abby,” she snaps. “The man’s missing and most likely dead, he doesn’t count.”

  “Yes, he does. You said there weren’t any men who fit what I want. I named two.”

  “Don’t be this way, sis. You can’t put such strict restrictions on this. If you do, you will never find a man.”

  “Then I won’t find one.”

  “Abby,” Carry snaps again. “Stop being so damned difficult.”

  “Fine,” Abby says, pouting in a very sexy way. “Tell me more about him.”

  “Yay. He’s my divorce lawyer’s accountant. He drives a 2012 Dodge something or other. I tuned out some of the guy stuff. Nicole just went on and on about him. He’s five foot eleven. I don’t know how much he weighs. He likes camping. He has his son every other weekend.”

  Nicole must have gone on and on because Carrie did as well.

  “You know, it sounds to me like Nicole should be the one dating him,” Abby finally interrupts.

  “I thought the same thing. She only blushed when I brought it up and said he wouldn’t want her.”

  “Okay. Let me get this straight, Nicole has a set of legs that go on for miles. Her face isn’t Hollywood perfect, but she is beautiful. Her hair is long and a chestnut color. Her eyes are a beautiful shade of amber. She is nowhere near as big as I am, but she isn’t supermodel thin. If this man wouldn’t want her, he sure as hell isn’t going to want me,” she tells Carrie. “And even if he did want her, then he sure wouldn’t want me. Either way I’m not in line for this one.”

  “You get on my nerves,” Carrie shouts at her. “Just forget about it. I’ll tell Nicole that you aren’t interested.”

  “No, you tell her that she needs to go for him herself. Leave me out of it entirely.”

  “Fine, whatever. Damn it, James, don’t hit your sister.” She grunts in the phone, sighs heavily, and says, “I gotta go before they kill each other.”

  “Shouldn’t they be in bed? It’s like ten o’clock.”

  “They should, but Katie is having a sleep over, and the boys are aggravating the girls.”

  “Have fun.”

  “I will. I love you.”

  Abby hangs up and sighs. “At least I don’t have to deal with that every night,” she mumbles to herself. My thoughts exactly. Not that I hate kids and don’t want to have any, but I don’t think I could handle three. One, yes. Two, maybe. But definitely not three.

  The phone rings seconds after she hangs up with Carrie. I’m getting up from the sofa to get ready for bed when she answers.

  “Hello.”

  “I forgot to ask if you got the movie.” It’s her sister again. She sounds out of breath and annoyed yet slightly excited.

  “I did. I picked it up this morning.”

  “When can I have it?”

  “I’ll bring it over tomorrow. That is if I can ever watch the movie. You keep calling, and I keep not being able to have a moment’s peace.”

  “Fine, I’m hanging up now, and I will not call you back tonight. I promise.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I swear. Night sis.”

  The desired movie is Acheron, a film adaptation of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter novel. Showtime picked up the rights to create a television series after the extreme success of Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire aka True Blood series. I know all of this because she is a big fan of the show. Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series on the other hand, and I’m quoting an earlier conversations she had with her friend Crystal, “Are the novel equivalent of cheesecake. If I take one bite of either, I will not stop until I’ve consumed everything.” They apparently made this movie first to see how popular it would be. The movie’s ratings were off the charts. She saw it the night it aired, but she hasn’t told her sister this. It went on sale a few days ago, so she picked up a copy, and I’ve heard about nothing else since.

  She completes her nighttime ritual in about ten minutes and crawls into bed with her remote. The moment she is comfortable and about to hit play, Sebastian leaps onto the bed, walks up her leg, across her stomach, plops himself on her chest, and begins licking her chin.

  “Whereas this is all kinds of cute, you gotta move,” she says to him. “I can’t see the television, and the guy playing Acheron is a lot cuter than you are.”

  He grunts at her in disapproval as she picks him up an
d sits him down on the bed beside her. Without even turning around, he springs to his feet and off the bed, passing me in the doorway as he leaves the room.

  “Sorry,” she calls after his retreating form, then turns to look down at me. “Your highness greets us with his presence,” she says. I pretend to ignore her. “I’m watching a romance movie; you might not want to stick around.”

  I don’t acknowledge this and make my way over to my usual spot on a large rug at the foot of her bed. Every once in a while I will sleep up there with her if Sebastian is too busy roaming the house to come to bed, but not often. Shrugging her shoulders at my ambivalence, she hits play on the movie.

  “What the hell?” I grunt, forgetting that no one can hear me. The movie had gone on for three whole hours. Some of it was interesting, but most of it I couldn’t watch and toward the end I had fallen asleep. I’m awake now. I jerk up from my place on the floor even though I can’t see because something is covering my eyes. I shake my head lightly and the object slips to the floor. My eyes go wide at the sight of the yellow piece of silk lying before me.

  Her panties. How had her panties gotten on my head?

  Before I can think too much on it, I hear a soft moan come from the bed. Jerking my head in her direction, I focus all of my attention on her and hear another soft moan.

  With the aid of my magic, I am forcing my body to grow into the size of a full-grown Maine Coon in record time. This means that it takes very little effort on my part to raise myself up on my hind legs and lift head over the mattress to see what is going on up there. I can’t help myself. I know what she is doing, and I know that I should leave the room to let her do it in private, but I can’t make myself.

  As I watch her hand move under her sheet, I feel my body tremble. I feel the shift coming on. Moments later when her sheet slides to the floor and I get a complete view of her naked body, I actually began to shift.

  This shift doesn’t hurt. I don’t writhe in pain. No, this shift comes on as smooth as any as I have had in the past. Merely seconds after I laid eyes on her glistening naked body, I am a man again. I am myself.

  Instead of going to my brother, I turn back to the bed. Her head lays flat against the mattress. Her eyes are closed. One hand kneads a breast while the other is buried deep between her legs. As I watch, she bends her legs at the knees and spreads them wide, showing me exactly what she is doing. Giving me a very personal look at the most intimate part of her body. Even in the dark I can see how perfectly smooth, silky, and moist she is.

  I grow harder and harder as she plunges not one but two fingers deep inside herself while her thumb massages her clit. She is masterful. The knowledge that she is so skillful at what she is doing saddens me. Her proficiency confirms the fact that she has spent more time pleasing herself and not enough time having someone please her.

  The ache in my groin worsens the closer she comes to achieving an orgasm. I can’t take my eyes off her body. Her breasts are large. Her body round and velvet looking. My hands twitch to touch her. I have to ball them into fists, burying my nails deep into my flesh to keep from reaching out and doing just that.

  I shouldn’t watch this, I know. I hate the part of me that can’t or won’t look away. She doesn’t deserve this. This is a private act, and I’m violating every moral code I have. If she ever finds out that I have seen her this way, she will never forgive me.

  Just as I make up my mind to shift out of the room, her orgasm hits. My eyes lock on the way her body convulses. The sounds of her soft cries and gasps have my body begging to enter her. At this second, she probably wouldn’t protest. I can almost feel her pulsating around me.

  As she calms, my imagination goes wild with thoughts of how I can heighten her pleasure. How I can make her scream my name in pleasure. Feeling my body nearing its own release, I use my magic to shift soundlessly from her bedroom to her bathroom, where, with only the briefest of strokes, I release my own pent-up orgasm.

  When I feel the cold porcelain of the bathroom counter on my bare backside, and think that as great as the release felt, I’m not anywhere near sated, I fully realize that I am human. I spin quickly to look at myself in the mirror. I’m human. Completely human. Like a man who hasn’t seen his reflection in years, I feel my face, my hair, my body. I can’t believe what has happened.

  I shifted. It hadn’t occurred to me earlier that I shouldn’t have been able to shift. My powers hadn’t been anywhere near that strong. Is it possible that the curse is broken? If so, do I want it to be broken? Until very recently, I had, but the longer I stay with her, the more I grow to care about her and am beginning to think I am in love with her, the more I want to stay with her.

  If I am human again, then I can actually court her. What will she think about Dimitri’s sudden disappearance? I can buy a cat that looks like me and bring it to her, claiming it is her missing cat. That will be one way to get to know her.

  Resigned to my plan, I walk back into the hall toward her bedroom. I can’t tell her goodbye, but I can’t leave without seeing her one last time. I listen closely to make sure she is sleeping. My hearing isn’t as good as it is when I am in animal form, but it is ten times better than any human’s is.

  I push the door to the bedroom open to get a better look at her naked form sound asleep on her bed. I open my mouth to whisper a goodbye and feel the familiar trembling of the shift again. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Dropping to my knees, my body convulses, ripples as my entire frame begins to alter its form. The shift is swift and only slightly painful. However, I apparently make enough noise to wake Abby. She leaps from the bed and rushes to me. I’m already in cat form and no longer convulsing. Luckily, this means she will think that I am having another seizure.

  “Oh, my poor baby,” she croons, picking my now limp body up from the floor and cradling me to her naked body. If I had the strength, I would nuzzle her breast, not caring what she thought of that. As it is, I barely have the energy to revel in the feel of her naked skin against me.

  “We’ll go back to the vet first thing in the morning, I promise. We’ll make them give you every test possible.

  -----

  Abby called the vet’s office the second she woke this morning, told Jody what happened, and is currently loading me into the car.

  “You still have my cat, I see,” a feminine voice says from somewhere outside of the car, causing Abby to drop my cage hard on the passage seat as she spins around so fast I can actually see her wobble a little.

  As she catches her balance, I register to whom the voice belongs. Great, Mave is back.

  “What do you want now?” Abby barks, I can tell she does this more in anger at herself for flinching than at Mave for showing up again.

  “Same thing I’ve wanted for the last few months. My cat back,” Mave says, pointing to me in my carrier in the front seat.

  “Give it a rest, would ya,” Abby says, shaking her head and shutting the passenger car door.

  “No, I want him back,” I hear Mave snap.

  “You know what; I’m not doing this with you today.” Since I can no longer see what is going on, I slip into Abby’s head, see her reach into her pocket, and pull out her keys and her cell phone. Mave hisses loudly at her when she does this. Puzzled by her reaction, Abby looks up at her to see Mave eyeing her hands. Abby thinks she is looking at the cell phone, but she is actually looking at the cat toy dangling from the key chain.

  “Yep. I’m calling the police. After the false statement you gave the police about that missing man being in my house, they’ve been looking for you. Now I suggest you leave before they show up.”

  With that said, Abby flips open her phone, scrolls through her contacts list, and hits the call option for Officer Richards. As she does this, she walks around the backside of her car away from Mave to get to the driver’s side door.

  Mave continues to stand there. Abby refuses to leave until Mave does. I hear her think that if she can get Mave to hang around long enough, ma
ybe the police will arrest her.

  I can’t see Mave from my vantage point, but I can hear her. She is projecting her thoughts into my head as clear as if she were speaking aloud.

  “I felt you turn human last night,” she says to me.

  “Is that why you are here?” I project back. To my surprise, she answers, but before I hear her reply, I hear her thoughts racing in shock and anger. The fact that I can speak to her telepathically means I’m getting my powers back and she knows it.

  “Yes,” she finally says with a bit of unease in her voice. “I didn’t feel you shift back. I wanted to know if you were still human. I see you’re not. Good.”

  “For now. It seems that you aren’t as powerful as you think you are.”

  “Oh, I’m powerful. Powerful enough to curse you again if you dare come after me.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and do it now. My powers are growing rather quickly. We both feel it. Soon, I will be myself again. When I am, I am coming for you. And you will pay.”

  “I don’t need to curse you again. You’re still a cat.” Despite her words, I feel her trying to work her magic on me.

  “You lie. I feel your magic. You can’t touch me. Not anymore.”

  The problem is I’m positive that the only thing protecting me is the charms Dr. Smith gave me. One of which is dangling from Abby’s key chain. Another is sitting comfortably in the back of my cage. When I regain control and Abby throws me out of her house, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I will be defenseless.

  “Besides, if you were so strong, this thing wouldn’t be fading.”

  “It shouldn’t be.”

  “I wonder why it is.”

  She eyes Abby curiously, as Abby gets into the car, phone in hand, but doesn’t answer. I can hear her thoughts. We both are thinking the same thing.

  “How is it possible?” she wonders.

  To goad her, I say, “Like I said, you aren’t as powerful as you think you are.”