Shifter (26 page)

“Will you stay with me? I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Yeah.” He kicks off his shoes, pulls off his shirt, and crawls into bed beside me. I roll over onto my side to face him, wincing in pain as I do so, and scoot close to him, not all the way up against him as a lover would, but close enough to feel the warmth of his body lightly brushing mine.

To my shock though, once he gets himself settled, he pulls me as gently as he can into the contours of his body. My head and wounded arm drape on his chest. His hand slowly strokes my back as he flips on the television. Within minutes, I am drifting off to sleep.

Chapter 24

~~Abby~~

I didn’t dare tell my sister that someone shot me. For the last week, I’ve feigned being sick instead. She has begged me to go to the doctor, but I keep telling her it is a cold, and that I will be over it soon, though, it wouldn’t be a good idea for her or the kids to come over.

Dimitri has been wonderful, taking care of the house, me, and everything. Whenever he is human, that is. Oddly enough, since the shooting, he has been human more than he has been an animal. He says his powers are stronger and that the only thing he can’t do is shift into any other form but a cat. Although, he is sure he is almost to the point of being able to control that shift. He is nearly able to stop from shifting when the need comes at inopportune times and can almost shift back once he is tired of being a cat.

Mave and her cronies have been lying low. No more bounty hunters have showed up at my door. That doesn’t mean they aren’t still looking. One of Dimitri’s pack members ran into a wolf at a bar near my house. The wolf was bragging about having a plan to catch me, so when he left the bar later that night the pack member followed him, summoning a few others to his aid. They caught the wolf and offered him a deal. He could either die or leave the country. The wolf opted to leave.

Another of Dimitri’s pack members ran into a wolf trying to enter their territory. The pack member caught him and hauled him in for questioning. The wolf told the pack council that Mave still had the bounty on my head, but most of the wolves were opting not to come after me, not while the pack is still protecting me. That didn’t mean that if they saw me out they wouldn’t make a move for me, they just weren’t coming to my house anytime soon.

In the meantime, my back has completely healed. All I have to show are two, small, pink scars that Dimitri says will be nothing but a memory in less than a week. This super healing thing is awesome. Too bad, it can’t take care of the scars I already have. Dimitri says that is a sign that I’m not turning vampire. He says that a vamp’s entire body smooths out when they change. Not that vampirism is something we are worried I’ve caught. Dimitri and I can’t think of a single moment when I could have come into contact with a Vampire. As a matter of fact, we can’t think of any moment where I have come into contact with any supernatural being capable of changing a human.

That is good news. I know vampires are all the rage, but I didn’t want to become one. The immortality would be great, but I don’t like the idea of living off blood for the rest of my life. Yeah, I know, I would probably love the taste of it once I became a vamp, but right now, the thought of it makes me ill.

The only real explanation for my healing that he and his family are able to come up with is a spell of some kind. This means that Sam came to examine me yesterday. There was no part of me that wanted her to touch me or to be in my house, and I argued that if Dr. Smith hadn’t been able to find anything on me that suggests that Mave put a spell on me, then Sam wouldn’t be able to either. They ignored my argument. In the end, I grudgingly promised Dimitri’s parents that I would let Sam look me over.

I know I shouldn’t dislike someone so much that I barely know, but Sam spent most of her examination of me making subtle, offhanded comments about how imperfect my body is in front of Dimitri, while giving him a look that clearly said she wanted to sleep with him. And he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He followed every move her hands made as she examined me for marks.

My entire body burned from the heat of my embarrassment, not that anyone noticed. Although, how they didn’t, considering I was wearing the shortest pair of cut off shorts I owned and a white, stretch camisole is beyond me. I’ve worn less in front of him since getting shot, but at those times, I didn’t have a skinny, little witch pointing out all of my flaws. She chose every scar, freckle, blue and purple vein, stray hair, and cellulite dimple as something she should examine in-depth in case one of them might be a place where some supernatural being touched me.

“What kind of mark are you looking for?” I ask, trying to divert her attention. “Do all spells leave the same type of mark or different marks for different kinds of spells?”

“It depends. Most look more like a tiny birthmark. But your more talented witches can disguise them.”

“How can you tell when a mark was left by a spell?”

“As a supernatural and a witch, I see the world a little differently than you do. The mark will glow slightly and be a bit blurry. The different types of supernaturals that make up this world all have different ways of doing things, and I’m looking for those types of marks. None of your marks match a vampire’s bite or a pixie’s bite, which are the two most common supernatural beings in this area. Although, I guess the two spots where you’re developing varicose veins in your legs might look like the results of a succubus’ touch, but they don’t normally go after women, and they can’t turn humans into succubi.”

Her reminder of my physical flaws brings me back to the scene, and I shut up.

Dimitri and I told her before she started that Mave has had very little direct contact with me, but she swore her examination was protocol for situations such as mine, even though I don’t think they have ever had a situation like mine.

I think she wanted to expose my not so smooth or muscular body to Dimitri in a way to purposely show off my flaws. Her efforts were in vain. He barely noticed that I was in the room.

I held my tongue, refusing to give them the satisfaction of getting to me. I did have the satisfaction of watching Dimitri turn into a cat while she flirted. Why he did, I’m not sure. Maybe she turned him on a little. She pouted when he shifted, and in a very not like me way, I told her that he only shifted when he is bored. She wrapped up my evaluation quick after that and left.

Chapter 25

~~~Dimitri~~~

Since the day the she-wolf shot Abby, it has taken everything I have to keep my hands off her. Seeing her laid out on that kitchen table, bleeding had been more than I could handle. I know it is wrong to want her. She is human. I age slower than she does. I would out live her by more years than I want to think about. None of that matters though. Every part of my body wants her.

She doesn’t seem to see it or reciprocate it. Sure, she is a little more dependent on me, but that is probably due more to fear than anything else. She flinches from my touch, despite the fact that I touch her every time I can. I even make up reasons like nonexistent fuzz or a loose hair on her shirt to touch her.

Two days ago when Sam came to examine her, I had to force a shift to escape the obvious need I felt for her. Sam was using every excuse to expose every piece of Abby’s flesh and the pink color Abby was flushing in embarrassment from it was turning me on. The plus side is that a forced shift is a good sign in my recovery, especially since my body tends to want to shift into a human when I’m aroused not the other way around.

Today Abby woke up completely healed. I woke an hour or so before she did and was lightly tracing my fingers over the exposed flesh of her shoulder where the bullet had been. There is no sign of the wound ever being there.

“How bad does it look?” she asks when she finally wakes. For an instant, I start to jerk my hand away, but then I decide that I’m not going to be able to stay away from her; therefore, I might as well give her my all.

“It doesn’t. All signs of it are gone. There isn’t even a scar.”

“What?” She jumps out of bed and rushes to the bathroom.

I laugh and go after her. I find her with her back to the bathroom counter. Her arm pulled through the small strap of her tank top. Her shoulder bent forward as she cranes her head around to see her shoulder in the mirror.

“That’s incredible,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say, stepping up beside her and pulling the back of her tank top down a little more to show her the spot where the second bullet grazed her. I also do it so that I can feel the warmth of her skin across the tips of my fingers. “Even this one is gone.”

My cock twitches when I look up to see her watching my fingers run across her body. She continues to watch as I slowly move my fingers up to the spot where the second wound had been. I grow harder at the sight of her eyes darkening. She isn’t breathing, and by the time my finger finds the spot, tiny little bumps cover her body. Before I can do anything more, she lets out her breath, shifts to stare at her arm where the were scratched her.

The scratch has faded a great deal, which tells me she has been changing for a while now. Her eyes widen in surprise and glee to see nearly smooth skin. In another quick motion, she hikes her leg up on the counter and looks to her inner thigh. I nearly explode in my pants at the sight of her panty-covered sex.

“Damn it,” she whispers, breaking my gaze from the spot.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” she says and starts to lower her leg.

I grab her bag and bend it to see what she had been examining. Just inside her thigh are a number of circled scars that obviously came from a cigarette.

“Mother fucker,” I say, moving my hand to the marks. I know exactly how she got them.

Before I can touch the marks, she pushes my hand away, lowers her leg, and tells me to go call my parents while she pees and brushes her teeth. I don’t hide the look of anger, disappointment, or desire that is all over my face. I don’t miss the same look on her face. Her expression quickly shifts from wanting to resolve. She wants me; she just doesn’t want to want me.

After breakfast, Mom comes over to examine her, and the rest of the day Abby makes it a point not to be too close to me and to keep her body covered. I’ve seen a number of her scars. Some could be explained away as mere accidents, but some are obvious. Over time, she told me some of what he did to her, but I have a feeling there is a lot more she is keeping to herself. I don’t push her. She’ll tell me in time.

In order to avoid me, she goes to work early, and works until her eyes are unfocused and her wrists hurt. I do the same. First picking up the house, something she usually fusses at me for doing, then I answer some business e-mails and look over contracts and designs.

Around five, she shuts down her computer and announces that she is making chicken and mushroom fettuccine for dinner. I’m not necessarily a big pasta fan, so I tell her I’m going to put a steak on and ask if she wants one. I know she doesn’t, just as she knows a simple steak will not be enough for me and that I will help her demolish the fettuccine.

An hour or so later we were sitting in front of the television, eating our dinner, and watching television. Thursday nights tended to have a number of different shows she likes. Some shows she watches and others she records. I had only watched one or two of them before meeting her, but the others she likes are slowly growing on me.

At nine, she kicks me out of the living room so that she can do her hour on the treadmill. She refuses to let me watch her on the machine, even in cat form, which is what I shift into out of pure boredom when she sends me to the bedroom. I don’t leave her bedroom until I hear the water in the bathroom running.

Still in cat form, I hop off her bed and head into the living room. Sebastian is usually in there, and I’m in desperate need of someone to annoy. I come to an abrupt halt when I hit the hall. My eyes growing wide in surprise. Abby left the bathroom door open. I know she is getting used to me being here. She’s been doing things and wearing things she normally wouldn’t have with company around.

My favorite is the long t-shirts she wears to bed. At first, she wore shorts, but after too many mornings of waking without them, she gave up on them. She has a habit of disrobing in her sleep if she is uncomfortable or hot. Socks and shorts end up in a pile at the foot of the bed. Those long t-shirts end up high up on her waist, exposing her panty-covered bottom to me when she kicks the covers off.

Until tonight, though, she has continued to shut and sometimes lock the bathroom door when she is in there. Inhaling deeply, I force myself to walk pass the door without looking in the room. It is hard. Every part of me screams to go in there, to shift and join her, but I can’t.

In the living room, I find Sebastian balanced precariously on the arm of the sofa with his eyes closed. I know he isn’t asleep. He pays absolutely no attention to me. Gathering all of my pent up frustration, I take off running, leap, and knock him right off the arm. I want him to chase me. I need to disperse some of this energy and frustration that is filling me.

He only swats at my head and makes to walk away. I attack again. This time he gives chase. We stalk each other around the living room and kitchen multiple times. Every time he makes to hide or rest, I pounce. I rarely play with Sebastian when in this form and only do it when my emotions are all on edge like this. Yet, this time I feel worse. More agitated. More wound up.