“What do you mean, you’re going on vacation?” Dayne said.
In answer to the question, she shifted into cat form, then wrestled with the pajamas until she was out of them.
***
Day eight of the stand-off was interrupted by the shrill ring of the phone. Dayne crossed the floor, his eyes still trained on the black cat perched on the coffee table. Her tail was wrapped around her paws, and she had that look in her eyes that said hissing and clawing would be part of the evening’s repertoire very soon. Just what he didn’t need.
The sorcerer picked up on the fourth ring, his voice gruff. “Hello?” He only half-listened as a young woman in near hysterics rambled incoherently about some problem at the bookstore. Greta would shift for this. Surely.
Being in a relationship with a werecat was challenging to say the least, especially when she was angry. Maybe he shouldn’t have helped his ex. Greta had been actively pissed at him for the past week.
A normal, human woman might make him sleep on the couch. Not his Greta. No, she’d shifted to cat form and stayed in cat form to avoid his attentions. He’d tried everything. Truly. She’d been hunting for her meals in the woods behind the house, refusing even to eat with him.
Dayne gritted his teeth as the woman on the other end of the call started crying. She wasn’t handling retail management very well. The apocalypse had apparently arrived.
“Please, do calm down,” he said. “Greta’s right here. Let me get her for you.” He held the phone out to the black cat. He knew with her super senses that she’d easily heard the conversation on the other end of the phone. As panicked and loud as the girl had been, Greta probably would have heard it even if she were only human.
The cat shook her head.
Dayne covered the phone with his hand. “What do you mean, no? You heard all that. Is being pissed at me worth your business going up in flames?”
She looked like she’d shrugged, but he couldn’t be entirely sure. He held out the phone for another minute, but she still made no move to leave the room to shift and put some clothes on. He knew she wouldn’t change back to her human form here and now. It would afford him the luxury of seeing her na**d, and that would be far too much to hope for at this juncture.
He sighed and took his hand from the receiver. “I’m sorry, she seems to have stepped out. Why don’t you go ahead and close up for the night, and I’ll have her drop by first thing in the morning.”
When he hung up, Greta jumped off the coffee table and started clawing at the edge of one of the red, leather sofas.
“So help me, if you don’t stop that shit . . .”
She looked up at him, her innocent routine far past its expiration date. Dayne stomped over to the kitchen, grabbed a jar of herbs, and returned. He rubbed the special blend over the part of the sofa she’d just destroyed and incanted the spell he’d memorized by day two of the stand-off. The leather looked good as new again. For the fiftieth time now.
Greta arched one kitty brow at him and flicked her claws out, tapping them on the hardwood floor as if to say, I can do this all night.
Doubt had started to set in that they’d ever make it through this. What was going on in that cat head of hers? If she’d just shift and talk to him . . .
He’d had enough of her current behavior. Cats really were so much more trouble than anything else on the planet. They didn’t belong to you. You belonged to them. And that truth had never been more clear than right now with his little shapeshifter. He was tempted to use magic to lock her in a pet carrier so she could think about how far she really wanted to take this cat thing. He could play dirty, too.
Oh, who was he kidding? He’d been a consummate pu**y about the whole thing, letting her walk all over him, believing she’d vent her rage and eventually come back around. But every day she just seemed to grow more distant and aloof. If things didn’t change soon, he worried she’d go feral on him. If that happened, would she lose all sense of her humanity? Could she even shift back if she let it go that long? He didn’t know.
He wasn’t aware of any therian staying in animal form this long. Or if such a thing could cause any long-term repercussions. Then again, having been born in her fur, she’d been in cat form for several years before shifting for the first time to human. Maybe it wouldn’t present a problem.
He sighed. “Greta, are you ever going to forgive me? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
She blinked once. He waited for her eyelids to drop again, but they didn’t.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re hurting right now. I just don’t think this is the way to handle it.”
She hissed at him.
“Fine.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I can’t go on like this for much longer. I know it was dangerous, and I don’t expect you to be over it, but we do need to talk. And without all this blinking nonsense.”
She just gave him a soft meow, which of course he couldn’t translate to English.
***
Greta watched as Dayne’s face fell, and he left the room. It made her feel like shit. But she couldn’t help it. She knew she’d crossed the line into evil bitch territory and marveled at the fact that he didn’t already completely hate her.
You’re going to f**k this thing with him up, if you aren’t careful.
When was she going to forgive him and let it go? It wasn’t like he’d struck up a friendship with the woman. Esmeralda had come to the cottage for the blood and once she got what she wanted, she’d been gone. She hadn’t called or come by again as far as Greta knew. Unless it had been when she’d been out hunting. But Greta would have smelled the witch’s whorish perfume in the cottage if that had been the case.
Dayne appeared in the doorway again, a familiar look in his eyes. He was making another attempt, switching back to seduction and bribery mode. She let out the closest thing she could accomplish to a sigh.
“Here, kitty, kitty.” He crooked a finger at her and started backing down the hallway.
This isn’t going to work. Whatever he’d come up with wasn’t going to sway her. She’d stubbornly decided she was going to shift when she was good and damn well ready. Still, the look in his eyes made her curious, wondering what he’d thought of that he hadn’t come up with in a week of this madness. She would just follow him and find out. It didn’t mean she’d crack.
Greta hopped off the coffee table, landing softly on the hardwood floor. She tried to look as disinterested as possible as she sauntered toward him. He smiled. How she wished she could yell at him, but her passive aggressive form of fighting only gave her growls, hisses, and shrieking meows to work with. Next time she’d choose a different approach.
He led her into their bedroom where he’d lit a few candles and scattered some rose petals. This was a rerun from day four of the stand-off. Did he think she couldn’t hold memories in her cat head for that long? Or was he going to just do the same things over and over until he wore her down from boredom?
Dayne started to undress.
I’m not shifting. I am not shifting. Even with her mind made up, it couldn’t hurt to watch, right? She never got enough of the eye candy.
As the shirt slipped off his body, she could tell he’d been working out a lot since their fighting had started. He seemed a little more ripped than normal. Not only did her human side want to sleep with him, but her cat side sort of wanted to rub up against him to leave her scent, making sure it was clear to the rest of the world––at least other cat therians––that this one was hers.
But if she rubbed up against him, he’d start petting her. Then she’d relax and maybe shift. Then they’d be all na**d together and, yeah.
Dayne turned away from her, and she drank in the display of muscles dancing playfully across his back. Her ears perked at the sound of a lid being unscrewed. She craned her head around the bed to see what he was up to.
Greta’s eyes almost popped out of her skull when she smelled and then saw the chocolate sauce as he laid back on a towel and drizzled it over his skin. He’d stopped playing fair.
“You know, you love chocolate. But you can’t eat it in cat form. Chocolate isn’t good for cats. It’ll make you sick. But if you shifted for me . . .”