Chasing Her Tail (10 page)

While she ate, Bridget heard him filling a big mixing bowl with water, which he set by her plate. It took a few tries to figure out how to drink but she caught on quickly and was amazed at how much water a curled tongue could bring into her mouth. After the food and water, she felt much better and also really, really sleepy.

The man left the room and returned shortly, carrying a towel.

“Come here, pup,” he ordered and she went to him with a lazy wag of her tail. He began to towel her off and it felt so incredibly good that she groaned with pleasure, wriggling with the motion of the towel. No wonder dogs liked to be petted—this was 50

Title

nice
. She let out another low moan as he did her ears, moving down her neck to her back, the terry fabric massaging her all the way down to her tail. Kneeling, the man began on her legs and feet, and when he ran the towel over her injured back leg, she yelped and pulled away.

“Sorry, puppy,” he told her, sounding contrite. “So you weren’t faking completely, huh?”

Ignoring him, she twisted around to see her injury but it was hard to tell how bad the cuts were beneath her fur.

“Let me see,” he ordered, leaning in to peer at her leg, his huge hands gentle as he held the fur away from the wound. “What’d you do, get caught up in barbed wire, poor baby?”

Got it in one
, Bridget thought, feeling a warm rush of liking for this man. She was still twisted around enough that she could lick his ear, so she did.

“Hey!” He jolted back, dropping her leg and rubbing at his ear. After his initial startled reaction, the man started to smile. “What’s with the wet Willy?” He scratched her ears. “Better bring you to the vet tomorrow,” he told her. “It’s too late for stitches but you’ll need some antibiotics. You’ll live though.”

After a final pat, the man disappeared into the next room which, judging by the detergent and dryer sheet smells coming from it, was the laundry room. Bridget waited for him, not sure if she should be half in love with a guy just because he scratched her ears and fed her cold hamburgers. When he reemerged into the kitchen a few minutes later, he was completely naked.

Bridget froze and stared, knowing that she shouldn’t look, that she was operating under false pretenses, that it wasn’t right to stare at him when he thought she was a dog. She couldn’t help herself though—he was just so incredibly gorgeous. She realized that her tail was wagging.

“I’m taking a shower. You behave yourself.”

Bridget made a low sound in her throat, not quite a bark.
Woof indeed
, she thought, watching his tight backside leaving the room. She resisted following for a solid ten seconds before running up the stairs after him. She’d only be staying for a day or so; she had limited time to look her fill.

He’d left the bathroom door open and she padded into the steamy room, guilt niggling at her but not strongly enough to stop her from slipping her muzzle between the shower curtain and the wall.

He is perfect
, Bridget decided, watching as soapsuds ran over the sculpted planes of his body, the bubbles stark white against his mocha skin. As big as the man was, there was no fat on his body. His eyes were closed as water ran over his shaved head and down his face and neck, cascading off his nose and lips. She must have made a noise because his eyes flew open and his whole body tightened in readiness.

Bridget pulled back, startled as well, but his relieved laugh brought her nose poking in once again.

51

Katie Allen

“Dipshit dog,” he insulted amiably, starting to lather his hands again. “Scared the hell out of me. I should call you Norman Bates.”

Please don’t.
If a dog could wince, Bridget would have.

“Except you’re a girl dog, aren’t you? Norma then.”

Yeah, not that much better.

“I shouldn’t name you though.”

Especially if you’re going to choose such lame names.

“I’m sure you’re someone’s dog. I shouldn’t get attached.”

That jolted Bridget back to reality.
She
was the one who shouldn’t get attached.

After a couple of days at the most, she would be gone. This sweet, ripped guy was just a source of food, shelter and, when he slept, internet access. She knew she had to figure out what she was going to do, if she was going to try to keep her house and her job and her life or if she was going to create a new one somewhere safe, a place where creepy doctors and hired housebreakers couldn’t find her.

As oddly tempting as it was, she couldn’t just stay this man’s pet, eating hamburgers and peeking at him in the shower. With a heavy sigh, she withdrew and padded down the hall. His bedroom smelled of him in the best kind of way. The sight of his bed reminded Bridget how very tired she was. Hopping up, she stretched out on the blissfully soft comforter and rested her head on a pillow. She was asleep in seconds.

“I don’t think so.”

The man’s voice jolted her out of a deep sleep. She opened an eye and saw him standing by the bed, amusement making the corners of his mouth twitch. Thumping her tail against the bed a few times to show that she was happy to see him, Bridget let her eye drift close.

“Off.”

Seriously?
Bridget lifted her head. The bed was huge. Surely there was room for both of them? She shifted over closer to one side and let her head fall back onto the pillows.

“Off. The. Bed.” He sounded serious this time.

With a groan, Bridget heaved herself up and off the bed. She stood on the floor and yawned so widely her jaw cracked.

“I don’t care how many teeth you have,” the man told her. “You don’t get to sleep on the bed.

We’ll see about that.
Plotting ways of sneaking back in, Bridget curled up on the floor. The man had pulled on some boxer briefs after his shower. She pretended to sleep as she watched him climb into bed. All she had to do was wait until he nodded off.

Instead he stared at the ceiling. What seemed like a long time later, he flopped over onto his stomach, squashed the pillow into a new shape and jammed it under his face.

Bridget could tell he wasn’t sleeping. In fact, his body almost vibrated with tension.

Finally, he turned to his side and propped himself on an elbow.

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“Fine! I can’t sleep with you staring at me. Get your hairy ass up here.” The man flipped over onto his other side in a huff.

Excellent!
Happy that she didn’t have to wait until he fell asleep, especially since that seemed to be taking an extraordinarily long time, Bridget hopped back onto the bed and circled two and a half times before she caught herself and lay down. Just because she looked like a dog didn’t mean she had to act like one.

She had a frightening thought—what if the longer she stayed a dog, the more she turned into one? What if, a year from now, she’d not have any humanness to her at all?

A little freaked out by the thought, Bridget moved closer to the man, pressing her back against his. She felt him tense at the contact and then relax. A few moments later, his breathing slowed and deepened in sleep. Although she was tempted to close her eyes and wallow in the shared warmth and the softness of the bed, Bridget was still unnerved by the idea of spending the rest of her life as a dog.

Easing her body away from the man, she tensed and froze when he muttered in his sleep. When he grew quiet again, she hopped onto the floor and padded out of the room. As soon as she’d left the bedroom and was out of viewing range of the bed, she changed. Such relief flowed through her when her muscles and bones slid into position that she burst into tears as soon as her body allowed. Pressing her fists against her face, she tried to muffle her sobs as she hurried away from his bedroom.

She slipped down the stairs, taking deep, raggedy breaths, trying to get her tears under control.

“Later,” she said in a faint whisper and then almost started crying again at the sheer relief of being able to talk again. She needed to focus on finding a computer. There had to be
something
on the internet about other people who were like her, who could change into dogs. She wondered if there were even those who could change into other things—

cats or horses or end tables or whatever. If the human body could transform as hers did, why not into other shapes and species?

As she thought, she crept from room to room, searching for the dark shape of a laptop or desktop computer, the green flicker of a modem light or the reflection from a screen. The streetlights outside provided just enough illumination for her to see only the basic shapes of furniture and doorways, so she used her hands to feel.

The living room yielded nothing. Neither did the kitchen or dining room. Holding her breath, Bridget tiptoed back up the stairs and past his partially open bedroom door.

She didn’t dare peek inside in case she woke him and had to explain why a naked stranger was tromping through his house.

The first room she checked looked like a guest bedroom. Disappointed once again, Bridget poked her head into the next room and had to suppress a squeak of happy discovery when she saw that it’d been set up as a study. Excitement tightened her throat as she hurried to the computer on the desk. Turning both speakers off, she sat in the chair in front of the computer and booted it up.

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Katie Allen

When the white rectangle with “Password” beneath it came up on the screen, Bridget stared at it for a full minute. Of course his computer was password-protected—

why hadn’t she thought of that? Guessing was out of the question. She didn’t even know the guy’s name.

At that thought, she changed her focus. The surface of the desk was clear of clutter, so Bridget slid open the top drawer. Pens rolled with the movement of the drawer, sounding thunderous in the quiet night, and Bridget’s heart pounded in her throat.

When a solid minute of silence had gone by without a peep from the man sleeping in the other room, she shuffled through the contents of the drawer as quietly as possible. Her fingers slid across a smooth surface and she pulled out a half-sheet of address labels.

Score
, she thought, bringing the labels over to the window to read what was printed. Unless the man who had taken her in was in the habit of stealing other people’s address labels, his name was John Dexter.

John.
Bridget cocked her head and considered the name. It didn’t seem to fit her host, just too plain for such a…fascinating guy. She realized she was smiling and mentally pinched herself. First lusting after Micah and now she had a crush on her pseudo-owner? What was wrong with her? Hurrying back over to sit at the desk, she tucked the address labels back in the drawer and slid it closed.

The bright white of the password box on the computer screen taunted her. With a huff of annoyance, Bridget pushed the off button on the CPU.

“What the hell?” The sleepy voice from the doorway startled Bridget so much, she toppled sideways out of her chair. When she hit the floor with an “oof”, she was already changing. She crouched low, hiding as much of herself as she could behind the chair, even as she knew it was too late. He’d seen her.

“Get out here!” John ordered and Bridget obeyed, head lowered and tail tucked.

He blinked at her. “Where did…?” After rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands, he looked at her again and then shook his head. “I’m really losing it. You didn’t happen to see a naked chick sitting here, did you, muttly?”

Nope. I
was
the naked chick. And if you call me muttly again, I might have to bite you in
the ass. Literally.
Bridget wagged her tail, giving him her best dumb and innocent look.

“Never mind. It must have been a trick of the light or my brain or something.

C’mon back to bed, fuzzy. Don’t mind me and my delusions.” He turned away and Bridget, relieved, followed him back to the bedroom.

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Title

Bridget woke up feeling cozy and contented. Snuggling closer to the warm body next to her, she let herself drift in and out of sleep. The mountain of man—
John
, she reminded herself—stirred and she opened one eye to glare at this disturber of sleep. He had turned onto his back and was stretching his arms above his head. Any irritation Bridget had felt about being jostled out of sleep was swept away by the beautiful sight of his taut chest, muscles lifting beneath his skin.

She lifted her head for a better view, so entranced that she jumped when his hand began massaging her ears. With a groan of pleasure, Bridget let her chin rest on his ridged stomach and closed her eyes blissfully. Too soon, he gave her a final pat and his hand fell away.

“Morning, muttly.” John slid away from her and sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I had some crazy-ass dreams last night.”

Even in dog form, Bridget couldn’t meet his eyes. She hopped off the bed.

“Suppose you need to go outside.” John stood up and stretched again.

If Bridget could have made a face, she would have. Peeing in the bushes was not her favorite part of being a dog.

John pulled on some sweatpants and led the way downstairs. His sliding glass door in the dining room led to a fenced yard. One corner had a few evergreens, so Bridget used them for cover. Although she knew a regular dog wouldn’t care who saw her pee, she still did—especially if John, on whom she was rapidly developing a serious crush, was the one watching.

He was smirking when she returned to the door. “Shy?” he mocked, sliding the door open for her. Bridget chose to ignore that and instead focused on breakfast.

“Still no dog food,” he said, digging in the fridge. “How does bacon and eggs sound?”

Perfect.
Bridget wagged her tail, following him around the kitchen as he cooked.

After he tripped over her for the second time, he pointed at the far side of the room.

“Go over there and sit,” he commanded.

She obeyed with a sigh, flopping down to wait the endless time it took for him to finish cooking breakfast. She was going to have to figure out how to keep him from buying dog food.