A Girl's Best Friend: An Erotic Shapeshifter Paranormal Romance (3 page)

This man had something about him that he hated immediately, something that smelled dangerous. He barked and barked but Pamela scolded him, and invited her father inside. He couldn’t believe that she was doing that. He barked more, his aggression growing, but she told him firmly to keep quiet, and he knew if he didn’t she would lock him outside. He lay down next to her, his body taught, every muscle trembling.

Her father was clearly drunk, sobbing in her little kitchen, begging her to come back, telling her how much she hurt him by running off. Her father  screamed in agony, begging Pam to come back home with him.
What a ridiculous drama queen
, Logan thought to himself.

How could Pamela not see through this man? She listened silently, offering him a tissue when he became a real mess. She kept saying no to him, to Logan’s relief, but every time she did, the man sitting across from her got more and more angry, and Logan could smell his aggression, like something acrid in his nose.

“Spit it out girl, I don’t have all night. Are you coming with me or not?” her father yelled at her.

She stood there in front of him, motionless, like a deer in the headlights. The next thing Logan knew he saw her dad curl his hands around a butter knife that lay on the table. Logan, understanding the man’s intention, jumped up with a growl, leaped into the air, and let out a piercing howl from his throat just as the butter knife sank in between his ribs, instead of Pamela’s neck as her father had meant to do. Logan had jumped in front of her to save her from that fate.

Everything went black. This is the end, he thought, at least the last thing I saw was her face.
——–
Suddenly he felt better, he could breathe again but the scents… well, they just weren’t as powerful as before. His head didn’t feel light, and his vision had cleared up. Logan blinked his eyes twice, trying to adjust to the bright light, wondering where he was. How did he get here?

A sharp pain to his ribs brought him back to reality but made him dizzy too, but when he lifted his arm to reach for the wound, he realized he was human again. He was human again! And in the hospital. Thomas sat next to his bed, grinning over at him.

“What happened?” Logan asked his friend weakly.

“You saved her,” Thomas told his friend. “You’re okay now and you are in the hospital.”

“But what about her dad?”

“All locked up.” Thomas confessed. “And you proved yourself. Well done, young man.”

Thomas sauntered out of the hospital room, smiling, just as the nurse came in to check on Logan’s current condition.

He slept fitfully that night, and a week later Logan was out. It took a couple of days mulling the idea around in his head, but the more he thought about it, the stronger he felt about giving it a shot. What did he have to lose? He didn’t have the girl of his dreams now anyway; it couldn’t get much worse than that, really. But he knew that he had to go win her back now…

Finally he decided to do it. Logan called her up later on. He swallowed nervously, not knowing what to say, walking up the steps to her sad little duplex. She didn’t know he’d been the dog. But he had to fix where he messed up without any help. But what if she didn’t want him anymore after the way he had treated her in the past?

He felt guilty now that the roles were reversed and had a change of heart since he realized he judged her way too easily. Logan passed the swings in front of the large schoolyard right next to her small rental home, counting the missing panels that created those ragged, gaping holes to distract himself enough to keep himself from feeling like he was stuck in a horror movie.

He knocked on her door, and after a few seconds she opened it, looking a little stunned to see him there, but then she smiled, and he knew it would be alright. She grabbed his right hand and pulled him inside, shutting the door behind him.

“I’m sorry.” Logan said as he entered Pamela’s apartment. He hesitated a moment again, but then decided it was now or never, and stepped into the small duplex she was now living in.

“What’d you do, Logan?” she asked with a gleeful admiration.

“I just… well… yeah.”

He shook his head lightly, thought about what Thomas had explained. He wanted to tell her that he was the dog, but when he’d opened his mouth to mutter the words, something prohibited him to speak. Without a doubt it was Thomas’s magic still working on him. He grabbed at his throat as if to suggest that he was choking, swallowed a couple times just to make sure he’d still had his breath.

Pamela’s jaw dropped. She actually thought he was choking as well. He did gasp once before grabbing at his esophagus. By the time she’d reached him and started patting on his back, he was clearing his throat, gargling on his own phlegm if you will, and coming back to his senses. She asked him if he’d wanted a glass of water.

“I’m alright… but yeah, a glass of water will do fine,” he gasped, in between clearing out his throat.

He took a seat on the couch as he waited on the drink.

Pamela came back into the living room with a tall glass of ice water and a cheery look. Her beautiful eyes sparkled. Logan had never seen her so full of life and energy. She gently handed him the tall glass of ice water and took a seat beside him, and asked where he had been.

“These past couple weeks?” he asked with wide eyes. Yes, it was a shock to him although it shouldn’t have been. He had not prepared any type of speech or bogus story to feed her mind. He repeated himself before finally asking her how she’d been.

“I’ve been great,” she grinned. “Nothing could ever be more wonderful.”

Logan stole a glance at Pam as she passed him in the room. She looked gorgeous, her dark hair pulled back in a mini ponytail and her emerald green sweater reflecting the color of her gorgeous eyes. She almost shimmered it seemed.

He turned away as she came closer. He didn’t want to be caught staring. But as time went on, Logan realized that Pamela was completely different than he thought at first, and he falls in love with her, realizing that he treated her wrong.

She now acted like a new woman. This was a side of Pamela that he’d never witnessed in his human appearance. He had only seen this side as a pup, licking the palm of her hand or snuggling up underneath her. He didn’t know what to say, then looked over toward the kitchen entrance and saw a pair of tin bowls on the floor.

“Oh,” he said to her with a smile. “You got a cat?”

He knew she did not have a cat but figured he’d play along with the setup. He needed a story to play off of before getting to the meat of his own spiel.

“Cats… oh no, yuck!” she laughed, slipping her tongue to the edge of her lips as she bit down, tilting her head to the left and pulling an imaginary rope over her head at arm’s length.

Logan laughed at the act. The longer he sat there the more he wondered how he let her get away from him. “So I guess it wasn’t a cat then,” he said.

“Oh no…” she stretched the word no into a two second long term. At that moment she fell silent for a split second, lost in thought. She closed her eyes and thought about what she was going to say next.

“Logan,” she said, excited. “Let’s go for a walk.”

He didn’t know what to think. He just openly flapped his arms and let them fall to his lap. “Ha,” he blithely huffed, not exactly happy, but not knowing what else to say or do.

“Is that a yes?” Pamela asked. She did not wait for an answer. “Super… let me just grab my bag and we can go.”

She laid both hands upon his right hand, leaned in and kissed him on the cheek before darting to the back like an eight year old that had just been given permission to go outdoors and play. Logan smiled as he waited for her to return.

Outside, she’d acted like a newborn baby girl opening her eyes for the first time. She’d blinked as if blinded by the sun’s ultimate rays of light. A radiant smile with an eager stride was all so new and pleasant. Almost like a weight had been lifted from her tiny shoulders. It was a weight in which she had carried for years on end, holding her back from a full and glorious life that one should honestly be accustomed. Of course Pamela had been happy before, but never so vibrant and lively.

“So what’s going on with you?” Logan asked. “I never saw you like this.”

She didn’t respond. Trapped in her own mind, she’d fantasized only of rolling through a field of flowers. It was like a breath of fresh air, one she hadn’t experienced in all of her life.
A few cars rolled by in both directions as they walked away from her home.

“Where are we headed?” Logan asked, as he looked ahead to see a dice game in full play on the corner.

There were three young men. Two wore baseball caps, and white v-neck t-shirts, the third had long black hair that was tied into a ponytail, with a black shirt. They were stooped next to the bodega, bouncing the dice off the brick wall of the building, their backs to the street. Logan could see money on the ground but had no idea how much.

Clapping and cheering went on as the dice bounced of the wall and smacked the cement; one of the baseball caps swiped up the bills from the ground, and rose to his feet. The other two guys reached in their jeans pockets and dropped a couple more. The dice were rolled again.

“Pamela, did you hear me?” Logan asked as they neared the youngsters.

She blinked back to reality. “Huh? No… What’d you say Logan?”
“I asked what’s been going on.” Logan said, catching the red eyes of the young man with a ponytail.

“Oh… well… guess what?” Pamela asked, as they neared the gambling trio.

Logan looked to her. “What…”

They stopped.

She looked to Logan. “My father won’t be coming around any longer. He…”

And just then her purse was snatched right from under her arm.

The young man with the ponytail bumped into the pair in a frenzy and ran up the block from where they had just come. Logan and Pamela weren’t expecting such nonsense in broad daylight on an open road. There hadn’t been much crime, if any, in the neighborhood.

Pamela shouted for the thief to stop. She looked behind to see the other two gamblers take off around the other side of the bodega. She turned back to the thief and took a few steps in pursuit before she slowed to a stop.

Logan grabbed her by the arm. “No! I’ll catch him. You call the police.”

What better time could there have been for Logan to be a hero? He dashed up the concrete sidewalk behind the purse snatcher, in full pursuit.

Ponytail must have thought he was going to make a clean getaway. He ran about a block before busting a right, and jumping over a picket fence into someone’s backyard. That was a bad idea.

He leaped into a yard with a full grown Rottweiler. The dog instantly showed its teeth, and chased Ponytail to the other side of the backyard. Ponytail jumped the other side of the picket fence and kept going.

The dog’s chain was just long enough to reach the boundary. It jerked at the edge of the fence, the dog whined in frustration.

Logan was just about to leap the picket fence too when he noticed the Rottweiler as it was barking in the direction Ponytail ran. With no time to waste, he decided to run around the fence.

The oddity in this was that Logan did not get winded as easily as he would have before transforming into that big brown and red dog. Plus he did not feel any soreness in his ribs, as he had before either.

Logan moved at an incredible Olympic sprinter’s fast rate. He could feel his feet getting ahead of him, kind of like he still moved on all fours. The wind blew around his face; he could feel his cheeks blowing back almost as an animal would when running at such break neck speed. The next corner was nearing. Without breaking for a second, he dipped to the right, witnessed Ponytail dart through an alleyway.

Ponytail passed by three trash bins while in the alley. He made it his business to knock them over as he flew by. Once reaching the other end of the alley, he sporadically looked both ways before deciding to make an immediate left on the sidewalk.

Logan hurdled over the trash bins one by one. He hadn’t panted nor slowed down. In fact, he sped up a bit while giving chase. He caught a visual of Ponytail nearing the end of the alley, as he darted to the left.

“Hey!” Logan shouted in hopes of the purse snatcher getting scared and dropping the purse he’d just snatched from Pamela. “Hey… stop!”

It was useless.

By the time he had reached the end of the alley, Ponytail had vanished. Logan slowed the pace down a bit to get a feel of the area while staying on the path he was led to.
Where did he go?

The streets were empty. Two cars had passed by. Logan looked inside of them to see if any of the occupants were Ponytail. No luck there. He looked toward the Duplex’s and single family homes up and down both sides of the street.

Then he heard the sounds of gushing water. Up the block, just around the corner was a fire hydrant, spitting out H2O. Some noisy neighborhood kids came out of nowhere in swimming trunks and bikinis. They began splashing around in the water as it sprayed, to beat the heat.

A gust of wind erupted. Logan grabbed himself a whiff and could not believe his senses. His face twisted to the aroma; his head lifted. His nose twitched – that was a scent he’d just not long ago encountered. With a jolt of his head, he followed his instincts and headed off straight for it.

His instincts led him in the direction of the children, but he knew the whiff he’d caught was not theirs. It was more of an odiferous person, a man. He knew it was Ponytail. And he had to have been somewhere, near the vicinity, hiding.

But this was another quirk in Logan’s brain. If he had smelled Ponytail, then he must have been in his dog form and didn’t know it. He looked to the merrily playing children, and then faltered his sights, took a deep breath and stunningly looked downward to visualize the sweaty palms of his nervous hands.

Bang, bang…

The double shots arose from across the street.

Logan ducked imperatively; the children scattered.