Gail raced along branches over the forest floor. Her tail balanced her sinuous body as she bounded above her running prey. She made a final screaming leap to earth, her quarry in her claws.
Before she could bite for the kill, a loud barking woke her. Startled, she jumped to her feet beside the bed, perfectly balanced. The sheets fell off her unclothed body as she looked wildly around her. The dream faded, and the room came into focus. The sound came from the open window.
“Damn.” Gail went to the full-length mirror. She checked herself as always, to make sure she was not actually a tree-top hunting cat. Her jet black hair fell down her back, setting off green eyes and pale skin. She looked approvingly at the rest and smiled as she began brushing out her silky hair.
A few days before, she had heard some young men checking her out in a convenience store. They had called her a cougar. That still gave her a chuckle. They had even joked with each other about going cougar hunting.
She had heard “cougar” used to mean an older woman interested in younger men, but this was the first time she had heard it applied to herself. If only you knew how appropriate it is, she had thought with a smile.
The thing to remember when hunting a cougar, she mused as she brushed, is that cougars are hunters, too. She had left the young men alone. They were physically interesting, but far too childish. By the time most men were old enough to be mentally interesting, they didn’t have the energy for her.
The sharp, angry sound of a dog interrupted her reverie again. Gail glared at the window, then set down her brush. She stepped out onto her rail-less third-floor deck, looking for the source of the annoyance.
Her new neighbor had finished moving in and was putting up a fence. Large piles of posts, fence sections, and bags of concrete mix were piled up in his yard, and little flags marked out his whole property line.
Chained to a tree in the middle of the yard was a dog. It didn’t look too large, but it certainly had a loud bark. The neighbor was at the near fence line, digging a post hole. He did have a fine set of muscles, she noted as they rippled in the sun.
She could see he was a young man, but not too young. Maybe the cougar should do some hunting now. As he picked up a post and began to turn toward her, she turned away and went into a back bend. It was a lazy, liquid motion that bent her naked body almost in a U, her breasts bare in the sun.
Through the tangle of her hair, she caught a glimpse of the neighbor’s yard. Sure enough, he was standing still, the post in his hands, looking up in her direction. Good. She was inverted, twenty-five feet above the ground, and perfectly secure. She was tempted to continue the back bend all the way into a handstand walkover, but she didn’t want to overdo it.
Without looking in his direction, she finished her bend, making sure he got a good look, stood back up, and casually swayed back inside. He was perhaps fifty feet away, but she was sure he was still looking, and would want a closer look. Men were so predictable.
The moon would be full soon, and she was beginning to feel reckless.
YOU ARE READING
Unnatural Conflict (Fantasy Story)
ParanormalGail is supremely confident of her surroundings, and finds men both amusing and contemptible, but there is something that bothers her about her new neighbor. This is the first of the werecat stories, although two prequel novels are in the works, an...
