Alpha Assassins Guild: (Complete Series: Books 1-5)

by Juniper Leigh

  Graham was watching her touch herself as he shrugged out of his shirt and shimmied out of his jeans. His boxer briefs were the last thing to go, and she delighted in the vision of his thick, hard cock in his fist. He was stroking himself to full attention as he watched her masturbate. But after a short while, he could no longer stand keeping his hands off of her.

  He climbed onto the bed on his knees and moved slowly forward until he could slide his free hand up over her knee and down along her thigh. His fingers came to rest at her entrance, and he gently stroked the velvet-soft flesh there. She responded to his touch, inching slightly forward, begging him with body language to come in, come in. And he did: pressing one finger forward, he entered her, relishing the feel of her wet warmth.

  “You’re so fucking wet,” he said, his voice more of a growl than anything else. All Viola could do was nod her head.

  Her desire had been kept sharp ever since the first time they’d gone to bed together. So after a few moments of him working his finger in and out of her swollen nethers, she withdrew from him and rose up on her knees, coming face to face with him. After the span of several heartbeats, they kissed like two magnets coming together. Then she pressed him back, and he gave way beneath her so that he was lying down on the mattress, and she climbed astride him, a knee on either side of his hips.

  She reached between their bodies, his and hers, and curled her fingers around the turgid evidence of his arousal, guiding the head of his member to her pulsing pink opening. He slid effortlessly in, his breath catching in the back of his throat as she lowered herself down on him, taking more and more of him into her with every slight twitching movement. He grabbed her hips and settled her down so that he was as deep in her as he could be, and she began to rock her hips back and forth. He lost himself to the rhythm of her movements, his eyes coming to a close almost against his will: he would have rather kept them locked on her.

  “I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you,” he confessed, his cool expression contorting with the intensity of his pleasure. She tossed her head back and leaned so that she could plant her hands behind her on his thighs, grinding against his groin as she rode him. “Even in the midst of all this chaos,” he continued, opening his eyes again to watch the elegant swell of her breasts as she moved, “I’ve wanted you.”

  She sat upright, bouncing slightly up and down so that the softer parts of her would jiggle, and smiled down at him. She didn’t tell him how it had been an effort for her to push him out of her mind; she didn’t tell him how the thought of him had been a comfort to her when she was locked in that cell, how the images of him in her mind had made her grow feverish with longing. Instead, she leaned forward and caught his mouth in a kiss.

  He ran his palms over the curve of her hips and gripped her fiercely, turning them both over and slamming her down onto the mattress beneath him. He held himself aloft above her as he positioned his knees, thrusting the full length of himself into her.

  “Harder,” she moaned, and he obliged, snaking an arm underneath her shoulders so that he could grip her tight while he plowed into her dripping wet cunt. And she reveled in the sensation, surprising even herself by the force of her wanting.

  “Fuck,” she whispered, her voice a husky descant above the rhythm of his grunting. “I’m gonna come.”

  “Look at me,” he said, and she opened her eyes and found his locked on her face. Her arms were clinging to his torso, and one of his arms was beneath her shoulder, the other holding him up so as to give her room to breathe. They were pressed close together, trying to become one, and when her body shivered and convulsed with the power of her orgasm, his did too. She could feel his cock pulse and release his come into the depths of her, and their eyes were open and locked together when it happened.

  As the wave of their release began to subside, Viola felt a lump rising in her throat, and her cheeks grew hot. She felt her eyes begin to well with tears that she didn’t understand, so she simply kissed him, forcing him to close his eyes along with her, to break the intensity of the bond that they had just created. She’d never felt anything like that with anyone before; she was terrified of its power.

  He was smiling when the kiss was broken, but that smile faded when he saw her face. “Viola?” he asked, uncurling his arm from around her shoulders and holding himself up a bit further to give her some space. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m sorry.” She turned her face away as a few tears escaped and made trails of water over the banks of her cheekbones.

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Did I do something…?”

  “No, no,” she said quickly, wiping at her eyes with her fingertips. “I guess I’m just… overwhelmed.”

  He reached up and smoothed back her hair, his touch so delicate, she felt like a prized and fragile thing. He pulled out, and she could feel the warm trickle of the evidence of their lovemaking as it seeped out of her. He rolled over, turning fully onto his back and opening his arms to her, inviting her to lay her head on his chest. And she did, rotating onto her side so that she could drape one of her legs over one of his, so she could rest her cheek against his collarbone, so her fingers could splay through the light dusting of hair on his abdomen.

  He held her like that, with both arms wrapped tight around her, even as her body tensed and convulsed with the tears she let flow freely from her. Incredibly, she felt safe enough to let herself be vulnerable. “S-so much has h-happened,” she stammered, “so much has ch-changed.”

  “I know,” he whispered, turning to press a kiss to her head.

  “I’m sorry, I wanted to keep it all together.”

  “You have kept it all together. Viola, your entire world has been turned upside down over the course of the last few days. You’ve lost your home, your employment; you’ve learned — and subsequently come to accept — that there is magic in this world; and you’ve taken it all in stride with grace and aplomb. It’s only natural that you should be frightened.”

  “But that’s just it,” she said, lifting her head to peer at him with glassy blue eyes, her cheeks a series of saltwater intersections. “I’m not afraid. I should be, shouldn’t I? But I’m not. I’m… relieved.”

  “Relieved?” he echoed, questioning.

  “Yes,” she said, exhaling a cleansing breath. “For the first time in my life, I feel like I understand what’s going on around me. I feel like I’m in tune, in synch with everything, instead of it all just feeling ever so slightly… off.” She lifted a hand and wiped away her tears. “I feel like I’m a part of something, instead of an outsider looking in. I feel like I can really do something, for once. I feel like I can take action, and make choices that have meaning.”

  “You can,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “You can.”

  “So here is what we need to do,” she said, suddenly energized. “We need to find a way to bring peace to the clans. We need to find a way for all of the cleans — Felidae, Ursus, Canis, all of them — to pool their resources so we can figure out what’s going on with Verity, and so we can figure out whether or not what I am, what I could be, is something that we can usher forth into the world. A way to permanently unite all of the shifters. And maybe disband this idea of clans altogether.”

  “That’s a pretty hefty order,” Graham said gently, rubbing at the rich brown stubble on his chin. “I’m not sure they’d all go for it.”

  “They might, if they knew it would work. If they saw someone who could shift into anything. Because let’s face it, once one clan has that capability, the others will want it, too.”

  “That’s an excellent point,” he said, smirking. People could always be relied upon to covet their neighbor’s property, after all.

  “And furthermore, they could use this mating process as a way to strengthen bonds between clans. It could be… revolutionary, really.” She paused, and lifted herself up so that she was sitting cross-legged beside him on the
mattress, regarding him levelly. “I’m not saying that I am going to consent to this whole… mate with you and Rowan… thing. I think there could be another way to make this all work.”

  “I’m certainly open to ideas,” he said. “Though I do hope you’ll at least consider —”

  She gave a shake of her head, a wave of her hand. “I can’t even think about that right now. It’s just…” She made a sort of frenetic gesture with her hands, and he couldn’t help but chuckle a little.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, sitting up beside her. “What did you have in mind, then?”

  “Well, you said before, earlier, that you thought the reason I had never shifted was because no one had been around to teach me how, right?”

  “Mmhm.”

  “So,” she said, the smile playing on her lips reaching all the way up to her eyes. “Teach me.”

  He hesitated for only a split second before bobbing his head in a nod and scrambling to the edge of the bed to stand up. “Okay,” he said, raking his fingers through his mass of brown hair. “Okay, I’ll try.” He gestured for her to join him in the center of the room, and she did, feet planted on the faux bearskin rug.

  “It would seriously be so much easier if we all just shifted during the full moon,” she said, grinning. He rolled his big, beautiful eyes.

  “So, when my father taught me to shift,” he said, “he had me focus all of my mental energy on bringing my guiding animal to the forefront of my mind. For me, it was the great Kodiak you’ve seen me become.”

  “Mmhm.”

  “So, close your eyes,” he said, and she did, squeezing them shut tight, and making sure that she felt steady on her feet.

  “And tense your limbs so that you can feel the energy flowing throughout your entire body. Yes, good, clench your fists.” And she did. She tensed all of her muscles form head to toe and tried to bring her guiding animal to the forefront.

  But she didn’t know what her guiding animal was — was she a bear? Or a panther? Would she become some sort of monstrous combination of the two, or would she be something else entirely? She scrolled through a menagerie in her mind, images of grizzlies and lions, antelope and bald eagles, tigers and hyenas and sharks and wild dogs. But nothing happened.

  “Do you remember when you were little,” he said gently in her ear, “and you would play pretend? Do you remember how you would start to embody an animal even before you made any of their noises? Think of your guide, and try to put your body into their form.”

  She tried to get her mind to focus just on one animal, but she couldn’t stop the scrolling. She saw giraffes and elephants, housecats and dormice, snakes and lizards. She saw men; she saw Rowan. She saw Winifred and Katherine. She saw Verity.

  “I can’t focus,” she said, her mind a runaway train over which she had no control.

  “Whatever you’re doing,” he said, “keep doing it. Give yourself over to whatever is going on in your mind.”

  Viola took in several long, deep breaths, and surrendered to the visions in her brain, to this wild jungle of thought. And she felt herself vibrating, felt her cells contort. And it wasn’t painful — it felt a little like putting on a pair of jeans that you’ve only just washed, and they’re a little snug, but if you give them a moment, they’ll stretch out. Except it was her skin that was a little tight; it was her skin that needed a moment to give.

  She was a Gaussian blur, a smear of ink. But she was still herself, Viola, the woman, the assassin, the sister, the orphan, the lover. She was still Viola until, in one high-frequency instant, she wasn’t.

  She was looking at him through her own eyes, a limpid blue that Graham could have recognized anywhere. But by his expression, she could tell that whatever body she now inhabited, it was no longer her own.

  TORN BETWEEN ALPHAS

  (ALPHA ASSASSINS GUILD: PART 4)

  I remember being a teenager and coming into the budding beginnings of sexuality and wondering, what must it be like to be a boy? I would spend inordinate amounts of time standing naked in front of the mirror, examining my form, critiquing it, wishing for it to be different because I wasn’t like my sister, who bloomed full, early. She was fourteen by the time her breasts grew round and heavy, before her hips gave her torso the symmetry of a figure eight. Her bottom was full but firm, and her legs were shapely and long. Standing next to her, I was a reed, a cane, tall and lithe and lean, all angles. Pointed hip bones and elbows, sharp shoulders and a flat stomach. I would cup my breasts and press them together, small and pert like ripe peaches, and wonder what it might be like to be more substantial.

  In the early days of my exploration, I was innocent and curious, wanting to know what I looked like to the boys in whom I was interested; wanting to know what they thought about in their private moments. I wanted to inhabit them, to see myself through their eyes, to grip their manhoods in my fist that was their fist, to be a silent passenger in their consciousness. I recall going to the cafeteria at the St. James Academy and taking my tray to a table full of teenagers, laughing and joking and tossing little bits of food at one another. I rarely sat with anyone but my sister, but she’d been out sick that day and I was feeling bold. I slid my tray onto the edge of the table and sat down, more interested in the conversation around me than I was in lunch. There was one boy, Charlie Evers, on whom I’d had a bit of a crush. Charlie was an athlete, and at seventeen he had the swagger and the figure of a full-grown man, with the stubble on his upper lip to prove it. His hair was yellow like fresh-hewn corn, and his eyes were the color of aquamarines, and he had a mole on his cheek that made him look like a 40s starlet, and I thought maybe I loved him. And Charlie Evers shrugged out of the polyester sport coat of his school uniform, glanced my way and said, “Man, if I had tits? I’d basically stand naked in front of the mirror all day and play with them.”

  I felt my face flush with embarrassment as the table erupted with laughter; I laughed, too. I laughed because that’s what I did. I stood naked in front of the mirror and squeezed my breasts together and thought of boys.

  The first time I ever touched a boy, it was Charlie Evers. The nuns had movie night for us every Friday, and I was seventeen and Charlie Evers was eighteen, and he was going to be leaving the school soon, to go be an adult in the adult world. He seemed confident, like nothing in the world could be more natural than to be launched out of the safe confines of the academy and into the big world of grown-ups, and he was ready to play pretend at being a grown-up, too. And during movie night, he sat down next to me and slung his arm across the back of my chair and said, “You know, Vi, I’ve always thought you were kind of pretty.”

  I angled my eyes up at him and wanted desperately to know precisely what he was thinking in that moment. What did he think of my smile when I smiled up at him? What did he think when I tucked a few stray locks of hair behind my ear, when I pressed a hand to his chest and leaned in and said, “I could tell,” like someone who was ten times more confident than I actually was? What was he thinking when he barked a laugh in the middle of movie night at a part of the movie that wasn’t funny? And what was he thinking when he leaned in and pressed his lips to my neck, when he lifted his full man’s hand to cup my small, round breast?

  And when he unzipped his trousers, the sound of the zipper was the loudest sound in the world, and when he undid the button on his boxers, I could feel the vibration of it radiate through my entire body. And I was reaching into the dark space he’d opened up before he’d even had the chance to ask me if I wanted to touch it, because I did. I wanted to curl my fingers around it; I wanted to know what it was like.

  I wanted to know what he was thinking when I tugged him free of his pants, when he glanced nervously from side to side to make sure we were alone in the back row of the makeshift movie theatre in the St. James auditorium. I wondered what was going through his mind as he sank down low in his seat so that his head could rest against the back of the folding chair. I wanted to know what it felt like for him when I began t
o rub the length of his erection, up and down, pacing myself based on the quickness of his breathing. It wasn’t even that I was turned on by this moment of intimacy — I just wanted to know everything about what happened when a man felt pleasure; more than anything, I wanted to inhabit the man.

  Because when I was seventeen, and Charlie Evers was eighteen, I had never seen a pornographic image. I’d read a few racy chapters in books, but I’d never seen a man’s equipment up close. And I was surprised by how completely he shuddered when he climaxed, how he tensed, and relaxed, and how warm and sticky the release was as it dripped over my fingers. I wanted to know his mind when he leaned toward me and trailed his fingertips along my thigh, up my skirt, and whispered, “Let me return the favor.”

  But I pushed his hand away and said, “No, thanks.” Because I knew what it felt like to touch myself there; I didn’t need any more information. No, I wanted to know what it was like for him.

  And now, standing in the Dwelling with Graham McCallum, all these many years later, I finally know.

  ***

  CHAPTER 1

  Graham was staring as though he had seen a ghost, all of the color draining out of his face. For her part, Viola was frozen in place, aware only that she had shifted, but hardly daring to move or speak, afraid to know what, exactly, she had shifted into.

  “Extraordinary,” Graham whispered, moving closer to her, approaching her as though she were a wild beast. And perhaps she was. When Graham touched her — which he did, most tentatively, on the shoulder — his touch felt different, lighter, as though her skin were literally thicker and it took more pressure to send the jolt of electricity through her body. “I knew you could do it,” he said. “I knew it.” He ran his hand gently along her arm as she began to settle into her new form. She realized that she was eye to eye with Graham — taller, then.