Shades of a Shifter

by Juniper Leigh

  She curled her fingertips up in the fabric of his shirt and pulled him closer to her, forgetting the job, forgetting her purpose there, and enjoying the warmth of his lips on hers.

  His large fingers fumbled to find the hook-and-eye clasp at the top of her gown’s zipper, and she reached back to help him, unclasping it with a gentle flick of her fingers. Graham did the rest, unzipping the thing, and brushing the thin straps from her delicate shoulders so that the gown spilled to the floor to puddle at her feet. When she stepped out of the skirts, she was clad only in a pair of black lace panties, and her black Louboutin pumps.

  He stepped back to admire her and she kept her arms at her side, despite the unconscious itch to hide her breasts from view. She was a beauty: pale, and lean, and slightly pear-shaped, she had a form that begged to be grabbed by the hips and pulled close. And that is precisely what he did, drawing her toward him with an animalistic forcefulness that nearly knocked the breath right out of her. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the spot where her neck met her shoulder, nipping lightly at her skin with his teeth. She allowed her hands to come up so she might tangle her fingers in his thick mass of hair the color of burnt umber. His lips traveled south, the scruff on his chin sanding down her skin as he went, until he was bent low enough to suckle at her nipple. The unattended breast he kneaded in his hand, pausing in his ministrations only when he had elicited a sharp little moan from the back of her throat. He stood up straight then, peering down at her, and trailed his fingers along the lines of her arms, up and down, up and down.

  “Take me to bed,” she whispered, and he tucked his hands under the curve of her ass and lifted her into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his waist, allowing him to carry her out of the kitchen, through the foyer, and up the stairs. She might as well have weighed nothing at all, for all the effort it took him to lift her, and she wrapped an arm tight around his neck, leaving the other hand free to roam, leaving her mouth enough space to explore the skin of his collarbone.

  Had she her wits about her, she might have noted the vaulted ceilings in the master bedroom, or the panel picture windows, or even the sheer size of the space. Instead, she noticed only the downy soft pillow top mattress upon which he laid her, and the fact that she could stretch her arms out straight to either side and not reach its edges. Graham was kissing, his tongue exploring the cavern of her mouth, and she had forgotten entirely why she was there, who she was, and who was waiting for her outside. She saw only him, his dim silhouette outlined in the glow of two Tiffany table lamps that cast everything in warmth.

  Drawing away, Viola began to fumble with the buttons of his flannel shirt until he stood upright at the foot of the bed and tugged it off over his head. His musculature was impressive, and even in the low light she could tell that he looked as though he were carved out of stone. A dusting of hair over his pecs led down to perfectly sculpted abdominals, and that delicious V, the end of which disappeared into his jeans. She sat up and reached forward, unbuttoning the jeans that stood in the way of her having her full view, and unzipped them, tugging them down to reveal he hadn’t bothered with anything so pedestrian as underwear.

  He was shimmying out of the jeans to leave them on the floor, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of his sizable member, turgid and ready, with a girth that made her wonder if she could even handle it. Lord knows, she wanted to try.

  Graham reached for her and tugged at the lace at her hips, sliding her panties down along her thighs, past her knees. That was as far as he required them to go, and he spread her knees so that they bloomed to either side, opening her sex to him. He peered down at her, admiring the beauty of how she was formed, pink, pert, and glistening with her desire. Kneeling down at the foot of the bed, he hooked her arms underneath her thighs and pulled her forward so that he could lean in, spread her open with his fingers, and lap gently at the pith of her sex. She arched her back and let out a whimper, reveling in the sensation of his tongue flicking her clit, then moving down to circle the flesh at her entrance.

  “Please,” she whispered, but she wasn’t sure what she was begging for. His tongue was driving her closer and closer to her climax, something he could sense, and like a proper tease, he stopped and stood over her. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop,” she said, her voice tinged with a heated sort of desperation. Now she knew what she was begging for.

  He proffered a roguish grin and shook his head, climbing onto the mattress beside her. She sat up on her elbows and waited for him to lie down before getting up onto her knees. Turning so that her bottom was near his face, she hovered over him and curled her fingers around his shaft, guiding the head of his member into her mouth. He grunted as she took more and more of him between her lips, pushing the length of him into the back of her throat before coming up again for air. She stroked him as she sucked, flicking the tip of his manhood with her tongue in rapid little circles. His hand came to rest on her ass, his fingers traveling down to her opening. He pushed one finger, and then two, into the welcoming opening of her sex, warm and wet like damp velvet. She groaned, her lips buzzing around his cock, and continued to work him in and out of her mouth.

  After a moment, she lifted her hand and pulled herself away from his probing fingers, turning and straddling him all in one fluid motion. Reaching down, she directed his cock to her cleft and lowered herself down onto him, taking him fully into her sheath. Viola swayed her hips back and forth, tossing her head back as she pressed her hands against his chest, delighting in the feel of him filling her to the brim. Graham had his hands on the supple curl of her hips, slamming her down as hard as he could onto his phallus. Their breathing began to synch up as they moved in time to the rhythm of their hearts.

  His hands traveled up the valley of her torso, to the peaks of her breasts, and rested there for a time before he pinched her nipples between his thumbs and index fingers. One hand continued its journey upward before his palm came to rest on her neck. She bent her head forward and took his finger into her mouth, sucking, biting, locking her eyes on his.

  Suddenly, he gripped her and turned her over, thrusting into her as she landed on her back on the mattress. She let out a cry and wrapped her legs around him as he pressed himself deeper into her. And she lost herself to it, until the entire focus of her world was the sensation of his cock stroking her G-spot. She was all pleasure, and the reality of her life, her memory, fell away.

  Graham gripped her wrists and held them down against the give of the mattress, rudely pinioned beneath him as he pushed into her wetness. “Viola,” he murmured, luxuriating in the taste of her name on his tongue. She silenced him with a kiss.

  He was bringing her to the brink, and he knew it by the noises she was making, animalistic and involuntary, not the semblance of forced pleasure that one heard so often in heteronormative pornography. And he was joining her at the peak. She shifted, pressing her hips forward so that he could thrust his full length into her, and the wave of her orgasm crested and broke against the rocks. She came fiercely, the muscles of her sex pulsing against his shaft. The feeling sent him into a frenzy, and he released himself into her, his cock spasming inside of her with the force of their union. He collapsed atop her, and she trembled beneath him, sated and sleepy, happy in their shared intimacy.

  After a moment, he climbed off of her and collapsed next to her, one arm slung over her tummy. She curled up facing him so that his hand was resting on her waist, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

  A long stretch of silence passed between him until she heard him chuckling quietly under his breath. “What is it?” she whispered, smiling.

  “I’m just sort of baffled.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “I saw you in that room tonight, and it felt like you stopped my fucking heart.” He turned his head and peered into her face. “I can hardly believe that you’re here now.”

  “You didn’t think I was that sort of girl?”

  “I don’t know what sort of girl you are, bu
t I’m glad you’re here.”

  He shifted, resting his head on his elbow, and let his hand come to rest lightly on her cheek. “I’m glad I came, too,” she said, enjoying the double entendre. They giggled together in the darkness. “It’s funny,” she continued, “when I saw you… I guess this is corny, but it felt instantly like I knew you, like we’d known one another in a past life or something.”

  “I know what you mean,” he confirmed, voice hovering just above a whisper, “it was like in the movies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the lovers spot each other across a crowded room, and it just feels like…”

  “Fate.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Exactly.” She allowed herself to bask in the notion, as foolish as it seemed, that she and Graham were somehow fated to come together, that this was somehow meant to be. Girls grew up with that idea, the maiden fated to find her prince, but she’d never really put any stock into it. Which is why she read books like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights to her poor sister: she didn’t want Verity to have the notion that love came easy, like in storybooks.

  But the idea that it could be like that for her was utterly intoxicating. What if this was supposed to happen, just this way? What if they were meant to be together, and this was true love, forged in the fury of one passionate night? What if…?

  “Viola, Viola,” he murmured, allowing his eyes to come to a close. “Viola St. James.”

  Her eyes shot open, and her entire body tensed. Fated to come together, perhaps, but not for love. Fated to be in this room together because she had been sent there to kill him. She remained very still, but every muscle in her itched to spring into action. She had never given him her last name.

  She stared at him, with his eyes closed in the darkness, unsure of what her next move should be. Suddenly, she was entirely outside of the romance of the evening, and her head was cleared of champagne and love and the dizzying sensation of spending the night like some heiress in a billionaire’s estate. She remembered that Rowan had driven her in the limo to the house, and that he was waiting for her outside. She remembered that he was the true and solid thing in her world, and that this man was just a mark. A mark, it seemed, who knew precisely who she was.

  His eyes opened, and when he saw her staring at him, his expression changed. “Viola,” he began, “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” she lied, forcing herself to sound casual, “you just look so beautiful in the moonlight.” He wasn’t buying it.

  Viola’s heart was thrumming in her chest like a timpani drum, and she stretched herself long with her arms over her head, a move that forced his hand off of her body and onto the mattress between them. She uncoiled slowly, her movements precise, deliberate, and slid off of the bed.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, sitting up.

  “Bathroom,” she said, casting a glance over her shoulder at him. “A girl always has to pee right after sex.” Not exactly the most romantic words, but true enough, and he nodded.

  “It’s just right there,” he said, pointing to a door at the far end of the room.

  “Thanks.”

  She moved with a gentle sway of her hips, hoping that the sight of her bare bottom sauntering like a vixen across the room would take his mind away from her odd behavior. She could feel his eyes on her as she moved, and she felt immediately relaxed when she had the door closed and locked between them.

  She sat on the toilet to pee, and to figure out her next move. The bathroom was spartan, utilitarian, and didn’t feature a plethora of objects she could use as a weapon in a pinch. She considered breaking the mirror over the sink to use one of the shards as a blade, but he would hear the crash and know her move.

  She wiped, but didn’t flush, and rifled silently through drawers and cabinets: soap, towels, extra rolls of toilet paper, a comb, a few bottles of ibuprofen, cologne, a Gillette razor blade — could she do something with that, perhaps? No, probably not — nail clippers, a nail file…

  A nail file. It was metal, pointed, and about the length of her index finger. She held it gingerly and examined it: it was pointed at one end, though not terribly sharp. It would have to do. She peered into the mirror, and tucked the nail file into her chignon, which was messy, but still largely intact. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and joined her mark in the bedroom once more.

  He was standing, wrapped in a forest green terry cloth robe, at the edge of the bed. He turned to face her when she came out of the bathroom, offering a thin-lipped smile. She canted her head to the side and peered at him, trying to appear at ease. “Why are you dressed?” she asked, though that wasn’t exactly an accurate descriptor.

  “I have the feeling you’re about to walk out, so I decided that I don’t want to be naked when you do.”

  “And why would I go anywhere?”

  “I’m not sure.” He furrowed his brow, looking at her as though he were certain of who she was, but not of what she was.

  “You’re just not used to be people staying.”

  He chuckled, chagrined. “Ah, yeah, I guess that’s it.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his robe and she sat down on the bed, curling herself up in a throw blanket at its foot. “I guess… I learned pretty quickly that a lot of the women I was choosing were only interested in one thing, and it wasn’t my winning personality.”

  “Well, your cock is pretty impressive.”

  He laughed. “No, if that were it, I would have less of an issue.” He sat down as well, but maintained his distance. “But as soon as they find out I’m not looking for a wife, they usually hightail it out.”

  “Why aren’t you looking for a wife? You’re about the marrying age, hm?”

  He smiled again, and it seemed as though he were easing back into his own skin. “Yes. But it’s… complicated. I have less of a say in these things than you might imagine.”

  This caught her attention. If it had been a normal date, she would have asked him what he meant, asked him to elucidate, try to get him to reveal the desires and truths of his secret heart to her. But this wasn’t an ordinary date, so she simply inclined her head, gazed at him through her eyelashes, and said, “Come lie down.”

  He blinked, a gesture that betrayed a moment’s hesitation, but ultimately obliged, and lay down. She climbed atop him, as she had before, the terry cloth robe the only barrier between their two naked forms. She kissed him, and he kissed her, and perhaps he sensed her newfound reservation, or perhaps he didn’t. But she used a finger to gently turn his head to one side so she could send a flurry of kisses to the skin of his neck, so she could find where his jugular pulsed with his heartbeat beneath his skin.

  Once found, she reached up, careful that her movements wouldn’t give her away, and pulled the nail file from its hiding spot in her hair. She had stopped kissing him, and was staring down at him, not wanting to do what she knew she must. And that moment of hesitation was all that it took for him to turn his head to face her, for him to spy the nail file clutched tightly in her small, but capable, fist, and for his eyes to ask a myriad of questions.

  She reacted fast, and plunged the nail file into his neck, just missing the major artery for which she’d aimed. He let out a primal shriek and threw her off of him with such force that she hit the wall opposite the bed, easily twelve feet. It knocked the air out of her, and she lay for a moment, a rag doll on the floor.

  Viola was breathing heavily as Graham sprang to his feet and plucked the nail file from where she’d buried it in his neck. She’d angled it too far down, it turned out, so that it had missed his windpipe. Damn. She’d really made a mess of this. He tossed the weapon to the hardwood floor beneath his feet, and she thought he would come after her then, attack her maybe, beat her to a bloody pulp.

  But he made no move toward her. In fact, all he seemed to be doing was tugging his terry cloth robe off and pressing it to the not inconsiderable spray of blood from where she’d punctured his neck. He pressed it there, his brea
thing heavy and deep, almost like he was having a panic attack. Viola was frozen where she lay, watching him.

  Because something was happening. She didn’t really believe what she was seeing, even as she was seeing it. And if you asked her to recall the details of this moment, she would simply look at you, wide-eyed, and shake her head.

  Graham McCallum was bent at the waist, using one hand to clutch the robe to his neck; the other he used to brace himself against the edge of the bed. His breathing made his back heave up and down, up and down, in an agonizing rhythm. The change didn’t begin in any one spot: no, the change overtook the entirety of his body all at the same time.

  Hair, thick as carpeting, began to spring up over his spine. It was the same rich brown as that on his head, which gave way to two rounded ears. The once perfectly visible six-pack abs were overtaken with similar hair, but she hardly took notice, as his strong nose curved out and became something of a snout. His arms and legs, also hirsute, were beclawed and broad. What the fuck is happening? she wondered, in shocked dismay. Surely she had knocked her head on the wall just now; surely this couldn’t be happening. What is he? A werewolf, perhaps? God, how absurd, werewolves didn’t exist.

  Did they?

  She forced herself to climb to her feet, even as his human bellowing transformed right along with his body into the roar of a wild beast. For when Graham McCallum lifted his head again, she was staring into a pair of blue eyes that belonged to a brown bear.

  Viola’s eyes grew wide with fright, but it took only one more roar from the beast for her to turn on her heel and dart at top speed out of the bedroom. She flew down the stairs, paying no attention whatsoever to the fact that she remained naked and unarmed. Perhaps she spared a single second’s thought to leaving her gown and Louboutins behind, but she was out the front door as fast as her legs could carry her.