My Alpha, My Bodyguard

Although being an actress certainly had its share of perks, the downsides tended to be far more harrowing. Mostly because they had the tendency to be broadcast throughout the world. There was hardly such thing as personal privacy when one wrong move could get your name and face plastered on every gossip column this side of the west. The high life was a dream, but a fragile one. Appearances were everything, and secrets were the ropes that bound them up. Vivienne knew that better than most because she was hiding several ugly little truths of her own.Like right now. Vivienne Hardison pushed open the door of her manager’s office to a sight that stopped her dead in her tracks. Biting back the gasp in her throat, she braced herself against the expected wave of sadness and leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb of her manager’s office; arms folded loosely across her chest as she watched cinema’s newest up-and-coming star bounce away on his lap. From this angle, Vivienne couldn’t see his fac

The barista, a freckle-faced teenager with curly brown hair and olive skin, fumbled to raise his head from the mobile badly hidden behind the register when Vivienne made it to the front. Painting on a patented magazine smile, she greeted him politely, “Hi, could I get a black coffee for here? Medium, please.”“Um…” Dark blue eyes went wide behind the round frames of his glasses. The phone slipped out of his hands and clattered very loudly on the ground.Experience allowed her to maintain her grace, though his behaviour confused her. It would be easy to call him starstruck, but Vivienne wasn’t a star. Depeche Mode had been the highest point of her career in terms of attention, but it had been a relatively small role in mid-tier Netflix series. No one stopped her in the street to ask for autographs, and baristas definitely didn’t get tongue-tied in front of her. This kid had definitely recognized her, but probably not for the reason other people normally would.Just as she was about to

Marcus Riviera considered himself to be a good man. At the very least, he tried to be a decent person. A life spent honing his instincts to fit in with normal human society had taught him how to ignore the auditory dissonance of information that bombarded his ears every day, and parse through the mishmash of olfactory sensations that assaulted his nose. Many times, after returning home with a splitting headache he had caught himself wishing that he was a wolf shifter and not a bear, if only to give his brain a break from the odorous overload. In addition to that, society was far more accepting of smaller shifter types. Cats, dogs, rabbits, they all tended to get first dibs when it came to lobbying for public acceptance. Even werewolves, vicious as they could be, were the most common shifter group and were thus better able to argue from a point of statistical significance in the population. Marcus didn’t begrudge them that, but he missed his little hideaway farmhouse. The sma

No matter how bad her mood was, there was nothing like freshly made breakfast food to perk a girl up from even the direst of situations. Sometimes Vivienne thought the only thing standing between her and the short edge of a very steep cliffside was a cheesy omelet and a cup of steaming hot java.Vivienne curled up on her bed, carefully balancing the mug on the edge of the bedside table while she ate her eggs on toast. Normally she was never up this early, but she hadn’t been able to sleep during the night. Every creaking sigh of the wooden beams, every gnawing squeak of the furniture, every rasping hum of an engine outside the window terrified her with the dire possibilities. What if there was still someone inside the house watching her? News and story forums were full of tales like that. Horror anecdotes of strangers living in the gaps between the

Marcus wasn’t a stupid man. He was well aware that he was acting a tad overprotective of his new charge. Obviously remaining at home – within a known confined space – was the safest option, and it was common to scope out venues prior to arrival to ensure that the client remained safe, but supermarkets were far too open to do so. Marcus was good, but he was just one man, and he didn’t have the authority or funds to cordon off the building and subject every casual shopper to a strip search. Not that he’d ever needed to. Gunpowder had a very distinct smell, and it was one he would never be able to mistake for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, that didn’t rule out other possibilities such as knives or poison. One of the bodyguards at the agency Marcus was affiliated with had told a story about a greedy uncle who had tried to bump off his young nephew by smearing peanut oil along the rim of the child’s cup. If not for her nose and lightning-fast reflexes, the toddler might have