by Dawn Steele
THE ALPHA MEN’S SECRET CLUB 5: FINAL CAPTURE
A Shockingly Hot BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance
By Dawn Steele
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright 2014 by Dawn Steele
Cover art by Dawn Steele
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dawn Steele is the New Adult/romance/shifter romance pen name of Aphrodite Hunt.
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THE ALPHA MEN’S SECRET CLUB 5: FINAL CAPTURE
1
The trouble with the shifter was that he was tough.
Alyssa Foley studied the feed from the many invisible cameras mounted in Rust O’Brien’s cell. It wasn’t really a cell, of course. It was quite spacious . . . for a prison. Rust had his own bedroom with a queen-sized bed and a nice little sitting area – without TV and a computer connected to the Internet.
He had to be kept in the dark from the world outside the FBI compound, lest he be influenced by what was going on.
And there was plenty going on. The word ‘#shifter’ was the number one trending topic on Twitter for the longest time already.
They had to keep all sharp objects from him too, lest he decide to be a martyr. No metal knives. No chopsticks. No glass bottles in his refrigerator – just in case he smashed one and cut his throat with the jagged edge. He was only allowed plastic utensils, plastic mugs, plastic everything.
She had been studying him for a month.
As the FBI’s best young interrogator, Alyssa Foley had cut her teeth in the CIA. She was young, blonde and an outcast in Pakistan, where she was sent to early in her career. But she soon blended in, planting her paid spies everywhere. She had participated in the interrogation and torture of many terrorists.
She had tried water boarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation and far more sinister practices which were publicly outlawed by her government ever since Abu Ghraib blew out of proportion. Nevertheless, the government agencies still practiced them in secret.
Alyssa had no qualms about torture. It was sometimes necessary – to protect the safety of Uncle Sam. And it was also necessary to elicit information which would be used for the advancement of Uncle Sam. Or humankind, in general.
Everything she did to Rust O’Brien was documented, of course, in a video log.
Alyssa ran through the feed highlights once again. Not because she needed to – she had every scene memorized. But simply because she liked to look at him.
He was a very handsome and beguiling man. He had that swagger that was terribly attractive. That confidence, even though he was not in a position to be confident.
And no, she had to remind herself. He was not a man. He was a mutant. A shapeshifter. An aberration of genetics.
He was a supervillain.
She needed to understand him – every fascinating aspect of him. And he was fascinating. Endlessly so.
To do that, she must first break him.
*
The video feed showed DAY ONE:
Rust O’Brien was brought into Area 47 in a black FBI van. He had come on a private plane from New York into this secret New Mexico facility. His hair was slightly mussed from the flight, but he was still impossibly handsome and arresting.
Footsteps.
Alyssa Foley came into view. Her hair was very blonde and her complexion very pale.
ALYSSA: Welcome. I am Alyssa Foley.
RUST: Is your name supposed to mean something to me?
ALYSSA: Of course not. We have never met.
RUST: (sarcastically) I suppose you are one of those people who don’t exist on paper or cyberspace or anywhere else.
ALYSSA: Let me explain what we would like to achieve together, with your help. We would like to learn everything we can about you and your kind. Your parents are also here – in a different section of the facility. You have all been separated.
RUST: So you can give us the third degree individually?
ALYSSA: We can learn a lot from you. You will be making a big contribution to the world.
RUST: Will it be over my dead body?
ALYSSA: We can make it a win-win situation. It doesn’t have to be unpleasant.
RUST: But it can. That’s what you are saying.
ALYSSA: Think of this as a collaboration between your species and ours.
RUST: I thought I belonged to the human race.
ALYSSA: That remains to be seen.
RUST: So what do you have in store for me? A lobotomy? A removal of all my organs?
*
DAY TWO:
ALYSSA: You are not the only one of your kind, are you?
RUST: As far as I know, I am.
ALYSSA: We have your parents here with us.
RUST: Then go bother them. They’re a lot chattier.
ALYSSA: None of you just appeared out of thin air.
RUST: I didn’t think we did. I’m not religious and I don’t believe in immaculate conception. I’m sure you came from an egg yourself. One that’s fertilized by a sperm.
ALYSSA: You think you’re being funny.
RUST: I am funny.
ALYSSA: We want to see you transform.
RUST: What will you give me if I do?
ALYSSA: If you collaborate with us, we can make you very rich and famous.
RUST: I’m already rich and famous.
ALYSSA: What is it that you want most in the world right now?
RUST: I want you to disappear.
ALYSSA: Haha. That’s not going to happen.
RUST: (leans back) I can wait. I have a lot of time on my hands.
ALYSSA: Why don’t you just transform and spare us the unnecessary wait? I don’t want to have to ask my colleagues to work on your parents.
RUST: (suddenly silent) Are you threatening me?
ALYSSA: I’m being solicitous of their wellbeing. Your mother, in particular, is fragile. Her bones are a little more brittle. I don’t want any of my colleagues to . . . manhandle her in an attempt to make her transform. Your father, according to his medical records, has a heart condition.
If you collaborate with us, then we mightn’t have to put them through a rigorous process of expe
rimentation. As much as the FBI doesn’t wish them to, accidents do happen.
RUST: (stares at her) You are threatening me. And them.
ALYSSA: (taking in his piercing green-eyed stare) I want to be your friend. The rest is up to you.
2
Rust was in a deepened enclosure. Around him were several guards, all with tranquilizer darts, ready to put him down at a moment’s notice.
Alyssa watched him from behind a fortified two-way mirror. He could not see her, but he faced her anyway. Resolutely. His eyes meeting hers – which had to be a fluke, she convinced herself, because he really had no clue where she was standing.
“Please go ahead,” she said. “We’re ready when you are.”
He began to take his clothes off.
They had given him some normal street clothes, so he wouldn’t feel like a prisoner. He looked damned fine in them. Her breath caught as she watched him unbutton his shirt. He did it nonchalantly, as though it were of no consequence to him. When he finished, he shrugged it off, with the overhead panel lights gleaming on his magnificent body.
Next, he took off his shoes and socks. And then he unbuckled his belt. What a sight he must be to his girlfriend, she thought. He did have a girlfriend, didn’t he? A human one. Some college student he was involved in a scandal with.
Kate Penney.
She would have to pay a visit to Kate Penney soon.
Rust stripped off his boxers. His cock and balls sprang out. He wasn’t tumescent, of course, especially when he was watched over by four men with tranquilizer guns.
Was he sexy?
She found him sexy as hell, against her own conscience.
Alyssa’s dalliances with men were mostly with coworkers. The nights could get lonely in Pakistani bases. She didn’t love the men, and they sure didn’t love her. It was purely sex, the way she liked it.
She wondered how Kate Penney and Rust O’Brien felt about each other. Was it pure sex or were there emotions involved? Could a godlike being such as Rust O’Brien actually have feelings for a mere human being?
Her heart skipped several beats as he began his metamorphosis. She had seen the video that went viral all over the world, courtesy of the reporter, of course. But it was nothing like watching it live.
All his bones remodeled within his flesh, which shifted and compacted as though it were gelatinous. Then he crouched on all fours. Fur sprouted, as did a tail. Orange and black and white fur. His ears became round and his nose lengthened to become a muzzle.
Alyssa breathed. Such things did exist.
She remembered what she asked him.
“So you shift into a tiger?”
“It says so on CNN. So it must be true.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Excruciatingly.” When her eyes went round, he added, deadpan. “I have a high pain threshold.”
“Do you shift into anything else?”
“Do you have two uteruses?”
“Do you shift into any other animal besides a tiger?”
“No. I’m a specialist.”
So he was antsy and snarky and passively aggressive in his ‘collaboration’ with them. She could live with that. Besides, his snark was sexy.
The tiger growled menacingly at the tranquilizer snipers but did not move towards any of them. He just stood there – a large, magnificent beast – and turned his vivid green gaze on her. She was certain he could sense her behind the mirror. So far, she had not indicated her presence.
The tiger waited. He seemed to say:
“You’ve come, you’ve seen, now what more do you want?”
She could not take her eyes off him.
She reached for the microphone.
“I suppose you can hear me.”
Silence. Of course. Did she expect a talking tiger?
“If you understand me, please raise a paw.”
She hoped she didn’t sound condescending.
The tiger did nothing. He just went on staring at her. In a manner that seemed almost mocking.
“Do you understand me?”
Nothing.
She wondered if he had truly shifted into something bestial, unable to understand human language.
Then he shifted back. Effortlessly. Naturally. Back into his impressive and very naked human physique.
He glowered at her.
“Did you understand what I was saying when you were in your animal state?” she asked.
“No. I was mutely disassociated, like the dumb animal I was.”
She was nonplussed.
“Why don’t you show yourself behind that obvious two-way mirror?” He crossed his arms. “Or do you think I’m too hot for you to handle without a barrier?”
Was he flirting with her? No, he couldn’t be.
Could he?
Alyssa pressed a button and the two-way mirror dissolved into a glass.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m repeating my question.”
“Yes, I understood you the first time. You said, ‘If you understand me, please raise your hand’.”
“I didn’t say ‘hand’.”
“Close.”
“So you did understand me.”
“Of course. That’s how it is.”
“Are you a soul trapped in a tiger’s body when you are in that state?”
“Define ‘trapped’.”
She remembered he was a professor of Psychology. So he was playing with her.
He added, “Provided you actually believe in the concept of a soul. Are you religious, Alyssa Foley?”
She was trying very hard not to stare at his genitals. “No.”
Who was the interrogator here?
“Then why do you use the word ‘trapped’? Is your subconscious trapped in this role of your own making? Does it wear you down to be constantly at the other end of the stick? How many people have you tortured in the name of your country?”
Unbelievable.
Well, she was a seasoned interrogator and he was not going to get to her – psychologist or not.
She said, “I asked you a question. You can interpret it any way you want.”
“So you’d psychoanalyze everything I said? The short answer to your question is that I’m not ‘trapped’, Alyssa Foley. I’m liberated. Perhaps this body you see right here is the real prison. Perhaps my natural state is the beast.”
She couldn’t decide if he was pulling her leg.
“Can you transform at will?” she asked.
“Or at the behest of others, obviously, even though my subconscious is unwilling.”
“Good.” No way he was going to get under her skin. “Because we’re going to test how you react to different stimuli.”
3
Kate Penney was a woman with a mission. She stared out of the window – anxiously, purposefully. Her senses were enhanced for some reason or other, and perhaps it had to do with the little entity growing inside her womb.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Ms. Penney?” asked Hector from upfront.
“I’m sure.”
Kate caressed her rounded belly. There was a baby bump all right, one that she couldn’t hide any longer. She thought of all the possible repercussions and set her mouth in a thin, grim line.
She would do anything for this baby.
Anything.
The limousine, now at her every beck and command, cruised to the mansion which had brought along all their troubles in the first place.
*
It was great that Aaron Mitchell agreed to see her despite all the drama they were all entwined in. Of course, now that Rust was cleared of his son Teddy’s murder, Aaron had warmed up to the prospect that neither she nor Rust was the enemy.
The forbidding gates swung open again, and the limo purred into the compound. Sufficient time had passed for the reporters not to be camped outside this mansion.
Once inside, it was Aaron himself who opened the front door. He was quite unlike any billionaire she had ever met. Not that she
was in the business of meeting billionaires on a regular basis. She remembered his kindness to her on the night of his son’s murder and her chest warmed.
Perhaps he would help her.
“Kate,” he acknowledged her.
“Aaron. Thank you for seeing me.”
“Not at all.” He showed her in. “I hear you’ve made yourself at home in the O’Brien manor.”
“The house is empty without Rust and his parents. I don’t think of it as home. I know I didn’t get the chance to tell you earlier, but I’m sorry about your son.”
Aaron shook his head. His handsome face was lined. He had aged five years since Kate last saw him on the night of the rave. She remembered the ebullient billionaire and philanthropist she had seen on TV when she was growing up, and decided that this was an older, wiser and sadder man.
“He pissed off the wrong person too many,” he said. “But please . . . you’ve come here about the living, not to dreg up old wounds about the dead. This is about Rust, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Kate took a seat.
“You’re pregnant,” Aaron observed.
“Yes.”
His face grew grave. “This is not a good thing right now. You do know that, right?”
“I do know that if the FBI finds out, they would want a piece of the baby.” It sounded horrible, and she cringed at the mental image of it. She met his eyes. “That’s why I’m coming to you now. I’ve thought long and hard about everything. I can’t stand not knowing what’s going on in that place in New Mexico, or wherever the hell he really is. I don’t know what they are doing to Rust and his parents.”
“They are the FBI, Kate. They can do anything they like under the thinly disguised veil of national security.”
“How does Rust pose a threat to national security? He’s only one man.”
“It’s not what he poses. It’s the idea of him. Of all of us.”
