by Amira Rain
THE ISLAND
OF ALPHAS
A BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance
AMIRA RAIN
Copyright ©2015 by Amira Rain
All rights reserved.
About This Book
Fertility Doctor Liz Fowler is not having the best of times in life. Her fiance has left her, she is in debt and now she is unemployed.
So she cannot believe her luck when she is approached by a handsome and very mysterious man named Eric who offers her a job. A job he describes as being very, very important.
Eric claims he owns a private island and needs her help to solve a fertility problem on that island. In return she will paid very, very handsomely.
Liz is very eager to take this job however once she arrives on the Island she begins to realize that not everything is as it seems.
Liz is set to discover that this is not just any island, this is The Island Of Alphas and it is a place where, literally, anything can happen.
Liz is in for another shock when she discovers that the Alpha wolves that reside on the island want her to help solve their fertility problem in a more practical way then she first expected...
They don't want her as their doctor, they want her as their MATE!
ALSO BY AMIRA RAIN....
SOLD
TO THE DRAGONS
#1 Paranormal Romance Bestseller
In a dystopian future, fertile women are so hard to come by that they are now bought and sold for huge sums of money across the world. You could say that women are the new currency.
Curvy Kira Southerly is one of the few remaining fertile women left on the planet and she has resigned herself to the fate of being SOLD.
However, she had no idea she would end up being sold to two young and handsome bachelors named Blake and Steven. They are both dragon shifters and they are intent on mating with her and producing a baby as soon as possible.
With not enough fertile women to go around the brothers have no choice but to share the curvy beauty among themselves. Something that allows Kira to fulfill her every sexual fantasy....
Being sold to dragons should not be this much fun, should it?
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CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
The deep male voice calling out from the reception area startled me so badly I dropped the stack of framed diplomas and pictures I was holding. I'd just taken them off the wall in my office. They fell to the floor with a crash, the glass in several of the frames breaking.
I sighed, closing my eyes. "Because I just needed another huge mess in my life."
I already had plenty. Due to my business partner's negligence in paying taxes, among many other areas of financial negligence, our jointly-owned fertility clinic had been shut down just two years after opening. The IRS had also seized all my personal assets and had frozen my bank account. I was ruined. At least, that's the way it felt.
Realistically, I knew I’d be able to dig my way out of the mess I was in. After all, I still had my medical license. I was still allowed to practice. However, I realized it would take time for me to re-establish myself as a doctor and secure a new position. It would take time to pick up the pieces of my life.
Just because I could still legally practice medicine didn’t mean that other clinics would be jumping to hire me, that I knew for sure. Despite the fact that my business partner, Andrew, had been responsible for all financial aspects of our practice, my name had still been dragged through the mud. On paper, it appeared as though I'd had a hand in nonpayment of taxes, tax fraud, and possibly even defrauding patients.
It would likely take months, or even years, before I found a clinic or hospital willing to take me on. In the meantime, I wasn't sure how I was going to make a living and survive.
To make matters worse, Jason, my fiancé, or former fiancé rather, had left me, without any explanation, shattering my heart, several months earlier. This had been right on the heels of essentially losing my best friend when she'd accepted a government position working at the US embassy in Belgium. Which had happened almost exactly a year after my mother, the only parent I'd ever known, and my last surviving family member, had been killed in a car accident.
I felt as if I had no one left in my life, and really, I didn't. And now, I'd also lost my dream of owning my own fertility clinic. A long-time dream I'd had to fight like hell for to make a reality.
School, as far as the academic part of it, had been the easy part. Deemed "gifted" in science and math by my teachers, I'd graduated high school early, at fifteen. Getting into my top-choice university had been a breeze. Paying for it all had been the struggle.
Even with scholarships covering a good portion of my tuition, the sizable remainder of it had been more than my single mother could easily handle. She'd worked two jobs during my undergrad years, and I'd waited tables thirty hours a week while going to school full-time. During medical school, I'd almost literally lived off of instant noodles and peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches. But I'd made it. To my and my mother's joy, I'd graduated near the top of my class and became a doctor.
After my residency, I'd decided to partner with Andrew, a fellow med school student, and we opened a fertility clinic. Helping women with fertility issues had always been my passion, and I looked forward to doing so for the rest of my life. I'd been just twenty-six when the clinic opened, younger than some of my clients by a decade or two. Now, at twenty-eight, I was boxing up everything in my office, unemployed and heartbroken.
I knew I'd been stupid by giving complete control and oversight of all financial aspects of the practice to Andrew. I knew it. I didn't need anyone to tell me this, though people still did, of course. I'd simply wanted to focus more on the patient-care aspect of the business, and I'd trusted Andrew. Now I was paying the price for my naiveté.
On this particular day, a couple of weeks after the clinic had been officially shut down, I was boxing up a few last things from my office. I just wanted to be done with it and get the hell out of there. But now, it was going to take me a little longer, on account of the sea of broken glass at my feet. I dropped the frames when that deep male voice had startled me. It was all going to have to be carefully cleaned up and the broken frames disposed of.
Despite there being a large Closed sign on the front door of the clinic, and despite the fact that I'd canceled all deliveries of medical supplies, a few deliverymen had still stopped by that week with various odds-and-ends, things I'd forgotten I'd even ordered. I'd meant to lock the front door before heading into my office to finish packing up that day, though now I realized I'd forgotten.
Figuring the deep male voice belonged to yet another deliveryman, I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted out the open door of my office.
"Please just leave all boxes in the reception area! Thank You!"
I knew he'd probably ask me to come out and sign something, though I hoped he wouldn't. Like it had with a deliveryman earlier that week, I knew coming out to sign something would likely lead to questions about why the clinic had closed, and what my plans were now. And I just didn't feel like answering. The latter question, I couldn't, because I myself didn't even know.
But the man that had called out from the reception area now announced that he wasn't making a delivery. "My name is Eric James, and I'm looking for a Dr. Elizabeth Fowler! I'm hoping for just a moment of her time!"
Stifling a groan, I wondered if he was maybe a prospective patient who just hadn't seen the Closed sign on the door. Or, who had seen it, but had also seen lights on inside and had found the door unlocked, and had therefore, maybe, thought the sign had been left up by mistake. At any rate, I knew it was rude to make a person shout from the reception area.
Surveying the mess of broken glass on my office floor, I shouted myself one last time. "One second, please!"
On the way from my office to the reception area, which was at the end of a short hallway, I re-pinned a few strands of light brown hair that had fallen loose from the messy bun on top of my head. Then, realizing my clothes had gotten a bit dusty while I'd cleaned out a storage closet earlier, I brushed a bit of dust from the front of my jeans and navy blue sweater. I certainly wasn't feeling or looking very much like a doctor. I hoped my visit with the man in the reception area would be brief.
To that end, I began speaking before even fully clearing the hallway and coming into view of the reception area. "I'm sorry, but this clinic is closed for good. I can refer you to another clinic and give you the business card of...."
My voice trailed off upon reaching the reception area because standing there, just adjacent to the front desk, was the most attractive man I'd ever seen in my life. The most attractive man I'd ever seen in my life, hands down, without a doubt.
He stood a good several inches above six feet tall with broad shoulders and a trim waist. Of course, I couldn't tell for sure, because of his clothes, but I just had a feeling that beneath his clothes, his long, lean body was almost entirely composed of rock-hard muscle. He had what I considered the perfect male physique. He had what I absolutely knew most women on the planet would consider the perfect male physique.
His face was equally as jaw-droppingly attractive. With a strong, square jaw, high cheekbones, a full mouth, and heavy-lidded coal-gray eyes, it was a work of art in and of itself. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen a face more beautiful, yet entirely masculine, at the same time.
This devastatingly attractive man, who appeared to be in his early thirties, was wearing an immaculate black suit. I was in jeans. With my hair in a very sloppy, hastily-done bun. I was standing in a shuttered fertility clinic that I'd been co-owner of, a clinic that had been shut down because of tax evasion.
I wished for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. I wished to spontaneously combust, the act of becoming a fireball sparing me from further interaction with this handsome stranger. But, as I knew neither of these things were likely to happen, I took a deep breath as discreetly as I could and finished what I'd been saying.
"I can give you the business card of a highly-respected fertility clinic nearby if you'd like. This clinic here is never going to reopen.”
The beyond-handsome stranger in front of me dipped his head in a nod, making his thick, nearly black hair glint in the overhead lights. "I know, and I'm very sorry about that. I read about the closing in one of the local papers."
The newspaper article. I had to fight not to cringe. Though a fertility clinic closing in Manhattan usually didn't make the news, Andrew was the son of a prominent New York City politician, so this closing, and some of the details about the tax evasion, had. A picture of Andrew and me at the clinic's grand opening open house had been included with the article.
In the picture, I'd been grinning from ear-to-ear, holding a giant pair of scissors to a wide red ribbon spanning the length of two pillars supporting the entryway of the clinic. Behind me, a cluster of at least a dozen balloons shaped like baby bottles had swayed in a breeze, anchored to a stone planter filled with flowers. Those had been happy days, and it was a happy picture. Not one I'd ever dreamed would accompany an article about the near-complete and total ruin of my career.
In response to the handsome stranger in the lobby saying he was sorry about the closing, I lifted the sides of my mouth in a tiny polite smile, at the same time fighting a wave of butterflies caused by the stranger's mere presence. "Thank you. Now, what can I help you with?"
That gorgeous man spoke, his expression unreadable. "What you can help me with might take a minute for me to explain; so please allow me to introduce myself and then maybe we can sit down. I'm Eric James. And please, call me Eric."
He extended a large, long-fingered, strong-looking hand, and I took it, though a bit warily. I knew it would be rude of me not to give this man a minute of my time, maybe to listen to his particular fertility issue and then steer him in the direction of a particular specialist or something, I thought. But frankly, I still just wanted to get the hell out of the clinic, away from all reminders of what I was losing.
I shook the man's hand, hoping I'd be able to help him quickly. "It's nice to meet you, Eric. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Fowler. Though, please call me Liz."
I'd always gone by Dr. Fowler, except if a patient specifically asked that I call them by their first name. Then, I'd take their lead and assume they wanted a less formal relationship, and I'd ask them to call me Liz. Not that Eric was going to become a patient of mine, and thank God for that, I thought. Though I prided myself on remaining professional at all times, just the idea of examining Eric's body made me feel slightly weak in the knees.
His grip was firm and his hand warm, and he gave my own hand a few good pumps before releasing it. "It's wonderful to meet you, Liz." He looked deeply into my eyes while he spoke, infusing his words with sincerity and increasing the amount of butterflies in my stomach as well. Increasing them even more than the feel of his touch already had, that is.
Normally fairly confident and unruffled, I stuttered and stammered my way through, asking him to follow me to my office, then turned and began leading him there with my face a little warm. My face got a little warmer still, when I realized that he now had a perfect view of my derriere and ample time to study it.
I'd always been slightly self-conscious about my rear, though not because I didn't like it or it was unattractively-shaped; that wasn't it at all. I'd always been self-conscious because my rear, though not extremely large, was definitely on the rounder, fuller side, which always seemed to make men take a very attentive interest in it. A very attentive interest that, when it came from a very handsome man like Eric, could make me feel a little self-conscious, though in a not-entirely-unpleasant sort of way.
I fully realized that Eric's possible focus on my rear probably should not have been my focus right then. I knew I probably should have been thinking more about the fact that I was leading a man I'd just met even further into an empty clinic without another soul in the building. Something about Eric just wasn't giving me serial killer vibes, though.
When we reached my office, I began heading around to my desk, telling him to please have a seat in a chair opposite. While I spoke, my tennis shoes crunched over bits of glass and pieces of plastic frame. I'd completely forgotten about the mess.
I glanced at it, wincing. "Sorry. Please step around, I guess."
Eric looked from the broken glass to me, frowning. "I'm so sorry. Did I make you do this? I thought I heard some sort of a crash earlier. Here. Please direct me to the nearest closet with a broom and dustpan, and I'll clean this up for you."
I said that really wasn't necessary, and I meant it, but Eric insisted that he should clean up what he'd caused, so I told him there was a cleaning closet just around the corner in the hallway.
&n
bsp; "I'm pretty sure there's a broom and a dustpan in there. Somewhere, anyway. I don't think the cleaning crew was ever too organized."
Eric gave me a half-grin that instantly turned my insides to jelly. "Be right back."
He left my office and soon returned with the needed supplies, plus a small hand-held vacuum cleaner and then he got right to work. Not really knowing what to say while he did so, and with the vacuum cleaner running half the time anyway, preventing conversation, I busied myself packing up more things from my office.
However, I couldn't help but sneak a few peeks at Eric as I went along. Crouched on the floor in his immaculate black suit, running the hand-held vacuum over various patches of carpet that glittered with micro-fine glass particles, he made quite a picture. Quite an unusual and irresistible picture.
Even cleaning up glass pieces on the floor, he moved in a confident, purposeful, masculine way. If he was an alpha male, which I was positive he was, the cleaning task took nothing away from that status. Whereas, most men might have looked awkward and emasculated crouched down, running a hand-held broom across carpet, he didn't at all.
