Red Hot Alphas: 11 Novels of Sexy, Bad Boy, Alpha Males (Red Hot Boxed Sets Book 2)

by Jo Raven

She yawned.

  The Beast Man’s body came closer.

  She let her eyelids fall. Not that it mattered. It was just as dark behind her lids as it was with her eyes open.

  But then the Beast Man suddenly wrapped his body around hers.

  His strong arms around her waist, his bare chest pressing into her.

  Oh, she thought. He’s really not a dog at all.

  * * *

  The Beast Man was wearing a pair of jeans, but he wasn’t wearing anything else, and that meant that whenever Calla tried to move to push him away, she brushed some part of his bare anatomy. His muscled arms, his hard chest, his taut stomach.

  He was close, and he was warm, and there was something that felt right about being wrapped up in his arms.

  His head rested on her shoulder. One arm was behind her, resting on her waist. The other arm was flung over the front of her body. His body curved around hers.

  It was very intimate, and it wasn’t anything like a dog might do. Dogs didn’t have limbs, and they didn’t know how to put their arms around people. It wasn’t animalistic at all, except for the fact that most animals—mammals, anyway—did seem to like to curl up together for warmth when they slept. And, she supposed, if she was honest, there was nothing sexual about what the Beast Man was doing. He was holding onto her, but he wasn’t trying anything.

  It was her. She was the one that was making this sexual.

  Because from the moment the Beast Man’s body had touched hers, she’d felt like something inside her had been woken up, like a spark of flame was growing deep in her core. Every place they touched sizzled. She felt feverish, a little out of breath—as if in breathless anticipation for something that was going to happen.

  But nothing was going to happen.

  It was wrong for her to feel this way about him. He wasn’t all there in the head, quite obviously. If she were to allow anything to happen between them, she’d be taking advantage of him. He was innocent and sweet and pure. It was her thoughts which were deviant and wrong.

  And she wasn’t going to be able to keep from having them if they were close like this. Which was why she was trying to push him away.

  She wriggled in his grasp, turning to face him, and she placed both of her hands on his chest and pushed.

  Oh, she thought. I’ve never felt a man’s chest that felt like this. It’s warm. It’s flesh. But it’s so solid, like stone.

  He didn’t let go of her, but he did lift his head and give her a puzzled expression.

  Damn it. Why was he holding onto her? He wasn’t totally an animal, was he? There was some part of him that was a man. She remembered the way he’d punched the wall beside her head, the way he’d struggled to make noise, almost as if he was struggling to speak.

  “What are you?” she whispered to him.

  He cocked his head.

  He furrowed his brow. And then licked his lips. He opened his mouth. He made a sound. It was a low “errrrrrr” noise, half strangled. He sounded even more mentally challenged than she’d first thought.

  She held up her hand, shaking her head. “It’s okay.”

  He stopped the sound, storm clouds gathering in his eyes. He was angry with himself.

  She patted his forearm. Geez, it was like hot granite too. “It’s okay. Really.”

  His shoulders slumped. He moved his head back to lay it on her shoulder.

  “No,” she said, pulling back.

  He recoiled quizzically.

  “It isn’t right,” she tried to explain. She pointed out away from herself. “You sleep there.”

  His brow furrowed again, and his grip tightened on her body.

  A tiny jolt of fear went through her again. What if he wouldn’t let go of her? This man seemed gentle and innocent, but he was clearly a full grown man, and he probably still had male hormones running all through him.

  Maybe she wasn’t the only person making it sexual. Maybe he wanted her too.

  In fact, maybe she had been right before, when she’d speculated she was here for the Beast Man’s pleasure. Maybe the carnival workers had to keep their Beast Man satisfied in order for him to perform. Maybe they nabbed women and locked them up with him here so that he could have his way with them…

  She shuddered, the tiny bit of fear growing stronger.

  And his grip on her loosened. He yipped at her, butting his head against her shoulder.

  She understood it as a reassuring gesture. She smiled at him.

  He laid his head on her shoulder again and snuggled against her body.

  She sighed. Maybe there was no avoiding it. As long as it went no further than innocent physical closeness, she supposed it wasn’t wrong, no matter what forbidden desires his nearness wrung from her body.

  She shut her eyes.

  The Beast Man shifted, getting more comfortable.

  And that was when she felt him… poke her.

  With his…

  She stiffened. All right, so he was aroused. They were both aroused, and they were lying in each other’s arms.

  She gulped. Would it really be so horrible a thing to give in to a willing man, even if he wasn’t strictly all-there in the brains department? It wouldn’t hurt him, would it? He’d probably enjoy himself, and he had such a glorious body. She wanted it stretched out against her, wanted to be able to run her fingers over all of his bare, muscled flesh. It had been quite a long time since she’d made love. She and Chad had been anorexic in the bedroom for months and months before he left. She longed for the feeling of a man inside her, a man filling her up. And from the way that poke felt, the Beast Man would do a pretty good job of it.

  She drew in a shuddering breath, bringing up one hand to caress his shoulder.

  His hand moved against her waist, sending thrills through her body.

  She gasped.

  The Beast Man shifted position quickly, and suddenly, his body was over hers, pinning hers to the floor. His pelvis ground into hers, and she found herself parting her legs to cradle his hips with her own.

  She felt frightened and excited and unsure. “I don’t think… We really shouldn’t.” Her voice was a squeak.

  The Beast Man looked into her eyes, and she could swear that she saw tenderness in his expression, which didn’t make sense. Couldn’t make sense. He caressed her cheek again, and then his lips came for hers.

  Her heart pounding, she let her eyes flutter closed.

  And then, there was the first touch of his lips against hers—soft and warm and just a little insistent.

  Could a Beast Man know how to kiss?

  She opened her mouth to let in his tongue, which swept inside, tasting and claiming her.

  She whimpered, confused and stunned. His kiss was so sweet.

  Light.

  Startled, she turned to see that there was a square of light appearing at the other end of the room.

  The short wall—it wasn’t a wall at all, but a door. It was all being lifted up, and as the light filled the room, she realized that it wasn’t a room either. She was in the back of a freight container—the kind that was attached to a trailer and pulled behind a truck. That was why everything was metal, why there was no door, why it was shaped like a big rectangle. She let out a little cry as it all slid into place.

  A figure stepped up into the freight container. Lit from behind, she couldn’t make out the figure’s features, but she could see it was a man.

  “Aw, hell, Ryder,” said the man. “Get the fuck off of her, you idiot.”

  The Beast Man got up on all fours, but her body was still trapped between his limbs. He turned to the man and growled.

  The man was advancing across the container. “I mean it. If you don’t move, I’m going to have to tranq you.” The man reached back and took out something gun shaped.

  Calla drew in breath.

  The Beast Man growled again, this time more menacingly.

  The man shook his head. “Ryder, I swear I don’t know what I’m going to do with—”
<
br />   The Beast Man leapt off Calla, lunging for the man.

  The man raised the gun shape. There was a bang.

  The Beast Man squealed, halting in midair, and then falling to the ground.

  “Damn it,” said the man. He eyed Calla. “I was hoping you’d make him better, not worse.”

  Calla looked from the body of the Beast Man to the man. Could she run? If she did, would the man shoot her too? He’d said it was a tranquilizer, so she hoped that the Beast Man wasn’t dead. But whatever the case, she couldn’t leave the Beast Man here. These people were mistreating him. He was a mentally ill man who needed help, and Calla had already decided to help him.

  Slowly, she got to her feet.

  “Hey,” said the man, “did he hurt you? I’m real sorry if he did. I didn’t think he would.”

  She recognized the man now. He was the ticket taker, the man who’d jeered at her, asking if she was scared. She drew herself up and said to him in her best no-nonsense-teacher voice. “You have to let me go.”

  The man sighed. “I need you to try a little longer with him. If it’s hopeless, I promise, I’ll let you go, but until then, I just can’t. I’m sorry.” He gestured to the end of the container, where it was light. “You hungry?”

  Her stomach growled in response.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Just because she was hungry didn’t mean she came easily. She was wary of this man, and she didn’t trust him. But when he walked out of the freight container, she followed him cautiously.

  Outside, she found herself deep in the woods. There were huge trees all around the container. It was early morning, she realized. She’d probably been working her way around the container for most of the night.

  The man looked back at her. “We’re about an hour’s drive from where the carnival’s set up, but we’re at least a two-hour’s drive from any town. There isn’t anyone else around here, so don’t even bother yelling for help or nothing. No one’s coming.”

  Calla licked her lips. She really didn’t like this guy.

  He gestured to a tent which he had set up in a small clearing of trees. Next to it was a small campfire, and on the campfire was a saucepan. Something inside it smelled delicious. Her stomach did gymnastics inside her. Her mouth started to water.

  “You’re probably thirsty,” said the man. He opened up a cooler and handed her a bottle of water.

  She snatched it from him. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she, in fact, was.

  He watched as she guzzled the water. “I guess you’re wondering why I brought you here.”

  She lowered the bottle. She was interested, but she also didn’t want to engage in polite conversation with this man. He’d kidnapped her, after all, and he wasn’t very nice to the Beast Man. He was the bad guy, and bad guys didn’t deserve politeness.

  “I don’t do things like this,” he said. “Capture people, that is. It’s just…” He sighed. Then he sat down in a camp chair by the fire and gestured for her to join him.

  She didn’t.

  He shrugged. He took the lid off the saucepan that was on the fire. Steam rolled up, along with the delicious scent.

  It was oatmeal, Calla realized. Seasoned with cinnamon and maple syrup, full of walnuts and raisins. God, she was hungry.

  The man began to dip some of the oatmeal into a bowl. “My name’s Jasper,” he said. “And you already met my brother Ryder.”

  She furrowed her brow. Brother? What was he talking about?

  “I am really sorry if he hurt you. It seemed like before, when you were talking to him in the tent, that he’d listen to you. I haven’t seen him listen to anyone like that. You made him calm, and no one can do that. I just thought that maybe if anybody could help him—”

  “What’s wrong with him?” she blurted. She was breaking her rule not to ask questions, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to know more about the Beast Man. About… Ryder.

  He held up the bowl of oatmeal. “Hungry?”

  She wanted to refuse him, because he was an awful man, and she didn’t want to owe him anything. But she was starving, so she went and sat down in the other camp chair. And she accepted the bowl of oatmeal.

  Jasper handed her a spoon. “Do you know much about werewolves?”

  She jumped, sloshing a little of the oatmeal out of her bowl and onto her leggings. She’d almost forgotten about this stupid outfit she was wearing. But she didn’t much care how she looked right now. And she didn’t care about a stain either.

  But Jasper was giving her handfuls of napkins, apologizing left and right. “I know people don’t like to talk about werewolves,” he said. “Most folks are afraid. But you got to understand that my family and I, we aren’t anything like the stories you hear on the news. Those wolves are mutts—they turn into a wolf because they catch it.”

  Calla knew all about that too. Everyone did. It was in the PSAs from the Sullivan Foundation that ran on TV. It was mentioned in health classes in school. Heck, she’d been put through at least three in-services as a teacher in which she’d been required to talk to her students about the dangers of STDs—including the lupine virus, which could be spread through sexual contact. Like other STDs, it was greatly diminished through the use of condoms. She wiped at her leggings, and tried to only focus on those aspects of werewolves, not anything else.

  She wouldn’t think about the red balloon. She wouldn’t.

  “My family,” said Jasper, “we were all born werewolves. Natural and not scary at all. My mom and dad are our alpha wolves, and the alphas keep their children—the beta wolves—from shifting at a full moon. So, we’re not dangerous. Not at all.”

  Ryder was a werewolf. She shut her eyes. That changed things. Maybe he didn’t deserve her help after all. Maybe he didn’t—

  “I swear to God,” said Jasper, “none of us have ever hurt anyone. We’re not like the mutts. The mutts shift out of control and they hurt people, because they don’t have alphas. We’re not like that.”

  “Never?” said Calla. Her voice quavered.

  “Never,” he said.

  She took a bite of oatmeal. It was very good, and she immediately took another one. Throughout the rest of the conversation, she continued to eat the oatmeal.

  “Ryder disappeared from home a long time ago, back when he was just out of high school. Ryder didn’t want to work at the carnival, and my father wasn’t pleased that he was leaving the family business. We didn’t see him for years, but then he came back one day. Except he was in wolf form, and it seemed like he’d been that way for a long, long time. He wouldn’t shift back.”

  Calla looked back at the container. Was that why he acted like an animal?

  “If you stay in wolf form too long, you start… losing things,” said Jasper. “You forget who you are. You just… fade out and become a wolf. Like your human part just kind of disappears.”

  “I see,” said Calla quietly. He did think he was an animal, then. But he wasn’t mentally damaged. Not the way she’d been thinking anyway.

  “Well, he got hurt,” said Jasper. “He was in wolf form, and he got hurt bad, and when werewolves get hurt like that, they shift back to human. It’s just an instinct, you know? And he got better and healed and all. But he still doesn’t know he’s human. He still thinks he’s a wolf. I don’t know what to do with him.”

  Calla set down her spoon. She’d been feeling a little sorry for Jasper, but now she was angry. “Well, making him a sideshow attraction at a carnival definitely wasn’t a good idea.”

  Jasper glared at her. “Got to earn his keep somehow. We generate money in that attraction, and he gets paid for it. I have to feed him.”

  Calla narrowed her eyes. “You’re exploiting him.”

  “I’m taking care of him.”

  She shook her head.

  “Look, I don’t care if you agree with me,” said Jasper. “I didn’t bring you out here so that you could pass judgment on me. I got it hard enough as it is.”

  She rolle
d her eyes.

  “You think it’s easy trying to take care of a brother that doesn’t even know who he is? You think that feels good, remembering what he used to be like and seeing him now? He’s not himself. He’s not even human.”

  “He is human,” said Calla. “You’re the one who’s treating him like an animal.”

  Jasper snorted. “Oh, you’re all fired up about protecting him, are you? Here I thought he was attacking you when I opened up that container. Guess you weren’t as attacked as I thought.”

  Calla turned bright red.

  He leaned forward. “I didn’t bring you here for that, lady, but if it helps him, I don’t care.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I don’t care what you were doing,” he said. “All I care about is trying to get Ryder back. I saw a change in him when you spoke to him. I don’t know what it meant. Maybe it only means that you can get him to obey better—train him like a dog. But even that would be easier than the way things are now. But I’m hoping you can do more than that. I’m hoping you can find the human part in him somewhere. You can bring him back.”

  She was aghast. “How could I do something like that?” She didn’t have any kind of experience with helping werewolves become human again. “Why would you think that I could do it? All I did was tell him to stop. I didn’t—”

  “Like I said, you’re the only person he’s ever listened to like that.” He raised his eyebrows. “Will you try?”

  She grimaced. “What if I say no?”

  He glared at her. “Don’t say no.”

  “What if I want you to let me leave this place right now?”

  His lip curled. “Too bad.”

  She looked away, down at the grass.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Jasper. “Because you’re going to help him anyway. If you refuse to be compliant, then you and Ryder can get locked back up in that container every day. If you promise to help out, then I’ll let you stay out here in the camp.” He smiled.

  She looked around. She didn’t want to be locked back up in that container again. And all she had to do was pretend to cooperate. Whenever she felt it was time to make her move, she could. She could get away from Jasper. Maybe she could even take Ryder with her. She didn’t think he belonged with someone like Jasper, who was treating him so badly.