The Alpha Men's Secret Club 3: Fallout: A Scorchingly Hot BBW Shifter Romance

THE ALPHA MEN’S SECRET CLUB
3: FALLOUT

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.

GET A FREE NOVELLA!
Please visit her blog at either
http://dawnsteele.blogspot.com/
or
http://aphroditehunt.blogspot.com/
for a full list of books and to sign up for her exciting mailing list. For a sign-up, you will get an erotic sus
pense novella completely FREE!
 

Dawn Steele/
Aphrodite Hunt is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her stories have been in the Top 5 of the Amazon overall bestselling charts, the 10 of the Barnes and Nobles overall charts and the No. 1 spot in Amazon's Movers and Shakers. She is a Top 50 Amazon Most Popular author.
She has had no less than 42 stories hit Amazon's Top 100 Erotica/New Adult/Paranormal Romance charts and two which have hit the Top 2. 18 of them have hit the Top 100 Barnes and Nobles bestseller charts.

Go to her mailing list to sign up here:

Aphrodite Hunt Mailing List

This mailing list will be for all three pen names: Dawn Steele, Aphrodite Hunt and Artemis Hunt. I’ll only update you on a new romance (and all its subgenres) release, and not erotica for fear of offending some sensibilities. Erotica updates will be on Aphrodite Hunt’s blog only.

You can also scan your smart phone over this code for the mailing list:

THE ALPHA MEN’S SECRET CLUB
3: FALLOUT

1

Fiona Montgomery appeared more confident than she felt. As she walked to the Dean’s office in her high heels, which were completely unsuitable for campus wear, all sorts of misgivings were tumbling in her head.

Misgivings about what she was about to do.

Should I?

Shouldn’t I?

Should I walk in there and destroy a man’s life?

There was a devil whispering in her left ear:
Destroy him, destroy him. He doesn’t want to fuck you. He’s a man, and all men are evil. Just like your stepfather, who took your innocence and made you what you are.

At the same time, there was a higher voice
of reason, which sounded tinny and hollow in her other ear:
You can stop this vicious descent. If you do this, you will never be able to take it back
.

But she was so far gone now. At least, she convinced herself that she was very far gone. Sometimes, when you have stared despair and depravity in the face so many times, you start to become
so damaged yourself that there was no going back, like a cancer which had extended its claws and rooted itself deeply in your vital organs.

B
esides, he rejected me.

That stung.

It stung more than she could bear to let it. After all, he was the object of her adoration. Rust O’Brien. Intellectual, unattainable sex god. A sex god who could have any woman on campus – and out of it – that he wanted. And he had the gall to choose that fat cow, Kate Penney.

Yes. Kate Penney – whose name and portly visage did not even cross Fiona’s mind until recently.

She imagined Rust’s hard body grinding against Kate’s cushiony one. Granted, Kate would be the type of girl that
some
men craved, with her exaggerated curves and her doughy pouches. And a sickly, visceral feeling choked up Fiona’s esophagus.

He chose her over me
.

That was what quickened her step and steeled her resolve as she entered the Dean’s office.

His PA looked up.

Fiona said, “I want to see the Dean. I have something very important to tell him. It has to do with one of his faculty members violating a campus rule.”

The PA – a bespectacled
matronly lady – said, “I have to screen all requests for the Dean’s time, Ms – ”

“Montgomery.”

“Montgomery. Can you tell me exactly what it is about?”

“Yes. One of the Professors on campus, Rust O’ Brien to be exact, has been
fucking one of his students. Isn’t that a violation of campus law?”

The PA was rather taken aback.
“Is she a current student?”

“Yes. She’s currently in his class.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“
I have evidence.”

The PA paused. “In that case, I’ll show you into the Dean’s office right away.”

Fiona smiled. “That would be nice.”

2

The buzz around campus
was going around now, spreading like wildfire. Professor Rust O’ Brien was being summoned to the Dean’s office for allegedly having an affair with a student.

Kate Penney was with Michaela,
her best friend, at one of the cafeterias in campus, when the news hit them.

Michaela was tucking into her
apple pie.

“
Mmmm, mmmmm,” she said, forking a heap of pie into her mouth. “This is good for campus crap.”

“But not as good as your Aunt Jemima’s apple pie,” said Kate
, waggling her own fork around. She had heard the story of Aunt Jemima’s prowess in the kitchen only a million times before.

“
Aunt Jemima should have been canonized for the cookies and pies she made. Pity she died of that heart attack before the Vatican got wind of her key lime.”

“I thought she died of morbid obesity?”

“A complication, among her other afflictions, bless her soul.”

There was a distinct commotion going on at the other tables.
Students raised their voices, and there was a palpable excitement in the air. Kate could hear the barely concealed squeaks:

“
You don’t say!”

“You’ve
gotta be kidding.”

“Rust?
Hot Rust O’ Brien?”

“He doesn’t seem like the type. I’d always thought he’d go for some leggy lingerie model.”

Kate’s heart stopped.

“Hot damn,” Michaela said. “You hear that? Something’s going on.”

She hailed a student who was eagerly getting up to pass the word to the next table. “Hey . . . you, come over here.”

One look at Michaela’s face and girth was enough to g
et the pimply-faced freshman scuttling over.

“Yes?” he said nervously.

“What’s going on?” Michaela demanded.

“Rust O’ Brien has been hauled up by the Dean for
molesting a student.”

Kate’s stomach acids congealed.

“Molesting?” she squeaked.

“You serious, boy?”
Michaela said, furrowing her brow.

“Dead serious.
The news is going around the whole campus.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s true,” Michaela remarked.

“B-but,” Kate stammered, “surely he didn’t molest anyone. Why should he need to? J-just look at him.”

The student said, “Yeah, but you never know about people.
It’s just like in
Hannibal
. Or
Dexter
. I mean . . . those guys are serial killers, and you wouldn’t know it to look at them. Right?”

Michaela put up her fist. “You’d better start getting better at reporting the news, kid.
Who did he allegedly molest?”

“We don’t know. They won’t release the name of the student.
She can be anyone here.”

“But he didn’t molest anyone,” Kate cried. She stood up. “Where is he now?”

“Still with the Dean. Maybe they are calling the police now,” the freshman said excitedly. “He’ll be cuffed and led away!”

“Bullshit.” Michaela stood up too, and she dwarfed the
student. He actually shrank back. “I’m going to ask someone else.”

Kate was frozen to the spot. The freshman went
around to spread the rumor, and she could only stand there, her insides swimming with sickly anxiety.

Rust
. She did this to Rust. Now they were caught out. But how? They were so careful not to do anything near campus. Did someone leak out their affair?

Her mind immediately sprang to Carlo.

Shit.

That display in front of him in the intimate restaurant. She had known it was a catalyst for something deeper and darker. That was when the seeds were sown. She knew this instinctively.

Her heart clenched. It was something they couldn’t take back. And now they would both pay.

But Carlo still hadn’t leaked her name out. Was he protecting her in some way? There was a psychological game being played here.
She needed to talk to Rust.

Michaela came back from talking to the students at the other table.

“That’s the rumor all right,” she said wryly. “And now there’s a new one. Rust O’Brien has admitted to molesting the student.”

“What?” Kate was truly incredulous.

“He’s out of the Dean’s office now. Apparently, he has tendered his resignation.”

3

Kate could only fly off blindly
away from the cafeteria, causing Michaela to call after her, “Wait. What’s wrong?”

She had to see Rust. She headed towards the Dean’s office, running as fast as her legs could take her.
Students were grouped everywhere, avidly talking and dissecting the news. Why was everyone so eager to see Rust’s downfall? He had never harmed anyone. He was a great professor.

There was a commotion outside the Dean’s office.
Students milled around ten rows thick. It was a media circus. She could see Rust standing at the doorway of the ivy-covered building. Every face was turned to his. He looked super-handsome, as always. His hair was neatly combed back, and his eyes were impossibly green.

“Professor,” shouted a student, thrusting a
cellphone recorder into his face, “is it true you have been asked to step down?”

Campus paper reporters, thought Kate in disgust.

“Professor, who’s the girl you molested?”

He didn’t molest anyone, she wanted to scream.

“Professor, is the girl pressing charges?”

“Are you going to be arrested?”

“How did you get caught? Who fingered you?”

Rust swept through the
crowd without speaking a word. Kate tried to catch his eye, but he made a beeline for the parking lot, where she knew he parked his white BMW. A trail of people followed him. The morbidly curious. The ones who wanted to get a glimpse of the disgraced professor.

If only they knew what he really was, she thought, thinking of the magnificent tiger.

She lost sight of him, obscured by the bobbing heads. A celebrity falls, and everyone wanted to be there for the kill. She could only watch as the white BMW slowly pulled out of its parking lot and revved away to the road to head out of campus.

A sinking sense of dread engulfed her.

She wondered if Rust was going to blame her for what happened.

*

Kate rang Rust’s cellphone for the seventeenth time. And for the seventeenth time, it went to Voicemail.

She could take matters in her own hands, of course.
She could take a cab to Rust’s penthouse, where they had made love repeatedly, and tell him herself that she was guiltless. Did he blame her? Was that why he wasn’t answering her calls?

Oh my God, he thinks I’m the one who went to the Dean about him!

Despair such as she had never known swept through her. He couldn’t blame her! She didn’t do anything except love him desperately. What did the Dean tell him when he fired him? Did the Dean know who she was?

She ran blindly out of the
library where she had been trying to call Rust. She glanced at her cellphone display. When she had been trying to call Rust, her phone had vibrated many times, indicating that there were other callers trying to get through to her. She now looked at the missed calls.

Michaela – twice.

An unidentified number which had the prefix of the university. She didn’t recognize the number at all. She wondered if it was Carlo, using a landline.

Damn Carlo. She was sure he had something to do
with all this. But Rust and she had goaded Carlo, knowing full well he was in lust with her for some inexplicable reason. And now Carlo had had his revenge in a roundabout manner.

She could well picture Carlo going up to the Dean:
“Dean Whitehouse? I have something to tell you. It’s about one of your Professors. He has been fucking one of your students, Kate Penney, in public places. You see, he’s an exhibitionist and a sadist.”

Should she call the number back?
She should give Carlo a piece of her mind.
Yes, we were cruel, but there was absolutely no need to ruin his life!

Her decision was made for her when
that number rang again. With trepidation, she picked it up.

“Hello?” Her voice croaked.

“Ms. Penney? Kate Penney?” said an unfamiliar female voice.

“Yes?”

“I’m Ellen Thatcher, calling from the Dean’s office. He would like to see you right away.”

Kate
swallowed the lump which had suddenly bolted into her throat.

“Yes. I’ll be there,”
she whispered.