The Alpha Men's Secret Club 4: Intrigue: A Shockingly Hot BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance (7 page)

19

Kate sat beside Rust’s bedside. He was manacled to the hospital bed, an indignity suffered by all prisoners in a public hospital.

“Procedures,” Detective Lance had insisted. “We’ve had prisoners escape from hospitals before.”

Kate didn’t doubt that. But she doubted that it would be easy to get Rust out of this. The hospital door had a window on it, and outside the door, there was an armed guard. She was searched every day before she was allowed into the room.

Oh Rust, I want to believe you didn’t do it.

How did one plead ‘not guilty’ to a case like this?

I’m sorry, Your Honor, but my client
is not guilty by reasons of insanity in the throes of metamorphosis. Yes, he was literally not himself when he committed those crimes
.

Connor and Moira
were getting Rust the best shifter defense lawyers now. But Kate suspected their defense would be built upon a lie to protect the shifter community from exposure. Lies layered upon lies.

At least, Rust had never lied to her. Or so she convinced herself.

“Rust?” she said to him.

He turned, and his eyes focused on her. Her heart leaped. He was getting better.
The more she made love to him and told him she loved him, the more he seemed to respond. There was light at the end of this tunnel.

But once he got better (“and he will get better,” Lance Horner predicted),
it was off to jail and to the court to be charged. What kind of bail would they set for someone like Rust O’Brien on a charge of Murder One? A million dollars? Two million dollars? Kate’s mind reeled with a world she was not accustomed to.

She had only one pressing goal now.
Make Rust better.
The rest, she will have to make it up as she went along.

What if he still rejected her once he got better?
Her chest quailed to think of it.
After all we’ve been through. After everything –

No. She couldn’t think of such things.
Better she focus on what she was about to do.

The room door was closed but not locked.
She was very well aware of the guard outside, probably listening in to everything that was being said in this room.

Did she care?

“Rust, I love you,” she said.

His eyes held a flicker of understanding, and her heart leaped. She was so close to making a breakthrough with him. She didn’t know if there was any scientific basis to her love, but
it seemed to be helping Rust. So Connor had spoken to the court appointed doctors to let her stay with him.

Rust
struggled against his manacles.

She got onto the bed. She was wearing a skirt, and she threw a quick look at the door before she slid off her panties.
Rust was wearing a hospital gown with nothing underneath. She lifted the gown. His cock was limp.

“Rust.” She seized his cock and massaged it
.

He responded immediately. In this, he was still the Rust he knew – virile and always ready to fuck at a moment’s notice.

She gripped his flesh hard, mindful that the guard could come in at any time, and pumped it up and down.
His soft rod quickly grew hard under her expert touch. She debated whether or not to give him a blow job but decided there was not enough time. Besides, she wanted to speak to him.

“Rust? Do you remember the time we met? I was so scared when Thomas tried to have his way with me, but you were there for me. Remember how you took me into that room? Remember how you tied me up and fucked me?”

Rust grunted as she squeezed the head of his cock.

“From then on,” she said, “I wanted you. I wanted only you. But it was never about just the sex.
I fell in love with you. You are the most amazing, talented, brilliant man I’ve ever met. I fell in love with your mind, body and soul.”

She lifted her hips
and stripped her panties off. Then she eased herself down on his erect cock. Rust pulled in a deep breath as her pussy encased his cock.

“I would follow you to the ends of the Earth,” she assured him. His cock was nicely embedded in her tight pussy.
It was always so gratifying to have him inside her, as close as they could be. Lovers, friends, confidantes. She wanted to be everything and anything to him.

She moved again
in her position of control.

“Rust, look at me.” She grabbed hold of his face so that his eyes were focused on her. “I love you. I love you.”

She rode him. She rode him frenetically, desperately, fiercely.

“Come back to me, Rust. It’s Kate. Your Kate. I love you.”

She kept repeating permutations of this. The bed creaked. He could not hold her with his right hand because his wrist was chained to the bed, but his left hand grabbed her tits. She was glad he was not connected to a heart monitor because she was sure both their heart rates were going up erratically.

“Hey, what are you doing?” said a voice from behind her.

Oh shit. It was the guard. She was well aware that her skirt was hiked up to her waist and her buttocks were showing.

She turned her head. “Please . . . just leave us. We just need a minute more. This is therapy.”

The guard stared. She did not abate her fucking.

“Please,” she cried.

“Five more minutes, and I’ll call the nurse,” he threatened.

“Thank you!”

She swiveled her head back to Rust, marveling at her boldness. But to get Rust back, she would do anything.

She increased her humping movements. His cock was buried deep inside her, and she
squeezed her pussy walls to compress his hot, tender flesh. She bucked her hips to make a triangular movement. His balls grazed the space between her pussy and asshole, and it was an intense, erotic sensation.

Rust’s breathing escalated
.

“Come on,” she whispered. She needed to hurry.

He did not disappoint her. His balls contracted and he jettisoned his sperm into her.

“Ohhh,” she moaned.

Rust sank back into his pillow. He was breathing very heavily. There was a strange spark in his eyes.

“God, I love you,” she said.

The emerald spark changed into something more focused. She stared into his eyes, marveling at their beauty.

He blinked, breaking the spell.

“Kate?” he whispered.

She was thunderstruck.

“Rust?”

And then his eyes dimmed again and the curtain descended.

“No, please . . . Rust, you are in there. Please, I know you are. Wake up! It’s me, Kate.”

The door behind her swung open.

“Ms? I must insist you stop doing that.”

“Wait!
I’ve got him! He spoke to me. Just give a couple more minutes, please!” She was desperate now.

The nurse strode into the room.
“Get off, or I’m going to have you physically removed from this room.”

This was bordering on the ridiculous.
“Just give me a moment to get myself together. Please?” She turned a beseeching look at the nurse.

“You have o
ne minute,” the nurse thundered.

The guard smirked from the doorway. He was certainly getting an eyeful.

“Let her get cleaned up,” the nurse told him. “Then she’s out of here.”

Kate hastily got off Rust. She put her panties back on and smoothed her skirt.

“Rust?” she said urgently, seizing his face in her hands. “I know you remember me. Please, try to focus. I love you.”

His clouded green eyes
gazed at her.

“Kate?” he said with more conviction
.

Her spirits leaped. “Oh my God. You’re OK! You’re back!
You’re really back!”

The nurse swung the door open again. “Your
one minute is up.”

Don’t be such a bitch, Kate wanted to tell her. But she cried, “He spoke to me! Please, get the doctor. He’s going to be OK!”

And then she thought of the charges Rust was facing, and the light bulb inside her dimmed again. Maybe things would never again be OK.

*

It was six hours later. Connor flicked off the penlight he was shining into Rust’s eyes. Kate and Moira were seated at his bedside.

“What was the last thing you remember, Rust?”

Rust blinked.

“
There was a party,” he said slowly. “Kate. I took Kate to the party.”

“What party was that?”

“Aaron Mitchell’s.”

“Very good. Do you remember what happened in it?”

Rust went into a confused silence.

“No.”

“It’s OK. It’s the ECT. It blocks out a lot of memories. How do you feel?”

“Fuzzy.”

“How about the rage in you? You feel it?”

Rust paused for a moment. “No.”

“How do you feel?” Moira said carefully.

“Like something’s been torn from me.” Rust said this in a flat voice.

Kate’s heart clenched.

Rust said, “But you will fill me in why that is so, correct?”
He furrowed his brow. “I know I’ve lost a lot of time, and there are pieces of those memories . . . swarming inside my brain. I know I did something terrible.” He pulled at his manacle. “Or you wouldn’t have put these on me.”

Connor said, “We didn’t put those
on you, Rust.”

“Then who
did?” Rust demanded.

With every
word he said, Kate could see that his confidence and possession of self was gaining.
But he still hasn’t said he loved me.
Did he even remember what she said to him?

The door opened. Lance Howard strode in
with Geraldine Brickford and the guard in tow. Lance held up his badge.

“Rust O’Brien, do you remember me?”

Rust hesitated. “No.”

“It doesn’t matter.
You are under arrest for the murder of Theodore Mitchell.”

20

Rust had to spend an entire night in prison before bail was
posted the next morning – at the sum of one million dollars. Connor and Moira were good for it, of course, and Kate waited on tenterhooks with them for Rust to be released from jail.

When Rust came out, she immediately went into his arms. He hugged her and buried his nose in her hair.

“I’m OK,” he whispered.

Was he truly? she wondered.

“Let’s go home,” Connor said. “We’ve secured a great defense lawyer who is coming in about two hours. We need to prepare your case.”

*

When they reached home, a rabble of press awaited them outside the gates. Kate suspected it had more to do with Teddy Mitchell than Rust himself. Teddy was a celebrity in the ‘eligible bachelor’ tabloid sweepstakes, and people would naturally be interested in the man who allegedly murdered him in cold blood.

At the same time, Rust was just fresh off
his university scandal, and the fact he was extremely handsome and prepossessing made for good tabloid fodder. The whole case was an explosion waiting to happen.

Connor had to ease the car through the gathered throng.

“Don’t wind down your window,” he cautioned everyone. “Lock the doors.”

As the electronic gates opened, the reporters and photographers pressed closely around the car, but did not shatter the glass or impede its passage.
They wouldn’t dare to. The lawsuit Rust would take out on their newspapers would far supersede any mileage they could get out of this.

They got into the house without incident. There was so much Kate wanted to talk to Rust about, but there wasn’t time. The
shifter lawyer, Derek Buchanan, was already there, and he whisked Rust away into the study to talk things over.

“He will want to talk to you about that night’s events, Kate, so stick around,” Connor said.

“Of course. Anything to help Rust.” Kate was aware that she was not above suspicion either.

The lawyer meeting looked like it would take a long time. So Kate went to her bedroom – which was Rust’s old bedroom – to text Michaela, who would be in lectures now.
It was then that she saw a text from a number she had never seen before.

The text
said:

I HAVE INFORMATION WHICH MIGHT HELP ABSOLVE RUST O’BRIEN OF THE MURDER. MEET ME IN FINNEGAN’S, HYDE CORNER, AT 3 P.M. TODAY.

A BENEFACTOR.

Kate was stunned.

She read the text again. Was this a joke? Was this one of the press just trying to get an inside scoop ahead of everyone else?

Call the number.

She dialed the number, but it went straight to Voice Mail. This Voice Mail thing was getting to be the story of her life.
It was probably a prepaid number too, bought off Verizon for this purpose alone.

It was probably a prank.
Definitely a prank text from someone who managed to wrangle her number from someone, which wasn’t terribly hard to do in today’s circumstances.

But what if it wasn’t? What if it was genuinely someone who had information that could get Rust off the Murder One hook?
Things weren’t looking terribly bright for Rust now and he needed all the help he could get.

There was only one thing she could do.