he Alpha Men's Secret Club 2: Desire Games by Dawn Steele Read Free Book Online

and knowledge are not the same.”
    Now he was beginning to sound
like the Professor she had lusted after and admired in simultaneous measure.
    She hesitated. There was so much
she wanted to know about him. He was very handsome in his white dinner jacket.
Imposingly so, like a prince of the underworld. It struck her that this was
their first real dinner together. A date . She was on a date with Rust
O’Brien – a surrealistic notion she had dreamt about. It had always just been
about fucking for the two of them.  
    She was extremely ill at ease. What
did one do on dates?
    Oh, yes. They attempted to make
conversation.
    She said timidly, “Were your
parents shifter tigers as well?”
    “Yes. That’s the only way I could
be in existence.”
    “Do you . . . see them often?”
    He smiled. “Ah, you want to know the
source of those earrings.”
    She blushed. “Not in that way.”
    “I know. My mother lives in
Manhattan. She still runs a successful private practice there.”
    “What does she practice?”
    “Psychiatry. Both my parents are
psychiatrists, but my father left his private practice long ago to work in
Bellevue, a psych hospital for the criminally insane.”
    She didn’t dare to breathe. This
was the most she had uncovered about his family in the time they had been
together.
    “Why did he do that?”
    “He wanted to give back to the
community, I suppose. Do what was needed, what other psychiatrists were leery
of.” There was an edge in his voice that she subtly caught, but only because
she was looking out for everything he said.
    “That’s very brave of him.”
    “No braver than most.”
    Kate supposed private practice
paid for those earrings then. But that didn’t indicate the source of Rust’s
wealth, unless his mother paid for his bachelor pad. Rust didn’t seem like the
sort of son who would take handouts from his parents, though.
    He watched her watching him.
    “I suppose after one month, you
might be curious about me,” he conceded. “My great-grandfather came from
Ireland with nothing but the clothes on his back. He started a small convenience
store in his neighborhood, Brooklyn. It became so successful that it grew into
a chain of convenience stores all around the Eastern seaboard.
    “My grandfather took over, but
unfortunately, his children – my father included – were more
inclined towards the mind sciences. So he listed the business publicly and sold
all his shares out. What you see now are the reapings of our multiple trust
funds.”
    She said, “And you are a shifter
family. No one knows?”
    “No one but other shifters.” He
held her eyes. “And the human lovers we take.”
    I’m his lover , she
thought. The word sent a thrill down her spine.
    “Have there been many?” she said.
“Human lovers, I mean?”
    His marvelous green eyes
glittered. “For shifters in general or me in particular?”
    She blushed. “Both.”
    “There have been some.”
    “In both cases?” she ventured,
her tongue going slightly dry. She was being daring in asking him so many
questions. He might take it in his mind to punish her with a paddle or a soft
whip for it later.
    “Yes,” he replied. “Though in my
case, I haven’t taken on many human lovers.”
    A lump escaped into her throat.
His eyes were so very penetrating as they gazed into hers, as though he was
anticipating all her questions before she could ask them and finding them
amusing in their childlike curiosity.
    “How are we different from . . .
the others?” she asked.
    He smiled. “The others are more .
. . feral. More aggressive as lovers.”
    “And do you like aggressive?” Her
voice fell.
    He weighed this before replying,
“Not necessarily. Oftentimes I like a submissive, pliant woman. Docile, sweet .
. . and tractable.”
    His hand rose to her cheek and he
caressed her skin slowly with the pad of this thumb. Lovingly.
    Her chest rose with a quick
breath.
    Sweet . He called her
sweet.
    Rust licked his lower lip.
    “Not