by COE 3. 1. 0
THE ALPHA MATING GAME:
A BBW 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.
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1
“Oh screw it, screw it, screw it!” Felicity knelt down to pick all her scattered papers from the floor. “You know, the next time you want to ruin someone’s life, don’t do it on my rush hour.”
The young man she hated most in the world stood in front of her, clutching his iPad and grinning. Damn Oliver Greene. She hated his smug face and snarky smile – the very same flashing perfect teeth smile which got many a co-ed to melt and drop her panties.
Everything was a breeze for Oliver Greene. She wished she could say he got into college on a football or another similar athletic scholarship – and he certainly had the body for that, damned his bulging biceps and the veins which stood clearly out on his damned arms – but no, the damned prick actually was smart.
Super-smart.
“Maybe you should try losing a little weight to balance your center of gravity, Marks,” he said.
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Manners . . . and don’t you wish.” He stepped back as she swiped at his ankles. “All that extra padding isn’t going to make you any faster.”
She finished picking up her papers and got to her feet. Then she glared at him.
“Why don’t you look where you are going?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
She had rounded a corner in a hurry to get to her Applied Chemistry class, and she had crashed straight into the hard body of Oliver Greene, who was all lean muscle if he had seen a day. Oliver Greene – who always had something snarky to say about her weight since they first started college together in freshman year.
OK. So she wasn’t the type of girl he would usually look at twice, but he didn’t have to actually tease her so mercilessly about her weight, right?
She remembered that very first day when they filed into the lecture hall together. A brand new exciting year had started. She was a scholarship student and she couldn’t afford to screw around with her grades. If she scored top marks ahead of everyone else in her class that year, it would be a full scholarship. Anything less than that, and her mother would have to cough up fifty percent. Her mother – who worked two shifts just to make ends meet after her father dropped out on them – couldn’t afford fifty percent of her college fund.
Felicity had taken a seat on the third row from the lectern. The two seats in front of her were empty. Everyone else was busy filing in and choosing their seats and setting up their laptops and phones for recording the lecture. Felicity couldn’t afford a cellphone or a laptop. Yet.
Then a voice behind her said:
“Do you mind moving one row down? You’re blocking my view.”
She turned to see a startlingly handsome young man behind her. He had amazingly penetrating blue eyes and long lashes to frame them, hair cropped short like a Navy SEAL, and he had the type of body which necessitated plenty of workouts to maintain.
Gym bunny, she thought disdainfully.
“Why don’t you move yourself?” she retorted.
“Because I was here first.”
“I don’t see your name written on this seat or even your grandfather’s. And why don’t you mind your own business anyway?” She turned back, rolling her eyes.
She could almost feel him grin behind her. She knew guys like him. They were the type to make fun of girls a little out of the usual BMI spectrum. She got it all the time and she decided to claw back a lot time ago. Don’t let anyone give you flak, her mother always told her.
He said, “I guess I’ll have to peek around you then. But it’s gonna give me a damned crick in the neck.”
Ignore him, she told herself.
The lecture started, and she managed to immerse herself into it fully. Well, not as fully as she preferred to. The cute boy’s presence needled her like a boil on the back of her neck. OK, he was more than cute. He was gorgeous. And he was as mean as anyone else she had ever known.
Throughout the lecture, the Professor kept asking questions which were portrayed on the Powerpoint slide show screen in front of the hall.
“Can anyone tell me what the empirical formula for a compound that contains 17.34% hydrogen and 82.66% carbon?”
She put her hand up. The Professor raised his head mildly and pointed at her.
“Mr . . . Greene.”
Huh?
She turned around.
The rude hunk behind her said, “C2H5.”
“That is correct.”
What? He had to be reading off the answers from his iPad, she figured. Guys like him usually had a muscle for a brain.
The next question was:
“If the temperature of a reaction is increased by 20 degrees Centrigrade, what will the reaction rate be?”
Felicity immediately put her hand up.
“Yes . . . Ms. Marks.”
“Twice as fast.”
That is correct.
She beamed. She felt like they were on ‘Jeopardy’.
This went on and on throughout the whole lecture, and the two of them seemed to be laying tag when it came to answering questions. They also seemed to be the only two people in class who actually knew the answers.
At the end of the lecture, she grabbed her notepad, turned and glowered at him.
“You seem to have had a pretty good view of the screen,” she said smugly.
He bent his neck and sideways and pointed at it. He said, “Ow.”
Bastard.
And now she had collided with him. Her rival. Her lab partner. (Because they were both star students, and so they were paired together.)
Her bane.
“OK,” he said. “So you don’t look where you are going. You don’t apologize. You don’t clean up your apparatuses after lab – ”
“I do too clean up after lab,” she cried.
“Not the last time. You walked out right after the session. I had to put your things away.”
“That was only because I had a phone call from my mother and I had to take it in the Dean’s office.”
&
nbsp; He smirked. “Excuses.”
“Well, I don’t have to answer to you,” she retorted. “Now, if you will just step aside.”
“I’m not a mountain you have to go around, Marks,” he said, grinning.
She rolled her eyes and sidestepped him. She walked swiftly away. She had been doing a lot of eye-rolling around him, and the more they shared each other’s airspace, the more convinced she was that she was going to get eye muscle strain.
She passed a group of students crowding around and peering at someone’s iPad.
“That’s gross,” said someone.
“And he just attacked the woman like that?”
“Replay the YouTube video.”
Felicity glimpsed the streaming video which was being replayed. It was a hospital waiting room scene, filmed by someone with a shaky camera phone. A patient on a stretcher suddenly jumped out of bed and launched himself at a passing nurse. His teeth sank into the throat of the woman, who screamed.
There was a lot of blood and gore and a glimpse of the floor where the cellphone was dropped. Felicity could see a view of many running feet in all directions.
One of the students turned around. “Whatcha looking at, Marks?”
She arrested herself. “Nothing.”
Someone tittered. “If it were Marks in that hospital, she’d be mincemeat for sure.”
Felicity glowered. “What was that again, Kowalski?” She clenched her fist.
“Woah.” Kowalski eyed her bulk. Felicity was five foot nine and she packed a good amount of weight around her body. Too much weight for comfort, although she still retained her voluminous curves.
The others laughed.
“Try to pick on someone your size next time, Kowalski,” someone said.
Kowalski mock shuddered. “I’d better.”
Felicity did the eye-rolling thing and then she stalked off.
Dumb asses.
2
Felicity spent the next six hours in the library, collating stuff for her project. She was very thankful that Oliver Greene wasn’t in this project this time or in the library either.
When she looked up, she was all alone in the library. Well, almost. The night librarian was still there at the reception. Felicity glanced at her wristwatch. Wow. Almost ten o’clock. Time had caught up while she was having fun.
She had forgotten to feed herself again, as usual, and her stomach growled. You would think that with all the occasions she skipped dinner, she would be losing a lot more weight than she did. But there you have it, her genetics and metabolism didn’t allow it. She was one of those people who had to just look at a cupcake to gain weight.
To her credit, she had tried to lose weight. But the temptation and binge gorging of the good sugary stuff and the burgers (and boy, did she like burgers) were too much, and she gave in time after time. Her eating times were irregular, and she sometimes compensated for missing a meal with too much snack food. And hence, the vicious cycle continued.
She felt like having a burger again now. Or maybe fried chicken in eleven herbs and spices.
“Time to go, Felicity,” she said to her lonesome self.
She grabbed her stuff, threw them all into her tote bag and got up. As she walked to the exit, she nodded to the night librarian, a black man.
“Good night, Sam.”
“Good night, Felicity. Putting in another late night, I see. Would you be coming back for an all nighter?”
“Maybe, Sam. I’ll see how busy my dance schedule is for the rest of the night.”
He winked at her. Both of them knew she hadn’t been on a date since the senior prom in high school, when her mother had managed to talk her cousin, Barry, into taking her.
Felicity breezed out of the library. This was the final year. She had managed to be top in her class for the last three years running. Her mother was proud of her. She was proud of herself. They had managed to save three years of college fees and accommodation, and she was on track for a record fourth.
Of course, the feather in her cap was the ultimate trumping of Oliver Greene, who got second each time and wasn’t pleased about it. She found herself thinking of Oliver – of his vivid blue eyes and his tight forearms and his tight body which filled out his equally tight T-shirt so well. Trounced you well and good, pretty boy, and I’ll do it again.
She stopped at the women’s restroom outside the library on her way out. It was empty at this time of night except for one locked stall. As Felicity paused to wash her hands and face at one of the sinks, she could hear weird noises coming out of the stall.
“Ooooh!”
“Ahhhh!”
“Fuck me harder. Don’t stop. Oh yeah, you’ve got that spot just right, baby. Harder, harder!”
Felicity turned to stare at the locked door. Her stomach wilted a little. She was a virgin, and the closest she ever got to having hot sex like this was in eleventh grade, when Danny Holten – the class loser – who wore braces and pants three times his size, tried to kiss her. OK, that wasn’t even technically a kiss. More like a mashing of teeth.
She had often dreamt of being taken like that by a hot guy. A hot guy who resembled (don’t say his name now, don’t say it) Oliver Greene, but with a personality transplant. In fact, guys who looked like Oliver Greene should come pretty and vacant and devoid of all mental capacity and be made to function like fuck dolls. Yeah, that should teach them.
The moans and grunts inside the stall were reaching a crescendo.
“Ohhhhhh!”
“Ohhhhhh!”
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Felicity’s eyebrows shot to the top of her forehead. It sounded like someone was being slaughtered in there.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
Someone was in pain. And something else was rattling. The entire stall, more like.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” The ‘oh’s’ were punctuated with much thrusting, and then –
“Oliver! Don’t stop, Oliver!”
Felicity froze.
Oliver Greene was in there?
Why should she be surprised? He had quite a reputation as a college stud. With his looks and brains and athletic prowess, all the girls were lining up and bending over to be fucked. She didn’t mingle in his circles, but she had heard that he was quite the player. Never having a real girlfriend of any sort. Never having had a second date. Oliver went through college girls like a bull in a cow pasture.
Or so they said. How should she know, right – not having firsthand experience?
Of course, there were other Olivers on campus. It mightn’t be the Oliver Greene in there.
“Oh, that was good.”
Shit. That sounded just like the Oliver she knew. Felicity heard other sounds – of clothes being pulled hastily over body parts. Of zippers being zipped up. Before she could hightail it out of there, the door of the stall opened.
A very flushed Oliver Greene tumbled out of there with his shirt half-buttoned. He was followed by a thin blonde Barbie Felicity didn’t recognize. The blonde was in one of those leather dresses which could be zipped up (or down, depending on your vantage) from the front, and her cleavage was very pronounced now.
“Oh.” The blonde’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Hi, Marks,” Oliver Greene said. He did not seem the least bit apologetic for his very public display.
“You’re in the wrong restroom,” Felicity said. OK, she was still shocked, but not shocked enough to take the edge off her natural snarkiness.
“Oh.” Oliver was nonplussed. “I thought I’d borrow it for a while, seeing as no one is around at this hour except for people who get laid and people who – ” he eyed her pointedly “ – don’t.”
“I could report you.”
He leaned closer to her and said, “Go ahead.”
“Is this the fat girl you were telling me about, Oliver?” the blonde Barbie said. “The one you think has a secret crush on you?”
Felicity was about to combust.
“What?” she r
asped. “What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Oliver said.
“I have a crush on you. I . . . have a CRUSH . . . on you?” Felicity was taking the time to enunciate and inject every word with the proper amount of incredulity and venom.
“Yes.”
“And here I was thinking you have a crush on me.”
Oliver started to laugh. “I have a crush on you?”
“Yes. That’s why you’ve been following me around, crashing into me around corners, and sitting behind me in class.”
The blonde looked from one to the other. “Why do you have a crush on her, Oliver? She’s fat and ugly.”
Felicity waved a warning finger beneath the blonde’s nose. “You watch it, Blondie, or I’ll sit on your boobs and squash that silicon job out from your nipples.”
“I don’t have a crush on her,” Oliver said defensively. “Why are we talking about her anyway? She’s the one who has a crush on me.”
“I do not and will never have a crush on you in this world or any other worlds in parallel to this one!”
The blonde looked at her wristwatch. “Oh, damn, Oliver, I’m sorry, I have to go. Deke’s picking me up from the front hall.”
“Right. Send him my regards.” Oliver leaned over to kiss the blonde.
She giggled. “You know I won’t, silly. He’d, like, kill you. He’s my boyfriend after all.”
She wriggled away in her five-inch high heels. Felicity grimaced in disgust.
Oliver turned a tap on in a sink and bent over to splash his face.
Felicity said, “Excuse me, you’re still in the wrong toilet.”
“Chill, OK? I’m leaving.”
“Well, leave faster.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. You know what your problem is, Marks?” Oliver’s skin was still glowing from a post-orgasmic flush.
“My intuition says you’re about to tell me.”
“You’re not getting laid yourself, and so you come down hard on people who actually do get laid.”