Way Out of Control

Chapter One
The first odd thing Jaxon Wentworth noticed when he opened his eyes was that the scientists were much further from his bed than they sounded. They were at the counter all the way on the opposite side of the medical room, talking to each other with their backs to him. Yet he could hear them as if they were standing right next to his head. Perhaps enhanced hearing was one of the potential “perks” they’d told him about—he couldn’t quite remember; although, it was disconcerting enough to be more like a drawback than a bonus. Either way, like the mild headaches and itchy skin he’d already suffered a few weeks ago, this was just another side effect of being a volunteer test subject he was going to have to get used to. Temporarily, he hoped.
The next thing he noticed, for the first time in years, was the lack of pain in his right leg. He wiggled it and was surprised by how sturdy it felt.
He hoped that effect wasn’t temporary.
As he pushed himself up into a sitting position, the third thing he noticed was the new-found strength in his left bicep. With his heart racing, he sat up straight, swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed and stood straight upon the floor. He bounced up and down a little, swinging his arms. Ignoring the scientists rushing towards him, Jaxon grinned. He jogged in placed for a few seconds, his knees reaching high and his arms bent and pumping mightily at his sides. He cackled out loud in glee.
“Oh my, you’re up already,” Dr. Sri Ashni said, the black and silvery bush of a mustache spreading over his smile. “We did not expect you to awaken so soon.”
“Ha, well, I’m definitely wide awake.”
The taller, lanky scientist called Victor Morhamer gestured at Jaxon to slow down. “Easy now. Let’s check you out, see how you’re doing,”
“How am I doing? I can tell you how I’m doing, doc,” Jaxon snickered. “I’m fucking fantastic!”
He beamed as he moved towards a mirror so he could watch himself strut. He ran around the small grey box of a lab in a few quick circles, testing his speed, his balance, his reach. It was as if he’d never even been shot, as if there was no bullet still lodged in his leg, no muscle damage at all from the gunshot wound to his arm.
At last, after five long years of being stuck behind that boring desk at the precinct, he was finally going to get back on the beat. He was finally going to be a real cop again. All thanks to Cyclone Industries and their experimental Titan Formula.
“So you do not have any discomfort, no? You feel perfectly fine?”
“Yes sirs, I do.”
Sri and Victor cheered.
“I can’t believe you’re paying me for this. I should be paying you.”
Smiling, Sri shook his head. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”
Victor went over to the laptop on the counter. “The last installment is being wired into your bank account as we speak,” he said, his fingers moving on the keyboard. Even he, the normally stoic one, looked up and smirked.
Sri grabbed the ends of the stethoscope that hung around his neck and brought them up to his ears as he approached Jaxon. “Lift your shirt so I can have a listen to your heart, please.”
Jaxon raised his arms and yanked the white t-shirt entirely off. His pectorals were hard, defined, and he could not help but flex his upper body. He felt strong, quick, no discomfort. Like a real man, a brand new man. Like there was nothing he couldn’t do anymore. And now that he was going to have some real money in the bank, maybe he could finally find the courage to ask Dr. Celise Belderon to go out with him.
The corners of Jaxon’s mouth tugged into a smile as let his mind wander back to the very first moment he met her.
He’d sat on the table in the medical room wearing nothing but the odd-shaped paper gown that the equally odd-shaped nurse had given him. He hadn’t bothered to secure the plastic tie, knowing that the damn thing would likely just come loose within minutes anyway, and modesty was a rather moot concept during a full medical exam. Ever since that damned injury, he was prone to a little bit of anxiety whenever he had to see a doctor, so he whistled the base line to the hip-hop tune stuck in his head to ease the wait.
Because the click-clacking of sharp heels approaching the door was what alerted him to her arrival, his eyes went to her feet first when she entered the room. Yellow, three-inch heels greeted him. He’d wondered what kind of doctor wore yellow high-heels to work. When he looked up to find out, his back went rigid as his breath shot out of his throat.
Those bright eyes of hers, a mixture of green and grey, sparkled at him with a quiet intelligence under black horn rimmed glasses. She wore her hair—which looked as red and soft as rose petals—in a neat updo with swooping bangs to frame her face. The hint of a yellow dress peaked from under her buttoned lab coat. She had a casual-yet-classy style, a graceful poise and demeanor, and what appeared to be the thick, shapely body of a damn porn star. It took effort for him to close his mouth and not stare.
She appeared almost as startled as he was. “Oh, you’re already undressed? I’m sorry, I would have knocked first had I known. I was going to at least introduce myself before asking you to get undressed.”
Jaxon coughed as if to clear his throat, but it was the erotic thoughts that entered his mind at those words that he was trying to get rid of. “No, it – it’s fine. I’m all ready for you.”
“Good then. Officer Wentworth, I’m Dr. Belderon and I will be tending to you for the duration of the trials. We’ll begin today with a complete physical examination.” She held out her hand, and he shook it firmly but quick. So this gorgeous woman was going to give him a full exam? He stifled a laugh; this was definitely going to be an experiment in self-control.
She listened to his heart and lungs, checked his blood pressure, and inspected his eyes, ears and throat while engaging him in idle chit-chat.
“Are you on any medications, Officer Wentworth?”
“No.”
“Have any allergies? Or any additional medical conditions since you filled out the forms?”
“No and no.”
He focused on breathing deeply and staying cool, and all went fine at first while she covered the basics. But then she slipped rubber gloves on her hands, reached for the hem of his gown and pushed it up to his hips. “You’re unmarried, correct Officer Wentworth?”
“R-right.”
“Are you sexually active?” she asked, as she placed her fingers on the head of his penis and lifted it.
Jaxon looked away from Dr. Belderon and swallowed to concentrate on chaste thoughts. A nearly impossible feat to achieve with this lovely woman’s hand between his legs, with her buttery voice asking him about his sex life. “Well, it’s been a while.”
She gently moved his penis and testicles around a bit and scrutinized. A tremor rattled up from his groin to his gut, but he wasn’t sure if her hands were shaky or if he was shuddering. “How long of a while?”
He shrugged. “A few months, I guess. Maybe a little more than a few.” She leaned down close enough to batter him with her sharp, tangy scent of soap intermingled with a sweet vanilla. He dared to look directly at her and when their eyes met, Jaxon swore her cheeks were three times rosier than they were before.
“A man like you going without? I’m surprised.” She cupped his balls in her hand. “Cough”
He coughed once in response to her command and then again in response to her comment. “A man like me? What do you mean by that?” he asked, eyeing her curiously.
She snorted and shook her head. “Nothing important. It’s just that you’re a healthy and physically attractive guy, and your answer wasn’t what I expected.” She went to the counter and began to lube her right index finger. “Stand up, turn around and bend over for me, please. Elbows on the table.”
“Are you coming on to me, doctor?” Jaxon asked as he got to his feet. He looked down at her heart-shaped face and smiled. Yup, she was definitely blushing. He caught a smirk playing with the edge of her mouth before he turned around and leaned forward.
“Believe me, Officer Jaxon Wentworth, if I were coming on to you, you’d know it.” she said, just seconds before she slipped her slender finger into his rectum. The opening of the gown he’d forgotten he’d left loose slid open, exposing his entire backside to her as she probed him. He exhaled heavily. He might as well have been naked. The thought only excited him further.
Please don’t get hard, please don’t get hard, he mentally pleaded with himself, as Dr. Belderon circled a finger against his prostrate. She was very clinical and quick about it, and yet his dick still found a way to disobey him. When she was done and he pulled down his gown and turned around, he tried to keep his hands in front of him to hide his arousal, which was protruding against the paper material.
She smiled at him, and he noticed that one tooth on her bottom row leaned slightly against the one next to it. That small little imperfection made her even more endearing, and his heart began to throb along with his erection.
“All right, we’re done here. For the most part, you seem to be a man in good health. In more ways than one, if I might add.” She said. She let her gaze slip down towards his midsection, then smirked back up at him. “That’ll be all for today. You can put your clothes on, and Dr. Ashni will come see you shortly. It was a pleasure to meet to you, Officer Jaxon.”
But damn, did she have any idea how much pleasure had been his, he wondered.
So for the next three months of the experiment, Celise Belderon tended to Jaxon and monitored his health—and tortured him with the insane sexiness of her presence. And the more he got to know her, the more he came to admire everything about her. The way she walked, the way she laughed, the way she said exactly what was on her mind. As far as Jaxon was concerned, she was the perfect woman.
So perfect, in fact, that he was perhaps a bit intimidated by her. She was highly educated, independent, gorgeous, down to earth. And she was a doctor, for Christ’s sake, while he was an injured blue-collared cop with confidence issues. But with Celise, it was hard for him to keep his desires completely bottled up, like he was used to doing. Eventually he’d worked up the nerve to kind-of ask her out once, after he was almost certain that the blush in her cheeks and the sultry look in her eyes were due to her experiencing the same wave of attraction he was. In response to his sort-of invitation, she sort-of politely turned him down. Yet the sexual energy between the two of them never dissipated. In fact, it only seemed to increase twofold.
That sexy ass doctor. Now, just thinking about the combination of big brains and crazy curves on that woman got a rise of out Jaxon. Instantly, he stiffened his back as he felt his erection. Something was—odd. He loosened the white strings on his grey sweat pants and pulled them and his boxer briefs away from his body, and looked down in confusion. Not only had he achieved record hardness in such a short period of time with no physical provocation, he barely recognized his own member. It looked thicker and a couple of inches longer than usual.
Now that was an effect he hadn’t even begun to anticipate.
But the little bit of masculine awe he felt could not override his worry. Just how much was he going to change, exactly?
“Are you okay, Wentworth? Come sit on the bed so I can examine you.”
Jaxon nodded his head, but then paused at his reflection in the mirror. Stunned. “Wait—am I getting bigger?”
Victor joined Sri’s side then, and both of them looked at Jaxon and then each other.
“It’s happening very fast,” Sri noted.
Victor nodded his head. “Unbelievably fast. Much quicker than we expected.”
“Too fast,” Jaxon gasped. “It’s starting to hurt. I can feel my chest—oh shit, what the hell is happening to me, doc?”
Dr. Morhamer furrowed his brows as his frown deepened. “Something’s wrong.”
“No shit, something’s wrong! Something is way fucking wrong here.” Jaxon could feel his pants getting tighter, and his body stretched upwards as he grew taller and wider. He grunted in pain as his body expanded and morphed, his blood rushing through his body, his heart pounding in his chest. He smashed his fists against the sides of his head as he tried to muffle the loudness of the doctors chattering, the pounding of his heart and the howl of his own voice.
Terror welled up in him. The complete and utter fear of what was happening to him took over, sending his mind into a haze of panic. He backed into the bed and it toppled over. Shocked, he jumped sideways and sent a silver table on wheels crashing into the wall.
“Stop this,” he snarled at the doctors.
“Morhamer, what should we do?”
“I don’t know yet. Go get the tranquilizer.”
“No,” Jaxon shook his head. The thought of them rendering him unconscious again to do God knew what sent tremors of alarm rolling through the haze. “I don’t need to be god-damned tranquilized; I just need you to make this stop. Now.”
“We’re just going to sedate you, to eliminate your pain. Then we’ll examine you and try to determine what happened.”
“I said no! I’m staying awake so I can see exactly what the fuck it is you’re doing to me. To make sure you fucking fix me!”
“Please, sir, you need to just calm down and —”
“I am calm!” But why did his voice sound so loud and angry?
“Okay okay, here-give me your arm and just —”
The sight of the needle aiming for his flesh sent Jaxon’s blood into a boil. “No fucking needles. No fucking tranquilizers, just give me the cure!” He meant to just shove Dr. Ashni out of the way, but his strength was at least triple what it was normally. The sixty-something-year-old doctor went flying backwards, his head crashing into the counter with a loud thump, and he slumped onto the floor, motionless. Dr. Victor Morhamer rushed to Sri’s side to check for a pulse, and looked up at Jaxon with wide eyes.
Jaxon stared down at his own outstretched hands in confusion and disgust. “What did I do? What did you guys make me do? You were supposed to make me better, ‘a physically perfect human,’ you said, not turn me into a fucking killer!”
“He’s just unconscious. You didn’t kill him. We can fix this—”
“Then fix it! Now!”
“It’s going to take some time to find out what went wrong. Then we’ll have to create a solution to reverse this.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. First we have to figure out why —”
“How the fuck long?”
The thin man shrank back slightly. “There’s no way to guess. Could be months, could be weeks.”
“Get out.” Jaxon’s voice was nearly a hiss. “Get out and don’t come back until you tell me you have a clue how to fix me.”
“Just let me examine you, Jaxon.”
“You aren’t fucking touching me right now.” The rage in Jaxon was uncontrollable. His face was hot and flushed, his fingers automatically flexed and un-flexed as his entire body seemed to burn with his rage. “Get out now because I’m having a really, really hard time not choking the life out of you right now.”
Victor sighed and a dark expression crossed his face, but half-dragging and half-carrying Sri along with him, he quickly left the room, slamming the door behind them.
Alone in the room, Jaxon turned again to the mirror and gasped at what was reflected. He barely resembled himself. His five foot ten inch frame was now closer to six and a half feet. In minutes he’d put on at least another thirty pounds of pure muscle, mostly in his shoulders, arms, chest and thighs. His hands were big and swollen, almost like paws. And when he moved closer to the mirror, instead of the brown eyes he’d been born with, yellowish-green eyes with thin, oval-like pupils blinked back at him. Lizard-like, foreign and frightening.
He was a monster.
He slammed his fists against the mirror and a crack spread from the top of it all the way to the bottom.
What had they done to him? What had he allowed them to do?
He heard the lock latch on the door, informing him that he’d been contained in the room. Fear and rage welled up in his chest, burning him, tearing at him. And Jaxon felt himself grow more and more inconsolable by the minute.
* * * *
Just as she began fiddling with her hair in the mirror, Celise Belderon caught herself. There she was, in a women’s bathroom of Cyclone Laboratories, fussing with her appearance before going upstairs to the lab to work. When was the last time she had even bothered to use a mirror when doing her hair or putting on lip gloss at all? Never. So why was she so concerned with how she looked now?
Because Officer Jaxon Wentworth was upstairs, that’s why.
Celise didn’t know what it was about Jaxon that made her so self-conscious, only that he did. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been eyed up by big, handsome, sexy men before. She had. And it wasn’t as if she cared what she looked like to men. She didn’t. Not that they seemed to care either—men looked at every woman merely as a potential play thing. Didn’t really matter what she was wearing or how her hair was, if they liked the size of a woman’s tits or the way her ass poked out behind her then they were interested. Otherwise, they weren’t.
Such simple creatures men were.
But Celise was not as simple as a man. And she had not the desire to complicate her life right now by dealing with one. However, Jaxon Wentworth didn’t seem quite so simple. What kind of man volunteered his body as a living test subject for months? Sure he ogled her in the way a simple man would, but the way he made her feel whenever she caught him looking at her with those hypnotic brown eyes of his … was anything but simple. He aroused her, made her feel tempestuous. He uncovered aspects of herself that she’d never fathomed revealing, even though his behavior was always that of a composed and gentle man who seemed carefully reserved even while blatantly flirting. She smiled as she recalled the way he’d posed a dinner invitation to her as a hypothetical situation. “Suppose I asked you to join me for dinner tonight,” he’d said, staring directly into her eyes. “What would you say?”
For a moment, she couldn’t respond. His full lips glistened from the stroke his thick tongue had given them just before he asked the question. She’d had to muster up all of her will power in order to tear her eyes away from the seductive gravity of his gaze and decline him. “Well, I suppose I would have to say no. Both because I’m not interested in dating anyone right now and because I already have plans tonight.”
He’d smirked and nodded his head. “Good thing I didn’t ask you out for real then. Would have been a real bummer to get turned down.”
Yes, Celise thought, he was definitely a bit on the careful side. But the way he would eye her completely from head to foot, staring at her as if she were inside out, with that curve on his lips and gleam in his eye—made her sense the passion within he was holding back, which was smoldering just under the surface.
What was he thinking exactly when he looked at her like that? She wished he would just come right out and say it.
She shuddered and shook her head. She was here to work, and nothing more. She was here for the medicine and the science. Jaxon was just a test subject.
A brave, attractive subject of mixed race with dark, thick, curly hair and big brown eyes with whom she could easily talk to, shared an obvious mutual attraction with, and who stopped crime and protected the innocent for a living.
Boy, the kind of experiments she really wanted to perform with him. Experiments with them both fully undressed and the lights off. Was he the silent type or a moaner? Did he talk dirty? Did he like having his nipples licked? He was always asking for a peach—did he taste as sweet? The man inspired all kinds of delicious curiosities. But she couldn’t allow herself to even think of satisfying any of them. Work and men didn’t mesh well for Celise.
Hell, Celise and men didn’t mesh well for Celise.
How many times had she thought a guy was just right, got with him, only to end up later realizing he was oh so very wrong for her? She needed to take her time, get to know a guy. No jumping head-first into a big boiling pot of lust.
But damn if Jaxon Wentworth didn’t make her want to just strip off her clothes and take a running dive. Doctor Morhamer’s voice infiltrated the bathroom and her thoughts through the building’s PA system.
“Attention all staff, this is an urgent announcement. Everyone—including all staff members—must evacuate the building immediately. A dangerous contaminant has been released, and for your safety it is pertinent that you gather your belongings and leave the vicinity of this building immediately. Do not report back to this site until you have been contacted that it is safe to do so. Decontamination could possibly take weeks. Again, all personnel and guests must evacuate the building immediately. The building will be locked down in four minutes.”
Celise’s inquisitive nature subdued any sense of alarm she might have felt. What kind of contaminant could Victor Morhamer have been referring to? Most of the staff in the building were only recently hired within the week, in preparation to produce the formula en masse—once completely tested and approved for production—and therefore should have been only using materials approved for the project. And there were no hazardous materials or biochemical products that would endanger everyone in the building that Victor and Sri were working with.
At least not that she was aware of. Fact was, Celise did not have as much knowledge of the project as Sri and Victor. She was not part of the team when the initial development of the Titan Formula began over half a year ago. She was hired specifically to help procure a test subject and to assist by monitoring said subject’s health. For all she knew, Jaxon could have just spontaneously combusted in the lab. She snatched up her big, baggy purse and hurried out of the bathroom in time to see the small crowd of employees rushing towards the front entrance. Even the guards were fleeing in terror.
But Celise was no dodger. She was a doctor, and if there was a contamination, someone could be hurt and in need of help. She took the elevator up to the third floor and scurried down the hall to the lab, her navy blue heels clicking loudly against the linoleum tiled floor. Less than a second before her fingers reached the knob, the door reverberated with a loud, jolting bang as some force on the other side slammed into it, splitting it in half from top to bottom.
She gasped and stumbled backwards just as the remains of the door came crashing down and a nearly seven-foot tall, burly beast-of-a-man stood in its frame.
His lack of a shirt revealed a massive torso cut like a comic book hero. Around his pelvis were the stretched and ripped remains of what appeared to have once been grey sweat pants. He stood within the remnants of the doorway, heaving and snarling like a rabid creature. Behind him she could partially see the half-destroyed remains of the lab, but no sign of Victor or Sri.
Her breath caught in her throat as she froze. When he turned his head and landed his beady, yellow eyes upon her, the silent scream ringing inside Celise’s brain extended down her body and finally reached her legs and feet.
She turned and began to run, and was acutely aware that the beast man was running, too. Their opaque reflections on the windows that lined one side of the hallway confirmed how frighteningly close he was to catching her.
Celise eyed the elevator she’d just rode up in. Mental calculations of his pace told her there was no way she was going to make it inside the elevator and close the doors before he caught her, so she kept going past it and flung open the door to the stairwell. Had four minutes gone by already? The building used to be a mental institution and if it was already on lockdown, all the exits and windows on the first floor would be barred and bolted. But she had to try.
She bounded down the steps, practically flying out of her shoes so that she could increase her speed and friction down the three flights of stairs. But it was all in vain—the beast-man simply flung himself over the railing and came down on the floor of the landing right next to her, the thunder and wind of his leap and weight knocking her into the wall. Before she could contemplate what to do, he rushed her and trapped her between his massive body and the wall.
Again, Celise screamed only in her head. Her throat clenched and unclenched and she scraped her back against the wall in a panic, as if with enough friction she could meld her molecules with the wall and pass through it and escape. But moments went by and all the big thing did was hyperventilate and stare at her, pressed uncomfortably close to her but not touching her. And did it look—familiar? Confusion began to saturate her terror.
“What do you want? Please don’t hurt me.”
Not until he spoke did she recognize him. “Trust me, doc, I’m trying my best not to.”
Shock shook her as she glanced at the long, thick, curly brown hair that now brushed against his bare shoulders. How had she not noticed those curls before? “Officer Wentworth? Is that you?”
“Please, Celise. Help me.”
“My god.”
“God didn’t do this,” he said. His eyelids fluttered and his black, oval pupils rolled up until there was nothing to see but the yellow of his corneas.
Celise moved out of the way as the transformed and expanded Jaxon slumped to the floor face down, revealing the sedative needles stuck in the center of his back.