Dead Man's Curves (BBW Vampire Paranormal Erotic Romance) [KOBO ED] (4 page)

Chloe came again.

When it was over Chloe collapsed, limp, against her door, her white-knuckled holds on the steering wheel and seat slowly releasing as satisfaction and contentment swept over her. She had never felt so right with the world. Bad day? What bad day? The worst part about this day was that she seemed to have misplaced her bones.

The vampire slipped his fingers from her pussy and moved up her body. Hard muscles moved over her softness, the contrast delicious and maddening. Her body, still lax, responded to his hardness, his maleness, his possessive posture, and when she reached up and ran her fingers over his cold skin, he shuddered slightly. His mouth found her ear and for a moment he seemed content to worry it with his lips.

Then he bit her.

A sharp sting cut through the fog and Chloe squeaked. Reflexively she shoved him away, but it was like pushing against a wall. In her ear, the vampire snarled and his teeth came down harder as he lapped up the dark red drops of blood from the soft lobe. Again the narcotic effect, but it was muted this time, as though she were growing immune. Squirming, she brought her legs up and between them and shoved as hard as she could with her feet. The pain in her ear became excruciating for a quick, blinding moment, and then she was free.

They parted, both of them breathing hard, coolness and warmth mingling together in the chill air of the car. The world spun around her, and not just from lack of blood pressure.

Chloe could hardly think. “What... what the hell was that?” she managed to say finally. The thrill of his drugging kiss was fading fast, and she was coming down hard from both her orgasm and the chemical high.

He raised an eyebrow. “The pleasure, or the pain?”

She wanted to hit him, but she knew all too well that he had let her go only because he felt like it. “Both!”

He tilted his head. “The pleasure was to remind you what I may do for you. You may be immune to one charm of mine, but not all. The pain was a reviving snack. A woman like you is almost a vampire in her own right. The passion you hide...” He smiled and spread his hands. “Well, let us just say that a man can be wrung dry by a woman of such... appetites.”

Chloe had no idea what to say. She didn't know if he was making fun of her or not.

She struggled into a sitting position, turning away from him and closing her legs so she wouldn't feel so exposed. Readjusting her clothes, she tried to think of something—anything—to say. The silence stretched out.

“I still require clothing,” the vampire said suddenly. “Now more than ever.”

Chloe stole a look at him. Yes, he did need clothes. He was practically naked now. The dust of his old clothes was all over her car. Her broken car. She felt the gap where the headrest should be yawning behind her.

She took a deep breath. “You need to fix my car first.”

He said nothing. Her nerves began to tingle.

“You will buy clothes for me,” the vampire said at last, “or I will do something dire.”

He must be used to fainting Victorian females, because Chloe was not going to just roll over and give it up for a good fingerbang, no matter how much it had just blown her mind. She whipped around. “Like what?” she snapped. “Not kiss me again? There are plenty of fish in the sea, mister.”

A faint smile crossed his face. “No,” he said. “I will kill someone.”

Chloe froze. “What do you mean?”

He gave her a dry look, as though she were stupid. “Exactly what I say.” Sitting back, he put his hand to his mouth—the one covered in the juices of her pussy—and began to lick his fingers one by one. "Who should I choose?" he asked her between licks. "A young mother of two? A man trying to feed his family? A servant whose mother is solely dependent upon her small income? An old grandfather waiting to bring in his last harvest in the fields? I shall sit here and choose, and if you have not returned in a quarter hour, I will be happy to sate my hunger the way I am meant to." Dated references, but very real threat.

Chloe swallowed. "You... you haven't killed anyone yet, have you?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "Corpses are so messy," he said. "Leaves a trail. But I would welcome the chance to drain someone dry, feel the last pump of their heart on my tongue..." He watched her as he spoke and she felt her own blood—what was left of it, anyway—grow as cold as his hands.

She turned and bolted from the car.

His laughter followed her into the store.

U
p until her credit card was declined, Chloe had been making barely-decent time. She'd spent far too long, however, hopping from foot to foot in the checkout lane, wondering why so many people had to be at Walmart at almost ten o'clock on a weeknight. Not that it would have been any better if it were a weekend, but she needed to get through the line fast and back out to the car where the vampire waited, scoping out victims and no doubt counting down the seconds.

Fighting through the spinning of her head, Chloe had ripped the first clothes to come to hand from their hangers: a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt in the colors of Iowa State. Socks and a pair of shoes were next—she had to guess the size—and then she'd sprinted back to the front of the store, her heart hammering in her throat. The self-checks were all down for some reason, so she had raced along the long line of counters, frantically searching for the one with the shortest line. When she'd found it she'd hopped into place and began to dance impatiently, staring at the huge clock that hung high on the front wall.

Ten minutes and fifty seven seconds,
she thought. Her jaw clenched tighter and tighter.

That was why, when the nice lady running her card through the register told her her card had been declined, Chloe at first didn't realize what had happened.

"What?" she said. "No, that can't be right, I have enough for this."

The older woman, her hair sandy and gray, gave Chloe a sympathetic look. "I'm sorry, but your card has been declined."

“That's not possible.” Chloe stared at her. She knew she had at least two hundred dollars left on her limit...

The cashier just shook her head and handed the card back. "I'm sorry," she said. "Do you have another method of payment?"

Numbly Chloe opened her wallet. A flock of moths might as well have flown out for all she had in there in terms of cash, but her debit card peeked out from behind her driver's license. She had maybe fifty dollars in her checking account and she was loath to touch it lest she somehow accidentally overdraft, but she bit her lip and handed it to the cashier anyway. She'd have enough time to worry about her card and her meager bank account after she was no longer in fear of her life or the lives of others.

The woman zipped it through the slot on her register, but her lips tightened when a red message popped up on her screen. "I'm sorry, ma'am," she said, "but this card has been canceled."

"Canceled!" Chloe stared at her. Then she realized.

James
.

Their finances were joint. He must have canceled the checking account and the credit cards now that they were broken up.

...What was she going to
do
?

"I..." Chloe shook her head, unable to process what was happening. "I have to go. Keep the clothes." Her face numb, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, she turned and ran out of the store, the ground seeming to heave and pitch beneath her feet as she stumbled into the harshly-lit parking lot. Dragging cold air into her lungs, Chloe half-sprinted, half-staggered to her car. Her hands weren't working right as she opened the door and fell inside, but when she landed on the ruined front seat and the vampire was still there, watching her placidly, Chloe realized that she was probably in deep shit.

No money. No home. Wrecked car. Vampire.

"My clothes?" the vampire asked.

Chloe burst into tears.

They weren't pretty tears. She wasn't the heroine in some Gothic novel, and Gabriel the Vampire wasn't the heroic tragic vampire who would dry her eyes, so she just let it all out. Huge, ugly sobs spilled out of her, and she covered her face, attempting to stifle her grief, but she just sobbed harder.

She had nowhere to go. She had no money to take her somewhere. She had half a tank of gas. All her clothes were in the trunk of the car. Her worldly possessions were still back at her apartment, and she had been informed she could pick them up on the weekend, while James and Jenny were out of the house. She had no fiance. She had no best friend to cry to about that fact.

All she had was her car, a job, and an unwanted vampire, and dammit, that didn't seem quite like enough right now.

She was fucked. Really fucked. Next to her, the vampire seemed to go perfectly still, and she just let herself cry, unable to control it or do anything to contain it. Huge gulps of sorrow poured down through her throat, lodging hard in her chest, feeling like boulders pushing against the soft insides of her skin. She was filled with sharp edges; if she moved wrong, she would get cut.

Then something heavy and flat landed on her shoulder. It lifted, then fell again. Then again. The pattern repeated itself.

Scrubbing her eyes, Chloe stole a glance at the vampire from the corner of her eye and found that his hand was on her shoulder, awkwardly patting it.

"There, there?" he said. He seemed uncertain as to whether
there
actually happened to be
there,
as if he suspected
there
had picked up and moved to a new location in the middle of the night.

Chloe was so shocked she stopped crying.

That a vampire who had not fifteen minutes ago threatened to kill whoever he felt like if she wouldn't procure clothing for him was now attempting to comfort her in the most hamhanded way she'd ever seen shocked her so much that she stopped crying and stared at him. The second her sobs quieted the vampire snatched his hand away and tried to look nonchalant. He couldn't hide the relief in his face, though.

Weakness? Or was he just not as big of a prick as he was threatening to be?

“I don't have any money,” Chloe said. “I thought I did, but I didn't. I'm sorry, I can't help you.”

The vampire frowned. “What happened to the money you believed you had? Were you robbed?”

Chloe started to shake her head, then realized that yes, she was. In a way. “Remember when I told you I'd been having a really really bad day?”

Warily, the vampire nodded.

Chloe took a deep breath. “Well, it started out like this...” And she told him the whole story. James and Jenny having anal sex on her couch, getting kicked out of the apartment she'd lived in for the past three years because James thought it would be best that way and his name was on the lease anyway. Then the part about how he told her he was no longer attracted to her because stress at work had caused her to put on weight. Then she added in her terrible day at work, the sudden disappearance of her access to her bank accounts, the breaking of her driver's side seat which was going to cost a fortune and her car was currently the only home she had—especially since now she couldn't get a hotel thanks to her utter lack of cash, oh
god—
and to top it all off she'd been shanghaied into the service of a vampire who seemed to want to either drink her blood or fuck her and he couldn't decide which.

“...and now I'm sitting here, talking to a dead guy,” she finished. “No offense.”

He just sighed and shook his head, as if he couldn't believe his luck in choosing victims. Of all the women in the world, that shake of his head seemed to be saying, he had to pick the one with the most baggage.

Still, she had to admit that it had felt good to get all her thoughts off her chest. Normally if she wanted to cry to someone, she'd cry to Jenny. Now she was pretty sure she was never going to talk to Jenny again. In the circumstances, telling a centuries-old vampire her woes didn't really seem like a bad idea. For one, her previous confidant had obviously been poorly chosen, and for two, he probably had a better perspective on these things than she did.

“Well?” she said after a second. “Any thoughts?”

The vampire shook his head.

Her heart sank. “You're not going to say something like,
oh please, I once knew a guy who got his dick caught in a metal press
,
or,
when I was your age we were lucky we didn't die of tuberculosis before lunch time
or something?”

The vampire pursed his beautiful lips and thought about this for a moment. “No,” he said at last. “It is my opinion that you have indeed had a fairly bad day.”

“Oh.” It was actually far more disheartening to hear it confirmed by a guy who probably knew what a bad day looked like. After all, he'd clearly had a day where he'd actually
died
. “I guess I have, then.”

The vampire sighed. “It appears I must find another avenue to procure the things I need.”

For some reason, a pang hit Chloe's heart. It wasn't like she
wanted
to help a vampire recover his strength and once again become an undead stalker of the innocent and guilty alike, but... Well, to be honest, the crazy chemistry she'd felt with him had been the only good thing about her day. The kissing? The handsy groping in the library? The intense fingerbang? Their interactions had been doozies. Almost enough to make the whole twenty- hours a wash, and that was saying something.

“I'm sorry I can't help you more,” she said, and she really did feel sorry. “But, uh, if I might ask, why are you so, um... affectionate?” That wasn't the right word, but the faint smile on his face told her he knew what she meant.

He turned and looked her in the eye. “Because,” he said, “if you had spent a hundred and one years underground, your thirsts would be at the front of your mind as well. Can you blame a starving man for falling upon a banquet such as yourself?”

Then he bit her. Again. She was starting to feel a little like a pincushion.

He moved
fast.
Like a viper. His lips were fastened to her throat before she'd even had a chance to blush at his words, and the narcotic of his bite was already moving through her veins when she realized what was happening. And, of course, by that time it was too late to do anything about it. Chloe stared at the ceiling of her car as his cool, insistent lips drew her blood from her throat, his tongue laving the pinprick wounds he'd made, and sighed.

Sometimes
,
she thought,
you just might as well go along with it.
So she did.

The vampire retreated after a moment, licking blood from his lips. “Thank you for that,” he said. Far away, Chloe felt a sad tickling at the base of her stomach. Was he going to say goodbye? She was stupid for wanting him to stick around. Everything sucked, but at least he'd been a different flavor of suck.

Haha.
Suck
.

But he didn't say goodbye. Instead, he opened his door, looped his arms around her, and dragged her out into the parking lot.

The dark night dipped and swayed around her, and Chloe found herself just letting him carry her, distantly curious as to what he was going to do. A naked vampire dragging a chubby librarian through the Walmart parking lot at ten o'clock at night? Someone might actually take note of a sight like that.

Someone did. Through the dizziness, Chloe saw two young fratbros, clearly drunk, watching them curiously from their perch on the bed of a pick-up truck. “Hey...” one of them said.

“Excuse me!” the vampire called to him. “Excuse me! My wife, something is wrong with her, please help me! She just collapsed, I don't know what to do...”

Oh,
Chloe thought as the young men jumped up and ran toward them,
oh, I can't approve of this at
all
.

She couldn't really do much about it, though. The moment the two young men were within range, the vampire dropped her and struck.

Chloe hit the ground rather softer than she expected. The creeping cold of the concrete beneath her seeped into her clothing and she had to clench her teeth to keep from shivering as she watched the vampire bite first one young man, then the other. Within seconds the venom was doing its work, and the vampire stood before them, staring them in the eyes. They watched him dreamily.

“Give me your clothes and all your money,” the vampire said.

“It's too cold to leave them naked,” Chloe protested from her spot on the ground as the two began to disrobe.

“Do not fret, my bride,” the vampire said, never taking his eyes from them. “They will have many pleasant memories of how they got that way. And besides, they can warm up in their truck.”

Helpless to do anything and, admittedly, curious as to what the vampire would do next, Chloe watched as he shed the last of his disintegrating clothes and took the replacements from the two students. He ended up in worn jeans, a striped sweater, a dark jacket and a pair of Chucks with argyle socks.

And just like that, the vampire was no longer an undead monster risen from the grave. Now he was a J. Crew model.

The perfect predator,
she thought.
Blending in, no matter where he goes...

The vampire pressed the clothes he hadn't chosen back into the hands of one of the young men, then reached out and held both of them by the back of the neck.

“You will remember nothing of this encounter,” he said. “Instead, you will go back to your vehicle and consummate the lust you have been repressing for each other. It will warm you up. You will go home and keep each other warm until tomorrow morning, after which you will wake up and...” He trailed off. “And you will go from there.” He turned away from them with a satisfied smile on his face, and Chloe's eyes widened as the two of them suddenly threw themselves at each other, right there in the middle of the parking lot. Open mouths clashed and tongues warred while hands groped and grabbed. Though she could ill afford the blood, Chloe felt a red-hot blush rising to her cheeks. She was too weak to look away. Or at least, that's what she told herself.

“That was unethical,” she told the vampire as he strolled toward her, looking as swank as any man who spent five hundred dollars on a pair of jeans. Behind him the young men staggered toward their truck, still glued together.

“Was it?” he asked her as he bent over and lifted her into his arms. “I felt their confusion and lust as I glamored them. I daresay they will be happier now once the initial fuck is over with.” He tilted his head, considering this. “Or perhaps not. Either way, that is not your concern. Your only concern is to get in your vehicle and attempt to sober up long enough to drive us to your home.”