Dead Man's Curves (BBW Vampire Paranormal Erotic Romance) [KOBO ED] (5 page)

“I need something to eat,” Chloe said as they reached her car. He opened the driver's side door and poured her into her seat. “And I don't have a home, remember?”

“Your home is still your home,” he told her, “whether or not a faithless piece of shite has told you to never return.” With that he shut the door and strolled off toward the store.

Chloe sat in her car and tried to do as he'd suggested. She knew she was going to have to drive him somewhere since he probably had no idea how to operate a motor vehicle; she was surprised he was willing to let her ferry him around. Then again he seemed surprisingly progressive for a guy who had last seen the world a century ago, but death probably liberalized one's views on things such as sex and women 'doing things.' The thought made her feel a bit more kindly disposed toward him and she attempted to rally. Unfortunately, biological imperative was against her. Chloe fell asleep and only jerked awake again when the vampire opened the passenger's side door and slid in.

“Here,” he said, handing her a small bottle of orange juice and a packet of cookies. “Enjoy.”

Weakly Chloe tore into the cookies, but as she ate and drank she began to regain her strength. Next to her the vampire sat perfectly still, watching her, and she wondered if he got a vicarious thrill out of watching her eat. Presumably he couldn't consume food any longer, but that didn't mean he didn't miss it.

When she was done, the vampire gently took her trash and threw it out the window.

“Don't litter,” Chloe said.

He looked at her blankly.

“Don't throw trash on the ground,” she clarified. “It's less biodegradable now than when you were last, uh, up and around.”

“I am afraid that is something I cannot possibly even begin to care about,” he said. Chloe stiffened when he moved toward her, but all that happened was he grabbed the driver's seat and, with a screech of metal, bent it back into a rough approximation of its original shape.

“Uh, thanks,” Chloe said.

“Don't mention it. Now take me to your home. I require a place to rest for the day.”

Chloe sighed. “I told you, I don't have a home any more.”

He gazed at her with hooded eyes. “Yes,” he said. “You do. Take me there.”

What can it hurt?
Chloe thought.
I mean, other than 'a lot'?

She pushed her car into gear and drove.

W
hen Chloe pulled up in front of the small apartment block where she had lived the last three years with James, she hadn't expected to feel such a punch in the gut. Unfortunately, that was exactly what she felt.

The old building had been put together some time in the early eighties when enrollment at the college had boomed, and it hadn't been renovated since. Peeling paint and dated wood patterns decorated the walls and balconies, but despite the fact that it was a rundown shithole Chloe had loved her time here. It was her first apartment after college. She and James had spent more nights than not curled on the couch in the living room watching TV, cooking dinner in the shitty little kitchen, making love in the old bedroom that still smelled faintly of cigarettes. It had been
her
shithole.

Now, in the dark of the autumn night, it looked exactly the same as always... except it wasn't home any more. That hurt far more than it should have.

Why had she been so stupid as to let James be the sole name on the lease? At the time it seemed like a good idea. He'd needed to build up his credit, and if they were ever going to make a life together they both needed to be on decent footing. Now she had no footing at all. The apartment had been her little haven away from the world, the launching pad of her life, and now she'd fallen below it. She was going to have to work her way all the way up to it again, and even when she did get another shitty little apartment it wasn't going to be the same.

Her guts twisted, clenching like a fist.

“You worry too much,” the vampire said. “It's bad for your health.”

“What do you know about health?” Chloe snapped. “You're dead.”

“Yes, so you keep mentioning,” he replied. “But I know quite a bit about it. The amount of pressure you are putting on your nerves is unhealthy.” To her shock, he reached across the car and patted one of her hands where it gripped the steering wheel. “Leave this all to me,” he said.

Chloe suddenly had visions of the vampire attacking James and Jenny, draining their bodies of blood and leaving their desiccated corpses to rot in a cornfield. The thought was surprisingly cathartic, and Chloe didn't know whether to laugh or be disgusted with herself. She settled for trepidation as the vampire let himself out of the car and she followed. She hoped James hadn't changed the locks on the apartment yet. The keys in her hand seemed to weigh ten pounds. She stood in the parking lot for a minute, paralyzed.

“We should really go to a hotel,” she said after a second.

“We will be safer in your home,” the vampire replied. “Do not worry yourself overmuch. Your faithless fiance cannot stand up to my charms.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Chloe said. “I don't want you to... to hurt him.”

“Why not?” the vampire asked. “He hurt you.”

“Yeah, but...” Chloe trailed off. “It wouldn't seem right,” she finally said. Even to her own ears it sounded lame.

The vampire smiled. “Then I will persuade him in other ways. Show me your door.”

Taking a deep breath, Chloe led him up the two flights of stairs to the third and top floor, then down the breezeway to the door of the apartment that used to be hers. Apartment five thirty-seven. Her hands trembling, Chloe fitted the key into the lock and prayed it would fit. It did. She turned it and opened the door.

All the lights in the living room had been left on for some reason, and cheery, welcoming yellow light—no longer welcoming for
her,
though—flooded the breezeway. The familiar apartment smell hit her, too: stuffy, but with the overlay of old meals and incense. She burned incense all the time, trying to banish the cabbagey ghosts of the past in the kitchen. James had always claimed he could never smell it.

“It reeks in here,” said the vampire.

“Yeah, well.” Chloe sighed and stepped inside.

“Aren't you going to invite me in?” the vampire said.

Chloe turned and regarded him.

He stood patiently at the threshold, his dark eyes glittering with borrowed light. He seemed to have no guile about him, and that was enough to put her on edge.
An invitation?
she thought. Did he need an invitation to enter her home? Should she refuse?

They stared at each other for a long moment, the future balanced on a knife's edge.

Then a stirring in the bedroom and James' sleepy voice calling out: “Who's there? Chloe?”

Chloe gave the vampire her brightest smile. “Won't you come in?” she said.

The vampire smiled back at her and passed through the door.

Immediately he descended upon her, his hands running over her body, his mouth latching onto her throat. Chloe cried out in apprehension, afraid that he would yet again take her blood and this time might take too much, but she needn't have worried. The vampire didn't bite her.

Instead, he swirled his tongue over her pulse and planted urgent, open-mouthed kisses from behind her ear down to her collarbone. His hands scooped and squeezed, massaged and kneaded, and wherever they went, flames followed beneath her skin.

Without even meaning to, Chloe returned his passion, her fingers running over his shoulders, up his neck and into his hair. The coolness of him contrasted with the fierce heat of her wounded heart, and when she arched her body up into his, she felt as though he could soothe the burns left behind by a sweet, comfortable love denied. If only the desire he stoked in her didn't threaten to burn her with even more intensity...

Hooking her leg over his hip, Chloe nudged his already-hard cock. Her ruined tights still clung to her full, curvy legs like spiderwebs, but the crotch was gone, leaving only a thin layer of soaked cotton between her pussy and him. He seemed to realize it, too, because his mouth found the swell of her shoulder and he sucked hard on her skin, as if he could draw blood out through sheer willpower alone, and he bucked his pelvis into hers, grinding his cock into the soft, hot space between her thighs. Chloe moaned, her hands tugging at his ill-gotten clothes, wishing he were naked again so she could do wicked things to him, things that would haunt her forever, that she would always remember, that would make her forget...

“What the hell is going on out here?”

Chloe's eyes flew open and she gasped. She had somehow completely forgotten that James and Jenny were in the very next room. All that she had known was the vampire's need... and her own.

In vain, she tried to push away from the vampire, but as though she were a mouse in the lion's paws, he held her effortlessly against him and continued his urgent kisses, moving from her collarbone down to the swell of her breasts. His strength held her up as he manipulated her into a backwards arc, exposing her completely to his questing mouth.

From the corner of her eye, she saw James standing in the doorway of the bedroom, in a robe and boxers.

"James?" Jenny called. Her voice was sleepy.

And suddenly Chloe was angry. What did it matter if she'd gained a few pounds since they started going out? James was going bald, that didn't change the fact that he was a two-timing assface whose sole good points, she saw now, were only in comparison to her previous boyfriends, none of whom should ever have made it past the first date. She'd supported him while he finished school and looked for a job. She had been there for him. She didn't have an eating problem or a stress problem or any of that. She had a
James
problem. Although now that they were broken up, she supposed she just had a perspective problem.

And she was going to take care of it right
now
.

"Oh, haha," she said breathlessly as the vampire fastened his lips around her nipple and sucked hard. She could feel the draw of his mouth through her clothing and it made her dizzy with need. "I, um... I mean..."

"What are you doing here?" James said. "I thought we had agreed to go our separate ways?"

No,
you
agreed to go our separate ways, as long as that meant you didn't have to go anywhere or do anything. Think I'll just roll over for you? You can't even make me come with a good fingerbang. I have seen the
light
,
my friend.
She couldn't get her tongue to cooperate with such a long string of words, however. She had to settle for something more succinct.

"All my accounts were locked," Chloe told him as the vampire picked her up as easily as if she were a kitten, wrapped her legs around his waist, and moved to the couch. They fell together onto the cushions in a heap, his hips coming to rest between her thighs. He studiously ignored James and instead began to work her clothes off. "And... uh... no cash..."

“Chloe, stop this, you're acting like a child...”

I
am?
I
am? Fuck
you.

Against the soft mound of her breasts, she felt the vampire smile.

“Well, I still had the key,” she said as the vampire managed to work her sweater over her head. “And I couldn't get a hotel... I thought, um—
ah!”
Her blouse parted, and with a swift yank on her bra her breasts popped free, bouncing straight into the vampire's cool hands, which immediately warmed upon contact. Roughly he dragged his palms over her nipples and Chloe mewled and squirmed, tossing her head back as she tried to press every inch of her body against his.

"What do you think this is accomplishing, Chloe?” James sounded angry now. “If you think this is some kind of revenge on me or something, I just... I don't even know. Jesus, would you
stop
?" A quelling hand landed on the vampire's shoulder from behind.

Oh, boy,
Chloe thought.

The vampire, to his credit, moved like a human being when he whirled around and punched James in the face. Chloe was sure he'd pulled the punch, too, but even a pulled punch can hurt like hell. James hit the ground like a fallen tree.

"Oh my god!" Jenny had just arrived on the scene. Now the little living room was even more crowded and confusing. Chloe was starting to think this hadn't been such a good idea as Jenny rushed to James' side and helped him into a sitting position. He was holding his nose. Blood streamed down his chin from behind his hand.

“What the fuck, man, what the
fuck—
you
broke
my
nose
—!”

"Oh, sorry chum," the vampire said in the most bored, aristocratic accent Chloe had ever heard. "War reflexes, you know." And he put out a hand to help James to his feet.

Without thinking, James took it, and the vampire pulled him effortlessly upright. Their eyes locked. A dazed look passed over James's face.

"Hello," the vampire said conversationally.

"Hey," said James.

Chloe licked her lips. She didn't know what she was going to do if this went south, but she was sure she would do something. Her whole body tensed as she waited for things to play out.

“Sorry to bother you,” the vampire continued, clearly not sorry at all, “but I was just hoping to fall into bed with a beautiful woman, and what should she tell me but a story about a faithless fiance and a treacherous friend?” He shifted his eyes to Jenny, who had begun to bristle. Immediately she calmed. Her eyes unfocused and stared somewhere far away.

“That's better. After all, we are all acquaintances here. We all know the score. Now... James, was it? James... tell me, what made you think you should be the one who keeps the living quarters? Do you not possess sufficient funds to procure your own place to live?”

This was something Chloe hadn't thought of before. She knew Jenny was in a bad way financially, but Jenny had always been twenty dollars away from losing her apartment the entire time Chloe had known her. She was just bad with money. James, on the other hand, had a good paying job. He had plenty of money.

Except apparently he didn't, because he shook his head. “No,” he said dreamily. “I lost my job five months ago.”

Chloe gasped.
Five
months?

The vampire didn't look at her, but she saw a muscle twitch in his neck. “I see. Did you inform your fiancee of this fact?”

“No. I was ashamed. I told Jenny. I hid it from Chloe. I've been using up our savings keeping up my half of the bills...”

Their
savings? A sick feeling settled in her stomach, pushing back the breathless desire, leaving her reeling. “Was that why you cut me off from our accounts?” she demanded. “So I wouldn't find out?”

James' mouth twitched but he didn't answer right away.

“Well?” the vampire prompted.

“Yes,” James said. “That was why.”

Chloe collapsed back onto the couch and stared at the ceiling. All that money... was it all gone? She'd been saving her birthday money since she was seven—seven!—for something special. Like a honeymoon, or a down-payment on a house with her husband. She'd
thought
that was going to be James.

She was going to have to start all over again. Chloe covered her face with her hands and tried not to hyperventilate.

“I think,” the vampire said, “that you should leave all your valuables here. Go fetch a piece of paper... Good. Now write on it:
I,
first name and last name,
do hereby bequeath all items in my possession worth more than the sum of one dollar to—”

“Twenty dollars,” Chloe interjected. “Inflation.”

“Apologies.
More than the sum of twenty dollars to Miss Chloe Banks. Any remaining items will be collected and removed in the space of seventy-two hours.'
Good. Now sign it. You, too, Miss. You'll make a fine witness. Now date it. Now... pack a change of clothes and get the hell out of here. Miss Banks does not want to see your weaselly face again.”

“Yes, sir,” James mumbled.

Chloe dropped her hands from her eyes and watched as James and Jenny calmly gathered their things. They must both have very little money, Chloe realized, otherwise they might have gone to crash at Jenny's apartment. Had Jenny been kicked out? Why didn't they tell her? Why turn to each other and keep her in the dark? It was no wonder they'd ended up fucking. Her relationship must have been over long before James and Jenny had begun their tryst.