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

T
o say her day had been bad was an understatement, so when the vampire cornered her in the religious and rare books section of the library and pinned her to the shelves, Chloe Banks' first thought was
,
Oh yes, of course. Naturally.

In fact, the vampire was probably the least of her problems. That morning, she'd awoken to the sounds of a woman who was not her getting laid on her living room couch.

Confusion had reigned for a moment. Who was in her apartment, and why wasn't her fiance James chasing them out with a broom? He was by far the lighter sleeper. Chloe could sleep through the end of the world.

But that question had been answered when she looked over to the other side of the bed and found it empty, just as she heard James out in the other room whispering to the woman to keep her voice down. So Chloe had rolled out of bed, pulled on a comfy robe, and, in a daze, wandered out into her living room to find her fiance and her best friend fucking on her couch. James was balls deep in Jenny's ass, and Jenny, face-down in the cushions, wanted the world to know she liked it.

“What the hell?” Chloe had said. There hadn't been much more
to
say.

James glanced up and saw her.

“Fuck,” he said, and came inside her best friend.

So yeah. That had been a bad start.

That neither James nor Jenny seemed repentant made it worse.
 

We're in love,
they said.

That James tried to blame
her
for growing distant and for putting on a few pounds since graduation—
you've been so busy with work,
he said,
I've grown close to Jenny, I can talk to her,
he said,
you're lifestyle is unhealthy,
he said—well, that was like a knife to the gut. Chloe had always been the larger friend, but she'd never envied 'Skinny Jenny' her figure until now.

And then James, the sole name on the apartment lease, had asked
her
to leave.
This apartment is bigger,
he'd said.
We can trade. You take Jenny's. We'll figure something out...

So yeah. It had been a bad day. Chloe had spent most of it in a trance, which meant she fucked up her job more than once, and finally invited a scathing recrimination from her superior, Deena. When the tears had threatened to finally well up and overflow, she had fled to the safety and silence of the top floor of the library, where all the rare tomes were kept. There she shut herself in the rare books reading room and sobbed her eyes out, only stopping when someone knocked on the glass windows, presumably requiring help.

Drying her eyes and forcing herself to look presentable, Chloe exited the reading room, keeping her gaze down so she didn't have to endure any further humiliation like a stranger's compassion, and asked the patron if she could help him with anything. At the time, she thought nothing of it, but the shoes she had affixed her gaze upon were extremely scuffed and dirty. And dated.

“I believe you
can
help me,” said the patron. Then he grabbed her, shoved her against the shelves, and pinned her wrists above her head in a grip so tight she thought she heard her bones creak.

She knew he was a vampire right away. Entirely aside from the fact that she was a huge fan of vampire fiction—and she was a librarian, so she had access to quite a bit of it—there were several things that clued her in to this fact.

For one, once she looked at his face, she discovered that he was preternaturally beautiful. His skin was pale and smooth and his messy dark hair fell into mesmerizing eyes. To be fair he seemed a bit too thin, but, Chloe reasoned, no one was perfect, not even vampires.

That wasn't the only thing, though. For another, his hand on her wrists as he held them above her head was as cold as a corpse's, and no heat rolled from his body despite how close he stood to her. They were so close, in fact, that her full breasts, heaving with the rush of adrenaline in her veins, actually brushed over the tattered jacket he wore. Which was another thing—he was
dressed
like a guy who had just risen from the grave, his once-fine clothes now faded rags barely clinging to his frame.

Then there was the part where he was attempting to glamour her.

“I'm going to suck your blood,” he was saying, his voice low and soothing, “but you will remember only a passionate kiss, stolen from a handsome student whom you've never seen before. You will not scream, no matter how it hurts...and it will...but you will remain silent, and bear it...”

Yeah. That was creepy.

Oh, and also he had fangs. They gave him a lisp. That was a pretty big tip-off.

This was where she found herself now. On the worst day of her life, best-friendless, fiance-less, homeless, and trapped in a secluded spot by a supernatural predator hellbent on drinking her blood. Which, she supposed, wouldn't have been
so
bad as long as he left some behind for her to use, but she'd been planning on selling it later for extra cash and this was just going to shoot that all to shit.

It said a lot about her mental state that Chloe did not immediately dissolve into a messy puddle of panic upon realizing that, point A, vampires existed, and, point B, she was about to become a snack for one. It just seemed like par for the course for a day like today.

“...and when you wake up,” the vampire was droning, “you will be only pleasantly confused, and will sit here for ten minutes until the dizziness wears off, whereupon you will continue about your business—”

“No way, I am
not
doing that,” Chloe said without thinking. “I was planning on selling that blood, I need to remember you stole it.”

Her voice cracked through the stale library air like a slap to the face.

Silence fell as the vampire stopped in mid-soothing chant and stared at her.

“What?” he said after a moment.

Chloe tried to ignore her pounding heart. It wasn't that she wasn't
scared;
she was. Quite scared. But it was more that losing her precious—and valuable—blood to an undead parasite would have been the snot topping on the shit sundae that had been her day, no matter how pretty the parasite appeared to be. She just didn't need the
hassle
.

She cleared her throat. “I
said
,
I need it. I'm kind of strapped for cash.” There was no way she was moving into Jenny's apartment. She somehow had to scrape enough together for another deposit. She
needed
that blood.

The vampire stared at her.

Chloe wondered if she could appeal to his better nature. Sure, he was a vampire, but he probably had a better nature hidden in there somewhere. “And really, I'd kind of prefer you didn't do it in the first place? I've had a really shit day and don't feel like getting drained by a vampire on top of all my other issues, okay?”

If anything he looked even more surprised at this. His face went utterly still, which lent a far creepier air of deadness to him.

But at least he wasn't biting her. Yet. That was good, right? She kept babbling because she didn't know what else to do. She tried to be helpful. As a curator of knowledge sent to guide lost lambs to the wisdom they sought, being helpful came naturally to her. Librarianship was serious business, and she fell back on it now.

“But, you know, it's cool. If that's your thing, I know you gotta do what you gotta do. But maybe you should pick people who don't need all their blood? And maybe be a little more suave about it, I think that might help soften the blow. You'll need some new clothes first since yours aren't in the best shape. And they're a bit dated. Did you die in the fifties? Untuck your shirt, you look like a grandpa with your pants so high on your waist. Your suit jacket is nice—oh, you have a vest, too—okay, your suit was very nice when it was new, but it won't pass now, and most people don't wear suits anyway. You'd look good in leather. Or, um, you know... Something fitted. You know, to show off your, uh... Well, uh, what I
mean
is if you're going to lure unsuspecting young ladies into your arms for a quick snack you'll need to clean up a bit. People have
expectations,
you know. I don't want to get bitten by someone who looks like they just crawled out of a grave and I doubt anyone else will either. No offense.”

“None taken,” the vampire said, bemused. His hand on her wrists was still like cold iron, and the shelves of books behind her bit sharply into her arched back and generous behind. He was strong, despite his lean appearance. She was no lightweight—boy, did she know it—but he still held her barely on her tiptoes, leaving her struggling to stay balanced while her breasts and hips ghosted against his clothes. He was really
tall,
too, looming over her exposed and utterly immobilized body.

She tried not to think about that. Or about the fact that, despite his grungy appearance, he really
was
extremely pretty. She hadn't been this close to a man this hot since... ever.

Which didn't change the fact that she had to get away from him. Yeah. How was she going to do that exactly?

“Anyway. You're not going to blend in looking like that,” she continued, her mouth running on autopilot as she frantically thumbed through her meticulous mental librarian files, struggling to unearth everything she knew about vampires. “You need new clothes, and a bath. And you should hide your fangs, they totally give you away.”

The vampire's eyebrows drew down. His pretty, brooding face looked even more stunning with a frown, if that were possible. “I am hungry,” he said defensively. “I cannot control them. They come out when the thirst grows too great for my body to contain it, a physical manifestation of my unholy cravings—”

A comparison occurred to Chloe. “Like an erection?”

Silence crashed down between them.

Probably should have kept that to myself.

The silence thickened. Chloe felt her heart fluttering in the pulse at her throat, heard her harsh breath scraping through her teeth.

“Yes,” the vampire said eventually, his voice dry. “Exactly like an erection.”

And he pressed his body against hers.

Oh
,
Chloe thought.

He was cold through his clothes, his long, lean muscles bringing a chilly pressure to bear against her soft curves, but sure enough bulging between his legs was an enormous cock. It nudged her low on her belly, and despite her fear and racing thoughts Chloe couldn't hold back the small, quick rush of heat between her legs and the tiny, traitorous squeak in the back of her throat.

The vampire smiled.

Chloe heard a little
pop
as her brain blew a fuse.

He'd been stunning before. Now he was deadly.

Grasping at her last shreds of sanity, Chloe tried to muster some measure of professional distance while the vampire ground his hips against hers in a slow, dangerous circle.

Such as, for instance, were
all
vampires this meltingly sexy, or was it just this one? The original vampire legends portrayed them as pretty gross and disgusting, and yet this one had no problems in that regard, questionable fashion sense aside. And how did a vampire get an erection in the first place? Did he have control over his circulatory system? And why would a vampire, who presumably could have anyone he wanted, choose a mousy, chubby librarian over, say, one of the pretty young undergrads or graduate coeds studying all alone in private rooms on the other floors? Maybe feeding had nothing to do with sexual attraction... but why the raging hard-on, then? None of this made any sense!

Well, within the context of
holy crap, vampires actually exist,
anyway. That... that was also a surprise.

Chloe opened her mouth again as she tried to pick one of the myriad of questions bubbling up in her head, but then the vampire placed his free hand over her lips.

It was the barest of touches, just a phantom caress, but it stopped her in her tracks. Cold sliced through her, robbing her of breath, and Chloe gasped. The inhalation caused breasts to push back against his chest, and she writhed in his grip like a butterfly pinned, her instincts at war.

“Don't speak,” the vampire said. “And don't scream.”

His fingers departed her lips, slipping over her cheek, down her chin to her throat, where he closed his hand around her neck, smoothing and massaging her, sending shivers of cold and unwelcome arousal through her body.

The perfect predator,
Chloe-the-librarian prattled distantly,
able to walk amongst and seduce its prey at will...

Long, possessive fingers slid down over one large breast, cupping it gently, his thumb finding a nipple through her clothes. She wore a gray v-neck sweater over a smart white blouse, but his touch was so potent it she would have sworn she could feel every ridge of his fingerprint on her flesh. Blood rushed to follow his touch, and Chloe fought to keep her eyes from closing as he lifted her breast up, pushing a soft swell of cleavage past the edge of her blouse.

“A meal fit for a king,” the vampire murmured.

Then he lowered his head and bit her breast, like Adam taking his first bite of the apples of Eden.

Pain flashed through her, as sharp as the stinging stab of a needle, and her breath caught—

—and then she was floating.

Sweet numbness spread through her veins, radiating out from the point of contact of the vampire's lips. The breath gusting from his nose was cool, but the inside of his mouth burned like a pyre. He swirled his tongue over the wounds he had made in her flesh before probing them in order to coax more blood from her body. A lance of pain speared through her heart, but it was far away, happening to someone else. The sudden desire and heady, flying euphoria, however—those were very immediate. Those were happening to
her
.