Curve Effect (A BBW Box Set of Contemporary, Science Fiction and Paranormal Romances)

by Vremont, Ann

  Lonnie slammed through the door a few seconds later, the words "Fat frigid bitch" bursting from his throat. Stopping beneath the door’s exterior light, he patted his jacket before he reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Cigarette lit, Lonnie stepped into the alley.

  Cruz let the man clear three of the old brick buildings before he started the hunt in earnest. He was within a few feet before Lonnie passed the fifth building. Cruz caught his attention with a raspy snarl that jiggered up Lonnie’s spine and sent him pinwheeling in Cruz’s direction.

  "N-n-nice doggie."

  Crouched in the shadows, Cruz dipped his head far enough forward that light reflected off his golden eyes and white fangs. Lonnie stood, his hand out as he made direct eye contact. It would have been a stupid enough move if he had been facing down a stray dog. But a twenty-three-year old, hundred-eighty pound wolf shifter? Still snarling, Cruz took a step forward, and then another, more of his shifter form becoming visible.

  Lonnie shot down the alley in a straight line, legs pumping wildly as he ignored the side alleys and cross streets. Cruz would give him a little slack, wait until Lonnie peered back at the blur of fangs and fur and then lunge forward, doubling his speed until he was within snapping distance of Lonnie’s Nike-clad feet. Cruz chased him like that for seven or eight blocks until Lonnie stumbled, cutting his hand on a piece of glass.

  The blood in the air overtook the lingering scent of Tamsyn on Lonnie’s clothes. Lonnie’s steps became more erratic, Cruz’s more purposeful. Coming up on the next intersection between alleys, Cruz leapt, jaws open.

  A cannonball of black fur and gleaming white teeth body-checked Cruz, sent him flying eight feet to slam against the wall of the nearest building. He twisted, offering a warning snap as words filtered into his head.

  Haven’t I warned you? Look before you leap, little brother.

  Still snarling, Cruz regained his footing. Lowering his snout, he pushed his brother Dominic’s furry shoulder with the flat of his head. The gesture earned him a snap and a bloody ear.

  More gently, when Cruz refused to yield any ground, Dominic asked, would you destroy her world--her life?

  Always it came back to that with his big brother--the warning that no one had been there to give Dominic when he had fallen in love with a human female.

  An image of Lonnie between Tamsyn’s legs flashed through Cruz’s mind. The sight was pushed out by his brother's vision of a charred building and the trail of long black hair from a covered coroner’s gurney.

  Lyrra, Dominic’s woman.

  Let Tamsyn live her life and make her own mistakes. Don’t be one of them.

  Dropping his head, Cruz took his first step towards home--the small, two-bedroom apartment above the garage Dominic owned and they both worked at. Back in his bedroom, door shut and locked, Cruz reached beneath his bed and pulled out his pencils and drawing pad. Tamsyn’s shape quickly took form on the paper. Only this time, the head dipping down to lovingly savor her taste was his.

  *****

  Tamsyn was speed eating a plate of scrambled eggs between customers and taking notes for her anatomy class when Ed nodded over her shoulder at the diner’s front door. Grabbing her order sheet and pen, she turned just in time to see Cruz sliding into the booth closest to the door. His hair was short at the back, but a forward fall of black bangs blocked her view of his silver gray eyes. She saw instead the slash of a strong nose and full lips. A sleeveless shirt showed off his muscular shoulders and sculpted arms. She recognized the green tee, one he had screen printed on his own with a werewolf reaching for a moon shaped like a biohazard sign.

  Seeing the image, she sighed. He only wore the shirt to piss off his brother. Dom didn’t seem to like Cruz’s artwork any better than Dom liked Tamsyn.

  "He better--"

  She shot her boss a hard look and picked up the coffee pot. "He won’t."

  At the table, she turned Cruz’s cup over and filled it. "You should eat someplace else. The food’s shit."

  Looking down at the cup, he smiled. "So’s the service."

  He took a sip of the steaming hot coffee before glancing up at her. "But the coffee’s the best on the entire block."

  "Ed doesn’t think it’s the coffee you’re after." She stopped herself before an embarrassed moan escaped her. Ed thought Cruz liked her but her boss was dead wrong. Maybe once upon a time he'd looked at her that way, back at the end of high school when she was still on the small side. Not anymore.

  Holding pen to paper, she waited for Cruz to order. She could feel Ed’s eyes boring into the spot between her shoulder blades as he likely remembered the last time Cruz had been in the diner. A customer -- some jerk catching a ball game with his buddies -- had gotten all grab ass with her, saying he'd always wanted to ride a fat chick. Cruz had tossed the man like a rag doll through the diner’s plate glass window. Dismissing the memory, she tapped her pen against the order pad. "Look, you want today’s omelet special? Ham’s fresh."

  He shrugged. "What’s Lonnie think?"

  Her pen froze mid-air. "About the ham?"

  "About me coming round here." Opening the menu, he pointed to the Eggs Benedict. "Way he’s talking, he fucked you last night. That true?"

  Tamsyn colored, felt the warm flare of embarrassment against her cheeks and throat, but stared him in the eyes. "No."

  "But you let him go down on you." This time there was no question in his tone.

  She blinked and her gaze dropped to the tip of his nose. "No."

  "So he’s lying when he says you let him eat you out, that you told him if he could make you come--"

  "Fuck you, Cruz. Like you give a shit." She crumpled the order sheet up and shoved it in her apron pocket before taking his coffee cup away. "And stay out of the diner. You’re going to get me fired."

  Heart slamming in her chest, she walked away from Cruz, her mind flinching with each swaying step of her too wide hips. Eyes blurring, she sat down at the counter and tried to study for her evening exam. Words swam as she picked up a highlighter and ran it across the text.

  Maternal peripheral testosterone levels during the first half of pregnancy…

  "He’s gone." Ed’s voice cut through the tears, his tone softened now that Cruz had left without breaking the diner in half. "Looks like he left a tip."

  Cruz always left too much, like it was some kind of apology for being an ass, for running hot and cold while he made sure no man got within twenty feet of her. She shrugged. She didn’t want it, didn’t want anything he had to offer. "Mim can bus the table."

  Her thoughts turned to that rat bastard Lonnie. He would be bleeding before she was finished with him. Swearing under her breath, she highlighted more text about peak levels at nine to eleven weeks and then the door to the diner opened again, followed by the high-pitched sound of wired kids and the exhausted bleating of their parents.

  *****

  Back at the garage, Dominic had banished Cruz to the underside of an old Ford Ranchero. He took his punishment smiling. Dom and Tamsyn might both be pissed as hell at him, but it was worth it. The scene at the diner, her knowing that he knew and thinking that word would always get back to him would halt any future reckless deals like the one she had made with Lonnie. And it would forever and always shut the door on that tweaker’s frequent attempts to get into Tamsyn’s pants.

  "Quit grinning."

  "Yes, boss." He slid under the Ranchero and tapped lightly against a rust spot on the manifold with his socket wrench. Damn thing was ready to crack.

  "Boss?" Dominic’s voice dripped sarcasm. "You seem to be forgetting that a lot lately."

  Cruz ignored his big brother, his mind drifting to last night’s chase as he worked. He would seek to capture the rush of it with his pencils and inks, just as he had captured Tamsyn’s soft curves and succulent breasts. Unlike the image of Tamsyn, however, he would spin Lonnie’s image off into a story, another chapter in the Beast Brothers’ comic. On paper, t
here would be no last minute reprieve for Woodrow.

  Dominic kicked Cruz’s exposed shoe. "You’re whistling that damn theme song of yours."

  Cruz immediately stopped whistling and focused his attention on a stripped nut as he tried to keep Dominic out of his head. It was easier in human form. As wolves, they might as well have been one mind driven by two very different wills.

  "Please tell me you haven't been posting any more pictures."

  Cruz slid a little further under the Ranchero.

  "Damn it, Manito. It’s too risky." Dominic put his size twelve down on the edge of the mechanic’s creeper and tried to pull Cruz out from under the Ranchero.

  Cruz wrapped both hands around the manifold’s rusted form. "Keeps me sane, Dom."

  "What about when someone recognizes it for more than a comic?"

  He shrugged the suggestion off. "You worry too much."

  It had been over eleven years since Dominic had experienced his change and six years since Cruz had his first taste of moon madness at the age of seventeen. Not in all those years, back alleys and empty rooftops had they ever had the slightest whiff that there was someone else that shared their…

  Curse or gift?

  Cruz stopped working the nut. It was a gift most of the time, except for when he ached for Tamsyn or when that cloud of worry crossed Dom’s gaze.

  "It’s bad enough anyone like us could smell you from a mile away anytime you get near her--"

  "You saying I stink?" Cruz maneuvered beneath the Ranchero until he could take a deep whiff of his pits.

  "It’s just something…strong. For about six months now."

  Six months--Cruz knew the exact night. Six months ago was the first night he’d been unsatisfied with just passing beneath her window to check if she had made it home okay from classes. It had been the first night he’d climbed up to the rooftop and lingered through her shower, through her dropping the towels onto her bedroom floor and crawling up onto her waterbed, naked. It had also been the first night he’d watched her touching herself. She moved like a dancer on that damn bed, slow and sensual, the bed's small waves magnified as her hips rotated and thrust, her fingers working the thick lips of her cunt and swollen clit.

  He had nearly cummed in his pants spying on her.

  "Are you paying attention, Manito?" Dominic pulled on the creeper again, managing to drag Cruz halfway out. "These comics are accessible all over the world!"

  "It’s just you and me, bro." Cruz pushed and pulled his way back to the nut. "Ain’t nothing else like the Beast Brothers out there in the whole wide world. Now go find me a replacement for the manifold and quit fretting like someone’s abuelita."

  Grumbling, Dominic retreated into the small glass office tucked in the far corner of the garage. Finding a part for a car that was almost forty years old wasn’t a quick task. Taps, clicks and more taps sounded as he worked the laptop’s keyboard and mouse. Minutes would pass and then he would pick up the phone, only to find out that the used parts dealer hadn’t updated his online inventory or had the wrong part listed. Then it was back to the sound of tap, tap, click, and the soft, subversive whistle of the Beast Brothers' theme song.

  Until the smell of Lonnie Woodrow preceded the tweaker’s presence by half a block. The stink was a mix of sweat seeped in last night’s fear, cheap beer and freshly smoked crystal meth that filtered through the Ranchero’s oil and engine grease.

  Dom was on the phone again. Before Dom could even scent Lonnie, Cruz was up and on the sidewalk in front of the garage. Behind him, the office door opened.

  "Manito?"

  Dominic’s question was answered a second later by Woodrow’s appearance. With an open palm, Lonnie tried giving Cruz’s shoulder a hard push, frowning when he couldn’t force Cruz to take a step back.

  "What kinda shit you spreading about me, Medina?"

  "Nothing you haven’t been spreading yourself," Cruz answered, guessing there was no chance in hell Lonnie had actually kept his mouth shut about last night. He’d have bragged or bitched to somebody.

  "That’s my business." Lonnie gave another unsuccessful shove. "Not yours."

  "I’m not letting my best friend hang out with a meth head." Cruz watched Lonnie’s face sag at the accusation. "What, you thought you were keeping it a secret?"

  Lonnie jabbed a finger in Cruz’s chest. "Shut up, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Medina!"

  "Wrong, I can smell it on you."

  A malevolent, smart ass grin broke across Lonnie’s face. "Fuck that. All you smell on me is Tamsyn’s puss--"

  The cartilage in Lonnie’s nose snapped, the bright burst of blood following almost immediately. Dominic caught Cruz’s arm as Cruz pulled back to launch a second blow. Capturing Cruz’s other arm, he trapped him in a full nelson, with both of his arms up under Cruz’s and his hands locked behind his little brother’s neck. Cruz tried to wrap his legs around Lonnie but the tweaker was folding fast to the ground, his hand pressed hard to his nose to stop the blood and pain.

  Dominic dragged Cruz to the door leading from the garage bay up to the apartment.

  "Fucking let go!"

  Dominic threw the door open, using his extra two inches of height and thirty pounds of weight to force Cruz into the narrow stairwell.

  "I’d level his ass, too, but we can’t afford the cops."

  Dom threw the switch on the garage door’s hydraulics, keeping one eye on Lonnie’s recovering figure while he straight-armed Cruz to keep him from busting back into the room. "It isn’t worth--"

  "Tamsyn is worth it."

  Dominic glanced at Cruz to see a cold fire burning in his brother’s eyes.

  Out on the street, Lonnie screamed at them. "You’ll get yours, Medina. Both of you goddamned fuckers!"

  Sure that the garage door was down too low for Lonnie to slide under, Dominic raised his hand, wrapped it around Cruz’s throat and forced him against the wall. "Think about it, Manito. You, in a prison cell, for eight to twenty years because some street trash wants to hook up with a girl you like. How long you think you can go without changing? A month? Maybe two? After that, you’ll rip your fucking guts out with your own hands!"

  Purpling from the choke hold, Cruz still fought to get free, pushing at Dom with his arms and legs.

  Dom let go, moving like lightning to drop low and hit his shoulder hard against Cruz’s stomach, instantly doubling Cruz over. Dom wrapped his arms around Cruz’s legs and lifted, staggering as he found his balance and climbed the stairs.

  Flung over Dom’s back, Cruz grabbed hold of the railing.

  "Don’t make me use the bear spray on your ass, Manito!" Dominic gave his upper torso a hard twisting jerk, breaking Cruz’s hold on the railing and slamming Cruz against the opposite wall.

  Upstairs, furniture was overturned as they cut a wild path to Cruz’s bedroom door. Dominic tossed him onto the bed and quickly stepped back. He raised his hand before Cruz could charge him.

  "You know I still have a can."

  Cruz settled back against the wall, ass planted on the mattress, a fistful of the bed’s quilt in each hand as he glared at his older brother.

  Dominic shook his head. "If we have to start all over once more, you’ll never see Tamsyn again."

  Silence, hard and angry, and then the fire in Cruz’s gaze flickered and died.

  *****

  Dominic finished closing the garage. Back upstairs he started the computer and righted the furniture they’d overturned. Checking the garage’s email account, he found a confirmation on a manifold in stock for the Ranchero and called the vehicle’s owner before placing the order. Printing out a copy of the invoice, he spotted a corner of paper peeking from the scanner. The end page of Beast Brothers, issue six.

  "Cruz!"

  Cruz came out, shoes dragging along the carpet. He stopped a few feet past his bedroom door and leaned against the wall, one thumb hooked in a belt loop and the other hand shoved deep in his jeans pocket.

>   Dom held up the picture. "Where are you posting these now?"

  "M-not."

  "Bullshit, little brother. You wouldn’t scan it if you weren’t posting it somewhere." He opened up the web browser and started putting in keywords in the search engine. "I'll find it."

  Looking up, he saw a cocky grin on Cruz’s face. He pushed the keyboard to the side. "Right, just show me."

  "First, admit it."

  "Fine. I won’t find it."

  "Because…"

  Because you know your shit."

  Satisfied with the admission, Cruz leaned over Dominic’s shoulder and clicked on what looked like a blank space on the desktop. Screens opened and closed in rapid succession, all too fast for Dominic to read what they said.

  "So you’re masking your visits and your uploads?"

  "Yeah." Cruz had explained it a dozen times over. He spun on his heels and plopped on the couch, his gaze wary as he watched Dominic click through the images on the site and then the comments.

  Dominic grunted. "Woof, woof, make me your bitch? Are these girls fucking serious?"

  Cruz offered a flat, "Don’t know. Not interested. None of them are Tam."

  "You IM or chat?"

  "Just the serious visitors, mostly other artists. The chat is secure, too, Dom."

  "What about this one, Bad Moon Rising. It says, ‘I’m just like the weres in Beast Brothers and I can prove it.’"

  "Just someone role playing. Get ‘em all the time." Cruz rolled off the couch, grabbed the keyboard and typed a reply. "Then prove it, dude."

  Cruz picked up the picture he’d left in the scanner. "We done?"

  The downstairs’ buzzer sounded. Dominic rose slowly from the computer chair and jerked his thumb in the direction of Cruz’s bedroom.

  "If it’s the cops…"

  "Yeah." Cruz stripped his t-shirt off as he went. "Just you and Rover at home."

  In his room, he pulled his shoes and socks off, unbuttoned his jeans. He listened for the sound of footsteps on the stairs and the casual warning of addressing a cop as "Officer" that Dominic would give if their visitor was a cop. It was a trick they'd pulled before, too many times.