by Vremont, Ann
About Curve Effect
Featuring a contemporary romance, a slice or two of tomorrow, an interfering muse and an ever-so-slightly love crazed werewolf, these five stories are filled with heroes who have fallen under the spell of the curve effect.
Behind the Curve
Plus-size reporter Valerie Lane didn't expect to find love during an undercover assignment in a sex parlor. Hell, she couldn't even anticipate the mind-blowing orgasms the parlor's newest client teases from her as he explores every erogenous zone on her ample body.
For Craig Spence, behind the curve of his fantasy girl is pure heaven. He just needs to convince Valerie this is more than a one-time trip around the world.
Fantasy Curves 269
It's not easy being a big girl in 2169…
On her way to a friend’s Halloween party, Morgan Macy never expected to be confused for a real Fantasy Unit for one simple reason -- she has never seen a plus-size pleasure droid. Hell, there are very few big girls, period, and it has been a long, long time since a man looked twice at her overgenerous curves.
Apparently there are plus-size Fantasy Units and what was meant as a practical joke poking fun at her secret crush Vance Gemini turns into a gauntlet of groping males. Forced to head home for a costume change before she even gets to the party, Morgan finds herself on an empty subway platform with a masculine, all-too-familiar voice ordering her to halt.
Turn around, FU 269. I want your time.
Curve Cover
Betrayed by her commanding officers and abandoned by her husband, plus-size Major Amanda Child wants to spend her forced retirement flying under the government's radar while she finds proof of its crimes. What she gets is six-feet-three-inches of rogue Berserker handcuffed to her bed. Will one night of pure bliss reveal that the last thing she was looking for is the one thing she desperately needs?
Curve Beast
For two years, Cruz Medina has tried hard to ignore Tamsyn, the plus-size beauty he's lusted after since high school. Never mind that he climbs rooftops every evening to watch her in bed, her hands caressing her lush curves with an intimacy he can only dream about. Never mind that she wants him just as badly, that he can smell her arousal and need every time they meet.
He's a shifter, she's not. Loving her isn't an option -- until a rogue pack of shifters goes on the hunt for Tamsyn and the only way to protect her is to tell the truth.
Curve Muse
An inspiring mix of a muse-on-the-loose, a plus-sized beauty and the artist next door…
Bryce is a practical, plus-sized woman with an L.A. apartment located a world away from the fairytales of Hollywood. So, when a blonde in red leather shows up proclaiming to be a muse and deputizing Bryce, she thinks another L.A. kook has landed on her doorstep.
But faster than Bryce can say, “No way, bye-bye, don’t let the door hit your skinny ass on the way out,” she finds herself in a toga and amulets that are wreaking havoc on her senses. The fight to get out of the toga and return to sanity leaves her butt naked on the neighboring patio. When she realizes her gorgeous next door neighbor is RIGHT THERE with her, it’s worse than any bad dream of showing up naked in high school.
For Mr. Gorgeous, however, it’s been a long time coming. He’s been having fantasies of painting Bryce au naturel for months. He’s had other fantasies, too, but the shy beauty has turned aside and ignored every attempt to get closer. Now that he’s got her halfway there, he’s pulling out all the stops.
Behind the Curve
"Fresh meat, Val baby."
Hearing the front doorman's voice over the speaker, I stood and moved to the cash register. Knowing I had a few seconds while the next client walked the long, private corridor to reach Belinda Lee's sex parlor, I self-consciously ran my hands over the corset I had on. It started just above my nipples and stopped over a miniscule triangle of fabric masquerading as underwear. Except for the studded platform heels on my feet, I was otherwise bare.
My face started to heat and I felt like squirming. I was four days into an investigative assignment into San Francisco's sex trade and I didn't look the part, not even with the new wardrobe I had acquired. The women working at Belinda's topped out at a size ten. Most fell around a six, which was a third of my dress size. They had hair extensions, fake nails, false eyelashes -- false everything. In all my life, I had never felt more like the ugly fat girl.
The door opened and I braced against the incoming client's reaction.
"What'll it be?" I asked, trying to mimic the disaffected tone of the women I had spent the last few days interviewing.
The man's gaze stroked its way down my body, lingering over my full breasts before dropping straight to the hourglass flare of my too thick hips. I swallowed, trying not to show my discomfort. For all the trouble I had out in the regular world getting a guy to notice me, Belinda's clients had been split fifty-fifty in their reaction to my plus-size frame.
Pulling his wallet from his back pocket, the client licked his lips then smiled. "How about you and a trip around the world?"
Belinda was in the corner processing credit card payments and she stood up, hips sashaying in the short walk from corner to counter. She wagged a crimson-tipped fingernail at the man.
"No health certificate," Belinda told him. "You can book a flight with her next week."
"Next week, eh?" The man tossed me a wink and placed three hundred dollars on the counter. His brows rose higher as his gaze snuggled against my cleavage. "Not everything requires a health certificate, does it?"
Scowling, Belinda clicked her tongue at the man. "I'll get you Salome. They're twins, these two."
I bit back a laugh. Salome was black and weighed about sixty pounds less than me -- that made her one of the biggest women in Belinda's stable. She was also a complete hoot, sassy and an absolute handful. Her stories alone had given me enough material to fill two newspaper features and a month's worth of fantasies.
Sighing, the client pushed the cash closer to me, his focus never leaving my breasts as I input his request for a blowjob, straight fuck, and ass fuck. Then I walked him back to a room and put a blue order ticket in the bin next to the door. The whole thing, from the tables in the room to the notification system, reminded me of visiting my gynecologist.
When I returned to the reception area, Belinda was hanging up the phone. She turned to me. "You wanted to interview a customer, right?"
I nodded.
"Well, I got one for you."
I picked up my notepad and pen and waited while Belinda finished generating an order ticket.
"What's that for?" I asked as she took me by the elbow and steered me down the hall. My stomach started to knot and my ass pulled tighter in apprehension.
"Patience, cricket," Belinda answered.
They still called me cub at the paper, so Belinda's use of cricket grated. As did the order ticket in the woman’s hand. I didn’t want the client getting the wrong idea. I still couldn't get over the idea that guys who probably wouldn't give me half a glance at a club or out on the street had been drooling all over the counter the last few days, the amount of water shed increasing as my outfits got smaller and tighter.
I didn't want to be alone in a room with a man like that and a fuck ticket in my hand.
"Don't worry, cricket. This'll be fun." Belinda opened the door to a room and shoved the piece of paper into my hand. "For one of you, at least."
With a pat on my ass, she propelled me inside and shut the door.
I caught myself befo
re the shove and my platform shoes sent me sprawling across the room. Thankfully, the man had his back to me, his attention centered on a Japanese shunga print on the opposite wall.
Since he didn't acknowledge me, I took my time studying him. Heat flared across my body and I started to get a little wet. He had auburn hair, full and thick. From behind, with the short, black silk robe that customers wore clinging to his broad shoulders and stopping just short of fully covering a tight ass, he could have been a brother to the man I'd been lusting after since I started at the paper. Certainly he had the thighs for it, thick and muscled.
Ooh…and the calves.
Yeah, almost a twin. My gaze crawled back up his legs toward the robe's hem. Seeing the heavy drop of balls as he shifted, I wondered why a man built like that was paying for sex. He started to turn as potential answers ran through my head. Maybe the front didn’t match the back. Maybe he was too kinky or too cruel. Maybe...
He was my boss.
Craig Spence faced me, his handsome face wearing that familiar, smug smirk I itched to scratch off his face most mornings.
"Damn it, Craig," I bit out. "If you're here to check up on me…I swear, I'm going to punch you."
"Cool down, cub." The smirk widened into a predatory grin. His gaze dropped to the order ticket. "I'm here to make sure you write the best story you possibly can."
"It’s my story -- I don't need your help to write..." I made a critical error, my gaze dropping to his hips and the outline of an erection against the fabric. I licked my lips, top then bottom, in the time it took my gaze to caress the full length of his covered cock.
Damn, yeah. Impressive.
Remembering the ticket in my hand, I looked to the counter where his pants and jacket were neatly folded alongside a condom wrapper and a bottle of almond-flavored lubricant.
"This is some joke." Over the initial shock of seeing my boss half naked, I analyzed the situation. My breathing became erratic, heavier and painful the more I tried to control it. "A very bad joke."
More than bad, it was downright cruel. My crush on Craig started the day he interviewed me. He was smart, funny, and gorgeous. In short, he was everything a girl like me would never have absent a fairy godmother or some disease that wasted me down to a size six.
Rolling my lips, I blinked back the tears I felt building. He could be a hard man, at least he was with all the other reporters and staff on the news team. Most of the time, he avoided the hell out of me, which made me wonder why he had hired me in the first place.
I had to fight tooth and nail to get this assignment from him and had been self-conscious of every last word of the drafts I had turned into him each night. Especially the words no one would ever use to describe me -- petite, toned, sexy, slinky…
"Not a joke," he said, his eyes on my mouth so he couldn't see how I bordered on crying. "A game. Like freshman year of journalism school. You remember?"
Closing my eyes, I nodded. Craig had a reputation as a mentor. Students and recent graduates sought him out. Hard and exacting, he turned most of them down -- even the beautiful future nightly news anchors that purred their way into his office.
"Well, it's not exactly Twenty Four Questions, Confidence Up/Confidence Down," he continued. "But you get what I'm saying?"
I repeated the nod, daring to look at him just in time to see him smile again. His mouth narrowed as he looked me over head-to-toe, just like the last client I had processed. Only Craig's attention lingered at my hips, not my breasts. Sucking his bottom lip into his mouth, he dragged his gaze up to meet mine a few long seconds later.
"I call this one Magenta. I've been saving it just for you, Valerie."
He sounded like the doorman, his voice all raspy as he said my name.
"Magenta?" I looked at the order ticket -- three hundred seventy five dollars without any description of the acts to be performed. I tried to swallow the knot that had formed in my throat, but it only swelled in size.
"You're not too afraid to play, are you, cub?"
His voice was low, the quality contemplative. It dropped like that when he talked to me in the newsroom, in his office, riding the elevator. Basically anywhere he talked to me. Like he had to wear kid gloves around me instead of barking orders like he did with the rest of the press pool. I generally did whatever he wanted when he used that tone, afraid I would either call him a sexist bastard and get fired or go all weak in the knees so someone had to catch me.
Yeah…every time I saw Craig, I fell a little harder.
"Stop calling me cub," I growled. If I couldn’t be witty, I could at least be terse. It might save me from crying.
With his sea-green eyes dappling like sunlight on the ocean, Craig closed the distance between us. He eased the ticket from my hand and let it fall to the ground. He leaned in, hands capturing my biceps as he smelled my hair.
His hands slid lower and inward, his fingers lighting on the black leather corset and following its curves down to my cinched waist.
"I'll stop calling you cub when you stop holding back and write the story I know you're capable of ." With a deep throated growl, he went on to explain the rules of the game. "It's very simple, when you want to stop, you say Magenta."
Right. A safe word. He would stop when I wanted him to -- which should have been five minutes ago but wasn’t. If I didn't panic and tried my best to see the game through, I would know what it was like, going all the way or chickening out because the fear got too big. Shame, arousal...all the things Salome had talked about that morning had seemed distant -- were distant. Another woman’s problems, another woman’s burden to bear.
I had felt that distance in the drafts I submitted to Craig. I guess he had felt them, too.
"So, cub, do you want to play?" He pushed closer, his broad chest pressing against the leather corset to mash my soft breasts as he snaked his hands around to cup my ass. "Or will you tuck tail and go back to the newsroom to polish your tepid little draft?"
"I’m staying." I glared at him, hoping he thought I was pissed and only playing because I had to. He would discover all to soon how wet I was at the mere suggestion of what he might do with my body.
Craig dropped his smile. His pretense of civility disappeared with it. He spun me roughly until my stomach pressed flat against the table. Stepping forward so that his hips dug into my overgenerous ass, he looped the long hair spilling down my back around one hand.
The fingers of his other hand stroked the side of the corset. "I can't decide whether to strip this immediately or leave it on awhile."
I flinched. Up until that second, I had mostly forgotten about my body, the folds of flesh, the stretch marks along my shoulders and most generous curves. Even with the room's forgiving light, there was a good chance Craig would cry Magenta before I did. Then, for the rest of my tenure at the paper, I would see his aversion reflected in his eyes at every meeting, every closed-door consultation.
"Mmm…" Resting his torso against my back, he braced an arm under me and nuzzled my neck. "Off. It has to be off. I need to see you, need to touch all of your flesh."
He nipped lightly at my shoulder then straightened. Releasing my hair, he used both hands to release the corset. I heard the heavy leather slap against the floor as it hit then he had both hands beneath me, each one overflowing with my breasts.
He jerked back for a second, just long enough to stir panic in my breast. But he only wanted to remove the robe. With it off, his chest covered my back again as his hands seized my breasts. Rolling and squeezing them, he whispered in my ear. "Wish there were mirrors in here. I want to see these as I fuck you."
He pulled at the nipples, giving them a little twist until I arched against him. "Like that, do you?"
Biting my lip, I shook my head, lying to him. He twisted again, a little harder, and I felt my knees start to give.
"Yes...that." I rubbed my ass against him as I confessed.
"You always have them strapped down at the office, some baggy monstrosity hid
ing everything from your hips up to your chin."
His teeth grazed over my shoulder. Groaning, he thumbed both nipples. "Can you imagine when you finally settle down and get pregnant. They'll be so much heavier, milk dripping from these hard little tips."
Craig sucked at my throat, a moan whipping from me.
"Makes me hard just thinking about it, taking one in my mouth, sucking the cream from you as you ride my cock."
A quiver rolled through me and my pussy started to jump. What the hell was he talking about? If I ever found a man who wanted to play house with me, I wouldn't ride another man's cock. And Craig Spence sure as hell couldn't be implying he wanted to be my baby daddy.
"Can you picture that?" He kissed the side of my throat and squeezed my breasts a little harder, as if the pressure and deft manipulation would trigger those first drops of milk.
"No." I choked another lie out. Even without a glimpse of the thick cock wedged between my ass cheeks, I could imagine every last detail.
"Oh, cub..." Craig trailed one hand down my side to the top band of my panties then followed its edge to where my thighs met at the front. He slid a finger between my slick lips, rubbing it back and forth. "Don’t lie to me when you’re this wet. It gives you away."
He pushed me chest down against the table. "Keep that ass up high, cub."
I felt his finger disappear deep inside my pussy. He slid out, then took me twice as wide, staying deep but taking small thrusts.
"Nice," Craig murmured. "Deliciously tight and responsive, cub."
He pulled his fingers out and dropped to his knees. He ran his lips over one plump cheek and then pulled the crotch of my panties to the side. He ran his fingertips, wet with my juice, over my anus. "Bet you’re even tighter here."
"Craig?" Certainly he didn’t mean to go there?
Chuckling, he stroked the nervous spot again, the pressure remaining gentle but increasing. "What was that?"
I shook my head then pressed my cheek against the table. "Nothing."
"Good." He angled his face against my bottom, his tongue sliding into my pussy. He circled its rim, that slow tracing of its circumference making me tremble. He lipped the aching gate, almost a nip but not quite, then pulled back. "Wouldn’t want you quitting the game before it starts."