Curve Charm (Paranormal BBW Erotic Romance) (2 page)

"What's wrong?" Leah kept her voice low, not wanting to frighten Oscar.

Seth didn't answer immediately. He rubbed a reassuring hand up and down Leah's back as his gaze landed briefly on Esme before jumping to Dana.

Seeing Oscar, his brow furrowed. "The boy should be at Coop's."

"His name is Oscar, love." Leah wrinkled a brow at Seth, her gaze asking him to turn his boss voice down a notch as the little boy buried his face against Dana’s neck.

Dana tossed one of his patented I-don't-give-a-shit smiles, but kept his tone level as he answered his pack leader. "Just getting a little food in him and making sure he didn't need any healing."

Seth sniffed, his nose telling him that the boy was in no immediate need of healing and that his beta had used the child as an excuse to see Esme. Seth's mouth flattened into a straight line. "Camille is a quarter mile from Coop's, she could have met you there and checked him over."

"I’ll remember that next time," Dana shrugged, knowing
next time
likely would never arrive. Not only was the cub the youngest child on Coop’s land, until Leah’s baby arrived, he would be the youngest child across the seven North American clans.

Lifting a hand to the boy’s face, Dana softly stroked Oscar's cheek. "Guess it's time for you to meet the big boss."

"No." Seth planted a kiss on Leah's forehead before extracting himself from her tight embrace. "Watch the cub, baby, and the women. Jory is just a few minutes behind me."

Leah nodded, her gaze landing on Esme as Seth turned toward the witch. "Leave your bag, Coop needs to talk to you."

Esme's brow shot up. Jack Cooper wasn't her biggest fan, far from it. He'd already tried to move her to another clan after she had spelled her house against Dana entering. If she hadn't been kidnapped by one of the Hunters and pulled a few new charms out of her ass after studying the documents found at the cabin, said ass would be parked somewhere north of Seattle.

Dana placed Oscar on the ground, gently shushing the child's protest. Straightening, he glared at his pack alpha. "What's this about?"

"Oh, you'll find out soon enough." Seth opened the door, his hand sweeping out in an invitation to leave. "You're coming with us."

**********

Esme sat in a chair in Jack Cooper's cavernous living room. Seth stood with his back against one door, Jack's second in command holding a similar position at the room's other door. In front of Esme, her mother sat, hands folded in her lap, her eyes locked on her interlaced fingers. Jack sat next to Camille, his elbows on his knees as he tried to stare Esme into changing her mind.

"You're blood bound, girl. You'll do it or face the consequences."

"Fuck that." She folded her arms across her chest, her gaze jumping between Coop and her mother. A little behind her and several feet to her right, she sensed the tension coiling inside Dana, but she forced herself to ignore it.

She focused her attention on Camille, still stunned that the idea had come from her mother. "Mom, this isn't…"

She stalled, words escaping her. What Coop was asking -- commanding -- was beyond wrong. It was barbaric. That Camille had brought the idea to him was a complete betrayal.

Not that she expected any better from the witch. Esme's whole life had been filled with reminders that she was an accident, a child that never should have been conceived. A mistake long before she started looking like one with her too round face and plump body. A mistake from conception, to delivery to…

Esme’s brain faltered, the room starting to spin. Breaking a blood oath meant death.

Behind her, Dana growled. She could feel the vibrations rolling off him, his desire to shift almost uncontrollable. She blinked, tried to rid herself of his energy and the heavy fog that settled atop her brain. She needed to think straight if she was going to avoid Coop’s demand.

"Your oath, girl." Jack slammed his hands down on his knees. "Name the wolf and be done with it. There's no need for all this fuss."

Oh, but there was. Otherwise no one would have suggested she…

Esme took a deep breath in, unable to finish the thought. Forcing herself not to turn and look at Dana, she closed her eyes. If she refused, would Coop actually order her execution or just ban her? Either was a death sentence. As much protection as she gave the clan with her spells and charms, she drew power from the magic inherent in shifters. Away from clan land, with no shifters, she would be easy prey to the Hunters.

Opening her eyes, she looked at Seth. She saw kindness when he looked back, but no help. Her compliance, if Camille was right, would offer greater protection to Leah and his unborn child, everyone in the clan. As a pack alpha, maybe even clan alpha when Jack stepped down, it was his job to enforce the oath as much as it was Coop's.

"Baby…"

The word dripped like poison from Camille's mouth. Not once could Esme remember her mother having used it before this meeting. Now she was repeating it for the third time.

"In nine generations, you're the most powerful witch the clan has known and this…" Camille rubbed her hands against her legs, her words getting lost in the movement.

"Pick the wolf or I'll do it myself!" Coop bellowed and pushed the coffee table between them to the side as if ready to immediately carry out his threat.

Dana rose, his growl telling Esme he was seconds from transforming. Coop growled back, coarse hairs sprouting along his hands and neck. As clan alpha, his display of power should have been enough to force any wolf to submit, but the younger wolf seemed immune to the command. Esme heard the pop of muscles and cartilage behind her, Coop's dominance slowing but not stopping Dana's shift.

Seth moved from the door, his hand up as a signal for Coop's beta to stand down. "Dana--"

"I told you not to bring him," Coop snapped.

Esme wished Seth had listened. The request was humiliating enough without Dana there to witness it.

"It's not my oath," she whispered, shaking her head, knowing that her protest was lost on the clan alpha. Blood bound blood, no matter how many generations had passed. There was no stronger law in magic than that. Her ancestor’s oath was all Coop needed.

"You'll be free if you do," Camille whispered. "This kind of blood magic will break the oath's power. Whether you stay or leave, it will be by your choice."

Esme thought she saw tears shining in her mother's eyes. She shook her head. Tears weren't possible, not from Camille. And her words were lies, whether the older witch realized it or not. Even if the ceremony broke the oath, a new oath likely would be extracted or she would be forced off clan lands. Coop had her coming and going and he knew it. The other clan alphas would follow his lead, particularly after Gordon, the last unbound healer, had betrayed them.

She would be degraded if she obeyed, dead if she didn't.

"Esme." Dana pushed past Seth and dropped to the ground in front of her in human form. His hand covered her knee for half a second before she shrank from his touch.

She knew he was staring at her face, could feel the searing intensity of his gaze, but she couldn't bring herself to look at him. "Make him leave."

"Baby, we--" His hand wrapped around her ankle, the grip possessive and demanding.

She jerked her foot up, curling her leg between her ass and the cushion as her body protectively folded in on itself. There could be no "we" between her and Dana. Once, a long time ago, the possibility had been there. But he'd walked away from her. Slowly at first then like a fucking freight train.

That kiss she had waited for in the field fell on another woman's mouth and then another's. His hands had wrapped around other women's hips, held them tightly to him as he penetrated their bodies.

She'd had a decade of loneliness -- a cold hard bed with just her in it, the very quality that had led her to this moment, to Coop's demand that she spread her legs and let a wolf take first blood.

Now Dana was all but begging to be that wolf. Not because he actually loved her or wanted her -- he'd had ten plus years to claim her. No, he'd been sniffing around her the last six weeks because a sequence of chemicals commanded his selection of her as his mate.

"Ems…"

She felt her chest crack open. He'd called her that only a handful of times over the last decade. Each time had been like a knife in her heart, reminding her of what could have been, sparking the stupid hope that something had changed when nothing ever changed, not his casual indifference, not his frequent if only temporary bedmates.

"I only wanted you to have what I couldn't give you."

The words caught as they left him, hooking and tearing chunks of flesh as they passed through his throat and out his mouth. She still didn't believe him, wouldn't be so stupid as to let that hope back in.

Esme looked up. Refusing to meet Dana's gaze, she glared at Coop, her acceptance issued as a single word. "Cade."

"Ems--"

"Cade," she repeated, her whole body wanting to climb up the chair and away from the wolf at her feet.

"Esme." Dana's voice was a low rumble of menace.

"Cade." Her voice shook on the final reiteration, her heart pounding in her chest to shake the name free.

Dana rose, his eyes as dead as they were deadly. "Fine," he snarled. "I'll fetch him for you. How many pieces?"

He spun on his heels, Seth trying to growl him into obedience. Fabric started to strain as both men hovered at the edge of their transformation.

"Move." Dana's claws extended.

Seth's claws quickly followed suit. From the opposite door, Coop's beta moved at last, his clothes ripping and falling to the floor. The clan alpha hovered at the edge of his seat, snarling and snapping to no effect.

The knowledge that Dana would not back down until someone was bleeding half dead on the floor cracked Esme's chest open a little wider. She could care less about Coop and his beta, but she didn't want Leah's baby born fatherless, didn't want…

She tried to shake the image of Dana dying on the floor from her head, but the vision wouldn't dislodge.

"Stop!" Her cry was wet with tears. She buried her face against the chair's leather cushion, not wanting anyone to see her capitulation. "I won't choose Cade."

"Baby--"

She felt Dana's hand on her shoulder, slapped blindly at it. "Go! I don't want to see you before or after!"

He hesitated and she screamed into the chair. "Leave now or I'll take it all back!"

Eyes glued shut, her hands covering her ears, she felt Dana slink away. Another long week would pass before she saw him again, when her magic and Dana's wolf totem were as full as the moon in the black sky above them.

**********

Esme spent the week in self-imposed isolation. Her magic unstable from the strong emotions running through her, she had Seth find other homes to foster the latents. She refused to meet his gaze when he came to retrieve them, knowing rage and resentment burned in her eyes. It sizzled across her skin, the air around her crackling with energy.

The whole house seemed possessed with her anger. Doors opened and slammed shut without her near them. Glasses shattered inside the cupboards. When Camille visited the day before the ceremony with instructions for Esme's ritual cleansing, the blue skies vanished on her arrival. Big black clouds materialized to drop hail the size of grapefruit on her mother's car.

When the night of the full moon finally arrived, she stayed in her room. She greeted none of the four witches summoned to mark the compass points outside her home while Dana mounted and shamed her. Facing her bedroom window, her stare blank, she ignored Camille as the older witch dressed the bed in charmed linen. And when her mother had the audacity to approach her, to reach out as if to place a comforting hand on Esme's shoulder, the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe began to quake, its vibrations building until it threatened to crash down on both women.

Alone, the robe around her naked body uncharmed, she waited for Dana's arrival with her eyes closed and her head filled with memories. She saw the two of them, both outsiders within the clan, running through the woods together. Only ten and human, she was no match for his shifter's speed but he never pulled too far ahead, just enough to duck behind a tree so he could scoop her up when she ran by, twirl a circle with her in his arms, his forehead touching hers, and then place her back on the ground and run ahead. Esme at four, a lisping shy girl in her mother's healing room when Coop came back from a rescue mission with an unknown, orphaned cub who couldn't -- or wouldn't -- shift to human form. Esme sneaking back into the room that night against her mother's orders, her already generous frame curled against his shivering body as she smoothed her fingers through the dense undercoat and whispered her favorite calming spell. Her waking hours later next to a little boy with blond hair as dark as her own and yellow-gold eyes that sparkled like topaz.

Feeling Dana's arrival outside her home, Esme wiped angrily at her eyes and wished she could live life in reverse -- that tonight was long past and tomorrow she would wake and look into those tawny eyes for the first time, everything between them fresh and full of promise.

All the way at the opposite side of the house, separated by three walls and sixty feet of floor space, Esme sensed Dana's first step on her porch. The vibrations of the impact rippled across wood and carpet, growing heavier with each step until Esme felt like she was on the ocean, tossed by giant waves.

He didn't knock, just paused outside her door for a few seconds with his palm against the wood, feeling her presence as clearly as she felt his. Still alone in her room, she shook her head. It wasn't right to feel someone so strongly when she wanted nothing more than to forget he ever existed. She inched toward the headboard, stopping when her back met the hard, cold surface.

The knob twisted. Dana pushed the door open, taking everything slow and cautious as he studied her face. His cheeks flushed a dark red. His chest lifted in deep breaths made deeper by the wide flare of his nostrils. Black pupils clouded three quarters of his iris, leaving only a band of gold around the glittering dark inset.