Claiming Curves (Werewolf & BBW Erotic Romance)

Claiming Curves

T
he first time I saw him, I was irresistibly drawn.

It wasn't
just
lust – I mean, that was undeniably there, in the pounding of my heart and the hot blush that spread across my cheeks. And that feeling that made me want to bite my lip when our eyes first met ...

But there was something else there too – a little bit of
fear
. Swirling amidst the butterflies in my stomach. And for some reason, that drew me even more.

There was something about him, some quality of darkness which simultaneously reached out to me, even as it made me afraid. It was strange, the way that tinge of fear only intensified the inexplicable longing that burst to life when I first saw him.

I think it wasn't only a fear of him that I felt, either. Certainly, that danger lurking in his eyes made me nervous. But in retrospect, I think that it may have been a fear of myself that he brought out in me, too.

Maybe a part of me knew that after meeting him, I would change forever.

Let me take you back to the start. Explain how it all began.

It was my twenty-first birthday. And instead of being out celebrating, there I was at home, bent intently over a book. Studying.

I had a biology exam coming up in a few days, and it was preying on my mind. I was attempting to memorize reams of information, but my eyes seemed to merely skim over words which were forgotten as quickly as they were read. I sighed for the thousandth time, realizing that my mind had wandered once again from my workbook.

To travel, of all things.

Several of my friends had recently gone overseas, and I was always seeing their pictures up on social media – beautiful, foreign scenery in the background, my friends' grinning faces in the foreground. The expressions on their faces spoke of freedom. Of adventure.

A longing for that – for
adventure
– bloomed inside me every time I saw those photos. I'd always been a meek, studious person, and now I felt trapped in that pattern. I was stuck at home, trying to memorize facts for an exam, when what I really wanted was to be out exploring the world.

I sighed once more, my gaze drifting to my bedroom window. The sun was beginning to set, and its golden light illuminated the signs of Spring that were dawning in the garden. The trees swayed slightly in the breeze; they seemed to be awakening, stretching and shaking off the remnants of a long winter slumber. Touches of green were beginning to color their branches.

My bedroom door was suddenly flung open, and the intrusion shocked me from my reverie.

“What the hell are you doing?” Came a familiar voice from the doorway. I turned to see Jade, my friend and roommate, an expression of mock outrage written across her pretty face. She had a bottle of something in her hand, and was clearly tipsy.

“You better not be studying!” she said. “It's your fucking birthday. And we have to celebrate!” She raised the bottle and took a swig.

I laughed as the shock of the sudden intrusion wore off. “I'm trying to study,” I said, “but I'm not having much luck.” My previous train of thought came back to me – my longing for adventure – and I slammed my biology book shut with a bang. “Maybe you're right,” I said. “What kind of celebration did you have in mind?”

“You're damn right I'm right!” Jade exclaimed gleefully. “Don't you worry, I have the perfect plan for the evening.” She had a slightly manic grin on her face which made me kind of nervous, but I also felt a tingling of anticipation – her excitement was always contagious.

I couldn't help but return her grin.

But my nervousness only grew as I got ready to go out. This would be my first actual expedition to a bar, and Jade wouldn't even tell me where we were going.

Although she was the same age as me, she'd had a fake ID for years, and had plenty of experience going out partying. Sometimes too hard. On more than one occasion I had been woken in the morning by the sound of her being sick, struck with a terrible hangover.

I hoped that she would take me somewhere nice, but I could never be sure. Jade had a wild streak that worried me sometimes.

My anxiety was only partially because of my lack of experience with bars. I usually felt this way before going out, even to house parties with friends from college. And my anxiety usually started the way it was starting now:

As I was trying on clothes.

The longer I looked at myself in the mirror, the more dissatisfied I became. I slipped on dress after dress, but I wasn't happy with any of them.

I knew the problem wasn't the dresses, though. The problem was what was underneath it.

The problem was
me
.

For as long as I could remember, I'd been unhappy with the way that I looked. I was plus-sized, and although I'd been told I was pretty, my curvy figure always made me feel uncomfortable, no matter what I was wearing. I just didn't have the type of body which guys always seemed to lust after – that tiny waif-like figure. I was pretty healthy, but I just didn't have that body-type.

I sat down on my bed, wondering glumly what Jade would be wearing out. Not that it mattered. She was gorgeous and petite. She would look fantastic wearing a rucksack. She ate much more junk-food than me, and never exercised – and yet she looked like a runway model. I just didn't understand it.

Jade and I had gone to house-parties before, and as much as I hate to admit it, I had felt an occasional pang of jealousy towards her. She was
always
the center of attention for every guy, wherever we went. Their eyes just seemed glued to her.

Whereas I always seemed to occupy some kind of male blind-spot.

I stood up again, attempting to push the negative thoughts from my mind. I was going out to have
fun
, to celebrate my birthday. Not to show off. I just wanted to relax, forget about my homework for a night, and enjoy myself.

And yet I took a long look in the mirror one more time, checking out the black dress that I was wearing.

It would have to do.

When I left my bedroom to find Jade, I found my assumption was correct. Jade looked gorgeous.

She was wearing a black dress too, which only intensified my feelings of comparison towards her. It clung to her figure, emphasizing the curve of her waist, revealing the lithe muscles of her shoulders.

Why couldn't
I
look like that?

Jade turned as I entered the room, and her face lit up with a smile.

“You look beautiful!” she said. “How do you do it?” The admiration in her face seemed real, and it confused me. How could Jade possibly feel anything approaching the same way that I felt about her?

She couldn't. Surely she was just being nice.

“I was just thinking the same thing about you,” I said. Jade grinned and gave me a hug, squeezing me tight. And then she said something that confused me even more.

“You're just being nice,” she said. “But I appreciate it anyway.”

Jade did
not
make sense to me sometimes.

“You ready to head out?” Jade asked, her eyes wide with excitement. I took a deep breath and mustered a smile.

“I guess so!” I said.

The whole taxi ride out, I tried to convince Jade to tell me where we were going. But her lips were sealed. She just smiled knowingly, directing the taxi driver turn by turn.

And as it turned out, we weren't going far at all. After five minutes, we were at the local main-street, where we got out. Being there didn't really help me figure out our destination though; there were heaps of bars along the main street. This was a college town, after all.

Jade took my hand, leading me down the street.

It was completely dark now, and the main street was beginning to crawl with night life. Jade and I walked past hordes of drunken college kids, many of whom checked out Jade – some even wolf-whistling appreciatively. She usually rewarded those guys with a smile, but she never stopped. Pounding music blared from doorways, and and smoke wreathed its way out of bar after bar as we continued along the street. Neon signs buzzed and flashed, and I found myself tingling with excitement despite my nervousness.

“Where are we going, Jade?” I asked one final time, as we were outside some dingy, dangerous-looking bar named
The Howling Moon
. Jade stopped to look at me, and I expected her to berate me for questioning her so much. But instead she grinned her manic grin that made me nervous.

“Right here,” she said.

“Here?” I looked at her in alarm. Something about this place worried me. I looked up at the sign again – the letters were a cool neon blue, and encircled by a huge yellow circle.

The Howling Moon.
I had heard that name before ... but where?

An alarm bell rang somewhere in the back of my mind, but before I could say or do anything, Jade had dragged me through the door.

It was like entering a different world.

The room pulsed to an animalistic, tribal rhythm which vibrated through the floor and into my legs. The entire bar seemed to be constructed of roughly-hewn pieces of wood, like some medieval structure. The air was thick with smoke, which swirled amongst the tightly-packed crowd of people.

Dangerous-looking people. A pair of huge bikers in leather jackets, scarred and tattooed, swaggered past Jade and I, leering.

I stopped at the threshold, frozen by nerves, and Jade gripped my hand, trying to pull me further in.

“Jade,” I said, “There's something I don't like about this place ...”

But Jade just turned back to me and laughed. “Don't worry!” she said. “These guys aren't as nasty as they look.”

Her statement did little to ease my mind. A huge bald guy wearing a singlet wandered past as she spoke, and he turned and grinned at her words. I caught a glimpse of his face and recoiled – one torn, blind eye, and a thick red scar which ran from eyebrow to jaw. His teeth glittered sharply, stirring a sick feeling in my stomach. He turned away and continued to walk, which sent a flood of relief through me. I saw a tattoo on the back of his neck as he receded.

A tattoo of a wolf paw.

Those alarm bells rang again in my mind. But they were clearer this time. And suddenly it came to me. I realized, with a fresh rush of fear, where I'd heard the name of the bar –
the Howling Moon.
I'd seen it mentioned in the newspaper several times. It was notorious for violence.

And werewolves.

I squeezed Jade's hand, and she turned back to me again. She must have seen the fear on my face, because she looked a bit more concerned.

“What's wrong?”

“This bar,” I said, trying to keep my tone hushed – which was difficult, considering the pounding music. “It's ... a
werewolf
bar!”

Jade burst out laughing again. “I know! Isn't it awesome?”

I knew Jade had a thing for bad boys, but this was crazy. I opened my mouth to speak again, but I struggled to find any words. And before I could stop her, Jade had released my hand and weaved her way into the throbbing crowd of people.

Not people.
Werewolves.

Helplessly, I watched Jade disappear into the crowd. Without her beside me, I felt instantly vulnerable. I wanted desperately to leave, to turn around and run through the door. But I couldn't leave without her.

I took a deep breath and followed Jade into the crowd.

I was instantly enveloped by the feverish throng. Heat emanated from the bodies as they danced around me. Sweaty limbs protruded from the darkness, undulating and writhing like snakes. My senses were overwhelmed by the rhythmic pounding of the music, and I felt myself begin to move with the crowd, despite myself.

Something stirred deep inside me, something hot and pulsing, and suddenly I found myself writhing along with the other bodies. My sense of fear somehow evaporated in the music, became replaced with a sensuous longing to do nothing but
move.
My plan to find Jade receded into the back of my mind as I began to dance. I noted with awe that my normal self-consciousness had begun to fade. In the darkness, I became nothing but another joyous, sweaty limb in the burning, dancing throng. It felt delicious. Freeing.

It was in that moment of release that I first saw him.

From the darkness he emerged. In a sea of faces, his stood out. He was opposite me in the crowd, and his features were lit by a continuous flash from the strobe lights. I felt myself stop dancing as I took him in.

He was standing still too – a complete contrast to the bouncing, twisting crowd around him. He was tall and muscular. Dark hair and a strong stubbled jaw. Bright, striking eyes which contained a dangerous, seething darkness – while simultaneously somehow glowing golden in the haze of the bar.