145kg

“Nope. Arms in the air, like the Venus di Milo.”

Your weight is displayed on the scales right now but your belly is in the way. And now I’m refusing to tell you the number, a glint in my eye. It’s frustrating because you’ve been looking forward to weighing yourself all day: you’d pushed yourself for a longer run, and even resisted snacking on a mother and her two pushchair-bound infants in the middle of nowhere, so damnit, you deserve this.

“You sure you want to push this?” you say, a warning note in your voice.

I step right up close and brush my lips by your ear. When I whisper it causes you to shiver. “Seeing you is worth the risk.”

Hmph. You know it’s flattery, but you also know damn well I mean it. You push me away, causing me to backpedal two or three steps.

Fixing me with a glare so I know who’s boss, you straighten and put your shoulders back. The gesture pushes forward your slowly diminishing belly, still an edifice in snowy flesh. A slight twist of the hips brings your curves into gorgeous relief: the eye reads backside, hips, doughy flanks, smooth round tummy and pendulous breasts like a poem written in skin.

Your arms reach for the bathroom ceiling, intertwined, and your hair falls around your shoulders.

“A hundred and forty-five,” I say, and you smirk as my breath catches a little. “Just under twenty-three stone. Your clothes looked a little baggy today, think you’ll have to switch down wardrobe again. And look.” I come close and wrap my arms around you, tightly. Am I standing a little closer, your belly pushing me away less? The feeling of squidge is undiminished, though, as your skin conforms around me like it wants to pull me in directly. “I can grip my wrists now. Could barely touch fingers when you started.”

You allow your raised arms to fold around my shoulders, lean back your head, and open your mouth without warning. You might as well have skewered me with a lance: I go rigid, absorbed entirely in the dizzying view of teeth, tongue and throat, just a you knew I would. My chest against your breasts, you feel the increase in heartrate that warms my skin. “Want to undo some of my good work?” you say, lips forming the words with exaggerated care. “Just slip your fingers in. Aaaa…”

I have no capacity to form words. You watch my resistance start to crumble, melting away with the proximity of your body, your predatory spirit, the heart-stopping view of the deadly pit of your throat…

You snap your teeth shut and feel me shudder like an elastic band had snapped inside me.

“Next time you keep my numbers from me I might not make it an offer.”

You watch me blink like a man returning from some reverie. I raise my eyebrows in disbelief and take a half-step back to give me the space to gesture at your whole body, hips to jawline.

“Seeing you is worth the risk.”