a hot bath
In retrospect it was a miscalculation to give you a feast half an hour from the car. Digestion fuzziness made you slow and giggly. You hung off my arm and made jokes, then after a while started asking how much further the walk was. The walk was at least an opportunity to settle your busy stomach: you spent quite a bit of time burping under your breath.
At the car I held your hand as you eased yourself into the passenger seat. Your sudden grip reminded me most viscerally that “giggly and heavy” didn’t mean “not strong enough to pull your shoulder out of your socket”. When I basically fell into your lap you kissed me, hard, and gave me a sleepy smile. “Picnic was nice.” I was so flustered I could barely render a response. You laughed and closed your eyes, slowly rubbing your burbling tummy.
You are a little chilly by the time we got home. I can tell because you don’t say you’re chilly—you never admit it—but I’m freezing.
“I’m going to run you a nice, warm bath.”
You tilt your head side-to-side as if weighing up the task. “Fancy hot chocolate,” is your response, as if the one leads inexorably to the other.
And so, with a chocolatey mess in the kitchen and a trail of walking clothes abandoned though the house, you find yourself submerged in hot, scented water, both hands wrapped around a tall glass cup of fancy hot chocolate. Real melted chocolate in blue top milk is only the start: mini marshmallows and chocolate shavings lurk in the depths, little bombs of sweetness that provide body as they melt; a heavy crown of whipped cream hangs over the rim of the glass; and in the cream is stuck a twix, a flake, and a KitKat. You’re already munching your way through the KitKat, purposefully biting off chunks like it were any other biscuit bar instead of snapping the fingers apart—from how you’re staring at me, I think to see if it annoys me.
I pretend it does and you see through my deception but play along and I know that’s what you’re doing. The hot chocolate glides thick and sweet down your throat, lining you inside with heat as your intestines process the kilos of food entrusted to them in this single meal. They can handle entire humans: a picnic isn’t going to make them sweat.
As you warm up you get sleepy again and glide down till your nose is just above the water. I never left, and right now nothing could tear me away. Above wanted scented and made milky by bergamot and sweet almond rise the wonderful mounds of breasts, belly and thighs: an archipelago of flesh.
Knowing that of these only your belly is busy I slip to my knees by the bathtub and glide hands over water-beaded flesh. Despite the heat you’re only a little pinked-up: I guess soon you’ll be looking to hunt for prey you can drain dry.
But for now, your belly purrs appreciatively as liquid heat and firm hands massage deep over your alimentary canal. You sigh, sounding more relaxed than you have in weeks.
As you doze in twilight consciousness I’m left to study you and think. You… I don’t know why I do not grow accustomed to your beauty. By now I should be inured to the delicate, rolling folds of your soft but predatory form. But I’m not. The sight of you bulldozes my defences like a blow torch on a candle.
Perhaps it’s because I know I won’t see it forever.. At least not from the outside.
And as I’m left to my own devices, coaxing a particularly recalcitrant gurgle from around some invisible lump within your tummy, I think. I know you like me, but you prize women. On other occasions you have sought out other special prey. Made other predators. Perhaps there is some world in which the stomach I am currently kneading is not literally the last thing I consciously experience. Perhaps… would you feed me to another? If it pleased you?
I stare sightlessly at bathroom tiles. The very thought leaves me cold. But then I think of you, perhaps holding me in place, a final touch and act of grace while your new pet performs the rite that I’ve watched you grant to so, so many others… And I think, if it made you smile, would that be enough?
You snort yourself awake and send a wave of water slopping over the edge of the bath. I smile down at you while you blink, disoriented. Then you give me a crooked smirk and close your eyes again.
If you smiled, I think that would be enough.