chapter 2

By the time I was twelve, it had seemed that gaining weight was the most wicked, wanton thing a woman could do. Yet when I'd looked at the old masters' paintings in art class, at the full-bodied women with their rolling curves and pink, glowing skin, I felt a shocking flush of desire between my legs, a slick wetness I could hardly keep myself from touching. Those plump women gazed out at me with secret, rosebud smiles, taunting me from a place I would never dare to go.

At twenty-seven, I'd never been on a diet?there was no need. I lived on teaspoon-sized servings of food, and deep draughts of my girlfriends' envy. I kept my brown hair streaked blond and cut into a short, tousled mop, "because you're so sporty," my hairdresser chirped. In truth I loathed sports, hated every minute I jumped and sweated with my friends at the gym. I never looked at my nude body. I covered it with the latest fashions and had been content with the dull-eyed men who tore them off, felt lucky with any orgasm I was able to get, as brief and plaintive as a kitten's meow.

Then tonight Michael had reached under my tidy, trendy surface and laid his sculptor's finger on my secret. And I was still trembling.

It was two a.m. I pulled into my underground parking stall, the cavern deserted except for the cars. My panties were wet, soaked by the voluptuous image that had burned in me all through the drive. As if it belonged to someone else, my hand pulled my coat open and wriggled under my loose skirt. Through the damp cotton, I pressed hard on my erect clit. Pleasure roared through my body, shamefully sweet, a desperate, clutching, throbbing release that left me gasping against the steering wheel.

Jane, girl, you are in trouble, I told myself. You're in love with the most dangerous man.

Banks are terrible places to work. I knew first hand. Banks are run by pasty, balding, underpaid managers who satisfy themselves by playing God with money that isn't theirs. Tellers can never hope for this power. They are simply more poorly paid and frustrated, and when grouped together become a den of mewling jealousies. The women I worked with had only three passions: weight, clothes and boyfriends.

At three minutes to ten I was called to the phone. I felt eight pairs of eyes lift up as I walked past, checking out my new mulberry-colored knit outfit, and my figure in it. That morning I felt the full thrust of resentment for the first time. Who the hell did they think they were? Why the hell did it matter?

"Hello," I snapped.

"I don't have a joke," Michael said ruefully. "All I have is an apology and a confession. Which do you want first?"

I was so glad to hear his voice I almost laughed. "You choose."

He took a breath. "Janey, I might've said something last night...that made you think you weren't perfect. And you are, my love, inside and out."

"Oh." My heart was tripping.

"I just stuck my foot in it because I go mad for flesh on a woman. It's a weakness, I admit that. But I never should have mentioned it. However you want to be?that's perfect."

I felt a swell of heat at those words alone: flesh on a woman. I was sitting on the edge of a desk and I crossed one leg over the other, pressing my sex lips together, imagining my thighs filling out my new skirt. I felt sinful, excited, but most of all defiant. I was in love and I dared the world to stop me.

"Michael, would you make dinner for me tonight?" I whispered.

He must have heard something in my voice because his own thickened with brogue. "Aye. Ye know I love to cook for you."

Under the mulberry knit, my nipples hardened.

That night I leaned against a tall cupboard, drinking a glass of wine, working up my courage and watching Michael cook. He prepared food with more delight than anyone I'd ever known, whipping around the kitchen with the enthusiasm of an explorer.

"Ah, look at how these onions are caramelizing. It's all the sugar."

"Here, smell this." Thrusting forward a bag of fresh herbs, as fragrant as summer. "You'd never think of rosemary with beef, but just you wait!"

Michael had already chopped his other ingredients into brilliant heaps?yellow peppers, green asparagus?and was rubbing olive oil over the steaks, his strong, sensitive fingers massaging them like a lover.

"A little sea salt, a little fresh pepper," he said happily. "That's all a good rib-eye needs."

"Michael, I've decided. I want to relax and enjoy myself."

It stopped him cold. He looked up at me, waiting.

"I want to gain thirty pounds," I said.

"You don't have to do this for me, Janey." The words were quiet but breathless.

I shivered with the exhilarating, dangerous truth. "I want to do it for me."

Michael's hazel eyes turned smoky. He turned off the stove elements and was over to me in two strides, arms around me, hands stroking me, his voice a thick, urgent rush against my ear.

"My beautiful, beautiful girl. You'll be a queen to me, smooth and round, plump all over. Look, just thinking about it and I'm coming out o' my clothes."

His pants were bulging already, his excitement rising up hard against my thigh. My own need was just as sudden, the buxom, forbidden image licking me shamelessly between the legs. I squirmed against him, trying to coax his hand under my skirt, yet still I managed to blurt out what I needed to say. "I'm...a little afraid."

"We'll take it safe and slow," he crooned. "Just natural. A pound or two a week, just a woman enjoying herself. Ah, you'll enjoy yourself?I'll see to that!"

He thrust against me and moaned, a deep sound that made my cunt contract. Yet his knowledge of ësafe and slow' tugged on me.

"Have you ever done this before?"

"No, lass, but I dreamed of it, fattening up the woman I love."

Lightning strike of shock and desire. Fattened up, like a goose or a piglet. The decadent, thrilling threat of it was beyond my fantasies. I twisted and writhed with apprehension while my clit rose up, a hard bullet of pulsing want. I could have mounted him in the kitchen.

We made it to the couch. As he tugged off my pantyhose, the tight elastic band cut across the flesh of my thigh. Michael paused and reached out to stroke the small curve above the elastic.

"Oh," he breathed, "just wait. Ye'll burst these little britches by the time Michael's done."

I was going to die if he didn't fuck me. I gripped his member, the huge, swollen *** gleaming with readiness, and pulled him to me. He pushed into my soft wetness with a new moan, lifted my hips with hard, animal thrusts that made my hungry cunt clench with pleasure. I imagined how it would be months from now, my full breasts bouncing with the force of him, round belly and hips quivering with lascivious, wanton, indulgent fat.

The kitten between my legs sat up and roared.

I gave up my apartment and moved into Michael's loft. It was the top floor of a small, old building, three thousand square feet of ink-stained hardwood floors that had belonged to a printer. There were only a few walls dividing the vast rooms, and a wrought-iron freight elevator that opened in the living room. I trailed my fingers along the beautiful metal scrollwork, mesmerized, thinking of Hansel and Gretel.

"It was the elevator that sold me," Michael admitted. "I got an angel stuck in a stairwell once, at my last place. I had to saw her wings off and it broke my heart."

Angels had room to soar in his open studio now. It had fifteen foot ceilings with three large skylights, and full length mirrors positioned to reflect the natural light. Nudes in terra cotta and sculptors' plasticine rose up from the tables, a clay garden of powerful men and sultry women.

Michael's ëother playground' was just as alluring: almond cupboards overhung with gleaming copper pans, wide, wooden cutting boards and a stainless steel restaurant refrigerator. The counters were crowded with gadgets, and heavy crocks stuffed with whisks and spatulas.

"An artist needs his tools," he said with a smile.