Chapter 1

“Christian, you’re being insane,” Stella insisted, the desperate, pleading look in her eyes clashing with the steady firmness of her tone. “I’m sorry, you know I’m sorry, and more than that you know I’ll never make that mistake again. You know that.”

“I don’t,” he responded calmly, his gaze leveled to hers with a degree of intensity Stella was unaccustomed to from her typically easy-going boyfriend. “I don't know that. Before today, I would’ve said that I know you’d never cheat on me, but turns out that was wrong. Turns out, I don't know what I know.”

“Christian, I’m sorry,” she pleaded, real panic pitching up her tone as the realization set in that his resolve on the matter was firm. “I’m sorry, I really am, and I love you, and,”

He held up a hand, cutting her off.

“I told you what I want Stella,” he said evenly, still staring her down. “Your body, the way you look? That's the problem. You’ve always been such a little attention whore and I've never minded, never thought it would have any real impact on our relationship. With all the little crop tops showing off your abs and extra short skirts so everyone will stare. The tiny sports bras you wear to the gym. You love the attention, you know you can't deny it. I just thought you liked to show off, but now I know what you were really up to. And as long as you look like this,” he said, gesturing to her lithe, toned figure. “As long as you look like this I’ll never trust that you’re not out cheating on me again. I’ll know that you have the eyes of every guy in the room locked on your tight little ass and I’ll be up at night wondering who else is touching what's mine.

Stella blinked, taken more than a bit aback. Christian never spoke like this, never got this aggressive or possessive with her, and despite the circumstances, she felt a strange emotion blooming within her.

“So,” he went on. “You’re either gonna gain weight like I told you to, or we’re breaking up right here, right now.”

“But I don't,” Stella pleaded frantically, all semblance of steadiness leached from her tone. “I don’t want to. I can't get fat, everyone will…”

“What?” he interjected coldly. “Everyone will see? Nobody will think you're hot anymore, guys will stop drooling after you when you walk down the street?”

Stella was silent, studying the floor intensely as if it concealed a possible escape route from the conversation.

“Well, good,” he said decidedly. “Great, actually. That's exactly what I want. And unless you want me to walk out that door and block your number, it's exactly what I'm gonna get. No more of your crazy vanity and your skimpy little outfits. No more waking up at 4 am to show off in the gym and take Instagram pictures, no more turning down the random guys that come up to you every day. If you’re going to be with me, then I'm going to be the only one that wants you and the only one that gets to have you.”

He gripped her face roughly, forcing her hesitant gaze up until it met his.

“Do you understand me?” he all but whispered, the reduced volume of his words doing little to offset the stony conviction behind them.

Stella hesitated, opening her mouth but finding herself unable to speak.

“I said, do you understand me,” he repeated in the same chilling, commanding whisper that was making electricity dance across Stella’s skin.

She’d never seen him like this, so serious and dominant, the darkness and anger behind his eyes and barely concealed within his expression mingled with the still obvious desire he had for her. She bit her lip.

“Yes,” she finally answered simply, still searching his face for exactly what it was about the situation and the way he was acting that was getting her so worked up.

This should be the worst news of her health-obsessed life, the worst day of it. She should want to leave him, to tell him to walk out that door despite how much she genuinely cared about him. She wanted to stay with him, she really did, but now she had another motive, a confusing one she couldn't quite acknowledge in the moment. She wanted him in control of her. And even if that meant ruining her perfect body, the thought of him taking complete control was making her weak in the knees.

“Good,” he responded simply, searching her face with the same narrow-eyed scrutiny she’d applied to him. “Good. I’ll have your new diet plan ready for you soon, I have to do a little research. In the meantime, cancel your gym membership,” he said, turning away from her and heading up the stairs of their 2 bedroom condo.

“Oh,” he called, looking over his shoulder at the model thin woman standing at the bottom of the stairs. “And go online and buy yourself some different clothes. Bigger ones.”

He paused, considering.

“Go for large and extra large. You don't dress like that anymore,” he instructed, indicating to her skintight, strapless pink dress that clung tightly to the tops of her thighs and showed off more leg than could be considered appropriate. “Now you’re gonna dress like a fat girl. You’re gonna keep wearing those sizes till they fit, then you're gonna squeeze into them until you can't. Got it?”

Stella nodded then quickly corrected herself, eking out a small “yes” before scurrying off to the kitchen for a respite from the strange feelings that were beginning to overtake her.

She couldn't believe she was agreeing to this, but more than that, she couldn't believe what it was doing to her. She was almost anticipating the weight gain, almost excited about it just from the way Christian’s firm tone had described the fact that she had no choice. That he was going to tell her what she could and couldn't do, that he was going to control her body entirely.

She shook her head, trying to clear her mind enough to organize her thoughts, but they raced through her consciousness two at a time, loud, unruly, and entirely indiscernible. The only thing she knew, and knew for a fact, was that ever since Christian had grabbed her chin and forced her to look into his eyes she’d been soaking through her panties. Despite her horror at the idea of getting fat, she couldn't separate the two thoughts in her mind: she was more attracted to Christian than ever before, and he was going to make her gain a lot of weight. The ideas were intrinsically linked, and the budding lust she felt over one was quickly morphing into a hunger for both. She placed a tentative hand on her rock-hard middle, imagining what it would be like to let herself go.

She’d always been near religious about her commitment to the perfect figure, and Christian was right, she did relish in the attention she got from it. That's how her little slip-up had occurred in the first place. Her life revolved around opportunities to show off her body which meant she was always down for a night out with friends, her inhibitions out the window as she took shots on an empty stomach in alluring, barely there outfits. She always flirted, always gave out her social media handles, and always danced in ways she knew would leave all eyes on her, but last night things had gone too far.

She drank every libation every man offered to buy her that night, and in her blackout state, one of those men was able to talk her back to his apartment. When she woke up, freezing cold with a pounding headache, she found she’d lost more than her left heel that night. She’d lost her mind. Despite her constant desire for attention, she loved her longtime boyfriend. He was gentle, sweet, caring, funny, the whole package. He loved her immensely, worked hard at his banking job, and sent her mother flowers every month. He was the perfect man, and she was horrified to realize that she might’ve ruined everything.

She’d taken an Uber straight to her best friend's house, stifling sobs that were worsening her headache by the minute, laid on her friend's couch, and cried, lamenting her bad choices and propensity towards debauchery.

“I’m a bad person,” she’d moaned to Monica, her equally gorgeous friend whose bottle service job meant she had all the nightlife ins.

“You’re only a bad person if you don't tell him,” Monica had promised, smoothing the brunette’s unruly hair as she spoke. “You made a mistake. He can understand that, I’m sure he can. And if he can’t, then you know I'll be here for you. But I know you Stella, you can't keep a secret. You couldn't live with that kind of guilt. You need to tell him.”

Stella had cried on her friend’s couch for a few more hours, ignoring Christian’s good morning text and the subsequent ‘where are you messages’ that began to flood in. Spending the night out at a friend’s wasn't unusual for her at all, but not returning home after her early morning gym session was unheard of, and Stella never skipped the gym, not even to party.

She finally returned home to a worried, then furious boyfriend who went on to make the ultimatum that led to her current confusion.

“Am I really gonna do this?” she thought to herself. “Am I actually gonna get fat just because he told me to?”

She looked at the fridge and shuddered as if it were a maleficent being despite the fact that the sterile appliance contained little besides zero-calorie energy drinks, bags of cut celery and carrots, and Christian’s weekly meal preps.

Food wasn't a temptation for Stella because she didn't allow it to be. If there was nothing in the house to eat, then she simply wouldn't eat, and years of that mentality whittled her into an enviable level of thinness and buried her hunger cues under a mountain of praise and compliments. She couldn't remember the last time she’d actually eaten something that tasted good, much less the last time she’d actually been hungry. She ate just enough so she didn't faint during her heated pilates classes (at least, most of the time), and all other nutrition seemed a frivolity that almost disgusted her.

Even now, staring at a fridge that she knew was basically empty, the thought of opening its silver doors and revealing food she might be tempted to eat for no reason was frightening. The thought of eating more than she needed, of overeating on purpose, was one she had so little experience with that she could hardly imagine.

Stella sat at the kitchen island in a near fugue state, unaware of her surroundings or the amount of time that passed as she worked and reworked the issue in her mind. She’d already agreed, but as the haze of her confounding arousal at Christian’s suddenly domineering energy dissipated, she wondered if it was too late to back out. She was also exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to go up to their bedroom, take a shower, and fall into the fluffy duvet she’d made Christian spend a fortune on, but she knew that meant a confrontation with him. She had no idea what he was doing upstairs, perhaps that research he had mentioned to her earlier, but either way she didn't feel she could face him.

She was entirely lost in thought, so far off any established path that she was proverbially turning in circles, when the doorbell suddenly rang. Stella's head snapped to attention, her suspicious stare locked on the front door before she even had time to question who it might be. She paused, frowning. They weren't expecting anyone and their neighborhood was quiet, they’d never received so much as a single solicitor.

What if it's the man from last night, she suddenly thought, her heart clenching.

She’d snuck out of his admittedly impressive apartment without waking him, and while she wasn't sure if she could even remember what he looked like, she was certain he remembered her. What if he was angry at her unceremonious departure and had somehow found her to tell her off? What if he’d become obsessed with her? What if her choice about whether or not to follow Christian's instruction didn't matter, what if Christian left her anyway after a confrontation with the man she’d been unfaithful with?

She popped up, her heart racing, and all but ran to the door, sliding precariously on the entryway carpet in her urgency. She could hear Christian's footfalls above her and knew he was coming down to discover the source of the disturbance, and she sent up a silent prayer that she could convince her one-night stand to skedaddle before she had to make some less-than-pleasant introductions.

She threw open the door, expecting an angry, vaguely familiar man, and stopped short, confusion etching her brow.

“Why are you here?” she asked, dumbfounded.

The bespectacled teenager blinked back at her through fingerprint-smudged glasses, clearly annoyed.

“Cause you ordered a pizza?” he replied with a shake of the 2 boxes in his outstretched arms, boredom and confusion intermingled in his voice. “When you order a pizza for delivery, usually someone delivers it to you.”

Stella rolled her eyes, her heart calming in her chest but her nerves still heightened from the scare.

“Well, we didn't order a pizza,” she retorted snarkily. “So maybe deliver it to whoever did.”

The driver sighed.

“Are you serious?” he asked, irritation overtaking the apathy in his tone. “This isn't 8053 Greenton Drive?”

“Yes,” confirmed Stella, already stepping back to close the door. “But we didn't order any…”

Stella jumped, cutting off her own sentence with a muted yelp as she felt an unexpected hand on her back.

“This is the right place,” Christian's deep voice rumbled behind her.

She turned to look up at him, protests already on her lips.

“But,” she began, and Christian grabbed her arm firmly, moving her from in front of the door with ease.

“How much?” he asked the teenager, pulling out his wallet.

“Christian, wait, what are you,” Stella tried again, and Christian looked down at her with an expression that made her mouth snap shut.

“You’re gonna go to the kitchen, sit down, and wait for me,” he informed her casually, as if he had no question about whether she’d obey. “Now, “ he added more firmly, and Stella felt her knees go weak as she nodded and silently turned heel.

She listened from the kitchen as Christian paid the ornery teen, including a hefty tip that earned a ‘wow, thanks dude” completely devoid of teenage sarcasm, and watched her man as he walked into the white, ultra-modern kitchen, sparkling clean as usual from lack of routine use.

She wanted to say something, to ask him a million questions, but instead kept silent, suddenly shy in the presence of this new Christian she was getting to know. He didn't speak to her, instead setting down the pizza boxes and opening both, revealing a greasy, fragrant disc covered in cheese and pepperoni alongside a box of what looked to be rectangular donuts that Stella had never seen before.

“Cinnamon sticks,” he said, pointing to the box as if he could hear her inquisitions. “And pizza. You’re gonna eat it all. Both boxes.”

Stella scoffed, stunned out of her reverence for Christian's new personality by the absurdity of his statement. She hadn’t had a piece of pizza since she was in middle school, and the thought that she could finish one slice of those oil-covered calorie bombs, much less the whole box, was truly laughable.

“You’re joking, right?” she challenged. “Christian, I really don't know about all this, I really think we should just take some time and consider…”

“You’re talking back to me,” Christian interrupted in a gentle voice that did little to conceal its sternness. “I don’t wanna hear you talk back, I wanna see you do what I told you to do. Right now.”

Stella was silent, the same unexpected feeling that overtook her as they spoke at the foot of the stairs rising in her anew.

“You get one more chance to follow my instructions,” Christian went on. “Because I'm not gonna repeat myself. Pick up a piece of pizza, and eat it.”

Stella's heart was thrumming again, the interpolation of trepidation and excitement clashing ruthlessly within her. She studied the perfect circle piled with meat for a moment and, against her better judgment, darted her hand out quickly and snatched a piece from the box.

“Good girl,” Christian praised evenly, staring her down with a look she couldn't quite place. “Now take a bite.”

Stella brought the triangle of dough, meat, and cheese up to her mouth with shaking hands, feeling as if she was headed down a path of no return.