That has her batting my hand away. “Don’t mess with that,” she says.
“How do I get this off of you?”
“You don’t.” Her voice is crisp.
“I want to see you.”
The lights are still on. I’ve seen every inch of her that isn’t covered, I’ve fucked her in every position. Cum trickles out of both her holes. I see this whole glorious mess that she is.
I see all the flaws, too. The cuff she had on her arm fell off at some point, so I can see the old bruises from where they put needles in her veins. I see the scars. I see the lumps.
I want to see all of her.
I want to know.
I want to touch and feel and bury myself in her just a little bit more. When I leave in the morning, I want to leave behind a woman who knew, if just for one night, that she truly was a goddess.
And she looks so fucking sad when I refuse to back down. She pleads with me, says it’s bad, that it will ruin everything. But it won’t. Not for me. I’ll make sure it doesn’t ruin it for her either. If she wants me to turn the lights off and tie my hands to the headboard the moment I get to see her, I’ll accept that. But I need to see her. I need to know.
I can’t get it out of my head.
She rolls onto her side, away from me, giving me her back, but she’s also giving me the more accessible ribbons of hercorset. I kiss her shoulder and rub her arm before I start working the knots. I praise her and thank her and worship her as I loosen the strings. They’re in a complete loop, best as I can tell, but then she rolls onto her back and brings her hands up to her mouth as I work down the clasps holding the corset together in the front.
In my mind, it will work like a zipper and I’ll be able to lavish affection on every inch as it’s revealed, easing us both into this. But it’s not a zipper. It’s a steel strip of hooks, and they release as a single unit. There’s a pop — I’m not sure if it’s audible or if it’s a sensation — and then the corset splits, displaying her for me.
She is ravaged. There’s a well of extra skin, which I’d expected. She’s marred with stretch marks; a contradiction, but not an unexpected one, either. She was a big woman, that’s how she came across that beautiful ass and those incredible tits. People waste away when they’re sick, and everything I’ve seen tells me she’s only recently begun to regain her health.
No, it’s the scarring that startles me, an array of puckers and slashes that wouldn’t be any more devastating if she’d been attacked by someone, a random psycho or a pissed ex-boyfriend. But these are meticulous. Deliberate. Scars from surgery. And along her side, sad and wilted, drawn onto the skin of a very different woman from the one lying below me, is a vine of honeysuckles.
It’s terrible. I’ve never gone through anything like this, never suffered an illness so severe that I was reshaped by it. I’ve taken some bad hits on the field that landed me under a scalpel, but that’s a choice I made for myself as a quarterback. It’s something we all know will happen and just have to cross our fingers that we’ll be the same when we get to the other side.
I wonder who she was before all this. I wonder what she looked like, if she was happy or if she was uncomfortable with her size, if this corset was her first time trying on her new skin, testing the fit, if she wishes she could go back to what she was. I bet she was sexy as fuck, a force to be reckoned with, when she was feeling herself.
She keeps her hands above her head, not attempting to hide or shying away from my scrutiny, although she doesn’t make eye contact. She’s accepted this, it seems, but then when I lean down and place my lips on the pooled, rippled flesh, she flinches.
“You, umm, you don’t have to . . .” she starts, only to trail off with her sigh.
“I don’t have to what?” I push.
She rolls her eyes away. “You don’t have to act like it’s not gross. I know it is. I’m not offended. I’d rather you just tell me you’re sorry and then ignore this.”
“Absolutely not,” I push right back. “I am sorry, you’re right. I’m sorry you went through this. It must have been awful and scary, and it looks like you had a bunch of surgeries. Terrifying. The thought of it makes me feel sick. But this?” I rest my hand over her stomach, pressing my fingertips in enough that she knows that I’m acknowledging exactly what’s under my hand and have no qualms about touching her here. “This is you, and I think every inch of you is amazing. Nothing about you could be gross. Like, it’s just skin, right? And okay, it’s been in that corset all evening, and we’re both sweaty as it is, so it’s not—” The pained look she gives me has me shutting that down. I’m definitely losing ground here. “I understand why you’re uncomfortable with this, but I’m not. I think . . . I think it’s cool that you have a way to show off what you survived.”
“I don’t.”
I cringe. “I didn’t mean that to—”
“It’s okay,” she says, sitting up, making me regret pushing this only because I steered us right into Seriousville when I just wanted to get her naked so I could clean her up better and then have more of her to touch when I fuck her again. “I appreciate it. Thanks for being nice to me. And if you’re serious about it, I’m glad you feel that way. But I always imagined if I was thin, I’d get to wear all these awesome outfits and get to show off my midriff and, like, be comfortable in a string bikini. And instead, I got this, and even if you don’t mind this, I know others will.”
“Who cares what others think?”
She winces, but then her expression softens and she puts her hands around the back of my neck and kisses my cheek. “I do. I’m not crazy about it. It’s not like I’m super fashionable or put a lot of effort into my appearance. But I do care.”
I remind myself that I dehydrated just so I’d look as cut as possible under a wet tee shirt. I bet if the conversation was backwards and I was refusing to drink because the photoshoot hadn’t happened yet, she’d be asking me the same thing. So I get it, I do. “Okay, well, what about getting it fixed? There’s gotta be surgery for this sort of thing.”
She looks down at her stomach, I think for the first time since I took the corset off her, and she looks so fucking sad that I don’t even want to fuck anymore. Not because I don’t like how she looks, obviously, but because I’m having one of those rare moments of wanting to be recognized — with her on my arm, so the whole world can see that NFL quarterback Blaise Sinclair thinks she’s hot as fuck, so everyone else should too. I, like, want her pregnant so everyone knows I think she’s so fucking hot I put a baby in her.
Totally fucking ridiculous, and even if she hadn’t already told me she can’t get pregnant, I would never do it, but the thought is there. All that, just to make her feel better.
