Eating for Two
The afternoon light filters through my kitchen windows in thick, honeyed bands that swirl around the half-empty champagne flutes on the marble island.
I'm perched on a stool with my swollen feet propped on the rung below, watching Lanna arrange petit fours into a precarious tower that leans like a drunk's architecture.
My belly presses against the edge of the counter, a firm curve beneath my stretched floral dress, and I keep one hand there out of habit now, feeling the occasional flutter that might be movement or might just be digestion at twenty-two weeks.
"More pate?" Louise asks, sliding a plate toward me with the efficiency of someone who's been hosting since she could hold a tray steady.
Her dark hair is pulled back in a knot that threatens escape, and there's a smear of cream cheese on her lip she hasn't yet noticed.
I shake my head, though my mouth waters at the sight.
"I'm saving room. There's still that chocolate fountain in the living room."
"Kate." Lanna abandons her pastry engineering to stare at me, her mascara-heavy eyes widening in that particular way she has when she's about to say something she considers scandalous.
"You're five months pregnant. When's the last time you actually came?"
The question hangs in the kitchen's hum—refrigerator cycling, distant laughter from the garden where my mother chats with my sister-in-law.
I feel heat crawl up my neck, though I shouldn't be embarrassed.
These are my oldest friends. We shared dorm rooms and morning-after pills.
"That's not—" I start, reaching for my sparkling water.
"Oh my God." Louise's hand freezes on the plate. "You're not. Tell me you're not celibate."
"I'm not celibate."
The words come out defensive, tight.
"Mark and I, we... we try. It's just..."
I gesture vaguely at my midsection, at the way my body has become unfamiliar territory, all shifting centre of gravity and tender breasts and a libido that's hibernated without my permission.
"It's complicated."
"Bullshit."
Lanna rounds the island, her heels clicking against the tile.
She smells like the vanilla perfume she's worn since college, and something sharper now, gin maybe.
"Your hormones should be raging. Second trimester, that's when you're supposed to be insatiable. That's what the magazines say."
"They also say you can lose ten pounds by thinking thin," I mutter, but they're not listening.
Louise has joined Lanna in that predatory circle, the one that used to form around whichever of us had gone longest without a decent orgasm, back when that was a competition with stakes.
"She needs intervention," Louise announces, as if I'm not sitting right here, as if my belly isn't pressing insistently against my own spine, a separate entity with its own demands.
"Intervention?"
My laugh comes out wrong, breathy and uncertain.
Lanna's already moving toward the pantry, her hips swinging with purpose.
"Remember Sarah Parsons? Third trimester, couldn't reach her own clit—"
"I remember Sarah," I interrupt, though I don't, not really.
I'm watching Louise unlock a cabinet above the wine fridge, the one that usually holds the good scotch.
Instead, she produces a glass jar of something dark and glossy, and my stomach tightens with recognition.
Belgian chocolate spread, the expensive kind, the kind Mark uses when he's done something that requires an apology.
"Louise."
"You're eating for two," she says, which makes no sense as logic, which makes perfect sense as Louise-logic.
"Might as well make it count."
The kitchen door swings shut with a decisive click. I hear the lock turn, though who we're locking out I don't know—the party's winding down, the guests thinning to family who won't miss me for twenty minutes.
My pulse has found a new rhythm, something faster than the afternoon warrants, and I press my hand harder against my belly as if to quiet it, as if the baby can feel what I feel, this strange anticipation I don't want to name.
"Stand up," Lanna says, and I do, because I've been following her instructions since we were nineteen and she taught me how to give a blowjob using a banana from the dining hall.
The stool scrapes against tile. My dress rides up my thighs, and I don't pull it down.
Louise unscrews the jar with a pop that sounds obscenely loud in the quiet kitchen.
The chocolate smells rich, bittersweet, the kind of scent that pools in the back of the throat. She dips two fingers in, and they emerge coated, gleaming in the afternoon light.
"Arms up," she commands, and I raise them, feeling ridiculous and exposed and something else, something that tightens low in my abdomen where I haven't felt much of anything lately except pressure and occasional heartburn.
She starts at my collarbone. The chocolate's cool against my overheated skin, and I gasp at the contrast, at the intimacy of her fingers spreading it in slow circles across the swell of my breasts.
My nipples have been sensitive for months, aching at the slightest friction, and now they tighten against my bra, visible through the thin fabric of my dress.
"Louise—"
"Shh."
She's focused, her lower lip caught between her teeth, the same expression she wears when she's frosting a cake.
"You're getting this everywhere. Might as well commit."
Lanna appears behind me, her hands settling on my hips with a familiarity that makes me sway.
"Breathe," she whispers, and I realise I've been holding it, that my lungs burn with the need for air.
I exhale shakily as Louise's fingers trail lower, chocolate smearing across the stretched fabric covering my belly, dark against the pale floral print.
"Lift," Lanna says, and together they raise my dress over my head, leaving me in my maternity bra and underwear, both practical cotton, both suddenly absurdly erotic under their gaze.
My belly hangs exposed, round and marked with the faint silver lines of stretching skin, and I have the impulse to cover it, to hide, but Louise's hands are already there, spreading chocolate across the curve in worshipful strokes.
"Beautiful," she murmurs, and I don't know if she means me or the mess she's making, the way the dark spread glistens against my pale skin, catching in the hollow of my navel, sliding toward the waistband of my underwear.
Lanna's fingers hook in that waistband, tugging down, and I step out of the panties without being asked, standing naked except for my bra while my friends circle me like sharks ready for a feeding frenzy.
The kitchen feels enormous suddenly, the windows too large; anyone in the garden could look up and see—
"Focus," Louise says, her thumb pressing chocolate against my left nipple through the bra's thin layer, and the sensation rockets through me, a jolt of pure joyful need that I haven't felt in months.
I moan, actually moan, and Lanna laughs, low and knowing.
"Uhh! Uhh!"
"There's our girl."
They guide me to the island, clearing it with sweeping gestures that send plates scattering.
The marble's cold against my back as they lift me onto it, my legs dangling, my belly rising between us like a moon pulling tides.
Louise sheds her cardigan, revealing arms I've always envied, strong from tennis and yoga, and rolls her sleeves with deliberate precision.
"Last chance to say no," she offers, but her eyes are already on the chocolate still smeared across my breasts, my stomach, the trail leading down to where I'm bare and suddenly wet, embarrassingly wet, arousal pooling without my permission.
I don't say no. I don't say anything.
I just watch as she kneels between my spread thighs, as Lanna moves to my side and begins unhooking my bra with practised efficiency.
The first touch of Louise's tongue is shocking. She licks the chocolate from my navel first, a slow drag that makes my abdominal muscles contract, makes me aware of how empty I am, how hungry for something I haven't been able to name.
She works upward, cleaning my belly in broad strokes, and I feel the vibration of her hum against my skin, approval or pleasure or both.
Lanna frees my breasts from the bra's confinement, and the air hits my nipples like a touch in itself.
They've grown, darkened, the areolas spreading in ways that made me self-conscious in the mirror but that Lanna seems to appreciate, cupping their weight in her palms, thumbing the chocolate Louise left behind.
"So full," she whispers, and I arch into her touch, unable to help myself, the pressure exquisite against the tender flesh.
She bends her head, and then her mouth closes over my nipple, sucking hard, and I cry out, my hand flying to her hair, gripping tight.
"Mmm, oohh!"
Louise takes this as an invitation.
While Lanna works my breasts, switching between them with lips and teeth and the occasional scrape of fingernail, Louise returns to her jar, coating her fingers fresh, and then she's spreading me open, painting chocolate directly onto my clit, my labia, the mess of arousal and sugar that makes me writhe against the marble.
I'm sticky.
I'm wriggling in soaked anticipation.
"Fuck, you're wet," she breathes, and then her mouth is there, licking with broad, slutty strokes that mix her saliva with the chocolate, with my own slickness, creating something naughty and perfect.
She doesn't tease, doesn't build slowly—she eats me like she's starving, like I've been offered as a feast, and the sound of it, the wet suction and her muffled groans, sends heat flooding through my pelvis.
She munches my cunt.
Sucks my fem-lips.
Slurps around my pink private jelly bean.
Lanna releases my breast with a wet pop, watching Louise work with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Turn her," she suggests, and before I can process what she means, they're moving me, rolling me onto my side, then my stomach, arranging me on the island with my knees drawn up, my belly supported by a folded towel Louise produces from somewhere, my arse exposed to the kitchen's afternoon light.
Picture a beached fuckin whale!
"Louise—"
"You're not done eating," she says, and her hands spread my cheeks apart, and I feel her breath there, hot and deliberate, before her tongue drags from my perineum up to the tight pucker of my arsehole, and I'm making sounds I don't recognise, guttural and desperate, my face pressed against the marble's coolness.
"Uughh! Uughh!"
She rims me with the same thoroughness she applied to my cunt, licking and pressing and finally pushing inside, the sensation so intimate I could weep.
Fuck its good. Her tongue dabbing, pressing into my tight balloon knot.
I've had this before, with Mark, with others, but never while pregnant, never while my body feels so completely claimed by other purposes, other needs.
The contrast wrecks me—this filthy act in service of the life growing inside me, this pure physical pleasure that exists alongside, separate from, the maternal transformation.
My dirty, dirty need dominates.
My mussed arse is so sensitive.
Lanna's hands find my breasts again, hanging heavy beneath me, and she squeezes in rhythm with Louise's tongue, creating a circuit of sensation that has me grinding against the towel, against nothing, seeking friction for my clit while Louise's mouth works my arse.
She slides one hand down my belly, over the curve that still feels foreign, and finds my clit with unerring accuracy, rubbing in petite endless circles while Louise continues her assault from behind.
The orgasm builds differently than I'm used to.
There's no sharp climb, no cresting wave—instead it spreads like the chocolate itself, thick and slow and inevitable, pooling in my pelvis until I'm shaking with it, until my thighs clench and my toes curl and I'm coming with Louise's tongue in my arse and Lanna's fingers on my clit and my own cries muffled against the marble.
"Orrghh!"
They don't stop.
Lanna gentles her touch, keeping me on the edge, and Louise withdraws only to press two fingers into my cunt, curling upward, finding the spot that makes my vision spark with colour.
I'm oversensitive, writhing, but they hold me open, hold me down, working in tandem until I'm building again, impossibly, the second climax sharper than the first, a knife-cut of pleasure that has me screaming into the towel.
"Hnnghh!"
When I finally still, trembling and sweat-slicked and covered in chocolate and my own mess, they help me sit up, arrange me on the island like a doll, legs dangling, belly heaving with breath.
Louise wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing chocolate across her cheek, and Lanna laughs, leaning in to lick it off, the casual intimacy of long friendship.
"Mark's going to thank us," Louise says, and I realise with a start that my husband's name sounds foreign, that I've forgotten he exists in this kitchen, in this suspended afternoon.
"Mark," I repeat, and the word sends a fresh throb through my pelvis, a reminder of what they've awakened, what I've been missing.
They get me a fresh maternity dress.
My mother.
The garden.
The ordinary world that continued spinning while I was being unmade and remade on a kitchen island.
"Kate! We were looking for you. Feeling okay?"
"Perfect," I say, and my voice carries the truth of it, the resonance of a body that's been remembered, that's been fed.
I'm thinking about what Mark and I can do tonight.