**Soft**
Greta Lockett stepped up to the line, behind a group of college-aged girls, waiting in front of the Haut Cafe counter. She eyed the menu and the glass display full of pastries and treats before checking her phone.
Okay, she had about fifteen minutes before the Cinky meeting started; just enough time to grab some pastries and get everything set up. She took a deep breath, the scent of freshly brewing coffee wafting to her and making her smile as she inhaled deeply.
God, she loved their coffee.
And their pastries.
And their help.
Greta tilted her head and watched the sweet-looking, long-haired guy behind the counter. He gave a lopsided, lazy grin to the group of girls while he handed out cups of coffee. Bryan Harlowe. He’d been working at Haut Cafe for a little over a year now, ever since he transferred from the local community college, making Greta look forward to her coffee break a little more ever since.
Bryan was cute. Not particularly handsome. Definitely not someone who’d be described as striking. He was cute in an *aw-shucks*, shy kind of way. The kind of boy first crushes were made for. The kind of guy who had, she was sure, had his name scrawled on notebook covers and textbook margins in longing scrawl and wishful hearts. He had big, deep, brown eyes, fringed by long, full lashes, and almost too full lips that always looked soft and just a little slick from his near-constant licking. His light brown hair was almost always tied back and off his face, even when he wasn’t at work.
He was tall, which she liked. It was rare for a person, even a guy, to make her feel small, but Bryan did that. She could lay her head on the shelf of his shoulder, the bones and build of him—for once—feeling strong enough to hold her.
It wasn’t that he was some bulked-up gym-addict. No, Bryan rarely worked out; had next to no time for it. But he was well-built. Sturdy with a good frame. With good hands and arms and shoulders. When she thought of him, she always conjured in her head images of him with skin the exact shade and scent of the bread or cookies he mixed in bowls or kneaded as dough.
She looked at those hands while he took crumpled dollars and random coins from an apologizing redhead.
They looked cute together. A cute couple. Petite and pigtailed, the redhead was the girl-next-door all grown up. In a self-cut, off-the-shoulder university sweatshirt and jeans, she was pretty in that effortless kind of way. Her makeup-less, moonbeam pale face glowed like some skincare commercial.
Greta watched Bryan take the money from the girl’s hand and wondered what it would look like if his hand clasped hers. If he held hers sweetly. If her small, slim hands cupped his cheek. If his earthy hands moved over her celestial body, circling the whole of her tiny form in the orbit of his arms. With room to spare.
She fit him.
In a way that Greta couldn’t even imagine doing.
Bryan looked up from the change he was about to put into the register and spotted Greta in line. His lopsided smile widened. “I’ll be done in a minute; I just need to finish this sale and grab my stuff,” he called out to her.
Greta just nodded, her throat feeling tight, when the group of girls turned to see who he was talking to. She saw their eyes widen, then narrow as they studied her in confusion.
She knew what they saw.
Greta was a big girl.
She’d always been a big girl. Not just tall, though at 5′ 10″ she was that. She was *big.* *Big-boned,* her mother called her. *Plus-sized,* her size-12 baby sister insisted. *Fat* was what she heard them say whenever they did. At a size 24, Greta was only too aware of what she was.
And, though she styled her shiny, healthy, blond hair well, applied her makeup perfectly, and always wore colorful, stylish clothes that flattered her, she knew that none of that changed what she was. It helped—don’t get her wrong; she’d long since accepted that she was big and that didn’t mean she couldn’t also be beautiful—but she was what she was.
And she was only all too well aware that when paired next to Bryan, she and he didn’t make sense. No matter how many times or how closely—how sweetly—he held her, she knew that there was nothing she could do to change that.
She watched Bryan untie his apron from hips that were significantly smaller than her own. When he headed back into the kitchen to grab his things, the girls turned around to face her. “So how do you know him?” the girl closest to Greta asked, whose lustrously tanned skin and—despite the cool, breezy weather—slim, bared waist put in mind images of exotic beaches and bikinis.
“Do you come here often?” the brunette girl with deliberately unruly hair and quirky, possibly ironic glasses asked before her redheaded friend elbowed her. “I mean,” the rather hipster girl insisted, with an innocent shrug, “if she’s on a familiar basis with the baker guy…”
Greta scratched her eyebrow in an effort to hide her wince. She really wasn’t in the mood to deal with this. To have *this* conversation—this confrontation—now. Here. She simply wanted to pick up her pastries and get to her meeting. “Sure,” she said with a shrug.
“Do you know if he’s a student here?” The ginger girl-next-door stepped between Greta and her friend.
Greta just nodded. “He studies culinary arts.” Bryan had dreams of opening his own bakery someday. One where he sent people off to work with a croissant and a smile. One where teens had study dates around a plateful of cookies and whipped-creamed cocoas. One where couples had their first meet-cutes over coffee and cupcakes.
“So he works here between classes?” the Hispanic girl asked, her well-toned midriff not even paunching when she leaned closer conspiratorially. Greta instinctively pulled at her own sweater that hopefully covered the top of her own jeans, that fit, sure, but had felt a touch too snug this morning and were only now beginning to relax. She felt the other girl’s gaze judge her. “So he’s here a lot?”
Greta shrugged. “I guess.” It was the tail-end of the dinner-rush—when all the late afternoon classes got out—and prime-tipping hours. Yeah, Bryan tended to pick his class schedule around that time so he could still work those shifts.
The brunette squinted at her over her lenses and narrowed her eyes, taking all of Greta in. “So you know him pretty well, huh?” she asked. “Do you have classes together?”
“No,” Greta said, knowing where this conversation was heading. She shook her head; she didn’t have the time or patience for this. Their history wasn’t any of these girls’ business. “I’m a chem major.”
A part of her wanted to meet the girl’s gaze, to look straight into her eyes and tell her that Bryan was dating her. Wanted to watch her face when she realized that, yes, the cute baker boy was dating the fat chick, like some bad and impossible cliche.
And she would have. Probably. If, even after nine months, it’d made any sense to her too. But there was—would likely always be—that part of her that stared at these girls next to her and wondered what Bryan was thinking. Wondering why, of all the girls he could have, he chose to be with her.
“But you do know him pretty well,” the girl repeated, “right?”
Greta pursed her lips. There were days when she felt like she understood nothing about him. She sighed and shrugged. “Pretty well.”
“Is he single?” the girl’s friend interrupted.
“Janie!” the redhead hissed.
“What?” the hipster girl asked, adjusting her glasses. “You want to know; we want to know. So I asked.”
The tanned, toned girl just shrugged while the redhead shuffled her sneakered feet but tilted her head curiously. Greta’s jaw locked when all three girls’ gazes centered on her.
——
Bryan couldn’t believe this.
He’d had enough.
Seeing the speechless, stymied look on Greta’s face as she faced-off with the three clearly freshmen girls, he shook his head. Her painted lips—some glossy pink color—were parted and her neck craned back while she searched for what to say.
Enough was enough. He couldn’t believe the girls were questioning Greta like that, grilling her about him.
But, even more, he couldn’t believe Greta was letting them.
Knowing her the way he did, Bryan cringed a bit when he noticed that her tucked-in chin created creases—the dreaded *double-chin*—that never seemed to bother him as much as it did her.
Which, in turn, bothered him.
He could only imagine what she’d think, if she could see the discomfort contorting her beautiful, round face and stealing her confidence.
He shook his head and pushed away from the counter to step around the three girls, so he could hand Greta a latte before wrapping an arm around her waist. He let his hand lay possessively over her full, curvy hips.
Lifting the box of donuts in his other hand, he smiled and gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head. “Got everything; you ready to go?”
“Uh.” Greta stiffened against his arm. He almost tsked when he felt her start to lean away from him, trying to mask it with a dramatic sip of her drink. Fighting a frown, he pulled her closer. He held her firmly against him, hearing her mumble her assent.
He nodded to the freshmen and turned them both toward the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he hated that he saw Greta cringe into herself. Her strong shoulders slumped forward when they were usually tossed back and sure. Her usually expressive face was drawn tight, held frozen against whatever emotions were running through her.
And she was quiet.
Greta was never quiet.
She’d told him once that the only way to survive growing up as the *fat chick* in school was to make your personality as big—bigger—than your body. She never saw the point in hiding; who was going to miss her? Instead, she’d made them meet her as more than her weight. Made sure that, if they saw her, they saw the whole of her.
But, looking at her now, she seemed so small. He knew she could feel the girls’ gazes follow them as they left—he could feel them too.
And, while he knew why they were staring, he would never understand why. He knew plenty of guys who would rather chase the freshmen back in the cafe, but Bryan would pick Greta over any of those girls.
Greta was gorgeous. All sweeping curves and sassy sway, she was exactly the type of woman he went for. She was the definition of *full-figured*. When he held her, he *held* her. She filled his embrace. When he squeezed her, her body—like her heart—was giving and warm. With his arms wrapped around her, he felt grounded and grateful.
And, God knew, girl had an ass and a rack that made his mouth water and his heart race.
But, beyond that, she was smart and funny and adventurous. He loved how eager she always was to try new things. New restaurants. New recipes. New movies. New activities.
New kinks.
He’d never known anyone with the same kind of appetites as him. For food. For excitement. For sex. Too often, with other girls he’d been with, he’d been accused of being insatiable. Greedy. Gluttonous. The girls he’d known had been so easily sated. Had played safe. Had stopped short. Had always seemed a little afraid of reaching their fill.
But Greta…she got it. Greta was the kind of girl who always gave as good as she got. She shared and fueled his hungers. She was the kind of girl with whom enough didn’t have to be enough. With her, he didn’t have to settle. Never had to go still hungry for more. With her, he still felt gluttonous and decadent but, instead of shame or denial, he could only feel joy and anticipation.
As they walked into the kinky youth group they both belonged to, Bryan still marveled that she was always introducing him to new things.
For more than a year, Greta had been coming into Haut Cafe. Had been ordering a box of pastries and a latte before heading off into campus with a skip in her step and a secret smile.
For months, he’d studied her. The tip of her lips. The excited sheen in her brown eyes. The way her weighty body moved with a self-aware knowledge, he was sure, not many people had.
For months, he’d watched her and wondered. It’d taken him three months of watching before curiosity finally got the better of him. Every Friday evening, she’d come to him and left, looking more eager than he’d felt in far too long.
So he’d taken a Friday off and waited for her, donuts and coffee in hand, ready for an adventure. Sure that, wherever she was headed, was a place he wanted to go.
Bryan remembered how he’d just wanted to know what put that smile on her face. What lit up her eyes like that. He’d just had to know.
That first Friday, he’d simply walked her to her meeting, listening to her describe Cinky while they snuck crullers from the box. That Saturday, she’d met him at the café, laptop in hand, during his lunch break to put in an application to the group. The next week, he’d joined her and Cinky.
And, though this had all started with him trying to find out about her, he’d ended up figuring out so much more about himself. Giving a name to the thirst for something more that had hidden within him for so long. Giving a voice to the silent want inside of him.
He reached out and opened the door. Grabbing her hand, he led her into the building. There was no one else he’d rather be on this journey with.
———
Greta peeked up at Bryan. He’d been quiet. Too quiet. All through the meeting and all the way back to his apartment.
She frowned. Something was up, she was sure of it. “Are you okay?”
Bryan’s brow furrowed and he chewed his bottom lip—a clear sign that something was bothering him—but he just muttered something unintelligible.
Okay.
That was weird.
She reached out to grab his hand, hoping the walk down the sunset-lit street might lift his mood. Her hand felt so cold gripping his warm one. She felt like apologizing—only mildly joking—when his gaze jerked to their joined hands. But, when he squeezed and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, she smiled softly.
She cuddled close, feeling the evening wind pick up. She looked at him. His dark eyes were staring off into the distance, clouded by some unreadable thought. His lips curled in a slight frown. Even his shoulders were tense, making her want to reach out and rub them.
It was odd. She knew that before the meeting, those girls had thrown her off-stride. But, sometime during the meeting—somewhere among her people, who knew her and accepted her—she’d begun to feel more herself again.
She bit her lip; did Bryan not feel that way too?
After nine months of being part of Cinky, of getting to know people and finding a place among them, she’d thought he’d felt the same sense of home and belonging there that she did. Being among people who accept you just as you are made it much easier to accept yourself.
After all, like they’d said tonight at the meeting, the first step to acceptance—both from yourself as well as others—is understanding that being different doesn’t make you defective.
Greta knew better than most that, before you could ask anyone else to be okay with who you were, you had to find a way to be okay with it yourself. She’d let those girls make her forget that. Let them dictate how she saw herself.
She liked herself.
Just as she was.
She was fucking awesome. Beautiful and smart. And confident as hell.
She wasn’t about to let some just-out-of-high-school girls rob her of that.
Straightening her spine, she stopped. Still holding his hand, she pulled him up short in front of the stairs heading to his apartment’s front door.
Something was wrong.
And he was going to talk to her about it.
He looked back at her questioningly, their out-stretched arms between them.
“Something is up with you,” she said in a voice that told him nothing could convince her otherwise. “Was it the meeting?”
He paused, licking his lips nervously. She could practically see his mind try to decide what to tell her. By the curve of his lip and the tilt of his gaze, she could see him trying to figure out how to answer without answering. “I thought it was interesting.”
Interesting?
“Sure.” Greta nodded. She guessed. Dani, one of the Cinky leaders, had headed a discussion about how to talk to your partner about your kinks. It was a part of their *Back to Basics* series, something the group did at the start of every school year.
“You didn’t think so?”
Greta shrugged. “It was fine.” She shook her head. “I mean, knowing how to negotiate is always a good thing to go over, but it’s mainly for the new members.”
She watched him shift his feet back and forth a bit. “So you don’t…” He shook his head, his ponytail flipping over his shoulder with the force. “I mean, have you ever…”
A nervous flush colored his cheeks. He let go of her hand and turned to go up the stairs. “Never mind.”
She grabbed his hand again. “What’s going on?” He’d never been so secretive before. She didn’t think, anyway. It was one of the things she really liked about him. He was so straight-forward and curious. Was always asking questions or trying to figure things out. There was nothing they couldn’t discuss, explore, or even argue about.
It made her wonder exactly what he felt he couldn’t tell her.
He rolled his shoulders tensely. “Can we just go inside?”
She shook her head and took a step back. “Not until we talk about this.”
He sighed and looked about his neighborhood warily. “Can we at least talk about this inside?”
She looked next door at the college-aged boys throwing a football around the poorly tended lawn loudly and the grad student walking her dog across the street.
Okay, yeah, maybe they should take this inside.
Pursing her lips while panic crawled through her, she followed him into the apartment.
“Hey.” His roommate Steve nodded at them from the couch where he and their other roommate Jacob were watching TV.
Jacob straightened a bit on his seat from the couch. Greta could feel his gaze on her. On the width of her hips. On the bulge of her belly. As if he could see through her clothes, she could feel his gaze burn with baffled judgment over the stretch marks on her thighs.
Jacob had never said anything directly offensive to her, but she knew he thought his friend could do better than her. A heavier set guy himself, he’d look at the kind of girls—beautiful and slender—who looked at and flirted with Bryan, and Greta could read the *why* screaming out from him. Why did the girls he wanted always seem to go for boys-next-door like Bryan or jock-ish gym guys like Steve? And why, when presented with that, would Bryan want *her*?
Guys like Jacob looked at girls like her and thought—knew with a fervent certainty—that she was the kind of girl guys settled for. The *give-up* girl you get when you can’t have what you really want. She could read it in his face, hear it in his voice, that he was waiting for his friend to wake up to that fact.
She raised her chin and gave him a nod before letting Bryan lead her to his room. She may not always understand why Bryan chose her either, but he did. And, after nine months, his friend could accept it or mind his own business.
———
Was she mad?
Bryan wet his dry lips and swallowed hard.
This was not the way he’d wanted this night to go. First, there was that meeting. It was so weird; he’d been doing kink for nine months now with Greta. And, while he didn’t really think that they’d done anything too wild—mostly dealing with denial and edging play, where she teased him mercilessly before finally allowing him release—he no longer really thought of himself as being all that new to kink.
They’d played and explored enough to have a good grasp on what each other enjoyed. What places to touch. What tools to use. How long to linger.
But, because he’d joined the group mid-year, he’d sort of been thrown in the kink pool and learned to swim by just jumping in. Which was fine. Hell, he couldn’t look back on the past year and regret anything.
But it meant that he didn’t know the basics.
He didn’t know all the possibilities out there. Didn’t know how to go about discovering them. Thrilled with the kinks Greta had introduced him to, he hadn’t really thought about there being more than that.
But the meeting had got him wondering.
Some of the things they’d shown hadn’t appealed to him, sure. He wasn’t big into pain and kinda thought rope looked overly complicated and expensive, so he’d tuned out much of the beginning of the lecture.
But then they’d started to talk about more uncommon kinks. Puppy play. Age play. Medical play. Latex fetishes. Foot fetishes. Pegging. Water sports. There’d even been videos of people painting people like canvases and ones where entire banquets were being served on bared bodies.
And just seeing the vast possibilities, it’d made him think about whether the fantasies he’d thought were just nonsensical fap-fodder could be more.
“So what did you want to talk about?”
He looked up at Greta who sat down on the chest at the foot of his bed. She still looked tense, her lips set in a tight line.
Yeah, he wasn’t all that sure she looked in the mood to have this talk.
“You’re kinda freaking me out now.” She took a breath and held it, looking a little resigned. He wondered to what. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
He bit his lip and paced a bit beside his bed. “Do you,” he asked, lifting his shoulder in an awkward shrug, “have any kinks that you haven’t told me about?”
She looked at him oddly and frowned. “Not really.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “I mean, sure there’s always stuff that sounds fun to try—like Pyrex toys or violet wands—but it’s not exactly in my price range right now.”
Which were more like additions or accessories to kinks they’d already explored.
He shook his head. “You don’t have some,” he tilted his head and tried to find the right words, “deep desire that you’ve never told anyone about?”
Her gaze narrowed. She frowned. “No,” she said, “I guess not. Not since I started exploring my kinks.” She turned to tuck one leg underneath her to face him. “Do you?”
Bryan felt his face flush under her gaze. “Well.” He shrugged. He could feel hot embarrassment rush to his face. God, why was this so hard?
*Just say it straight. Don’t treat it like someone just died; this is supposed to be fun. We call it *play* for a reason.*
Which sounded all well and good. Except…
He shrugged and licked his lips. *Just say it.* He swallowed hard. “Well,” he said, “I do have one.” He took a fortifying breath. “I just don’t know if you’ll be into it.”
Her frown deepened. “Why not?”
His blush deepened. He watched her cross her arms over her chest. She didn’t think he’d tell her; he could see it. Suspicion and confusion glared out at him through her eyes.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t want to tell her. Not exactly. He looked away from her. It was just that. “I don’t want to…” his voice trailed off as he tried to find the words. Upset her? Hurt her with it? “Offend you.”
She let out a huff and rolled her eyes at him. “Bryan,” she drawled, “I already know that you’re into fat chicks.”
He snapped straight. “What?”
She gave him an indulgent look. “You like BBWs. *Big, beautiful women.*” She gestured to herself. “I kinda figured that out on my own.”
Bryan frowned and his spine stiffened. “You’re not fat.” Big? Maybe. Beautiful? Definitely. But *fat*? It was just such a harsh-sounding word for a woman like her. Like an insult for something he found inspiring.
She rolled her eyes again. “Are you kidding me?” She threw her arms out and looked down at herself. “Of course I am.”
His jaw tensed. “You’re *not* fat.” He looked at her, the sweet fullness of her body. The swell of her breasts and hips and belly. Every dip and sweep and curve of her called to him. “You’re soft.”
She snorted. “And, by *soft,* you mean *fat.*” She gave him another placating look. “It’s okay to say it.”
“No,” he said, walking toward her, each step deliberate with demand. He wanted her to understand. “I mean *soft,*” he said, taking her hand to pull her up against him, “as in the opposite of me.” With a hand on her hip, he held her close, so the lovely, warm give of her middle pressed flush against every inch of his hard length.
He felt her breath hitch, a shiver that echoed all over her body in an arousing jiggle. He looked down as awareness flared in her eyes. Instinctively, his eyes dropped to her breasts, lush and supple, that rose and fell with each shallow, aroused breath. He felt a smile spread across his face.
“Do you trust me?” he asked her.
“To do what?” she replied.
“To show you.”
———
Greta sat on the edge of Bryan’s bed. He’d told her to wait while he got things ready.
Ready for what, she had no idea.
He wouldn’t tell her.
He wanted to show her.
“It won’t hurt,” he’d promised her. “And we can stop whenever you want.”
So, she’d agreed. Why not? She knew Bryan. He was such a gentle person; she didn’t think there was anything he could do to really scare her.
Not like that anyway.
If she was honest, she’d been worried earlier. She wasn’t even sure she could say what she’d been worried about.
That he was breaking up with her? Sure, it was always a worry in the back of her head. Even though she hated to admit it, part of her was waiting, just like Jacob, for Bryan to wake up.
That he wasn’t actually really into the things—the kinks—that they’d tried? Oh, absolutely. She’d been with enough guys who’d looked at her desires—at her—and run. She’d had friends and even some family members find out her secrets and shame her for them. Bryan always seemed eager and more than interested in their games, but Greta couldn’t help but worry that it was just too good to be true.
But her biggest worry began to stir within her while she watched him squirm in front of her. She worried that he *was* into her and *was* into everything they were doing, but not in the way she wanted. That, after the meeting, suddenly, he was overthinking and overanalyzing it. Turning it into its own fetish.
Which, maybe it was.
But she’d known men with fat girl fetishes. Men who saw her weight and nothing else. Men who took one look at her and thought they knew her. Who thought fat girls were desperate or lonely. Who thought she ought to be grateful for any attention they threw her way. Or that she should be willing to do anything they asked just to keep them. Those men saw her bigger form and assumed that she was less than a person.
Bryan wasn’t like that. She knew that. Bryan may love her curves, but he also loved her. The whole of her.
But those men had left scars on her psyche that she’d have for the rest of her life and it was hard not to feel them on days like this.
“Are you ready…”
[**READ THE REST HERE**](http://sonnidesoto.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-better-to-eat-you-with-part-two.html)
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/4i4nfb/the_better_to_eat_you_with_mfbbw