Page 13 of Desperate Desires

“Then why did you text me? And who the hell is in your house?” she screeched.

The sounds of Baby Michael wailing started in the background and exhaled a breath.

“Micky, go take care of the baby. I am fine. It’s nothing. Just a man!”

Shit. I should not have said that.

“Oh? Ohhh! Get it, Shelly! Okay, look, I gotta feed the baby, but if Dr. Davis is finally getting some, I damn well wanna hear all about it later!”

“Oh my God! Goodbye, Micky,” I whisper-screamed, closing my eyes as I clicked end.

The sound of Ono groaning reached my ears, and I ran back across the apartment in my socked feet, sliding more than a little bit of the way.

I entered the room—my bedroom—slowly.

The mattress was a queen sized, but it looked like a twin with him lying on top of it. I had no choice but to place him there to recover, since there was only one bedroom in my whole apartment.

“Shh,” I murmured, leaning over and touching his forehead to assess his temperature.

Warm, but not unexpected.

It was too soon for another round of ibuprofen and antibiotics and I’d rather he slept.

I did not want to wake him a second time unnecessarily.

I breathed slowly, just taking him in.

The man was just too damn good looking for words.

He was big, too.

Hulking, really, and it wasn’t like I was small or anything, but he made me feel positively petite. That was a first.

Micky and I often joked about needing big men to handle our ultra curvy girl bodies. In her family, the men were all larger-than-life, and the women were bigger than society’s standards.

Maybe that was why she was always so confident.

It wasn’t always easy for women with a little bit of weight to feel good about their appearance, but the Volkovs seemed more than fine with it. They had a healthy appreciation for the female form and that helped me as an awkward and overweight teenager.

See, my mom had been slender and petite. She was a loving mother and never made me feel bad about myself for taking after my father’s side of the family. The women were what you called thick.

I missed my parents. My dad was awesome, and my mom, too. They loved each other a lot. Losing them sucked.

It was the worst time of my life.

When I went to live with Aunt Agnes, I’d been put on a diet at the very first. She was a thin, hard woman who did not approve of my shape.

I was a big girl, which was putting it delicately. I had always carried around more than a little extra padding. And no, it had nothing to do with laziness or diet like Aunt Agnes and so many other people believed.

It was so easy to fat shame.

But unless you walked in someone else’s shows, you had no idea what made them what they were.

Some things could not be helped.

Like genetics.

My thighs were always going to be big. Apparently, aside from Aunt Agnes, I came from a family of big-bottomed women on my father’s side.

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