Fifty Shades Fatter - A Sequel (Fifty Shades of Neigh Book 2)

by Anna Roberts

  - Whatever.

  Quite a bit of banging, actually. When the bed's really rattling and it's sweaty and there's that kind of jiggle and slap of flesh on flesh. Those times when you've bitten your lip red raw without even thinking about it and there's just a big sweaty matted mess at the back of your head where your hair used to be. And then when you get up your legs behave like Bambi's when he's on the ice...oh yeah. That's the good stuff.

  I blush and glance over at Timothy Grope, who is busy behind his laptop. I wonder what he looks like with his hair loose? If he wasn't so mean that ponytail would be kind of cute. Of course, I can't be completely certain that he doesn't want to kill me - I never did figure out what those text messages were about. Or those funny doodles of me tied to a traintrack.

  He catches me staring and my blush deepens. "Anything?" he asks.

  "Hmm?"

  "Any insights? Do you like the book?"

  "Um..." I say, realising that I was biting my lip. "Er...it's...yeah. The same. Um. Billionaire. Girl. Backdoor action."

  "Backdoor action?" He raises an eyebrow.

  I swallow. My face is on fire. "Yeah," I murmur, determined to sound sophisticated. "You know. Anal."

  "Anal's good," he says.

  "Is it? I've never..." What the hell is wrong with me today? "I've never...never...um...I've never...I just...I really..."

  "You've never taken it up the ass," he says. "Yeah. Got that. Thanks."

  "You're welcome." The words come out in a weird little birdlike screech and I sink down behind my laptop. I have a terrible strange feeling somewhere inside and oh my God...really? Am I...no. No way. I could never be...

  ...hot for Timothy Grope?

  - I am never speaking to you again. I mean it. I am on mute from hereon in, and you know I don't say things like that lightly.

  No. Not with your crippling fear of mimes.

  - Ugh. Seriously. And yeah. Starting now.

  Knock yourself out. I'll be quietly fantasising about being bent over the table and cornholed by your boss.

  Gross. We work through the manuscripts all morning. After a while they start to blur into one - a series of violet eyed heroines getting down in all kinds of strange ways with vampires, werewolves, pirates, billionaires, sheikhs, bare-knuckle fighters and cowboys. "I like the ones where the heroes cry," I tell Timothy Grope. "It shows a sensitive side."

  He curls his lip. "Whatever. If some of these guys were any more sensitive they'd be sponsored by fucking Kleenex. But go on - please."

  Huh. I think that's maybe the first time he's ever said 'please'. "It's more interesting if they're broken in some way," I explain. "So that the heroine can fix them. It appeals to the nurturing instinct."

  "It appeals to something," he says. "And I don't like to think about what. Relationships like that seldom end well in real life."

  "Yes they do. What are you talking about? Crispian is incredibly damaged and we're getting married."

  "And does he cry all the time?"

  "Quite a lot. Especially in the shower. I think it's more symbolic that way."

  "Symbolic of what?"

  "Water."

  Timothy Grope sighs. "Wow. You know, I always wondered what went on that head of yours."

  "Well, now you know."

  "I really do," he says, getting up from his desk. "So you think there's something in this whole weepy manchild kind of hero?"

  "Oh yes. So long as he's dominant where it matters. You know...in the bedroom."

  Timothy Grope leans against the desk and peers down at me. "Why the bedroom?" he asks. "Why not in the back of the car? Or the kitchen table? Or the desk?"

  "Well, yes. That would be...acceptable."

  "How dominant are we talking? Just smack her ass, pull her hair, yank her panties down and lick a big wet stripe between her legs right there in the office before going to town and eating her like a prosciutto-wrapped fig drizzled with gourmet Greek wildflower honey?"

  Whoa. "Um...yes. That would be a good...level of dominance."

  "Cool," he says. "Keep reading. You want some tea? Yours is the Twinings, right?"

  I watch him go. I think I've just been sexually harassed.

  My Inner Goddess rises blinking from her divan, her hair suspiciously muzzed. Tomahto tomato, potahto potato - let's call the whole thing off.

  Chapter Eleven

  Vanilla Surprise

  My head is swimming with badly written soft-core pornography when I get back to the apartment. Today has been a revelation. I had no idea you could do that with an oven mitt, a length of rope and a family sized tub of raspberry yoghurt. I want to talk about these things with Kate but when I get indoors I find her packing.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Home," she says. "Your mother got all Buddhist when Jesús made me a BLT. She wanted to have a candlelit service for the fucking bacon and shit."

  "Oh." I see trouble ahead. Crispian loves bacon.

  Jesús appears, stuffing several items of barely-there underwear into his laptop case.

  "You're leaving too?" I ask. "But I thought you liked it here? You're just going to leave Narnia?"

  Jesús sucks his teeth and sighs. "Yeah, man - I gotta say, for a kind of like not-very-subtle allegorical Christ-figure, Aslan is really fucking judgemental, you know? He's a decent enough dude at heart but come on - you can't love lipstick, high heels and Narnia? Like, you gotta choose?"

  "Weak," agrees Kate. "Dude hung out with enough hookers first time round for him to be unphased by their dress sense."

  "Totally. You know, that is a really good point."

  "It is. Do you want to wait so you can pass it on to Lion-O?"

  Jesús shakes his head. "Nah. You know what he's like. You go in there to continue a conversation and he starts with the mysterious ways shit, so you have to like reign for sixty years as King of Narnia..."

  "...oh yeah. And be wise and just."

  "Yeah. That too. Not to mention the battles and the sea voyages and ew - having tea with fauns."

  Kate shudders. "I know right? I will never get used to those creepy little goddamn goat-legs. It's like their fucking knees are on backwards. Ergh."

  "Hello Hanna, how was your day?" I say, sarcastically.

  "Don't be so sour," says Kate. "You wanted us out of your hair, we're going. It's just you and Equus. And your mom."

  Oh holy crap. My mother. I can hear her voice in the great room. What the hell is she doing to Crispian? I know she's a peace-loving vegan Buddhist but whenever she's around him she starts looking at knives and scissors in a whole new worrying way.

  I hurry down the hall. Crispian is on the couch, curled in a foetus position with his thumb stuck in his mouth. My mother is sitting in an armchair beside him and motions to me to be quiet as soon as she sees me. "And what do you feel now, Crispian?" she says, in the softest tone I've ever heard her use with him.

  "Want mom-mee," murmurs Crispian, in a baby voice.

  Holy crap! This is disturbing! "What are you doing?" I gasp.

  "Want boo-bee," says Crispian.

  "Past life regression," says my mother, in an undertone. "Only he doesn't seem to have any previous lives. He's stuck firmly in infancy in this one. It's been boobies and mama all afternoon."

  This is so not right. Crispian sucks noisily on his thumb and gazes up at me with sad, puppy dog brown eyes. I'm on the verge of some kind of profound sexual awakening and my fiancé has regressed to the level of a needy infant. "I really don't have time for this," I mutter, and go to hide in the kitchen. Crispian bursts into loud, baby wails as I depart.

  Thankfully Claudia didn't finish all the vodka on her last visit. I pour a double and top it up with hard lemonade. I am deeply confused, all astir in the panty department and in no mood to play Mommy. All day I've been reading about dominant men with piercing eyes and huge you-know-what's, doing things to shy, slender, large-eyed girls like me. And all of this in the company of a lean young man with painted-on jeans and a
silver earring and Crispian should know what that does to me - the whole bad boy thing. So yes, Crispian's been to prison and has an electronic tag that goes off if he so much as tries to go out into the hallway, but it's not how bad you are that matters - it's how you look. He's always been evasive whenever I mentioned him getting his ear pierced. The last time I tried to persuade him he got arrested the next day, and so the point was kind of moot.

  I check my hair in the cooker hood. Ugh. Maybe I should get a haircut. That's what girls in books do when they're having some kind of existential crisis. They go to the salon and come out transformed with a new sassy bob or a cute crop.

  "I am not responsible for that which I have no control over," my mother says, in the next room. "Repeat after me..."

  Oh shit. She's got him doing affirmations now. That's the last thing I need. "CRISPIAN!" I yell, surprised by my own volume. The glasses in the cabinet rattle.

  He comes in. "Yes Moth...er..."

  I drain my glass. "Do you happen to know a good hairdresser?"

  "As a matter of fact I do," he says. "I own a chain of beauty salons."

  "You do?"

  "Yep."

  "You never mentioned that before," I say.

  "Well, you know," he shrugs. "It's one of those things that never came up, I guess. And it's sort of on the quiet. They're exclusive places - specialise in massage mostly."

  He reaches for the vodka bottle and I snatch it away from him; it's one of the conditions of his parole. No drugs, alcohol or My Little Pony. "I want to get my hair cut," I say.

  "But I love your hair. It makes you look like a princess."

  I shake my head, feeling unaccountably sad all of a sudden. All my life I wanted to be someone's princess but now I just...I don't know. I don't know what I feel.

  Horny?

  - I'm not speaking to you.

  Rude. We haven't even met.

  - Yes we have. You've been the voice in my head since about chapter four of the first book.

  Oh, that's where you're confused. I'm the other voice in your head.

  - No. I've got one of those. She claims to piss bees, complains her toes feel like goats and gets really agitated by elderflower cordial.

  No. I'm the other other voice in your head.

  - You're not my subconscious?

  Do I look like a tinhatted weirdo performing an interpretive dance of Finnegan's Wake while babbling about halibut?

  - No. I guess not. And you're not my Inner Goddess.

  No.

  - So who are you?

  The voice gives a nasty laugh. Strap your ass in, girlfriend. I'm your Libido.

  Oh. Oh shit.

  "It's my hair," I say. "And I want to get it cut. If I can just do this one thing..."

  "Fine. I'll call the salon," he says. "What's the matter with you? You've been weird ever since I got out. What happened to my Serendipity, huh?"

  She read a bunch of dirty books and learned the true value of a good deep dicking.

  I flush. I can see this new inner voice and I are going to have...problems. "There is nothing wrong with me," I say, pouring another drink. "It's probably just wedding jitters."

  That, a bucketload of cheap porn and the dawning knowledge that there might be more than just one man in the universe.

  "It's Helena, isn't it?" he says. "You're still threatened by her."

  "Why would I be threatened by her?" I sniff. "I'm thrilled that she's representing you."

  "You should be. She's going to get me off."

  I'm not quite sure what happened next but the next thing I know my glass is empty and Crispian is peering at me through a film of hard lemonade and frozen vodka. He licks his lips and removes his glasses to clean them.

  "I'm sorry," I murmur.

  "Goddamit, Hanna - my parole said no alcohol."

  "I know. I'm sorry. You can't have drank that much of it."

  "I drank some. God knows I always keep my mouth open when insulting a chick with a drink in her hand." He wipes off his face with a paper towel. "Something's obviously up, Hanna. When I said 'get me off'..." He sidesteps, as if he's worried I'm going to throw another drink in his face.

  "You meant the charges," I murmur. "I know. I'm sorry. And I don't have a problem with her. I really don't. I just feel like sometimes you take no account of my feelings," I say.

  "What feelings?"

  "You see?"

  "No, no," he says. "If you have...feelings about Helena then you should carry on having them. Definitely. Your feelings are valid and I'm gonna do my best to understand them."

  "Oh." I wasn't expecting this. "Wow. Well, thank you."

  "It's fine," he says. "Absolutely the last thing I would want to do is invalidate your feelings."

  He pulls me into a hug and prises the glass out of my hand. "Huh," I murmur, as I sway against him. "Look at us. Having a grown-up conversation about our relationship."

  "I know. I want to understand how you feel, Hanna. Especially about Helena. I really want to understand how you feel about Helena. Do you remember that thing we talked about before? About getting some kind of visual aid thing going on? Like with an inflatable pool filled with cooking oil? And you'd have to kind of shave really...well...everything to get the full benefit, but you know - you could give me a general idea of wrestling holds and...stuff."

  "Are you...?" I blush and pull away. "Are you...is this a...is this some kind of...why would I...how...I'm sorry, I don't understand."

  I do.

  - Shh.

  "Crispian," I say. "Is this about you wanting to do weird things again? Because I told you a hundred times there is no way I'm dressing up as a unicorn."

  "No, baby. Listen - we're strictly vanilla from hereon in, okay? No pony stuff. No weird things. I'm over that."

  "You promise?"

  "I promise. That was the old me. I've changed. I don't need ponies any more. I'm into you. Wonderful, human you."

  "I believe you," I murmur, although my Inner Goddess is snickering quietly in a corner of my mind. I know exactly what she's thinking.

  What? That he's only stopped downloading shocking volumes of messed up My Little Pony porn because of his bail conditions?

  - I hate you.

  Kind of begs the question of what’s he keeping under lock and key in that drawing board, doesn’t it?

  - No.

  He opens the ice-box and rummages inside. "Well shit - we're all out of Cherry Garcia."

  "Are we?" I murmur, pretending very hard that I didn't see Kate shuffling off to her bedroom with the tub in her hands. Judging by the awful noises that followed I can guess what she and Jesús did with the ice-cream.

  You can't tell me you're not curious.

  - Maybe.

  Maaaybe. Ha. Go on - it won't kill you to admit you'd like someone to lick ice-cream off your pink bits.

  - Crispian. Crispian is the only one I want to do...that to me.

  Oh baby. You make it sound so romantic.

  "Guess it's just plain old vanilla for me," he says, taking out a tub of Haagen-Dazs.

  I feel myself blush furiously as feelings threaten to overwhelm me. What if we did naughty things with the ice-cream? My favourite bra may have been burned and flattened in the George Foreman grill, but I still have the pretty matching blue lace panties, and if I'm going to seduce him then I don't really need a bra at all, do I?

  There. I've said it to myself. I'm going to seduce him. I've never seducted anyone before. Gosh, you can learn a lot from books.

  "Save some for me," I whisper, and hurry to the bedroom. Unfortunately I run into my mother in the hallway and she has a 'we need to have a serious talk' look on her face.

  "Yes," I say.

  "Yes what?" She frowns.

  "Yes to whatever you were going to say about the psychiatrist."

  For the first time in my life, she is speechless. "Are you sure?" she says, after a short, starey pause.

  "Yes. I'm sure. The more I think about it, the more I
think we should have been in relationship counselling long ago."

  Her frown deepens. "Really? Hanna - this is...this is great. This is a breakthrough."

  "Is it? Oh good. We're very complicated." I sidle towards the bedroom door, hoping to signal that the conversation is at an end. "While we're on the subject of therapy, could you not regress Crispian while I'm at work? I'm in mourning for my lost baby and it's very traumatising having him call me Mother like that."

  I close the bedroom door and undress in a hurry. I can't find the blue lace panties and so I settle for wrapping a robe around myself. Let's face it - I wasn't going to be keeping the panties on long anyway. I feel so wanton, so wicked. I wonder what he'd do if I just opened the robe and flashed him? Jeez - why have I never felt this way before?

  Because he's an unimaginative and short-winded lover with a relatively small penis?

  - I might have known you'd say something like that. I have a Libido now. I think she can handle these scenes from now on.

  Fuck no. Don't drag me into this - he does nothing for me. I'll be in my bunk, having hopeful daydreams about the size of Timothy Grope's crotch bulge. If he stuffs his pants I'm going to be very disappointed.

  Oh God. He mentioned Labyrinth. And David Bowie's codpiece. You don't think...

  ...no. I don't think. Don't spoil my fun.

  No. Sorry. I think we're going to need all the fun we can get in a moment.

  I know. Oh God, it's too horrible to think about. That weak-chinned beardy face all covered in ice-cream...

  Yergh.

  - WILL YOU BE QUIET?

  I freeze. There is silence inside my head and out. Oh shit - did I just shout that out loud again? And is it normal for the voices inside your head to talk to each other? This has never happened before.

  It has. I've been talking to the subconscious since book one.

  - No you haven't. You're lying. You can't just tell me she was there all along when there was no sign of her until about two weeks ago. That's cheating. That's like...I don't know...it's like...

  I search frantically for an analogy, but my Inner Goddess looks intolerably smug. Like an apartment that sprouts mysterious new rooms at the author's whim?

  - Yes. Exactly like that!