🎄 The Festively Bellied Investment Banker (pic and story)

Hey all.

A few days later than promised, but hopefully it's worth the wait!

For context, the following scene is set a year after A Cranky Kari Christmas and a year before I've got to stop eating these. This puts it somewhere in the middle of Kari's Life in Lockdown, which I'll be continuing very soon!

One day I'll organise a proper folder and timeline :)

🎄🎄🎄

Raising the baking tray above his head so that he could navigate through the minefield of torn-open Amazon boxes and strewn wrapping paper, Tim gradually made his way across the lounge. He stopped when he reached the sofa and looked down with a smile.

'So what's the verdict, princess?'

Slowly, without taking her eyes off the TV, Kari lifted the half-eaten mince pie that had been resting on her stomach. She took a large, lazy bite. Flakes of pastry crumbling around her lips and floating like leaves down to her chest. Most of them clung stickily to her sweater even though she was lying on her back, with her cushion-propped head turned towards the enormous screen across the room.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, Tim though, chuckling to himself. But he wasn't discouraged. Eighteen months of lockdown might have buried Kari's once-feted curves under a gloopy landslide of pudge and mounds of spongy blubber, but her natural sense of entitlement – engrained over all those years of being the stereotypical "hot blonde" – remained undiminished. If anything, her ego seemed to have grown even bigger as she'd gained weight, puffing and swelling along with the rest of her. At any rate, praise did not flow easily from her sugary pink lips.

Although in fairness, Tim thought as Kari engulfed another mouthful of mince pie, that was partly because she was constantly shoving food between them.

Food which, despite the muted reaction, he could tell she was enjoying very much. Though her amber eyes continued to stare at the TV with that bored, vacant look, Kari's jaw had begun to work enthusiastically, her round cheeks bobbing as she rolled soft warm pastry and sweet, sticky filling across her tongue.

When she crammed the remaining chunk of mince pie into her mouth before she'd even finished chewing, Tim mentally scored it a solid eight out of ten.

'Better than the salted caramel.' Kari murmured eventually, talking with her mouth full. 'But the pastry should be crisper, and it would work better with -huurp- brandy butter than that Baileys.'

Tim added an extra point for the burp. Then scrubbed it out again, deciding it was more likely the result of cumulative overeating throughout the day than that particular mine pie.

Still, it was definitely a flavour he'd include in the sale batch, especially in light of Kari's relatively positive comments.

Tim smiled, watching his wife detach a large crumb from her cashmere-clad cleavage and pop it into her mouth. For someone who'd never cooked so much as a tin of beans in her life, Kari was a natural food critic. Perhaps it could be a new career for her, Tim thought, if investment banking continues on its current Covid-wrecked trajectory. He was chuckling to himself but... was the idea really that far-fetched? Kari certainly had the attention to detail. The ego. The high standards. Not to mention a real mean-girl bitchy streak that would make for some spicy reviews. True, she lacked cooking experience... but she did more than enough eating to make up for it. Over the past six months, Kari had pretty become an unofficial taste-tester for his bakery, working full-time hours... with frequent bouts of overtime.

The more Tim thought about it, the more food critic seemed the perfect career for his wife - a way for her to make money doing the one thing she loved more than anything else: eating. Of course, the pay wouldn't be as good. Kari would have to crank out a lot of reviews to keep herself in Range Rovers and Cartier.

A vision of his wealth-obsessed wife staggering through their doorway late at night, groaning and cradling a paunch distended with multiple dinners filled Tim's imagination. He pictured Kari cramming down seven or eight meals per day at different restaurants, her greed for profits intensifying her greed for puddings, growing fatter and fatter until nation's eateries had to widen their entrances and frantically hunt for chairs sturdy enough to support the increasingly vast rear-end of the country's most highly feared and heavily obese food critic.

The image sent such a surge of lust through Tim's loins that he almost orgasmed on the spot, his body shuddering so violently that the  remaining mince pies atop the tray he was holding began to bobble and shiver towards the edge.

Tim lurched forwards, desperately trying to tilt the tray back just in time to stop them sliding off. He managed it, at the cost of his knees, which bumped painfully into the arm of the sofa.

Kari's reclining bulk rippled with the impact. Her head turned slowly towards her husband, with that same bored, glazed expression. It didn't change when her eyes glanced briefly at his crotch, regarding the bulge there with the about as much enthusiasm as she'd give to a stick of soggy cauliflower.

Tim grinned sheepishly. 'Umm. Sorry babe.' He lowered the tray into her eyeline. 'Want to try a couple more?'

In one sense, it was a stupid question. Of course Kari wanted more. She always wanted more. More was practically her motto. And however unimpressed she affected to look, there was no hiding the gleam in those dark amber eyes at the sight of three large and shaped mince pies, piping hot from the oven and pulsing with sweet, fragrant fillings.

Tim watched Kari's nostrils twitch, the subtle bulge roll behind her lip as her tongue ran hungrily across her upper teeth.

And yet...

He could sense the conflict within her. In fact, he could hear it... an ominous grumbling that brought the pink-nailed fingers Kari's left hand to her belly.

It was a warning grumble. A grumble that said that four mince pies in one sitting was more than enough.

Especially on top of all that Christmas lunch.

Tim watched Kari's pudgy fingers rove to the underside of her belly and push tentatively against the taut flesh, as if trying to gauge whether there was any more room.

Her body gave its answer: a brief but definitive burp that billowed her cheeks and rippled her lips the moment her probing fingers made contact.

Tim wasn't surprised. In truth, he was amazed that Kari had managed to eat any mince pies at all, given the volume and richness of the food she'd consumed throughout the day. The bulging blonde had already had to change outfits twice to accommodate her swelling middle.

And at that moment, lying there on the sofa, she looked bigger and fuller than ever, her entire body—from her flushed round cheeks to porky pink toes—was pulsing and straining as if struggling to keep from bursting.

And no part of her pulsed harder or looked closer to bursting than her stomach.

Engorged festive goodies, Kari's plump belly rose from the sofa in a great food-pregnant curve. A burial mound for the all the animals she'd devoured over the course of the day.

'I'm full,' she murmured eventually, eyes still on the mince pies.

Tim smiled. That was the thing about Kari. However stuffed she felt, however uncomfortably bloated, the thought of leaving delicious food uneaten was just so difficult for her. It brooded on her, played on her mind. As if the idea that more could ever be a bad thing just didn't compute. As if she was somehow missing out. Like a hotly tipped new stock that she wanted to invest in, Kari just couldn't rest easy until she'd gobbled up everything.

Tim moved around the sofa and shuffled the mince pies off onto the crumb-covered plate, which sat on the coffee table alongside Kari's glass of brandy. 'I'll just leave them here, in case you feel peckish later.' He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek and was surprised at just how hot it felt against her lips.

Must be all that chewing, he thought, overheating her jaw like an overworked machine. 'Maybe when I'm done with the washing up we could watch a film?' he suggested.

Kari grunted, eyes still on the mince pies. They stayed there as Tim left the room, closing the door behind him all but the last inch, and walked down the corridor to the kitchen. He opened the door. Counted to ten. And then turned and retraced his steps at a creep, crouching to peek through the gap in the door like a wildlife photographer.

Kari was still sprawled out on the sofa, eyes closed and breathing heavily, one arm flopped across the gently pulsing mound of her stomach.

'And there she is,' Tim whispered in the voice of Bill Oddie 'the larger-bellied investment banker, Karius Maximus, in her natural habitat.' He held his breath as Kari began to roll onto her side — a slow, laborious manoeuvre, accompanied by a creak of springs and a wheezy groan, then a sloshing sound as her massively engorged stomach swung around, lagging slightly behind the rest of her. Kari's belly looked so huge and stuck out so far that for one eye-bulging moment Tim thought here wasn't going to be enough sofa for it to land on—that it would sag over the edge and its weight drag her onto the floor.

He was sightly disappointed when it didn't. Oh well... Maybe next year.

'After gorging itself beyond repletion,' Tim whispered, resuming his commentary, 'the gluttonous beast struggles to find a comfortable angle to let her colossal meal settle.'

He  smirked at the aptness of the metaphor. With her golden hair falling around her scowling face and her stomach bulging and pulsing obscenely, Kari looked every inch the overfed lioness trying to digest a particularly large wildebeest. Or perhaps an elephant.

Or perhaps a particularly enormous Christmas dinner.

Tim smiled. Overindulgence was of course a universal rule on Christmas Day. Still, he doubted many people in the country had eaten as much as his wife. Kari's morning had begun with a late breakfast in bed—a festive  cheeseboard and paracetamol washed down with Prosecco to cure a thumping hangover brought on by a Christmas Eve Zoom drinking session with Yaz and Michelle that had turned wild. Then while Tim had prepped lunch, Kari had lazed in bed, curing her headache with more booze and snacking fiendishly on chocolates to keep herself sane as unbelievably delicious festive aromas began to rise in fragrant swirls from the kitchen, teasing her nostrils and making her belly rumble impatiently despite its substantial breakfast.

By the time lunch was ready, Kari had polished off an entire box of Quality Street single handed. Even the coconut eclairs.

Of course, this didn't stop her from heaping up her plate like a starving refugee. Covid restrictions meant that it was just her and Tim this year, and with no Julie there to judge her, Kari hadn't held back. First, she helped herself to turkey - the choicest dark leg and wing meat that she loved the most, made darker still by rich gooey gravy which she layered on with salivating eyes. To this Kari added no less than five fat pigs in blankets (rather heartlessly leaving only one for Tim), which bobbed in her lake of gravy like a fleet of canoes in muddy water. An iceberg-sized hunk of gingerbread stuffing came next, then a slab of cranberry sauce, then two spicy sage and onion stuffing balls bigger than tennis balls, then six roast potatoes glistening with butter, and finally, in a token gesture to vegetables, a scoop of honey-glazed parsnips and carrots.

Hidden up to her tits behind this great mountain of food, Kari reached again for the gravy boat and began lathering it onto the summit, watching the layers of thick liquid cascade down the slopes in such a fixated trance of greed that she didn't even notice when her plate began to overflow, and Tim had to call out for her to stop.

It had been a big plate, even by Kari standards, and even Tim had doubted her ability to finish the lot. He watched in awe as his hungry wife set about the challenge, sawing and shovelling with intense focus, and gulping sweet white wine to help it all down. At first her efforts didn't seem to have having any effect. But she kept at it, and after ten minutes or so, the festive food-mound finally gradually began to shrink.

Of course, all that turkey and gravy had to go somewhere. And as the mountain of food shrank, Kari's belly began to expand. At around the halfway point she had to change into her onesie ('This dress is so itchy!') and after an extra helping of roast potatoes she had to unbutton the top three buttons of that ('This room is too warm!').

When Kari's knife and fork finally clattered to an empty plate, the big blonde had eaten herself into such a huffing, bloated meat sweat that Tim had to help her upstairs and peel her out of a sweat-slick onesie, while she groaned and panted, and then guide her glistening bulk into the shower by the love handles to help her cool down. Watching her bottom wobble as she stepped in, had proved too much and Tim had leapt into the shower with her, and spent the next ten minutes pumping away while she bent over holding the shower rail with one hand and supporting her belly with the other, belching damply through the falling water with every other thrust.

This burst of exercise was enough to restore Kari's appetite, and having dried herself off and changed into a cropped sweater and comfy pyjama shorts, she proceeded to put away two huge slices of marmalade Christmas Pudding soaked in molasses and homemade custard. After that she was done. Even before Tim had finished lifting her legs so that she could lie along the sofa, the overloaded blonde had fallen into a food coma. Tim left her snoring raucously with both hands clutching her massively engorged middle, the skin still pink from her hot shower, and went to clear the table and pack the dishwasher.

Four hours later Kari had awoken from her food coma to a throbbing heaviness behind her bellybutton and the scent of freshly baked mince pies filling her nostrils.

Four mince pies later here she was still lying on the sofa. Somehow contemplating even more food.

Tim watched, keeping completely still. For a while, Kari was still too. No movement at all, save for the gentle pulsing of her overpacked paunch. No sound other than the TV.

After another minute or so, she switched the TV off and sighed – long and sleepy – stretching her arms and linking her fingers behind her head. Her eyes closed, and Tim was on the verge of standing and returning to the kitchen when they suddenly opened again, staring at the plate of mince pies.

Somewhere beneath the thickness of Kari's neck rolls, muscles began to twitch. Sensing danger, her stomach let out a deep grumble. She shushed it with an impatient pat, and with a great squeaking of sofa springs, rolled onto her front, buttocks straining her striped pink pyjama shorts, quivering juicily as they settled into place.

The big blonde rocked from side to side a little, making herself comfy. Then, with what seemed like colossal effort she lifted her right arm and dragged the plate of mince pies onto the sofa.

From where he was crouched Tim could no longer see Kari's face. But the soft slurpy, squishy, wafflesome noises that filled his ears for the next five minutes told him everything he needed to know.

Another trio to include in the sale batch, he thought, smiling with satisfaction. And when Kari added her own confirmation with a belch that made her buttocks wobble so violently they clapped together, Tim's smile widened into a grin.

And the first round of applause she's given me in six years.