“Oh,” she stirred, “Did you want something, Patrick?”

“In all the excitement I forgot to tell you something. I was planning to ask you to go steady with me yesterday afternoon.”

“Really? That was very sweet of you.”

“I’d still like you to keep the memories of our dates, even after I’m gone,” he said.

“Thank you. I will. I’ll always treasure them, Patrick.”

They were both silent for a few minutes.

“Colleen?” he said at last.

“Yes Patrick.”

“Do you think you’ll go out with anyone after this?”

“Does that have any importance to you? You’ll be playing an entirely different role, Patrick.”

“I’m just curious, I guess.”

“Well I might.”

“Would you have accepted my invitation, if yesterday’s test hadn’t worked?”

She turned her head in the bed, looking up at the ceiling, so that her cheek was now visible to him, and rubbed the top of her head, stroking hair out of the way on the back of the pillow.

“I’d have accepted, but we’d have had to keep extending the arrangement until the experiment testing successfully reduced your size. I have had boyfriends before. How about you?”

“There was never anyone before you.”

“That’s good, Patrick,” she said, turning her head back to kiss him affectionately, “I will feel much happier, to be sure of that, when I’m gobbling you down tonight. I don’t know why I never thought to ask it before.”

Colleen drew her head back a few inches and yawned widely in front of him. It gave him a new arousing view of her tongue, with her lips stretched out in the yawning position. He could well have dived into her mouth right then.

“I’m still so drowsy, darling. We’ve got all day until it’s time to do it. Just make yourself comfortable, while I get some more sleep.”

Patrick was far too hyped up to possibly drop off again now. He lay awake on the bed and began to process everything she had said. It was the first chance he’d had to think, without communicating with her wakening self. He realised that she had returned his affections, and so cultivated an even greater willingness in him to submit to her tests, the eventual successful reduction and the dinner engagement which awaited him that evening.

He had certainly connected with her purely in the context of the wild fantasy she had aroused in him. But he had also fixed his affections on her in a permanent way. She had just expressed the fact that she would have humoured every desire of his, and enjoyed doing so. On top of the unique and costly pleasure she would gain from him, she would have all of the normal aspects of a long life to look forward to. 

She had asked him at the first interview, if he had found her beautiful. He had confirmed it. Since then, she had played on his affections to guarantee his willingness to play the role that she had sought from someone. That very night she was going to go through with it, and she had not even been concerned with sparing his feelings about the likelihood of her giving her affections to someone else, without exacting the same costly commitment from that someone else.