Chapter 6: The First Real Touch
The pizza box sat on the floor between them like a greasy, unearthed relic. Two slices remained, congealed in a swamp of cheese and pepperoni grease. The air in Lexi’s apartment was thick with the smell of baked dough, cheap meat, and the sharp, metallic scent of rain that had started to fall outside.
Mack leaned back against the plastic-covered armrest, one hand resting on his stomach. He hadn’t spoken for ten minutes. He’d just listened, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, as Lexi talked. She’d told him everything, her voice shifting unconsciously between its two registers—Lexi’s careful lilt for the clinical details of surgeries and hormones, Derek’s rougher cadence for the pain, the loneliness, the sheer, stupid obsession of it all. She told him about the recovery rooms, the voice coach who made her read erotic novels aloud, the humiliating, meticulous lessons in walking, sitting, flirting.
“So the Chad thing,” he said finally, cutting through the quiet. His voice was hoarse from disuse. “That was, what? Homework?”
“Field research,” she corrected softly, pulling the flannel tighter around herself. She was curled at the other end of the couch, knees to her chest. “I had to know if the product worked. If I could pass, not just to the eye, but… in the wild.”
“And it did.”
“Yeah. It really did.”
Mack nodded slowly, digesting this. He turned his head to look at her. The harsh overhead light was off; only a dim floor lamp glowed in the corner, casting long shadows that softened the edges of everything, including her. In the murky half-light, the stark perfection of her features blurred. He could see, or maybe imagine, the ghost of a familiar jawline beneath the sculpted cheekbones.
“You look tired,” he said, not unkindly.
“I am tired. I’ve been performing for a year straight. For doctors, for strangers, for Chad… for you. Even when I was alone, I was practicing.” She let out a long breath. “It’s exhausting being a full-time illusion.”
He shifted on the plastic, the crinkling sound absurdly loud. He didn’t move closer, but the distance between them felt charged, like the space between two magnets held apart. “That voice thing you did,” he said. “Do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the only thing that makes my brain not short-circuit. It’s the proof of life.”
She closed her eyes for a second, found the old placement. “Your three-rep max is still three-fifty, isn’t it?” Derek’s voice rumbled out, layered with friendly challenge. “You’ve gotten complacent, you big bastard.”
A slow, shaky smile spread across Mack’s face. It was the first real one she’d seen since he climbed the balcony. “Fuck you. It’s three-seventy now.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not.” He paused. “I had… a lot of fucking anger to lift this past year.”
The smile faded from her lips. The Derek-voice dissipated. “I know.”
Silence settled again, but it was different now. The confession was out. The facts were on the table. All that remained was the wreckage, and the two of them sitting in it.
Mack’s gaze traveled over her, not with the frantic shock from before, but with a deep, weary curiosity. “Can I…” he started, then stopped, swallowing hard. “Can I just… look? Without it being a thing? I just… I need to see what a hundred and twenty grand actually looks like.”
Lexi’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was it. The inspection. The final reconciliation of what he knew with what he saw. She gave a single, tight nod.
Slowly, he unfolded himself from his slouch and turned to face her. He moved closer, the plastic groaning under his weight. He stopped with his knees almost touching hers. His eyes were dark, unreadable pools in the low light.
“The flannel,” he said, his voice a low command.
Her fingers trembled as she undid the single button she’d fastened. She let the shirt fall open.
He didn’t touch. He just looked. His eyes traced the lines of her collarbones, the sweeping curves of her breasts, the impossible narrowness of her waist, the gentle flare of her hips where they met the couch. His expression was that of a man studying a complex blueprint.
“They did good work,” he murmured, almost to himself. “It’s… seamless.”
“The best,” she whispered.
His eyes finally lifted to hers. “Does it feel like you?”
She hadn’t expected that question. She thought about it. “It feels… right. In a way the old body never did. But ‘me’ is still a work in progress. The inside doesn’t match the outside manual yet.”
He nodded as if that made perfect sense. He lifted a hand, hesitated, then placed it gently on her side, just above her hip. His palm was searingly hot through the thin fabric of the shirt. “Here?”
“What?”
“The lipo. They took it from here?”
“Yeah. And the love handles. What you used to call my ‘powerlifter storage.’”
His thumb stroked a slow arc over her hip bone. The touch was clinical, yet it burned. “Smooth,” he observed.
“That’s the idea.”
His hand moved up, skimming the edge of her ribs, coming to rest just beneath the curve of her breast. His breathing had grown shallower. Lexi’s own breath hitched in her throat. This was no longer an inspection. It was a navigation.
“And here?” he asked, his voice thick.
“Implant. Under the muscle. Silicone. 425 CCs.”
“Numbers,” he grunted, a faint echo of his old self. But his hand was sliding upward, cupping the full weight of her breast. His touch was firm, purposeful, not groping, but assessing. He ran his thumb over the nipple, which hardened instantly under the thin barrier of the shirt.
A ragged gasp escaped Lexi’s lips. It was a purely physical reaction, a wire tripped in the new circuitry of her body.
Mack’s eyes snapped to hers at the sound. Something in them shifted, darkened. The clinical distance evaporated, replaced by a raw, bewildered hunger. The sight of her—this familiar-yet-alien creature, the sound of that gasp, the feel of her responsive body under his hand—it all collided inside him.
“Christ, Lexi,” he breathed, and the use of her name was like a spark in dry tinder.
He leaned in. Slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn’t. She swayed toward him, her lips parting.
The kiss wasn’t soft. It was a collision. A question and an answer crashing together. His lips were chapped, demanding. Hers were soft, pliant, then insistent. He tasted of pepperoni and cheap beer and something uniquely, fundamentally Mack. It was the taste of her past, and it shot through her system like a drug.
She moaned into his mouth, a low, needy sound that seemed to come from the very core of the new body she’d built. Her hands came up, sliding over the dense, familiar terrain of his chest, feeling the powerful drum of his heart beneath her palms.
He pulled back just an inch, his forehead resting against hers, their breath mingling in frantic puffs. His eyes were squeezed shut.
“I can’t believe,” he started, his voice a ragged whisper against her lips, “how fucking hot you turned out.” The words were crude, shocked, awestruck. They weren’t a sweet nothing. They were a blunt-force trauma of acceptance.
He kissed her again, deeper this time, his tongue sweeping into her mouth. One hand tangled in the platinum hair at the nape of her neck, the other still possessively cupping her breast. The plastic of the couch screamed in protest as he shifted, his body pressing her back into the stiff cushions.
When he broke the kiss this time, his eyes were open, black with a desire so confused it bordered on agony. “I know you,” he panted. “I know you want to touch this, bro.”
The word ‘bro’ hung in the air, a shattered relic. He took her hand—the one that had once spotted him on a bench press, that had passed him a thousand protein shakes—and guided it down. He unbuckled his jeans with a quick, frantic motion, pushed the fabric open, and pressed her palm firmly against the hard, hot length of him straining against his boxers.
The shock of the feel, the heat, the sheer solid reality of his arousal, punched the air from Lexi’s lungs. Her fingers curled instinctively around him through the cotton. He was enormous, thick, and so desperately hard it felt like iron.
He hissed, his hips jerking involuntarily into her touch. “See?” he growled, his face buried in the crook of her neck. His breath was scalding. “See what you did? What you are?”
It was a confession, an accusation, and a surrender all at once. He wasn’t just turned on. He was unraveling. The last straight line of his world was bending, snapping, re-forming around the impossible, undeniable reality of her body in his hands and her hand on him.
Lexi moved her hand, a slow, firm stroke. Mack groaned, a deep, gut-punched sound that vibrated through his chest and into hers. He was right. She did want to touch it. Derek had never allowed himself to imagine this, had buried the want under layers of friendship and fear. But Lexi wanted it. She wanted to break him open with it.
“Yeah,” she whispered, her own voice guttural, abandoning all pretense of modulation. It was just her, whoever that was now. “I see.”
And in the stark, crinkling silence of the plastic-wrapped room, with the rain pattering against the sliding glass door, they both saw it clearly: there was no going back. The prank was over. Something else, something terrifying and real, had just begun.
Something else, something terrifying and real, had just begun.
Mack’s entire body was a tense wire humming under her touch. She could feel the frantic beat of his pulse through the hot skin of his erection. This wasn’t a fantasy or a prank. It was a line, obliterated.
“Is this…” he started, his voice cracking. “Is this still part of the joke?”
“No,” Lexi breathed, her hand applying a firmer, slower pressure. “This is the part where the joke dies.”
She leaned forward, her blonde hair slipping over her shoulder to brush his stomach. She kissed the hard plane of his abdomen, just above the waistband of his boxers. His skin was salty, warm, taut with tension. She let her tongue trace the line of a defined muscle.
He jerked as if electrocuted. “Fuck, Lexi.”
“You like that, babe?” she asked, her voice sliding into its highest, most practiced register—pure, sultry Lexi, the persona she’d built in a lab to destroy him. She looked up at him through her lashes, her lips hovering over his skin.
He could only nod, a strangled groan trapped in his throat. His hands fisted in the plastic of the couch beside her head. The crinkling sound was a bizarre soundtrack to the intimacy.
“I like this too,” she whispered, and then she took him in her hand again, her movement sure and rhythmic. She watched his face, watched the conflict shatter into pure, desperate sensation. His eyes squeezed shut, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle vibrated in his cheek. The familiar architecture of his face was transformed by an unfamiliar rawness.
It didn’t take long. The dam broke with a violence that surprised them both. His hips stuttered off the couch, a guttural cry ripped from his chest, and he came in her hand, hot and slick over her fingers.
For a moment, there was only the sound of his ragged breathing and the relentless rain. He slumped back against the couch, one arm thrown over his eyes, utterly exposed. Lexi looked at her hand, then slowly, deliberately, brought her fingers to her mouth. She met his gaze as he peeked out from under his arm, her tongue cleaning the fluid from her skin with a slow, deliberate lick.
A dizzy, incongruous giggle bubbled out of her. The absurdity of it all—the plastic couch, the pizza box, the year of planning, the tectonic shift in their universe—crashed over her. “You taste sooo good, babe,” she purred, the Lexi-voice shaky now, undercut by a real, unhinged wonder.
Mack stared, his expression utterly blank. He wasn't laughing. He was just... gone.
He stayed like that for a full minute, his chest rising and falling in uneven heaves. The fluorescent light from the kitchenette buzzed, a stark counterpoint to the dim, rainy gloom they were wrapped in.
Lexi wiped her hand on the inside of the flannel shirt, the gesture practical, final. The giggle had died in her throat, leaving a hollow, vibrating silence. She watched him, this monument of muscle laid low, and felt a terrifying surge of power. She had done this. Not Lexi the fantasy, but her. The culmination of Derek’s pain and Lexi’s design.
“Hey,” she said, her voice quiet, no persona. “Earth to Mack.”
Slowly, he dragged his arm away from his face. He looked at her, his eyes glassy, unfocused. He looked wrecked. “What just happened?” The question was raw, stripped bare.
“I think,” Lexi said, shifting on the crinkling plastic, her movements deliberate, “you finally noticed me.” She placed a hand on his sweat-damp tee, right over his sternum. The heat of him was immense. “Now take this off.”
He blinked, processing the command. A flicker of his old defiance sparked. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll do it for you. And I’ll use my dude voice.” She let her fingers curl into the fabric. Then she found the register, the chest resonance she’d locked away. “Come on, ya big pussy. Show me the goods. Bet you’ve been skipping obliques.”
The effect was instant, electric. Mack’s eyes cleared, sharpening with a bewildered intensity. That voice, from these lips, issuing a challenge from their old world. It short-circuited his shock. With a grunt, he obeyed, grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it over his head in one rough motion.
He tossed it aside, his torso exposed in the dull light. The dense, powerful musculature of his chest and abdomen was a map she knew by heart, a testament to a thousand shared sessions.
“Damn, Jackson,” she said, Derek’s appreciation rough and genuine in her throat. Her hands were already on him, palms skating over the familiar terrain of his pecs. She squeezed the solid mass, her thumbs brushing his nipples. “Maintenance is acceptable. Could use more detail on the lower abs, though. Getting a little soft, old man.”
“Asshole,” he breathed, but he was arching into her touch, his eyes closing again.
She swung a leg over him, settling her weight onto his lap. The plastic shrieked in protest beneath them. She felt the damp heat of his sweatpants, the hard shield of his stomach against her. And then, unmistakably, the firm, renewing pressure of him stirring back to life against her own sensitive flesh through the thin barrier of their clothes.
A sound escaped her—a small, sharp gasp that was entirely, reflexively feminine. It wasn’t performed. It was pulled from her by the sheer, startling fact of his renewed arousal, so quick and so adamant, pressing exactly where she was most aware.
She fell silent, her gym-bro commentary evaporating. Her hips made a tiny, involuntary shift, increasing the pressure. Her eyes locked on his. His hands came up, circling her waist, his fingers nearly touching around its new, manufactured narrowness.
He was hard again. And he was looking at her like he was seeing a ghost, a miracle, and a sunset all at once.
“Lexi,” he whispered, the name a question, a plea, and an answer.
She couldn’t speak. She could only feel—the crinkle of plastic, the drum of rain, the ache of a year alone, and the devastating solidity of the only person she’d ever loved, coming back to life beneath her.
The crinkle of plastic was a chaotic percussion to the rain's steady beat. Mack's breath hitched, hot against her neck, his hands sliding from her waist to anchor on her hips. She could feel every ragged inhale, the way his body tensed and yielded in a cycle of shock and surrender.
"Jesus," he muttered into the space between her collarbones, the word muffled and thick.
"Not him," she whispered back, her own voice unsteady. She took his wrists, her fingers circling the familiar, thick bones, and guided his hands upward. She placed them firmly over the soft weight of her breasts, his palms covering the slick satin of the implants beneath the flannel.
Then she found the old voice, the one from a thousand gym sessions, and let it grind out low and coarse. "I know you like these titties, bro." His fingers twitched, digging into the give of the silicone. "But if we’re gonna be fucking, you need to get in better shape." She leaned back, meeting his wide, stunned eyes. "My man is gonna have abs that grate cheese, ok fucker?"
A strangled, incredulous laugh burst from him. It was pure reflex, a sound from before everything broke. She watched the laugh die in his throat, replaced by a dawning, frantic hunger. She switched her voice in the exhale, tilting her head and fluttering her lashes. "Deal, babe?"
She giggled, the sound airy and absurd, and shimmied her ample butt into the hard line of his crotch, grinding down until a sharp gasp punched from his lungs.
The gasp became a groan, deep and ragged, as his hands tightened on her hips. His head fell back against the couch with a soft thud. The plastic beneath them protested every micro-movement, a crinkling chorus to their panting breaths.
“Stop talking,” he managed, his eyes clenched shut. “Just… stop.”
“Why?” She ground down again, slower this time, a deliberate rotation that made his thighs tremble. “You liked my voice a minute ago. You came to my voice.”
“That’s the problem.” His eyes flew open, wild and desperate. “Don’t you get it? That’s the whole fucking problem!” He surged upward, flipping their positions with a sudden, brutal strength that left her sprawled beneath him.
The plastic shrieked. The pizza box tumbled to the floor with a dull slap. He loomed over her, his weight pressing her into the stiff cushions, his face inches from hers. She could see the sweat beading in his beard, the furious pulse in his temple.
“You’re not him,” Mack stated, the words a low snarl. He said it like he was convincing himself, his gaze raking over her features. “You’re not.”
“Aren’t I?” She kept her voice Lexi’s, soft and challenging. She brought her hand up, tracing the shell of his ear, a gesture so intimate it made him flinch. “Who held your head over the toilet after the tequila incident? Who programmed your fucking lifting spreadsheets for three years?”
He didn’t answer. He just stared, his breath hot and quick on her cheek. The conflict in him was a physical heat, radiating off his skin. His hips settled against hers, and the hard evidence of his want was impossible to ignore, a rigid pressure against her thigh.
He kissed her again. It was nothing like the first kiss. This was all teeth and possessiveness, a punishment and a claim. One hand fumbled between them, pushing the flannel aside, his blunt fingers dragging over her nipple. She arched into the touch, a sharp cry catching in her throat.
“See?” he breathed against her mouth, his voice cracking. “You sound like a girl. You feel like a girl. You’re built like a fucking dream I had once.” His hand left her breast, traveling down over the dip of her waist, over the smooth plane of her stomach where Derek’s gut had been. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her tiny lace panties. “But you know what I ate for breakfast the day my dad died. You know the scar on my knee is from a bike, not a barbell.”
He ripped the lace. The sound was shockingly loud. Cool air hit her skin, followed immediately by the searing heat of his palm as he cupped her, his touch blunt and exploratory. She gasped, her hips lifting off the plastic.
His fingers slid through her folds, finding her wet and ready. His eyes widened, a fresh shock drowning the anger. “Jesus,” he whispered, his movements slowing, becoming deliberate. He watched her face as he pushed a thick finger inside her.
Her back bowed, a choked moan tearing loose. The sensation was a live wire, brighter and more complex than anything with Chad. It was Mack. His hand. His ragged breathing in her ear. His scent, sweat and laundry detergent and him, filling her lungs.
“You like that?” he asked, his voice wrecked. He added a second finger, stretching her, his thumb circling the swollen knot of nerves above. His technique was clumsy, unrefined, but it was Mack, and that alone made it catastrophic.
“Yes,” she hissed, her nails digging into his shoulders. “Fuck, yes.”
He worked her with a fierce, concentrated intensity, his eyes locked on hers, watching every flicker of pleasure that crossed her face. He was mapping her, learning this new terrain with a frantic focus. She felt the coil in her belly tighten, a sharp, delicious pressure building.
“You’re gonna come,” he stated, like he was observing a fact. It wasn’t a question.
She could only nod, her vision blurring at the edges. The plastic crinkled madly beneath her as she moved against his hand. The orgasm, when it hit, was a silent, shocking rupture. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream, her body seizing, clamping down hard on his fingers.
He watched it happen, his expression one of awe and profound terror. He didn’t stop, gentling his movements as she trembled through the waves, until she weakly pushed his wrist away.
For a moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the rain. He slowly withdrew his fingers, staring at them glistening in the low light. Then he brought them to his own mouth, tasting her, his eyes never leaving hers.
The raw, intimate act sent a fresh shudder through her.
He unbuckled his sweatpants fully, shoved them down just enough. He was huge, flushed and urgent. He positioned himself at her entrance, the blunt head pressing against her. He was shaking, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding himself still.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice a broken thing.
She forced her eyes open, met his gaze. It was full of fear, and want, and a sadness so deep it hollowed her out.
He pushed inside.
It was a slow, devastating invasion. She was still pulsing from her climax, unbearably sensitive, and he filled her with a thick, stretching fullness that stole her breath. She whimpered, her legs wrapping around his hips to pull him deeper.
He began to move. It wasn’t graceful. It was frantic, almost angry, a pounding rhythm that made the couch legs squeak against the laminate. Each thrust punched a soft sound from her lungs. He buried his face in her neck, his beard scraping her skin.
“I hate you,” he gritted out, the words muffled against her throat. His hips snapped forward. “I missed you so much.”
She held him, her hands running over the familiar muscles of his back, now slick with sweat. She could feel his control fracturing, his rhythm growing ragged and desperate. The plastic was soaked beneath them, sticking to her skin. The world narrowed to the slap of skin, his grunts, the dizzying fullness, and the ghosts swirling in the air between them.
His pace became punishing, a final, furious drive. She felt him swell, felt the moment his body locked. He let out a muffled, broken sound, a sob trapped in a groan.
“Derek,” he choked, the name ripped from him on a wave of pure, unguarded release.
He collapsed onto her, his full weight driving her deeper into the plastic canyon of the couch. He was heavy, boneless, and shaking. The name hung in the humid air, louder than the rain, more final than the tear that tracked from his clenched eye into her hair.
She lay perfectly still, feeling the frantic beat of his heart against her chest, feeling the hot, wet evidence of his climax seeping inside her. Her own mind was white noise.
He had called her Derek.