Chapter 5: A Fitting First Lesson
Mark didn’t lead me so much as I trailed in his wake, a small boat following a liner through the dark, silent halls. The marble of the foyer was ice under my soles. My reflection glided across the black glass of the walls, a pale smudge of robe and hair.
“Guest suite’s here,” he said, his voice echoing softly. He pushed open a heavy oak door.
The room was larger than my entire old apartment. A king-sized bed dominated the space, a lake of navy silk and too many pillows. Everything was shades of cream and slate blue, tasteful, expensive, and utterly alien. A vanity with a huge, well-lit mirror stood against one wall. I avoided looking at it.
“Bathroom’s through there. Walk-in closet’s there.” He pointed to two other doors. “Should have everything you need.”
He walked to a tall dresser, yanked open a drawer, and rummaged. He pulled out a faded gray t-shirt, soft with age. He held it up. It was huge. “This is probably the smallest thing I own. It’ll still be like a dress on you.” He tossed it onto the bed. The fabric landed without a sound.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice small in the cavernous room.
He nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets. He looked out of place here, too big, too solid for such a soft room. “Get some sleep. The movers will be here early. Big day tomorrow.”
He turned to leave.
“Mark.”
He stopped, hand on the doorframe.
The wine buzz, the sheer surreal weight of the day, pressed down on me. The silence felt like a third person in the room. I needed the familiarity of him, even if it was an illusion. I needed my friend.
Without thinking, driven by a loneliness deeper than any physical form, I grabbed the tie of the robe and undid it. The terrycloth parted. Cool air washed over my skin. I let the robe slide off my shoulders, down my arms. It puddled at my feet on the thick carpet.
I stood there, completely naked.
My skin pebbled instantly. The air felt like a live thing on every new inch of me. The weight of my breasts, heavy and pendulous without support, was a shocking anchor. I felt their full, soft shape, the coolness of the air on the tips. My narrow hips, the sharp angles of my pelvis, the completely foreign flat plane below my stomach… all of it was exposed. I was aware of every follicle, every pore. My hair fell over my shoulders, tickling the tops of my breasts. I just stood there, not seductive, not brave—just empty, and present.
Mark didn’t move for a long moment. His eyes traveled down my body, then back up to my face. There was no lust in his gaze. It was an assessment, stark and clinical, mixed with something like profound pity. He saw Justin’s terror in Sabrina’s blue eyes.
“Okay,” he said finally, his voice a low rumble. He cleared his throat. “Okay. Put the shirt on, Justin. You’re cold.”
The sound of my name, my real name, in that moment, was a lifeline. I bent, the movement causing a jiggle through my chest and a shift in balance I wasn’t used to, and picked up the shirt. I pulled it over my head. The soft cotton swallowed me. The hem hung halfway down my thighs. The neckline slipped off one shoulder. I was covered, but I’d never felt more naked.
Mark walked back into the room, stopping a few feet away. The dynamic had shifted. The pretense of the dinner, the theoretical plan, was gone. This was the raw, awkward truth of it.
“We can’t just wing this,” he said, his voice quiet. “Jasmine is sharp. She’ll smell bullshit from a mile away. It has to look natural.”
“I know,” I whispered, clutching the fabric at my sides.
“So we practice.” He took another step closer. He loomed. I had to crane my neck to look up at him. The sheer scale difference was dizzying. “The easiest tell will be physical contact. You’ll flinch. You’ll stiffen up. We need to… get you used to it. With me.”
My heart began a frantic, high-speed rhythm against my ribs. “Get used to what?”
“This.”
He closed the final distance. His hand came up, not fast, but inexorable. His fingers, warm and rough, cupped the side of my jaw, his thumb brushing my cheekbone. It was a giant’s hand on a doll’s face. His skin against mine was a brand. My breath hitched.
“Look at me,” he murmured. “Not at the wall. At me.”
I forced my eyes to his. I saw my own tiny, terrified reflection in his dark pupils.
“Now,” he said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “I need to teach you how to kiss me.”
Before I could process the command, his head bent. His other hand settled on my hip, his fingers splaying, almost spanning the entire curve. He pulled me gently against him.
The contact was an electric shock.
My body, this strange, traitorous body, registered the heat of him first—a solid wall of warmth through the thin cotton of the shirt. Then the pressure of his hand on my hip, possessive and firm. Then his lips met mine.
They were warm.Firm. Dry. They moved with a practiced, confident pressure that was utterly foreign. My mind screamed a chorus of protests—This is Mark, your friend, you’re a man, this is wrong—but my body… my body melted.
A sigh I didn’t authorize escaped my throat, a soft, feminine sound. My lips, these fuller, sensitive lips, parted instinctively under his. The smaller muscles of my mouth, the different shape of everything, seemed to know a script my brain had never read. I felt the faint scratch of his evening stubble against the impossibly smooth skin around my mouth. The scent of him—soap, wine, the unique, masculine smell that was just Mark—filled my nostrils.
He deepened the kiss slowly. My hands, which had been frozen at my sides, came up of their own volition. They flattened against his chest. I felt the hard plane of muscle under his shirt, the strong, steady beat of his heart. A low, wanting pulse started somewhere deep in my core, an alien, physical thrum that bypassed all cognitive control.
When he finally pulled back, I was breathless. Dizzy. My lips felt swollen, tingly. A traitorous warmth pooled low in my belly.
“God…” he murmured, his own breath uneven. His eyes searched my face, seeing the confusion, the shock, the unwanted arousal. His thumb stroked my cheek again. “Again.”
This time, I didn’t wait. I rose onto my tiptoes, my small feet sinking into the plush carpet, and met him halfway.
The second kiss wasn’t teaching. It was confirmation. It was a dangerous, sliding door opening. His hand on my hip slid lower, over the curve of my ass. He grasped it, full and firm in his hand, and squeezed. The sensation was a bolt of lightning straight down my spine—a jolt of pure, physical sensation that was neither pain nor pleasure but an overwhelming thereness. He pulled me tighter against him.
And I felt it.
The hard, thick line of his erection pressing against the softness of my lower belly, even through our clothes. The reality of it, the sheer, daunting scale implied, cut through the fog of sensation. A memory, not mine, flashed: the gossip, the whispered number, twelve inches.
A wild, reckless curiosity overrode the panic. My mind, the analytical part that was still Justin, needed data. Needed to understand the mechanics of this new reality, of him.
While he kissed me, while his tongue traced my lips and my body sang an unfamiliar hymn, my small hand—the one with the chipped pink polish—drifted down from his chest. Over the taut cotton of his shirt. Over the buckle of his belt, cool against my knuckles.
I slid my hand into the open waistband of his pants.
His breath caught against my mouth. He went very still, but he didn’t stop me.
My fingers, slender and unfamiliar, found warm skin, coarse hair. Then I touched him.
My whole world telescoped down to that point of contact.
He was thick, and hard, and hot. My fingers couldn’t even circle him. As I gingerly traced the length, my mind, dispassionately, began to measure. The heel of my palm hit his body, my fingertips hadn’t reached the tip. The gossip wasn’t gossip. It was a simple, staggering fact. A fact that this new body, with its humming core and its soft, accepting lines, seemed to recognize on a cellular level with a shudder that was part terror, part craving.
I broke the kiss, gasping, my forehead falling against his chest. My hand stayed where it was, frozen, holding the overwhelming evidence of what this charade might truly demand.
Above me, Mark let out a long, slow, controlled breath. His hand was still clenched on my ass. The other came up and buried itself in my long, blonde hair.
“See?” he said, his voice rough, vibrating through his chest into my cheek. “We’ve got a lot to practice.”