Chapter 3: The First Touch
The walk back was a gauntlet of light and sound and unwanted contact. Every brush against a stranger sent a shockwave through Sabrina’s compact frame—a shoulder bump that jarred my teeth, a hand on my lower back that lingered half a second too long, the humid heat of bodies pressing in from all sides. The fishnets were a grating prison. The miniskirt, which had felt scandalously short looking in a mirror, now felt nonexistent, offering no barrier to the world.
I spotted Mark’s height cutting through the crowd. He was scanning, a look of mild annoyance on his face that melted into relief when he saw me. His smile was wide, white, and predatory.
“There you are, baby,” his voice boomed over the music, a deep vibration I felt in Sabrina’s bones. He reached out, his hand engulfing my entire arm just above the elbow, and pulled me into him. It wasn’t an invitation; it was a retrieval.
My face smashed against his chest. The smell of him—deodorant, beer, clean sweat—was overpowering. His other arm circled my waist, his fingers splaying possessively over the bare skin between the tank top and the skirt’s waistband. His thumb found the dip of my spine and pressed. A bolt of something, sharp and electric, shot through me. It wasn’t pleasure. It was an alarm, a biological signal from a system I didn’t understand, wired to a body that was responding to its owner’s mate.
I tried to breathe, but my lungs seemed smaller, shallower. My chest heaved against his, the hard points of my own pierced nipples, sensitized by the bra and the adrenaline, scraping against the cotton of his shirt.
“You okay?” he murmured into my hair, his lips moving against the top of my head. “You’re shaking.”
I was. A fine, constant tremor ran through my limbs. Sabrina’s body was running on panic and residual tequila.
“Just… the crowd,” I forced out, trying to pitch Sabrina’s voice into something breathy, something excited. It came out thin and strained. “Got a little turned around.”
He pulled back just enough to look down at me. His eyes were dark, concerned, but with a glint of something else. Amusement. “My little space cadet,” he said, the term of endearment feeling like a brand. “C’mon, Chloe’s saving our spot. Justin’s being weird.”
My own name, said about my own body inhabited by someone else, was a surreal punch. I let him guide me, his hand sliding from my waist to the curve of my hip, his fingers dipping just below the fabric to rest on the fishnet. His palm was hot, heavy. Every step we took, his thumb stroked a tiny, maddening arc on my hip bone. Each stroke sent a corresponding echo deep into my core, a sickening, involuntary clench of alien muscles.
We pushed through to a slightly less dense pocket. Chloe was there, swaying with a plastic cup of beer, her smile wide and effortless. And there, beside her, was me.Justin. Standing too rigidly, hands shoved deep in my own khaki pockets. Sabrina was doing a decent impression of my social awkwardness, but it was heightened, a parody of stillness.
“Sabrina! Oh my god, I lost you!” Chloe squealed, throwing a free arm around my shoulders. Her perfume, a cloud of jasmine and vanilla, enveloped me. Her breast pressed against my arm, a soft, heavy weight. The casual female intimacy was as disorienting as Mark’s possession.
“Sorry,” I chirped, the word tasting of lip gloss and false cheer. “Bathroom line was a nightmare.”
Mark kept me anchored to his side, his hand a permanent, heated weight. I chanced a look at Sabrina-in-me. Our eyes met for a fractured second. Her expression was a carefully blank wall, but I saw the intensity behind my own glasses, the silent scream.Perform.
The music swelled, a pounding country rock anthem. Chloe whooped and grabbed Sabrina’s—my—arm. “Dance with me, Justin! You’re not allowed to be a wallflower tonight!”
Sabrina-in-my-body offered a stiff, minimal nod, allowing herself to be pulled into a small, shuffling two-step. Watching my own tall, lanky frame move with such tentative, unnatural reluctance was a special kind of hell.
Mark leaned down, his breath hot against my ear. The sensation of his lips so close to the multiple piercings there made me flinch. “You’re being quiet,” he said. Not an observation. A question.
I tilted my head back, trying for Sabrina’s coquettish smile. The movement made my hair cascade down my back, a sensation like cool water trickling over my skin. “Just taking it all in, baby,” I said, hating every syllable. “Feeling the music.” I attempted a small shimmy, a move I’d seen her do a thousand times. The effect was catastrophic. My entire upper body became a rolling, bouncing tumult. The weight in my chest swayed heavily, the bra straps digging in. The motion traveled down my spine, making the skirt ride higher, the thong cutting deeper.
Mark’s eyes darkened. The hand on my hip tightened, pulling me flush against him. I felt it then, unmistakable and urgent: the hard line of his erection against my pelvis. A wave of nausea, hot and sour, rose in my throat. My body, Sabrina’s body, didn’t recoil. It… hummed. A low-level current of acknowledgment buzzed in unfamiliar places, a traitorous physical echo of habit.
“That’s my girl,” he growled, his voice thick. He began to move, a slow, grinding dance that was less about the music and more about friction. My smaller height meant my face was level with his collarbone. My breasts were crushed against his torso. The metal bars in my nipples, pressed flat and sensitive, sent jolts of sharp, startling sensation with every shift.
I was a doll. A possessed, jiggling doll. My mind fragmented. One part was screaming, a white-noise panic of violation. Another part was clinically noting the data: the strain in my calf muscles from the heels, the metallic taste of the lip stud, the slight, constant ache in my lower back from the new posture. A third part, a terrifyingly physical part, was just… feeling. The heat of him. The pressure between my legs, where the thong was now a soaked, narrow torment. Sabrina’s body was turned on. And I was trapped inside it, a horrified passenger.
The song crashed to an end. Chloe was laughing, breathing hard. Sabrina-in-me looked like she’d been through a war, wiping imaginary sweat from my brow with a clumsy gesture.
Mark didn’t let go. He kept swaying, his mouth against my temple. “Let’s get out of here,” he murmured, the words not a suggestion but a statement of intent. “You’ve had your fun. Now I want mine.”
He said it lightly, a playful growl, but the meaning was a steel trap snapping shut. His hand slid from my hip, down over the fishnet and the skirt, to cup my ass. He squeezed, pulling me even tighter against his need. The shock was so profound, so utterly violating, that for a second my mind went blank and silent.
Then the survival instinct, cold and analytical, clicked back in.Headache. Migraine. World’s worst period.
I opened Sabrina’s mouth, my tongue darting out to wet her plush lips, a nervous habit I’d seen her do. The taste of her lip gloss was cloyingly sweet. “Baby,” I whispered, forcing a pout into my voice.
He pulled back to study my face. His thumb brushed my cheekbone, near the delicate silver hoop in my nose. I fought not to jerk away. “You do look a little pale,” he conceded, his disappointment palpable. He sighed, the heavy sigh of a man denied a toy. “Okay. Let’s say goodbye. We’ll go home, get you some water, put you to bed.”
The promise in his voice, the ‘put you to bed,’ was laden with a patience I knew was thin. He was agreeing to delay, not cancel. He released his grip, letting his hand trail down my arm before lacing his fingers through mine. His hand was so large mine disappeared inside it, the intricate tattoos on my knuckles looking small and childish against his work-roughened skin.
We said quick, drunken goodbyes. Chloe hugged me tightly, her softness a shocking contrast to Mark’s hardness. Sabrina-in-me gave a stiff, awkward wave, my own face a mask of relieved terror.
Then Mark was leading me away, through the thinning crowd, toward the parking lot. The night air felt cool on my exposed skin, but it did nothing to quell the fever burning inside Sabrina’s traitorous body. Each step in the boots was a stab of pain. Each shift of clothing was a rasp against oversensitive skin. And with every step away from the lights, the reality descended, heavier and more suffocating than Mark’s embrace.
I was going home with him. To their home. To their bed. The performance wasn’t over. It had only just begun, and the next act was waiting behind a door I’d never seen, in a life I’d only ever observed from a safe, jealous distance. The key, cold and metallic, was clutched in Mark’s confident hand, and he was already pulling it from his pocket.