Chapter 2: The First Test
The pizza tasted like cardboard. My new taste buds registered the salt, the grease, but it was a flat, distant signal. Every other sense was screaming. The whisper-soft brush of yoga pants against my thighs. The constricting band of the bra under my tank top, a persistent pressure with each breath. And the weight—the heavy, gentle sway of my breasts whenever I leaned forward to take a slice, a motion that now required conscious thought. I kept my arms folded tight over my chest, trying to minimize the movement.
“Your turn, babe,” Mark said, his voice a warm rumble beside me.
I looked blankly at the Scrabble board. The letters in front of me—Sabrina’s letters—swam. “Right.”
Sabrina, sitting in my body across the table, was faring worse. She held a tile between my thick fingers, staring at it as if it were written in code. “I, uh… ‘Xi.’ It’s a Greek letter.” She placed it clumsily, knocking over two other tiles.
“Since when do you know Greek letters, Justin?” Chloe asked, a teasing lilt in her voice that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She was curled in the armchair, watching us all like a puzzling documentary.
“Since never,” Sabrina mumbled, slouching further into the couch, a posture I never used.
“Hey, genius over here,” Mark joked, nudging my shoulder with his. The contact was a brand. A jolt of heat shot straight down my spine, pooling low in my abdomen with a shocking, wet intensity. I gasped, a tiny, feminine sound.
Mark looked at me, concerned. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I squeaked. “Just… ticklish.” The lie was pathetic.
His knee, stretching under the low table, brushed against my thigh. It was accidental, fleeting. It didn’t matter. The thin layer of fabric might as well have been nonexistent. The nerve endings there were alight, mapping the exact point of contact, sending urgent, humiliating signals to a brain that was utterly horrified. A warm, slick feeling blossomed between my legs, an internal seepage that made me want to claw my own skin off. This body was responding to Mark. It was programmed for him. It was wet for him.
I shifted away, crossing my legs tightly. The pressure of my own thighs together sent another ripple of alien sensation through me. I saw Sabrina watching the small movement, her face—my face—pale. She knew. She saw my flinch, saw the flush on my—her—cheeks. A look of profound betrayal washed over her features before she hid it behind a swig from my whiskey glass.
“I think we should call it a night,” Chloe announced suddenly, her voice too bright. “It’s getting late, and Justin,” she said, nodding at Sabrina, “you look like you’re about to fall over.”
Sabrina nodded vigorously, a messy, un-Justin-like motion. “Yeah. Tired. Long week.”
Mark stretched, his shirt riding up to reveal a strip of taut stomach. My eyes, against my will, snapped to it. My mouth actually watered. “Fair enough,” he said. He stood and offered me his hand. “Ready, sweetheart?”
I stared at his large, outstretched palm. Taking it meant touch. But refusing meant suspicion. Slowly, I placed my tiny hand in his. His fingers closed around mine, completely enveloping them. They were warm, dry, slightly calloused. A surge of something that felt like safety, like belonging, washed through this stolen nervous system, followed immediately by a nauseating wave of self-loathing. He pulled me up effortlessly, as if I weighed nothing. I did weigh nothing. I was insubstantial.
“You guys sure you’re okay to drive?” Chloe asked, her gaze pinpointed on me.
“I’m fine,” Mark said, already fetching our coats from the rack. He held out Sabrina’s little jean jacket—it looked like a child’s garment. I turned and slid my arms into it, the lining cool against my skin. His hands came down on my shoulders to help adjust it, and his thumbs brushed the bare skin of my neck. I froze, every muscle locking.
“Chill, Sab,” he murmured, laughing softly near my ear. His breath stirred my hair. “You’re so tense.”
He had no idea.
Goodbyes were a bizarre pantomime. Chloe turned to me. She opened her arms for a hug. I stepped into them, and was immediately engulfed in her familiar scent—vanilla lotion and her shampoo. It was my wife. My heart, Sabrina’s heart, ached. I wanted to bury my face in her neck and sob out the whole impossible truth. But I just gave a light, feminine squeeze, my hands barely spanning her back.
“Take care of her, Mark,” Chloe said, pulling back but keeping her hands on my—Sabrina’s—arms. She was looking straight into my eyes, searching for a ghost.
“Always do,” Mark said, slipping his arm around my waist. His hand settled on my hip, his fingers splayed possessively over the curve. It felt like a claim.
The cool night air hit my face as we stepped outside. It was a relief. For three seconds. Then Mark opened the passenger door of his expensive sedan for me. I had to practically climb up into the seat, my shorter legs struggling with the height. The leather was cold through the thin yoga pants. He closed the door, sealing me in.
The interior smelled like him—that cologne, coffee, clean male. It was everywhere. I fastened the seatbelt, the strap cutting diagonally between my breasts, accentuating their fullness. I stared straight ahead, hands clasped in my lap.
He got in, the car dipping with his weight. The engine purred to life. “You really are quiet tonight,” he said, pulling out of the driveway.
“Headache,” I whispered.
“We’ll get you home and straight to bed.”
The word ‘bed’ landed in the silence like a physical object. My mind, my old male mind, spiraled. Bed. Where he would expect his wife. Where he would touch her. Where he would… my new body throbbed in a tight, aching pulse at the very thought. I squeezed my thighs together, trying to quell the sensation, which only made it worse. The thong was a maddening, flimsy barrier against the insistent, humming sensitivity.
We drove through the quiet suburban streets. I watched my neighborhood pass from a lower, stranger vantage point. The streetlights streaked gold across the windshield.
“You know,” Mark said, his voice taking on a low, intimate tone that vibrated in the closed space. “I was thinking. Maybe we skip the TV tonight.” His right hand left the steering wheel and came to rest on my knee.
The heat of his palm burned through the fabric. A jolt, sharp and electric, shot up my leg. My breath hitched.
He took that as a good sign, his thumb beginning a slow, casual stroking motion along my inner thigh. “It’s been a few days. And I’ve been… thinking about you all evening.”
Every stroke of his thumb was a masterpiece of torture. It sent filaments of fire directly to my core. A low, traitorous warmth was spreading, a physical readiness that my mind was screaming against. I felt myself growing damper, the slick, shameful evidence of this body’s betrayal soaking into the thin strip of lace. My own arousal had never felt like this—a deep, internal weeping, a hollow, wanting ache.
I couldn’t speak. I just watched his large, capable hand on my slender leg, on Sabrina’s leg, moving higher with each pass.
“You’re trembling,” he observed, his voice pleased. He gave my knee a gentle squeeze before returning his hand to the wheel, turning onto our street. His street. “Don’t be nervous. It’s just me.”
That was the problem. It was him. And I was not his wife. I was a terrified man trapped in a wireframe of responsive flesh, being driven toward a dark house and a marriage bed I could not possibly navigate. The headlights swept across the manicured lawn, the tidy walkway, the imposing front door of his home.
The car rolled to a stop in the driveway. The engine cut, leaving a ringing silence.
He turned to me, his smile visible in the dim light from the porch. “Home.” He leaned across the center console. His intention was clear. A goodnight kiss. A husband’s kiss.
I saw him coming, the confident tilt of his head, the look of tender expectation in his eyes. I was frozen, a rabbit in lamplight. His lips met mine.
They were soft, firm. The sensation was catastrophic. The plumpness of my new mouth against his, the slight scratch of his evening stubble on skin that had never felt it before, the taste of him—whiskey and mint. This body knew this taste. It loved this taste. It responded instinctively, my lips parting on a soft sigh I didn’t authorize.
He deepened the kiss, one hand coming up to cradle my jaw, his fingers tangling in my long hair. A sound rumbled in his chest, a sound of approval and desire. The world narrowed to the points of contact: his mouth, his hand, the devastating heat between my legs that was now a pounding, rhythmic demand.
He pulled back an inch, his forehead resting against mine. “Let’s go inside,” he whispered, his voice husky.
He got out, came around, and opened my door. I stumbled out on weak, unfamiliar legs. He took my hand, his grip firm and sure, and led me up the path to the front door. Each step was a march toward an inevitable, terrifying conclusion. The key turned in the lock. The door swung open into a dark foyer.
He ushered me in, closed the door behind us with a solid, final click. The only light came from a digital clock on the kitchen stove. He didn’t turn on any lamps.
He turned me to face him, his hands on my hips. In the profound dark, his presence was overwhelming. “I love you, Sabrina,” he breathed, and his mouth found mine again in the blackness. This kiss was not gentle. It was hungry, possessive. One of his hands slid under my tank top, his palm, hot and rough, skimming up the bare skin of my back to the clasp of my bra.
A mechanical click. The tension across my chest vanished. The bra loosened, and the full, aching weight of my breasts settled, freed. He broke the kiss to pull the tank top over my head, then eased the bra down my arms. The cool air of the house washed over my bare skin, tightening my nipples into sensitive, pebbled points.
I stood there, exposed from the waist up in his dark hallway, shivering. My mind had split. One part was screaming, a cacophony of terror and denial. The other part was a silent, shameful witness to the visceral reactions of this borrowed form: the tightening in my stomach, the heavy, full feeling in my breasts, the liquid pulse between my legs that was impossible to ignore.
He traced a finger from my collarbone down to the swell of my breast, and I jerked as if burned. “So beautiful,” he murmured. He bent his head, and his mouth closed over my nipple.
The sensation was white-hot and direct, a bolt of pure, shocking pleasure that erased every coherent thought. A strangled moan tore from my throat—her throat. My knees buckled. He caught me, his arms strong around me, holding me up as his mouth worked, his tongue circling, his teeth grazing with exquisite precision. This body arched into the contact, a supplicant to a god it was built to worship.
He lifted me then, effortlessly, my legs instinctively wrapping around his waist. The movement pressed the hard ridge of his erection, massive even through his jeans, directly against the damp, aching center of me. A shockwave of raw, undiluted need, so powerful it felt like pain, robbed me of all breath. I buried my face in his neck, clinging to him, as he carried me through the dark house.
I knew where we were going. I knew what was coming. And as he shouldered open the door to his bedroom—their bedroom—the last sane part of my mind clung to a single, desperate thought.
I had no idea what to do.