Chapter 6: The Aftermath
I didn't know what to do with any of it. I had never felt like this before, not as Justin, not ever. This body felt everything too strongly, too deeply, and the intensity of it was terrifying.
But some part of me, some small and treacherous part, wanted to feel it again.
I pushed off the door and made myself move. My legs carried me up the stairs, past the empty guest rooms, into the master bedroom. The bed was still rumpled from the night, the duvet twisted at the foot, the sheet pulled loose at the corner. I stood at the foot of it for a long moment, staring at the morning light falling across the pillows, and then I collapsed onto it.
The mattress gave under me. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, and every nerve in my body was still humming with the memory of his fingers on my throat, the brush of his knuckles against mine, the way his eyes had traveled over me like he was memorizing the shape of me.
I cursed myself. A low, bitter stream of words that died in my throat, because the curse came out in my new voice, light and soft, and it didn't sound like me. I pressed my palms against my face, hard enough to see stars behind my eyelids, and tried to will the feeling away. The heat. The ache. The slow, insistent pulse between my legs that had started the moment he'd touched me and had not faded.
It was wrong. All of it was wrong. I was a thirty-six-year-old man trapped in a body that was not his, and that body was responding to a uniform and a smile and a pair of grey eyes like a teenager at a summer camp. I had no business feeling anything. I had no business wanting anything.
But my hand was moving anyway.
I felt it as if from a great distance, watching myself from the outside. My fingers trailed down my stomach, slow and tentative, over the thin cotton of the tank top, down to the waistband of my shorts. My breath caught as my fingertips brushed the fabric, and the sensation was electric, a spark that ran through my nerves and settled deep in my belly.
The shorts were thin. The thong beneath them was thinner. And under that, I knew, there was a body I had never explored, a geography that was entirely foreign and entirely mine.
My hand slipped beneath the waistband.
The touch of my own fingers against that soft, warm flesh was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Justin had known his own body. He'd understood its mechanics, its needs, its responses. This was different. This was a body that felt everything twice as strongly, that shivered at the lightest pressure, that seemed to know exactly where I wanted to touch before I did.
His face swam up behind my eyelids. Allan. The way he'd smiled when he said my name. The way his thumb had grazed the chain of the locket. The way his eyes had swept over me, hungry and warm, like he wanted to touch more than a piece of jewelry.
I pressed my fingers against myself, and a gasp tore out of my throat.
The sensation was overwhelming. A wave of heat that started where I was touching and spread outward, through my hips, my thighs, my stomach, making my toes curl against the mattress. My body arched on the bed, my back bowing, and the weight of my breasts shifted against my chest, a heavy, reciprocal pressure that made everything worse, better, more.
I tried to pull my hand away. I really did. But my body was no longer listening to my mind. My fingers moved on their own, finding a rhythm that felt as natural as breathing, and the sound that came out of my mouth was a high, breathy whimper that I had never made as a man.
His name was a whisper in my mind. Allan. The way he'd said he'd like that coffee. The way he'd looked at me, really looked, not at my face but at my body, at the curves that were still so alien to me. The thought made my body clench, a deep and desperate need that I had no name for, and my fingers moved faster.
I imagined his hands on me. His calloused palms, his steady grip, his fingers tracing the locket before trailing lower, across my collarbone, my chest, pressing into the soft weight of me. The image was vivid, visceral, and I could feel my body responding to it in ways that were terrifying and good and entirely too much.
The wave crested. I felt it building, rising through me like water through a broken dam, and then it broke, and I cried out, my back arching off the bed, my fingers pressing hard against that place until the sensation overwhelmed me completely.
I lay there, panting, my hand still between my legs, my body trembling with aftershocks that I did not understand and could not control. The tank top was soaked with sweat. The shorts were twisted around my hips. And the low, aching shame was already settling in, cold and familiar, curling around the heat like a snake.
What had I just done?
I pulled my hand out from beneath the fabric, letting it fall to the mattress at my side. My fingers were damp. The sensation was alien, intimate, and I stared at my own hand for a long moment as if it belonged to someone else.
I had just touched myself. I had just gotten off to the thought of a man I had met ten minutes ago. I had just, for the first time in my life, experienced an orgasm that was not mine, that belonged entirely to this body, to this woman I did not know, and I had enjoyed it.
The shame was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest until it was hard to breathe.
But underneath it, terrible and undeniable, was the knowledge that I wanted to feel it again.