Chapter 3: The Possession
The click of the door was a full stop in the quiet room. Bree didn’t move from the threshold, her keys dangling from her fingers. Her green eyes were wide, reflecting the ugly neon glow. They weren’t scanning the mess. They were locked on him.
On her.
Matt couldn’t breathe. His new chest felt tight, constrained by his own old t-shirt. He watched Bree’s face, waiting for the scream, the recoil, the phone call to someone, anyone, to fix this impossible wrong.
It didn’t come.
Instead, a slow, profound stillness settled over her. The confusion in her eyes didn’t melt into horror; it crystallized into a piercing, almost clinical focus. Her gaze traveled down his body again, lingering on the open fly of his jeans, the new softness beneath the fabric of his shirt, the way his posture had subtly collapsed into something less broad.
“Matt?” she whispered again, but it wasn’t a question anymore. It was a test.
He tried to answer. A dry, clicking sound came from his new throat. He swallowed, the motion unfamiliar. “Bree.” The voice was alien—higher, smoother, laced with a tremor that was all his own panic. Hearing it made his stomach lurch.
She took a step forward. Then another. Her high heels made precise, echoing taps on the stained laminate floor. She stopped just a foot away, close enough for him to smell her perfume—jasmine and vanilla—cutting through the stale apartment air. She was looking up at him now. He was still taller, but the difference had shrunk.
Her hand came up, hesitant at first, then deliberate. She didn’t touch his face. Her fingertips brushed the side of his neck, where his Adam’s apple used to be. It was gone. Just smooth, sensitive skin. He flinched.
“You’re warm,” she murmured, as if noting a curiosity.
Her hand trailed down, over the slope of his new shoulder, and came to rest just below his collarbone, on the swell of his chest. His breath hitched. The touch sent a jolt through him—part shame, part a shocking, electric sensitivity. He felt himself respond, a traitorous flush heating his skin.
“Oh my god,” Bree breathed, not in revulsion, but in awe. Her fingers pressed gently, exploring the firm, tender flesh. A strange, possessive smile touched her lips. “It’s real.”
She looked up, meeting his eyes. Her expression was unlocked now, raw with a hunger he’d never seen before. It wasn’t the gentle affection she usually showed. This was something darker, needier. “The wish. You used the charm.”
He nodded, a jerky motion. The world had narrowed to the pressure of her hand on his chest and the terrifying intensity in her eyes.
“You said…” He struggled with the new voice, forcing the words out. “You said ‘make me what she needs.’”
Bree’s smile widened. It wasn’t sweet. It was victorious. “And you are,” she said, her voice low and thrilling. “You perfect, stupid thing. You are exactly what I need.”
Her other hand came up to cradle his face. Her thumb stroked his cheekbone, his new, smoother cheekbone. “All this time… I was trying to find a way to be her. To be… complete. And you… you just became her for me.” She laughed, a soft, disbelieving sound. “Look at you.”
She leaned in, her lips close to his ear. Her whisper was a hot, intimate secret. “I dreamed of this. Of having someone… soft. Beautiful. Mine. To have and to hold.” Her hand slid from his face, down his side, coming to rest on the new, pronounced curve of his hip. She pulled him closer. “And to fuck.”
The word, so crude in her usually soft mouth, detonated in Matt’s brain. A wave of dizziness hit him. This was Bree. His Bree. But she was a stranger, her desires a foreign landscape he’d suddenly been dropped into.
She pushed. Gently, but with an undeniable authority he’d never felt from her. He stumbled back until his shoulders met the cool plaster of the hallway wall. The box of old photos at their feet was a monument to a past that already felt like someone else’s life.
Bree pressed her body against his. The difference was staggering. Her softness met his new softness. Her hardness—the confident set of her shoulders, the grip of her hands—encased him. He was trapped between the wall and her will.
New sensations, alien and insistent, flooded his system. The brush of her wool coat against his sensitive skin. The scent of her, overwhelming now. A low, deep ache was building in his pelvis, a need that had no reference point in his old self. It was a thirsty, hollow feeling, coupled with a throbbing sensitivity between his legs that was entirely, terrifyingly different.
“You feel it, don’t you?” she whispered, her mouth against the corner of his lips. She didn’t kiss him. She hovered. “What I feel. What I’ve always wanted to feel.”
He did. A confusing cocktail of submission and a raw, devouring want. His hands, those narrower, softer hands, came up to grip her arms. He didn’t push her away. He held on.
“I don’t… understand,” he gasped. His mind was a battlefield. The part that was still Matt screamed in confusion and fear. But the new wiring, the new flesh, sang a different tune—one of aching compliance.
“You don’t have to,” Bree said, finally sealing her mouth over his.
It wasn’t like any kiss they’d ever shared. It was dominant, consuming. She claimed him. His new lips responded, moving with a pliancy he didn’t direct. A small, helpless sound escaped him, lost in her mouth.
When she pulled back, her pupils were huge and dark. “The old you,” she said, her voice husky, “he loved me. But he could never really… take me. Not the way I needed.” Her hand slid down, over his stomach, towards the open fly of his jeans. He tensed, every new nerve ending screaming. “And I could never really… have him. Not the way I wanted.”
Her fingers dipped inside, past the loose waistband of his boxers.
He jerked against the wall, a bolt of pure, shocking sensation paralyzing him. It wasn’t pleasure as he knew it. It was deeper, more complicated—a vulnerable, exposed intensity that was utterly foreign. He was wet. The reality of it, felt under her probing touch, short-circuited his last connection to who he was.
Bree’s eyes flew open, watching his reaction. She watched the shame and the helpless arousal war on his new face. “There she is,” Bree murmured, a feverish light in her eyes. “My good girl.”
The term shattered something in him. A dam broke. Not of desire, but of understanding. This wasn’t a mistake. The charm hadn’t just changed his body. It had rewritten his role. He hadn’t just become a woman. He had become hers. The fantasy made flesh. The object of her secret want.
And with that understanding, a terrifying, deep-seated part of him… yielded. The fight bled out of his muscles. The new ache between his legs became a whole, pleading throb.
He saw the change in his submission register in Bree’s face. Her possession solidified into something like worship. She leaned in, her forehead resting against his.
“Come on,” she said, her tone shifting, becoming practical, almost gentle. “Let’s get you out of these boy clothes.”
She took his hand—her grip firm—and led him, stumbling on unsteady legs, away from the hallway mirror, away from the spilled whiskey and the scattered photos of a past life. She led him toward the bedroom, her stride confident, while the flickering neon from the world outside painted their path in pulses of lurid, impatient red.
The bedroom door swung shut behind them with a soft, final click. The neon glow from the sign outside sliced through the blinds, painting bars of sickly red across the rumpled bed. Bree didn’t turn on the light.
“Just stand here,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. She guided him to the foot of the bed.
His legs felt like water. He stood, obedient, while she stepped back to look at him. Her gaze was a physical weight, traveling over every new inch of him in the striped half-light. It felt like an inspection.
“Those clothes,” she said, gesturing vaguely at his jeans and t-shirt. “They’re all wrong now. Take them off.”
Matt’s hands trembled as they went to the hem of his shirt. The cotton fabric felt coarse and alien against his sensitive skin. He pulled it over his head, the motion awkward with his new proportions, and let it fall to the floor.
The air in the room was cool. It raised goosebumps on his arms, his stomach. He felt devastatingly exposed. He crossed his arms over his chest, a habit from a lifetime ago that now felt pointless and strange.
“Don’t,” Bree said softly. She uncrossed them for him, her hands gentle but unyielding. “Let me see.”
She stared, her breath catching. In the crimson light, the curves of his new body were sculpted in shadow and fever-bright lines. He watched her face, seeing his own bewildered reflection in the dark gloss of her eyes.
“It’s a miracle,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “That stupid flea market charm. It actually worked.”
Her fingers reached out, tracing the line of his jaw, down the column of his throat, over the slope of his shoulder. Her touch was proprietary, reverent. It was nothing like the casual affection she’d shown the old him.
“Now the rest,” she said, her voice dropping lower.
His fingers fumbled with the button of his jeans. They were already undone from earlier, from his panicked checking. He pushed them down his hips, letting them pool around his ankles. He stepped out, kicking them aside. He stood there in only his boxers, the last shroud of his former self.
Bree’s focus dropped. Her expression was one of pure, rapt fascination. He felt a hot rush of shame, followed by a deeper, more confusing pulse of something else.
“Those too,” she breathed, nodding at the boxers.
He hooked his thumbs in the elastic. He closed his eyes for a second, a futile attempt to pretend this wasn’t happening. Then he pushed them down.
The cool air was a shock. He felt fundamentally naked in a way he never had before. Every detail was wrong. Every sensation was new and terrifying. He kept his eyes shut tight, unable to look at her looking at him.
He heard her take a sharp, unsteady breath. He felt her step closer. Then her hands were on him, not where he expected, but on his hips, her thumbs stroking the sharp new bones there.
“Open your eyes, Matt,” she said. It wasn’t a request.
He did. She was looking up at him, her face illuminated from below by the red light. Her beauty was severe now, almost frightening. Her green eyes swam with a complex mix of triumph, desire, and a fierce, loving cruelty.
“Do you see?” she asked, her voice barely audible over the hum of the city outside. “Do you feel what you are?”
He could only shake his head, a minute movement. Words were beyond him.
“You’re my answer,” she said. One hand left his hip and drifted inward, a ghost of a touch over the flatness of his stomach. “All that guilt I carried. All that hiding. Wishing I could be… different. Wishing I could have… this.” Her fingers didn’t go further. They just rested there, a promise. “And you, you sweet, desperate man, you wished yourself right into the center of my fantasy.”
She leaned forward, pressing her lips to his sternum. The kiss was soft, but it burned. “You’re not Matt anymore,” she murmured against his skin. “Not really. That guy is gone.”
A sob hitched in his new throat. It sounded like a stranger’s cry.
“Shhh,” she cooed, rising on her toes to kiss the tear that escaped his eye. She tasted the salt of it. “That life was small. This is so much bigger.” Her hands slid around to the small of his back, pulling his new body against hers. He could feel the wool of her coat, the hardness of its buttons.
“What…” he managed to gasp. “What am I?”
Bree smiled, a real smile that didn’t reach her hungry eyes. “You’re mine. You’re her. The woman I needed.” She released him and took a single step back, beginning to unbutton her own coat. “And now,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper thick with intent, “it’s my turn to show you what I’ve been hiding.”