Constant 3 - Chapter 3-1 (Patreon)

As Julia's story has grown in length, it's become clear I can't keep it as a single, long narrative as I'd originally planned. TGStorytime won't allow posts of voer 15k words, for instance. More importantly, readers need a bit of a rest. Consequently, I've inserted breaks at the natural points.

Rather than a Sneak Peek, I'm going to post these scenes for high tier subscribers over the next few weeks. These are near-complete scenes for chapter 3, unlikely to change much before final publication, gathered in a new collection for easy exclusive access. Enjoy, and if you like, why not let me now what you think.

Warning: explicit scene.

***

One: The Story of Julia (Return)

Let’s take it back, shall we? Right back, nearly two months ago and September’s on its way out and the evenings are turning cold. Every night takes me by surprise how quickly it’s dark, and too often standing alone under a wavering pool of light at the bus stop after work, wind tugging at my hair, I’d question the wisdom of my choice of skirt or shoes for the journey home. From leering stares to unwanted advances, or the too-frequent touches, gropes or “accidental” brushing up against my boob as the bus juddered into motion, I quickly learned that public transport sucked as a pretty young woman.

            But that Wednesday, instead of the long ride back to the city suburbs, I decided to come home via Jonas’ place. It’d only been last weekend that I’d gone out clubbing with the girls and… met him? Somehow, ‘met’ doesn’t quite capture the whole sordid night, from drug-and-booze comedown cuddles, to blowing the boy in a darkened chillout pod against a backdrop of larger-than-life LCD screens.

            But we’d been in touch since the weekend, innocuous enough messages, ‘thx sm,’ ‘np’, that kind of shit. The boy seemed genuinely surprised I’d kept in touch: don’t suppose a girl like you, he eventually sent, would be interested in meeting up with a guy like me again?

            Fortunately for him, Willow flaked out on after-work drinks, so yeah, I was free and interested. Dropped Jonas a note at lunch and caught the train over to meet him in the early evening. We met up for noodles at this authentic-styled izakaya called Edo just around the corner from his, serving up genuine Kyoto-style ramen with noodles swimming in rich pork fat broth. We chatted as we popped edamame from their salted shell and ate our gyoza and drank dai-biru Asahi under red lanterns. Intermittently shouted Irrashaimase! punctuated the conversation as his hand drifted over mine, or rested on my knee, and he managed to only piss me off once with his sexist pseudo-intellectual bullshit.

            After he paid, we went back to his place. We talked a bit more, he coped a feel and we kissed a little before I got in a little more practice. Third time lucky, so to speak. I got what I wanted out of him, and quickly at that. He invited me to spend the night, but I ruefully declined. I think he accepted my excuse: a “girl like me” couldn’t exactly show to work the wearing the same rumpled clothes as the day before. Truth was, I was pretty much done with him at this point.

            And that’s what was on my mind when Julia returned, eleven o’clock at night and tired as I rode, first the bus and finally the elevator to my little apartment: Jonas’s cock. I dreaded the coming morning, the blurry-eyed 5am rise, daily workout then shit, shower and shave legs and pits, then makeup and hair. Picking something to wear for the day and the long, tired commute.

            I had that feminized routine brewing on my mind, but mostly I was thinking about dick. Gazing out the window of the bus as the night city scrolled by, the memory of pursed lips and pressure on my tongue rode with me. The ache in the jaw, though not so bad as before. The weight of hair over one shoulder. The slight burn to the knee. His touch at the side of my head, at first tentative, then with increasing confidence. The rhythm of it; the response: eyes meeting, the disbelief that this was happening. Is this happening? My God, this is actually happening! And then the ridiculous scrunched up face, bared teeth hiss, sealed lips, groan and final jerks of the hips….

            His taste still lingered on the tongue, in imagination if not reality. Bitter, and a little soapy, nutmeg and fennel. He’d had a wash before I got there. Good boy—if a bit optimistic, the little dork. Still, I’d taught him a life lesson. His next girlfriend should thank me.

            Distracted by these girl-thoughts, I was near-oblivious trotting up the broken concrete path to my building and riding the ageing elevator to my floor. Rumbles, both ominous and comforting, accompanied me to its shuddering stop at my floor. The ever-present smells of other apartments’ stale cuisine lingered, as ubiquitous as the chintzy peeling wallpaper and halogen bulbs that flickered intermittently and lighted my way down the narrow corridor in pale pools of sickly yellow.

            At my apartment, I fumbled in my purse for the keys and found the door unlocked.

            Slipping into my apartment with silent steps wasn’t easy: secretarial skirts and heels aren’t made for stealth. My hand curled tightly around the straps of my purse, ready to swing or throw. Fortunately, my cautious entry proved unwarranted. Almost immediately I recognized the shoes and handbag at the entrance and suppressed near-dormant impulses that rose by instinct. I’d forgotten she’d kept the key that night she left.

            Julia sat at my little table. She had a cinnamon-scented candle lit and a bottle of wine open and breathing. She looked—

            It’s so fucking hard to be honest and remember the moment uncoloured by what came later. Julia looked amazing. Sexy, mature and elegant in a way that made a mockery of my twenty-year old showiness. Her lips were an intense red; diamonds glittered at her ears; and her long hair fell with a dark sheen over her shoulder. Julia wore a slender, fitted suit, severity offset slightly by a satiny blouse, and she sat with legs crossed at the thigh, fingers steepled over her knees. She smiled when she saw me at the door.

            And seeing her left me feeling horribly self-conscious of the knee-length pencil skirt that half-hobbled my step. Faux-leather and tight, it showed off my ass and brought a sexy wiggle to my walk. The hint of deep pink push-up bra visible through the pale blush shirt now seemed gaudy rather than fun. My hair was up in a high ponytail and hoop earrings dangled at my ears and what felt pretty good this morning suddenly felt trashy compared to the woman sat at my table. One glance at her and the thought crossed my mind, not for the first nor last time: if I’m stuck being a goddamn girl, why not more like her?

            Day by day, it’d gotten easier. By the end of that first month, most days I coasted blissfully along. Imagine a sexy girl riding convertible shotgun, dark sunglasses and hair whipping out behind her cruising along the coastline. Automatic on the straights, but often thrilling, even terrifying veering around cliffside corners, waters crashing against breakers far below, and at the wheel—yeah. Who was driving this thing? Because it certainly wasn’t me.

            But one smouldering look from Julia collapsed the whole fantasy. Suddenly, masculinity reasserted itself and I felt keenly playing at dress-up sexy secretary, a clown in makeup and a fraud in heels. The bra strap dug into my shoulders; skirt tight at hips and thighs; my breath caught in my throat.

            Yeah, I felt myself a man again, but only for an instant. The brief flare-up of male pride didn’t last. Rather, like a mild injury on a bad day, its presence tickled my brain and faded—lingered, but not insistently. Self-consciousness dissipated almost instantly and then I was back to myself as I trotted into my apartment.

            Julia’s eyes shone with a curious mixture of hope and intensity at my arrival.

            “You look good,” she said, pouring out two glasses of Rioja as I closed the door behind me. She watched as reached down to undo the buckle on my shoes. Nine months, and I still hadn’t quite mastered the elegant art of crouching in unyielding clothes. A little smile drew across her lips as she watched me bend, ass rolling beneath the taut skirt. 

            “I’ve missed you, David,” she said.

            I joined her at the table. We drank, and an awkward silence stretched out between us.

            So much had changed in her month-long absence—I had changed, and her presence forcibly brought this to mind. Dan and Anastasia. Michael Connor. Emma, Willow and Melanie. Nights out with the girls; shopping—clubbing. Jonas. And—other things, too, of course. A single month! And she’s missed so much this month she was away, an entire September where leaves yellowed, the world darkened, and I was left to explore this new girlhood without her.

            Julia looked at me and I felt the weight of her unspoken expectations. She’d missed so much, but her real concern was whether I’d missed her and the truth of it was—no. Not at all, not beyond that first few desperate day. Or so I thought, with resentment simmering beneath the skin.

            “Where’ve you been?” I asked, fighting back a yawn. I contemplated tomorrow’s early rise. I’d need extra time in the morning; I wanted to look my best for my 8:30am one-to-one with Mr Connor.

            “I’d accrued a lot of paid leave,” she said. “I needed a break.  From… us; from work. Wanted to clear my head. Think about life. I took a holiday.”

            I sipped the wine, though after the beer earlier tonight I wasn’t really into more drink. She told me about her time away. First, a week spent abroad in England and France, and then another week in Spain, where she’d picked up the bottle we were sharing.

            “London’s a shithole these days,” Julia was saying. “Never really bounced back from the flooding, if you ask me, and the financial sector packing up and leaving.” Though there was something about the sad atmosphere of decay and crumbling empire she found romantic, the sense of old money and faded glory. “Got over the jetlag, visited the usual sights, caught up with a lawyer friend from my university days.” She smiled wistfully and moved on to Paris.

            I barely heard her, back to thinking about a boy’s cock between my lips, the crick in my neck and the bitterness of his cum on my tongue.  I thought of the carpet burn on my knees, wished I’d worn pantyhose today and wondered if Julia had noticed.  She talked at me about Paris, her visit to the restored cathedral and the long, blustery walk up the Champ de Mars, the hem of her dress cracking in the wind. But instead of the Eifel Tower, I pictured a different erection and the quiet time afterwards, laying on Jonas’s bed with my head in his lap, smiling up at him with the quiet hum of laptop cooling and the tap of the fingers of one hand at the keyboard, and the others gently, absently threading through my hair.

            “Are you even listening?” Julia eventually asked, after what must have seemed an uncomfortably long pause. “You seem—”

            “Distracted?”

            She nodded.

            I checked my phone and saw the time was nearing midnight. “I haven’t seen you in a month,” I said. I swiped some gloss on my lips, then waved the wand at her. “Then you just appear in my home. What the hell do you want me to say, Julia?”

            “That you missed me,” she said.

            The way she looked at me, then: half-lidded eyes glittering in the candlelight, and her enigmatic smile; when she reached for me, her touch sent a little spark up my arm and down my spine. I looked at her hand over my mine, at my fashionably shaped and longer nails, pale pink with white tips a contrast to her darker burgundy ovals. The pale perfection of my skin against the maturity of her thirty-seven years. Wrinkles and minor blemishes, the evidence of a lived life: time and change, encapsulated in the image of two female hands.

            The disparity in our apparent age struck me powerfully. It wasn’t just the crinkles at the corner of her eyes that makeup couldn’t quite conceal, or the looseness of skin at the neck, or the leanness to the lines of her face. I knew, beneath that blazer and blouse, her tits sagged—just a little—the pertness of youth gone, though her breasts remained gorgeous. The spidery veins at her thigh, dimpling at the thigh, or droop at the waist. Nothing a good bra or a little boning couldn’t bolster, an illusion of youth maintained through the touch of ever-heavier makeup plastering harsh lines of decline.

            This was inevitable.

            But not for Cindy—not yet—she was beautiful in her youth, or beautiful because of it. There was something enviable in how fully she embodied this vigour. Though it felt as though my femininity was in thrall to youth: not just smooth skin and perky bums and pert tits, but everything else, too: a quagmire of freedoms and joys and insecurities and hurts as we lurched towards our thirties. Flashy fashions, excess and regret, frivolity, fun and hopes, but also struggles and impossible expectations, timorous self-confidence gradually giving way to an awakening into the unconscious expectations of society and the terrible limits placed on its women. Constantly scrutinised and somehow invisible. The pressure to conform; the push to stand out; the desperate holding on to something intangible slipping away bit by bit, grains of sand sifting through slender fingers.

            Then I looked at Julia and saw in her the possibility of a feminine future—something beyond the shimmer and shine of these past months—a dignified, confident maturity, Cindy as a strong woman with wrinkles, greying hair, and boobs betrayed by gravity.  Tracking from my smooth, pretty hand up the arm that held it, I travelled forward into a future where I remained female but older. Seeing Julia sat opposite me, bemused and patient, for the first time the idea of remaining trapped in this life didn’t seem entirely horrible if it led to her.

            Irrepressibly, I smiled. “I did miss you,” I said, and in the speaking realised it was true.

            She brushed a stray hair from her face.  “Why the smile?”

            “I love your nails.” My fingers paddled up her wrist. “And this, too.” Past the ruffled cuff of a milky white blouse, a chunky metal armband, inlaid blues and whites. “Haven’t seen it before. Where’d you get it?”
            “A gift,” she said. “From my friend in London. He bought it when we visited the museum. Babylonian inspired. Supposedly.” With her other hand she brushed back her hair to reveal drop earrings, lapis lazuli blue and gold.

            “They’re beautiful,” I said, inexplicable envy flashing through me—at the gifts, at the very idea of idle browsing a soft-lit boutique, surrounded by beautiful and expensive thing, and someone at my side, smiling, selecting, holding an item up against me and saying, you’d look good in this, you’d look sexy in this. I thought about this friend, this man who bought her the gift.

            “Friend?” I asked. “Or boyfriend?”

            “Does it matter?”

            “Did you fuck him?”

            She frowned. Her silence was confirmation enough and I felt an unexpected stab of jealousy, which I hid behind a gulp of wine.

            “You say you missed me,” Julia said instead. “Tell me what you missed.”

            “You, Julia,” I said. “Your presence. Your guiding hand.” I interlaced my fingers with hers, alternating pink and burgundy lustre. “I missed your memory of who I was.”

            She took her time before answering.  Julia looked at our joined hands. Then she looked me in the eyes and tilted her head to one side. “You hurt me.” She said it without rancour but as a simply stated fact.

            “Many times,” I acknowledged.

            “Would you really have left without saying goodbye?”
            I nodded.

            “Do I mean so little to you?”

            “Getting my male life back meant more.”

            “Meant? Past tense?”

            My shrug was limp, defeatist. “I didn’t get it back. And during my time there, I don’t know—there was time to think, about the past, about you.”

            “And….?

            “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wasn’t thinking and….” I took a deep breath. “You’ve become very important to me, Julia.”

            “Important?”

            “I need you,” I said.

            And I did need her, and the most obvious indication of that need manifested itself immediately: in her gentle exhalation at my words, the renewed hunger manifest in her eyes, and the thrill that ran down my spine in response. In her reaction, mine as well: nipples stiffened, and my breath caught in my chest. I felt an ache—an echoing craving—below.

            A full month, and I hadn’t gotten laid once; nothing since that night with Chad at the Clinic five long weeks ago.

            Weeknight and weekends, in the company of all these sexy young things—a sexy young thing myself—dressed to kill, makeup and perfume and the tickle of lacy underwear—the shimmy of ass in heels under a tight skirt—flared nostrils—a held breath, wicked smile, and a warm sigh over an erect cock bobbing in anticipation—wet sounds, saliva and spit—and glossed lips gliding—the grunt and groan and grip of male hands at my hair, firm hold, and the hot spurt to the back of the throat—and seeing, from the outside, and feeling, from the inside, the heavy sway of tits and growing heat at their peak, spreading to tummy, across my neck and… lower down….

            With the ghost of Jonas’s presence a renewed tingle on my lips, I considered the weeks I’d had to come to terms with the vagina nestled between my thighs. But I hadn’t cum, not once. I’d touched myself, obviously—that night clubbing, desperately; another night thinking of Mr Connor, shamefully—gently rubbing my finger up and down my labia, quivering at the feeling—shivering with the sensual pleasure of my soft touch—there was no denying that, no, it definitely felt nice…. Like I could keep at it for hours…

            But I wanted more. I needed some kind of release.

            One night after work, I’d gone out for a drink with Mel. Just me and Mel sat at the bar with drowning our frustrations with work in brightly-coloured G&Ts, shiny lips pursed in mock outrage. Her eyes tracked the fit young men walking past in their tight white shirts, loosened ties and fitted trousers, and my eyes had been on her, mostly. That night, the way her tits pushed out that red blouse, nipples poking through, and the gleam of her lips, the constellation of freckles that flitted up the collarbone, the little fuzz at the curve of her neck under the crimson counter lights—I wanted to grab her, feel those breasts, take her nipple in my mouth and make her back arch under my touch. I wanted to slide my hand beneath the waistband of her trousers and touch the hidden wetness and draw from her the eager moan. Peel her panties down. Rise above her. Press her down. And enter—

            Instead, I felt—an ache in anaesthetised balls; a wanting throbbing wetness—and she noticed my excitement, maybe even smelled it, I think, her wicked grin and the way she stroked my bare shoulder. 

            After, I went home alone and—

            Sat in my chair staring into the darkness of the night—

            And drank—

            Picked up that dildo Julia left me.

            I held its tip against my lips and shuddered and couldn’t do it.

            Just as Julia predicted, I was going fucking crazy. On reception duty days, sat behind my desk and warmed by the pink and blue lights of Volumina International at my back, I found myself drifting into detached hazes—mind adrift, untethered—thighs squeezing together, lips slightly parted—breathing, fantasizing, flushing as inchoate flashes of male and female sensuality taunted me.

            And there was just so much fodder to trigger these fantasies and twist them into pure torture. Bad enough seeing myself in the mirror. But so much of my days were spent in the company of women—beautiful women, wonderful girls. Over the month, I saw some of them in increasingly comfortable, intimate moments. There was the casual comradery of restrooms, obviously: the communal mirror, unguarded adjustments, passing comments and makeup moments shared between girls. Those were now so familiar as to be unremarkable—usually. The gym changerooms began to feel the same after the initial titillation of seeing colleagues in panties and bra as they prepped for a workout.

            But it was the personal moments that got to me, the unexpected intimacies experienced as a girl and shared with girls, now familiar but once only dimly perceived from beyond the veil. And these times were somehow both more and less exciting than expected.

            Willow’s sofa, for example. One night we got shit-faced on—what was it?—Brennevin? Some kind of Icelandic spirit brought back from holiday two years ago, a half-finished bottle buried at the back of her closet. The other girls, her roommates were out for the night—Emma on a third date, Mel visiting her parents—it was just the two of us.

            Next thing, we’re obliterated on Viking paint-stripper on a Friday night, melting into the sofa and lit by the light of her TV, volume down and turned to some lurid anime she grew up with that I’d never heard of. My feet rested in her lap and I listened as she painted my nails and shared surprisingly intimate and detailed stories from her past.

            She’d reached the sweary stage of her drunkenness. We sat there in our bras. She complained hers was too fucking tight, the cunting thing, bastard underwire. I told her to take it off. She did. What the fuck about you, you prissy twat, she slurred, poking at my boob. I joined her in toplessness, my curvy Cs joining her slender Bs. She cupped hers, then mine; fucking unfair, she bemoaned, I wish I had your tits. No, you don’t, yours are gorgeous. Liar, the boys love these. Well, I love these—and Willow all but purred as she cuddled into me, muttering cute obscenities under her breath. She drifted asleep in the crook of my arm, her breast against mine as I sat there watching a show I didn’t know in silence, softly stroking her head as the room spun its slow boozy dance around us. Somewhere beneath the prosthetic my cocked yearned to grow, and instead I ached for her all night.

            I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, an Achilles at Skyros—but what if the predator never again escapes the fold, and Odysseus never brandishes that spear? Living among these girls as one of them was torture, and by the end of the month I was ready to….

            Honestly, I don’t know. It was while lost in one of these eroticised fogs that I first went down on Jonas, at the club; and stared at my boss and imagined his strong hands at my waist; and for the first time, began to notice just how—attractive—some guys could be, at work or at the bar. Gradually, the idea of someone sticking something where I might enjoy it grew on me. Still disgusting—but no longer impossible.

            So, yeah. I was going nuts.

            I’d pleasured others, this past month; now it was my turn.

            One look, and Julia knew what I wanted—or needed.

            “I need you,” I repeated. “I want you.” My voice trembled with excitement.

            “I bought you something,” she said. “In Paris. Something for you to wear.” She gestured towards the bedroom with a nod of her head. “It’s waiting for you. Put it on.”

            It was gorgeous and elegant, a bondage-inspired bodysuit in blue. I stripped out of work clothes and stepped into the lingerie she’d chosen for me. With straps sensuously coiled around thighs and torso, gold buckles gleaming and breasts left bare, I saw myself in the mirror and felt the now-familiar haze seep into my mind. Face flushed and heart beating that little bit faster, I touched up my makeup and rejoined Julia in the living room.

            She smiled at the sight of me, hungry, pleased. “God, look at you,” she said, advancing. I shivered at the openness of her lust and dampened in the crotch. My nipples tightened and my breath caught in my throat and my knees felt weak.

            She stood over me. She touched my bare shoulder. I exhaled, softly, at her touch. Julia smiled. “You’re an eager little bitch, aren’t you?” she said.

            I bit my lip and glared up at her. “Is this what you wanted?” I asked.

            “Is it what you want?” she retorted.

            My eyes dropped to the floor, and I nodded.

            “Did you try it?” she asked. “The gift I gave you?”

            She meant the dildo. I shook my head no—the truth, though I’d held it, considered it, gotten familiar with its feel though never came to terms with the actual reality of—what? Sticking it my mouth, or somewhere else? I’d had an actual man’s penis in my mouth, but never this sex toy.

            I didn’t tell her about Jonas, or anything else I’d gotten up to during those weeks she was way. She didn’t ask, either. I’m not sure why, except that I had this sense she wanted me to be ‘pure’ for her. She wanted to be there for each milestone, every step deeper into femininity, if not in person than still part of the experience. She’s engineered the date with Dan, after all—my first date with a man, first attempted blowjob, and the first time I’d made a man cum by my touch. At the time, it didn’t seem important for her to know she’d already missed key steps in Cindy’s development.

            She stepped closer. Her hand at my shoulder traced the silk and satin straps surrounding my lithe frame, and she played with the decorative bows. She slid a nail under the suspender strap, snapping it against my ass, following it down to the band binding my thigh, massaging the sensitive skin there. I shivered in the coolness of the room, goosebumps rising along bare legs and arms. Her closeness was a welcome and palpable heat. Julia took a naked breast in her palm and smiled and squeezed. Her hand left my thigh and smoothed down my long hair and cupped my ass.  She gave me a little slap there, encouraging me towards the bedroom. In an aroused fog, I flounced in the direction she directed.

            “Where is it?” she asked, smiling and I pulled the dildo she’d given me from the drawer where it lived. I trembled in the small darkness of my room. She extended her hand. I bit my lower lip and shook my head no. Julia frowned and silently, imperiously demanded the sex toy. Wide-eyed, I passed it to her. Her smile returned. With a twitch of her head, she indicated the bed. Her long hair swayed with the gesture. Shakily, I clambered onto the bed. I sat there, knees to chest, and felt the straps of French lingerie draw taut over my ass. She sat next to me, at the edge of the bed. She rubbed my shoulder and my back with her free hand and stroked my hair.

            “Relax,” she said.

            Hesitation vibrated through my extremities. I wasn’t ready. I needed to do this, but I wasn’t ready.

            She lay the dildo down and turned to face me. She held my face between both her hands. She traced my cheekbones with her nails. “I’ve been thinking about you,” Julia said, “about what I want to do to you,” and she drew me into a kiss.  Her lips were soft, and so were mine. Our fresh lipstick mingled, my gloss a little tacky, strawberry flavoured; strands of her hair or mine stuck to my makeup. She laughed and I giggled as she swept the hair away and pulled me in for another kiss.

            And it felt—nice—so nice, and my heart beat quicker and I felt hot and I felt—young—like a teenager—like a first kiss with someone I’d crushed on for ages—someone older, more mature, who could guide me through this thrilling uncertainty—and the time apart made these first kisses of the night blossom beautifully in my chest and I don’t know that I ever felt as fondly for Julia as I did right then.

            She explored my body as I sat there with arms limply at my side, hands palm up on the bed as she kissed my cheek, my neck and nibbled at my shoulder. She passed her thumb across a nipple and I squirmed, a little, and bit my lower lip. “You like that, don’t you?” and she did it again and threaded her fingers through my hair.

            With a gentle push she guided me towards the head of the bed. I rested against the headrest. She sat next to me, still fully clothed. There was something thrilling in that, Julia in her suit and me nearly naked in lingerie. I felt an echo of the times with both Dan and Chad, but without the stomach-churning fear and shame. Instead, the confidence and control she exuded brought an unexpected ease to what we were doing. Beyond an initial surge of tumultuous emotions, I found myself eager to—please her—to slip back into the relationship we’d enjoyed before I went to the Clinic.

            Things were different now.

            Before, anything we did together ended with me railing her. She’d play her games, I’d dress the part, but whatever control she had over me dissipated the moment I had her bent double with ankles over my shoulders and my cock buried deep. She might curse me, or pant for more; but always, we finished with me fucking her. I might be smaller than her, and curvier, and she’d smack my ass or grab my tits or yank on my long hair—but it always ended with me on top.

            But now, with a smile and insistent hands, she parted my knees. Her fingers hooked into the waistband of my panties and tugged that scrap of rich blue silk down my thighs, over my knees and past my ankles. I sat propped up in my bed with my legs spread and my furry mound exposed and felt deliciously, terribly vulnerable.

            Julia drew closer. Her fingers danced up my calf, tickled behind the knee and traced the long lines of my thigh. She pressed her palm down over my groin. She felt the heat there and smiled. She felt the wetness, too. “You really haven’t tried my gift, have you?” she said, slowly shaking her head in disbelief. “Why not?”

            I opened my mouth to answer, but then her finger swept across my labia, and I shuddered rather than spoke, and when she languorously drew her nail between those wet lips, I hissed with anticipation. With each pass I felt myself grow warmer and the warmth radiated outwards and flowed through my tummy, into my chest; and down my legs and curled my toes. “Relax,” she murmured, and this time I did, slowly with each deft stroke of her finger, sliding downwards until my head rested on a pillow. I closed my eyes. My fingers coiled and uncoiled into the bedsheets. I breathed, deeply, and submitted myself to Julia’s touch.

            And God—did it ever feel good!—why hadn’t I done this earlier?—except that my few failed attempts at pleasuring myself hadn’t felt anything like this. Her finger continued to elicit pleasure. A gentle moan escaped my lips—a sigh of contentment—even as, alongside the pleasure a growing need—a demand—a frustration, even.

            Her touch felt good—so good!—and Julia was patient, even as her other hand continued to stroke my flank, or brush against my face, or she’d lay a soft kiss at my chin, or flick her tongue across a nipple and draw from me another happy moan.

            But—I wanted more. Quickly—so quickly—I felt the all too familiar aching need of the past month return; it’d never really gone away. My back arched, slightly; I twitched my hips forward. Julia stopped her gentle ministrations.

            My eyes fluttered open. “Why’d you—”

            With the softest of touches, she pressed the pad of her index finger to my clitoris.

            And when I moaned, it wasn’t quiet or gentle and like sparking flint applied to tinder, she ignited a fire in me. Her finger began to circle the clitoris, a slow but insistent orbit around the point of my pleasure and with each languid cycle I felt the flickering flames inside of me grow.

            And it felt—wonderful; and it felt—terrifying. And it—stopped.

            I glared at her from between the heaving mounds of my tits. “You—”

            Julia grinned. “What?”

            “Don’t you dare—”

            And she resumed, and my head flopped back onto the pillow, and the heat swelled greater than before.

            She did this several times—edging me closer, feeding fuel to the fire, and I glowered at her and called her a bitch, cruel, don’t you dare fucking stop, I hissed, I swore and I pleaded—and she laughed but there was something hard in her glittering dark eyes, like a diamond, beautiful but cold, and this time when she started again her finger moved faster, the pressure more insistent, and I knew this was it and panic welled up inside of me, only to be subsumed by the cresting wave of pleasure.

            There was no stopping it, this time. There was no thought of breaking away. The fire she’d nurtured inside of me blossomed into an inferno and its fire swept through me in an instant.

            I final glide of the finger. My back arched. My hands clenched into tight little fists. From deep, deep within, a desperate groan grew in my throat. Buttocks clenching, legs clenching—whole body drawing tight—and that impossible pressure and heat and frustration, all wound together and pushing outwards—it was too much—I couldn’t—but even then, I wanted more!—and then—

            Release.

            My voice ripped free in a long, shuddering wail.

            My whole body rose, jerked and flopped back onto the bed.

            And I felt—

            Jesus.

            Okay, so fucking a woman, right, burying myself in her twat and holding her, yeah? holding her tight in that moment—that moment right before—however you got there, slow luxurious thrusts or a right proper pounding, furious and hard, up against a wall or intimately vanilla missionary or gripping her ass and banging her from behind—whatever—there was always a moment of control, and then loss. Loss and control: a point of no return where the buildup tips into inevitability, becomes too much and—

            Balls tighten, thighs clench and then grind everything you’ve got into the body pinned beneath and—it’s good, God, it’s satisfying and when it’s really good, a truly great fuck, that moment in which will and control collapse into the intensity of pleasure draws itself out, that animal thrusting, the final release. Pouring yourself into her—physically, anyway. Always, I felt alive in those moments, regardless of how much I’d drunk, even if hated the bitch beneath me, even when the sex was a bit shit, a bit dull.

            But when it was good—and it was, far more often than not—goddam, but it transcended the perpetual hate and anger and hollowness that defined me. In the rapture of release, I saw myself as a candle flickering in a window on a dark and windy night: brief, but so very brilliant. No wonder that David sought out those moments to feel alive. They gave meaning to his existence; I understood that, now. Sometimes ecstatic—epiphanic, even. And complete; yes, almost always the sense of a job well done.  Satisfaction before stupor and the final dropping off into sleep, even if he never recaptured what he’d once known with Persephone, that meeting of selves, the sharing of—something more.

            Goddamn it, though, if Julia didn’t bring me close that night.

            I cried. Fucking unbelievable, but what shuddered through me in that moment was—it was more than I could process. My brain just didn’t know what to do with the information sent by body parts it struggled to understand it was connected to. I’d felt something similar, once before—with K—way back at the start, a different time and a different prosthetic. She’d brough me close, then pulled back, and laughed cruelly at me. But what I felt then was a mere shadow of the sensations now funnelled into my nervous system.

              I reached for the familiarity of balls clenching and emptying; instead, I felt—wet; even wetter; physical bliss coursed through me but in the crash that followed I found to my horror that not only was I ready and capable of more—but that I remained somehow… unsatisfied. And that lack of completion—both the possibility and burden of further pleasure—tore an eager and disbelieving sob from my lips.

             “Did you like that?” Julia’s stroked my face and kissed me deeply. I panted under her touch. “Does my little slut want more?”

            Wide-eyed, I nodded, and a pathetic little mewl escaped my lips. With each shuddering breath, pleasure and the desire for more throbbed from my wet, eager hole. I was torn between clenching my thigh together tightly to keep her out and pulling at my own tits to add to the promise of further pleasure. There wasn’t any possibility of words, and she damn well knew it.

            And it was at that point with my eyes half-rolled back, chest heaving, torn between wanting more and wanting the ride to stop, with my eager prosthetic cunt betraying what little rationality remained—that Julia picked up the dildo and with one smooth movement shoved it deep inside of me.

            Elasticity, right? The human brain’s adaptable, especially when young; I read that somewhere. And my brain was certainly young again. Or at least it thought it was, maybe but who the fuck knows, right? And it was flooded with hormones and swam in those chemicals they’d pumped into me at the Clinic. As far as I can tell, my brain was racing to catch up with everything being thrown at it, shoving aside a lifetime of male experiences in favour of these new impulses, adapting to and interpreting feminine encounters, girlish modes, female feelings.

            Following that first burst of female pleasure, I learned and adapted. Some little nugget of grey matter, animal sensory synapses, reconnected with evolutionary memories of what could’ve been. X-sensory inputs swapped for Y, dormant potentiality gradually awakening. That prosthetic never again felt quite so intense as it did that night.  

            But that night, it sure as hell felt as though those same regenerative chemicals that once saved David also ensured his death—because that’s what was happening—which each slick, confident thrust Julia fucked the manhood right out of me.

            My whole body went rigid when she first impaled me on that cock—my whole body clutching tight around this impossibility—of penetration—as my poor primate brain tried to catch up to the insanity projected through the prosthetic. It felt—amazing; so much more intense than just her finger. It felt like something was stabbing—piercing—skewering my cunt and my first experience of being penetrated by a dick left me with fingers curled tight into the bedsheets and a rictus grin of disbelief so tight my face ached afterwards.  I was barely conscious of the tight little yipping noises that escaped under her implacable onslaught.

            My whole body drew tight—taut—a string ready to be plucked or snapped—an erotic rhapsody vibrating in my throat—as my head thrashed and my tits burned and all of me drew into that impossible space Julia controlled.

            Julia withdrew the cock; she paused; my whole body cried out.

            Then she buried that fucking thing as deeply as it would go inside of me and—

            I felt so full, so good and—

            Clawed my own tits, and whined until her fingertip brushed across my clitoris, and—

            Afterwards, Julia told me she’d nearly grabbed a pillow to drown out my keening cry. I don’t remember. I must have blanked out. Vaguely, I remember wetness; bucking hips; spine-cracking tautness suddenly releasing into body-thrashing pleasure as I came—filled with an indescribable sense of loss—and again—jerking and falling back into the bed and I laughed and cried at how awful and awesome it felt.

            Julia chuckled, but kindly, and stroked my hair and kissed me lightly on my sweaty forehead. “You enjoy that, baby?”

            I gurgled incoherently in response.

            “Take your time.” She laughed. “Enjoy the afterglow.”

            Once I’d recovered enough to string coherent thoughts if not words together, I watched her move around my room. She stood for some time at my closet perusing my clothes. Her lips moved in silent conversation with herself, and she occasionally frowned, or beamed.

            “Julia?” My voice felt and sounded hoarse.

            “Wear this to work tomorrow,” she said, holding up her selection. “I’ve picked out some earrings too, a few accessories.” Julia moved with confidence, laying the items at the foot of the bed. She went over to the dresser and riffled through its contents, eventually withdrawing a flimsy pair of stockings, suspender belt, and panties. She laid these, too, over tomorrow’s outfit before leaving the bedroom.

            Meanwhile, I struggled to catch up, wrapping myself in the satin robe hanging on the back of my door. My legs felt weak and wobbly. Jesus Christ—I could barely walk.

            She was at the door, sliding into her shoes. “Meet me tomorrow after work. Café D’Eon, 7pm.” Julia slung her handbag over her shoulder and only then stopped. She turned and saw me and her face split into a genuine smile. “Jesus, look at you….”

            The girl in the mirror by the door—tousled hair, green eyes wide, pink-faced, shaky and tits half hanging out of a flimsy pink robe, sash tied in a hasty loose knot—was the very image of a well-fucked girl—and a happily-fucked one at that. She was a pair of stilettos and stockings away from pin-up postcard girl. Unable to resist, I pushed my mess of hair back from my eyes and returned a disbelieving grin of my own.

            “Christ,” I said. “What the fuck did you do to me, Jules?”

            “Nothing you haven’t done to me countless times.”

            Standing only thanks to the support of the wall, I let go of a shaky breath. “Fuck me.”

            “Again?”

            “Ha ha. No,” I said. “But thanks. I think.”

            “You think?”

            “God, I needed that, I really did but—” I held my hand to my chest. My heart still pounded under my palm. “That was intense.”

            “Welcome to the club,” she said.

            I jerked a thumb over my shoulder towards the bedroom. “You want me to wear—”

            “Not ‘want’.” That same icy hardness glimpsed during sex returned to her eyes. “I’m telling you.”