Constant in All Other Things 3: Chapter 3 (Patreon)

For the archives: Constant in All Things 3: Chapter 03. This should be the most up-to-date and current version of the story.

Constant in All Other Things 3

Chapter 3

by

Fakeminsk (fakeminsk@gmail.com ; https://www.patreon.com/fakeminsk)

“Friendship is constant in all other things

Save in the office and affairs of love:

Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;

Let every eye negotiate for itself

And trust no agent.”

Much Ado About Nothing

Synopsis:

The funeral of David Saunders continues as he revisits the role his ex-girlfriend, Julia played in his feminisation.

What has gone before:

David Sanders saw something he shouldn't have: his boss, pharmaceutical magnate Jeremiah Steele murder the son of an underworld rival.  Placed in witness protection, an assassination attempt forced David to adopt the life of Cindy Bellamy, a tragically deceased young woman.  For months he suffered the ignominy of living a life he despises, his torture both alleviated and acerbated once discovered by Julia, a jilted ex-girlfriend. A return trip to the Asklepios Clinic brought both an old enemy and new friends but also extended his time as Cindy by another six months whilst completing his disguise. Consequently, he arranged his own symbolic funeral, with Julia in attendance. Over the length of the evening, he sought to answer the question “who killed David Saunders?” inevitably returning to Julia’s stories.

One: Achilles at Skyros

Oh, where to start?

            I know: let’s take it back, 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 gets dark, and too often standing alone under a flickering 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 evening, 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 apartment, 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 familiar, 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 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 veering around cliffside corners, waters crashing against breakers far below, that terrifying and very real possibility of flying off the road and falling. 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.

            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 those first few desperate days. Resentment simmered 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, reluctantly after the beers earlier tonight. 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 such 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 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, digging in my purse. 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 yet 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, hidden behind a gulp of wine.

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

            “You, Julia,” I said. “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 stay at the Clinic, 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 drowning our frustrations with men and 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 seen. My feet rested in her lap and I listened as she painted my nails and shared surprisingly intimate and detailed stories from her past, the intense closeness of her family life, the tragic horror of a south-east Asian homeland sinking beneath the waves.

            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, too big and 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 escapes the fold, 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?”

            “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 progress.

            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 a 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 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 nailing 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.

            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 never really went 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, 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 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 information sent by body parts it struggled to recognize. 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 for 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 again—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 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.”

Two: All-or-Nothing

That was the moment, really, that my life—or rather Cindy’s—and where does one finish, the other start? —split in two. Cindy’s life bifurcated, two roads diverging though somehow, I travelled both.

            Like, to speak of Cindy’s life is of course to speak of my own. But in that first month following the visit to the Clinic, the memory of maleness remained raw and insistent.

            Truth is, in those earlier days femininity still felt exotic. This may seem odd, considering how long I’d inhabited Cindy’s life. And certainly, what had seemed a strange and distant land, like a foreign country studied at school, had grown familiar. Once, those lands of girlhood were only glimpsed from afar; tasted in brief samples, like exotic foods at a pop-up restaurant. Now, femininity was all too familiar, a place so often visited it now felt commonplace.  I’d moved into temporary accommodations, unwilling to pack my bags with the certainty that I’d be someday leaving.

            The vagina forced on me changed everything. Yes, it made life so much easier, in so many ways. But that prosthetic was like a wound that could not heal. It reminded me of its existence every single morning. Every time I went for a piss, for a walk, pulled up my panties or became even slightly excited—I felt its presence, not just for what was there, but by reminding me of what was absent. It fundamentally altered the way I interacted with the world. I felt vulnerable in a way I hadn’t before.

            So, yeah, I’d been living as Cindy for over half a year already, but now I had this thing between my legs: a passport to an unwanted destination from which I was desperate to escape but could not risk leaving. And how much longer, before I became the expat, waking up one day baffled to find myself forever abroad, years older and trapped in this beautiful but ultimately alien land?

            And so, on the one hand: life over the next few weeks continued as it had been. I went to work. I had my weekly meetings with Mr Connor and hung out with the girls. I met Jonas, went clubbing with the girls again, met Jonas, hit the bars after work. So, yeah—that all happened; and life shuffled on in its steady pace of days.

            There were comments, of course: ‘you seem happier,’ Willow observed one day, ‘more relaxed.’ ‘Who’re you fucking?’ Mel demanded. People noticed other changes, too. Emma envied the daily fashion show of my life under Julia: “Oh, I love that outfit it’s so you, I couldn’t wear it, but I love it!” And even though Mr Connor, ever the stolid professional, never said anything I felt his heavy gaze tracking me across the office more than once.

            That was Cindy’s first life across the month of October, largely unchanged, the whole messed-up, single-white young female reality of it flashing by in a kaleidoscope of days and nights counting down to a six-month deadline. And that life was dull, surprising, simple, amazing, fun, exhausting—in other words, a normal life—and in each day of that life there were moments of intimacy, frustration, joy and peace. To tell the story of each of those days would take forever, and looking back there is a sense of wonder that the stories of those days are my story, my life, a second youth refracted through female lens.

            I kept this life isolated from the other one. It was Cindy’s first life and never shared with Julia, though her presence shadowed it. Julia never knew of the meetings with Mr Connor, and how the timbre of his voice trembled down my spine and resonated in that place between my thighs as I lean in closer to listen, biting down on a shiny lower lip so the pain would distract from the pleasure his presence brought me.

            Nor did I tell her about Jonas and our last night together, the memory of him forever mingled with the taste of ramen and Japanese beer and fennel and nutmeg. My first blow job. The first boy to slide his finger in my pussy. The first boy I ever broke up with. He cried after I dumped him, even though I tried to be gentle.

            Tuesday happy hour Daquiri with the girls at Calypso’s—another one of Willow’s ‘traditions’—she always wanted to start a new tradition—“we should do this every Tuesday! This could be our thing!”—though it never happen more than twice before she latched on to something else. Otherwise, we defaulted to Noir, or Ennui or even Reckoner on especially dark days. All this, too, I kept from Jules.

            I never even told her about Emma’s date late into September, and how the next day at work I dragged my girlfriend into the bathroom stall, locked it and brushed back her hair, and saw the bruise the concealer couldn’t hide. Her smile was sad and accepting. She shrugged and didn’t cry, though I wanted to for her.

            That was Cindy’s first life; but her second life was also David’s life and spent with Julia; and Julia swiftly took charge.

            The playful ambivalence of our earlier days together was gone. She made that very clear that evening we met at Café d’Eon, the day after her return. There was no threat of handing me over to Steele, or turning me in to the police, or exposing my previous male identity. 

            “You do as I say,” she said. “Or we’re through.”

            We sat at our little table at the back of the café. We’d first sat here four months ago, when I tried to convince her that Cindy has always been a part of me—that David was the façade worn over my true self. I’d sweltered in the heat of a summer’s day, then, makeup almost sliding off my face, sweaty under the prissy costume I’d chosen to convince her of my newfound femininity. Today, I shivered with the chill of the late autumn’s evening, more rain dashing against the café’s wide windows.

            Julia had been so angry, then. So full of spite and resentment and bile that there’d been no possibility of reconciliation, let alone trust. If I’d allowed Julia to leave four months ago, she would’ve let someone—anyone—possibly everyone know that the new, pretty young woman in the office had been born male. She would’ve hated herself for doing it. But she would have equally gloried in my destruction.

            Instead, I revealed my disguise and exploited her hunger and bound her to me. She needed me, to feed her anger and kindle her passion.

            And now, I needed her.

            Julia sipped her chai. In her fitted charcoal suit and heels, she presented a mature contrast to the outfit she’d picked for me.  Serious and stern, but then she removed her blazer and her black top, satin sheen and fitted, bared her left shoulder and softened her look: stern yet feminine, and I envied her. She sat comfortably, leaning back in her chair and a smile tugged at her lips as she gazed at me over the rim of her cup.

            Meanwhile, under her gaze I squirmed in my seat, though only a little. My feet ached, after a day in stilettos. I wanted out of the skirt, the garter belt, the tightness that restrained my stride to a mincing trot. The stockings I didn’t mind so much—my legs looked fucking fantastic in them—but the clips holding them in place were shit, plastic rather than metal, and four garter straps fine for the bedroom but not a working day, probably the reason the undergarment ended up forgotten. All day long I’d made surreptitious adjustments to my stockings, twisting them back into place, or disappearing to the toilet to reclip. Meanwhile, the wholly-inappropriate-for-work thong disappearing up my crack ensured my ass felt uncomfortably chilly under the thigh-baring miniskirt she’d chosen for me. I’d taken special care all day to avoid flashing my privates, let alone stocking tops, to colleagues.

            Meanwhile, management insisted on keeping the ambient temperature just a couple of degrees too cold for scantily clad secretarial types like me. The men were fine, of course; the girls shivered all day. I’d have thrown on a jacket or something—but Julia hadn’t allowed me one. Meanwhile, the bra she’d picked, a gorgeous teal lace balconette, was more boudoir than boardroom and visible through the sleeveless, high-collared ivory blouse. The blouse buttoned at the back, tiny fiddly buttons that were a nightmare to do up with fashionable nails. My nipples poked clearly through all day.

            People noticed; I noticed people noticing; I spent most of the day in an uncomfortable flush. Constantly aware of the eyes of men and women, I bristled under their gaze and hid my discomfort behind a bashful grin that was one-part embarrassment to one-part feminine shrug, ‘like, what can you do?’ Remarkable, too, how in-demand I’d been in the office today, retrieving old files from low cabinets and delivering paperwork and coffees as I vainly held the back of my skirt down and minced about in heels that rivalled my skirt in length.

            So why’d I go along with it?  Because I knew where Julia was coming from.  Her intentions were clear; she told me, directly. “I want to humiliate you,” she said. “All day long, I want you to remember who’s in charge.” Equal parts humiliation to discomfort, my clothes were a constant reminder that I was, to put it bluntly, her bitch.

            Consequently, the thought of her never strayed far from mind. To be honest, even without the clothes my mind would’ve drifted back to her. She’d well and truly fucked me with that dildo last night. She’d dispelled the sexual fog of the previous weeks.  But in that fertile ground, she’d planted desire for more.

            “You look delicious,” Julia said. “So pretty in pink.”

            The hot chocolate was too sweet, adorned with sprinkles, marshmallows and whipped cream—she’d ordered for me. “What the fuck, Jules?” I grumbled, sitting with legs tightly crossed at the thighs. “I’ve been flashing headlights all day—Sarah even took me aside to warn me.” I blushed at the memory. “The office’s so cold and—”

            “Do you know why that is?” she interrupted. “The building’s environmental controls are run by a simple AI trained to constantly monitor who’s in the building and balance the temperature against current staffing levels. Fine. Women generally prefer the temperature to be warmer than men. Good. And there’s more women than men in the building, did you know that? A lot more, generally a 3:1 ratio. But then: why’s it always so goddamn cold?

            “So, I went poking around in the monitoring AI and you know what I found? Staff were given different weightings, based on perceived levels of responsibility—read, importance: Director? 10. Manager? 5. Secretary? 1—if even that. Cleaners barely register. Can you guess which jobs the men have, and which jobs the women have? Exactly. Can you guess who determined the weightings? Got it in one,” she explained. With nearly every floor male-dominated in the high value categories, especially following the takeover, it didn’t matter that women in administrative and secretarial roles outnumbered the men, not when it took ten secretaries to balance out one male asshole in the top job. And that’s why the temperature consistently skewed towards the male-preference of twenty-two Celsius vs women’s twenty-five.

            “Even if those fucking numbers were determined nearly a century ago,” Julia muttered. “And yes, the men can take off their jackets, and female staff are actually directed to wear skimpier clothing—but hey, let’s think about the men for a change, right? Because he’s worth it, he’s just so fucking worth it.” The last she spat venomously, face reddening with anger.

            I took a precarious sip of my hot chocolate, avoiding the slowly-melting mound of whipped cream. “Well, if you knew all that, why’d you dress me—”

            “Welcome to the patriarchy, David.”

            I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I get it; it sucks. Being female’s hard. But still, I look—” the word ‘sexy’ came to mind, “rude.”

            Her lips drew into a thin, displeased line. “Then go home,” she said. “Change. Wear whatever the hell you want.”

            I sighed. “And let me guess, I’ll never see you again?”

            She gave a curt nod.

            “Goddamn it, Julia, does it always have to be all-or-nothing?”

            At my words, her eyes flared. She leaned forward and spoke with chilling, restrained fury. “You hurt me, David. You hurt me—again.

            “Fourteen years ago, you fucked me and left me and ruined my life and I….”  She drew a hand across her face, and her earrings glittered and danced as she shook her head in disbelief. “I let you do it again. Two months and I believed—I wanted to believe—that you’d changed. That you weren’t the same selfish, arrogant bastard I’d left behind. And God, it was easy, so easy to fool myself, I mean, look at you!”

            She gestured with one hand, nails drawing purple arcs in the dim light as she indicated me, sat opposite, the very image of prissy pink femininity. “You had tits, for fuck’s sake! And when I found you in that bathroom stall you were this tiny pathetic little bundle, all tears and running makeup.”  Her eyes unfocused in recollection. A hint of a smile tugged at the angry corner of her lips. “And when I realised that it was you—and saw, afterwards, the clothes you wore and the way you performed at work or when we were out in public together?

            “It couldn’t all be an act, I told myself. You even told me it was an act, that you were doing it all unwillingly—but I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.  And I didn’t want to believe it, at least not entirely.  Because you were just so goddamn good at it. Good at being Cindy. I didn’t think any man could be that convincing. And I thought…

            “I thought….” She trailed off, and when she focused her gaze on me her eyes smouldered with anger again. “But no. All that time, it was you—the same toxic dickhead who’d left me all those years ago. You hadn’t changed; you haven’t changed at all.”

            I plucked at my diaphanous blouse to hide the fact my hand was trembling a little. “Why’d you come back, then?” I asked, voice soft, eyes downcast.

            “Look at me,” she said.

            I did.

            “Because I still have feelings for you,” she said, and just like that the hard ice of her eyes softened, melted – her eyes glistened.  But there was still anger there, too – anger at me, but also anger at herself.

            “I—”

            “No.” She held up a finger to silence me, and then after another deep breath, continued. “That guy in London? Cameron. He and I dated, university days, and we both wanted the same thing when we caught up with each other. We went to Paris together. Little boutique hotel on Isle-St-Denis. You asked if I fucked him?  Yes, we fucked. We fucked like bunnies, David.          

            “We’d take a little stroll along the bank of the Seine, or up the Champ Elysee and browse the boutiques. Then we’d pick up a bottle of wine, some cheese and a baguette, and head back to the hotel. We feed each other stinky, soft cheeses sitting by the balconette window and drink wine and fuck.” She watched me, checking for jealousy, for some kind of reaction. Meanwhile, I was thinking that while she was getting laid by this European boytoy, I too was getting impaled, my lips sealed tight around a boy’s cock.

            “And it was—fun.” She takes a deep breath. “And it was—unsatisfying.”

            I kept quiet.

            “This man was fucking me, and it felt nice, it felt good have a cock in me again, you know?” and the way she said it, her voice slid into that comfortable, conspiratorial space used by girls between each other: the exchange of feminine secrets, girl experiences outside the realm of men. I wanted to interrupt and remind her that no, actually, I didn’t know—but thought of Jonas, and swallowed uncomfortably.

            “And Cameron was… fine. Considerate. A bit quick on the foreplay, maybe. Energetic, a bit like a puppy. It all felt really good, really—healthy. Normal and safe, right? And he came, and I did too, though not every time but even when I didn’t it always felt… pleasant. But those time when I did cum and cried out? When it happened…” she trailed off and took a sip of her tea. Julia grimaced at the bitterness. “I was thinking of you.”

            I didn’t say anything; what could I say?

            “So, here’s the deal,” she said, as we finished our drinks. Julia still wanted me in her life. At least, that’s what she said. And after last night’s fucking, she knew I wanted her in mine.

            On that point, she was absolutely correct. I didn’t just want her—I needed her in my life, at least for a little longer.

            “But I don’t trust you,” she said.

            She was right not to trust me. I certainly couldn’t blame her for that.

            “I want to make sure you can never hurt me again,” she said. “Or any woman, for that matter. You’re a shitbag, David, even sitting there looking like a college boy’s wet dream, you’re still a toxic little bundle of selfish, arrogant…. And I want to….” She swallowed against the anger and bile building up; she leaned forward, eagerly.

            “We’re going to salvage the good bits, David. I’m going to erase every last bit of masculinity, manhood, I’m going to wipe away the man you were.” She spoke with such eagerness spittle flecks her lips. “And I’m going to teach you, David, whether you want to learn or not. Teach you to be a good person. No—to be a good girl. A gentle girl, demure and compliant, considerate and soft, maybe even kind—yes; the kind of girl who so easily gets hurt by men, by callous dickheads like you.”

            I weathered her withering barrage. “And what happens in five months, Jules, when I get my male life back?”

            She shrugged. “Not my problem.”

            “And if I say ‘no’?”

            “Then go,” she said, “But if you stay, you do it on my terms. You’ll submit, and you’ll never hurt me again.”

            I stayed, of course, although she was wrong: I would hurt her again and she, me.

            We finished our drinks in heavy silence. Then we returned to her place, with an agreement, an explicit recognition of her authority over me. We sealed the deal with my lips sealed around the dildo she’s bought me. I’d carried it around in my purse all day, flushing a hot crimson every time I had to dig something out, like my makeup or mirror or phone. Mel saw it in the bathroom, when I passed her a tampon; she grinned wickedly at me but kept silent.  My main fear was Julia sending me instructions to use it during the day. She’d sent plenty of other instructions: when to freshen up my makeup, where and what to eat for lunch.

            But no. Today, she waited until we were back at hers.

            My earlier reluctance to use that thing myself? Gone. Under her watchful, appraising eye, I knelt on a pillow in her living room in just my bra, panties and stockings, in front of a full-length mirror. With curt, specific instructions guiding me, I luxuriously fellated the dildo, licking and sucking and bobbing my head to the rhythm she set. When she ordered me to grab my tits, I did; and when she directed my hand between my legs, I found myself hot and wet.

            And when she ordered me face down in a pillow, ass in the air, I was ready for that, too and she took that realistic, fleshy toy and smoothly thrust it in once more, and almost instantly drew from my lips a rapturous cry.

            Afterwards, she ordered me a taxi and I got home late and exhausted, on wobbly legs with a series of instructions and a tight knot in my belly, one part anxious churning to another part perverse satisfaction.

            Looking back, there’s so much that amazes me about this period. The brevity of it, the intensity of that month. Not even a month: a short three weeks—twenty-one days that changed everything—changed me—utterly.

            The easy submission to her will, for one. Especially at the start, I saw through the fragility of her authority. She was scared and uncertain. Discipline and control did not come easily to Julia. She wanted to be strong and cruel, but she was at heart a good person and callousness did not come naturally to her. Though taking control wasn’t entirely new to her, dominating me was, and a tremor of uncertainty trembled her voice and weakened her resolve. Had I pushed back, our shared illusion, this fortress on a foundation of sand, would have wavered and collapsed.

            But I did not resist, not even with my tits squashed and face in pillow, breathing in hints of lavender and floor polish, ass in the air and embarrassment suffusing me to a degree I hadn’t thought possible. I endured and eventually, I enjoyed; she pushed my limits, and the ever-present shame only accentuated the pleasure that followed.  

            Those three weeks were an intensely confusing time. It was my ‘other life’, the one that ran parallel to Cindy’s but wasn’t part of it. Because it was David she wanted—of that, Julia was absolutely clear. David’s life; David’s punishment.

            Yet simultaneously it was Cindy’s company she desired, for it was her vision of the girl that she was moulding me into that justified her vindictiveness.

            From that first night onwards, I did whatever Julia demanded. And the thing that took me most by surprise? With one or two exceptions, I don’t know if I’d ever been happier.

            We were back to her picking out my clothes, makeup, or sending me off to the salon for my hair or nails. I was her dress-up doll again, though this time with the guardrails off. And I was fine with that too. She kept a remarkable mental inventory of my wardrobe and dresser, bolstering it with purchases of her own.  Maybe my weeks at the Clinic had prepped me for this. Or maybe, knowing the intense pleasure that inevitably followed her dominance put my doubts to rest. Over those three weeks, she well and truly fucked David many times.

            And so, even knowing what came next, I can’t help but look back at this phase of our relationship with joy. I keep telling myself this. It really was an amazing three weeks: crazy and thrilling, humiliating and endlessly challenging. Some of the things she had me do… or wear… especially in the privacy of her place, or mine; I blush to remember.

            Equally, the sex was fantastic; some of the best of my life. I remained David enough for Julia to draw her own pleasure from what we were doing, and when she eventually gave me permission to go down on her, or finger her, or fuck her with the dildo, she also moaned and cried out and our shared feminine pleasure was beautiful.

            Before, our sex had always centred around me, my penis and the promise of penetration. Now, I think we discovered in our exploration of each other a new, sapphic enjoyment. The softness of our chests pressed up against each other; her lips at a nipple; long hair intermingling, tickling bared shoulders; a gentle touch to the back of a knee; hands at a throat; grinning lips gleaming with lipstick; taste of makeup; a sharp slap to the ass; bite at the thigh; fingers—one, two, sometimes more, slowly thrusting; gentle circles; the final press; our moans, merging in an ecstatic music. At times, in our lovemaking she called me by another girl’s name. Once, she cried in doing so and I held her close, our naked bodied pressed together, breast to breast until her tears stopped.

            She loved the pleasure I brought her; she hated the fact it was me. Her emotions made the pleasure all the more intense, for both of us. She made it clear the savage joy she took in bringing me—bringing David—to these peaks of female ecstasy: my little yips of pleasure, gasps, and bared-teeth hisses interrupted by: “you like that, you little bitch?” “sissy,” “slut.”

            “Beg for it,” she spat, and I did, every time.

            What would’ve happened, I wonder, if we’d just left it at that? How long could we have sustained this strange and twisted relationship? Not much longer, I think.

            I learned to love having her in charge; I was fine with that. More than fine; my submission enabled pleasures I couldn’t have otherwise accepted. Truth was, after that first fucking, I was hers. I yearned for her—she could do whatever the hell she wanted, so long as it ended with her visiting that pleasure on me again. For some reason, she was the only one who could get me off. I couldn’t manage it on my own, and I wasn’t about to invite anyone else to try. The fact it never again felt as intensely powerful and conflictingly powerful as that first time was just more reason to keep trying and recapture that first hit.

            Being with her reminded me of the photoshoot back at the Clinic: trussed up, tightly bound, restrained at someone else’s mercy. Voluntarily giving up control—able to take it back at will—up to a point—taking comfort in the transient illusion of willing consent until the moment the gag went in, the arms bound, and agency torn away like a page from a book read in a foreign language. Limited by fear, in the fierce grip of the corset and my own ego, I hadn’t fully grasped this new truth. But under Julia’s tutelage, I came to an awareness of just how liberating it could be, submitting myself to another’s will.

            So long as I could stop it when I wanted to. And by the time I wanted off this ride, it was too late—that page had been ripped out, the gag was in, and I’d lost control.

            Perhaps more significantly: Julia couldn’t sustain it. Even by the end of the first week, I started to sense the signs of strain. The pallor; the hesitation. The exhaustion setting in as she tried to dominate my life without losing track of her own. Her world was already stressful enough without me in it. Work was grinding her down and though she wouldn’t share those stresses with me, she sure as hell couldn’t keep herself from taking frustration out on my hide.

            But where did it start?

            It started with a shopping trip, of course.

Three: Magic Mirror

Julia wanted to wipe out the remaining traces of masculinity she saw in me. Lurking behind those c-cup mounds jiggling on my chest, the curve of my hips or flowing hair, she detected traces of the man I used to be. And that man, she wanted to punish. That man, she wanted to make suffer. And what better agony, she thought, than trapping him in a humiliating prison of lace and satin, frills and bows, in public view? Tight and slinky or flowing and flouncy—lingerie and dresses to rehabilitate the reprobate, in her mind, one prong of a multi-fronted assault on those final remnants of David Saunder.

            And so, to the mall.

            I felt a little guilty, to be honest. From the very start, she tried so hard—like, really, really hard to be this tough, hard-as-nails bitch, stiff-backed, stern-voiced, thin-lipped and frigid, ordering me about and taking control of my life. No doubt she picked that pink-and-black jumpsuit, a relic from the Clinic hanging in my closet, and paired it with pink pumps and black knee-high socks, to embarrass me. And, like sure—it just screamed ‘girly’, the way it hugged my ass and flashed my thighs. Ostentatious as well, at least compared to her casual jeans and t-shirt, a sort of prissy prep-school vibe.

            But I fucking rocked that little outfit, with a toss of my mane and a swipe of dramatic winged eyeliner in the style Emma taught me. Heads turned to follow my prancing walk and I was fine with that, I was used to it by this point and frankly, if I’d been out with Mel, Emma and Willow they probably would’ve picked something worse. That’s the thing Julia didn’t understand; she was already behind the curve. I’d already had a month’s self-flagellating mortification by this point. I’d had a boy’s cock in my mouth—three times! A trip to mall? For fuck’s sake, this wasn’t punishment—this was fun.

            But thinking of the girls also brought guilt. I’d had to brush them off to be with Julia. Scheduling the weekend was tight, trying to run my two parallel lives. Last night Friday, end-of-week drinks with the girls at Reckoner near work getting shitfaced on caffeine-laced Paranoid Android cocktails decorated with tiny fake plastic trees. Tartarus nightclub afterwards; dancing and boys and Mel desperate to get laid. Today with Julia: morning shopping, apparently, with the rest of the day a mystery. Then Sunday: I reserved the morning for myself, though I knew Julia expected me back at hers in the late afternoon and evening for a feminine surprise. Then Home. Prep for the coming week. Crash.

            Jesus.

            Couple this with mostly-full weekdays as well—working late with Mr Connor one night, Tuesday drinks, back to Julia’s, maybe a date at Noir, maybe shopping—and those lonely weekday nights, sat alone staring out across the city until late began to feel a distant memory. I had to fall back on age-old excuses more than once: no, sorry, I can’t, I’m washing my hair—handwash my underwear—or the one a pretty young girl apparently just couldn’t say: I just need a goddamn night to myself. Most startling of all, it was true. I did need an evening to properly wash, condition, brush out and dry my hair, or clean the ever-present, always-growing pile of delicate bras, stockings, and panties. And yeah, I did need some goddamn time to myself. For reasons.

            It was exhausting—fucking exhausting—and exhilarating—wonderfully exciting, this deluge of demands on Cindy’s life. I’d never been so popular. David kept busy, sure, with work, with working out, the occasional formal date and most weekends hitting the bars. But not like this; never like this. Looking back, I’m not sure how I got through it all except that Cindy seemed to have endless reserves of energy. No matter what those three weeks threw at her, I bounced back. Until the end, that is. And even then: I still dragged myself to work the next day, made it to that Halloween party, and got the job done.

            Who knew twenty-year old chicks were so goddamn resilient?

            We hit up the first couple of shops: a blouse for work for Julia, a miniskirt and a few flouncy, frilly or revealing tops for me. A little cosmetics shopping: even after nine months, I still found approaching those counters with their mirrors and endless rainbow of pots and pads and sticks of colour both daunting and baffling, but Julia was there to take charge—even if I didn’t agree with her choices.

            She sat me at the counter while Debbie, a burbling, overly-made up woman in her late twenties—who looked like she was in her mid-thirties—reeking of strong perfume gleefully attacked my face. By the third round my cheeks felt raw under heavy, cheap makeup, garish, bright and colourful—fashionable, the woman insisted, painting my lips in another layer of gloss, like, just so girls your age sexy am I right?—as I silently glared murder at Julia standing to one side, who didn’t even bother to hide her smirk.

            Eventually, laden with shopping bags dangling from the crook of both elbows bouncing against my hips with each step, we succumbed to the first wave of consumerist fatigue. We found a coffee shop. Julia went to the counter for a pair of lattes. Perched on the tall stools at the long counter at the window overlooking the interior mall, I waited and watched the buzz of humanity flowing past.

            Assholes in jobs like David’s and Julia’s predicted the death of shopping decades ago, and they were wrong—like, so wrong. Endless pundits, articles in trade magazines, op-eds and online commentary: from assumptions about the decline of consumer capitalism to post-pandemic collapse of the public space, so-called experts declared the mall dead and buried, nothing to see here, folks.

            The crowds milling through the mall never read the obituary, apparently. Grey skies the colour of an administrator’s soul churned above the vaulting ceiling of the atrium, a tower of polarised glass sharply glinting in the morning light. Stretching out from our coffee-shop eyrie, three floors of consumerist glory extended into the solar-lit distance, storefront signs promising a good deal, a new you, the experience of a lifetime, game of the year, innovation, dreams, beauty, a better everything—hope, if you could afford it.

            Decades ago, sure, stores struggled, and brands died; malls closed. But they all came back, with a vengeance, with new names, branding, IPs, USPs, freebies, virtual tech, AI and good old-fashioned young, sexy staff.

            After all, the shopping mall offered something online shopping and digital experience couldn’t: weaponized nostalgia married to the physical experience and dopamine hit of buying shit. You didn’t go to the bookstore to buy a book—you went there to sit, read expensive coffees shat out a civet’s ass and to feel and be seen looking clever. Clothes—even for the boys, but especially for the girls, a truism through history—were always about the experience, now even more so: the changing room parade, the free drinks, sizing and recommendations, the social experience.

            But maybe most of all, the mall become a place to escape—shelter from the heat or cold of extreme weather, or periodic social isolation, or the collapse of state infrastructure: corporate, climate-controlled consumerist bunkers in a world that increasingly felt like a shitshow for the youngest and disillusioned.

            Nave, transept, and ambulatory; and glittering chapels ringing it all raised to beauty, hair, nail and makeup: a cathedral raised in glory to consumerism, thronged with adherents moving like pilgrims from one prayerful experience to the next.

            I sat and watched as a group of young women laughed, sparkling and happy, eyes flicking across my outfit, assessing, judging as they passed. A group of boys wandered by as well, openly staring at my long legs resplendent in their pink heels. Their assessment was somewhat ruder. One boy laughingly flashed me a V, flicking his tongue between upthrust fingers. I rolled my eyes, licked my lips and mouthed ‘fuck off’.

            When Julia returned with our drinks, I was fiddling with the pink bow decorating my sock cuffs. She sat and scrolled through a list on her phone.

            “What’s that?” I asked.

            Julia looked up from the screen. “Bucket list.”

            “Bucket list?”

            “All the things I didn’t get to do in my twenties,” she said. “All the fun stuff, girly stuff I missed out on because some dickhead fucked me up so badly, I could barely cope with life, let alone enjoy it.”

            “Oh.”

            Her tone is surprisingly friendly, even if her eyes are not. “And guess what? You get to be my proxy. I’m going to live out those parts of my twenties I never got to do the first time around. Through you. How does that sound?”

            And because I couldn’t say—no, no thank you, you crazy bitch, instead I took a sip of my latte and forced a glossy smile over a coffee cup rim, stained coral with lip-prints. To be honest, it was kind of reassuring hearing her explicitly state her intentions. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who’d changed during her month away. This is what she’d wanted to do from the very start.

            Maybe, at first, she’d repressed the instinct. Maybe, before, she couldn’t admit to herself what she really wanted. Because all those outfits, the ever-more extreme clothes she forced on me, from skanky to sexy, cute to lewd, flouncy to tight and restrictive? I think she wished she could wear them herself. And with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder: did she envy the other things she did to me?

            I didn’t protest. “If that’s what you want then… yes. I mean, sure, but—” and here I plucked at the sleeve of the outfit she’d picked out for me— “why proxy? Like, this outfit? You’d look awesome in it.”

            Julia wrinkled her nose. “Fifteen years ago, maybe.”

            “No, now,” I insisted, and nearly called her ‘babe’ and remembered I wasn’t sat opposite Willow or Emma. And I suppose she had a point; it was a young-woman’s style, flashy and cute and not really Julia’s thing. But then, I’m not sure it would’ve been Julia thing fifteen years ago, either.

            “So, what else is on the list?” I ask.

            She smiled wickedly. “You’ll find out soon enough,” and drained her coffee.  “Come on—we’ve got lingerie shopping to get done.”

            We traipsed along the busy corridors to the first shop. Her sneakers squeaked a counterpoint to the delicate tap of my footfall. I struggled to keep up, the floors slippery beneath my heels, burdened by all those bags hanging from the crook of my arms. My hair flounced with each step, earrings jounced and I couldn’t imagine a more stereotypical display of femininity.

            The lingerie shop—or rather, the first one—was trashy and cheap; ie, Cindy’s kind of place, Julie pointed out to me. With panties in packs of three, and bras in vivid colours and lurid patterns, made from fabrics that scratched the skin, it was just about the kind of place I could afford.

            “I don’t need any more bras,” I said.

            “We’re not here for the bras. Though we might as well pick you up a few. We’re here for the sizing.”
            I rolled my eyes. “I know my size.”

            “No, you think you know your size. Trust me. You’ll thank me later.”

            Trust her? Unlikely. But she was proven right: a young girl took me aside and with deft professionalism measure me and declared me an 86cm underbust, 95cm bust; or more traditionally, a 34C at the cusp of graduating to a D-cup. She recommended the larger cup-size and a little silicon cutlet for padding.

            “Shit,” I muttered.

            Julia couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “Surprised?”

            “Yeah.” I glowered at the bustier she passed me, a lightly boned brash thing in sparkly purple and pink, four removable garters with cheap plastic tabs loosely dangling. “I thought…”

            “What, you were a different size?”

            “No. I knew my size. They measured me at the Clinic. I am—I was, six weeks ago—just under 89cm around the ribcage. My tits were a modest C. They’ve gotten bigger.” I glowered at the tag on the item in my grip. “I thought those chemicals had done their thing. They’re meant to be slowing down. They’re meant to… to stop, and go away, so that I can….”

            “So you can—what?” Julie asked.

            But I couldn’t answer her.

            She frowned, looked away and didn’t pursue it any further. Instead, Julia became sullen, her mood matching mine. The next few shops she dragged me into—first another lingerie shop, this one far more upscale, and then one specialising in swimwear—should’ve been joyful for her. Surely this was peak satisfaction, watching her ex-boyfriend model bras and panties, suspender belts and boudoir fashion.

            And though she perked up a bit at the sight of me in a deep-purple and black number inspired (apparently) by the artwork of Fuseli, cuffs and links dully glimmering in gold and costing more than I made in a week—I probably enjoyed it more than she did. My mood quickly lifted. Turning this way and that in the pink-lit mirrors and seeing myself reflected in triplicate, I couldn’t deny I looked tasty: dark and brooding and bound in straps of ebony and gold. Like, if Jonas saw me like this, he’d probably have a stroke. And if Chad saw me in this—or Mr Connor, even!—I exhaled as I stroked my flanks beneath the grip of straps and buckles and imagined stronger hands there, a firm grip, a tight embrace.

            Julia, meanwhile, could barely summon up the energy to pick out a tiny string bikini for me in gold. I gripped the scraps of fabric in my hand and vowed to never wear it. Nine months as Cindy and I hadn’t had reason to go swimming yet, and I saw no reason for that to change. I then noticed her glum expression and grinned. Holding it up to her, I said: “I mean, yeah, I’d look awesome in this but know what? So would you.”

            She frowned but bought it anyway and led me out of the shop.

            Her mood switched instantly when she spotted an upscale boutique on the higher, more upscale floor of the mall. A quick escalator trip and we stood outside Hestia.

            “Okay.  Now this should be interesting,” she said.

            I eyed the shop. It looked expensive; expansive and well-decorated with a somewhat pretentious mythological theme going on, mannequins on pedestals like classic statues modelling overpriced though elegant evening wear for men and women (though mostly women). “What’s so special about this place?”

            “Come,” she said, grabbing me by the hand and leading me in. We passed through the ubiquitous security scanners and under quiet cameras into the store, and she pulled me towards a large, full-body mirror set in an alcove modelled after a Grecian shrine from antiquity. “This is one of ours,” she said.

            “A mirror?”

            “No,” Julia said, and her voice filled with pride. “Much more than a mirror. You know those display screens you’ve seen in other shops? The ones that project your image, let you try on virtual outfits without the bother of doing it for real?”

            I nodded. Useful, though the girls preferred the physical experience, the changing booth scramble, the awkward fit, the giggling reveal.

            “And you’ve probably had a few that made recommendations—A.I. powered ones offering in-stock shopping suggestions?”

            I nodded.  “Yeah. They suck.” I remembered my smart apartment at the Clinic, the wardrobe and its struggle to determine who I wanted to be. “Mostly.”

            “Not anymore,” she said, and stepped in front of the mirror. “This is one of ours; one of mine, really. My team’s been developing this for the past few years, and we’re trialling it in select stores. It’s all hush hush, a bit of on-the-side R&D I’ve been running with my team.

            “This screen’s linked into every camera’s that’s tracked us since we’ve entered. That’s at least eight separate feeds, each providing a unique data stream to the AI we’ve trained to run this thing. I’ve also arranged for special access to the whole mall’s security system, so that data’s available, too, hundreds of visual data streams to analyse. It’s also tapped our phones, any smart devices we’ve got enabled, and digs through any socials we’ve got set to public access. And if the project gets the go-ahead, we’ll tie all this to a proper data harvester service, access some of that juicy deep data on the consumer, everything from dating profiles to location services.”

            The mirror in front of her faded to a foggy grey—not a mirror, but a screen.

            “Now, the software I’ve developed brings this all together, connecting social media data with media res data, linked to the latest in facial and body recognition software. It’s analysing behaviour patterns exhibited during our time in the mall, and since walking through that entranceway. Teasing out correlations and trends. And it feeds this through its millions of parameters and….”

            The fog on the screen faded, and there stood Julia, or rather a digital projection of her. She wore an elegant midnight blue halter dress, a sheer lace panel veiling her bosom, and star-burst patterns exploded in glittering gold sequins across her waist and skirt. The dress swept down to her ankles and a single high slit revealed medium-height heels and sparkling dark nylons. The image moved as she moved; and she looked amazing.

            Julia beamed with pride. “It’s recommending this dress because it knows I’ve booked theatre tickets for a show in a few weeks. It’s chosen something at a price point it knows I can afford. The style and colours are influenced by the recognition software that slots me into one of thirty-two distinct consumer groups—we’re working on making that more granular, feed it more data to create exponentially more specific and identifiable consumer types, segregated by gender, age, class, race, occupation—by where and what they eat, hobbies and holiday locations, the movies they enjoy and who they fuck.” She smiled. “Correlations between these data points create ever more precise recommendations, and purchasing patterns can return ever more relevant and applicable data back to the store owners.”

            Hands on hips, she turned this way and that a few times and gave a single, curt not. “I’m going to buy this.” Then she hesitated, gnawing on her lower lip, and turned to me. “What do you think? It’s not too… much?”

            “It’s perfect,” I said and meant it.

            Julia nodded, seeming pleased as she stepped away.  “Your turn.”

            The screen fogged over, like a magic mirror from a fairy tale, and the mists churned portentously. Plucking nervously at my hair, I glanced aside at Julia, who frowned slightly. “Is it working?”

            “Give it time,” she said. “We’ve had some buffering problems.”

            The fogs parted. And there I stood—in a man’s suit.

            The digital image only lasted a few seconds. But for that time, Cindy stood cross-dressed in a tailored men’s suit, navy blue and pinstriped, cut to slender curves, standing solidly in wingtips with a heavy watch at her waist.  She wore a pastel tie and a crisp, light blue men’s shirt, curves minimized by her blazer, single button fastened beneath her breasts. Heels and hose peeked out from her trouser legs. A darker shade of blonde swept her shoulder, and her makeup was subdued. Undeniably female, but incongruously so, and my heart hammered in my chest at the sight.

            Just as quickly, the projection flickered: Cindy, almost spilling out of a sparkly pink minidress, thin straps over her shoulder, pigtails and shiny lips, cork wedge heels. It wavered and flickered again: flared jeans, tight bum, Sin-DI concert t-shirt and peep-toed stilettos. And again: knee high boots, beige skirt, curvy under a tight sweater and wide belt, autumn colours trench coat and a cute beret. Then Cindy, again in boyish clothes with a feminine flair, cargo shorts, baggy shirt, short-cropped hair but bright lipstick and long, painted nails.

            I looked to Julia. “What happening?”

            “I—don’t know.” She looked pained. “It’s… confused.” She frowned. “You’re confusing it.”

            The screen wavered a final time. Once more a mirror, it reflected just me: pink-and-black jumpsuit, loose-flowing hair, bared thighs and arms and an open expression of mild panic.

            Julia stared at it for a long time, frowning until she sighed and declared, “Let’s get out of here.”

            By the time we returned to Julia’s condo that afternoon, I was tired, rattled, hungry and desperate for a drink. She provided for two of those. She ordered in some Thai food and cracked open a chilled Chardonnay.

            “So, now what?” I asked, sinking deep into her sofa. My feet ached after their hours in heels. Spreading my arms across the back of the sofa, head back and staring at the ceiling, I was suddenly and powerfully reminded of my first time here. Then, too, my feet ached and my soul felt heavy. That night finished with the two of us, arms and legs entwined in sweaty slumber in her bed, moonlight dancing against our naked skin.

            Julia checked her list. She smiled, her face lit from below by the tablet screen glow. “We eat,” she said. “We drink. We get dressed, do each other’s makeup. Gossip like twenty-year-olds about boys and shit like that. And then we go out.”
            I groaned. “Really?”

            “Really,” she said.

            Yes, really, and we spent the next few hours getting ready for a girls’ night out. And it was—fun, I had to grudgingly admit, if somewhat desperately so. Different, than doing the same with Mel and Emma and Willow. Julia layered everything with a healthy dose of self-deprecating irony and wry sensibility: the woman nearing forty playing at being half her age, opposite the man performing the vivacious girlfriend. We emptied out the day’s shopping bags. We drank white wine spritzers. She asked me if any guys had caught my eye at work, and I retorted by asking about her London fling.

            She gazed at me curiously. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” One finger slid back and forth along the edge of her glass of wine. “This boyfriend, this other guy.”

            “Not at all,” I said, and meant it.

            “Is it the fucking?” Julia smiled. “God, I needed a good fuck. Needed a cock inside of me, know what I mean?”

            “I’m happy for you,” I said. “Really. And no, I don’t. Know what you mean, that is.”

            “If you say so.” She drained her glass, poured herself another. “Because you sure sounded like someone who enjoys a bit of cock inside you the other night.”

            I reddened and declined to answer.

            “Shit, it’s getting late.” She reached into one of the shopping bags and tossed me the purple-and-pink bustier from earlier today.

            I opened the box and unwrapped the garment from its crepe paper wrapping. I held it up and grimaced. “Really?”

            She grinned. “Really.”

            “Not fair,” I grumbled, stripping.

            “Tonight, I’m the classy older sister.” She held a red dress up against her frame, a gorgeous item way out of my price range, bought earlier today at the kind of boutique where the woman behind the counter eyed Cindy with undisguised distrust. Julia turned this way and that in the mirror. Clearly, she liked what she saw, and smiled. “You’re the trashy younger sister.”          

            We ate noodles as we dressed. Julia brushed out my hair. Long hair, I’d realised long ago, was equal part nightmare and fantasy. It looked awesome; drew compliments; and stroking it—or having it stroked—could feel divine.

            But maintaining it was a goddamn pain in the ass and brushing out the tangles hurt like fucking hell. I swear, I spent as much time keeping this mane under control as I spent working out in the morning. More than once, I’d been tempted to hack my mane back to shoulder length. Drunk, I’d too often held scissors or a sharp knife to my scalp. Or my breasts. Sometimes, in my deepest drunkenness, even lower. Stared at myself in the mirror. Dared myself, dared Cindy.

            “Ow!”

            “Oh, quit whining, you little sissy,” Julia said, not unkindly. She continued brushing, and I worked at my nails, cleaning off the day’s colour. “My dad used to brush out my hair when I was a kid. Every day. Not my mom but my dad, even though she’s the one who wanted me to grow out my hair.” Her voice softened and deepened, each stroke slowing and becoming longer.

            “Mom loved long hair. Even at the end, at the hospital, she smiled at me around all those tubes, at my hair, so beautiful, she said, thank you, and tried to stroke it but she was so weak she could barely lift her hand. Please keep it, she said, always. I don’t know why. But she’d always been a bit obsessive about the most peculiar things.

            “And at the start, when she first got sick, when she was so tired she couldn’t get out of bed some days, Dad took over brushing my hair. Then I’d go show her if I was allowed into her room. Seeing me with my hair brushed out and shining always brought a smile to her face. Almost always. Not so much near the end.”

            The brush ceased its motion as she took a meditative sip of wine. “Eight years old, and my dad’s trying to yank this comb through my hair, starting from the top, dragging all the tangles through. I remember crying.  It hurt. He didn’t know what he was doing. But every day it got easier. It hurt less.

            “By the time I turned nine he was a pro. Every day, we’d sit, in the morning and again at night and he’d brush out my hair and he rarely said anything but his presence behind me, every day, that solidness, stability… we were together, and that meant something. Especially after mom was gone.”

            Her voice wavered. “But I grew up. And as a teenager, you know, I didn’t have time for that kind of shit. Especially after I went off the rails for a bit, after mom died. He missed our time together, missed brushing my hair. So did I, though I couldn’t admit it, obviously. He asked to brush my hair once, when I was fourteen and I told him to fuck off, to stop trying to control me. Who did he think I was, my mother? I said.”

            She resumed brushing. “It was a cruel thing to say. It hurt him, and I remember how warm that made me feel, powerful to be able to hurt someone like that, just with words. Afterwards I felt sick but in the moment, watching him as he crumbled into himself… that was the first time I realised my own capacity for cruelty.”  The brush paused, and I heard and felt her heavy sigh. “I’d give anything to have that time with him again. Now, I’m lucky if he fucking remembers who I am when I visit.”

            “I’m sorry,” I said. My nails were clear, denuded of their earlier pink. I laid my hand flat on the table and stretched out my fingers. “I didn’t know.”

            “Yeah. Well.”  She gave a final, angry stroke of the hairbrush. “You never asked.”

            She picked a glittery bright purple for my nails. I suggested she go for the metallic silver, and she agreed. Then she revealed another of her purchases: press-on nails, quick-binding and high quality but far longer than I’d ever wear.

            “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

            “Like I said, cruel,” she answered, breaking the kit open.

            Afterwards, acetone sharpness balanced against the slightly floral scent of her more upscale polish as we got to work on our nails. At first, we painted in diligent silence until Julia said, nonchalant as she fanned her fingers: “You know, you never did tell me what happened with Dan.”

            “How do you mean?”

            “Your date. The one I set up. You texted me from the toilet, said you couldn’t do it—then you disappeared to your Clinic. After, you told me nothing happened—but what did happen?”

            “Like I said—nothing.” I smiled wanly at her. “And… everything, I guess.”

            She cocked an eyebrow and waited.

            So I told her—skimming some details, obviously, like the confrontation with Steele’s man, Jeff—about the whole ordeal. Dan’s late arrival. Steak and mushrooms, red wine and tedious conversation. The guy’s arrogance and dismissiveness, and how he kept cutting me off until I said something he deemed worthy of his attention. The walk back to his. Making out under late-night halogen streetlight.

            “You kissed him?”

            “I mean, yeah, sure, you could call it kissing, I guess, if you want to be polite.” I grimaced in recollection. “He was all over me. Tongue down my throat. Hands on my thighs, my tits. The whole way up the elevator, and the hallway, and his condo.” My blush wasn’t entirely for show, and I left out that it hadn’t been just Dan, I’d hardly played passive victim en route to the evening’s conclusion. “I was terrified he’d find the secret under my dress.”

            At this point, telling this story ten months into living Cindy’s life, I was way beyond worrying whether kissing a man was gay or something: I’d crossed that line in the sand so long ago, I couldn’t remember even drawing it. Those session with Crystal a few months back had expunged the seething guilt and shame I’d suppressed. Mostly. What happened, happened. I was fine with it.

            Yeah. But.

            This was different. Julia wasn’t some counsellor. We’d dated; she’d fallen in love with me. She knew me as male; she wanted to punish me as one. She yearned to see the humiliation implicit in disguising a heterosexual man as a woman and having him submit to another man’s advances.  Under that heavy expectation, I once again felt the implications of my actions. Doubt gnawed at me, and I gazed at my glittery purple fingernails and felt the clinch of the bustier, my boobs all but spilling out of its cups and wondered, again, how I’d ended up here.          

            “And that was it?” she asked. She started on the other hand, confident strokes varnishing her nail to a vivid mirrored sheen.

            “No,” I snapped. Not particularly enjoying the conversation, I started on my other hand, too. The polish was cheap; it didn’t flow well, and I was getting frustrated. Julia raised an eyebrow, her expression a clear warning. “No,” I repeated, mollifying my tone. “We drank, we made out on the sofa, he knocked the ball out of the park and made first base, second and was approaching third and wanted—well, you know what he wanted. So did I.”

            “You wanted it, too?”

            “No!” I glared at her. “I meant I knew what he wanted.”

            “Sure,” she said. “Freudian slip.”

            I swallowed a sharp retort and instead muttered, “Obviously, nothing could happen.”

            “Why not?” Her eyes sparkled with mirth.

            “Because I still had a cock back then.”

            “Oh yeah,” she said. “I forgot.”

            I rolled my eyes. “So instead—”

            “Yes?”

            I mimicked fellating him, lips a moist circle, tongue tenting my cheek.

            “You said—”

            “Yeah. I tried; couldn’t do it. So drunk the whole room’s spinning. And there I was between his legs wearing—well, something like this,” I said, indicating the bustier and fishnets she had me wearing, “but nicer, you remember that lingerie you strapped me into. Black and crimson, really classy-like, and I had my heels on, tits out and on my knees, and….”

            She leaned forward and maybe it was the wine, but she’d gone a bit red in the face.

            “I couldn’t do it.” I shook my head, long hair dancing around my shoulders. “Jerked him off instead. Into my favourite pair of stockings, if you can believe it.” I still mourned their loss—they’d been my best pair.

            Julia stared at me for a long moment, eyes bright and hard, and her lips trembled somewhere between a sneer and a laugh. “Oh—David. This is perfect!” she said.

            My stomach churned with Thai noodles, wine spritzer and fear. “How do you mean?”

            “Tonight,” she said, and I swear she would’ve clapped her hands together in glee if those silvered talons weren’t still drying. “Tonight’s going to be Cindy’s big night. We’ll hit the bars. Pick up some guy. And tonight, Cindy’s going down on her first man, and I’m going to watch.”

            And because that’s what Julia wanted, that’s what happened.

Four: Noir, part 1

That night, we looked hot. Or rather Julia did, crimson halter top maxi dress, bare back criss-crossed by slender straps, gold chain belt, and those Byzantium earrings and bracelets gifted by a foreign lover. I looked—cheap?—next to her, flashy and younger certainly—as I fidgeted in a sparkly, sequined miniskirt over fishnet thigh highs paired with that bustier. Her makeup was bold, mine was brash; her earrings classy, mine were dangling purple hoops. Julia presented as mature and confident and strong, and I was the over-compensating little sister barely in control of the flirty signals she flashed.

            “This isn’t fair,” I hissed, perched opposite her at our table. We were at Noir, the first bar I’d ever visited as Cindy. She knew that; she also knew it was a popular pick-up haunt for men with money to flash and aspirational girls looking to hook their claws into a success story. Over the months I’d become a semi-regular here, though not so often with the girls. It wasn’t really their kind of place. Willow felt out of place, it made Mel angry, and Emma had bad memories of an awful night here. Me? I kinda loved it.

            “Why?”

            “Why?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. “Look at me.  I look….” I searched for the word: “indecent.”

            She laughed. “How very classist of you. I didn’t realise Cindy was such a snob.”

            “Fine. Cheap, then.”

            “Like an office assistant on minimum pay?”

            I glared at her. “Very funny, Jules. I’m poor, not cheap. You could’ve let me—”

            “What?”

            “Pick—” a dozen better outfits jumped to mind, and I flushed under my makeup. My foundation was too heavy, bordering on orange and left a carrot-coloured crescent at the nape of my neck, beneath the taut pull of hair drawn up into a high ponytail. My lips felt tacky. Purple plastic bangles the colour of my nails clinked against the table. And that fucking choker she’d fixed at my neck! It was all so embarrassing. “I dunno. A dress. Something pretty.”

            “You want to wear a dress?” Her smile grew. “Do my ears betray me? David Saunders wishes he wore a pretty dress on a night out. What, something slinky? Or flowing? Maybe a nice mini?”

            “What you’re wearing would do fine.”

            “Well, too bad.”         

            “I feel ridiculous,” I grumbled, and fluttered press-on eyelashes. They were too long, heavy with glittery mascara and driving me fucking crazy. It was all I could do to resist peeling them off my lids then and there, though I probably would’ve stabbed my eyes out with those tacky press-on nails.
            “Good,” she stated flatly. “You’re twenty, it’s about fucking time you start dressing and acting like it. No wonder my magic mirror freaked out! You’ve still steeped in the privilege of a thirty-nine-year-old man. You’re not some classy lady on her way to the opera. You’re a goddamn kid! You should be experimenting, pushing boundaries. Following trends and trying to impress. You should be filled with constant anxiety and still figuring out who the hell you are.”

            She stood, leaving me perched on my stool. “I’m going to buy us some drinks. You sit there, and stick those D-cup titties out, and flash a pretty smile at any dreamy men that wander by.” The stubborn petulance she saw in my glare made her pause. “I mean it. I’ll be watching from the bar. Now lick your lips and make eye contact with someone.”
            “Fuck you,” I muttered under my breath after she was gone. “I’m still a C-cup.” Julia’s messed-up, anxiety-fuelled childhood had me living out her memories, and I didn’t like it one bit. Living as a girl was one thing, but… this? I stretched out my fingers, fanning too-long, too bright nails. Then I hooked those too-tall heels into the stool, arched my back, licked my lips and looked around.

            The place wasn’t too busy, not for a Saturday night but then typically it was more of an after-work crowd, this place. The weekend DJ went in a little harder than Tuesday evening ambient chill, but it wasn’t exactly pounding clubland beats. The clientele here might enjoy dancing, but it wasn’t what they’d came for tonight.

            I liked Noir despite the memories of that first night. David preferred a good, dark pub, oak paneling, bottles of Scotch lined up neatly behind the counter, and good beers on tap; but this kind of place came a solid second. It was familiar. It felt good. As David, it would’ve felt comfortable—no, more than that.

            Noir always brought to mind anticipation and arrogance, the cocky strut and cocksure smile, strutting up to the bar, leaning in, flashing a bright smile and flashing an expensive watch at the wrist, tailored suit sleeve, a sharp comment, one half insult to compliment, confidence. And always, in return, the bright-eyed response, the curve of shiny lips, glossy cheeks, and—yes, the inviting gesture, tucking hair behind the ear, swiveling at the hip, the pink tip of tongue caught between bright teeth. I didn’t have to imagine it: I could see it happened in real-time around me.

            Once, I came to places like this to get laid. If Jules had her way, I still would.

            Thing is, even if Julia wanted me to smile at the boys it was still the girls I noticed first, the pretty, trendy or try-hard young women, some clustered in small groups of two or three, one or two floating solo at the bar, most already paired up with some guy. There was a mixed group of eight or ten in the corner booth celebrating the end of a major project, from the looks of it, all young but tired looking. String lights glinted in swirls along the wall, and at each smaller table or booth decorative tealight candles in decorative glass bulbs cast pale sphere of light. Yes, I saw the girls: painted lips, eyes shimmering, and their dresses and skin glimmered in subdued hues; we were all little oases of beauty in the darkness of Noir.

            I say ‘we’, being one of them, now. The man I’d felt myself to be in those earlier days seemed impossibly distant. Months ago, he’d squirmed with shame at sitting in a skirt opposite Dan, makeup on his face, tits upthrust in a push-up bra. He’d flirted. Hated himself for it. But that was—what—three, four blow jobs ago?  And three men ago, fuck, three different men each with their grubby hands on my tits, tongue down my throat, and an arm at my waist.

            Although: no; there’d been nothing ‘grubby’ about Chad.

            Sure, a good guy. But how and when did “good guy” shift from ‘guy I’d share a pint with?’ to ‘guy who’s cock I’d wanted to suck?’

            Fuck. How the fuck did it fucking come to this?  

            And sitting there, growing increasingly flustered, I recalled another time that seemed impossibly distant; a similar time, a bar much like this. Wearing trousers and a shit-eating grin, legs manspreading wide, pint in hand, pointing a finger at the girl opposite.

            “You’ll enjoy it,” I say, laughing as she flushes a deep red. “I know you.”

            “Shhh!” she hisses. “It’s embarrassing.”

            I’m twenty-five; Julia’s twenty-three: we’re both young and stupid and I’m too blinded by this new life of mine to see she’s already fallen in love with me. But it’s not just blindness: the idea somebody could love me—or me, them—is beyond my ability to conceptualise. It’s our third date? Maybe our fourth. And she’s already dropped hints about moving in with me.

            “Why?” I take a long pull at my pint and slam it down. I’m being loud, obnoxious and don’t give a shit. I feel great. Successful. Powerful. The IndigoTech’s buyout’s just completed, and while my slice of the pie is comparatively modest it’s more money than I’ve ever known. We’re being rolled into a subsidiary of NeoPharm and I’ve just earned a sweet promotion.

            I’m feeling good, and I don’t know what to do with this unfamiliar, surging emotion. Part of me hopes someone picks a fight. Another part of me is thinking about fucking Julia in the ass, who’s still wiggling with discomfort. But at the same time, I’m eying some of these chicks prancing past in their tights skirts and the idea for a threesome suddenly jumps to mind. A threesome: that’s something successful guys do, right? And I wonder what my chances of scoring a threesome tonight might be and if not tonight, how to set one up.

            “It’s….” She struggles to find the word, and winces. “Indecent.” She sags a little, saying it, as though embarrassed by her own bourgeois limitation, as though she’s not as cool and liberated as she’d like to be. “And I don’t like it.”

            “Hey, that’s cool,” I say, placing my hand over her. I can see the relief flit across her eyes. “Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with. I’m sure I can find someone who is.”

            “David!” She’s suddenly angry, but also afraid at the thought of losing me.

            “I’m joking,” I say. I’m not.

            “Not funny.”

            “Excuse me?” I puff out my chest. “I’m a funny guy.”

            Julia glares at me. “You’re not.”

            “That’s because you think I’m too bossy right? Just because I ordered everyone a round at the bar.”

            She stares at me for a moment, then groans.

            “If I’d been a duck, I could’ve asked them to put it on my bill.”

            “Please,” she says, covering her face in her hands, though a smile tugs at her lips. “Stop.”

            “Sorry,” I say. “It’s a faux Pa, isn’t it? Telling dad jokes when you don’t have any kids.”

            Julia groans even louder. “God, you really do sound like my dad,” she says.

            I took her home that night and with drink and a little charming coercion, talked her around to letting me fuck her in the ass, because it was something I’d never done and it was the kind of thing successful men do, right? Although I hated it, and so she did. In the years that followed I only ever did it if a girl begged for it, was really into it.

            It was only a few weeks later that the threesome I wanted happened, too, with Tom and Julia, and that was the last I saw or even thought of Julia for fourteen years until she found me curled up on the floor of a woman’s bathroom stall, wearing a skirt, wearing heels, lipstick and mascara a smeared mess, face puffy with crying—all in this very same bar.

            The memory coiled it tendrils around me as I shifted my attention to one of the handsome young men walking past and smiled, smiled until it hurt, and made eye contact, and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

            By the time Julia returned with a man in tow, I’d already seen off two potential suitors, both promising me a drink, one politely, the other with his eyes fixated on my chest and quite explicit about what he’d like to do to me. She held two drinks, a flute of Champagne for herself, evanescent amber sparking between her fingers; and something horribly blue and sparkly on ice for me. The man, meanwhile, pulled up a stool. He was wearing a suit, and a dusting of grey coloured his temples. His smile to me was perfunctory, as he joined our table. His attention was on Julia.

            “Say hello, Cindy,” she said. “He’s joining us for a drink after so kindly buying us ours.”

            “I’m with that lot over there,” he said, jerking his thumb towards the large group in the corner. His voice is slightly inflected—an English accent, the rounded vowels, precise consonants of old-school received pronunciation. I despised him instantly. “We just finished off a big project. I’m their boss, bought them a round, set up a tab for them.” His smile was easy-going, and he raised his pint glass in salute to his table of minions. He’s drinking something enviably dark and beery. There’s a brief cheer raised in response. “But nobody wants the boss around on a night out, right?”

            Meanwhile, I’ve picked up my drink and stared at it darkly. It’s too blue, with silvery flecks that swirl and sparkle, and the drink smells of candyfloss.

            “A Nebula, that’s what you asked for, right?” Julia said, grinning over her flute. Most of the bespoke cocktails at Noir were night-sky themed. “Panty-stripper, the bartender called it. Popular drink with the young girls. What do we say to Mr…..” She trailed off, laid her hand on his forearm and giggled.  Julia—giggling?  “I never even got your name!”

            “Caleb,” he answered. “Caleb Harrington.”

            She raised her eyebrows at me. “Thank you, Mr Harrington,” I said before taking a drink. Fuck me, it tasted like a distillery fucked a candy shop and had babies. The flakes weren’t just for show: they melted against my tongue, and it went briefly numb. A few of these, and I’d either be passed out drunk, toothless from dental rot, or suffering a saccharine heart-attack.

            “A pleasure,” he intoned, his smile distant, then looked between the two of us. “You’re….?”

            “Sisters,” Julia said.

            “She’s the older one,” I added. “Like, so much older.”
            “And she’s the ditz.” Her eyes flashed a warning at me. “She doesn’t visit often, so I like to show her the big city when she’s around.”

            He nodded. Briefly, his eyes flashed over me, taking in my tits, my tarty makeup and glittery miniskirt, hoop earrings and fishnets; then he shifted his posture slightly towards Julia and excluded me from the conversation.

            It was two adults at the table, and one child. Julia and Caleb talked. They flirted. His hand rested on hers. She licked her lips and played with her hair. Julia’s eyes danced over to mine, once and she smiled with grim happiness at watching me watch her work this older man.

            Once her attention was fully on Caleb, I was left to sit there, sipping my sickly drink. Those silvery flakes continued to spark against my tongue as this unknown man touched Julia—first her forearm but after shifting his seat closer, his hand rested on her naked shoulder, drifted across her back, rested on her thigh. His thumb worked its way inside the high slit of her dress and slid along stocking welts.

            Inside, I seethed, and looked him over, picking out his obvious flaws. The imminent bald patch at the top of his head. His off-the-rack suit. What was he, forty? Older than forty. He wasn’t even that good looking, really, weak chin and that accent—fuck that accent! Julia could do better.  So could I, especially considering Julia’s plan was clearly for us to take this asshole home so I could fellate him.

            “… and I’ll have it on your desk tomorrow!” He finished his story with a self-deprecating chuckle he no doubt thought was charming, and Julia’s laugh tinkled in response.

            “How funny,” she said.

            “Yeah, but was it, though?” I interjected, leaning into the conversation. My chest pressed up against the table, and his eyes widened momentarily at the sight of my cleavage. “Funny?”

            Caleb shrugged. “If you’ve led a team before, maybe,” he said. “You ever lead a team before?”

            I puffed out my cheeks in annoyance. “I used to be a cheerleader. Does that count?”

            “No.”

            I laid my hand on his arm. “Then why don’t you explain it to me?”

            “I’m sorry… Cindy, is it?” He pulled his arm back. “Nothing kills a joke like the explaining of it.”

            Meanwhile, Julia’s caught between a frown and a smile, watching my fumbling attempts at drawing this guy’s attention. “Why don’t you head up to the bar,” she said. “Get yourself another drink. I’ve started a tab.”

            “If I was a duck,” I muttered, hopping down from the stool, “I’d ask them to put it on my bill.”

            “What was that?”

            “Nothing,” I muttered, and dutifully trotted up to the bar. I made a deliberate effort to not look back towards the table. I didn’t want to see them there, leaning in close, hand-in-hand, or hand-on-thigh, or hand-on-back, her gleaming lips, his smoothly arrogant words. My blood roiled with—resentment, and frustration. But most of all, I was jealous.

            What the hell did I have to feel jealous about?

            Was it because some guy was hitting on Julia? Or was it because he was hitting on her—instead of me?

            Fuck this shit. I needed a drink—a real drink.

            Standing at the bar, I saw myself in the mirror behind the counter, looking for all the world like some kind of teenage tart, all pink and purples and fishnet stockings, sparkling in the dim light with a showiness that just screamed try-hard insecurity. I scowled and used the screen on my phone to check and fix my makeup while I waited to be served.

            “I.D., please.”

            “Really?” I rolled my eyes and withdrew my fake ID from where it nestled in the bustier.

            The bartender grinned. Every cool bar needed a skilled bartender of ambiguous sexuality, and at Noir, that was Terry. He was a young guy in his mid-twenties with a nose like a hatched buried between two dirt mounds and blessed with startling nimble fingers.

             “No way this is real,” he said, same as every other time, as he plucked the little rectangle of plastic from between my purple talons. Tonight, his russet beard was waxed and ringed and tamed into stylish points, and he grinned from beneath a curled mustache that would’ve suited a 19th century gentleman. Elaborate tattoos, a mix of writhing figures and miniscule text, crawled up his forearms, disappearing beneath the rolled-up cuffs of a flouncy white shirt and navy vest, and chunky earrings gleamed at his ears. I’d become somewhat of a regular at Noir since that first night and knew the guy by name, and he knew me, too. I’d flirt-bantered with him often enough.

            “Does it look real?”

            “As real as it did last week.” He gave it back. “I like the choker.”

            A deep flush blossomed across my chest and crawled up my neck, reaching Julia’s final gift for the night: the sparkly purple choker. She affixed it just before we stepped out of her apartment. It matched the hoop earrings and my lipstick. The word “sex” was clearly inscribed in glittery tiny plastic gemstones.

            “Thanks,” I muttered, picking at it.

            “So, what’re you having? Not another of these, I hope?” He indicated my nearly finished ‘Nebula’.

            “Ugh, no.”

            “Good call,” he said. “Those THC flakes’ll fuck you up.”

            “And it’s too sweet,” I said. “Too sparkly. Too… blue.”

            “So long you don’t go painting the stalls with your vomit again.” He laughed. “What, then?”

            I tapped an overly-long purple nail to overly-glossed lips. It was out of character, but fuck it, I needed it, and Julia was paying: “Old-fashioned, please?”

            “Really?” He was already reaching into the freezer beneath the counter. He popped a small sphere of ice out from its rubber mold and set it aside. “You don’t seem the type,” he added.

            “Girls can’t like bourbon?”

            “Girls who need fake ID generally don’t.” He muddled bitters with a sugar cube at the bottom of a thick-bottomed tumbler, then reached for a bottle of Jim Bean from the shelf behind the bar.

            “Put that shit back,” I said and pointed to the higher shelf. “Use the Whistle Pig.”

            The bartender paused. His gaze swept over me, re-assessing at a glance and finding nothing new: “You can’t afford that.”

            “No, but she can.” I jerked my finger in Julia’s direction. “She’s running a tab. Make the fucking drink.”

            “Sure thing, girlboss.” He pulled down the bottle, measured and poured in the bourbon. Then, the thirty second slow stir, smiling with wry amusement at me the whole time. “You want a Cristal chaser with that?” Very gently, he lowered the little ball of ice into the drink.

            “You’re funny for a man dressed as a pirate.”

            “Yar,” he said, handing it over.

            First, a moment to appreciate the amber beauty of the drink, and then a delicate sip, the ice spinning to cool the drink as it hit my tongue. The first taste was soiled by cheap lipstick and gloss, but then the warm alcohol hit, vanilla and molasses unfolding on the tongue. I inhaled deeply and took another sip and my whole body sagged.

            “Good?” the bartender asks.

            “So good,” I sighed.

            I closed my eyes. Maybe it was the aftereffects of those silvery flakes, the alcoholic buzz, the powerful sensate memories of taste; or the need to escape the night’s ultimate destination. The drink carried me away.

            The reality of that busy bar, the ebb-and-flow of conversation, the pinch of the bustier and cool air across my chest withdrew and in that moment—a fleeting, wonderful moment—I was… me. Past-me, standing at the counter of some pretentious, over-priced bar. And I’m happy, God, just ridiculously happy and pleased with myself. I don’t want this moment to end.

            Because when this moment is done, and this drink is done, I’ll return to Julia and Caleb and follow them back to her place and do what Julia expects of me. And I don’t want to.

            But not now. That’s a then-problem and now, in this moment, I’m in the past with the warm taste of whisky and sharp tang of bitters sitting on the tongue and, that’s right, I’m feeling pretty fucking pleased with myself. This bar, these people, the shit I’m speaking, yeah it’s all bullshit, but it’s my bullshit now, young-David’s new world.

            I’m not serving behind the bar. No, I’m on this side of things. The drink cradled in my hand? That drink’s held in a strong, firm hand, and once this drink would’ve cost me a day’s pay but now—fuck it, I can afford this shit. And this shit is good.

            Outside of the moment, the drink unfurled in my belly and coiled its warmth around my core. There is shudder in the bedrock of my soul. Something is dredged up by profound currents and something dislodges: primitive, primal and floating up through those dark, churning depths. It rose through lighter, brighter waters shimmering with colours. This chunk of me reached the surface and brought with it the confidence of the past. An absurd confidence I haven’t felt since the night I fucked Steele’s secretary filled me to the brim. In the moment, I felt myself, wearing an expensive suit. There’s an expensive watch at my wrist, and solid shoes on my feet; short hair, loosened tie wide-legged stance; and I felt this in the present, too.

            When I open my eyes….

            I don’t want to open my eyes.

            Because when I do, I’ll be standing at a bar, yes, but not in a suit. I’ll be wearing too-tall heels and a too-short miniskirt. Boobs spilling out of a too-tight bustier. Makeup too heavy. Everything’s just too—girly, it threatens the wonderful sense of self I’ve salvaged from the past.

            Now someone’s standing next to me. Of course there is. Girls like Cindy never stand alone for very long in a place like this. I licked my lips, pushed out my chest. Opened my eyes.

            The girl standing next to me is drop-dead fucking gorgeous.  She’s a real knock out, this girl. First impression’s one of red: red shoes, red hair and this clingy mini dress, sequin scales shimmering like snake’s skin with each sinuous movement, so short it barely clears her crotch. I’m not normally an ass-man but her ass has me reconsidered the errors of my ways, the way her curves strain against the tightness of her dress. Delicate straps tie the dress behind her neck, and it’s not just her ass that’s testing the dress’s limits. She’s not quite spilling out of her top like I am, but her tits have me wishing she was.

            This girl’s taller than me, especially in towering heels, beautiful sandals with slender ankle straps. Auburn hair fell in a wave over one shoulder, and her lips and nails were dark red, too, the colour of an autumn sunset, or a fresh bruise.

            So, yeah, she’s gorgeous, serpent and fruit of some forbidden garden rolled into one: pure temptation, and my first instinct’s that she’s some rich bitch on the prowl and I liked that, some instinct driving me closer.

            But then I saw how she’s standing there, gripping the bar as though it’s the last plank of wood on a sinking ship. There’s a nervous energy to this chick’s that’s immediately alluring but gave me pause.

            “Hey,” I said, raising my glass in greeting.

            Moist lips smiled hesitantly in response, hazel eyes wide behind incongruously black-rimmed glasses. There’s a real artistry to her eye makeup that draws out the vivid green of her irises. Yeah, she’s throwing off this real sexy, naughty-librarian vibe, but the look in her eye’s pure fear. This chick’s got the fashion acumen of a fashion model yet comes off as a tomboy cleaned up and squeezed, squirming and struggling, into her first prom dress.

            “Um…. hi.” Her eyes swept across me—legs and ass, breasts, face, an all-too common inspection mirroring my own—and I swear, this bitch also liked what she saw. Her eyes kept dancing to my tits. Meanwhile, I wanted another look at those exquisite hazel eyes. When our gaze met again, I twirled a lock of hair around my finger and grinned.

            Nervous hands that don’t quite seem to know where to settle tugged at the hem of her dress. It’s a futile effort; and she’s clearly uneasy with how much of herself is on display. Now that’s something I could sympathise with, the awful anxiety of being seen whether you want to or not, a glittering bauble in a dimly lit room.

            It wasn’t so long ago I felt what I see in her eyes: that constant terrible, gnawing fear at being painted and posed in public. Of course, whatever the reason for her discomfort, it couldn’t be as bad as mine, the awful humiliation of presenting as something you’re not and hiding from an ever-threatening world.

            “I’m Lucinda,” I said, extending my fingers. “But my friends call me Cindy.”

            “Stacy,” she said, taking my hand in a surprisingly strong handshake. Her grip’s almost manly, despite the slender fingers and crimson nails.

            “Nice to meet you, Stacy,” I said, and then it just tumbled out, “Can I buy you a drink?” Truth was, this girl’s keeping those long-dormant instincts alive: I’m hitting on her. I want to do a hell of a lot more than just hit on her, but I know this can’t lead to anything. Yet the way she looked at me, just then—and those eyes—and those full, red lips waiting for an answer… fuck me, I felt a powerful stirring below.

            Which is to say, I felt a distinctly female response and squeezed my thighs together, with one hand daintily to one side, the other still raised in cheer, and flashed a wide smile to conceal my desire.

            “A drink?” There’s a delightful demureness to this girl. Her eyes dropped to the floor, and glanced back bashfully, and I had to supress the urge to reach out and cup her chin or stroke her cheek. I’m thinking of what I’d like to do to her, visualising the snake shedding its skin, the pale flesh beneath, wondering if those cute freckles across her nose extend further.

            “Maybe an orange juice?” she said. “I’m not really much of a drinker.”

            I wanted to touch her; and realised I could, easily, it’s just us girls, right? I winked, and flashed a rueful smile and laid my hand over hers. “You’d be doing me a favour,” I said. “Honestly.” I waved my other hand in the direction of my table. “Big sis over there’s with some guy she just met. And he’s like, ugh, forty, you know? Like, just so—o boring. And I’d rather give them some room. But standing here alone…,” and I give a helpless little shrug.

            “Some guy’s going to hit on you?” The tremor to her voice, disgust and dismay, struck me as odd. Girls like her, dressed as she is, in a place like this—

            I winced: fuck that; I’m a ‘girl like her, dressed like that,’ and I wasn’t about to make the same assumptions others made of me.

            “Exactly.” I took another sip of my drink. “But standing next to a total babe like you? I’d be like—” My eyes crossed with the effort of concentration, tip of tongue between my teeth. “Like Rosaline next to Juliet at the Capulet party?”

            Very cutely, she blushed, cheeks reddening beneath her makeup but she also relaxes, just a little, at the reference. “I guess that makes this guy Tybalt,” she says, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “The boys usually keep away. They don’t want to mess with my….” She hesitated, eyes dancing towards a nearby table.  There’s a big, beefy guy there, short-cropped blond hair, tall and built like a brick wall sitting with a pitcher of beer. He’s on his phone, some kind of intense conversation that doesn’t stop him from openly ogling passing women. He’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts and clearly put minimum fucking effort into getting ready tonight. “Boyfriend.” This dickhead didn’t deserve this total babe, who’s clearly spent hours putting herself together for tonight, and I feel offended on her behalf.

            I gave her hand a little squeeze. “Oh, babe, I’m like so sorry.”

            She smiled, just a little. “Byron’s not so bad,” she said. “Well, he used to be. He was a nightmare but, you know….” She shrugged. “I’ve got him under control.”  She followed my gaze back to this guy and watched him in silence for a long moment, and then I swear I heard her mutter ‘fuck it’ under her breath. “You know what? He’s going to be on that call for ages. Some boring football thing. I’d love that drink. A strong one.”

            Terry’s been keeping an eye on the two pretty young things in front of him, and I can tell he’s thoroughly enjoyed watching me flirt with this girl. “Let me introduce you to Flouncy McFlounce.”

            “Most people call me Terry.”

            “An old-fashioned for the lady,” I said, and because he’s a clever barkeep, without needing telling he reached for the Jim Bean rather than the good stuff and added an extra dash of gum syrup to the bitters.

            Stacy took a sip. Her eyes widened. “Oh—my, this is good.”

            “Terry’s the best,” I said.

            “Don’t you forget it, Purple Rain.”

            I commented on her dress, how beautiful it was and how well it suited her. She replied, cheeks reddening slightly, that her aunt picked it out for her date. Her aunt ran a modelling agency and took endless delight in showing her niece off in an endless-seeming parade of couture, dragging her to fashionable events requiring precisely chosen clothes. “Aunt Amanda’s even hinted at me doing some modeling,” Stacy said, biting her lower lip. She did that at lot; it was impossibly cute. “And she keeps trying to get me to lose the glasses.”

            “Show me.”

            Stacy took off her glasses, blinking and gazing into the middle distance.

            “Keep them,” I said. “They’re just so you. They’re you and they’re sexy. You’re sexy.”

            She blushed. She seemed really pleased by my comment. Stacy was a student at the university, which is where she met her boyfriend. “It was… difficult, at first,” she admitted, and there’s a whole backstory she’s only hinting at in that weighty pause. “Byron wasn’t very nice to me at first.” He was a quarterback, a big man on campus used to getting his way, one with big-time potential. “But I changed, and the way he treated me changed, too.”

            In return, I told her a little about myself, about working at Volumina International and the thrilling, no-holds barred life of glorified secretary-slash-receptionist Cindy Bellamy. Stacy listened with her head cocked slightly to one side, unconsciously passing fingers through auburn hair falling over one shoulder, in a show of intense concentration behind her glasses. There was sympathy, as I complained about the early morning rise and commute; empathy, at the constant effort and necessity of maintaining a feminine appearance; and an almost comical fascination as I described daily office politics.

            Stacy, for her part, admitted to the stress of balancing two lives. This was something I could appreciate. For her, it was the student, striving to complete her studies in an environment that refused to take her seriously because of her looks; but also, the socialite, where her looks were paramount. In that life, her perfect 4.0 grade seemed utterly irrelevant in contrast to the hours spent perfecting her makeup, hair and nails for an evening soiree with her aunt.

            Yet I envied her life, to a degree: not the ultra-femininity of it, somehow even more extreme than the nightmare from which I constantly yearned to wake. Stacy had her studies, and these academic pursuits salvaged meaning from the superficial frivolity of a life spent obsessively maintaining appearances to her aunt’s expectations. That’s what I envied. David had a degree, entirely falsified and I’d only ever known campus life as filtered through my long-ago girlfriend Akiko, and far too many college girl one-night stands.

            As for salvaging meaning from a frivolous life?  I was working on a few things, and it certainly didn’t involve dressing up pretty and sticking my tits in the face of lusty men in swanky bars.

            In any case, for all the lip-gnawing uncertainty Stacy exuded, there remained an inner core of confidence to the girl that slowly revealed itself as she relaxed into her drink. Something happened in her past to trigger a change, and she clearly found this new path unnerving, as though she’d made a wrong turn and found herself lost somewhere unexpectedly beautiful, surprisingly fun yet disturbingly unfamiliar. Often as we spoke, she caught sight of herself in the mirror behind the counter and faltered, as though surprised by the beauty of her own reflection. Then she’d tug at the hem of her dress or flutteringly touch the earrings at her ear.

            Despite this clear hesitation, she spoke about her life with a warmth that belied her self-doubt. This was a girl who’d found her best life; she just didn’t know it yet. And I envied her that.

            We finished our drink. We stood close to each. Between the wine at Julia’s, that fucking Nebula drink and now the bourbon, I felt quite drunk—pleasantly so, but at a tipping point. Stacy’s face was also flushed a little red. There was a lot of touching as we talked, and giggles. I felt turned on, and I was having fun. Maybe the subdued eroticism is what made it fun. Nothing could happen, of course. And that added to the pleasure of the conversation, because there wasn’t any motive to it beyond enjoying the moment.

            Well, maybe a little titillating motivation, as out tits squished together and we pouted and leaned in close for a selfie.

            “Shit,” I muttered, as Julia approached, Caleb in tow.

            “Shit,” Stacy echoed, as her boyfriend plodded over.

            Instinct drove me to check my makeup, and the moment I did, Stacy gave a little start and did the same. When we noticed each other primping, we giggled. “I love that colour,” I said, indicating her dark red lipstick.

            “Ottoman Sunset.” Stacy said. “Here, let me.”

            I leaned closer, eyes fluttering shut. “You have beautiful lips,” she breathed, as I pouted. Carefully, sensuously and with expert strokes, Stacy painted my lips and I exhaled and felt deeply turned on and when I opened my eyes, saw she was, too. Her smile faltered slightly, and she squirmed a little as she pulled away.

            “Who’s your friend?” Julia asked, and from the tone of her voice she wasn’t pleased to see me flirting with another woman.

            “Hey, who’s the babe?” Byron asked, and from the tone of his voice it was clear that he was.

            That was the end of it. With a cute little wave, she pranced off, that gorgeous ass rolling sexily beneath the stretch of her tight dress as she followed her meathead boyfriend back to their seat. She leaned into him, and his arm circled her waist. Silently, I wished Stacy the best possible life. Julia settled the bill—perfunctory, without even noticing the cost—and I followed her back to the table.

Five: Noir, part 2

We left Noir with Caleb’s arms at our waists. A thorn between two roses, he chuckled, as we passed his team on the way out the door. They hooted and applauded at the sight of their boss leaving in the company of two sexy women.

            There was a self-driving taxi waiting for us as we exited the bar. The night was damp and heavy, the gaudy Saturday night glow diffused across cold concrete and glass. Swiftly, silently, the car ferried us back to Julia’s condo, city lights a smear against our windows.

            Awkward tension filled the back of the car. Caleb and Julia held hands. A faint miasma of booze and anticipation filled the air. There was more of Julia’s lipstick on his lips than hers. A pleasant haze hummed my skin, the aftereffect of that hideous blue drink that was undeniably growing on me. Playing with my long hair felt nice, and my lips tingled. I sat opposite the other two, smiling widely, legs crossed tightly at the thigh, squeezing down on the pleasant warmth the conversation with that gorgeous girl planted in me. Meanwhile, Julia glared and seethed with disapproval. Clearly, I’d enjoyed myself too much at Noir.

            As for Caleb? He sat, lost in a sea of wonder at finding himself in the back of a taxi with two gorgeous women. His tie hung loosely from his neck, one hand rested on Julia’s knee and his bottom lip wobbled with the effort to repress a grin. The tip of his nose glowed red with drunkenness.

            The trip was brief. The taxi dropped us off before anything could happen. Silently holding hands, we passed the concierge who dutifully averted her eyes as we passed. The elevator held us close. A pat on my skirted rump from Julia compelled me towards Caleb. Within those narrow confines, I strutted closer. My heels clicked against the metal floor. He was far taller than me despite the heels and up close, I lifted my gaze to meet his eyes. He had blue eyes, very pale and washed out, the colour of sky before a summer’s storm. They were eyes that unexpectedly reminded me of Chad, and I fixated on that memory as he pulled me closer. A nod from Julia, and I coiled his tie in my hand, the other hand splayed against his chest. His arm once again snaked around my waist.

            Meanwhile, his eyes slid away from mine for a moment, seeking consent. But not from me.  Somewhere over my shoulder, Julia gave her approval. His grip at my waist tightened. My breasts flattened against his chest. Then, his lips were against mine. This close, he smelled of beer and shreds of Julia’s perfume. His stubble scratched my face. He kissed me; I didn’t kiss him. My lips wouldn’t soften. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to kiss this man, any man. Especially with Julia watching.

            A sharp pain blossomed in my rear: I jumped, mouth opening in a gasp. Julia, reaching up beneath my skirt to pinch my bottom. Parting my lips was all the invitation he needed. Like a slug slipping through a crack in a damp stone wall, his tongue invaded my mouth. His hand slid down, cupped my ass and pulled me deeper into his kiss. I moaned, signaling my displeasure to Julia but he took it for passion and with an awkward dance of heavy shoes and heels, he had me pressed up against the elevator wall. He pinned me there. He fondled my tit. His erection prodded my hip. He sucked on my lower lip and it hurt. Somewhere behind us I heard Julia laugh.

            The elevator dinged. We fell away from each other. Once again in silence, holding hands as though one of us might suddenly renege on an unspoken agreement, the three of us walked the short corridor to Julia’s apartment. The door unlocked at her approach. We crossed the threshold into her place.

            And then there we were, one woman, one man and a girl—though truly, two men and a woman, all in our thirties or forties—standing in mute contemplation of our intentions.

            Julia turned to Caleb. Took his face between her hands and drew him in for a kiss. Their kiss was deep and long, and I stood to one side unsure what to do with myself. I felt embarrassed, watching them. I played with my hair, tightly coiling blonde locks around my fingers. The delightful warmth that traveled with me from the bar began to fade. I was drunk, but not drunk enough for this. Focusing on Julia and how sexy she appeared in that dress wasn’t enough to alleviate the awfulness of standing awkwardly to one side as another man kissed this woman for whom I had complex feelings.

            Julia pulled back from the kiss when I went to remove my shoes. “No,” she snapped. “Keep them on.” But she removed hers, and Caleb knelt to undo his brogues. She led us into her apartment, my heels tapping out an unsteady rhythm against the hardwood floor. Despite the shoes I remained shorter than Caleb. Standing next to him, my stomach churned with resentment at the vulnerability implicit in my skimpy outfit and fragile shoes contrasted with his masculine suit.

            “Wine?” she asked. Julia pulled a bottle of red from the wine cabinet, an expensive Bordeaux and handed it to Caleb to open. As he worked the cork, she retrieved three glasses. Julia had him pass me the bottle after he’d opened it.

            “Mind if I use the loo?” he asked, smiling apologetically. “One too many pints.” Julia pointed to where it was. I swear he hummed a jaunty little tune as he left.

            “What the fuck?” I hissed, once we were alone. We stood in the kitchen on either side of the long island that divided the room from the dining area. Pouring out three glasses of wine, I asked, “What’re you playing at, Jules?”

            Her smile was hard, but she still looked goddamn sexy in her red dress. She leaned against the counter and dug a small makeup bag out of her purse. She touched up her lipstick as she watched me serve the drinks. The tube gave a sharp click as she returned the wand applicator. Then, she told me precisely what she was playing at, in short, curt sentences. Her instructions were clear and precise. So were her expectations.

            “And what if I say no?” I asked, cringing at my whine. “What if I don’t want to?”

            Julia shrugged. “There’s the door. You’re free to leave at anytime.”

            I stared at her door for some time before answering. Too-long purple nails clicked out my anxiety against the marble countertop. “And what if I don’t want to leave?”

            “Then stay.” She circled the counter to my side. Julia rested her hand over mine. “And do as you’re told. Be a good girl.” She reached up and nudged my chin.

            “I don’t know if I can,” I said, with a tremor to my voice, even though that was a lie. All too well, I knew that not only could I do everything Julia expected of me, but also that I would. After all, what choice did I have? I needed her.

            “Of course you can, David,” she whispered, and her hand at my chin drew me closer. “You might even enjoy it, if you just relax a bit. Let go.” She kissed me, then, deeply and this time I responded, the smell and warmth of her so compelling, and that fading heat I’d carried back from the bar rekindled.

            And that’s when it hits me—those words—an echo of words I’d once spoken to her, long ago: you’re free to leave. You might enjoy this. Let go. Relax. And I shuddered to think how profoundly our positions had changed from fourteen years ago to this night.

            Julia rubbed her thumb across my bottom lip. It came away smeared with purple. “I love this lipstick,” she murmured, sliding the tube she’s just used into my hand. “It sets so quickly.” She smiled her crimson smile and stroked my cheek with the back of her hand. Her mouth found mine again and I sighed into her as our soft lips met, and her tongue slid against mine, and she held me firmly as we kissed. I sagged under her touch. My arms hung limply at my side. When she broke the kiss, she lightly touched her fingertips to my lips, then hers, as though to check if her lipstick had smeared or not.

            “So, you’re not actually sisters, are you?” Caleb called out from behind us. “Because I don’t think I’m into that.”

            Julia broke the kiss and left me wobbling slightly, breathless as she smiled over her shoulder at this man. “You got us, Caleb.”

            “So, ah… what’s the deal, then?”

            “Let’s just say we’re close,” she said, padding towards him.

            “How close?”
             “Very.” She took him by the arm and led him to the sofa. “Fix your lips,” she instructed over her shoulder. A wet wipe from her little bag removed the purple. Julia’s kitchen was all gleaming stainless steel and glass. I checked myself in the polished surface of the fridge and I quickly primed and lined my lips.

            “Lesbian?” He shrugged. I could feel his eyes on me as I fixed my lipstick. Slowly, carefully, I swept the little wand across my top lip. “Because I’m fine with that, really. I know it’s a bit of a hostile environment but hey, live and let live, right and….” He stopped and shook his head and gave one of those little self-deprecating chuckles that were quickly growing on my nerves. “I’m babbling.”

            “We’re not lesbians,” she said, with a twinkle in her eyes.

            “So, this is….”

            Julia stepped in close, passing her hands across his chest. “A game. Let’s call it that. A game we like to play.”

            “Kinky,” he said.

            She tapped him on the nose. He sat, and so did she. “We like to share.” She played her fingers through his hair. His hand drifted to her thigh, inside the long slit of her dress, thumb sliding along the lacy top of her stockings.

            “Share?”

            “Everything,” she said. She glanced over at me. “Wine, Cindy,” Julia instructed. I finished painting in my lips with her colour. Now our lips matched. I tided away her makeup and then brought them their wine and laid it on the end table next to the sofa. I returned to the counter to collect my glass and by the time I turned around, they were back to heavy petting and kissing.

            For a moment, I hovered unsure what to do as Julia made out with this guy. I drifted towards a chair in the corner next to a bookshelf sparsely decorated with books and digital photo frames displaying recent experiences: abroad, but also several of the two of us together, and a few of just me, in a range of outfits of varying degrees of humiliation. But as I went to sit down, Julia broke off the kiss. “No.”

            I stopped and glanced back at her.

            “Kneel over there,” she said, and pointed to a slate-grey cushion on the floor, directly opposite the sofa near the wall-mounted television screen. I hadn’t noticed it before. “Watch,” she added. “Wait your turn.”

            Gingerly and mindful of my tiny skirt, I lowered myself onto the cushion. It struck me as the kind of floor cushion you’d lay out for a pet. At least she’d given me something to protect my knees. I sat back on my haunches, which felt awkward with heels on and set my glass of wine on the floor for want of a better place.  My hands rested lightly on my thighs. The netting of my stockings dug into the skin a little.

            I suppressed the urge to fiddle—to tug at my skirt—or fix my makeup again, absurdly, an insistent urge that so often itched my brain—sigh or complain—toy with my hair—and instead, watched, as Julia and Caleb resumed their fun. At some point I took a sip of wine, and then another, and then gulped it down in a go. It was delicious, but I only dimly noticed. Only a colourless smear on the glass this time. Her lipstick really did set quickly.

            He’d been nibbling at her neck as she spoke to me, but now she took control. She pushed him back into the sofa. Straddled his lap, and kissed him, hard. His hand reached up and kneaded her breast through her red dress. She allowed him to do this for a short while, then slapped his hand away. He tried again. This time, she took him by both wrists and held his hands over his head. Then, she kissed his face, his neck, and bit his ear. He jerked, laughed a little nervously.

            “Relax,” she murmured, shifting off his lap. Julia unfastened the middle buttons of his shirt. He was unexpectedly hairy. She slid her hand in where she’d made a gap and drew her nails across his skin. He stiffened, then relaxed. Over a disbelieving grin, pale blue eyes slid to me, back to her, and once again to me.

            “Is she just going to… watch?”

            “For now.” She passed him a glass of wine and collected up her own. “Trust me. She enjoys it.” Julia took his free hand and brought it to her thigh. His hand disappeared beneath the folds of her dress, and her lips parted in a silent gasp of pleasure. A long drink from her wineglass concealed the shudder that went through her. Meanwhile, he also drank to overcome his obvious nervousness. It didn’t take them long to finish their wine. Then, they resumed kissing and touching each other, and it seemed to me that Caleb was more confident, more aggressive than before.

            And I was uncomfortable, kneeling on that cushion. But not overly so. After so many hours strapped into it, the bustier felt tight and irritating, the cheap boning jabbing into me a little. My ankles ached a little from being in heels all day. I also felt very tired from spending the whole day under Julia’s thumb. Otherwise, I felt fine. Kneeling there. Watching my ex-girlfriend make out with some man she’s just picked up at the bar. I understood Julia’s expectations for tonight. But I struggled to understand what she really wanted. Meanwhile, I was fine with this, if this was what Julia wanted, or rather needed.

            Julia leaned into him. One hand continued to touch her beneath the dress. The other explored her beautiful body, sliding over the dress, through her hair, back to the breast, sliding beneath the scoop neckline. She arched her back and allowed her dress to fall open. Peep show of the lingerie beneath. Garter belt and silk stockings, and delicate lace demi-bra, all in intricate yellows and fierce oranges. Her toes curled as he felt her over the bra, fondling, slithering under the bra, finding the nipple. Pinching.

            Julia hissed with—pleasure? pain? Displeasure: what the fuck did this guy think he was doing?

            Okay. No. I wasn’t fine with this.

            I wasn’t fine and the emotions I’d suppressed came crowding.

            I felt: excited, frustratingly so, at the glimpses of her naked body and the familiar sound of her little gasps of pleasure. There was a warmth in the palm of my hand, and it was the warmth of her breast beneath my palm. There was a heat in my groin, and it was the heat drawn by the touch of her fingers playing across my sex.

            And I felt: jealous. Jealousy paced my lust, and it wasn’t just envy at watching her find pleasure with another man—no, though that rankled, far more than I’d expected it to. Rather, my jealousy also stemmed from the denial of my own pleasure. I heard her moan, and saw her squirm, and felt a moan of my own burgeoning in my throat and fought down the urge to squirm, too. There was an itch below, that disconcerting wetness between my legs. My need echoed hers; I wanted the pleasure she felt.

            And I felt: angry—and sick—like I wanted to gag—and so much more, fear and anticipation and resentment and frustration—a slurry of emotions swelling. I trembled with it. I grew hot with the effort of containing all that I felt. Yet I remained kneeling on that cushion like the good girl she’d instructed me to be. It was hard—so hard—to keep myself in check.  I wanted to storm over there and grab this man and….

            What? Break his arm? Or shove him aside and show him how to properly please Julia? Or did I want to thrust my tits in his face and feels his tongue at my nipples for myself?

            I did nothing. I whimpered slightly and squeezed my thighs together tight.

            Julia heard me. 

            An all too recognizable flash of displeasure crossed her face as this idiot man again rolled her nipple between forefinger and thumb and pinched. She pulled back but he followed, chasing her eagerly with hungry kisses and an aggressive hand. She stopped him with a palm to his chest.

            “Easy there, tiger,” she said. Her fingers rested over his crotch, tented with excitement.  She patted his erection like it were an overly eager puppy. “Remember what I said?”

            He blinked in momentary confusion.

            “We like to share,” she said. With a curl of a finger, she ordered me to approach. “We like to share everything.” Caleb smiled, though not without some anxiety.

            “Um….” He watched me as I gracefully lifted myself from the cushion of the floor and strutted halfway to them. “I mean—yes. That’s great. But, uh, I’ve never—that is—”

            I stood silently and posed for him—for both, hip cocked and smoothing my hair over one shoulder. He looked up at me, then at Julia. “She’s—um.” He turned back to me. “You’re… old enough, right?”

            Julia gave a bark of laughter, but quickly got herself under control.

            I gave a little nod, doe-eyed and biting my lower lip.

            “That’s ah… good,” he said. “This is good.”

            Julia silenced him with a finger against his lips. “Now it’s her turn.”  She returned to the kitchen island to pour herself another glass of wine. Then she crossed over to the chair in the corner and sat down and positioned herself to watch.

            Following her cue, I crossed the remaining distance to Caleb. Again, I felt hyperaware of the tap of my heels against the floor and the wiggle they imposed on my walk. I stood in front of him. Under his gaze, I very distinctly felt the shortness of the sparkly miniskirt, the tightness of the bustier and just how much skin I bared in contrast to this man in his rumpled suit and shirt.

            He gazed at me from his seat on the sofa, mouth hanging slightly open.

            “You can touch her, you know.”

            He touched my knee. His fingers stroked the sensitive, soft skin behind the knee. His touch was hesitant at first but with a nod from Julia, he held me more firmly. His hand traveled up over my fishnets and rested on the bare skin of my thigh. My skin crawled at his touch. He explored the other leg with his other hand, fingers dabbling their length before also resting at my thigh. Then, his grip tightened, thumbs digging into the flesh beneath my buttock. I gave a little yelp of surprise as with a sudden tug he pulled me off my high-heeled perch onto his lap.

            Through his pants and the silky nothing of my panties, his erection rudely poked my bum.  His fingers threaded through my long hair. His thumb traced the line of my collarbone, and his breath was hot on my neck, red wine and a faint musk of cologne. I glanced back over my shoulder at Julia with pleading eyes. She watched me from her chair, legs crossed at the knee, cradling her wine glass. Her eyes glittered with amusement.

            With an insistent hand he turned my face back towards his. I felt his touch on my breasts. Then his palm rested between my shoulders. My top offered scant protection. I felt small, and terribly vulnerable under his touch.

            Again, he paused. A tiny frown knitted the space above the bridge of his nose. He looked at me with something like concern. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asked, so quietly that Julia couldn’t possibly hear.

            For some reason, his worry touched me deeply. Not so long ago, in the same position, I would not have done the same. I gazed into those pale blue eyes and saw hopeful lust, but also kindness. His touch was hesitant, not with fear or inexperience but with care.

            I still didn’t want to do this. Sitting in his lap remained profoundly humiliating. Julia wanted to emasculate me totally and what could me more un-manning than—this: my little demure nod as I brought his hand to my breast. “I am,” I murmured, a lie that wasn’t entirely a lie because as he slid his touch within the cups of the bustier, a shiver ran down my spine and the heat in my groin blossomed once again. I gasped at his touch. I whimpered, just a little, as he cradled me closer. And this time, when he brought his lips to mine, it didn’t seem quite so bad.

            We kissed, deeply, his hand at the base of my neck holding me close, and the other fondling my tit. I hated it; I loved it; I hated the fact it felt so fucking good. And when he rolled my engorged nipple between thumb and forefinger, I gasped. And when he pinched down hard, I moaned; and unlike Julia, I arched my back and forced my chest deeper into his palm. He continued to kiss and touch me intimately and I received his attention passively.

            A hand swept my hair back from my shoulder. Julia, joining us at the sofa. She pulled Caleb away and kissed him deeply. I was left slightly reeling, mouth open and gasping for air. Then she gave him back to me, and he kissed my open mouth, tongue diving deep. As he kissed me, I felt Julia’s fingers dancing along my back. Hooks and eyes parted. The bustier released its grip and fell away, leaving me naked but for heels, thigh highs and panties and that tiny sparkling skirt.

            I saw the look of appreciation and lust in Caleb’s eyes as he saw my boobs in their full naked glory. And I saw Julia smirk as I preened under his appreciative stare.

            With a light touch, she shifted me off the sofa. They continued to kiss, but also watched as I dropped to my knees in front of Caleb. With a light touch at the thigh, I had him part his legs and shuffled even nearer.

            And my heart pounded in my chest and a dull pain throbbed in my temple.

            And he looked down at me in anticipation.

            And Julia indicated that I should begin.

            My hands trembled a little as I reached for his belt buckle. I undid his trousers. He lifted his ass from the sofa as I tugged his pants to the floor. He kicked them aside and sat there on Julia’s expensive sofa in a pair of loose-fitting boxers decorated with a print of schnauzer dogs wearing Buckingham palace guardsman uniforms: red tunics, black bearskin hats. He chuckled. “I… wasn’t expecting to show these to anyone tonight.”

            His shirt was half-undone, his tie long ago cast aside. Caleb shifted into a more comfortable position. His erect cock tented his boxers and little spots of fresh precum stained them. After a moment’s hesitation, I went to pull his boxers down, too. But Julia’s voice stopped me.

            “Not so quickly,” Julia said. “Take your time.” His cock twitched at the sound of her voice. “Lavish him with your appreciation.” He looked down at me, and I looked up at him, and we both felt uncertain how to start until Julia added, with a hint of steel to her voice: “Kiss him, Cindy.”

            I planted a light kiss on the inside of his thigh. Wiry hairs bunch beneath my lips. His legs were thick with tight whorls of surprisingly dark hair against very pale skin. Long nails carved narrow tracks through this hair as I lightly raked his thighs. Under my touch, I felt his muscles tense, then relax. I shifted closer, reached up and undid the final buttons of his shirt and slid my hands along his tummy. He was a little soft around the belly, but not unpleasantly so, and his chest was just as hairy as his legs. I reached around his flanks and then dug those nails gently into his back. Again, he tensed up and as he did, I rose to trail a series of kisses along his abdomen, from belly button up to his pectorals. My breasts hung heavy over him, nipples tight and hot, as I kissed my way up his chest.

            He reached and cupped those pendulous breasts, gently squeezed and then pinched my nipple, again. I gasped in pleasurable pain. In return, I lapped at the tiny nib of his nipple like a cat at water. Caleb jerked. I grinned. So did he.

            “You can take his boxers off now, Cindy,” Julia said from somewhere next to me.

            He hissed as I drew my nails back along his side and then hooked them in the waistband of his boxers. Then I hesitated. I looked up at him, and then across to Julia. Lust burned in both their eyes, but his gaze was far more tender than hers. I willed my hands to yank his boxers down, but they refused to move. I licked my lips and smiled wanly at him.

            “Are you sure she wants to do this?” Caleb said. “She doesn’t really seem to want to do this.”

            “Oh, she wants to,” Julia answered. “She’s been eager to try this for a long time. Isn’t that right, Cindy?” Her voice was somehow both stern and loving, an invitation and a warning.

            I gave him my best innocent, doe-eyed look and nodded.

            “Try?” He hesitated.

            “You’re her first.”

            His cock jumped beneath his boxers. “This is part of your game, right?”

            “No, it really isn’t,” she said, and her hand rested heavily on my naked shoulder. “This is Cindy’s first time. Her first time sucking a man’s cock.” She patted my chin, stroked my hair. “You’ll be a cocksucker for real after tonight, won’t you?”

            I stared into her eyes and she stared into mine and I waited for her to flinch and she didn’t. I broke away to look up at Caleb, and gave a weak, nervous smile. I nodded again. “It’s true,” I said, softly, eyed dropping. “I want to—” but I couldn’t finish.

            “Go on,” Julia said. “Say what you want.”

            “I want to suck your cock,” I mumbled to the floor.

            I imagined the floor opening and swallowing me whole—much as I was about to do, I suppose: his cock, my mouth; swallow. And the fact that I’d been here before somehow didn’t make this any easier.

            On my knees between Dan’s legs. On my knees between Chad’s legs. On my knees between Jonas’s legs. Three different men, three different cocks; and now a fourth to add to my mental inventory of penises seen up-close.

            If only I could retreat and hand the reins over to my female self. But that kind of mental trickery wasn’t going to work. With Dan, I’d been able to step out of myself and let girl-me, Cindy, take over. Even before the trip to the Clinic but especially since returning, it’d been increasingly easy to check out and subsume any ragged sense of masculinity under the pretty, vivacious shell of a girl I wore as disguise. Always, cracks through with reality intruded but more often than not, I wore my glossy, painted outward appearance as though it projected my inner life. Perhaps, over time, it began to work the other way: surface bleeding into the depths. But when I needed her, Cindy was there to take over.

            At work, with the girls, even on my own, at times, over the past month it’d become easy to check out and let Cindy do her thing. Getting drunk helped. Drugs, too, at times. Often, the anticipation of humiliation alone was enough to trigger my retreat.

            But not tonight. Because tonight, it had to be David—had to be me—who willingly kissed a line of wet kisses up another man’s hairy chest; who submitted to having his nipples pawed at and pinched; and who shivered with disgust as they fell back on their haunches and knelt between a man’s legs in anticipation of taking his cock in his mouth.

            Cindy could do all this. Not easily, but with a smile, with enthusiasm, with bright eyes because—that’s the kind of girl she was, I guess. But Julia had no interest in Cindy tonight. It was David she wanted to see on his knees. David, she wanted to punish. David’s masculinity and pride, his heterosexuality and confidence, Julia wanted to challenge, erode and supplant with feminine deference and docility.

            Which is why I hesitated with purple talons hooked in another man’s boxers already bulging with arousal.

            Julia rubbed my back. I heard Caleb chuckled. “She’s a bit nervous,” Julia said. “She’s a little shy. She just needs some encouragement.” And she continued to rub my back, and then Caleb leaned forward and joined in, gently stroked the side of my head. “Whenever is good for you, pet,” he said. “Take your time.”

            And their hands—two people, four points of contact—at least at first, simultaneously stroking and rubbing me with gentle, fleeting touches? It made me feel warm. Julia nestled closer. Her arms encircling me. Long hair, falling about my shoulders. Rounded nails gently prodding into the undercurve of my breasts. Her breath warm against my neck. Kittenish nibble of the ear, tongue flicking across the lobe, careful of dangling earrings. An almost loving caress. But not just Julia; Caleb too, nudging my face up towards his.

            A kiss, gentler than before. His tongue, but also mine, and slow and languid kisses that felt like a shared, deep exhalation rather than a harried assault. A male hand cupping my tits. His grip, on my thigh. I felt warm—warmer, as he joined me on the floor, joined Julia in kneeling opposite me. And then it was hands and tongue and bites and caresses, a soft storm of sensual strokes, hisses and coy words and stealthy fingers and lips: and at the centre of it all, Cindy—no, me—fuck it; both—who cared when it feels this good? Sighing and falling into—her? his? arms, held and fondled gently and surrendering myself to the susurrus of submission.

            It wasn’t my first threesome. Not by a long shot. But it was my first time as the woman. With three, someone’s got to be the target of affection and this time it was me. Even with two girls, as the man the focus was always on the female.

            Now, I was the soft, passive recipient of their gentle passion. I felt hot and desired as I twisted in their grasp, giving myself over to first one, then the other, aware of the difference between the two but not caring. Caleb’s touch was heavier, rougher despite his care; a man’s hand on soft skin, heavy and strong; reassuring, controlling through instinct, an assumption of dominance.

            And though Julia’s hand was more supple, her every action both excited me terribly and reminded me of who I was and why I was there. Her touch focused on my lips, my face, gentle strokes that also found me below, subtle fingers sweeping across damp panties eliciting a deeper groan or sigh or moan. She aroused me even as she redirected my passion towards the man she’s selected for me tonight.

            Until, finally, she withdrew. Caleb raised himself back onto the sofa. I remained kneeling there, breathing heavily, heavily aroused, breast heaving, nipples painfully tight and a fire burning between my legs as Julia smiled, stroked my shoulder and gestured towards the man sat in front of me.

            “Ready now?” she said.

            I nodded. I was. If not now, when? I had to do this, or I had to leave; and I could not leave. I hooked my fingers into Caleb’s boxers and with a final kiss to his thigh, pulled them down to his ankles.

            Caleb’s cock sprang free. My hands, operating as though under their own volition, crept up his thighs and took him in my gentle grasp. My fourth cock seen up close, and it was—fine, the smallest I’d ever held but his humble twelve centimeters sat perfectly in my dainty grip. It was also the first circumcised dick I ever held. The head was slightly purple and shiny with precum, the shaft veiny, the balls small and compact, like well-formed walnuts. For such a hairy man, his crotch was pleasantly under control—trimmed, but not bare.

            Caleb chuckled as I held him. “I, ah… hope it passes muster for your first,” he said.

            I gazed up at him. “It’s—” I reached for the correct word. This was, after all, meant to be David’s first dick. In a way, I suppose it was. Neither Dan nor Chad happened, and Jonas—well, he belonged to other-me, to Cindy’s life and those experiences remained untarnished by Julia’s revenge. This was David’s first cock, and it was—

            “Perfect,” I finished. I smiled, wide-eyed at him. His cock twitched under my touch. “Oh!” I giggled. “It moved.”

            “It does that,” he said.

            I glanced aside at Julia. Bit my lower lip. “Now what?”

            Something—dark and a little scary, but also exciting, burned in her eyes. She shuffled closer. “Kiss it,” she said.

            I leaned closer. Sensed her eyes on me. Felt the warmth of my own body. Breathed in and smelled soap, a slight bitterness of sweat but not much else. Licked my lips, feeling the creamy slickness of lipstick there.

            Hesitated.

            Julia leaned in closer. “You can still stop,” she whispered in my ear. Her breath was hot and heavy with wine and delight. “Even now—David. You can withdraw your consent. Put your clothes back on. Leave.”  Her finger threaded through my hair and tidily tucked a loose bang back behind my ear. “Or stay. And kiss this man’s penis.”

            I couldn’t leave; I didn’t want to, and so I kissed Caleb’s cock.

            Julia’s exhaled, an almost orgasmic sound of release.

            What followed lasted under ten minutes but certainly felt longer. “Another kiss,” Julia instructed. Lick the shaft, again, then around the head. Open your mouth—go on—you can do it—and then down and there you go! Once, twice, slowly now, not too far you’re not ready for that. Yet. Three. That’s right, gently, bob up and down again. Hold him there, lips sealed. That’s not so bad, is it? No—don’t talk with your mouth full. Oh, but you do look adorable like that. Again, up and down. But look at him as you do it, make eye contact. A man likes it when you make eye contact. You should know that. And smile. Like you’re enjoying this. You are enjoying this, aren’t you? And—off you come…

            I sat back on my haunches, gasping for air, wiping flecks of drool from the corner of my mouth. Julia stroked my back, my shoulder, proud of her girl. He just gazed at me in surprise, in wonder, wondering what the fuck was going on but happy to be along for the ride.

            “You’re not, ah…” He grinned, sheepishly, and gestured at his saliva-slick cock twitching to the rhythm of his excitement. “You’re not done, right?”

            Julia laughed. “She’s just gotten started, isn’t that right, Cindy?”

            I nodded.

            Her eyes burned with feverish light. “I love you,” she murmured, and pulled me in for a deep and passionate kiss. I stiffened, then melted into her arms, and moaned as she explored the inside of my mouth with her tongue and her hands roamed my body and held me tight. And just as suddenly, she broke away and shoved my face towards Caleb’s crotch. “His turn,” she jeered. “You cocksucker.”

            I took him back in my mouth. Julia offered no guidance this time. I kissed and licked and pursed my lips, though a bit awkwardly, reluctant and reeling after Julia’s kiss. Apparently, being on the receiving end of countless blowjob didn’t instantly confer expertise: being the passenger in a car doesn’t mean you know how to drive one, but I was learning, quickly—far quicker than I would’ve liked. I soon found my rhythm. I guess those sessions with Jonas were paying off. Payoff? Jesus; there was only one possible reward at the end of this and I could do without it.

            I paused, again to catch my breath, but kept a hand on his penis, stroking up and down to keep him hard. I smiled at him and fluttered my eyes. With my other hand I groped my own breasts and in response his cock twitched again under my palm.

            This was, what, the fourth blowjob I’d given since returning from the Clinic. How the fuck did any of this even happen? How did me witnessing a murder lead to—

            Whatever. I flashed him a smile. It was time to finish this guy off. My knees rubbed against the floor through fishnet stockings, and my tits swayed with each eager bob of the head, and I felt my earrings jounce against my cheeks. I tried to keep eye contact but more often than not his eyes were shut, or his head thrown back, and he sank deeper into the sofa and groaned with obvious pleasure. “Oh—God. Yes, yes—just like that.”

            Dimly, I was aware of Julia kneeling next to me, closer now. Her hand rubbed my back as I went down on Caleb. She touched me as I licked and sucked. A finger slipped beneath my skirt. She knew better than anyone how to elicit pleasure from this feminized body and drew from me a moan that resonated the length of Caleb’s cock.

            I fell back a final time, to catch my breath. She withdrew her touch. As I pleased Caleb, so she pleasured me; when I paused, she paused. I held his penis in my mouth, cheek distended, and whirled my tongue around the head, and her finger drew a languid circle around my clitoris and a deep shudder coursed through me and I moaned, again, a deep sigh muffled by the cock in my mouth. When she stopped, I tried to glare daggers at her but it’s hard to look threatening when you’ve gone cross-eyed with a man’s dick between your lips.

            I resumed, and so did she, and this was it. I felt Caleb tense beneath me. I, too, drew tight with anticipation. I knew what Julia was doing. Associating pleasuring a man with my own pleasure—wicked, but I didn’t care. I was too aroused. By this point, I was desperate for my own release and Julia was the only one who could get me there.

            The heat sparked by that girl at Noir had glowed and smouldered all night. It grew, Caleb and Julia’s petting adding tinder to eager embers. Every pinch and prod, kiss, lick and stroke, stoked the flame. Even, to my horror, my own degradation, the feel of the cock between lipstick-slick lips, the press on the tongue, push on the inside of the cheek and the whole fucking image of some blonde, big-titted bimbo on her knees in a sparkling miniskirt and knowing—feeling—being that bimbo, and the shame of it, and how that shame fed on itself and further fed the heat, fuel for an imminent fire needing only a final ignition—the  promise of Julia’s touch—as soon as….

            Caleb whole body went stiff. His fingers curled into sofa cushions and his hips jerked forward, thrusting his meat deeper in my mouth. He groaned, and I did too in feverish anticipation of my own release, and sealed my lips tightly around his cock as—

            Julia yanked me back, off Caleb’s cock. His penis popped free from between my lips. He gave a startled yelp, and so did I, even as Julia grabbed him by the base of the cock and with a few quick strokes finished him off and directed his ejaculation. Caleb groaned and his cock spasmed. He came, spraying his load right in my face.

            The first ropey thread of jizz took me in the open mouth, but also across the chin, nose and cheek. Another spasm, and a third: he spattered my tits and neck. Then he collapsed back into the sofa with a satisfied grunt.

            I felt Caleb’s cum dribble down my cheek and drip from my chin. Some slid between my breasts. I tasted the bitter goo in my mouth and wanted to spit out I out, wanted to gag, wanted to wretch. Julia lifted my face towards hers with a touch at my chin. Still, the hot, angry light to her eyes, as though the implacable fire I still felt was reflected in them.

            “Good work,” she sneered.

            I tried glaring at her but only managed a pathetic, “But—” my tongue thick and working around the slime in my mouth. “Please…?” and I desperately squeezed my own tit but it didn’t help. I needed her touch to finish me off and she withheld that.

            With a single, sharp shove she knocked me on my ass. “Not tonight,” she said, her voice filled with disdain and disgust. How different her voice as she settled next to Caleb on the sofa, hand curling around his flaccid penis. “You got anything left in there for me?” she said, her voice now light and happy.

            “Ha—” Caleb exhaled. “Phew. Holy shit. That was—” He shook his head. “Phenomenal.” He sat up a little and saw me still kneeling on the floor in front of him, his jizz on my face and tits and hair.

            “Hear that, Cindy?” Julia spoke over shoulder, eyes still fixed on Caleb. “You’re a phenomenal cocksucker.

            His eyes glowed with that post-coital, but there was sudden concern there, too. “Hey, are you—” he turned to Julia, “is she okay?”

            “She’s fine,” Julia said. “She loves it.”

            He hesitated, then grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Well… thank you,” he said.

            “What do you say?” Julia added.

            “You’re welcome,” I said.

            Her hand rubbed a gentle circle over Caleb’s deflated penis. “Think you’ve got another round in you?”

            He took another shuddering breath. “Just—you know—give me a minute?” He sat up a little. “I uh—you know—took a blue pill before getting in the cab so—yeah. I can do this.”

            Julia smiled. “Good.” She stood, letting go of his cock and taking him by the hand. “Why don’t we take this to the bedroom, then?”

            Caleb shrugged. “Sure.” Then he saw me, still kneeling on the floor and paused. “Um—her too?”

            “What do you say, Cindy? Want to join us in the bedroom?” She trailed one nail up and down his thigh, touched his ball sack, and then leaned into his height. She looked—happy, nestled in this man presence. Even though her smile was cold, and her eyes even colder as she looked down at me, I could also see the flush of arousal across her neck and breasts. She wanted him; or rather, she wanted a real man’s cock in her following her victory over me.

            It’s difficult to speak with spunk on your tongue, so I just shook my head no.

            “She’s—”

            “Fine,” Julia said, leading him towards the bedroom.

            They walked off, together. But at the threshold of the room, standing alone half-shadowed in the darkness of the corridor, she paused and looked back at me over her shoulder. An expression crawled across her face: disappointment, maybe, or desire, possibly disgust. She stood there gazing at me, still kneeling half naked on the floor of her condo with Caleb’s cum cooling on my face and tits. When she spoke, her voice remained flat, her features impassive. “Clean yourself up,” she said. “I trust you can see yourself out.”

            In the bathroom, I spat and rinsed out my mouth. I wiped away the cum and washed my face and chest with a washcloth. I tried to fix my makeup, but my hand was shaking too much. Instead, I rinsed my mouth out again. Then I got dressed, peeling off the fishnets but reluctantly strapping myself back into the bustier. Again, my fingers shook. I only managed the hooks near the middle. I paused to strip off the false nails and thought to peel off the eyelashes but my hand wasn’t steady enough. This time, I was able to fasten the bustier properly. I also managed to fix my face.

            By the time I finished in her bathroom, Julia and Caleb were already at it. I heard his chuckle through the open door and a moment later, her moan.  There was a little wine left in the bottle. I knocked it back and swilled it around my mouth and swallowed. It didn’t taste as good as before. It also didn’t quite clear the taste of cum from my mouth. I collected the pink and black outfit from earlier today and a few more items but otherwise left all the shopping bags with Julia. I could collect them another time.

            The sound of their fucking followed me out the door.

            It was only after the door clicked shut behind me that I gave up the struggle to hold myself together.

            Something rose from somewhere very deep and dark inside of me. It was slimy and sharp and nasty. It scorched my insides—a heat somehow similar but also very different to the one that still smouldered elsewhere. I felt this part of myself rise through my stomach and into my throat. It filled my mouth and burned like bile. I tried to swallow it back down but there was no stopping it. It scrabbled at my mouth from the inside like some hideous spider clawing free. I whimpered with the effort of containing it, but spiny legs pried my lips apart and it heaved itself free.

            And what escaped with almost reckless abandon was loud and terrible. There was fierce anger, and terrible fear and profound disgust. Howl, wail or scream collapsed into a sob that wracked my chest and tore my throat. I hugged myself and doubled over as the second, and third cry broke free. Gagging, I dropped to my knees, fell back against the walls, and buried my face in my hands. The tears and noise that followed were quieter, but equally unstoppable. I don’t know for how long I cried. Nobody passed by, and Julia’s door remained closed.

            Eventually, I took a shuddering breath and found that the tears had stopped. I felt hollow and so very tired. There was a window at the end of the corridor. Outside was very dark, and very late. Staying here wasn’t an option. But the thought of returning home was unbearable. The commute on its own would be enough to undo me. And I couldn’t face the thought of sitting in my tiny apartment, alone. The recrimination and self-loathing—pathetic self-pitying and shame harrowing my being—was too much.

            I couldn’t go home. But I couldn’t stay here.

            Next thing I knew, I was tapping at my phone.

            Can I come over, I texted.

            I didn’t expect an answer, but it came almost immediately.

            You broke up with me, remember?

            I need you, I texted. Please.

            Ok, Jonas replied.

To be continued….