Constant in All Other Things 3: Chapter 4 (Patreon)

For the archives: Constant in All Things 3: Chapter 04. This should be the most up-to-date and current version of the story.

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Constant in All Other Things 3

Chapter 4

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 lays out for Julia how her campaign of humiliation and vengeance ultimately undid him.

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. He throws a symbolic funeral to determine who bears the responsibility for killing of his male identity, zeroing in on his ex-girlfriend; but is she really to blame?

One: Non, Madame!

His semi-erect cock pushed into my backside that morning. Sunday was going to be rough. Lying in Jonas’s bed, nestled in the crook of his arm with snores tickling the back of my neck, I desperately wished for Julia to cancel.

            She didn’t. My phone pinged. She expected me at her place, 2pm on-the-dot. I dropped the phone by the side of the bed and closed my eyes.

            The boy’s hand rested lightly on my ass. I felt very detached from myself and from his touch. Jonas stirred, hand shifting from ass to boob. This was my first time waking up in a man’s bed, in a man’s embrace. He held me a little closer in his half-sleep, and his cock grew a little and pressed a more insistently against my bum. His morning wood was an echo of my own, though I felt mine very differently.

            I must have dozed, because when I opened my eyes again the watery sunlight slanting through the blinds was higher up the wall. Jonas was propped up on one elbow, looking down at me with a curious half-smile.

            I blinked up at him sleepily. “How long have you been watching me?”

            “Not too long.” He sat back in his bed. “Not long enough.”

            “Creep,” I smiled, and yawned.  The bedsheets fell away as I stirred, and his gaze tracked the expanse of an exposed leg, thigh and breast, before returning to my face.

            “You’re beautiful,” he said.

            He deserved better. Better than a basket case at his door at midnight, desperate for company and dissolving into tears the moment he got her through the door. He took me in his arms and held me. Bruno, his roommate, rolled his eyes and shook his head with silent disapproval as Jonas led me to his room.

            But to me, last night Jonas looked then as he did that first night at Tartarus when he allowed me to sit with him: transfigured by kindness into someone truly beautiful. When the crying eased, I kissed him, at first very tenderly but then with increasing passion. He kissed me in return, and held me through the night.

            Nothing else happened, and he kept the nightmares at bay.

            “Thank you.” I sat up in his bed, the sheets pooling around my waist, and stretched. He blushed at the rise and fall of my tits.

            I smiled. Or rather, I performed a smile; inside, I felt empty and removed from the events happening around me. Was this me, in some college-kid’s bed? And was this really me, slowly crawling across the bed towards him, tits swaying with my approach?

             “You like these?” not-me said, one hand cupping a dangling breast.

            He nodded, transfixed.

            And because I knew it’s what he expected, or at least hoped for, even though he was too kind or afraid or weak to ask, I reached for and found the pole tenting his sheets.

             “You don’t have to—” he started, but I silenced him with a kiss.

            I pushed him down onto the bed. Still distant from these things my body did, I straddled the boy’s thighs. Leaned forward over him and with a hand at either side pressed my tits around his cock, feeling the smooth warmth between my soft flesh. I held him there and smiled and then rubbed up and down a few times. He grew harder, and I licked the tip and he groaned and looked at me with such hopefully anticipation I couldn’t help but grin. I took him in mouth. I did this without hesitation but began to hear Julia’s voice: lick the shaft. Open your mouth. Once, twice, slowly now. That’s right. Not with your mouth full.

            For the first time that morning I felt—something; an acorn of sentiment nurtured by Jonas’ kindness and Julia’s cruelty. This seed grew and blossomed and shot out vibrant branches. I stopped, with Jonas’s cock still in my mouth, and shuddered.

            You do look adorable like that, trilled her voice.

            “You okay?” his voice both distant and near.

            And the tremor that ran down my body was hot and angry—fury at last night’s events; but also gratitude and warmth, for this ridiculous boy who held me when I needed him.

            Pulling back, I smiled and it was me smiling, and I felt within myself again. Determinedly, I pushed Julia’s voice out of my head. I would enjoy this boy. His pleasure was mine to give or deny. This moment together would be fun and deliberate and above all else kind, untainted by cruelty.

            Long blonde hair tickled his chest and waist and cock as I slid backwards. Then I slowly, gently kissed my way back up his leg, starting from the ankle all the way up to his thighs, dancing around his erect penis, over his abdomen, a lick around the bellybutton, a wicked flash of the eyes as I kissed and licked his nipples and briefly sucked—he jerked and laughed uncertainly and then—a final kiss on the lips before diving back down on him.

            It didn’t take long. Jonas gasped and grunted, and his fingers curled into the bedsheets, and I felt proud at how easily I brought him to climax. This was my fourth time going down on him, and I knew his cock. His hips bucked once, twice and I felt his cum at the back of my throat. Holding his jizz on my tongue, I padded out of his bedroom and spat it out in the sink and rinsed and when I returned, he smiled at me, and I smiled at him.

            He went to speak.

            “Don’t you fucking dare thank me,” I said.

            What I’d just done made this guy happy, and it’d been done on my terms. I didn’t need Julia’s instructions. This boy wasn’t part of her plans to humiliate me. He was mine, and what I did this morning was my choice. Julia didn’t need to know about this boy or this part of my life.

            Jonas watched as I dressed, unwrapping one of the cheap-and-cheerful bra-and-panty sets from yesterday, a fire-hydrant red balconette and thong. With few other options, I pulled the sparkly miniskirt back on but stared balefully at the bustier. No fucking way. Instead, I picked up Jonas’s t-shirt from where he’d tossed it on the floor last night. It was black; on it, in red silhouette, a man with shotgun and chainsaw standing on the roof of a car as a crimson horde of zombies closed in. It fit, though tight around the chest and hung off my tits, exposing a well-toned midriff.

            “How do I look?”

            He opened his mouth to speak.

            “And if you give me some bullshit about patriarchal corporate oppression manufacturing feminine insecurities pushing me to seek validation, I’ll—"

            “You look really great,” he said.

            “Thank you.” I smiled. “You mind?” I indicated his t-shirt.

            “I don’t know.” He tore his eyes away from my tits. “I like that shirt. Will I see you again?”

            I sat next to him on the bed. “Maybe? Probably.”

            “As a girlfriend?”

            “Probably not.” I stroked his chin with the back of my hand and kissed him gently on the cheek. "No."

            “Why not?”

            And because I couldn’t tell him the actual truth, I told him something else that was equally true and easier to accept. “Because I’m too fucked up, Jonas,” I said. “And you’re too nice. There’s bad shit going on in my life right now. And you don’t deserve it. I wouldn’t wish that on you. I’ll use you.” I already had. “And I’ll hurt you.” I held my hand over his chest. “Here,” I said. And then I kissed his temple. “And here.”

            He considered my words. “Then why call me last night?”

            “Because I’m weak.” My laugh was small and a little sad. “Because sometimes, a girl just needs a cuddle from a nice boy.”

            After, I did my makeup in his little bathroom and did a passable job of it. At first, I struggled to look at myself in the mirror. Mirrors were one of those things I’d discovered about living as a girl. You couldn’t escape them; they were everywhere. I carried a little compact mirror in my purse. My phone doubled as one. Every reflective surface acted as a mirror, too: windows, doors, the shiny side of a kettle, concave surface of a spoon, the glass over a picture hanging on the wall presenting my face, framed and in reflection. Each one more than an invitation, but reminder: of standards, expectations, to self-scrutiny.

            It was a pressure scarcely felt as a male, now vivid and pervasive as a girl: to constantly inspect myself and not just fix imperfections, but to actively hunt for them—manufacture them, even. Find flaws, identify weaknesses and always remain open to the potential for improvement. And that tension between checking the mirror and shying away from it concerned not just beauty. As a girl, I felt keenly the pressure to dress a certain way, paint myself, scrupulously maintain appearances—and then feel ashamed for this very same superficiality.

            After all, as some feminist once said, one is not born woman but becomes one—and how painfully difficult to stifle a bitter laugh at those too-true words as they came to mind in Jonas’s little bathroom. The mirror was my constant reminder of “becoming.” It told me to judge and see myself judged by others.

            No wonder that some mornings, holding my gaze in the mirror felt so goddam difficult.

            But you couldn’t fix your makeup without a mirror, and so I stared, and lay a foundation for the day, and concealed the evidence of last night, and painted an illusion to hold up to a new day’s scrutiny. Along the way, something happened. The process became the outcome, the trick into truth. Blusher to create the cheeks of a cheerful girl, lipliner and lipstick and gloss for a happy smile; but by the time the work was done, the happiness I radiated was genuine. Mostly.

            And when Jonas saw, and kissed me on the cheek, the blush that brightened my face was genuine, too.

            It was Bruno, his roommate and bouncer at the club, who saw me to the door. His expression was grave, and he towered over me. “Don’t fuck around with my boy,” he grumbled, waving a finger at me. He always did that. It was kind of cute. “Don’t be—”

            “A bitch?” I finished, strapping myself into last night’s heels. I’d hate to fight this guy. He was like, two meters tall and pure muscle, and even in heels I strained to reach his cheek as he bent down to my height. He moved with graceful confidence at work, and I’d see him toss out some nasty customers. I mean, I’d still take him, sure, but he was a nice guy.

            I gave Bruno a gentle peck on the cheek, and he reddened a little. He always did that, too and it was also kind of cute.

            He frowned at me. “Treat him good.”

            “You know I’m not girlfriend material,” I said.

            “He deserves better than a booty call, Cindy.”

            I wrapped my arms around his waist, feeling the muscle beneath his shirt. “You’re too good, Bruno,” I said.

            “See you at the club?”

            “You know it, big man.”

            After that, there wasn’t much time left for any of the things I wanted or needed to get done that day. I made a few necessary stops, and then straight to Julia’s. Riding the elevator to hers, I tried to understand how I was feeling. That hot, earlier anger faded and as I reflected on last night, my feelings were profoundly confused. The person I saw in the elevator mirror seemed strained, yes and a touch apprehensive—but also content.

            I gave my makeup another quick touch-up, brushed out my hair and looked myself over, and—much to my surprise—liked the person smiling back.

            I reached Julia’s door at precisely two o’clock.

            “You’re on time,” she said as she let me in. “Good.”

            Her condo was a mess, yesterday’s events manifest in the array of open bottles and glasses, crusted with dried wine at their bottom, lipstick prints at their rim. Dirty plates and open containers of noodles were scattered here and there, and shopping bags half-spilled glittery garments across chairs and sofa. Makeup and bottles of nail polish dotted the counter. The remains of a fry-up breakfast lay on the stovetop, and the scent of bacon and grease hung heavily in the air.

            I undid my shoes and listened for a moment. “Is—”

            “Caleb left an hour ago,” Julia said. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”

            I nodded.

            “You look good,” she said. There was a hint of surprise to her voice. She must’ve wondered where the t-shirt came from. It wasn’t exactly my style—neither Cindy nor David’s—and she’d never seen it in my wardrobe.

            “Thank you?”

            “How are you feeling?”

            Her eyes bore into me with such expectations that I couldn’t keep her gaze. I looked away and went to answer—but honestly had no idea how to answer that question—and so shut my mouth and simply shrugged. “Fine.”

            For a moment, she appeared to waver. Her eyes and her voice softened. “David—”

            “So,” I interrupted. “What’s the plan for today?”

            She flinched. “Guest bedroom,” she snapped. “There’s an outfit laid out on the bed for you. Get changed.”

            Dutifully, I plodded to the bedroom, wondering what I’d find for today. Looking at the garments laid out, I though—yeah, of course. It was bound to happen eventually.

            Then I thought: no fucking way. I’m out of here. I’m still a man, for fuck’s sake—even with tits and a pussy, I’m too much a man to put up with this bullshit. Most women wouldn’t wear this fucking thing, how can she expect me to?

            Yet almost immediately after, an insidious whisper and tempting shiver down the spine: why not? Like, really, why the hell not? It might be fun. Let’s see where this leads.

            Reality intruded, and I returned to Julia with one of the items she expected me to wear.

            She took one look at me and read the expression on my face. I’m not sure what she thought she saw there, but she—

            She took me by surprise.

            “I’m sorry,” Julia said, looking crestfallen. She held my gaze for a moment, mouth opening to say something that died on the tongue. Instead, she turned away and stared out the window looking towards the city centre. It was an unusually sunny and bright day, with clouds scudding across the sky casting fleeting shadows across the glittering cityscape. “I’m—it’s too much, isn’t it? I thought it might be fun, but after last night—I don’t know what I was thinking.”

            “Jules.”

            She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Just—forget it. You get a pass, a free pass today. Go home, or whatever. You don’t have to do what I say today. You’re not off the hook but it can wait until tomorrow.”

            “Julia.”

            She walked towards the window, and her steps were slightly unsteady. Her steps were those of a well-fucked woman. Huh. I wouldn’t have thought humble-dick Caleb had it in him. He hadn’t exactly been a big boy—even my prosthetic could’ve handled him.

            Well, good for her—she needed a good fuck, and I certainly couldn’t provide. Watching her, I could also see just how tired she was. Hungover as well, pale and drawn. Funny. I’d drunk more than her, mixing my booze, and capped the night off by knocking back a few beers with Jonas before cuddling to sleep. And with his prick prodding my ass all night, and his hands cupping my tits, and my mind a cesspool of dark thoughts—yeah, I hadn’t slept much, either.

            Yet I felt fine. Great, even. Must be one of the perks of being twenty again.

            “Go,” she said.  “Please.”

            “Julia!”

            She turned to face me, eyes flashing with annoyance. “What?”

            “I can’t get into this thing on my own,” I said, holding up the corset, the words surprising me as much as they did her. I had an opportunity to leave—and didn’t. That meant something, though I didn’t know what. “Lace me in?”

            Fifteen minutes later I stood before her, unsteady in what surely had to be the highest heels I’d ever worn, resplendent in a ridiculously gorgeous and revealing French maid’s uniform. I say uniform instead of costume, because there was nothing of Halloween crassness or cheapness to it. It was lewd, and it was tight, and I jiggled up top and flashed petticoats and bum below—but it was a quality bit of bespoke fashion, cut perfectly to fit my tightly corseted frame. It felt somehow both intensely sexual and strangely functional—gleaming satin and delicate lace, bows and stockings and a little apron and cap—fashioned to last for longer than a single costume party. It must’ve cost Julia a fortune, especially factoring in the undergarments, shoes and accessories. Fitted corsets don't come cheap, nor quality fetishistic 15cm stilettos.

            “How do I look?” I seemed to ask that a lot these days. The corset was as tight a thing as I’d ever worn, a match for Clinic bridal bondage wear—a beautiful piece of work in midnight black with delicate white brocade, with a shining steel busk beneath its panel and six robust garter straps softened by decorative bows. A hint of the fear—and breathlessness—of that photoshoot insanity nipped at my confidence, that sense of vulnerability and helplessness brought on by being strapped into restrictive clothing from which I couldn’t release myself. These shoes were beautiful, shiny and surprisingly comfortable—but also a lesson in learned helplessness. There was no running in these things, or even walking quickly. I’d be taking tiny, mincing steps, enforcing the caricature of flouncy femininity to which I’d consented.

            Julia stepped back and looked me over. Her eyes shone brightly with pleasure. “Oh my God,” she said, and gave a little clap of glee. “You look—amazing, David.”

            I craned to see my rear beyond the flounce of lacy petticoats and black skirt. “How are my stockings?” I stretched out a leg, checking the seams. They were quality stockings, fully-fashioned silk with a wonderfully deep and decorative welt. They felt a dream against my skin, and I wished I’d shaved and moisturised my legs this morning.

            In a corset this restrictive, though, those stockings were a nightmare to secure, especially the garter clasps at the rear. I’d needed Julia’s help for this as well as lacing the corset, and to do up the row of tiny buttons at my back that sealed the bodice tight around my frame. Now, I felt the tug at my thigh and the way the straps went taut across the curve of my bum. “Are they straight?”

            Julia held her fingers to her lips to hide a little laugh. “Yes. They’re straight.”

            I raised one heel off the floor, turning the shoe this way and that. The black leather caught the sun, and the top piece glinted in the light. “I don’t know if I can actually walk in these things.”

            “I can’t even imagine.” She shook her head. “I’m impressed you’re even able to stand.”

            I took a tentative step, and another, and swiveled. They didn’t pinch, but almost immediately I felt the strain on ankle, heel and at ball of the foot. Still, I could manage—if I took it slow.

            “Not bad,” Julia said. “How’s the corset?”

            I held my hands at my reduced waist. Fierce boning and tight fabric held me in tightly—again, a brief tremor of fear—and I smiled weakly. “It’s… tight.” I tried to take a deep breath and couldn’t, and I swear my tits nearly swelled out of the scooped neckline.

            “Good.” Julia stepped closer, her hands over mine at my waist. I stood taller than her in those towering shoes but felt smaller and weak. “I reckon we can take it in another centimeter or two once you’ve gotten used to it.”

            “Ha ha.” I tried to take a deeper breath and failed. “Please. No.”

            Ignoring my protest, she pulled me back towards the guest bedroom and its ensuite bathroom. “Let’s finish you off,” she said, and got to work on my hair, makeup and nails.

            By the time she was done, it was three o’clock and I looked devastatingly sexy. My hair was brushed out and glowed, pinned into an updo beneath a ridiculous little maid’s cap. My makeup was very dark and sultry, heavy on the bronzer and contouring that gave me an almost unnatural glow. Last night’s cheap press-on nails were gone, so back to my natural nails—already long enough on their own to not be entirely sensible, frankly—painted a pale pink. Then a spritz of her favourite perfume, dark and mature with black pepper and patchouli notes, to help keep her in mind as I worked, she said. She applied it my neck and the vastness of my exposed bosom and a little dab to the inside of each thigh.

            “And these,” clipping a pair of dull metal bracelets to each wrist. They were at odds with the very pretty nature of everything else I wore and reminded me of the one I’d worn at the Clinic. She concealed them beneath decorative little cuffs in delicate lace. “And this, of course,” she said, affixing a slender silk choker in black around my neck. “Perfect.”

            “So—now what?” I swept my hand across the expanse of my squeezed and coddled body, from upthrust jiggling tits to tensed calves shadowed in smoky stockings. “I mean it’s fun and all, but not very practical.”

            Julia raised an eyebrow. “You’re a maid.”

            “Yeah, I get that.”

            “So, get to work.”

            I stared at her. “You’re joking.”

            “Not even a little.”

            First, she introduced me to the storage cupboard where her usual cleaner kept everything, the mop and rags, gloves and sprays and everything else. “I expect this place to be spotless,” Julia told me. “And I expect you to play the part.”

            Then, she presented the videos queued up and cast to the tv screen on the wall, ready to play on demand. I don’t know where she found these things—a fetish porn site, or an archive for the upper-classes, or maybe she’d paid to have an AI generate them for her—but it was clip after clip of deportment videos, prescriptive instruction for both master and servant. How to curtsy; what to expect from your maid; approaches to cleaning; punishment and training; how to please your master; how to keep your maid in line. Mixed in were clips from movies of questionable quality, both old and new, featuring beautiful young women in scanty maid outfits scampering about in heels much like mine.

            Julia indicated the shoes, gleaming like obsidian in the late afternoon light. “You’ll have to take it easy with those, I think,” she mused. “You can take a ten-minute break every half hour.”

            “Thanks.”

            “But you’re either working,” Julia added, “or learning how to be a better maid.”

            On screen, a pretty girl dressed very similarly to me pranced down the stairs of some wealthy home, delicately holding the banister as the exposed crescent of her tits jiggled with each step.

            She grinned. “Have fun.” Then she waited expectantly.

            Rolling my eyes, I gave my best approximation of a curtsy.

            “That was shit. Practice; I expect the next one to be better.”

            I blew a stray band of hair from my face. “Fine.”

            Her hand caught me across the face. “Excuse me?”

            Still smarting from the slap, I started at the anger, the steel to her voice. “Julia….”

            Again, the slap. “Are you stupid? You’re a maid! What do you say?”

            I was slow, but finally got what she meant. “Ma’am. Er, Miss. Madame.”

            “Ma’am will do.”

            “Yes, ma’am.”

            She glared at me, and I dropped my gaze.

            “I could get used to that,” she said. “Now I’ve got work to do, so get on with it,” and she gave me a sharp slap to the bottom to get me started. “I’ll be checking in, so no laying about, you lazy girl.” She indicated one of the many integrated smart-sensors dotted around the condo. “You’re working until 7 o’clock, and I expect this place to be spotless by the time you’re done,” she added, before disappearing into her office and closing the door.

            Well, what could I do? Fuck, but this certainly wasn’t how I wanted to spend my Sunday. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but it wasn’t this. For a moment I just stood there, gently massaging my cheek, mindful to not ruin my makeup but feeling the heat of her slap. A few minutes ago, this uniform felt fun—kinky and weird, and uncomfortable, but fun. Now?

            I resented the unpaid labour, her exploitation of my circumstances. It made me angry, the injustice—forced to clean up her mess; no, the mess her and her lover made last night. It wasn’t fair. It was mean. She wanted to punish me, but surely this was going too far.

            But I couldn’t leave—not dressed like this, in an outfit I’m not sure I could remove without help. More to the point—I didn’t want to leave. The same impulse that led me to put the damned outfit on in the first place also insisted I stay and do what Julia wanted. And I knew she meant it—proper cleaning—not just fluttering about with a feather duster bending over salaciously and holding a finger to my lips in mock surprise, like the girl in the video playing on the screen behind me.

            I started in the kitchen. That went well, at first.  It was easy enough to tidy things away, empty and rinse out the bottles, and toss them in the recycling. Scrape plates clean and arrange in the dishwasher. I envied Julia her kitchen and smart appliances and wished my little apartment was so well appointed. My own home needed a good clean, but here I was cleaning this highly paid bitch’s kitchen.

            Last night’s cold noodles in the trash. Leftovers from breakfast sat in a pair of frying pan on the stovetop: a few stray strips of real bacon, some home fries that reeked of too much garlic, and a cold and rubbery egg, sunny side up. Briefly tempted by the bacon, I realised the steady grip at my belly robbed me of hunger. I found some gloves to protect my nails and skin and got to work scrubbing the pans.

            Who cooked the meal—Caleb? He seemed the type. I could imagine him standing here, at the stove, just as I was—but cooking, not spraying it down and wiping it clean of grease. He was a messy cook, leaving fat spattered everywhere, and hardened yellow streaks stained the cooker. But then, maybe he got distracted. Julia, silently sliding up behind him, delicate negligee fluttering around her frame. Julia, reaching around his waist to fondle his crotch as he flipped an egg. Nibbling at his ear. The moment when he turned off the heat and chuckled in that way of his, picked her up, her legs wrapped around his waist as he carried her back to the bedroom.

            And just like that, last night’s dormant heat blossomed in my groin once more—one of the reasons I was here, I realised, possibly the only one. I paused and gripped the countertop and took a deep calming breath—tried to—and found my breath arrested by the firm caress of the corset. I tried again, and couldn’t again, and suddenly felt flustered and dizzy and had to sit down for a moment.

            Biting down on my lower lip, I got back to cleaning. I focused on the work. At least, I tried to. Distractions came frequently. It wasn’t easy. Everything I did reminded me of the ridiculousness of my uniform. Every time I knelt, bent or reached, I felt those garter straps pull taut or tug at my stockings. Every move was accompanied by the swish of petticoats. Up close against a table or counter, they bunched up with a delicate rustle of silk tulle that tickled my thighs. Standing still, the taste of lipstick, the gentle squeeze of the choker at my neck and the persistent press of the corset at waist and abdomen. Always, the peripheral glimpse of breasts pushed high, nearly spilling out of their tight lace-trimmed décolletage. Moving, the sharp click of heels against hardwood, the sway of my hips and the gentle rolling gait forced by these shoes. And of course I couldn’t move quickly, nor work too hard, not without running short of breath and having to sit, fanning myself, ribcage straining against their restraint until recovery.

            Every single thing I did that afternoon brought to attention the enforced femininity of the role dictated by Julia, with a vividness unfelt since the earliest days of playing Cindy. Worst of all, it was… arousing, so fucking sexy being wrapped in this whisper of skirts and petticoats from which I couldn’t escape. I’d never worn something so intensely designed to arouse—not just others, though doubtless it’d be very successful at that—but rather the wearer, me, wrapped in these layers of silk and satin.

            Somehow, the very forcefulness of it all, this prison of perfume and petticoats, and the taste of my own girlishness, made it even more erotic. And of course, the mirrors: and every glimpse of this fetishistic punishment added to my growing arousal.

            At some point, I simply surrendered to the sensations. I didn’t so much check-out as subsume myself to the erotic haze suffusing every motion, and as I tidied and cleaned and washed, I paused frequently to squeeze my thighs together, or surreptitiously grab my own tit, or blank out briefly in a sexually distracted fog. More than once, I found myself pressing up against the countertop, or gently bumping into a table, rounded wooden edge slipping beneath petticoat ruffles to fleetingly rub against the delicate front of lacy panties to scratch the itch I didn’t dare touch.

            Julia, meanwhile, worked. For the first two hours of cleaning, she remained behind the closed door of the office. Was she watching? I assumed so. Those security cameras dotted around her condo blinked their little red light, and presumably followed my movement around her home.

            Panties and bras, swimwear and lingerie, a few dresses, some skirts: yesterday’s shopping, carefully unpacked and carried to her bedroom and neatly arranged for her to put away. I held up the bikini Julia bought for me. It was a shimmering gold thing comprising a pair of triangles surely too small to cover my tits, and an equally small scrap of fabric down below. Yesterday, I couldn’t have imagined wearing it, breasts so prominently on display, pert bum and soft skin.

            Well, look at me now. Yesterday, I hadn’t imagined dressing as though I’d escaped a Parisian brothel. How could a bikini be any worse?

            Now in the main bedroom, I focused on the next task: the bed. Rumpled bedsheets glowed in the late afternoon sun cast through balcony doors, curtains thrown wide. Once, not so long ago I’d shared that bed with her. Our limbs intertwined, drenched in sweat and bathed in moonlight. Breast to breast softness, my weight pressing down on her, my cock pushing into her.

            Stripping the rich cotton sheets from the bed, I saw the stains of her lovemaking. An intense jealously gripped me as I seized the sheets. It wasn’t—right, or fair. Julia wasn’t mine; she was her own woman and could do whatever, or whomever, she wanted. But it still wasn’t right. It should be me, fucking her on this bed. Me, staining these sheets with sweat and semen.

            They’d started before I even left last night. I heard them from the living room as I put on my shoes. Naked, I imagined, over the sheets. Caleb’s hands at her breast, her thigh, her snatch, fingers dancing along labia and clitoris—did he excite her, touch her, make her wet, like I could?

            Once ready, did he rise over her before burying himself deep, before beginning the slow, languorous thrusts inexorably driving her to climax, weathering the hissed curses of her hated consent to this pleasure?

            Or was it fierce and brutal, the wet smack of flesh on flesh as he pounded her cunt until she screamed her passionate submission, legs raised high on his shoulder, bent nearly in half under his weight? Did he take her roughly or gently, on her back or on all fours, did he—

            He—

            Christ. How long had I been standing vacantly staring at the bed, with one hand at my throat and the other gently kneading my breast, before she found me standing there?

            “Caleb was a good fuck,” Julia whispered in my ear, coming up silently behind me. Her arms encircled my tiny waist and I started at her touch. She held me close, and I felt the press of her breasts against my back and the tickle of her voice at my ear. “Surprisingly good. We went at it all night. He fucked me again and again and I came—oh, so many times I lost count.” Her hands at my waist drifted, one up and one down, the first gently curling fingers over mine at my neck, the other burrowing through layers of petticoat to find the treasure buried beneath.

            She found what she was looking for. “Of course, watching you blow him….” Her grip at my neck tightened and she held me closer. I leaned back into her, mouth opening in a silent sigh. “I was already wet—so fucking wet—by the time Caleb got to me.” A finger slipped past the waistband of my panties and found I was wet, too.

            I gasped and my knees went weak. Her fingers moved around, and her grip at my neck tightened, and I tried to draw in a shuddering breath and couldn’t because of the corset. I felt light- headed, delightfully so, weak in her embrace as she guided me to the unmade bed.

            “Has my maid been working hard?”

            Petticoats rustled with the movement of her fingers.

            I gasped and swayed under her touch. “Yes. So—,” her finger drifted across a special place, “Oh! Yes, so hard…..”

            “Yes, what?” The finger stopped.

            “Yes, ma’am,” I moaned. “Ma’am, miss, boss—yes—God, please don’t stop….”

            My skirts rustled once more. The heat grew—I was close, so fucking close, but….

            “Has she earned a reward?”

            Biting my lower lip, I nodded.

            She stopped. “Curtsy,” she ordered.

            On wobbly legs, I tried my best. Fortunately, I’d practiced over the past few hours. My legs trembled as I dipped a knee and held up the hem of the dress. Julia smiled, a mix of cruel satisfaction and clear joy at the sight of me.

            “Good. And what’s an appropriate reward for a maid?”

            Even as I went to answer, I saw the narrowing of the eyes and the beginning of a frown. Instead, I demurely dropped my eyes to the floor. “You should decide, Ma’am.”

            “And what if I decide you don’t deserve a reward?”

            Fuck Julia and fuck her games, but most of all: fuck me—please. Instead, I gazed at her with the cutest desperate eyes I could muster. I whimpered.

            “Get on the bed, you slut,” she instructed. “Face down, ass up.”

            I did as she demanded: face down in bedsheets recently soiled by another lover, ass up in the air in an explosion of petticoats and satin skirts.

            “Wait here, like that,” she said. “Don’t move. I’m going to inspect your work. It had better be good, or else—” and here, she gave my ass a sharp smack.

            I waited.

            There was just enough time to wonder, again, how the fuck I came to be here: ass in the cooling air, tightly corseted, garters and stockings, tightly wrapped in the fetishistic satins of a fantasy maid, waiting—for my ex-girlfriend—to return and either fuck me silly or deny me release or possibly, even, spank me for my poor performance. The shame—the cognitive dissonance between who I’d been and where I now was—was exquisitely painful: I nearly cried, quivering in anticipation as she returned to the room.

            “You’ve done good work,” Julia said, sounding both surprised and a little disappointed.

            I tried to speak—to breathe—nothing came out.

            “Here’s your reward,” she said, yanking my panties down to my ankles. The front was already soaked through. “Look.” Julia had returned prepared—holding another life-like dildo, larger than the one she’d gifted me.

            I watched, as it disappeared between stocking-shadowed knees beneath quivering petticoats. Her hand at my tight little waist tightened as she braced herself—a moment of held breath and anxious trembling—the subtle movement—then that awful, awesome sensation of being filled as Julia buried that cock in one, smooth motion balls deep in my prosthetic pussy.

            Some small part of my brain again curled up in utter confusion as to what the hell was happening, the assault of impossible sensations on erogenous zones I shouldn’t possess. Another part of me raised a faint protest that this was wrong, so wrong, I was a man, a man squeezed into a corset with his ass in the air and his tits flattened beneath him as he writhed around that terrible, wonderful invader, my whole being coiling around this singular point—though quickly expanding—reports of pleasure flying in from everywhere—from clitoris and nipples and lips and the behind of my knees—like, really, behind the fucking knees?—suddenly tight and hot and desperate to be touched despite some sad, little voice insisting no, no no.

            But the rest of my brain and whole goddamn body cried out yes, goddamn it, and yes! again, and loved every fucking moment.

            After I came, my cries muffled by the mattress, and my breathing calmed enough that I no longer felt faint, and the room stopped spinning, Julia gave me a sharp smack across the ass. “Lazy slutty maid!”

            I could only groan in response, legs vaguely scrabbling for purchase like a heat-baked crab on its back on some tropical beach. I wanted more; I felt somewhat satiated but wanted more. Even just that simple slap to the bum left me wanting more.

            “Get your ass out of the air, you stupid girl.” But Julia laughed as she said it. I heard her leave the room, calling over her shoulder. “Have some dignity.”

            My breathing was slow, shallow and shuddering as I melted into the bed.

            “And get back to work!”

            This was—what?—the third time she’d fucked me like this? Or the fourth? I ran a quick mental tally: that first night, after I got back from the Clinic, though that time was just with her finger. The night she came back after Paris—yes, that was the first time, me all wrapped up like a gift in exotic blue lingerie and her edging me to climax before finishing me off with a dildo up my twat, my first time properly penetrated. Then, the very next evening, confirming her dominance over me—kneeling face down, ass up in her living room as Julia plunged her toy deep into my prosthetic. Did that count as two or three?

            Who the fuck cares?

            The erotic brain fog of earlier eventually dissipated and left me languid. Vague reports of pain came from my ribs and thighs—the tenseness of release, the bite of the corset as I strained against unyielding boning at climax. Eventually, digging deep, I found the strength to stand—wobbled slightly, like a girl freshly fucked—and tottered back into the living room, and got back to work.

            I got back to work and to my surprise, this time around, enjoyed the labour. I honestly did. For the rest of that afternoon and into early evening, I swanned around her apartment in this beautiful, sexy, stupid uniform. Heels clicked with every step as I pranced and minced and shimmied around Julia’s flat. Post-nut clarity brought an unexpected peace—not guilt, not consternation, just a simple emptiness as I continued the mundane act of cleaning Julia’s apartment.

            Gradually, my mind turned to the conflicted feelings I’d carried with me into Julia’s apartment that day. Last night left me—angry, but also feeling wretched, as though my insides had been ripped out. Tears, but what I’d really wanted to do was punch the walls until my knuckles bled. But I couldn’t do that, a girl like Cindy isn’t allowed to express her anger so openly and so instead I—

            Spent the night with Jonas, and—

            Now I was back here.

            On my knees, I attacked the toilet with determination. Julia needed to have a word with her regular cleaner. There was a buildup of limescale and filth under the inner rim of the toilet bowl. Armed with bleach and toothbrush, I attacked the dirt. Strong antiseptic detergent warred with perfume and the taste and scent of makeup as I worked. As yellowed and brown grit fell away, I contemplated Caleb. His annoying little laugh and flabby paunch. The dusting of grey at his temples and the smoothness of a circumcised dick. The unexpected kindness behind pale blue eyes. The spatter of jizz against my face, catching on nose and lips and chin, dribbling between my tits.

            After, I gave the guest bedroom and en-suite a quick survey, tidying away a few items but more meticulous in wiping down those harder to reach places cleaners usually can’t be bothered to clean. My mind continued to churn over the events of the past two days. A delicious mellowness infused everything I did, as though swimming through gentle sunlight. In repetitive, simple work I felt able to confront the emotions that plagued me. Despite the tight bind of restrictive clothing and hobbling shoes, freedom: and by degrees the anger and resentment and loss and shame drained away until I was left feeling… content.

            By the time I returned to the living room, it was getting late. Approaching six o’clock, and outside it was growing dark. Julia sat in the chair in the corner by the bookshelf. There was a bottle of wine breathing on the counter, and a single glass waiting. She raised her eyes from a book she was reading at the sound of my clicking steps.

            She made eye contact and raised an eyebrow.

            Blushing, I curtseyed. Compared to my first effort earlier today, it was much better: graceful, a little deeper, and I remembered to lightly hold the hem between finger and thumb. Then I stood, eyes downcast, waiting.

            “Well done, maid,” she said. When I looked up, she was smiling. Her eyes held a delighted twinkle. “Wine,” she commanded.

            I trotted over to the counter and poured out a glass of red and carried it back to her. Then, I stood a respectful distance away, hands folded daintily over each other and eyes downcast, as one of the videos instructed. Inside, I felt—nothing, really. Pleased, maybe, at how good the place looked.

            “You’ve done good work today,” Julia said.

            I accepted her compliment silently and felt an unexpected flush of pleasure that brought a faint spot of pink to my cheeks.

            “A little more, and we’ll call it a day.” She indicated the living room. “Finish off in here. Tidy, organize, dust—” she waved her hand in an idle circle—“Whatever. You’re the maid. Make it spotless. It’s nearly seven.”

            I nodded and returned to work. Truthfully, there wasn’t much left to do in this room. I’d already been through here, dusted and cleaned and sent out the vacuum and mopped the floors. Surely, Julia knew this. Nevertheless, I fluttered around as instructed.

            My heels tapped out an irregular rhythm as I passed a cloth or duster over every surface. Gradually, I became aware of her eyes on me. She tracked my every movement, eyes dark over the rim of her wine glass. Under her gaze, I grew hot and saw myself as she must see me: the mincing steps, the floating skirts. Long hair over slender shoulders and the slim frame bound in black satin reaching, bending, moving with delicate concentration. Julia looked at me and couldn’t see a man but rather this small girl with big tits fluttering around her apartment.

            Yet instead of humiliation, I felt—sexy. Exciting, and excited. I added a fun little flounce to my step. Stuck my bum out as I cleaned low places; kicked a leg up as I strained to reach higher places. Every now and then I’d gasp or hold my hand to my chest or fan myself daintily and take careful little breaths as my cleavage flushed red. Frequently, I sent searching little glances her way, coquettish smiles and half-lidded eyes hidden behind painted nails or the feathers of a duster.

            It was in just such a moment, bending at the waist as I attacked a pernicious stain on a low shelf, a semi-circle shadow of wine dried into polished wood, that she came up behind me. Suddenly, Julia’s hands were at my waist, a strong grip felt through the bodice and corset beneath. I gave a start, a cute little yelp of surprise.

            “You little minx,” she growled in my ear.

            “Ma’am!” I protested.

            She spun me around. I saw the hunger in her eyes, but also something more. “You little tease, flashing your ass like that,” and her hand groped my bum beneath its cloud of petticoats.

            I gasped. “Mais non, maîtress!” I held my hands up between us, my weak push ineffectual versus her size and the purchase of her shoes.

            “Non?” Julia stopped. “Maîtress?

            I blinked. “Yeah, as in, French?” I plucked at my apron and pantomimed the domestic servant resisting the advances of the cruel lord or lady. “Oh, no, zut alors! Sacre Bleu!” I paused. “I am a French maid, right?”

            She stared at me for a long moment. The lust evident in her eyes faded. It occurred to me then just how tired she looked—worse than when I’d arrived—genuinely exhausted even, the strain evident in the pallor of her face. Julia fell back. Earlier, as she sat under soft light in her chair I hadn’t noticed, not as glittering eyes tracked me with erotic intensity over the rim of her glass. But up close, it was obvious: Julia was barely holding her shit together.

            “What the fuck am I doing?” she muttered as she let go of me. She dropped heavily into her sofa. A moment of staring blankly into space, and then she focused on me. “I think we’re done here,” she said and then sat there, elbows on knees with her head between her hands.

            I hovered uncertainly. “Ma’am?”

            Blearily, she looked up. “I said we’re done. No more maid, okay? No more—anything. Please.”

            “Jules?”

            She glanced up, then away. “You should get changed.”

            I gnawed on my lower lip for a moment, and then with a rustle of petticoats crossed the room to stand over her. “What if I don’t want to?”
            She rolled her eyes. “Sure. Whatever.”

            “I mean it, Jules. What if I’m enjoying this?”
            She groaned. “You, David Saunders, are enjoying prancing around in—” her hand waved at my ridiculous outfit. “In all this?”

            I shrugged, bare shoulders rising and dropping in a delicate display of admission. “Not at first,” I said. “I’ll be honest. When I saw these clothes out on the bed, I nearly made a break for the door. And those videos? Ridiculous. Fucked up, too, but mostly ridiculous. And, yes, it’s embarrassing standing here in this getup.

            “But—what can I say? I got used to it. It’s not how I would’ve chosen to spend my Sunday afternoon, cleaning your apartment but… I don’t know. It did a lot to clear my head.

            She looked askance at me. “Sure.”

            “It did.” I smiled. “I was—angry, Julia, when I got here. Very, very angry: with you, with Caleb; mostly with myself. And confused.”

            Arms crossed beneath my impressive decolletage, I leaned against the kitchen countertop. “I’m still confused,” I said. “But I’m not angry anymore.”

            It took some time, but she eventually dragged her eyes from the floor to look at me. She sighed. “Why don’t you get a glass of wine,” she said. “And—sit. With me, please. I need—I think I need a friend. Not a maid, not a lover, and especially not someone under my thumb, just… another girl I can talk to.”

            “I’d like that,” I said.

            “And even if you’re fine with it—maybe you should change? Keep the corset on if you like, but maybe we’re done with the maid, okay?”

            The dark satin felt slick and cool under my palm. I tugged my little apron into place and felt the garter tabs at my thighs. “Then what should I wear, Julia?”

            She sighed. “I don’t—I don’t know. Don’t care. You choose.”

            “That’s not how this works, Jules.”
            “Who’s in charge here?” Anger flared in her eyes. “That’s how it is tonight, got it?” Almost instantly, though, she fell back into the sofa with a groan. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, as though fighting back tears “Just—” With an arm thrown across her face, she turned away from me. “Do whatever the hell you want. Leave. Stay. Change. Don’t. I don’t care.”

            I left her there, the sharp tap of my heels following me out the room.

Two: Isn’t This Fun?

She was still in that position when I returned some twenty minutes later: slouched deep into the sofa, arm thrown across her face, eyes shut. Her breathing was shallow, and she cradled her glass with a limp hand. Julia was at that dozy threshold between wakefulness and sleep, and her wine glass dangled precariously. I rescued it to the counter before it fell, shattered and spilled across the floor: I’d only just mopped the damned thing, after all.

            Petticoats rustling, I then settled onto the sofa. I stretched my legs and flexed my ankle. It felt good to be out of those heels although—perversely—I also missed them, the curved arch, the sexy wiggle and meticulous step; and the height, of course, the tension between empowerment and vulnerability embodied by the stiletto.

            I’d given Julia a little space, a little recovery time to herself to deal with whatever was dragging her down. Time to ditch the shoes and take a piss—an involved process, dressed as I was—and freshen my makeup. Time to quickly pass through her condo and double-check the cleaning I’d done today. Time to peek into her office and see the chaotic jumble of dishes, cups and glasses, leftover food and general funk there, amongst the stacks of work and unsecured computers, screens filled with rows of data and code.

            Now, the swish of tulle made clear my decision. I sat still dressed in that maid’s uniform—minus apron and cap—fluffing out my skirts and petticoats into a more comfortable position.

            Julia cracked open an eye, saw what I was wearing, and released a fatalistic sigh. “Really?”

            “Really.”

            “Now you’re just fucking with me,” she said. “I told you to get changed.”

            “No.” I picked at a piece of dirt on the white trim of the skirt. “You said I should get changed. Maybe. You choose, you said.” I curled my legs up beneath me, hands resting lightly on my knee. The silk stockings beneath my touch felt cool and smooth. “I chose.”

            “Impertinent.”

            “It’s not my fault your instructions were unclear.”

            “I’m too tired for this shit.” Her eyes fluttered shut. “Believe it or not, I did my research before we started all this. A little light holiday reading.” She chuckled dryly. “How to be a dominant, how to train your sub, that kind of thing.”

            “How was it?”

            “A lot less titillating than you’d think.” She sighed deeply. “But nothing I read mentioned just how much goddam work it would be. I’m exhausted, David. Keeping you in line is like working a second job, and I’m barely keeping up with the one that pays the bills.”

            I didn’t feel particularly sympathetic. “This was your choice, Jules. You want to dominate my life? Fine, but you’ve got to keep your side of the bargain. Tell me what to do.”

            She lolled her head to one side and glared at me. “This isn’t a game.”

            I kept silent.

            She blew a raspberry at me. “You’re being mean.”

            “Mean? You had me tidy up after you and your lover.” I drew the pad of my index finger along the surface of an end table and noted with satisfaction how it came away clean—far cleaner than my own home, in fact. “You fucked my pussy over sheets you soiled with another man’s seed.”

            “Seed?” She blinked, and the first hint of a smile tugged at her lips. “How very… literary.”

            “I’m dressed like I escaped from the cover of some 19th century regency romance.” I tugged at my low-scooped neckline. “Or a porno.”

            “Fine. But if you’re going to stay dressed like that, the least you can do is pour me another glass of wine.”

            “That’s the spirit.” I hopped to my feet.

            “You might as well get yourself one as well.”

            “The service shouldn’t—”

            “You’re not the service,” she snapped, then saw my grin, and smiled wryly in return. “Just pour us some fucking wine, will you? And grab some nibbles while you’re at it, you must be starving.”

            I returned with two glasses, a plate of cheeses (cave-aged cheddar, stilton, some brie) and water biscuits from England, and placed it on an end table. Sitting, we were a contrast in comfort: Julia in slim jeans and fitted long-sleeved black top, and me, snug yet oddly at ease in a cascade of petticoats, skirts and lace. She lounged; corseted, I sat stiffly. We clinked our glasses, sipped and nibbled as we sat together in momentarily silence. I crossed and uncrossed my legs at the knee with a sibilant whisper. It was dark out, and the condo gradually raised recessed lighting.

            Julia tapped at her phone. Music began to play, quiet and melancholy. “Do you know where this whole French maid kink comes from?”

            I shook my head no.

            “I went down a bit of a rabbit hole while you were cleaning,” she said. When she saw me open my mouth to protest, she glared. “And I was working, too, thank you very much, not that it’s any of your business, maid. But watching you in the kitchen, I got to thinking and did a bit of research.

            “You study any Moliere? Marivaux?”

            Again, I indicated I hadn’t; my fake education barely covered English-language classics, let alone the literature of other countries.

            The maid, she went on to explain over the length of polishing off a glass of wine, was a soubrette, a stock-character of 18th and 19th century French comedy, a house servant and foil to upper-class foibles. She was witty, sassy and above all else, attractive. Her lower status released her from the restrictive bindings of upper-class life; she was free to speak her mind, saucy, spicy and most of all, sexual. She embodied the liberated freedoms her upper-class mistress could only fantasize. She wasn’t a maid, specifically, though her costume was already salacious.

            This fictional stock character became conflated with real-life female domestics through to the early twentieth century. Young women entering domestic servitude were often precarious and easily exploited. Male servants and especially the masters of the house often took sexual advantage of these maids, and she was rarely in a position to refuse or resist their advances. Historical documents recorded many pregnancies, STDs, suicides and infanticides as a consequence of exploitation. Many dismissed maids ended up in prostitution, and their sexual employment simply fed the image of sexual hunger.

            The reality of exploitation became a cliché, a stereotype of victim and temptress that became fodder for cheap comedy. This fueled the view that maids were sexually promiscuous and fair game, always eager for a good fuck if you asked them; not that a man needed to ask, obviously, as it was his gender-given right, especially for an upper-class ‘gentleman’.

            Unsurprisingly, it all led to a bit of a maid fetish, and by the twentieth century there were French brothels offering costume services where you could order a prostitute dressed a nun, schoolgirl, ballerina—or maid. The uniform itself remained ‘realistic’, functional and often blue or gray with few embellishments, until the early-to-mid twentieth century, where it evolved according to fashion and the influence of American burlesque: the skirts got shorter, and the heels taller, and the fetish soon crept out of the brothel and porno industry into mainstream Hollywood.

            I listened patiently and swirled the wine in my glass and took cautious sips as she spoke. When she was done, I stifled a yawn. “That’s… fascinating, Julia, really. But why—”

            “It was your stupid French accent that did it for me,” Julia said.

            “Sorry.” I shrugged. “I’ve always been shit at accents.”

            “No—it’s just that when you spoke French, suddenly—” She hesitated. “Watching you, it was a turn on, okay? And when I grabbed you from behind, felt your tiny waist, I wanted….” Julia looked at me, intently, and licked her lips. “I wanted you.”

            “I was yours to have.”
            “I wanted to maul your tits and toss you over the edge of the sofa and spank that milky-white bottom,” she continued, fiercely, almost defiantly. “I wanted you on the floor with your little head and that silly lacy cap pinned between my knees eating me out until I screamed.”
            A little tremor went through me at her words. “Why didn’t you, then?”
            “Because—” She took a nervous sip of wine, swirled the glass and seemed to consider. “Because when you said, ‘non’, when you called me ‘maîtress’ and when you put on that ridiculous accent and acted all demure like, suddenly, I felt like I was in one of those videos I’d put on for you. I felt like I was in a porno. It felt—kinky; no, not kinky—worse.”

            She took another sip, a long one.  “It wasn’t just the kink. It was—” She stared into her glass as thought seeking answers in ruby depths. “For a moment, I looked at you and suddenly felt like I was part of that whole lineage. Centuries of abuse and exploitation and rape of young women. Fetishizing working-class vulnerability. And there you were giggling like a soubrette from a French comedy and instead of being funny or titillating, it felt performative and…” Her mouth opened and closed a few times, fish-like, as she searched for a word.

            “Pervy?”

            She nodded. “And sordid? Yes. It felt perverted and sordid and it felt wrong.”

            I stared at her for a long moment, and then laughed.

            She frowned. “I’m being serious, David.”

            “Jules, a few hours ago you had me face down in your bed with a dildo up my pussy.” I ticked off a finger. “Last night you gave detailed instruction as I sucked on another man’s cock.” Another finger. “You had him jizz on my face.” I plucked at my uniform. “And this—you chose this.” I ticked off a third and fourth finger. “Let alone what you had me wear last night! I mean—yeah, sure, me prancing around like some fetish fantasy’s perverse, it’s sure as hell sordid, but…. isn’t that the point?”

            Again, a long pause before she answers. “I felt guilty.” She held my gaze until it felt uncomfortable. “I feel guilty.”

            As did I. We all have things to feel guilty about, the terrible things we’ve done and the secrets we keep.

            “Have you considered,” I said, somewhat contemplatively, “that what you’re feeling isn’t just guilt, but maybe just a touch of jealousy?”

            With narrowing eyes, she waited for me to continue.

            Twisting a little to show off my tightly enforced curves, I fluffed out my skirts and smiled. “I mean, it’s your bucket list, right, but I’m the one wearing all the fun clothes.” I fluttered my fingernails and held them against my chest in a display of breathlessness. “Like, oh la la, it’s all pervy fantasy, but whose fantasy is it? Aren’t you the least bit tempted to join me? You’d look—” I made a chef’s kiss gesture, “in this, believe me, I’d love to see in this.” I grinned. “Can you imagine Caleb’s reaction to being served by a pair of sexy maids?”

            “No.” Julia glared at me, unamused. “I’ve had my fill of being objectified, thank you very much.”

            “Your loss.” I shrugged. “But all that shit you just told me? Yeah, it sucks. History sucks. Especially for women. We’re all walking victims of a nightmare from which we can’t awaken, right? But this?” I stood and held my hands at my waist, arms akimbo, and gave a little twirl that set the skirts of my sexy maid’s uniform to fluttering. “This is so far detached from reality that I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s got nothing to do with fucking Moliere.”

            From her seat on the sofa, she eyed me with amusement. “You know what really annoys me about that thing?” I shrugged, and she continued: “that there isn’t a male equivalent.”

            I thought for a second. “Butler?” I tapped my chin. “Sexy butler?”

            “Adding the adjective ‘sexy’ doesn’t make it the same,” she said. “There isn't nearly the same kind of fetishization of a butler. There’s prestige to the butler, a certain respect and authority the maid’s never had. Besides, ‘sexy’ butlers are all gleaming pecs, abs and biceps, basically strippers in uniform.”

            “They’re still objectified.” I settled back onto the sofa with another delicate rustle. “In fact, it’s playing off the whole power thing in a way a maid never could, right? These guys, they’ve got all that physical power but it’s meaningless, they’re still subordinate to whatever man or woman they’re serving.”

            She considered that, then shook her head. “No. Still not the same. Yes, they reinforce that power dynamic, but they also challenge it—implicitly—it’s like saying, ‘yeah, you’re in in charge, but I could physically dominate you in an instant.’ And it’s true; those men are like Grecians warrior painted on the side of an urn: idolized naked masculine strength. There might be all kinds of social and economic reasons that led to this guy oiling up and dressing in a g-string to serve a woman, but there’s always that frisson, for her, the knowledge that he could have her over his knee in a second. Her power’s an illusion; a social contract.” She looked at me with those dark, glittering eyes. “A fantasy.”

            The way she looked at me, then? Julia was clearly considering our contract, our shared fantasy: how far could she push the illusion before it broke? How long, I wondered, before she tried to put me over her knee—and what would I do if she did?

            “But the maid?” she continued, “Her outfit doesn’t just emphasise her vulnerability, it enhances it, those shoes, that skirt, the corset that restricts and steals her breath, leaves her flushed and faint. As if she wasn’t helpless enough to start with, her clothes manifest her weakness, lock way what little physical power she has beyond beauty.” She waved her hand at me. “I mean, how powerful are you feeling right now?”

            I make a show of flexing my biceps in a farcical strongman pose, then gave a rueful laugh. “Not very,” I admitted, though I felt she oversold the restrictions of the clothes. Even in this corset, I knew I could take Julia down in an instant, if I had to; or Caleb, were he here. But I got her point. “Though you shouldn’t underestimate that whole ‘beauty’ thing. The very fact it’s the only tool she’s left with makes it powerful. Still. I think you’re overlooking a key thing about this outfit, Jules.”

            “What?”

            “The fact that it’s—fun?” I shrugged. “I mean, yeah, obviously it’s got to do with power and control and all that other shit, but Julia… everything is about power and control and shit. Pop two people in a room together, one of them is going to try and take charge. Leave a guy alone in a room, five minutes and he’ll be trying to dominate four walls and a ceiling—or he’ll surrender to it.” I smiled and fiddled with the garter holding my stockings. “Think about it too much and you’ll go nuts.”

            She thought about what I said for a moment. “I still feel guilty.”

            With a rustle of skirts, I scooted a little closer. “Julia. Don’t.”

            She shook her head. “Last night, with Caleb….”

            “Was cruel,” I agreed. “But also….”

            She waited.

            “I—” My voice wavered. It was difficult to put into words how I felt. To find the balance between lie and truth. Julia assumed last night was my first, my first time fellating a man. She was wrong. Those times with Jonas hadn’t exactly made me a pro but did mitigate some of the shame of what I’d done with Caleb last night. Of course, Julia had introduced whole new layers of humiliation to the occasion. Watching. Taking charge. Knowing I was really a man. Not just a man, but the man who ruined her life. And Caleb himself—not some kid, but a man my age; somehow, that too made it worse.

            This disguise—this life—wasn’t one I’d have ever chosen but those weeks at the Clinic taught me I had to adjust, accept and live, rather than hide and wait. Waiting, I’d go mad—do something idiotic like explode violently, hurt myself or someone else, or drink myself stupid and reveal myself again, as I did to Julia all those months ago.

            Somehow, all this led to unwanted intimacy with—men: first Dan, then Chad and now Jonas, but also Caleb—four men in half as many months, and the most galling thing of all was the simple fact that with at least two of those, I’d enjoyed it, taken comfort from their attention and felt cared for, appreciated and safe in a way that I didn’t fully understand.

            With Chad, I felt—cherished and desired, not as a woman or a man, but simply as—Cindy; and whatever that meant, it felt good.

            And Jonas? He kept the nightmares away last night. The kid was clearly crushing on me, and who could blame him? I didn’t quite know what to make of his affection, but I was grateful for it—but also sad—because of how I’d hurt him, and probably would, again.

            It was all an exercise in compartmentalisation. I was learning to separate these lives, the Cindy-life and the David-life. Everything beyond Julia’s reach belonged to Cindy: the girls at work, clubbing and the boy I met there, and the late-night cuddle with him last night. The morning blow job. Or dancing on the dancefloor in a tight and sparkly dress. Sitting by the boss’s desk in a short skirt and licking my lips, waiting intently on his every word.

            Cindy did these things, and she did them guilt-free.

            But I couldn’t hand off to Cindy when I was with Julia, because it was David she wanted, and David she needed.

            Amidst all this confusion as to who the hell I was at any given moment, there was something else, too: jealousy. There was no other word for what I felt watching Caleb and Julia kiss. Watched him cup her gorgeous tits. Hearing the panting and moans and laughs last night, those bedroom sounds reaching me as I cleaned his cum from my face, washed in the bathroom mirror and fixed my lipstick.

            Julia wasn’t mine. But I wanted her and didn’t want to share.

            And then the anger—the fury—that she would do this to me. The way she treated me at Noir, like a child, like some fucking bimbo. That man and his cock pointed at my face, the cruelty of spraying his cum in my hair and eyes and nose. The taste of it. Even the fact that Caleb actually wasn’t a bad guy; he was kind and that, too made me angry.

            There was more, of course, seething and bubbling under the surface, a roiling witch’s cauldron of unresolved emotions set in motion by impulses I couldn’t share or didn’t fully understand. Stir the pot and who knew what might rise to the surface?

            This, all this—I wanted to share with Julia.

            “It was fine,” I said.

            Julia stared back at me. I wondered if she, too, had a whole churn of emotions for which she lacked the vocabulary, energy or courage to express.

            “Fine?”

            I ran the tip of my tongue across my lips. “Mostly fine?”

            “How very… blasé of you,” Julia said. “Your first ever blowjob was… mostly fine? I expected more.”

            “It wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be?” I relived the muscle memory of phantom jaw ache and a foreign pressure at my tongue or distending the inside of a cheek. “Like—yeah, ew, nasty. You know, the fact he pisses out of that thing. Although he’d obviously given himself a little wash when he popped into the bathroom, before.” Classy guy, that Caleb. “There’s just something a bit gross about a penis, you know?”

            “Do tell,” Julia said, with a smirk.

            I paused to remember. My stomach churned and I fought down disgust and shame. “It was uncomfortable. Being on my knees. The ache to the jaw.” I tapped my chin with a finger in recollection. “The cushion was a nice touch, so thanks for that. But—I didn’t gag—and he didn’t smell much—you chose a good guy, I think, and thank God he trimmed, right? I thought I’d be picking pubes from between my teeth—and he wasn’t too big—” and here I grinned at her, “and mostly I just licked and bobbed up and down a bit and he didn’t exactly last long, right? I’ve taken dumps that last longer.”

            “Thanks for that,” Julia said drily.

            “Wrapping my lips around his cock was humiliating, and knowing you were watching made it worse, and when he came….”

            Julia leaned a little closer. “Yes?”

            “It was gross. It felt gross and it tasted gross. And went everywhere, in my hair, ruined my makeup—that was nasty,” and here, some of the simmering anger overflowed. “What you did. You could have just let him—”

            “Cum in your mouth?” Her voice was a mix of anger and amusement. “Is that what you wanted?”

            I glared at her. “It wasn’t nice.”

            Her smile wavered. “No. It wasn’t.”

            “I never wanted any of this,” I said, indicating tits and hair and lips. “And it’s taken me nine months to come to terms with this… disguise. But I never expected it’d involve me, you know—doing guys.” I bring my glass to my lips, grimace and put the glass back down and realise my hand is trembling. “Feeling their hands on my tits or their cocks at my lips. Tasting cum.” I dropped my eyes and took a deep breath. “No. I never expected that.”

            She watched me the whole time. “What did you expect, then?”

            “I don’t know.” I smoothed down my skirts. “Not this.”

            “Would you have—” she hesitated, then continued, “Do you think it would’ve happened, without me forcing you into it? That date with Dan, kissing a man—going down on one?”

            “No,” I lied.

            Julia tilts her head to one side. “Why not?”

            “Christ, Jules, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m not fucking gay, okay? I’ve never—”

            “Fine, fine,” she interrupted, “But how long is this ‘disguise’”—and here she made air quotes, “supposed to last? Six months?  A year? Did you really think you’d go that long without at least kissing a guy? Or going further?”

            “Plenty of girls do.”

            “True.” She nodded. “But you’re not that kind of girl.”

            “No,” I muttered, voice sullen. “I suppose I’m not.”

            “I mean, for someone trying to not draw attention, you’re shit at it.”

            “It’s not my fault.” I plucked at my low bodice and blushed. “It’s… you, or the work dress code, of what people expect, making me dress like a—”

            “A slut?” Julia smiled, and her eyes were bright.

            “I’m not a slut.”

            Julia had perked up since we started talking. The early melancholy seemed behind her, and she was clearly enjoying the discussion, guilt and exhaustion pushed back by our girl talk. Fuck me: girl talk; wasn’t this on her bucket list?

            “Really?” She seems to consider this. “Tell me, David—how many girls have you fucked? You know, how many different sexual partners have you had?”

            “You don’t want to know that, Jules.”

            “Oh, I most certainly do,” she said, but to me her smile seemed forced and somewhat brittle.

            “Fine.” I took a moment to do the maths. Off the top of my head, I had no idea what the actual number was, but could estimate easily enough. Over the past fourteen years, most Fridays or Saturdays, hitting the bars with Tom and sometimes on my own, or with others from work; and workplace shit, conferences and workshops, or scoring with colleagues, a conveyor belt of interns, managers and administrative assistants, which is to say, sexy secretaries.

            Sexy secretaries, like me. Fuck.

            David didn’t go home on his own very often. Fourteen years of weekends, and the occasional mid-week pickup. Obviously, I didn’t always get the girl though I enjoyed far more hits than misses. On occasion, I dated the same girl for a few weeks or even longer, chicks like Akiko; and there were some repeats along the way, booty calls, date nights, events when I needed a partner. And not every weekend, clearly: work got in the way sometimes, or I had something else on, or I just needed a break.

            “Ballpark figure? About two hundred.”

            Julia stared, wide-eyed, possibly horrified. “Fuck off.”

            “You want me to walk you through the maths?”

            “No. No, I believe you.” Julia shook her head. “Jesus. Can you even remember any of them?”

            Yes, I could, I wanted to tell her. Every last one, if I thought hard enough, even if I never knew their name, a line running from that first girl in Tahir’s club all the way to the present. Women and girls, young and old, fat and thin, of so many colours and creeds and beliefs, all beautiful in their own way and each and every one of them earning their pleasure with me. They might’ve hated me before, or afterwards; many or most did. That never made a difference. But in the time between they were mine: to fuck, finger or eat out until they came; and every goddamn one of them did. I remembered, all of them. Sometimes, I wondered whether they remembered me.

            I shrugged. “Some.”

            Her mouth moved in silent count. “I’m eleven—twelve now, including Caleb.”

            “What can I say, I was—”

            “A slut?”

            “Stud,” I said. “The word you’re looking for is stud.”

            “Yeah, those D-cups really say ‘stud’ to me.”

            “I keep telling you, they’re not—” I looked down at my cleavage, hefting a boob in each hand. “Shit. They really do look massive like this, don’t they?”

            Julia snorted.

            “This is what I’m talking about. As a guy, I wore a suit, I wore trousers and a shirt, I always looked—respectable. Girls dig respectable. But ever since I’ve had these things hanging off my chest, it’s been… well, you know. Short skirts and tight tops and everything’s just so goddamn revealing all the time.”

            I said this and thought of the similar discussion with Crystal a few months ago and realised that in the interim something has changed. Or rather, the clothing hadn’t changed but my relationship with these female fashions had. Maybe the prosthetic made the difference.

            Without the constant reminder of a cock between my legs—the fear of getting caught, the pinch and the pain, the difficulty in taping or the discomfort of a gaff, even the frequent challenge of simply going for a piss—the way I wore these clothes was altered. Less hostile, less resentful—still, on occasion, baffling and embarrassing but also, at times, enjoyable. After all, I looked fantastic in them and there wasn’t any point denying the thrill of my own beauty.

            “It’s amazing,” Julia said. “All this time, and you’re still an absolute chauvinist, aren’t you? I agree—you’re not a slut. Or at least, Cindy isn’t one.” Her smile was entirely too knowing. “But you? You think you dress like one. And thinking that, you worry that you act like one, too.”

            She held my hand in hers as she spoke, and her voice was contemplative. “It’s like, you know you shouldn’t judge a girl based on what’s she wearing. Not because you’re particular enlightened or anything, but because that girl is you, now. Nothing altruistic; just self-serving, as always.”

            She laughed. “And so, when you wear a short skirt or high heels, show off your tits or glossy lips, you know it isn’t an open invitation to any passing guy for a fuck. But—” and here, she shook her head in disbelief or disappointment, “there’s still this toxic little male brain staring out from behind those beautiful, long lashes, isn’t there? And this sexist little shit, he thinks a girl dressed like you can only want one thing, isn’t that right?

            “Tell me, when you look in the mirror—what do you see, David? I’m genuinely curious: when you see yourself all decked out in lingerie, or as a sexy secretary, or some club skank—do you turn yourself on? Do you see yourself as a bimbo? A slut? Some trophy girlfriend?”

            She held my gaze for a long time, until I blushed and looked away. “It’s not my fault I’m so damn sexy,” I muttered.

            Julia laughed. “Oh, you really are a fucked up horny little bundle, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve always been a bit of a man-whore, but you really can’t help yourself now, can you? You’d fuck yourself, right now if you could, wouldn’t you, you dirty little maid!”

            “It’s not my fault,” I insisted. “It’s—” and here, I waved at my groin, buried under all those layers of silk and satin. “It’s this goddamn prosthetic.”

            “Really?” Her eyes sparkled over the rim of her wine glass. “Do tell.”

            “Ever since I’ve woken up with this thing,” I explained. “I’ve been horny as hell. I don’t know, maybe they didn’t calibrate it properly or something. You have no idea, Jules. Every morning—every fucking morning, Jules!—I wake up horny. Morning glory, right? I’ve still got a cock under here, and I’m like, twenty again, so—I’m waking up with wood. It’s just blood flow or whatever. As a guy, if I couldn’t deal with it then and there, well, I’d get out of bed, it went away on its own. Usually.

            “But this prosthetic, I don’t know, it takes those impulses, that blue ball ache and those urges and—” And fuck me, just talking about it was getting me a little hot and bothered, and I could feel the prosthetic warming to the conversation.

            “Morning wood makes morning dew, and this female arousal, it doesn’t just go away. I wake up, and I want to squeeze my thighs together, I want to—I’m wet, down there, I’ve got this itch and I can’t do anything about it.” I bit my lower lip and felt the blush lighting up my cheeks. “It’s fucking torture, Jules.”

            She seemed unimpressed by my plight. “You don’t think girls get horny? You’ve got fingers, you’ve got that dildo I gave you. Sort yourself out.”

            I shook my head. “You think I haven’t tried? It doesn’t work. Okay, fine, before—I was scared. I was scared, okay? I admit it. After I woke up with this thing on, I didn’t want anything to do with it. Bad enough acknowledging it when I went for a piss, or pulled on panties, or whatever. But masturbating—fiddling with it?”

            “No. I couldn’t—it was a step too far, it meant accepting what they’d done and yeah, I’ll be honest, maybe I was worried about how it might feel, weird or even—too good, like I was betraying my manhood or something. I spent those first weeks getting more and more horny and Jesus, people must’ve thought I was this fucking airheaded bimbo, because often, I could barely think straight.”

            I gnawed on my lip in frustration. “Thing is, sure, in a lot of way having this thing stuck on makes everything easier – you know—clothes fit better, and I’m not strapping my cock back and sitting on my nuts every day. But you have no idea, Jules—no idea!—how much I miss my cock and balls right now.”

            Julia gave a wry smile. “I’ve got some small idea.”

            “Then you came back. And ever since you—you know—with that thing—yeah, I’ve gotten over my… reluctance, and tried, I’ve used the dildo. I’ve sucked on that artificial cock and watched myself in the mirror, hopping it’d push me over the edge. I’ve played with my clit and fucked myself with my fingers. Fuck, I’d eat myself out if I could reach. And the thing is—”

            It felt good. Almost too good, sometimes, distracting in its pleasurableness.  Wonderfully sensuous, luxurious, especially when I wasn’t under pressure and could take my time to simply draw the pad of a finger slowly and gently back and forth across that prosthetic labia and feel that growing wetness, the rising heat. Sitting alone at home at night after work and staring out into the darkness, half-naked and with a hand laid flat against my groin, finger curling in to gently touch, other hand at my breasts. Soft music roiling in the background, and dim lights. A glass of wine. But…

            “It never works,” I wailed. “It builds and builds and—it builds, and nothing happens.” At worst, drunk and desperate and lying on my cheap bed in my little apartment, I’d pant and moan my frustration, scrabbling at my crotch, thrusting that toy into my snatch, and pinching and pulling at my nipples—fucking myself until I went dry and it started to hurt—before finally releasing a muffled scream into my pillow, frustrated and unsatisfied, and punching the mattress with impotent anger. “I can’t get myself off. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

            “But….” Julia leaned a little closer, laying one hand on my knee. “No offence, but you’re like the horniest girl I’ve ever been with. I’ve never known a girl easier to make cum.”

            “It’s you, Julia,” I said. “Only you.”

            “Fascinating,” she said, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

            For far too long, smiling silently to herself, she contemplated this revelation. Then she took a final sip of her wine and handed the empty glass to me. “Another one, maid.”

            “The maid’s off duty,” I grumbled, but hopped to my feet anyway. Truth be told, I was starting to regret my decision to stay in the maid’s outfit. Not that there’d been much choice, really. I needed help to get out of the damned thing. Probably, I could unfasten the buttons at the back of the bodice, wiggle out of the dress and then reach the tucked away corset laces—but it wouldn’t be easy.

            As it was, I was still tied into the restrictive uniform. I’d barely eaten anything today, only the occasional nibble as I cleaned, though the cheese and biscuits helped. The tightness around the belly had done a lot to suppress my hunger, but I really felt the booze hitting a mostly empty belly. The tips of my ears felt hot, and my stomach queasy.

            At the same time, I was also feeling turned on. Again. The very restrictiveness of the outfit and my inability to escape it; Julia’s presence, the sexy way she lounged on the sofa and the curve of her tits and her long, black hair. The smell of her, sitting so close. I crossed over to the kitchen counter to pour out two glasses of wine, and felt the heat below, the tightness in my tits and it was all I could to do to not squirm as I watched her silently watch me pour out two more glasses of wine.

            I padded back to her and with another gentle rustle, settled next to her, closer this time as I passed her a glass. It was easy to tell which glass was mine and which was hers, by the ring of pink lipstick prints at the rim. Sitting, I now envied Julia her relaxed slouch. She took a sip and seemed to consider her next words as I squirmed in discomfort.

            “Have you considered—” Then she stopped.

            “What?” I ran a fingernail along the lace trim of my panties. They were riding up my butt crack something awful.

            “A boyfriend?”

            I stopped mid-pluck. “Excuse me?”

            Julia held my gaze. “I’m serious. Find yourself a guy. Someone who can—you know—help with those needs.”

            Smoothing out my skirt over crossed legs, I glared at her even as a hot flush slowly traveled up my bosom and neck. “Fuck you, Jules.”

            She patted me on the knee, a patronising gesture no doubt meant to comfort. “Oh, relax, for Chrissake.”

            “I’m a man, remember? I don’t need a fucking boyfriend.”

            “That’s exactly what you need!” There was an unexpected earnestness to her voice, as though her intent were to help, not torture and humiliate me. “A boy—a man—for fucking.” Her hand at my knee gave a little reassuring squeeze. “You must’ve thought about it, David. Fucking a guy?”

            “No.”

            Julia gave my knee another squeeze. “Lying back, spreading your legs for him? Some man, rising above you; his weight, pinning you to the bed, pressing down—then into you—his hard cock sliding into your pussy, so easily, so slowly, filling you as he pushes in deep….”

            “Stop,” I said.

            She smiled: “pulling back, then thrusting, and thrusting again, and with each shove of his cock your tits bounce, he forces you deeper into the mattress, and staring at the ceiling you smell his sweat, feel his heavy breathing on your neck as he speeds up, and you’re wet—so fucking wet—and it feels so good being filled by a cock, a real cock, not some sex toy because this man, his presence, his warmth and strength—controls you—and you feel so… vulnerable, under him, at his mercy and weak as his balls slap against your pussy—”

            “Julia—”

            “Impaled to the bed and wanting more, rising to meet him, wrapping your legs around his waist to pull him in as deep as you can, arms around his chest, nails clawing his back; you want him, all of him, to take his strength for yourself and so you wrap everything you are around this grunting, sweating man as he jerks, and thrusts, and plants his seed inside of you.”

            She grinned, red-faced and excited, eyes bright with wine and passion as she leans closer. Her hand at my knees grips it tightly and I can tell that for all the earlier guilt, she loves the idea of me squirming supine under some man’s rutting bulk.

            “Jesus, now you’re doing it, too,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Seed? What am I, some fucking garden? Just give it a rest, okay?”

            But she shook her head, leaning closer.

            “I’ve seen you with the dildo; you’ve got to have wondered what the real thing is like. Because David? The real thing is—oh my God, David, it’s just so much better.”

            “Not interested,” I said.

            A lie. Obviously, I’d thought about it. But I’d be damned if I was going to admit it to Julia.

            But how could I not wonder how it might feel, lying in bed with Jonas’ semi pushing into my bum, already horny, already damp and desperate?

            How could I not, sitting at the edge of my seat in Mr Connor’s office, wearing a tight pencil skirt with thighs clenched together, nipples so fucking hard it nearly hurt, biting down on my lip as his sonorous voice resonated down my spine and whimpering with silent desire I couldn’t understand, and didn’t dare acknowledge?

            So, yeah Julia, I’d though about sex with a man. But there was no way—no goddamn way—I was ever spreading these legs for another guy.

            “No,” I repeated. “That’s your fantasy, Jules, not mine.”

            “Damn right, it’s my fantasy.” Her voice was suddenly both angry and petulant. “And that’s what we had, you fucking idiot, until you sealed your prick away behind that—thing.” She reached out and stroked the side of my face, my hair and there’s now something sad and melancholy in the way she looked at me. “What we had, before you left me, before you went to that Clinic and messed everything up—it was good, wasn’t it, wasn’t it fun?”

            And Julia was open to me, then, in her drunkenness, exhaustion and need. Vulnerable and honest, seeking validation—maybe even forgiveness—for the way she’d treated me. Mixed in with all the anger and resentment there was guilt, and I could see how impossible this situation was for her.

            Julia wanted to punish me for the past. But she still loved me, and so punishment against me was visited on her in equal measure. She wanted to change the man from her past, but it was that past man that she loved. Yet she could not let me be, because to do so was to risk further hurt and loss. Leaving me unpunished for the pains of the past would make a mockery of her years of pain and suffering.

            The problem, obviously, was not with me but with Julia.

            She was the one who needed to change. Yet her single-minded focus on my improvement meant she could only conceive of changes to herself through changes to me.  And what better way to alleviate the guilt this brought than to conceive of her violence against me as—love, as nurturing, as inviting me into experiences denied most men, leavened by the belief that further feminising simply helped keep me safe?

            Yes, she wanted to embarrass me, of course, but my shame and debasement was merely a welcome byproduct of her efforts to keep me alive, to make me a better person. Her aim was not to hurt, but to teach; to reform the man I’d been.

            Julia refused to understand—or perhaps couldn’t—that everything she did to reform me was, quite literally, re-forming me into someone antithetical to my being. She was reshaping the man I’d been into—Cindy. And could she love Cindy? I did not think so.

            She was quite literally killing the man I’d once been. And yet—

            She wasn’t wrong.

            Wasn’t it fun? she asked, and how differently everything might have turned out between us if I’d only been as open and honest with her as she was with me.

            If I’d said, quite simply: yes. Yes, it was fun, then and now, maybe more so than ever. Shopping and trashy bar outfits and Caleb and a day spent mincing around her apartment in a pervy maid outfit, all of it—fun. Especially sex, before; and even now, the way she played me like a fine-tuned instrument and made the entirety of my being sing.

            I resented her for what she did to me, and that made it fun. I felt trapped by her and her authority and that, too made it fun. My life as Cindy felt poised on a knife’s edge and even that, especially that, added to the excitement of everything we did.

            I felt the word form on my lips: Yes.

            But what I said was: “Fuck you, Jules.”

            There was no way to know this would be the last real conversation we would have, at least until the funeral. And by then, it was too late. Maybe once, there’d been the potential for something—more—between us. A chance for—I don’t know. Something real.

            We could have made it work. Julia, and Cindy as her lover. A life in which by day she was the head of our little household and me her young partner, an ambiguous relationship in a time hostile to two women together, but we’d have made it work. My life subsumed into hers—during the day.

            But after, in the darkness? Reasserting my manhood, hidden from the prying eyes of the world. And those nights… oh, those evenings would have been filled with passion and the song of our bodies playing in unison.

            Yet I didn’t say, Yes, yes it was fun. And, I didn’t say the other thing that came to mind.

            Instead, I said: “Fun. Fun? For you, maybe, for fuck’s sake.”

            Because when I spoke, the anger and resentment of last night rose once again to the surface, the taste of Caleb’s cum burning my throat, and I felt male hands on my tits, the grip of the corset—the bustier—of every ridiculous outfit she’d had me wear this past week, and the months before. I felt the profound humiliation of her pleasure at seeming me transformed into a feminine caricature of the man I’d once been. Most of all, I felt the bitter tears that dug deep rivulets through foundation and ran mascara in dark streaks down my cheeks as I curled in a seething ball in the corridor outside her door last night and wept for my own needs, unmet.

            “Do you think it was fun for me to parade around in all those outfits you chose for me? Fun, always wearing tight and restrictive clothing? Fun, wasting hours every fucking day so my hair and nails and makeup meets your exacting standards? Fun, having my tits slapped and my nipples yanked every time we had sex?” In my anger, I swept her hand from my shoulder, from my knee, and flounced back to the far end of the sofa.

            “Was it fun, being forced on a date with Dan? To follow him up to his apartment—to feel pressured to strip naked and kneel between his legs?

            “Or was it meant to be fun, parading around the office all day without a bra, fat nipples poking through and everyone whispering behind my back like I’m some office slut?

            “Or fun, having Caleb’s dick in my mouth and his balls on my chin—was that mean to be fun?”

            I crossed my arms beneath my tits and glared at her. “Fuck you, Julia, and your fun,” I said.

            Julia jerked back as though slapped. Her eyes went dark, and just like that she was once again closed to me.

            “Want to know what I did after you kicked me out last night, Jules? I sat outside your door, alone in that corridor—and I cried. I cried, Jules, like a little girl.” Turning away from her, I glared at the opposing wall. “Maybe that was the most fun of all.”

            “I know,” she said, her voice behind me quiet. “I saw the security footage.”

            I stood and walked away from her then, hugging myself, the corset rigid and unyielding beneath the satin uniform. My footsteps were silent as I cross to the tall window and stared outside. I could see clearly into the night. Windows in buildings along her gated road cast their yellow squares of light, some broken by the passage of their occupants. There, a man in silhouette standing at a high floor, also staring out, hands behind his back; there, a woman sat at her windowsill, book in hand. What did they see, when they looked this way?

            “Do you remember?” Julia asked, now behind me. Her voice remained soft, that of a parent speaking to a child on the verge of tears. I bristled at her condescension and did not answer.

            “That first night” she continued. “When you first told me why you were like this, when you first shared your secret with me.” Julia stood close, and gently lay her hand on my shoulder. I resolutely continued to stare out the window. “You stripped for me, and showed me your body—this amazing, beautiful body free of scars and injury, free of the past.” 

            Her hand left my shoulder and for a moment I though she’d left, but then both arms snaked around my narrow waist and held me firmly from behind. Julia pressed up against me, and she nuzzled the back of my neck, burying her face in my hair.

            “Do you remember, David, how I shoved you up against this window? Naked tits flat against the glass for the world to see—remember?”

            I went to turn, and her arms around me tightened. 

            “Julia,” I started, and then suddenly I was up against the window, again, she pushed me hard up against the glass and my tits flattened against the cool surface, nearly bursting out of their bodice. And she was behind me, pressing me up against her window, only now her hands were scrabbling at my body, one hand sliding beneath my skirt, the other grabbing at my hair, curling fingers in deep and holding so tight it hurts.

            “And wasn’t that fun, David?” she spat, yanking me head to one side and her breath hot in my ear.

            I went to twist around, to face her, but she held me firmly. 

            “Here’s what I think, David. I think you’re lying to me. You’re lying to me, and you’re lying to yourself. You love this,” and she pulled back just enough for her hand to reach around and find my tits, sliding past bodice and cups to grope for the nipple. She pinched down, hard, and I gasped; and she held tight and twisted, and I went weak in the knees and sagged against the window.

            “You love all of this, you dirty bastard. You loved it, when you got to shove your dick in me every night, as though fucking me was some kind of reward for playing at being a girl. And even now, even without a prick to shove inside of me, you still love it, you love the way I make you feel.” And here, her hand beneath my skirt wormed its way past petticoats towards the smooth front of my panties and felt how wet and ready I was through that thin scrap of lace and silk. “You’re playing along because you need me, you need me, don’t you?

            “And here’s the thing, you little bitch,” she said, and she pressed down between my labia, and yanked the hot, hard point of my tits, “You’re going to love it even more when you finally give in, when you think you don’t have a choice and finally let some guy shove his cock into your pussy.”

            I shuddered and would’ve fallen to the floor without Julia to keep me standing. My chest burned and so did my pussy, and my whole body trembled with her words.

            “And this guy, he’s going to drill you hard, plough you so fucking hard you’ll see stars and you’re going to cry and whine and complain you don’t want it—that you were forced into it—that I made you do it; and maybe you’ll even believe your own lies, lying on your back with your knees in the air and your tits flopping around—but you’ll be wet, and you’ll love it, and when you cum you’ll cum so goddam hard you won’t walk right for a week.”

            Never, I wanted to say, but with my mouth a silent pink oval pressed up against the glass, my protest went unheard.

            “But you’re free to leave, David, anytime you want. But you won’t leave. Because this is what you want. Because—” and her finger slipped past the final, soaked sliver of panty and plunged deep into my pussy, thumb pressing up against the clitoris, even as she bit down, now on my shoulder, and pulled brutally hard at my nipple. And—I moaned; my eyes rolled back up into my skull; and everything built up over last night and today swelled and rose over me like a wave of filthy light, grubby and wrong and unbelievably pleasurable.

            “Isn’t this fun?” she whispered.

            My fingers scrabbled at the windowpane.

            “They can see you, you know.” She thrust with her hips and pushed me up against the window. “Everyone can see the slutty maid with her tits out.” And it was true, God, the humiliation, anyone looking this way would see me, tits flattened against the glass, face a rictus of pleasure, lips parted with want.

            “What are you?” Julia said, and her finger at my labia slowed, her hand at my breast stilled.

            “Fuck—Jules—I don’t—” I panted. “Your maid?”
            “Slut,” she said. “Say it.”

            “No,” I groaned. “Fuck you, Jules.”

            Her finger flicked against my clitoris. My knees went weak. This time, she let me fall and followed me to the floor. “Say it.”

            “No.” I tossed my head and hair to glare up at her. “No!”

            She finger-fucked me once, twice and with that same finger, slick with pussy juice, indolently circled the clitoris once, twice—I gasped and felt that cresting wave of filthy pleasure—and then she stopped.

            “Last chance,” she whispered in my ear. “Say it. You’re a slut. A filthy, slutty maid. A whore—my whore.” A final touch, a flick of the finger; my hips bucked—I was close, so fucking close…. “Say it.”

            I thrashed and glared up at her through a tangled mess of hair, lips parted in a furious grimace, teeth gritted and—desperate—so hungry with desire—whole body tight and ready, the string waiting to be plucked, and it was just a word, just a goddamn word, right?

            “I’m a slut,” I said. “I’m your slut, your filthy dirty fucking whore maid.”

            An approving nod, and a cold smile. “Yes,” she said, and tapped me on the nose with her pussy-slick index finger. “You are, you naughty girl.”

            Julia stood and stepped away, leaving me a flustered mess of skirts and sexual frustration on the floor, and my eyes widened.

            “You can’t—” I reached for her. “That’s not how this works!”

            She stopped, turned and glared at me imperiously. “Excuse me?”

            “But—” I whined. “I need—”

            “Then do it yourself,” she said. “I give you permission.”

            “It’s not enough—”

            “Touch yourself!” she barked, and I did, and the instant my long, manicured finger brushed against my clitoris, I came, hard.

            So very, very hard.

            An indefinite time later, once I’d recovered somewhat, I sat primly at the edge of the sofa and finished tweaking and smoothing down my uniform. Julia reclaimed those dull metal bracelets and gave me a quick visual inspection. “Good. You still look very slightly freshly-fucked.”

            I touched up my lipstick and grimaced at her. “I can’t believe you’re sending me home in this.” She’d loosed my laces slightly, and it’d be easier to undress when I got home, but the public display was just another humiliation heaped on the day’s pile of shame.

             “A reminder of your subservience.” Julia grinned. “You can think of me as some creep ogles you on the bus.”

            “You’re being mean again.”

            “The maid,” she said, supremely satisfied, “shouldn’t question her mistress.”

            I glanced up from my shoes. They gleamed in the dim light and restored my tip-toe perch. Getting home in these stilettos would be a nightmare. “I thought you didn’t like the whole ‘mistress’ thing?”

            “It’s growing on me.”

            Standing, I immediately felt the strain of fifteen centimeters of lift in my ankles, calves and the balls of my feet. “You could at least let me take a cab.”

            “No,” she said. “Maids use public transport. Send me photos along the way.”

            Cursing under my breath, I collected my bags, bulging with the purchases from our shopping trip. I’d be a tottering, short-skirted, bag-totting fetish feminine stereotype for the trip home. Still—what a weekend. Pushing aside the grim thought that tomorrow was a Monday, I made to leave. A tentative step towards the door, and I wobbled, reaching for the wall to steady myself.

            “You okay?” Julia was swiftly at my side, voice filled with concern.
            Rubbing the back of my head, I grinned sheepishly. “I hurt myself when I came,” I said. “Banged my head against the wall. Pulled a muscle in my thigh.” I held a hand to my side. “Maybe bruised a couple of ribs?” I could dimly remember deep, shuddering breaths and the sharp grip of an unyielding corset, and seeing stars. “I’ll be fine.”

            “Good.” She smiled. “Fun, don’t you think?”

            I stuck my tongue out at her. “Yeah,” I said, “fun.”

Three: Mirage Under Moonlight

The second week of living under Julia’s control ended with a visit to Juno. It was Saturday morning and the mall thronged with early shoppers eager to escape the heat.

            “What are we doing here?” I hissed as we entered the lavish shop. Elaborate dresses in white and ivory ringed the main room, floating chiffon and tulle specters floating above us in decorative niches. It was like stepping into an ancient Roman temple set along the Tiber, and I the heathen invading this sacral space. A harp tinkled in the background: not a recording, but a girl with long hair in a flowing white dress. An eager and diffident young woman dressed in white approached.

            “Enjoy,” she said, and offered us a pair of glasses filled to the brim with Prosecco.

            “I’ve been thinking,” Julia said as we sat in a cushioned alcove, sipping at out drink. She relaxed in jeans and a plain black t-shirt; I felt less so in sandal heels, tight white shorts and bolero jacket over a balconette bra. I felt half naked because I was. Guys openly checked me out all morning, staring at my tits, checking out my ass, tossing rude comments my way like monkeys flinging shit at zoo patrons. It was just so fucking tedious and though I felt out of place in a bridal shop, this female space was a welcome retreat from the public eye. “About that first day I met Cindy.”

            I took a wary drink and nodded. Truth was, I was already on tenterhooks. The day had already been one of surprises. Second weekend of October, and an unexpected heatwave sweltered the city, early morning sun glaring painfully off steel and glass towers.

            The mall offered climate-controlled relief, and Julia was on a roll. We’d started early and enjoyed brunch and some idle chatter. A little shopping, in which she seemed just as eager to check in on her ‘magic mirror’ as buy clothes. Something about me still confused Julia’s software, but less so that before, I thought. It recommended me a tight, revealing dress in pink. Julia bought it, with a knowing smile.

            Then, a visit to a piercing studio. I made a token effort to protest. My efforts were wasted. She emerged with a second stud in her ear, a match for mine; but the belly-button piercing was for me alone.

            “Very trendy,” she said, “very Cindy.” The captive bead ring rested against my taut belly, a constant presence throughout the day. To be honest, I wasn’t much pleased. Bits of metal dangling off my body always felt like an obvious vulnerability, something for an enemy to grab, yank and tear the flesh. As a man, I’d never been one for earrings or any kind of piercing and didn’t even like rings or a watch at my wrist. Gradually, I’d come around on earrings—the way they sparkled, the weight in the lobe, felt a comforting presence now, and truthfully, I felt sort of naked without them.

            But anything beyond that? It felt—weak, girly; foolish, even, although of course the whole point of Cindy was that she didn’t have any enemies. Cindy didn’t fight mercenary assassins. What kind of monster would tear anything from her body, ear, navel or otherwise?

            But also, I felt bad. The girls had already harassed me to join them for some piercings weeks ago, and they’d be pissed I went ahead and did it without them. Especially Mel. She kept pressuring me to get drunk one night after work. Then, get a tramp stamp, or another piercing, or—something. Increasingly, her self-destructive instincts included me, as though she senses a kindred spirit keen to join her downward spiral.

            Julia kept me busy, but I’d caught up with Willow and Mel last night. Unexpectedly, Julia gave me a free pass last night, a Friday. I guess she was busy prepping today’s ‘fun’. Or maybe she let me loose because she was having Caleb around. Either way, I’d looked forward to a relaxed night at home, alone.

            Yeah, right. The moment Emma figured out I was free, she guilted me into joining the girls for the night. They’d been dropping catty hints about my recent absence, complaining I’d been avoiding them, called me a stuck-up bitch—that was Mel, so nothing new there—and Emma, eyes nearly brimming with tears, insisted I joined them with such earnestness you’d think I’d been off to war.

            The usual Friday night, then: around to their cramped apartment after work. Drinks and food, makeup and clothes, and Willow cried out “bitches united!” as she sculled a glass of white whine spritzer, then advanced on me with an array of glittery makeup. Mel was gluing on fake nails and gazing at me with half-lidded eyed.

            “What?” I asked.

            “Nothing,” she said then immediately: “you’ve changed.”

            I’d have raised an eyebrow, but Willow was busy drawing them in. “I haven’t.”

            “You have.” She glared at me accusingly. “You’re—fuck me, you’re happy! Look at you—relaxed; where’s the prissy little bitch gone?”

            I leaned in close. “Don’t worry, Mel,” I whispered in her ear, “I’ll always be your little bitch when you need me,” I gave her a light kiss. She held her hand over the memory of lipstick at her cheek, and something smouldered in her eyes.

            Then out to Tartarus once again, girls in glittering apparel squeezed into the back of a taxi slicing through urban lights towards the darker patch of city curled around the waterfront’s edge. Overhead, a thin sliver of waning crescent moon cut through curls of cloud, a silver fingernail grasping at the sky. The club was heaving and the lineup long, boozy sweat and flaring tempers under late autumn heat.

            Fortunately, Bruno pulled us out of the queue for a private word.

            “Not good, not good,” he said, shaking his head sadly. He ushed the other girls through but held me back for a chat.

            I looked down at my sparkly outfit, tugged it up over my prominent tits. “Not you, baby girl, not you,” he said. “Jonas.”
            Bruno explained that Jonas had been suspended from his job with the club, his AI taken offline. There’d been a major security breach: last weekend, somehow, the club’s AI not only failed to track an unknown intruder into the club but actually aided their progress through back doors and “personnel only” corridors up to the VIP rooms where—and here, Bruno’s voice fell to a whisper—a very important person, indeed, had met a very gruesome end. Rumour had it was some kind of political thing, maybe, or gang warfare, a professional hit job.

            I blanched at the news. “Is Jonas okay?” I asked, laying one hand on Bruno’s massive arm. I smiled weakly at him. “Was anybody hurt—I mean—anyone other than…?”
            He was fine, although under investigation; everyone was fine except for the victim. It was only the extreme secrecy surrounding the target that kept the club open whilst the authorities did their thing behind closed doors. The VIP lounge was closed, but hedonism continued unchecked everywhere else.

            “You should go see him,” Bruno said, his massive hand at the small of my back gently nudging me into the club and in the direction of my friends.

            I did. Emma had already bailed, before we even left the apartment—a ding from her phone redirected her from girls’ night out to boyfriend-night in. Then, Mel quickly hooked up with some guy and didn’t need me hanging around as they sucked face. With any luck she’d go home with him; she’d been nearly vibrating with the need for a good fuck all night.

            Meanwhile, Willow bumped into a pair of girls she knew from a side-gig she did a year ago, some temp work zero-hour contract thing at a conference, booth babe client-forward stuff. Both were tiny and cute, like Willow, long hair and bright makeup, one in a dress even shorter than mine, the other in tight shorts and sparkly tube top. The conversation kept drifting towards the past, and so after knocking back a quick drink I made myself scarce.

            There was an edge to the night, a threat of violence in the air I hadn’t felt before at Tartarus. Without the guiding hand of Jonas’s security AI, staff struggled to identify flashpoints before they flared. Part of me yearned to stay, to see what happened as the bouncers scrambled to contain the rising tide of alcohol- and heat-fuelled tension. But it wasn’t Cindy’s scene.

            Instead, she sought out Bruno. He was busy but found a moment to step aside. There was a fire to his eyes I hadn’t seen before, his dark skin flecked with sweat, and his smile bright. I gave him a little kiss on the cheek and he ordered me a cab back to Jonas.

            The poor kid was devastated. Sat alone in the dark, scrolling through lines of code of a backup copy of the club’s security AI he’d trained, hunting for the flaw that cost him his job. Paler than usual, he had the strained look of someone who hadn’t slept in days.

            “I don’t understand,” he kept saying. “It’s not possible.”
            I comforted him as best I could. At first, he resented my advances, insisting he had to work, had to fix it, but he soon succumbed, and afterwards he was grateful as I gave his cock a final lick and gentle kiss to the tip, before tucking him away. “Thank you,” he mumbled, as I gathered him in my arms. He rested his head against my chest. “You didn’t have to,” he said. “But thank you.”

            Soon, he fell asleep and we lay there in his bed, his breath whispering across my bare chest, and I stroked his hair and stared out the window into the night and eventually also fell asleep.

            Despite this, I felt surprisingly buoyant the next day, with a lightness to my step as I joined Julia in the city that morning. True, I struggled to focus on her plans for the day. Thoughts of last night, a touch of almost brotherly worry for the girls and concern for Jonas, distracted me. Too often, I reflected on his cock, or his hand at my breast, or the way he made me feel as he gently slept.

            But I did my best to push these thoughts aside. I was with Julia, now: a little shopping, brunch, a little salon piercing—and now… a bridal shop?

            “Do you remember?” Julia asked, gazing into the thin lines of bubbles snaking through her drink, rising, popping like memories. “You told me a story about a wedding dress.”

            A transformative experience, I’d told her then, an epiphanic visit to a bridal store, the moment of revelation of my natural femininity. It was the story of a seven-year old’s discovery of who she really was, raised male but destined to someday wear one of these gorgeous cascades of silk, taffeta and lace.

            I nodded and sipped my drink. When the hell did I become so familiar with satin and tulle and chiffon? The last two decades of my life had been cottons, worsted wool, and the fine cut of a tailored suit. An unlooked-for education: in shoes and heels, kitten, block or wedges, stiletto, sandals and slingbacks, pumps, platforms and mules. In necklines and hems. In lingerie, especially. But also in dresses, skirts and tops; and the fabrics used to make them, the drape and fall, support and style, texture and sheen.

            My stomach churned a little as the Prosecco hit. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone an entire day without booze. There’s anxiety, too: I’m with Julia but still thinking about Jonas and how terribly pale he looked as I left him, and the events at the club. Even a morning blow job hadn’t cheered him up. Leaving in the early morning, I saw the concern in Bruno’s face. I also saw the bruises and the split lip.

            “A busy night,” he rumbled, shaking his head, tired and blissful. “But thank you, baby girl. For taking care of him.” The massive paw of his hand patted my ass as he saw me out the door.

            Meanwhile, Julia waited expectantly. “You know I made it up, right?” I answered.

            “Did you?”

            “I mean, yes, my mom brought me with her to a wedding dress shop. But it’s not like I discovered my inner girl then or anything. Obviously.” Wrinkling my nose with distaste, I thought back to my childhood. “I can’t really remember why she brought me. She wouldn’t have if she didn’t have to. She was shopping with a friend. It wasn’t a place like this.” With a sweep of my arm, I indicated the luxurious wedding dresses, the classy details and gentle lighting. “There weren’t places like this where I grew up, and even if there had been, we couldn’t have afforded them.

            “I just remember she wasn’t happy. I laughed at her friend, maybe? She shouted at me and sent me out. I sat on the steps outside the shop and waited for hours before they finished. I remember the sun setting and feeling cold.”

            Julia’s hand rested on my knee. “I’m sorry,” she said.

            “Why?” I rested my hand over hers. “Not your fault my mom hated me.”

            Her eyes searched mine before she sighed. “You really are a fucked up bundle of joy, aren’t you?”

            I shrugged. “It’s like that song, you know – I’m a broken flower.”

            “Sin-DI?”

            I nodded.

            Julia smiled, a secretive glint to her eyes. “That reminds me. I’ve got a little something for you. A gift.”

            She reached into her purse and retrieved an envelope and passed it to me. I went to open it, but she stopped me. “I was going to give it to you tomorrow, but maybe it’ll cheer you up now.”

            “What’s tomorrow?”
            She pursed her lips. “Sunday. And the maid comes on a Sunday, doesn’t she?”

            I groaned. “Really?”

            “But you know, I was thinking: the maid, she’s a servant not a slave; and servants get paid. So—consider this your payment for services rendered.”

            I’d been thinking her shoving a dildo up my twat was more than adequate payment for my services, but I wasn’t averse to a little financial compensation, either. Truth was, money was tight these days, and I was struggling to pay the bills. Luckily, I had Julia buying most of my clothes and makeup, and I had all that stuff from the Clinic, but I was eating out a lot, and drinking with the girls, and my wages sucked. Just paying the entry fee at Tartarus nearly wiped out a day’s pay. Cindy’s social life wasn’t cheap, and I was steadily falling behind.

            A year ago, I’d had a perfect credit score and a healthy bank balance, with additional funds stashed away in secret, and short-term assets that could be easily converted in an emergency. Now, I was in the red, credit lines nearly maxed, and part of me hoped I escaped Cindy’s life simply to dodge the fucking bills. Galling as it might be, on a night out, if a guy didn’t buy me a drink, I wasn’t drinking; if someone didn’t buy me food, I wasn’t eating.

            Opening the envelope, there were two thin slivers of plastic, deep crimson and glittering with silver flecks. I glanced at Julia curiously.     

            “Go on,” she said, barely holding back a big grin.

            I shook out the envelope and examined the plastic in the palm of my hand—they were long, narrow strips covered in tiny printing, with an imbedded chip—I looked at them closer—and then, I’m embarrassed to say, released a genuine squee of delight.

            The woman at the counter glared at us in disapproval.

            “Like it?” Julia asked, dryly.

            “But—how?” They were a pair of concert tickets. “It sold out instantly. This is—and so expensive!—oh my God, Jules—how?” I almost vibrated in my seat. I looked closer. “Are these—Jesus, fucking backstage tickets? Fucking lord, Jules, this is—I can’t believe it!”

            Julia smiled, reached out and stroked the side of my head. “Her production company hired us on for some research work. Corporate tickets. There was an in-house lottery, and I got lucky.” She gave me a little kiss on the cheek, and I nearly melted. “Happy?”

            I could’ve ruined both our makeups then and there with mauling her face. Instead, I squeezed her hand and fought back a sudden rush of tears. Tears! What the fuck? but staring at those Sin-DI tickets in my hand, I felt—ridiculously excited, a hormonal fizz of joy bubbling through my veins. “Happy? I’ll—you just wait till we get back to yours! And tomorrow—I’m going to clean the fuck out of your apartment.”

             She smiled wryly. “Feeling a bit better now?”
            I nodded, eagerly.

            “Anyway, I got to thinking this week about—well, Cindy.” She leaned in a bit closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And how she might disappear some months down the line, and all those wonderful girl experiences she’ll never enjoy.”

            She pulled back, and smiled, and I swear there was something sad and melancholy to her gaze as she looked over me. “That didn’t seem fair to me. I want you to—enjoy this, Cindy. I’ve signed us up for the full bridal experience: drinks and nibbles, hair and makeup, and I’ve brought the lingerie. And after, once we’ve found the perfect dress—pictures, so we never forget.” Julia smiled, and her eyes were distant. “Something to remind you of what could’ve been.”

            Unexpected tears glimmered in the corner of her eyes. I opened my mouth to speak, but just then one of the shop women approached. 

            “We’re ready for you now,” the woman said, and led us through one of the archways.

            The ladies at Juno took charge, and by the time they were done with me, I was… gorgeous, absolutely fucking drop-dead sexy and beautiful, but in a demure, eyes-downcast, trembling flower kind of way. Makeup heavy, but not too bold; blonde hair gleaming, styled and erupting into bouncy, full curls. They built me from the ground up, chatting all the while. They were fantastic at putting me at ease, but absolute bullies at moving things along. “We had a man in here last week,” one whispered conspiratorially as she did my nails. “Can you imagine? You should’ve seen the look on his face.”

            “Very pretty face,” the other woman added.

            “His fiancée loved it.”

            “He did not, at first?”

            “Yet a very pretty bride.”

            “By the time we were done.”

            “But not as pretty as you,” they assured me.

            I stripped naked and changed into the panties Julia bought for me: a dream of ivory silk, decorated with sapphire bows and lace. Then creams, sprays and powders, bronzers and highlighters conceal imperfections (what imperfections?) and drawing out an almost inhuman luminosity—by the time they were done, I shimmered like a desert mirage under moonlight.

            Then the familiar ivory lingerie, including the bridal corset from the Clinic, and they cinched me in with almost cruel delight, per Julia’s instructions, mindful of my recent piercing which they carefully secured behind a strip of white medical gauze. I’m not sure my waist had ever been so tightly bound, tapered and narrow. A strapless bra, held up by both willpower and tape, lifted my tits. Then gossamer silk stockings with exquisitely wide, decorative lace tops, and shoes—elegant and delicate, less tall than I’d expected but with pencil-thin heels demanding precise and careful steps.

            Finally, and after careful consideration, the dress chosen by Julia. Time and effort to squeeze into that cascade of skirts, off-the-shoulder frills and tight bodice secured over corseted curves. Drop pearl earrings and heavy necklace drawing attention to my prodigious bosom. The ladies then posed me on a little dais and snapped photos beneath soft lighting, and I felt very much the unattainable Beatrice on a pedestal. Men could gaze and write sonnets in my honour, yearn but never touch, or if they touched—touch themselves. I was virginal wank-fodder in silk and satin, and I swear my eyes were wide with disbelief in half those photos at the crushing impression of my own bridal beauty.

            But the surprise—the big reveal—was Julia herself, emerging from behind a curtain having undergone her own transformation: suit and heavy shoes, her long hair hidden beneath a short, sandy-coloured wig. She had a thin, precise moustache, and her tits must’ve been flattened by a chest binder beneath that elegant dark grey suit. There remained something distinctly feminine to her shape, but there was also something unexpectedly manly about her, too. They’d brought out a firmer cast to her features, stronger chin and thinner lips, and a wholly unexpected heat flared in my belly. I felt— dainty, as she stood next to me, and vulnerable—and consequently, desirable.

            So many photos, then: her, kneeling, sliding a ring onto my finger. Side by side, arm around my waist. Veiled, and then carefully pushing back the veil to reveal full lips and my half-frightened, half-eager anticipation. Leaning in for the first, hesitant kiss, careful and chaste. Then in her arms, swept back, the heavier kiss that stole my breath and left me gasping, wanting more. With a bouquet. With flutes of bubbly raised in cheer. Alone, arms at my side and lips slightly parted and an ambiguously distant look: resigned, or ready?

            My favourite, though, was a photo taken at the very start after Julia joined. It’s an image—a memory—carried forward beyond everything that happened afterwards:

The young bride stands next to her husband. She is slightly shorter than he is, despite the heels. (A trick of the camera; Julia stood on a short riser, and my knees were slightly bent, hidden in the folds on the dress.) Silver and tiny pearls glitter in her hair, and her hair is pinned up in golden curls high on her head. Her long veil is thrown back. The man’s arm is at her narrow waist, possessive and assured. The simple dark grey of his sleeve cuts a sharp contrast with ivory white, but also with the intricate whorls of lace and tiny woven stones that glitter and catch the light. She looks tiny in his arms, cleaves to him. One hand holds the forearm across her waist closer, as though confirming possession; the other hand rests lightly against his side; and the fingernails of both hands are vividly pearlescent pink. The new husband gazes forward and upwards, as though into the future, and his lips curve, very slightly, in a satisfied smile. But the bride sees only her groom: she gazes up at him adoringly, green eyes wide with potentiality.

After the last photo was take, Julia leaned in close. “We’ll take more pictures,” she promised me in a deep whisper that trembled me to my core. “When we get home.”

            It was late by the time our bridal experience ended. Julia wanted to head out for some food. Clearly, she had planned the day carefully. Not only had she booked us a table at a nice restaurant—Chez Pierre, no less, the same place I’d gone on that first date with Dan—but she also had the clothes for me to change into.

            “Keep the corset on,” she instructed, and when I groaned, she kissed me deeply. Julia held me by the waist, both hands splayed to reach around my compressed waist, though fingers and thumbs couldn’t quite meet. “Please,” she added, playfully spinning me around.

            Her eyes shone brightly with emotion—a reflection of something I couldn’t then identify, carried with her throughout the day. We were in the changing rooms, though Julia wasn’t changing other than to remove the chest binder: she was the man, tonight, albeit a curvy one it seemed, and me the young female companion.

            “It’s your choice. I won’t force you.” Then she leaned in close, her breath on my neck growing a pleasant warmth in my belly. She kissed my neck, softly. “But I like you this way, tonight. Your shallow breathing. The pink in your cheeks. How small you feel in my arms.” Another gentle kiss, and another, her lips hovering over mine. “But tonight, it’s your choice.”

            No choice at all, then. I kept the corset and the stockings as she passed me the red dress bought earlier that day and a suitable bra. The dress wouldn’t have fit without the corset.

            The heat of the day dissipated with the night, and it was only a short walk to the restaurant. I trotted alongside her confident steps, her arm at my waist, leaning into her, her hand an occasional presence at my bum. We drew stares, most of them appraising or jealous; a few confused or amused or outraged, if they passed close enough to see through Julia’s masculine appearance.

            But the restaurant didn’t case, and swiftly sat us at our table.

            “So, what did you think?” Julia asked, scanning across the menu.

            The price of this place struck me again, just as it had the night out with Dan. “Julia,” I said, leaning close, voice lowered to stagy whisper. “Are you sure about this? This place is expensive.”

            “So?” She smiled. “Being taken out for an expensive meal is one of the benefits of being a beautiful woman.”

            “You wouldn’t take me out if I wasn’t beautiful?”

            “That’s right.” Julia scanned the menu. “You better keep your looks, babe.”

            “Sure, whatever.” I tapped one long fingernail at the menu. “But—listen, I appreciate this. I really do. But Chrissake, Jules—how much have you spent on me this week?”

            “A lot.” Her smile suddenly seems a little strained, the forced look of an addict insisting there’s no problem, really.

            “All these clothes?” I plucked at the dress. Beautiful and elegant, I hadn’t really worn anything like it before. There was a material difference between clubwear and evening wear, and whilst neither made me feel particularly more feminine than the other, it definitely had me feeling like a different kind of woman. This dress covered me from neck to ankle, yet I felt as naked as last night’s barely-there tube dress at Tartarus. A classier nakedness, maybe, but objectified sexuality nonetheless, eroticism with a higher price-tag.

            This dress was tight, with a cut out panel showing off cleavage, and a slit nearly up to the waist. “The maid dress? Bespoke corset? All these shoes? The bridal experience….?” I ticked each one off an elegantly manicured finger, another of Julia’s gifts today. “Even this—” and I tapped the navel ring, still trapped away beneath corset paneling. “You’re spending a fortune on me.”

            “Yes,” she said. “I am.” And before I could ask why, her hand covered mine and held it firmly. “I’m in a good mood, okay? Everything’s going well.” She squeezed my hand. “I’m feeling benevolent and you’re the lucky recipient. So don’t fuck it up, okay?”

            “But can you afford it?”

            “I’ve made good money for years, and not spent it. Might have a pay increase coming next week, too. Bonuses have been good. I’ve been a bit of workaholic so… what can I say? I’m enjoying the excuse to burn through some savings.” She closed her menu and put it to one side. “Besides,” Julia added, and smiled at me. “You’re worth the investment.”

            “Yes, but—” and I was about to ask what return she expected on this investment, when the waiter arrived. Professionally discrete, she raised an eyebrow at the sight of Julia’s hand over mine, and her masculine presentation, but nothing more. Judging by the hint of tattoos beneath collar and cuff, and concealed piercings dotting nose, eye ridge and upper ear, who knows? Maybe she silently approved. Either way, she immediately deduced who was in charge and she focused on Julia.

            “Are you ready to order?” and the unheard ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ hung over us like a question mark.

            Julia ordered for us both, starters and main and drinks. She continued to hold my hand. I relaxed into my role: the pampered girlfriend, the decorative adornment to Julia’s night. Our glasses rang our musically as we cheered, drank and then she stared deep into my eyes. “How was it?” Her voice thrummed with the need to know. “What did you think?”
            “Painful,” I answered, after a moment’s thought. “It stung, though not as bad as I expected. Annoying.”

            Julia looked both stunned and hurt. “But—”

            I patted my front. “Not a fan of piercings, to be honest.”

            Julia crumpled a napkin and threw it at me. “Tough.” She brandished her knife at me. “Now tell me how it felt being the bride.”

            I pulled back my hand and smoothed down my dress, and felt the corset boning beneath, and the garter straps pulling taut as I crossed my legs at the knees with a whisper of stocking and a sigh of silk. “It felt—” and my throat tightened and I said nothing.

            Fortunately, the waiter returned then with our starter, little bruschetta breads drizzled in olive oil, mouth-wateringly garlicky. Taking a delicate bite, I hid my hesitation. Dabbed at my lips with a napkin and smiled for Julia and tried again.

            “It was…”

            Complicated: and I searched Julia’s face for what she wanted to hear and saw that it was complicated there, too.

            There was the purely physical side of it all of course, an aspect I couldn’t deny enjoying. Glasses of Prosecco, delicately sipped; nibbles of cheese and biscuits. And being pampered, of course, a feminine indulgence rarely enjoyed as a man, and rarely too as Cindy, outside of Asklepios Clinic extravagance. I simply couldn’t afford the massage and manicure and pedicures, the salon facial and coddling escape into feminine luxury—even though Mel, uncharacteristically, kept trying to tempt me to a local spa. The truth was that the meticulous care the ladies at the bridal salon took with me felt exquisite: the attention to my hair and body against a backdrop of soothing music and mild drunkenness—and the lotions and makeup that made me luminous like ocean waters under a full moon—and then sitting as they did my face, the tickle of brush at eyes and lips, careful blending, precise lines drawn, my features a canvas transformed under their skill.

            And of course, though Julia couldn’t know, this wasn’t my first time in white. But those bridal photos taken months ago at the Clinic had been pure fetish sexuality, tits and cuffs manifesting Sin-DI’s wry metaphor for the bondage of matrimony. Then, my bridal experience had been one of objectification, sexualised bondage in which I was wrapped in white for the pleasure of another, a lesson in learned helplessness and submission.

            The experience today had been different. Sensual, yes, but somehow more real and consequently, intensely… alluring? if I’m being honest with myself.  And therefore, far more disconcerting than anything felt at the Clinic. I saw the bride in the mirror and saw myself and I liked who I saw.

            This realisation terrified me.

            A few short days ago, Julia wanted only to punish and humiliate me. From dragging me out to Noir to dressing me as a maid, my ex-girlfriend wanted me to squirm.

            And I squirmed: especially last weekend, at the bar dressed like some teen tart cruising for cock; and afterwards, kneeling in front of Caleb. No matter how used I got to these clothes, she found new ways to bring the embarrassing reality of these painful, restrictive or distracting clothes back to life.

            From the thong wedged up my ass to the hobbling pencil skirts that mocked my formerly masculine stride; the corset that stole my breath, or the flouncy skirt flirting at my thigh; new piercings, accessories at wrist or neck, bold swipes of makeup or her focus on some other feminine feature, be it hips, waist, bust or bum, bared midriff or glossy lips—Julia somehow managed to consistently bring back to demeaning life the realities of my female existence. Cindy might adapt, but Jules insisted David never forget who he’d been and how far he’d fallen.

            But somehow today was—worse; far worse, because there was no mockery intended. The whole day, from shopping and brunch to piercing and bridal experiences—had been….

            Joyful.  Yes, that was the word and the emotion whose name eluded me earlier. Joy, shining in Julia’s bright eyes all day: joy, not at my humiliation or immolation but in each others’ company and the day’s shared experience.

            But what pleasure could I find in an act than felt so terribly transgressive? When those ladies buttoned me into that bodice, I remembered my first bra. Yes, my first bra handed to me nine months ago, in a dirty little safe house with stained walls and cheap blinds pulled down over cracked windows. Still pallid and grey, a heavy pair of prosthetic tits hung from my chest. And under Agent K’s instruction, I slid my arms through the straps of that first bra and felt—ill, that deep-down stomach-churning sense of wrongness: a man, wearing an item designed for a woman.

            And as the wedding dress drew tight around me earlier today, I felt that same profound sickness once more. I was masquerading in matrimonial white. This was forbidden territory, the inner holy chamber, the walled garden and yonic space. Men were not allowed here. In this sanctified event she stood resplendent at the centre of ritual.

            The groom was an appendage to her brilliance, and all eyes followed as she was walked down the aisle, given away and transferred from one man’s ownership to the next. The woman flowed to meet the man, an inversion of their shared moment of creation in which agency was consumed and her final freedom expressed in a triumphant celebration of extravagant finery, flowers and dresses and bridesmaids and shining cutlery, female memories crafted to endure a lifetime.

            It was sick, to enjoy this. I knew this deeply in my bones, in my soul, in every fibre of my being. Yet I saw in Julia’s eyes such euphoric enjoyment of the experience—and saw that her joy belonged not to her alone, but also as a reflection of my own, the shared light of sun and moon in the sky; and I felt sick.

            Julia stepped out from behind the heavy velvet curtains in her man’s suit and strode towards me with absolute confidence. I stood trembling in my wedding dress, and felt—with shivering intensity—fleetingly, frighteningly—yet not as Cindy, not as performance or disguise—female; and in the mirror of her eyes and the intensity of her gaze, I genuinely saw and felt myself as a girl, as her girl, and I felt warmth and I felt—

            “Now tell me how it felt being the bride,” she asked, and gripped by an intensity of fear or anger that left me breathless, I said nothing.

            Instead, wholly unexpected tears welled up in my eyes, my eyes shimmered in the soft lighting of the restaurant and then those heavy tears ran in rivulets down my cheeks to hang suspended at my chin before falling, sparkling, to the table, to my chest, onto my lap where they dotted the red silk with darker stains.

            I tried to smile, a watery weak smile, and snivelled a little. “It was—”

            Julia squeezed my hand. “I know,” she said. “I understand.”

            Careful to not ruin my makeup, I dabbed at my eyes with a napkin. “I felt—beautiful,” I said.

            “You are,” Julia said.

            By the time the main course came, I’d gone to the toilet to compose myself, fix my makeup and plaster a contented smile back on my face. Duck a l’orange for Julia and a salad for me: you’ve got to watch that figure, she said with a wry smile, and with my stomach compressed in that fucking corset, I decided the salad was fine even as I eyed her food with envy.

            We ate in silence at first, lost in the ambience of the restaurant’s hum: tinkle of cutlery, clink of glasses, a gentle conversation of consumption interrupted by the murmur of men and women. We were beautiful, Julia and I, and so were the strangers around us, and their dimly perceived dialogue hinted at narratives we could never know.

            “Julia?” I kept my voice soft and gentle. At first she didn’t hear me. “Jules?”

            She leaned closer. “Yes?”

            “I hate to circle back around like this but—yeah. Like, really: why are you being so nice to me today?”

            Julia wiped flecks of juice from her lips. She considered, smiled and then, “can I ask you a question, first?”

            I nodded.

            “Promise to answer seriously?”

            I shrugged.

            She hesitated, then pushed on, dropping her voice to a whisper. “What do you miss—about being a man, that is? If this—” she waved her hand at me, my dress, makeup, hair and boobs, “—was, you know, permanent; what would you miss most?”

            A dozen stupid answers crowded my tongue, and I swallowed them back, because I could see her question was genuine: it was asked in good faith, not to bait me but in genuine curiosity. The clothes, obviously, though I supposed even in the current cultural climate a woman could get away with less-overtly feminine choices if she wanted. There was no escaping panties and bras, though, not with boobs the size of mine—that was a little depressing to consider.

            I missed not giving a shit. Tired, exhausted or in a bad mood, I could get away with—just not giving a shit, not shaving, skipping a wash, stepping out in a rumpled shirt and getting by. People might notice but no one cared. If I tried that as Cindy? Yeah.

            Pissing standing up; I really missed that. It seemed a jokey answer but really wasn’t. Pissing pretty much anywhere, whenever I wanted, was a privilege I’d taken for granted. Outside of rare occasions, guys didn’t have to worry abut holding it in; for girls, I’d learned, it was a daily challenge. Lineups at bars and clubs? A nightmare. Public toilets? Gross; and there always seemed to be some sketchy guy hanging out, hand buried deep in his pocket, watching….

            I missed my cock. Locked away behind the prosthetic, I was only dimly aware of it at times. The feel of it in my hand—or in some chick’s mouth—yeah; but even just the simplicity of balls, shaft and helmet. I missed the presence of manhood between by legs.

            Sex, obviously; God, yes—and everything rolled into it, from arousal to control to the intense finality of climax. My weight, over a woman, and pressing down. Confidence, and the way people listed to me. The way I altered public spaces simply by standing in them. The thrill of competition; the satisfaction of success and conquest; how easy it all once seemed.

            I stabbed another forkful of salad, crunched on leaves and tried to make something coherent out blurred impressions:

            “I’d miss—actually, I miss, as in right now—not missing anything.” Very precisely, I put down my fork and knife on either side of my plate. I held up my hand, fingers splayed, for Julia to see between us, turning this way and that so that my nails sparkled in the light. Their pink and pearlescent sheen from today’s experience caught the hazy light. “No. That doesn’t make sense.”

            I tried again: “It’s hard to explain, Jules. It’s not even a conscious thing, you know? Nine months already and I can’t even imagine what another nine months—or years—I can’t think about it.  But it’s always there, just beneath the surface. The sense of something missing, that’s something’s… not wrong, but not quite right. I feel—”

            Hesitating, I looked across the restaurant as though the answer sat among the other patrons. I saw all these couples, these beautiful pairs of people, women in evening dress—like me—sparkling and glimmering dresses and makeup and shoes, bare skin, cleavage and shining smiles sat opposite men in suits and crisp shirts and equally bright grins.

            “Incongruent,” I continued. “Like something’s out of joint. It’s not an ache, not a pain. And I suppose its not even really a sense of something missing—it’s—it’s more like feeling the absence of something you’ve never had. A hole where nothing once was.

            “Does that that makes sense?” I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense.” I offered a wan smile in way of apology. “Sorry.”

            Julia reached across the table to take my hand, but before she could say anything I continued.  “You know when you get a filling and at first you always know it’s there? You keep prodding it with your tongue, feeling its sharp edge against the tongue and wonder how you’ll ever get used to it. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t not hurt. Until one day, you wake up and it’s gone—forgotten—until for some reason, you find yourself running your tongue over it again.”

            I stared at her hand over mine, the contrast between our feminine presentation of fingers and painted nails. “And I’m not talking about any as crude as—at least, I don’t think I am—but, you know—like, missing my cock, although I do, believe me. Or a flat chest, anything like that. I miss those things. Obviously. But if I’m being honest—it’s not easy to admit—but like a filling-- I don’t really notice these things anymore.”  I cupped my boobs to illustrate. “These puppies, or the rest of it, really, unless something brings ‘em to attention, like when a guy stares or my bra digs in, or a hot day when pantyhose suck. Ditto with down there. If I’m being really honest, I might even enjoy these things, sometimes.”

            Julia smiles and gives my hand a little squeeze.

            “And yet….”

            I take a deep breath.

            “Even when I’m not thinking about it there’s this constant sense that something just isn’t right. Do you know what that’s like? I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin. Maybe that’s what I miss most. Just relaxing, within myself. I haven’t felt that in nine months. It’s like being trapped in a hot, muggy day, always uncomfortable and I want to squirm, wiggle around in my own skin, like tweaking a dress so that it sits that little bit better. I keep waiting for my own body to fit properly and finally settle around who I am.

            “And I guess this—wrongness—it gnaws a me? Like background noise, a radio slightly out of tune with a channel that won’t play clearly. All the time, even when I’m not really aware of it and it means I’m always a bit tired, on the back foot and it saps my confidence, or—I don’t know—it’s not like I hate myself or anything, obviously—and when I look in the mirror, I don’t despise what I see there, how could I, what I see there is fucking gorgeous, right?”

            And this is a lie, of course. I don’t tell Julia about standing in front of the mirror with scissors held to hair, or knife poised where the prosthetic seam must be. I don’t tell her about drunken nights where I grab my tits, nails digging deep, and pull and yearns to rip and tear them off. Pain and tears; long absent stares into the mirror, lipstick held poised at the lip; or those days when the sight in the mirror churned my stomach so deeply I nearly puke.

            Nor do I tell her about those early morning hours, lying in bed, when sometimes in the haze of half-sleep I can feel myself male again—almost male—a phantom sense of flat chest or cock and balls between my legs; and the agonizing sadness of fully waking to the reality of being a girl.

            No. Instead I offered a limp shrug and said: “But that gorgeous girl in the mirror, she’s… not-me; it’s me, but not the me I know, and that dissonance hangs over me twenty-four-seven. And maybe it’ll go away someday. Every morning, I wake up and hope I’ll feel different, that for the first time in months I’ll feel—rested, like I’ve finally had a good night’s sleep and everything’s better. And maybe in another nine months or nine years, I’ll wear this skin in like a new pair of shoes, wear it until it softens and yields to who I am. But for now, all the give is from my end, pinched toes and blisters with each misstep.”

            I pulled my hand back. “I’ve never felt this way before. I’ve always known who I am.” And this too is a lie though an unintentional one, but it’s only in the saying that I realised that I didn’t know myself as David, either. His name and very existence, an illusion; and I don’t know that I’d ever felt comfortable in his shoes, either.

            “So, you asked me what I’d miss, Jules?” I shrugged.  “Fuck if I know, Jules. What I just said,” and I hung my head, wishing my hair hung loosely tonight so I could hide behind its curtain. Instead, I stare at my lap where the high slit of my dress reveals pale thighs, garter tabs and white stockings. “All of it.”

            Julia didn’t say anything.

            Eventually, I grew impatient and looked up, to find Julia’s contentedly munching away on the final sliver of duck. She washed it down with a gulp of red.

            I glared at her. She raised an eyebrow. “What?”

            “Really? Nothing?”

            “You want me to pat you on the back, say, ‘there there’?”
            I gaped at her for a moment, then turned away in a huff, arms crossed. “Forget it, Jules. Forget I said—”

            “Welcome to the club, Cindy.” Julia cut me off. She raised her glass in cheer, and took a final sip, finishing it off. “About time you got here.” She picked up her napkin and dabbed at a little trickle of grease. “I’m sympathetic,” she continued. “I really am. And I appreciate the honesty of your answer.” She smiled. “I really do.

            “But honestly—everything you just said?” She shrugged. “I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t felt at least some of that at some point in her life.” She ticked points off on her fingers. “Hating parts of herself? Check. Feeling like she doesn’t fit in? Check. Being—how did you put it?—incongruous with the world around her? Double-check.” She was left with her thumb. “Feeling on the back foot and feeling out of place and feeling like she doesn’t belong and—” she curled her thumb into a fist and brought it down on the table hard enough to make her plate jump, the cutlery jangle and draw disapproving glares, “being tired, so fucking tired all the time?”

            Julia shook her head. “I’m not making light of anything you said. Honestly. And I know, I’m being deliberately obtuse, here. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to wake up in a body you don’t recognize. But at the same time—truly, David, half of what you just described is what most women feel, all the time. Welcome to being a woman in a world designed by men for men.”

            “But I’m not a woman.” Petulant, surly, resentful: “I’m not a bride, or a maid, or a secretary. I’m nobody’s girlfriend.” I leaned forward. “I’m not a fucking girl!”

            She leaned forward, too. “What are you, then?”

            I opened my mouth to answer but nothing came out.

            “I’ll show you what you are,” Julia said. “Tonight.”

Four: 95% Feminine

Julia paid the bill.

            By the time we stepped outside, the unseasonable heat had faded to mid-October chill. Corset notwithstanding, I felt the cold. I looked hot in that sexy red dress but it offered little protection and I hugged myself for warmth. Saturday night, and the city centre was busy though our backstreet alley of fancy restaurants was quiet, shopfront lights blinking off one by one.

            Our ride was delayed. It was late, moon veiled behind scuttling clouds and perpetual urban haze. With a distinct click, Chez Pierre locked up behind us. We’d stayed late, drinking and talking, until the waiter firmly asked us to pay up and leave. Drunk, we hung off each other outside, girl giggles in the night as we waited for the taxi.

            That’s when I noticed the man slouched in an alcove across the way. He stood at the top of stairs leading down to some dark and expensive late-night bar. He watched us with an unpleasant grin, and noticed me, noticing him.

            “What’s so funny?” The man lurched towards us into the street. He was drunk, too. Behind us, the restaurant lights flickered and went dark. The street was strangely silent, except for this man’s shuffling steps. The armpits of his white shirt were damp with sweat, and his tie hung loose around the neck. The watch at his wrist and the cut of his suit implied wealth; the stains on his shirt and redness to his eyes told of a bad night out.

            Julia stayed quiet. She went tense and her eyes slid away.

            “Hey.” He was on our side of the road, now. Close—almost close enough to smell. He was big, this guy. Nearly two meters, and the pull of his shirt across the chest hinted at muscle. His knuckles were calloused: he’s thrown a punch or two in his time. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to ya.”

            Julia studiously ignored him. She checked her phone, tracking the taxi’s progress. The night’s cheer evaporated, just like that.

            “Over here,” she said, loudly. “Taxi’s waiting around the corner,” and she tugged me by the elbow.

            “Just wanna talk,” the guy slurred.

            Julia started to walk away, dragging me with her.

            “Fuckin’ bitches,” the man shouted. “Fuckin’ c—”

            And then he was close enough to smell, because with a clatter of heels against cobblestone I was right in his face, staring up into those bloodshot eyes. “Say it,” I hissed. “Go on—say it.” This close, he could smell me, too, delicate perfume warring with sweat and booze and anger. “Please. Call us ‘cunts’—I’m begging you.” I trembled with restraint. My heart pounded in my chest, but my corseted breath was low and controlled. “Give me an excuse, man—do it.”

            He blinked with slow surprise. His lips curled into a sneer—wavered—and staring back he saw something that made him reconsider.  He shook his head, and drew his hand across his face, and fell back a step.

            “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m—” he shook his head again, “sorry.”

            Julia grabbed me by the elbow again. “This way. Now.”

            I dutifully followed her down the darkened street and around the corner, my clip-clop a counterpoint to her hurried steps. It was busier the next street over, back in the middle of weeknight action, brights lights and cheer pouring out of late-night fast-food joints, dive bars, small clubs and florescent-lit 24-hour convenience stores.

            A few minutes later and our taxi found us waiting, shivering, in the shelter of a cheap shop selling touristy t-shirts and emergency prophylactics.

            The car swiftly ferried us back to Julia’s. We rode in silence. I seethed with indefinable emotion riding over a deep well of exhaustion. Drunk, I still spoiled for a fight. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to hurt someone until that man approached. My fists itched. There was a powerful urge to tear someone to pieces. I nearly vibrated with the desire for violence.

            The reason for this was beyond me. I was too drunk and too tired from the day’s performance. Maybe there’d been too much thinking today, too much delving into emotions ignored for months. Fortunately, the corset was as good a restraint as any, a reminder of the idiocy of lashing out. I felt its unyielding grip and it kept my breathing controlled and gradually, over the course of the ride to Julia’s, the desire to hurt someone faded.

            Meanwhile, Julia stayed quiet. Anger rolled off her in silent waves, though I ignored them in favour of my own introspection. She said nothing as I followed her up to her apartment.

            But once the door clicked shut behind us, she immediately turned on me. “What the hell were you thinking?”

            “I wasn’t.” I knelt to unbuckle my heels.

            “No shit.” She glared down at me. “That guy could’ve—”

            “What?” Standing, I flexed my toes and sighed with relief. “What could he have done, Julia?”

            She stared at me for a long moment, then shook her head in disbelief. “I just don’t—every single time! I forget. You fool me into thinking there’s this sweet, demure girl, all dolled up in a sexy dress and heels and makeup—all giggles and smiles; and then this shit happens, and it’s the same macho bullshit.”

            “What should I have done? Ignore him?”

            “Yes!” Julia nearly shouted. “Ignore him! Like women do ever single fucking day when some creep comes up to them, invades their space—ignore him, and walk the fuck away and hope he doesn’t do anything nasty.”

            “And if he does?”

            Instead of answering, she kicked off her shoes and pushed past me. She was still muttering as she passed: should’ve fucking known. Macho fuckwit—she reached the kitchen and spun on me and demanded: “and what would you have done, Cindy, if he’d turned violent?”

            “I could’ve taken him.”

            She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Of course.” She waved a hand in my direction. “I mean, just look at you! Pillar of strength that you are.” She started to rummage around in the cupboard, eventually yanking out a pair of tumblers. “Did you see the size of that guy? You’re full of shit, you know that? Be honest: could you have ‘taken him,’ as you put it, as David?”

            I walked over and stood hand on hip. “Guess we’ll never know, huh?” Leaning into the counter, I flexed my arm and wrapped my fingers around a slender bicep. “I’m stronger than I look. And I’ll admit it’s not much to look at now, but I was in good shape when you knew me before.”

            “Doesn’t mean you know how to fight.” Julia crossed over to her drinks cabinet and came back with a bottle of whisky—a 12-year old Macallan—and poured a few fingers for us each. She slid the glass over. “Since you’re feeling so fucking manly.”

            Staring into the drink, I considered her anger—or rather, disappointment. She wasn’t wrong. Picking a fight with that guy would’ve been colossally stupid. Sure, it would’ve felt awesome, fleetingly until the inevitable horror expressed by Julia penetrated my lustful anger and drunkenness. Then the reality, of a delicate twenty-year old girl tearing a full-grown man to pieces in full view of security cameras. How long before this idiotic act of violence filtered through to some police or investigatory database? How far might it reach; and might some snoopy AI draw an association between this moment and previous acts of violence, query the little girl who tore larger men to pieces?

            Resisting the urge to knock it back in one, I took a delicate sip and returned the glass lightly to the countertop. “I’m sorry,” I said, quietly.

            “You’re sorry?”

            “I am.” I looked up at her. “You’re right. It was stupid. I should’ve ignored him. Followed your lead.” Staring into the glass again, I swirled the drink. “Been more Cindy, less David.” I took another delicate sip. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I’m trying.”

            We drank in silence for a moment.

            “I know,” she said, quietly, contemplatively. “You really are. I’m constantly amazed at how convincing you can be but…” and she put her glass down and reached across the counter to hold my hand. “It’s not enough, David. You need to do better.”

            Frowning, I went to withdraw my arm, but she held it firm. “Hey, one slip-up doesn’t mean….”

            “It’s not one. It’s all the time. You don’t notice it, but you’ve been slipping up a lot—more than before, to be honest. When I first met Cindy, you were more—mannered, maybe? It always felt a bit performative. Considered. But still convincing. But these past few weeks, getting to know this new you, it’s like…” She considered for a moment. “When you’re Cindy, it feels more natural, more relaxed if that makes sense.

            “But then you break character, and compared to before it happens a lot more often and I can glimpse the man you used to be.”

            “Bullshit,” I said.

            “It’s true. And if your enemies are as resourceful as you’ve made them out to be—you’re at risk, David. And you don’t even know it.” Her fingernails tapped out a cadence against the countertop. “If they’re still looking for you, and they’ve got the clout, they’ll have trained a bunch of AIs on existing data, building up a David-specific algorithm. At least, it’s what I would do.”

            I shook my head, hair dancing against bare shoulders, dangly earrings bouncing against carefully made-up cheeks. “No way.” What she said seemed impossible. I’d been living this disguise for nine months now. I had a vagina, for fuck’s sake! She was making this shit up, her weird obsession leading her to see so-called toxic masculinity in everything I did. “No way some bit of programming could recognize me.” I hefted my tits. “Look at these things! That’s all anyone sees.”

            “That’s all a person sees,” she answered dryly. “At least men. But the software won’t just be looking at appearances. It’ll be checking for David-specific behaviour, David-specific mannerisms and speech patterns. You don’t get it! People still just don’t get how far these things have come. These enemies of yours—if they’ve got access to the security footage of where you used to work and live—that’s at least a decade of data on which to train a model. It’ll be out there already, looking for you.”

            I thought of everything I’d endured so far: the clothes, makeup, simpering around the office—dates, and dropping to my knees—sucking Jonas off under the watchful eye of his digital pimp—flicking hair, and performative painting of my lips—giggles and flounces and tight skirts and mincing steps—all of it, Cindy; no way some fucking AI could link all of that to the real me.

            “You don’t believe me.” She said this as a matter of fact. “Well, I’ve got evidence.” She saw hostility in my eyes, and clearly wanted to show me her proof. Palpable excitement rose in her like a cresting wave. Julia always seemed happiest when proving me wrong.

            “Let’s get you out of the corset.” She wanted me to be comfortable for whatever she had planned. “You should stay the night,” she added. “Seriously,” and for a moment her eyes darkened. “I listened you know. To everything you said, tonight, at the restaurant. I don’t think you should be alone tonight. Not after what you said, and what you almost did.”

            She was right, of course: I didn’t want to be alone tonight and agreed to stay.

            “Good.” She led me to the guest room.

            I’d spent the night many times before, but never in this room. I assumed we’d share her bed. It felt odd, being a guest. A couple of outfits hung in the closet, and more clothes folded away in a chest of drawers. “What do you want me to wear?”

            “Whatever you want,” she said. “Something comfortable.”

            I plucked at the sleeve of a flimsy, loose-fitting and see-through black shirt on a hanger. “I don’t—”

            “Just for tonight,” she assured me, fingers working nimbly at the buttons sealing me into the red dress. “Tomorrow, we’re back to normal. Back in charge, like you can’t even imagine. Ice cold bitch, that’s what you want, right? But right now…?” She tugged the dress down over my shoulders and began to work at the laces beneath. “I need you relaxed. I need you to be yourself.”

            Fifteen minutes later, after I’d taken a piss and scrubbed my face clean, I joined her at the table. I felt strangely naked without my face on—I’m not sure I’d ever been with Julia without makeup. Meanwhile, she’d changed into light grey jogging pants and a t-shirt for a band I didn’t recognize; I wore skinny jeans with pink detailing, and that billowy shirt over my bra. It felt unbelievably good to be out of the corset, and I felt almost giddy by the sudden freedom.

            “One last thing,” Julia said, and clipped the same two dull metal bracelets at my wrist that she made me wear last week as a maid. In fact, she’d made me wear them every visit, without explaining why, and even when out at the mall.

            I held my arm up. “What is it with these things?”

            “Come,” she said, and led me into her office.

            The room was still a mess, and smellier than a week ago. Half-finished cups of tea or coffee dotted her desk, and at least one or two of them had crusted over with something green. “Jesus, Jules, this room’s disgusting.”

            “Good thing the maid’s coming tomorrow,” she said, typing in her password. Then she turned the screen towards me and with a flourish worthy of a magician, cried out, “Behold!”

            I peered a little closer at the screen. Other than my name, Cindy Bellamy and a bunch of timestamps linked to columns of data, I didn’t recognize much. The screen updated in real-time, new data scrolling past. I looked at her quizzically.

            “What’s this?”

            “This?” Her eyes bore into me. “This is you.”

            After last week’s visit to the mall, Julia explained, her project’s inability to define me according to consumer categories annoyed her. Why had Cindy’s appearance confused the artificial intelligence behind the recommendation software? She went digging into the data.

            “The problem,” Julia explained, “wasn’t with the software, but with you.”

            “Of course it was,” I said dryly.

            “You’re inconsistent, see?” She pointed at the screen. “Here, and here.” A few taps at her keyboard, and she brought up snapshots tied to the timestamps, high resolution security still-frame images: Cindy, sitting alone at the coffee shop counter, middle finger raised; Cindy, slouched in her chair across from Julia over lunch. “Normal human beings are hardly robotically consistent, but they trend in predictable patterns. But you? You’re all over the place.”

            A click of the mouse, and nearly a third of the data went yellow, or red.

            “I have no idea what you’re on about, Jules.”

            Her software, she explained, made its shopping recommendations based on prospective client’s appearance—and performance—and how they presented to the cameras: the clothes they wore, but also how they walked and talked, sat and gestured, held their hands, the tilt of the head, crossed their legs or glanced at someone. Cross-referenced against publicly-available data garnered from socials and open government and corporate databases, the AI sifted through it all in real time and determined an individual’s “posture”—as Julia put it—how in any given moment they stood within one of thirty-two predetermined consumer categories.

            “But Cindy,” Julia continued, both frustrated and excited, “doesn’t fit into any of them.” A few more taps at the keyboard, and the data sorted and reorganized into columns, roughly half blue, half pink.

            “Apologies for crass stereotyping,” she said. “But these columns show the instances in which Cindy’s posture skewed female”—she tapped at the screen, picking out clusters of pink data—“and at these points, the AI determined a more masculine posture,” and she indicated blue data.

            Leaning forward I scanned the screen, but it still meant nothing to me. Nevertheless, I felt an uncomfortable prickling at the back of my neck. It felt hot in Julia’s little office and stank of gone off food and body odour.

            “Your software’s full of shit,” I snapped. Plucking at the diaphanous, loose-fitting blouse that clearly showed off my bra and tits, I added, “Look at me, for fuck’s sake. What exactly about this says ‘masculine’?”

            She laid her hand over my arm. “It’s not just about appearances,” she said. “Actually, I hadn’t quite realised how little physical appearance influenced the decision parameters. This is part of the problem, see. A couple of decades ago, there was a real push to improve AI transparency—improve the mechanisms by which it gives feedback as to how and why it makes decisions. When this stuff really took off, no one had a fucking clue how these things worked—they’d built them, trained them, but the actual decision-making magic was a bit of a digital magic. Even today, decades later there’s always this cloud of uncertainty, and while feedback mechanisms are now baked into the model, you’ve really got to know where to look, know what questions to ask. Of course, even then, you’re basically asking the AI to report on itself, so it’s just another layer of ambiguity….”

            She trailed off for a moment.

            “Anyway, I looked and I asked. And yes—your tits, your long hair, makeup and everything really shouts ‘female’ for the AI. But all this—?”

            Again, she tapped at the screen, at the cluster of ‘blue’ data. “These postures were mostly gesture-based. Mannerisms. The way you keep your wrist. Sit, legs spread. Where you direct your gaze. Or vocal patterns—especially vocal patterns—pitch and tone persistently sliding into male vocal ranges. Turns out the AI’s a bit hypersensitive to these things.”

            I stared at her screen. “It’s listening to us? That can’t be legal.”

            “Anonymized, obviously,” she said. “But people gave up those privacy rights decades ago. Besides, this data’s from the mall—it’s corporate—the moment we walked through the door we gave our consent.”

            “This doesn’t look anonymous,” I pointed out. “This looks pretty fucking personalised.”

            She indicated the dull metal armbands she’d had me wearing for the past week. “Those help the AI track you. Biometrics too, but mostly its signals you’re a top priority. My contract with the shopping centre gives priority access to the data.”

            I glanced at the armbands and then back at her. “Why?”

            Again, she got excited. “Okay. So, here’s the thing. That day we went shopping, the AI couldn’t figure out what you were. It’s been trained for the possibility of transgender shoppers, obviously, even though that’s not really a ‘thing’ these days, but hey, capitalism trumps political showboating, right? Calibrated to compensate for gay customers, or whatever. But—” and she pointed at me, for some reason overjoyed by her software’s failure, “not you.”

            “My sheer, raw masculinity too much for it to handle?”
            Julia winced. “You’re such a dick sometimes, David. But yes—something like that.”

            As the AI tracked and tallied my activities that first day, its parameters simply didn’t know what to do with me. It had twenty clearly delineated ‘feminine’ boxes defined through a cluster of observable traits, and my presentation straddled a number of them, from fashionista to beauty guru—but also strayed into clearly male categories. Faced with fashion recommendations that morning, it glitched: Cindy in a suit; or boyish clothes and bright makeup.

            “So, here’s the thing,” she said. “There are times when the AI’s interpretation places you deep into ‘feminine’ categories, based on a fuzzy aggregate of makeup, clothes and mannerisms. These coincide with what I’ve labelled ‘conscious Cindy’ periods. That is, times when you’ve actively engaged in presenting as some version of Cindy.” She flicked the pink column and the data scrolled; a tap, and it reorganized. “Want to know the most ‘Cindy’ experience you’ve had this past week?”

            I didn’t but nodded for her benefit. “Go on.”

            “Here,” she said, and tapped the screen. “Today.” There was a camera capture associated with the instance: Cindy, in her full bridal brilliance and standing close to her man—to Julia—gazing up at ‘him’ with open adoration. “AI clocks you here at about 95% feminine—pure unadulterated Cindy, right here.” She grinned. “You really nailed the performance, didn’t you?”

            “What the fuck does that even mean, ‘95% feminine’? You can’t quantify that kind of thing.” On screen, a new blue data point appeared.

            Julia shrugged. “Honestly? It’s a bit of a mystery. These models are latest-generation AIs built-up on decades of harvested data but they’ve had some pretty terrible biases baked into them from the earliest days. Very hard to train them off of stereotypes. We’ve tried, but for the purposes of shopping recommendations—let’s be honest—stereotypes work. The AI’s probably a feminist’s nightmare, but it gets the job done. So, when it detects a feminine posture for you—and remember, I’ve guided it along to this point, too—it’s picking up on… well, everything you’d expect.” She patted my arm, almost proudly. “You made a very convincing bride.”

            “Great.”

            “Why so glum?” She took my hand and raised it to her lips and laid a gentle kiss at my knuckles. “I thought you were gorgeous.”

            “Yeah,” I said. “Gorgeous.”

            She considered me for a moment, head titled to one side and hair a dark line reaching towards the floor. “It wasn’t just the dress either, David. Whether on purpose or unconsciously, there was a minute there where ‘Cindy’ really came through—where you embodied the idea of her fully.” She released my hand. “Or at least, the AI thought so.”

            “And how would it know? You said she—I—defied easy categorization.”

            She nodded, eagerly. “Okay. So. After digging through the collected data, I started to play around with it a bit. Just messing around last week—you know, when you were cleaning? The AI was watching then, too, and I saw the data come trickling in and watched in real-time as these precise moments were sorted and clustered together. And I started to think—which of these are really ‘Cindy’?

            “I created a new category—a ‘Cindy’ category and began to associate collected impressions. That is, I took specific data points that seemed appropriate, ones that expressed desired traits and discarded others, and sketched the outline of a person based on appearance and performance. And the more I added, the more the AI engaged with the categorisation. It extrapolated Cindy’s characteristics based on data I approved. It began to build its own Cindy model.

            “Initially, I rejected some of its suggestions, but within a week it had the shape of you and was sorting data into optimal ‘Cindy’ impressions with impressive accuracy and ranking them—like it did with that bridal photograph—a single instance in which appearance and mannerisms reached a… a Cindy ‘singularity’ you might say; a pure expression of who she is.”

            I shivered and hugged myself. “This sounds… wrong, Julia. I know it’s just a shopping algorithm, but still—you’re talking about an individual’s identity—like it’s something you can just define, measure and rank. I say you—but it’s not even you—you’ve just handed it over to the computer?” For some reason, I suddenly thought of the Clinic, and that glass cage deep underground, and the monstrosity it contained. “How can you define ‘Cindy’ when she doesn’t even exist?”

            “You’re overthinking this,” she answered. “Like you said, it’s just software to sell clothes. As for Cindy…it’s an idealised version, sure, something to strive for but also completely distinct from who you used to be.” She tapped at her keyboard. “Think of this as my gift to you—because if you’re going to survive, we need a living, breathing Cindy, don’t we?”

            I felt those dull metal bracelets at my wrist grow warm. First on the left, and then the right, they briefly vibrated, and then turned quiescent.

            I raised a querying eyebrow. “What’s happening?”
            Julia’s smile, if possible, grew even wider. “Do something,” she said. “Just—be yourself.”

            “I don’t know what you mean.”

            “Do something—David. Do the most David thing you can think of.”

            Shrugging, I decided to play along. I leaned back heavily in my seat and spread my legs wide. “What’s so funny?” I snarled, then scratched at non-existent balls and grabbed my tumbler of whisky and knocked it back in a single gulp, grimaced at the burn, and forced a loud belch. Then, I slammed the tumbler down on the desk, loud enough to make her laptop jump. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to ya. Just wanna talk.” I half-standing and leaned in threateningly over her desk. “Fuckin’ bitches.”

            Julia started back, suddenly afraid. I held the pose over her. “So… what now?” I whispered theatrically.

            She glared at me. “Asshole.”

            “Too over-the-top?”

            She pointed at my right wrist. “Feel anything?”
            And suddenly, yes, I did feel something—an unnerving warmth at my right wrist, where the armband lay against my skin. It grew hot—uncomfortably so. A little more and the heat would become painful. I held my arm up and tapped at it. “What the fuck, Jules?” I said, and at my words it grew incrementally warmer.

            “Now,” Julia said, “be as Cindy as you can be.”

            We went back and forth like this a few times, between me acting like various caricatures of masculinity, and expressions of ultra-femininity—flouncing, limp-wristed, ‘oh icky poo!,’ ass-swishing, hair flipping, lip-pouting nonsense. Some of these had Julia nearly pissing herself with laughter. In between gasps, she managed to squeeze out: “No, no—dear God, stop—not like that—like Cindy!”

            I took a deep breath, let it out. Lowered into the seat opposite her, and crossed my legs at the thighs, and brushed long hair back over one shoulder. Head tilted to one side, I smiled—but only a little, somewhat hesitantly—and released a soft sigh. Back straight, chest out, with both hands on the desk between us, fingers splayed wide, I admired the play of light over my painted nails. “Like this?”

            The armband at my left wrist gave a subtle hum, a pleasant tingle running up my arm.

            “Like that,” Julia said, pleased.

            Both armbands, she explained, not only helped the AI track me. She’d also built a haptic feedback system into it, a way to indicate when I was performing David and performing Cindy. For now, it worked best within her apartment, where dozens of cameras, the infrastructure of any modern smart apartment, could track me constantly. Beyond these walls, feedback was slower and largely limited to where she had access, like the mall.

            “With these you can refine Cindy to perfection. Then your disguise really will be undetectable.”

            “And you get the pleasure of watching David disappear?”

            “It’s a win-win,” she said, immensely pleased with herself.

            I tapped at the armbands and felt trapped.

            “Get some sleep,” Julia said. “I’ve got big plans for you starting tomorrow.”

            That night I slept deeply, though haunted by dreams in which dim and indeterminate figures lurched and lurked. At some late point in the evening—around 3am, when the whole apartment lay in darkness and breathed in silent wait—I jerked awake in a boozy sweat, and momentarily confused by the unfamiliar surroundings of Julia’s guest room, felt my heart pound and sat there breathing wrapped in bedsheet clutched to my heaving chest. Then I went for a piss, and returned to bed and dozed intermittently, sleep interrupted by both the usual nightmare and incoherent thoughts of Julia’s expectations.

            When thin Sunday sunlight finally slipped through the curtains, I groaned and contemplated the armbands at my wrist. I’d slept with them, per Julia’s instructions. Presumably, her test had already started. Her software watched, waited and judged as I lay there.

            A full day as ‘Cindy,’ or rather her idea of Cindy. Even more precisely, her AI’s concept of this girl I’d become, an amalgamation of Julia’s hangups and impulse for revenge and humiliation mixed into a digital cesspool of tropes and stereotypes. Jesus. No wonder I didn’t want to get out of bed.

            Instead, I yawned and stretched and felt a reassuring tingle at my left wrist. A good start, I guess. Before crawling into bed last night, I’d slipped into a negligee Julia left out on the bed. It seemed to please my autonomous stalker. What did it see, as its cameras tracked across my lithe body? Full tits veiled in pale pink, stiff nipples pushing out against the gauzy garment; pink panties, long legs and gentle curves, and blonde hair fanned out across the pillows.

            I bit my lower lip in response to another tingle, this one lower down. Fucking morning wood—or morning dew—Jesus, I had to stop perving over myself. Some mornings, the illusion that some sexy bitch lay in bed with me was just too strong—the feel of my own tits, soft skin under my touch, or the tickle of underwear, even my own, delicate smell—no wonder I spent my days in a fugue of sexual arousal.

            When my fingers slid beneath panty waistband, scratching at that moist itch, and my lips parted in a silent sigh, the armband tingled again. The mood vanished.  Touching myself to the silent approval of some digital overseer felt creepy, and wrong.

            I considered getting up, washed and dressed—and getting the fuck out of here and never returning. Why, exactly, was I staying? By this point, I’d gotten what I wanted from Julia. Yet there was something—intriguing—about her proposal, a day of ‘training’ and fully embedding myself in character. More to the point, I didn’t want to leave. But why not? Guilt, perhaps. Curiosity. An odd reluctance to leave Julia. And again—though unable to admit it at the time—fun; some weirdly masochistic part of me getting a tremendous kick out of all this. It was crazy and perverse, but hardly boring.

            A knock on the door. “Cindy?”

            “Yeah?” I called out, sitting up in bed.

            My wrist glowed warm as Julia entered the room.

            “What’d I do wrong?” I pointed at the armband.

            Julia shrugged. “I’ll admit it’s not always clear. I’m setting up a tablet this morning to clarify feedback. This is a work in progress, after all.” She grinned and pointed. “Nice tits. I expect in this context, it expects Cindy would probably cover up a bit better?”

            “Even when it’s just us girls?” With a dramatic sigh, I pulled the sheets up to my neck. “It’s going to be a long day, isn’t it?”

            “Depends on how quickly you get into character. Breakfast in fifteen, okay?”

            She left the room. I remained like that for a moment, second guessing my next move. Would Cindy get out of bed now, or burrow under the sheets for another five minutes? And in getting out of bed: should she erupt into a tousled mess of hair and fluttering negligee, or slouch and scratch at her bum, or droop and melt to the floor and only grudgingly stand? Slip on fuzzy slippers for the walk to the bathroom, or pad barefooted? Yawn, lick lips, blink blearily or smile happily?

            Jesus. This way lay madness.

            Pushing these concerns aide, I tossed back the sheets and stood and scratched at the underside of my boob and lurched into the ensuite and the armbands neither rewarded nor punished. A quick shower, hyper-aware the whole time of being monitored, and then the impossible decision as to what to wear: I defaulted to last night’s jeans, bra and gauzy top, digging out a fresh pair of panties from a drawer. I kept the makeup super simple, five minutes for a touch of concealer, a few swipes of mascara, filled in my eyebrows and a dab of tinted lip balm.

            Did the AI approve? Taking the absence of response as endorsement, I smiled, brushed my hair back into a quick ponytail and joined Julia in the kitchen. She was pulling some grapefruit halves from under the grill, tops crisp and browned with sugar. There was also fresh yoghurt and honey and juice, a few croissants and slices of hard-boiled egg, yokes a brilliant orangey-yellow.

            “Nice,” I grunted, and the armband warned me. “What the fuck?” I pointed at the armband. “What now?” I added, as it grew even warmer.

            Juggling grapefruits, she shrugged and gestured with her chin at a tablet on the countertop. “Have a look.”

            She’d clearly been up early this morning, working on the interface. Instead of inscrutable columns of data, updates were presented in clearly defined boxes. There were also simple graphics, now, bar and pie charts embodying data for easy understanding. So far, I was trending high on “narcissism”. Meanwhile, Appearance earned a green tick; mannerisms and tone, a red one. Fucking sexist piece of shit: it didn’t like the way I talked.

            “Gosh, that looks scrummy!”

            Julia rolled her eyes, but the red tick faded.

            She reached for some plates, and noticed my tummy and yesterday’s piercing, visible through the diaphanous top. “How’s the navel ring?”

            “What, this?” I gave it a little flick. I’d fiddled with it occasionally in the night. “Fine. All healed up.”

            She nearly dropped the plate. “The salon said it’d take months.”

            I shrugged. “I heal quickly.”

            Shaking her head in disbelief, she passed me a plate and we pulled stools up to the counter. Over breakfast, she filled me in on the plan for the day. She was going to work on calibrating the software; my job was to just ‘be Cindy,’ as she put it. Then popping out for lunch and a bit of shopping: she wanted to see how the store’s mirror responded to me now. Then back to hers so I could maid-up and clean the apartment before debriefing on the day. She was excited to see what the AI thought of Cindy-the-maid, whether it might define a few new characteristics for me.

            Then the evening was mine, though I expected by then I’d be too exhausted to do anything other than head home and prep for work tomorrow.

            Julia licked her spoon clean of yoghurt and contemplated it for a moment. She avoided eye contact. “You’re still having nightmares, aren’t you?”

            “Yeah.” A warning warmth. “Yes. How did you—”

            “Heart rate, galvanic response.” She scrolled back through some monitoring data. “Biometric response typical to a nightmare.” She sounded concerned. “Is it the same one? As fourteen years ago? I remember—you used to—"

            “Yes.” Biting my lower lip, I gave a little nod. “The same.”

            The armband tingled.

            “Jesus. I’m sorry, David—”

            “Cindy.” I smiled weakly. “If we’re doing this, you need to get it right, too.”

            A flash of annoyance and a curt nod, which I thought was a little unfair. “Cindy. Have you—you know, talked to anyone about this? Tried therapy?”

            A slight pause, and then I shook my head no, hair dancing at the edge of my vision.

            “Jesus.”

            “I’ll be fine,” I said, “but thank you,” and I smiled wanly at the tingle at my wrist. “How do I look?” I indicated the bra beneath the see-through top, slender shoulders and thin arms veiled under flouncy sleeves. “Not too showy?” I pushed out my chest, turning a little this way and that. “It feels showy.”

            “You look fine.” She watched me, posing, and a little smile grew. “Does it… bother you, still? The showiness?”

            “Honestly?” I crossed and uncrossed my legs and felt another pleasant little tingle. “A little.”

            “I’m not surprised,” Julia said. “I mean, that’s sort of what we’re doing here, isn’t it? You ever read Berger?” She thought for a second, reaching for a quote. “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. But the watcher of women in herself is male, and that’s how she turns herself into an object.”

            She frowned. “Something like that. Anyway. You embody that quote, I think, probably better than anyone ever has, but without the whole lifetime backing it up, you don’t have those two decades of lived experience of being the object, the watched, the woman who appears.”

            I studied my fingertips, checking for flaws, chips in the colour. How would my nails look if I’d punched that guy last night?  “Hey, I was a good-looking guy,” I said. “Women used to stare at me all the time. I’ve been objectified.”

            “You know its not the same.” She had a sip of tea, found it had gone cold, grimaced and put it down. Unlike me, she hadn’t showered yet, put on any makeup, and there were bags under her eyes. She looked tired. Again, it struck me how she struggled to keep up with me—matched me for drinking and lack of sleep, but she just didn’t bounce back as quickly. Between running my life and keeping up with her own, Julia increasingly showed the strain.

            “A few years back,” she continued, “we picked up a project for a lingerie brand. This particular brand was targeted at children—not college-age girls, not even older high school girls, but actual children, skimpy panties and lacy bras for ten- and eleven-year-olds who’d barely hit puberty. Just think about how fucked up that is. And it wasn’t ground-breaking or controversial; this wasn’t anything new.

            “Now, imagine growing up with that? You’re, like seven, and already your shorts are just a little bit shorter, a little bit tighter than your brother’s. Tight little shorts on an eight year old girl—not to show off her ass, obviously. That’d be sick, right? But it sets a precedent, teachers her short-shorts and bared skin is normal. School uniform as well, P.E. shorts that aren’t just uncomfortable, they’re embarrassing. Brighter colours, too, for everything you wear and carry with you, and no pockets, and showy and by the time you hit ten, you’ve got sleeveless tops and ones that show off your midriff.

            “And again, I’m not suggesting parents are consciously sexualising their daughters, it’s nothing that gross, it’s just… normal, right? And that’s what girl learns, from their earliest years, it’s normal to show off your legs, your arms, a bit of tummy, right?”

            She speared a slice of egg, and there’s anger in the jerkiness of the movement that belied the calmness of her voice. “Start high school, and it gets worse. It’s not like when we were kids, David….” She grimaced. “Cindy. Most schools have uniforms these days, and it won’t surprise you, it’s skirts for the girls; last couple years, it’s even become—I dare say fashionable—to actively ban trousers for girls. Toss in cheerleaders and Barbie and a whole media barrage aimed at teenage girls, and—well, we’re back to the quote, right, ‘a woman must continually watch herself,’ it’s part of her identity, an identity rooted in her sense of being surveyed, of being an object, a thing to be seen and watched and judged, but after so long it’s mostly unconscious, an instinctive sense most notable when you don’t feel yourself watched.”

            She munched contemplatively on a slice of egg. I fiddled with a bra strap that kept sliding down my shoulder. “That’s what you’re up against, Cindy. That—instinct? How can you possibly feel what I’m talking about, after only a few months of living it? You might understand, even sympathise, but you can’t know it in your gut.” She smiled, a brittle and unpleasant expression. “But maybe it can be taught.”

            “Is that what this is about?” I poked and fluffed my hair a bit and smoothed it down over my shoulder. “You want me to feel objectified?”

            “No,” she said. “That’s exactly what I don’t want you to feel.” She stood, and pushed her food aside, and leaning forward across the counter, reached out to flick a stray bang from my eyes. “You are an object, Cindy.  And when you don’t feel it anymore, when that truth is so ingrained you don’t even notice it anymore—that’s when those armbands won’t be needed.”

            Standing, I helped her clean up after breakfast and received a gentle reward at my wrist for the effort. “Childhood, those teenage years, all those milestones along the way,” Julia continued, as I wiped down the counter. “Your first period, the first time you leaked, the embarrassment of leaving a stain on a chair in your classroom and not wanting to stand so nobody knows. Trying on your first bra, or the first time some asshole snapped your bra strap. Trying out makeup for the first time, messing it up, smearing mascara, laughing with your girlfriend, finding your style, horrified at old pictures of yourself.”

            “I’ve done the makeup thing,” I said, grinning ruefully. “Believe me.”

            “You’ve barely scratched the surface, Cindy. What about buying a prom dress—your first crush on the boy—the pain of getting dumped—shaving your legs for the first time; or the first time you walk down a street at night and feel afraid—not because the night itself is scary, but because of the scary men you now understand hide in the dark, and what they want to do to you?”

            She stopped cleaning for a moment, staring at the wall opposite. “Can you imagine what it feels like, being twelve and some guy exposes himself at you? Thirteen, and being pressured to send pics of your tits to a guy you like? Fourteen, and getting your first dick-pic?” She shook her head. “We live in a world where teenage girls hear adult men talk openly about them ripening, coming of age—grass on the field, game on!—and perv in public without fear of repercussion.”

            Julia sighed and tidied our plates away into the dishwasher. “Being talked over, because you’re a girl? Having your opinion ignored, because you’re a girl? Getting told to help in the kitchen while your brothers or uncles or cousins relax at Christmas—because you’re a girl?” She stopped and looked at me. “How could you understand any of that?”

            It’s true: I hadn’t experienced these things or, at best, only in a superficial way and from the perspective of adult experience. I remembered my first bra and shaving my legs for the first time, and those hours spent mastering makeup. But since it was all in the context of surviving a possible assassination attempt, it probably didn’t align with most girls’ lived experience.

            Still. I found it curious the milestone experiences Julia didn’t mention. This past month during her absence, I’d experienced my own female firsts.

            That first dancefloor ecstasy, shining brightly, the centre of attention.

            Listening, empathising, consoling Emma over a bad date, or Mel’s anger, or Willow’s joy—feeling, for the first time, a bond with them that frankly scared me, at times, in its intensity and difference from what I remembered of male friendships.

            The joy of standing in front of the mirror and for the first time realising: nailed it, navigating makeup, shoes, underwear and clothes and emerging the other side as—the me I wanted to be in that moment.

            Also, too, the… comfort? care? felt in Jonas’s arms, or under Chad’s intense gaze. The warmth of an embrace. The pleasure in relaxing into someone else’s protection. The first time Mr Connor’s voice shivered down my spine. Even that tremor of delightful helplessness, so alien yet exciting, felt in corset and heels and, yes—kneeling, an escalation of wrongness and desire and nakedness and passion and vulnerability and determination only possibly felt as a woman reaching for a man’s cock.

            I blinked and shook my head and felt the armband at my wrist reward me with its most intense tingle to date. Perhaps I hadn’t lived Julia’s female experiences, but after nearly a year I’d certainly had my own. Though I kept silent, I decided that my femininity was my own, and did not have to be defined by her expectations—or her damned AI’s.

            “You’ve only had, what, nine months, no, not even that?” Julia leaned against the counter, eying me appraisingly. “Most girls have a lifetime to figure out who the hell they are. And your lifetime’s going to be a short one if you don’t get a handle on this.”

            Julia jabbed at her keyboard a few times, smiled grimly, and slapped the lid shut. “But maybe, just maybe I can help you catch up a little.”

Five: Fake It to Make It

I must be cruel only to be kind: Hamlet’s idiom captured Julia’s intentions well.

            The final week of Julia’s control over my life was brutal.  She wanted to forcibly implant two decades of feminine conditioning into my pretty little head, and she had the means to do it. Oh, sure she insisted it was for my own good. Maybe she even believed it. It was a clever bit of mental trickery, rebranding her guilt as a gift. She humiliated me only to save me. And if she took guilty enjoyment at watching me squirm—well, it was a price worth paying. After all, she only humiliated me to save my life, right?

            Yeah, I didn’t buy it either.

            Two weeks ago, she’d established her dominance by trying to fuck the manhood out of me. And yeah, I complied willing because—because it felt so damned good, and I wanted it, needed it, even. So she said, and she was right. Now, she was training my masculinity into oblivion—again, for my own good. Considering how scarily effective a single week of her training was, it’s a very good thing that everything went so horribly fucking wrong by that weekend.

            It started on Sunday. Her day went as planned, at least at first: shopping, lunch, a constant barrage of corrective warnings and rewarding tingles—far more warnings than rewards, it seemed—followed by a couple hours of maid duty back at hers and then a debrief. With poorly concealed excitement, she walked me through the day’s data: “a fifteen percent improvement,” she said. She pointed at a pink spike on a graph. “Massive progress with vocal femininity. It’s skewing the rest of the data.”

            “I tried going the whole day without swearing,” I said. “Fuck me, it was hard.” Heat flared at my wrist. “Really?”

            Julia laughed. Then she indicated a moment earlier in the day, a blue surge in a rolling sea of mild pink data. “But this—we need to talk about this.”

            This: early afternoon, tummies glowing with a light lunch and glass of wine, head fuzzy with the effort of projecting the Cindy she expected, that the AI wanted. We left the café, click of heels against sidewalk slabs as we cut along a warren of backstreets under October skies. Bright sun and lost in both character and chatter, I felt—happy—a genuine surge of pleasure trotting alongside Julia on a beautiful Sunday, light dress fluttering in a cool wind.

            “Food?” called a voice. “Money?”
            He sat on a flattened bit of cardboard, dirty, menacing, dark-eyed. Successive governments over the past two decades promised homelessness would be a thing of the past but nothing changed. There would always been forgotten people and lost places in which they sheltered. Julia probably hadn’t even noticed the rent-a-cops we’d passed during our walk; I did. Private security forces swept through the city centre and moved the beggars and rough sleepers along, usually towards the periphery. On those seemingly, increasingly rare nights I slept in my own bed, I saw many of these lost souls on my morning run through the suburb.

            Up close, this guy reeked of despair, of piss and sweat. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty—no, not even that. Just a kid, and his eyes betrayed both disbelief and sullen anger at his own loss of dignity. He eyed these two pretty women in their bright clothes and resented them and keenly felt his own grubbiness. He needed their help but would hate them for it. Maybe he remembered women from his past and imagined the disdain they’d feel seeing him like this.  

            Before Julia could stop me, I crouched in heels and a dress that cost enough to house him for a week. “Hey,” I said. His clothes were filthy but not yet tattered, his breath rank but his teeth still healthy and white. Homeless, but maybe only recently.

            The man eyed me warily. His eyes flicked to somewhere past me, searching, looking for the catch, the authorities, for something to explain why this beautiful girl might talk to him. When his attention returned to me, he took in my shiny lips and earrings, the meticulous makeup and prissy cleanliness. I felt ashamed.

            “What’s your name?” I asked.

            He shifted uncomfortably, scratched at a spot under his armpit. “Theo.”

            “Well, Theo, if you’ve got a phone, I’ll spot you some cash.”

            I could feel Julia hovering disapprovingly behind me. Well, fuck her.

            Theo reached into an inner pocket of his puffy jacket. There were a few tears and rips in the fabric, taped over. He’d feel those come winter. He pulled out a phone. I tapped it with mine, transferred some money.

            He stared at me. “You’re pretty.”

            “Yeah.” I leaned in a little closer and spoke so only he could hear. “We passed some cops a few streets back. They’ll be here soon. You should move,” I said, and recommended an unofficial shelter near my neighbourhood, a derelict building of squatters, homeless and gang kids living in uneasy harmony.

            Julia and I walked on, until we turned a corner. She grabbed me hard by the arm, yanking me into the doorway of a fancy café. “What the fuck was that?” she hissed.

            I stared back at her, then at her hand. “Let go of me.”

            “You’re a young girl, you idiot. He could’ve hurt you.” An exasperated sigh, and she released me. “What were you thinking?”

            “He needed food.”

            “Food?” She laughed. “He’s a bum. He’s going to—”

            I shoved her up against the wall, hard and ignoring the scorching pain in my wrist jabbed a finger in her face and spoke with barely restrained fury. “Don’t you fucking say it, Jules, you don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re talking about. Yeah, maybe he’ll spend it on—whatever. Drugs. Booze. And who can blame him? His life’s shit.” My finger curled into a fist, and for a moment Julia must’ve thought I was going to throw a punch. But my arm fell impotently at my side. “His name’s Theo. And maybe—just maybe—he’ll take that tiny bit of money and… eat, or get himself a room for the night, shower and for just one day feel like a man again. It might make a difference. It might not.” I glared at her, flushed red and breathing hard. “He deserves the chance.”

            Julia stared at me and let it drop. It took a solid hour before the dark cloud over us lifted and we could enjoy the rest of the day. We finished our shopping; she punished my aggression with an extra hour of maid duty when we got back to hers; and then over wine and a charcuterie board, she pointed at the data that captured the encounter and the computer, in its digital fucking ignorance, determined it was an especially unfeminine—or un-Cindy—thing to do. Compassion and empathy were outweighed by anxiety and revulsion: a girl like Cindy shouldn’t stop and talk to homeless men—too scary, too icky—and if there’s a single time this whole goddam week I wanted to tell Julia and her goddamn AI to fuck off, it was then.

            “You used to do the same thing, too, back then,” Julia said, musing as she pushed the laptop aside. “I’d forgotten, you know. It was one of the things that first attracted me to you, fourteen years ago when we first met. It just seemed so—out of character.”

            I titled my head and smoothed hair over my shoulder and felt a buzz at my left wrist. “How so?”

            “You were so arrogant, especially after the tech buyout, really cocky. The way you splashed cash around, the flash suits, expensive restaurants. You could be such a dick, you know?”

            “You quite liked my dick.”

            She rolled her eyes. “But then, every time we went out and you passed some homeless person on the street, you’d stop. Talk to them, just a quick word and some money. I swear, you were kinder to them than anyone in the office.”

            I shrugged.

            “Why?”

            An itch, raw skin beneath a hardened scab.

            First, I lost Persephone. Then, I lost the only home and family I’d know. After recovering from my injuries, I walked out of the hospital, into the city and disappeared. Yes, there were offers to take me in; I had friends, then and favours owing. Debts I could have collected. In pursuit of oblivion, I chose instead obscurity, I wanted to forget, and to be forgotten.

            Lonely nights. Grey hollowness and fear. A constant hunt for shelter, for sustenance, for some way to obliviate the self. Rules: quickly learned, and the need to push on, the places to stay away from and how to avoid authorities. Not that anyone looked for me.

            A few bright moments that alleviated the emptiness: moments of kindness, grudgingly accepted. Other lost souls, briefly known. One girl—briefly—and then gone, forever. Jesus. I’d nearly forgotten her. Beatrice. That was the first tear, that night, shed in remembrance of the forgotten. I’d promised to find her, someday.

            Most of that year, numb. Hunger; always hungry, often cold. Filth; how deeply the stench can sink, an indelible stain on the soul. And the discovery of what a person might do for an instance of heat, or scrap of food, a drink or even the briefest flash of what passes for intimacy. I’d been raised into violence, precisely applied; that year, I learned the hollow joy of violence, indiscriminate.

            That year also taught me how quickly everything once taken for granted could be stripped away. We live dancing at the edge of the precipice, willfully ignoring the chasm and its depths. Basic dignities are fragile. Dreams and hopes, thoughts of the future a luxury. I learned the fundamental truth of our animal nature: we are beasts, and what we call human rights or morality are nothing more than pretty illusions. What value in social construct that fail so utterly?

             Julia watched the passage of silent emotions expressed as a shudder. Throat dry, I gulped my wine and smiled wanly at her. I’d never talked to anyone about this. There’s never been anything to say. That year was in past and could damn well stay there. David’s entire existence had been built on a foundation of forgetting. His life ensured it never happened again.

            “So,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

            From some distant place, I watched my slender hand with its shiny nails careful place the wine glass back on the table. The hand trembled, slightly. The armband tingled approvingly of my weakness. I felt tears form at my eyes and blinked them away. No. This wasn’t something I could talk about. Not while wearing a pretty dress, legs shaved and sleek, a face full of makeup, and sparkling rings at my fingers, earrings dancing against my cheek. The distance between then and now, impossible.

            I shook my head no.

            “Tell me.” This time her voice was hard and cold. “I’m not asking.”

            Her demand and the tone of it raised a strong sense of indignation—I opened my mouth to tell her to fuck off—felt a warning at my wrist—the feelings in my throat lurched and twisted sideways—and then….

            Cindy told my story. She told the story of a lost and tragic boy because it had never been David’s to tell. In her quiet voice, it came pouring out:

            “There was a boy, once, and—a whole year—before you knew… him, when he was only twenty—he was homeless. He’d run away from home long before that, and the people who took him in—the woman who—and I got hurt—I mean, he got hurt and ended up in the hospital, and—” I was babbling, or she was, the story wasn’t coming our right.

            Sad smile flickering through shades of apologetic sadness, Cindy took a deep breath and tried again. “That first night, this boy….”

            Julia listened in silence. At one point she tapped her tablet, and I felt those bracelets go cold and quiet and unlatch themselves, and she removed them from my wrist without a word. I talked; told her about things that happened over the course of that year that I’ve never told anyone. She never interrupted, though a few times she asked me to explain more clearly.

            Meanwhile, a quiet and insistent voice at the back of my head kept telling me to shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up! and stop whining, walk away and never look back. Jules didn’t need to know this; no one did; and I didn’t want to remember. But having started, I found that stopping simply wasn’t possible. Every time I tried, another memory tumbled, half-formed and ugly, from my mouth.

            I spoke until the bottle of wine was empty and it was dark outside, my throat felt raw and my makeup ran in dirty streaks down my face. I felt no shame in these tears. They were the tears of a young girl for a tragic boy she’d only known dimly, as through a dark mirror.

            “And then one morning, I walked into this bar run by this guy I knew and asked for a job. A few years later….” I trailed off, and stopped. I hadn’t told her the worst of it, nor would I. Those memories were fresh once again and would stay with me for a long time. I remembered Bianca, and Deniz, and the Pit. I remembered unpaid debts, a crunch of broken bones, and a scream, a bite, a final breath muffled beneath by palm.

            “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what came over me.” I rubbed at my eyes and the back of my hand came away smeared with mascara and eyeliner. “I’m sorry.”

            “Don’t apologize,” Julia said, voice flecked with the same steel with which she’d instructed me to start.

            “You asked,” I said. “Why I stopped today. That’s why. That kid, Theo? That was me, once.”

            Wordlessly, Julia stood and walked over to the window and stared outside. I remained at my seat, staring into my empty glass. Now, I felt tired, as though I could curl up and sleep for a week. Julia stood in silence, her back turned to me. Several minutes passed, until I glanced at my phone and saw the time.

            “I should get going,” I said.

            “No.” Julia crossed back to me. “You’re staying here tonight.”

            “I’ve got work tomorrow.”
            “Doesn’t matter.” Next thing I knew, she was reattaching the bracelets to my forearms.

            I shuddered at their cold touch and looked up at her pleadingly. “Please.”

            “You need these,” she said. “More than ever.” With a click, the armbands sealed around my wrist. With surprising gentleness, she pulled me to my feet and led me to her bedroom.

            The next day, Monday. She didn’t say a word about what happened the night before. Instead, Julia assembled an outfit for me: houndstooth skirt over tan pantyhose and a form-fitting long-sleeved black top paired with a wide red belt and red pumps.  I looked sexy—Cindy always looked sexy—but compared to previous days it felt subdued, almost comfortable. Touching up my nail colour that morning to match belt, shoes and lips, I watched Julia moved efficiently around her apartment. Exhaustion again dogged her footsteps, yet she pushed aside her own needs in favour of mine.

            “Good luck today,” she said, and I saw the tiredness behind her eyes. But she smiled and tapped the bracelets. “I made a few adjustments.”

            We traveled separately, that morning: I rode the bus, and she took a taxi.

            I didn’t see her at work. The night’s previous conversation haunted me at first, but the intensity of my performance distracted me. At 9am, my phone beeped: Julia, to tell me she’d hooked her software into the office’s security system. I felt the armbands come alive. For the rest of the day, they guided me through this new, nuanced version of Cindy. The software seemed to focus on mannerisms, that day, the less obvious expressions of girlhood. The negative reinforcement had changed as well. Gone, the previous warning warmth, the gradual heating. Now, both armbands gave a shock, ranging from a mild prickle to a genuinely painful jolt for persistent and egregious violations.

            When we met later that evening, she walked me through the day as represented by bar charts and line graphs. “Not bad,” she grudgingly admitted. “Though we need a bit more focus on this ‘timid’ metric, you’re still coming across as way too confident.”

            I blew a lock of hair out of my eyes and kept silent.

            “Next time someone compliments your work, try to play it down,” she advised.

            Tuesday played out similarly, but already I could feel her adjustments creeping over me. It’s difficult to precisely define what changed. It’s not like I performed some limp-wristed caricature of femininity. Rather, it was something—subtle—a tilt of the head, or the way I stood; the way I held my hands or gestured with them as I spoke. Holding objects differently—not just because of longer nails, but with a gentler grip, less controlling, less possessively. More eye contact. More hedging in conversation, more listening; and the light touch, subtle affirmation as someone else spoke.

            Even the things I wore came under scrutiny. Before, I’d slip on a necklace or bracelet because—well, because that’s what women wore; but under the AI’s supervision I better incorporated these objects of femininity into the performance—a low-key pantomime of gentle touches, fiddling, confirmatory fidgeting with accessories that confirmed my girliness.

            The tug of an earring, or the roll of fake pearls between forefinger and thumb; absently twirling a bangle during conversation, or the subtle tuck of hair beneath a hairband under watchful male eyes: these were the forgotten gestures that helped complete Cindy.

            And when I got it wrong, the pain of each correction proved remarkably effective. Somehow, I came to both yearn for and dread the sharp sting of each error—at times cringing in anticipation for a shock that never came, other times finding relief in having a recognized and accidental slip up corrected.

            And I wonder, had everything not gone so necessarily, disastrously wrong between Julia and me—what would the long-term effect of this training been? Between the affirmatory pleasant tingles of acting like Cindy, and the warning jolts of David-like actions, even a single short week of her regime changed the way I behaved, even in those all too rare times when I was alone and away from the gaze of judgmental observation. Another month—or two—and would Julia’s vision for Cindy have seeped into my unconscious sense of self? Fake it to make it: how long before the act becomes reality?

            Julia caught up with me during breaks that day, both to check up on me and to explain some of the AIs more baffling corrections. “Here,” she said, picking out an incident from the morning, caught entirely on camera:

Cindy in high-definition video, standing in reprographics, collecting a ream of copies to distribute around the floor. Oh, the irony of a sustainability report printed on paper: dozens of pages thick, in multiple copies, a heavy stack waiting in a box on a shelf for the young girl to haul back to the office. She stood there non-plussed and looked around, twirling a bang around her finger. She looked every centimeter the secretary: black pencil skirt, tall pumps, tight white bloused buttoned low over red push-up bra. For a moment, she seemed to consider the suitability of pretty nails, tall heels and a short skirt for manual labour. Then, just as she shrugged and reached for the reports, sliding her hands beneath the box, a man entered the room.

            “Hey, Cindy,” the man said.

            “John.” She twitched, as though from a static shock. “Um, Sir.” She grimaced and tested the weight of the box of printed report.

            “You look good today.”

            “Uh.”

            Just as she went to lift the box, John moved closer. He stepped in directly behind her. His hands held her by the hips. “Hey, let me help,” he said, even as he pulled her back into his crotch, grinding into her. “I can get that for you,” he added, and as he reached around her for the box, he took her by the breasts. She went immediately stiff under his touch, even as he groped her tits, briefly.

            John leaned close, burying his face in her hair. He took a deep breath. “Mm, you smell good, too.”

            She dropped her elbows, jabbing his hands off her chest, and twisted within his arms. Trapped between the man and the shelves behind her, she glared up at him. Loathing crawled across her face, and she visibly trembled. For a moment, it looked as though the diminutive girl might throw a punch.

            He didn’t notice, pushing past her to pick up the box. He grunted with the weight and smiled at her. “Where do you need these, little lady?”

            Cindy didn’t answer.

            “What?” John asked, as she stalked out of the room, face contorted with pain as she clutched her wrist.

Frankly, I deserved a medal for not killing that bastard. John was a known pervert; every girl on the floor had a story to tell. These stories ranged from pats to the bum and pinches to the thigh, to being cornered at office parties and mauled—or worse, according to Mel.  Many girls laughed it off; for many, their laugh hid tears. But John was a manager, and well-liked by the other guys. All the girls said they’d raised a complaint with HR, but nothing ever happened. One girl went as far as to threaten legal action but she no longer worked for Volumina International.

            “Jesus, what’d I do wrong?” I asked, munching on a high-protein, low-carb bar that passed for a breaktime snack. Emma had gifted me a box of these things. She was always commenting on how much I ate and drank and seemed genuinely worried I’d start putting on weight. Honestly, I’d rather be fat than live off these things. “These f—” I took a deep breath and tried again. “These things—” I indicated the corrective bracelets, “—were frying me alive. I didn’t kick him in the nuts. He got off lucky.”

            Julia shook her head and sighed. “Listen, Cindy, God knows he deserves it. John’s an asshole. But he’s also a manager, and technically one of your bosses. You’ve got to think like Cindy—what would she do in that situation? How would she react?

            “She might go to HR. But she can’t afford to put her job at risk. She certainly can’t risk losing her job. So, what does she do?” She directed my attention to her software’s recommendations, where sliders running from ‘demure’ to ‘bold’, ‘compliant’ to ‘assertive’ and ‘accommodating’ to ‘confrontational’, in shades running from pink to blue, were highlighted. “We need to push these over to the pink side,” she said.

            I raised an eyebrow. “Is this really the kind of Cindy you want?”

            To her credit, she looked pained even as she answered, “Yes.”

            By Wednesday afternoon, I sat behind my desk at work, idly twirling a pen through my hair, chin resting on the back of my hand, long fingernailed listlessly flick-scrolling through boring rows of numbers on the screen. Legs crossed at the knee beneath a pleated skirt, heel dangling from one foot, I gazed absently into the middle-distance and thought of Mr Connor. He’d just walked by, so intense and strong—stopping to speak to me, deep voice rumble planting a warm glow in my belly—and lower—and I suddenly started—became actively conscious of myself—and saw myself as a pretty young woman in a way I hadn’t since this whole insanity started.

            Jesus. What was happening to me? The transformation was subtle. Only a few short days, but the consolidation of all these tiny, learned behaviours had an incremental impact far beyond any single change. It was—something in the way I tucked hair behind my ear, the trailing of fingertips along the ear, or the touch of an earring. A tilt of the head, incline of body, and a different stance taken when talking to a man, or a woman. How long I held someone’s gaze—modulated my voice, timbre and tone and cadence—all of it, over the period of a single week and constantly reinforced by pleasant tingles and mild shocks—changes to the way I not only presented but felt about myself—as Cindy.

            I didn’t enjoy it. It felt like living death, a constant eating away at the memory of who I’d been.  But grudgingly, I also had to admit Julia hadn’t been wrong. I’d gotten complacent. The prosthetic fooled me into believing the illusion was perfect. That hole between my legs made my feminine cloak impenetrable. More subtly, perhaps, it pushed me unconsciously into old male habits as reassurance that underneath that prosthetic skin and female slit there still lay—me—cock and balls and a thrusting male libido.

            Well, that armband jolting me awake every five minutes quicky had me realising how far I’d slipped back into old patterns.

            Admittedly, what the AI considered “feminine” was too over-the-top for my liking, too stereotyped, too demure and compliant and soft. Mel popped over at break to lovingly swear at me for skipping out on Daiquiri Tuesday with the girls, before telling me in graphic detail about the man she’d gone home with and how he’d fucked her so hard she could barely walk this morning—and I blushed and nodded until she looked at me oddly and left disappointed, and I envied her. Even Julia—for all her self-destructive insanity, I’d have rather copied her mature confidence, her passion and anger and futile railing against the patriarchy.

            But that was not Cindy’s way. Increasingly, I resented the brand of femininity she forced into me. Julia argued that, based off my earlier failure, it’d do me good to push some of the software evaluative metrics to the extremes: submissive over dominant, considering how I’d reacted outside the restaurant a few nights ago; or accommodating rather than confrontational, after the encounter in the photocopy room. She threw the sliders over to one end, smiled and told me to enjoy the ride.

            Even if I hated it, seething behind a glossy shy smile, there was no denying that after a couple of days of intense training I found myself relaxing into a feminine posture far more easily. By that Wednesday, Cindy came easily—too easily—so much easier than ever before—and handing the reins over to her was almost a blessed relief. In fact, it felt as though it took a conscious effort to turn off the tiny girly flourishes that made the performance of Cindy complete. There was precious little time to myself that week, and even in those rare times I discovered myself still caught in the act.

            Jesus. And all this, after only half a week? How could I change this much in so short a time?

            I had a theory. During my stay at the Clinic, Crystal let slip during one of our sessions that the same process that saved my life might be messing with my mind, too. That’s not how she put it, of course. No, she couched it as “helping me adapt” and “easing the transition”, but her point was that the same chemicals that regenerated flesh in response to change or damage might also affect the brain. So long as those chemicals were churning away in my bloodstream, I wouldn’t just heal faster, but also learn faster. The overnight healing of the navel piercing was pretty good evidence that the regenerative compound remained active. My near D-cup tits were another heavy reminder.

            It’s not as if I understood any of it.  But it felt possible that the constant negative reinforcement of those bracelets—first the mild burns, now the sharp electric jolts—kept kicking the regenerative compound into some low-level active state. Nothing so serious as to trigger any of the monstrous effects I’d seen deep below the Clinic. Thank God for that. But still enough to stimulate the swift growth of new neural connections every time I complied with the software’s instructions.

            There was no way of knowing, of course. I’d have to ask during my next checkup appointment. But if acting like Julia’s version of Cindy meant becoming that version of Cindy, at some deep, neurological level—then this couldn’t continue. This version of Cindy wasn’t somebody I wanted to be.  Yet I could feel her creeping over me, in action but also, increasingly, in thought. How long could I pretend to be docile, or compliant, or submissive, or whatever other bull—other nonsense Julia thought was appropriate, before it stopped being an act and started being me?

            Meanwhile, between pain and pleasure, I completed the working day in a detached haze. Often, I felt disconnected from my actions. Oh, I completed my work easily enough. Sitting at the reception desk, my lips curved into the same smile as before: bright and shiny; but accompanied now by those tiny little touches that converted a welcome to subtle flirtation. I saw myself, as Cindy poked a stray bang behind her ear, touched her earring and then smiled shyly at the young man standing in front of her, and marvelled at my own transformation.

            “I’ve got the 3:30 interview,” the boy said, ill at ease in a cheap suit that didn’t quite fit.

            “Name?” I asked, smoothing down my hair and batting long eyelashes.

            “Keiran,” the boy said with an Irish lilt.

            “Black-haired.” I smiled and winked. “It suits you.”

            We chatted as he waited to be called. He blushed and at first spoke too quickly. I giggled, and listened, and he gave me his number, of course. He called me a pretty girl and said he’d like to take out sometime. After he left, I sat behind my desk, slowly stroking my hair.

            A pretty girl, he said. The kind a boy likes to take out.

            What, exactly, is a girl?

            Damned if I knew, but the first and simplest definition that came to mind was: not a boy.  A girl is defined in relation to a boy: she doesn’t have a cock, she has breasts, long hair, lacks physical strength; her softness a lack of male hardness, an echo of the mental frivolity contrasting male reason. A girl wasn’t just different: she was deficient, a deviation from the male norm. A girl is a boy, incomplete.

            This was nonsense. I’d hated so much of these past months, but I’d never been an absence of anything—I was my own, I was a person; and for now that person was a girl. My tits weren’t a deformed male chest, though once it felt that way. My pussy wasn’t a void, an absence, a no-thing rather than something.

            Did it even matter what I thought? I couldn’t define myself in isolation. After all, I wasn’t a girl in the abstract but a girl, a specific girl, not ‘just’ a girl but rather Cindy, and Cindy from the very beginning was defined as not-David. Agent K wanted her to be everything David wasn’t, and so did Julia—my current self was my previous self’s antithesis.

            Meanwhile, Julia’s software wanted to mold me into a girl according to binaries steeped in stereotypes, docile versus assertive, or weakness versus strength. Yet everything in my lived experience these past few days and months resisted these easy definitions. Could there not be a strength of sorts in weakness, an expression of will in submitting to the control of others? Could compliance to one be defiance to another? Passivity an assertion, and humility pride.

            I smiled and watched myself smile: the object defining itself and the object of constant scrutiny; the thing that sees itself being seen.

            A girl: coy smile, tilted chin, and backward glance over bared shoulder. Tap of an earring, whisper of silk, and slender fingers. Wet lips, demure look, tip of tongue between bright teeth. Smooth thighs, soft skin. Long hair and bright colours. Being a girl was being young, and slim, and pretty and fun and petulant and frustrated and cute and wonderful and sullen and sad and confused—yes, confused, more than anything.

            Though maybe a girl didn’t have to be any of these things: what if she wasn’t pretty, or young or slim or shy or… whatever. Did she give up her girlhood, then? What if she could be something other, their own—his own—manifestation of ‘being a girl’?

            If not in action at least in thought, in soul—always.

            I kept Keiran’s number and smiled absently through the rest of the day.

            Then, Thursday evening. Julia has plans for us. Another exhausting day, but she ended it strangely jubilant. She wanted to celebrate my achievements this week but her own as well. She took us out for late night drinks.

            The place she chose was expensive and pretentious and boring, but she said it was connected to the shopping center and therefore its security feed covered by the contract with her department. Icarus sat atop the luxury hotel that towered over the mall, forty-something floors of conference halls, chain restaurants and carpeted hallways lined with keycard coded mid-range rooms.

            “Something different for tonight,” she said, and smiled wickedly as we got ready at her place that evening. In the palm of her hand, she held a long and slender rounded cylinder, one end curving inwards and ending with a flat rubber tip—a bit like a suction cup. “A more encouraging reward for good behaviour.”

            “What the f—” I sighed, smiled and tried again. “What’s that?”

            “A gift.” Julia’s smile grew. “An improvement over these,” she said, and tapped at the ugly metal bracelets. “These ruin your look.” She detached them from my arms. “But this’ll really incentivise you to act like Cindy.”

            I held the object to the light and belatedly realised what it was. “You’re joking. You can’t expect me to—”

            She tapped me on the nose. “You’ll love it.”

            With the help of a little lubricant, the vibrator slid easily into the prosthetic and nestled between my pussy lips, the curved end lying gently over the clitoris. With my panties pulled up tightly, Julia’s toy stayed secure. “I don’t like this,” I said. I could feel it, inside of me, this foreign object. I wanted to clamp down and expel it from my body.

            “You will,” she said.

            A taxi ride later and we sat at a booth in the hotel bar. She set up her laptop, and clipped a choker around my neck, similar to the armbands but wrapped in purple velvet. A test run—the choker warmed, then delivered a mild shock that raced up and down my spine. “And the other one.” With a silent buzz, the vibrator kicked briefly into life—Jesus, was that thing sucking on my clit?—and I gasped softly and felt weak in the knees.

            “Fun,” she said.

            Glaring moodily into my brightly coloured cocktail, I pursed my lips in displeasure. “Why exactly are we here?”

            Julia grinned at my discomfort. For all the training this week, there’d been little tangible reward. In other words, she hadn’t fucked me with the dildo all week. I was already terribly horny and sat with thighs squeezed tightly together against the burst of pleasure emanating from Julia’s toy. At work, I’d started to find it hard to concentrate again and too often caught myself gazing dreamily at Mr Connor or one of the other young men—or women—in the office.

            The girls commented. Others noticed as well. At least, there sure seemed more guys finding reasons to hang around my desk by the end of the week. Giving license to John’s harassment seemed to have trickled downwards to other male colleagues, an uptick in pats to the bum, unwanted comments, and touches.

            But maybe worst of all, my own performance was somehow a turn on for me on, too. There was a uniquely, exquisite eroticism in so fully embodying Cindy and by the end of the week, I nearly vibrated with barely-restrained need.

            “We’re celebrating,” Julia said.

            Twirling a strand of hair around a finger, I checked my reflection in the window by our table. The view was stunning: the city sprawled below, a late-night carpet embroidered with glittering lights rolled out across the landscape. Towards the edges the carpet went dark, cut by dark concrete slashes raised against the sky: massive low-income apartment complexes in the suburbs. Caught in the glass I saw myself, and that view was stunning, too: shiny lips slightly parted, vivid makeup and eyes glowing with both fear and excitement. “What’re we celebrating, anyway?”

            “You, obviously,” Julia answered. “And—me.”

            “You?”

            “I guess I never told you. I had a job interview today. Promotion.”

            I glanced askance at her. “How’d it go?”

            Julia shrugged, eyes bright with confident pleasure. “Well,” she said. “Very well. I won’t know until later but—yes.” She took a sip of wine, and grinned. “I nailed it. Besides, there wasn’t much competition. Just Malik, and he’s an incompetent sack of shit.”

            I smiled warmly at her. “I hope you get it.” Turning back to the window, I took a moment to touch up my lips with a dab of gloss. Behind me, I could see the shadowed reflection of movement; dim and indeterminate figures sliding and stalking the dim light of the hotel bar. Icarus was busy: corporate men in suits staying for a few nights, unwinding after a day of workshops, conference speeches or hard work in the city.

            My stomach twisted and I felt warm, hot despite bare legs and arms, despite barely wearing anything at all. Pursing plump lips around my straw, I found my drink empty—fruity booze already churning in a mostly empty belly—and sucked on melted ice. We’d been here an hour already, whilst Julia setup in the corner. White tipped nails clicked out an anxious rhythm against the table surface.

            “You need another drink. Time to head to the bar, Cindy.”

            I moaned. “I don’t want to do this, Julia.”

            “Yes,” she said, her voice an iron fist wrapped in silk, “you do.”

            “It’s not fair.” I swept my hands down my front and past that smooth place between my legs. “I’m already, like super horny.”

            “There’s an easy solution to that that.”

            I chewed on my lower lip. Shook my head in denial. My hands twisted within each other. “I don’t—” I took a deep breath. “I’ve already….” Forcefully, I unclenched my hands and hugged myself. “I can’t do this.”

            “You can.” Julia eyed me cooly. “It’s time, Cindy. Well past time, actually. You’re—”

            “A guy!” I hissed hoarsely, desperately, leaning in close. The collar jolted me, and I winced. “I don’t want to get fucked by another man.”

            “… a twenty-year-old girl,” Julia continued, as though she hadn’t heard. “You’re pretty and horny and this is precisely what you need to get it through your thick, stubborn skull.”

            “I won’t do it.” My voice was embarrassingly petulant but kept another warning shock at bay.

            “And I won’t force you,” Julia said. She indicated the doors at the far end of the bar. “Exit’s over there. Same deal as before. And to be clear: I’m done getting you off, too. Thirsty, girl? Desperate to get your rocks off?” She waved her hand towards the bar. Her thin smile seemed as cruel as it was amused. “You’ll find what you need down there.”

            I stared at her sullenly, chewing my lower lip with indecision. My hands fluttered at my side. “Julia—please….” I whined, reluctantly standing; and suddenly the vibrator kicked into life. I whimpered and sagged against the table and felt so very hot.

            “Go get ‘em, tiger,” Julia said. With a sharp slap to the bum, she sent me on my way.

Six: Icarus

There’s something intimately familiar about Icarus. Nights spent in nondescript rooms, mini fridge and inoffensive art on beige walls, and always some kind of hotel bar: long counter, soft lit bottles of booze, strong drinks against the backdrop of a distant city. Exhaustion and boredom, both constant companions to conferences and office branch visits dotted across the country or abroad. Usually, a stalwart bartender willing to swap a few stories; occasionally, a girl at my side for the night; always, loneliness.

            Walking away from our table, I tugged at my dress. A futile effort, considering its length. It was tight and barely cleared my crotch and restricted each step. Slightest bend, I’d be flashing lilac panties. Even after all these months, the roleplays and dressing up and training, a dress like this didn’t feel natural or comfortable. At least, not tonight. It was too body-hugging, too revealing. Behind me, Julia sat lit from beneath by her laptop screen, wicked grin glinting from her dark corner. She watched, from a distance; collected her data, from a distance, and experience my shame in abstract measurements of heart rate, sweat and AI-feedback.

            In towering heels, I wiggled my way to the counter. I felt acutely aware of the toy buried in my pussy and bit my lip. Awful anxiety stirred in my belly. Even more than that night with Dan, I didn’t want to do this.

            Across the long, dimly lit way, bound on one side by an expanse of windows looking down on city, and rows of tables and private booths along the other, I saw the exit: slim rectangles of light promising escape. Just keep walking—past the bar, past all the men—all watching—and out the door and… out of Julia’s life.

            Look good, she said. Drink, but don’t pay. Flirt. These were Julia’s instructions. Look good drink flirt: you couldn’t separate them. And if I wanted—totally your decision, she smirked—get laid. You’ll love it, she added. Trust me.

            Clothes aren’t consent, but my outfit sure as hell invited consideration, or at least the leering men watching me thought so. Stares and rude comments on my ass, my tits or what they’d like to do to me followed my clicking walk; I ignored them, blushing furiously, eyes to the floor. Tight, shiny and purple, my dress was an abbreviated tube paired with a matching choker and strappy heels. Julia bought it for me last Sunday. It sure as hell wasn’t appropriate for this kind of place. It barely covered me from tits to thighs. Fine for clubbing or maybe some youthful cocktail bar where I matched the bright lights and optimism. Icarus was dark and serious and dull, a haunt of tired and lonely men. I’d been that man, once: sat alone with midnight whisky after an exhausting, purposeless day of conference bullshit and team-building idiocy.

            Nearing the bar, I hesitated. My body thrummed, murmur of need beneath the flesh, and my brain ached. Half naked, I felt hot. Eying the entrance, I glanced over my shoulder at Julia. In the minute it took me to descend to the bar, someone had moved in. She wasn’t alone. A large man in a suit, indistinct in the dim light of the bar, stood over her. Julia looked up at him. Indicated the man should sit. He did, heavy shadowed bulk joining her.

            I gnawed my lip with indecision. Julia’s AI approved of my delicate confusion. I bit down harder, swaying as the toy hummed with ecstasy.

            God, I needed….

            My nails dug into my thigh. I gritted my teeth through the wave of pleasure.

            No. Fuck it—and even thinking it brought a warning tingle to my throat—but no, no fucking way, a thousand times no, fuck Julia and her goddamn toy and all this right to hell. This was—insane. No disguise needed this. One thing to… to prance around in a sexy dress and heels. Even, under threat, to follow some guy to his apartment and—drop to my knees and—but to—I bit my lip—my hands fluttering at my side.

            To sit with some guy. Flick back long hair, smile and laugh, and rest my hand over his, briefly. A drink? Tinkling laughter. I’d love one, yes—how kind. Coo at his boasts; laugh at his jokes. Another? I shouldn’t but… glance away, suddenly shy; blush and look up through heavy eyelashes and smile: why not? His hand, on my knee. Leaning in. Hot breath on my cheek, whisper at my ear and wide-eyed nod. Yes. Yes, and hand in hand follow him up to his hotel room. Standing silently in the elevator amongst others, already wet with anticipation, palm pressed surreptitiously to the bulge in his pants. Stumble down the hallway. Cardkey swipe, through the door, hand on ass, a pinch, a squeal—falling into him, the first kiss, hot and heavy and eager, slamming up against the wall. A flurry of wet kisses, grabs, tits and shirt and tie, and the susurration of a zipper, sliding down, and the moment in which it all pauses as with a wiggle the dress drops to the floor, joined by a bra, amethyst coils at the foot of a naked goddess in heels striding in glory towards the bed, rising on it like divinity on a dais and the man approaches like a pilgrim to a shrine, humble and so very full of sin as she lies back and he touches the foot, the knee and parts the legs and rises—rises with devotion and approaches—presses down—and enters the sacral space ….

            The vibrator kicked in once again and I nearly melted to the floor.

            No. No—I couldn’t… follow some guy back to his room and… lie back. Spread my legs. Let him—feel him—inside me.

            I held a hand to my throbbing temple. My palm felt slick with sweat, my forehead hot.

            Fuck, though, I’d miss her.

            The decision was agonising, but making it brought clarity, like waking from a long sleep. My head still hurt but the way forward seemed easier. Yes: I’d miss Julia and all the bullshit that came with her, playing at maid, her dress-up doll, ticking off her bucket list. I’d miss being her girlfriend and confidant.

            But the job was done. I’d gotten as much out of her as I could. I—felt something for her—but the cost was too high; she expected too much. She wanted to force me across a line from which I’d never return. She couched it as a favour, the gentle push rather than the yank of the collar. Break me and hide the pieces: this was her plan to keep me safe.

            But I’d been broken before, and an item repaired is never as strong as the original. I’d tried to deny this for years—for my whole adult life. This wasn’t the time or place but an overwhelming sadness—a sucking, galling grief—swept over me at the sudden acknowledgement of a past long buried. And riding this swell of emotion was fear.

            This fear gnawed at me, a twisting of the belly, a trembling at the knees. Terrified, I felt myself standing at a precipice, tottering in heels at the edge of a cliff. Playing at—no, even being Cindy was something I’d grudgingly accepted. But this? To fuck some guy, what, bar pickup and a one-night stand? To do what she wanted was to step into the abyss.

            I’d been staring up at her indistinct shape in the dark recess of the bar. Taking a deep breath, suppressing that awful feeling inside of me, I turned my back on her. I took the first step towards the exit. And then there was a presence in front of me, large man shape blocking the way.

            I bounced off his chest.

            “Woah.” Judging by his voice, he was half-amused, half annoyed, holding his drink high to avoid spillage.

            “Sorry,” I mumbled, and tried to wave this guy off, sidle past him, but suddenly he had me by the upper arm in an assured grip.

            “Hey, what’s the rush?”

            Suppressing the instinct—with a warning buzz at the throat—blistering pain searing across my skull—to turn and slap this guy or knee him in the groin, instead a vapid smile instinctively replaced a grimace. It’s only as I turned to face him that I realized this guy’s voice was familiar. I blinked up at him through a mess of hair fallen across my face. I had to crane my neck, because of course even wearing heels I’m shorter than he is. My stomach clenched and twisted anew, and my blood ran cold.

            “Surely a pretty girl like you,” he said, voice a dark growl, his hand a confident match as he held me, “isn’t alone tonight?”

            And I had to blink again, because for a moment appearance and voice don’t match; I didn’t recognize him. I shook my head, tossing hair back and delicately drew long nails across my face to clear stray bangs out my eyes and—yes—it’s him after all. The first thing that comes to mind is: it’s about fucking time. I hadn’t seen this guy for months. I’d wondered where he’d disappeared to. It’s almost a relief, seeing him.

            Last time I saw this guy, he looked rough: red-rimmed eyes, unshaven and tense. He’s wearing the exact same clothes as before, expensive black trousers, crisp white shirt, and his hair’s still in the same short ponytail. But there’s also something different: he’s clean-shaven now, red eye gone, and relaxed. The threat’s still there, but then that might just be the ever-present intimation of menace between any woman and strange man at a bar, amplified by the contrast in height and size as I perched there in heels and my little dress, shaven legs shining under the glow of the bar. Dressed this way, I’d feel uneasy next to any man. Someday, I’d like to meet this guy when I was wearing normal clothes.

            He’s looking at me with a cocky grin, expectantly. I moistened my lips and forced a smile. “I’m not alone,” I said, tucking hair behind my ear with my free hand, touched an earring, and glanced demurely away and down and then back up at him.

             “Boyfriend?” He made a show of looking around. “I don’t see anyone.”

            I performed a little moue of sadness. He must be thinking of Dan. “It didn’t work out,” I said, and suddenly the vibrator kicked in hard, the accumulation of little flirty signals triggering a reward.

            I bit down on my lip to avoid squealing. Fuck—fuck fuck fuck Julia and her goddamn toys!

            His hand shifted from arm to waist to steady me. He must think I’m drunk—he wouldn’t be wrong—and he’s entirely too confident with my body. I suppressed a shudder, even as he asked, “You okay?” but it’s just an excuse to him to touch my bare shoulder as he leaned closer.

            “Just a bit emotional.” I wiped a fake tear away. Meanwhile, I desperately squeezed my thighs together, clamping down on that goddam toy. “It was a bad breakup.”

            “Grab a seat,” he said, and his hand slid from waist to bum and patted me towards the bar counter. “It’s pretty hot in here.” This dickhead’s manhandling me like a slab of meat, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

            Glancing back towards Julia, she’s still engrossed in conversation with the man sitting with her, two distant shadows against dark windows. Even her laptop’s closed, screen glow gone as she focused on the man sitting with her. Meanwhile, the hand on my ass has now moved to my elbow, helping me clamber up onto a stool designed for men in trousers, not girls in short tight dresses and stiletto heels.

            Sat there primly, knees together, I pursed my lips. “Thanks.”

            He winced in mock hurt at my tone. He settled into the stool next to mine, and at last his hands are his own, again, resting lightly on the counter. I don’t like the way his eyes linger over me, especially my tits, and I resist the urge to cross my arms over my chest. “So, where’re your friends?” he asked.

            I stared blankly at him.
            “You said you weren’t alone.” As he talked he loosened his tie, and undid the top button of his shirt. I hadn’t noticed the tie, before. “And no boyfriend, so….”

            “Friend. Just one. She’s over there,” I answered, nodding towards Julia.

            He glanced in the indicated direction. “Looks like she’s met someone to chat with, too.” He turned back to me, and his smile is friendly and inviting, a comforting mask pulled over a predator’s grin.

            “Too?” I arch an eyebrow. “We’re chatting? I don’t think so.”
            He frowned, and the first hint of danger flashes across his eyes, sending a thrill down my spine. “Why not?”

            I held up my empty glass and shook it in front of him, ice cubes rattling.

            “What, I’ve got to buy you a drink just to talk to you?” His lip curled with—amusement? Disdain? even as he shook his head in mock disbelief.
            “Them’s the rules,” I said, flashing a wide, painted smile. “I don’t make them: good-looking guy buys the pretty girl a drink.”

            He considered that. “I’m good-looking?”

            The whole time we’re talking, I’ve imagined smashing my empty glass into the side of his face. My whole body was tight in anticipation, right foot reaching down to brace myself against the floor. But there’s a shiver at the throat, a warning against violence. Instead, I tapped one slender finger against my chin, as though considering. Rather than claw out his eyes, I reached up and held his chin between forefinger and thumb. My nails pricked his skin. He started, eyes widening with surprise at my touch; I smiled.

            Turning his head this way and that, I examined his nose, slightly crooked as though it’s been broken and reset a few times. He’s got a strong chin—small scar, short pale white line along the jawline; I draw the edge of a nail its length—and thin lips perpetually hovering between scowl and scorn. He submitted to my examination, eyes smouldering as he looked me over, too.

            “Good enough,” I said.

            His hand closed around my wrist. “But are you?” he said, pulling my hand away from his face. And I swear I hear him say, “A girl?” even as his grip tightened. “A pretty girl?”

            He knew. The bastard knew, somehow, impossibly this fucker knew who I really was, saw past the makeup and tits and dress, the simpering smile and flirtatious touches. He knew, and had me by the wrist, and the threat he posed was clearly written in the hunger of his gaze.

            I bristled beneath his touch. Then I relaxed, without needing a reminder jolt from the collar. In fact, I felt the phantom warning without it triggering. Compelled by the memory of pain, instead of lashing out or yanking my hand back, I tilted my head to one side, and smiled tentatively, and felt the training of the past week roll over me, a gentle urging away from violence towards something entirely more accommodating. I held his gaze. Licked my lips—but not nervously—and rested my hand over his. “That’s for you to say. Am I pretty enough?”

            And then it seemed to me that what I saw in his eyes wasn’t anger at all, nor threat—but lust. This man who worked for my enemy desired me. He wanted me—needed Cindy. He’d watched over her for months now and at some point, fell for her. I understood this with an immediacy and certainty that nearly left me breathless. Suddenly, the tension I saw drawn in every line of his body wasn’t a promise of violence, but an expression of want—or even, a fear of rejection. With that realization I felt powerful, and my own fear abated.

            He nodded.

            “How about that drink, then?” I dropped my eyes, smiling coquettishly.

            “Why don’t you tell me your name, first?”

            “Cindy.”

            “Cindy,” he repeated, in a tone that told me he didn’t care, he damn well knew my name already. But he gestured for the bartender.

            “Hm-mm.” I nodded, forcing a smile, tongue-tip between gleaming white teeth. Now I finally noticed the little white sticker stuck his lapel, conference-standard nametag: Hello, My Name is…. in printed blue scrawl. “And your name is….” I pressed my finger against the white rectangle with the scrawled name: “Liam?” I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

            “That’s my name.”

            I tapped my finger against my chin. “I wouldn’t have thought you a Liam. You strike me as more of a… Jeff?”

            “Babe, you can call me anything you want.”

            He knew that I knew his name, must remember our previous encounter. But clearly, he was committed to this game we played. Well, so was I. He was Liam, clearly here for some conference or another, rather than Jeff—presumably not his real name, anyway—stalker-for-hire for Jeremiah Steele. Fine; and I was Cindy: secretary and receptionist, flirt and apparently tonight, single and available.

            If that’s what Liam-Jeff expected, then that’s damn well what he’d find. I’d give him all the confirmation he could ever need, prove once and for all that I’m the twenty-year old girl he thinks I am. After tonight, I never wanted to see this asshat again.

            The bartender approached. “All good, hun?” she asked, giving me a meaningful look, eyes dancing aside to the man sat next to me.

            Her name was Nadia. Earlier tonight, when I’d ordered the first round of drinks for Julia and me, she’d intervened when an early drunk punter got a little too grabby. She took sympathy on the silly, flustered girl clutching at her neck as this leering drunk pawed at her. We chatted for a bit, over that first drink.

            She told me about growing up in Kenya, and how the blight of alternating droughts and floods, and ultimately parental pressure drove her to study abroad. I told her about Volumina International and how my girlfriend—I’d waved over at Julia then, still setting up her equipment—was taking me out tonight to get me over a recent breakup. Nadia complimented me on my dress. I told her I loved her nails.

            She liked me; I don’t know why, but bartenders often did. Maybe it was my open admiration: she was gorgeous, tall and a little plump, and just radiated absolute confidence. The choker nearly melted my fingertip and toes warning me off, but I couldn’t stop staring at her eyes, large, dark and beautiful, or how her earrings sparkled against her skin.

            “Ah, Cindy,” she said, eyes on me and sparkling with amusement. “What can I get you?”

            I slid my empty glass back to her.

            “Same?” she asked.

            I glanced sideways at the man next to me. “Yup.”

            Nadia went off to shake up my cocktail. Meanwhile, my companion was openly checking me out and it made my skin crawl. “Thought I’d be drinking alone tonight,” he said, shaking his head.

            “You’re paying,” I said.

            He laughed dryly. “Yeah, I guess so.”

            Nadia returned with my cocktail, complete with straw, rim lined with slices of fruit. She handed it to me along with what I fancied was a warning look. Then she immediately moved on to serve another customer. Icarus was getting busy: there was a definite uptick in tired-looking men and women—but mostly men—in rumpled suits, loosened ties and half-untucked shirts. A late conference session must’ve just ended. I cradled my drink with both hands and stared into its depths: red and orange swirls, fruity sweetness belying a boozy kick like a punch to the head. I glanced up at… Liam? and smiled.

            “You here for the conference?”

            He grinned. “I prefer the sights.”

            This was—odd; none of this made sense. Even if he’d developed some weird thing for me, he was still Steele’s man—wasn’t he? If ordered to keep watch over me, then why approach and buy me a drink? If he knew who I really was, why wasn’t he acting on it?

            Then again, maybe he was working to get me alone, confirm a theory. Did he know I was really a man? At the moment, the open lust in his eyes suggested not.

            Unless—that was precisely why he wanted me.

            As to the most important question: was he a threat?

            This close, best I could hope for was a quick jab to the throat, collarbone, numb the arm, buy some time. Maybe strike the nose, or the armpit. If lucky, thrust ten centimeters of stiletto heel into his groin or the top of his foot before he found purchase. Yet these thoughts came from far away, a distant voice heard through a haze. That kind of violence, in full view in public? Stupid. It made more sense to leave Cindy in charge, follow him and yes… get him somewhere private. He could check me out and—I’d do the same.

            The week’s training made it easy.

            Lips wrapped around the straw, I gazed at him through half-lidded eyes. He looked back at me with a curious half-smile, clearly enjoying the view. I preened for him a bit, rolling my shoulders back and watched his eyes grow wide.

            I giggled. “Thanks,” I said, and lifted the drink in salute.

            His drink arrived a moment later: a martini, little curl of citrus, and he joined my salute. “Thank you,” he said. When he drank, he nearly gulped it down, eyes watering a little. It was clear he was nervous, fixated on me as though afraid I’ll disappear.

            I sip my drink a little more reservedly, or at least I think I do, but next thing I knew it’s nearly empty and my head’s buzzing, alternating between stress-headache tightness and drunken wooziness. Meanwhile, he’s flushed red from his drink. I’ve pushed him a little, vague intimations of the last time I saw him: our short conversation at the bar, his distant observation as I stood in a little back dress under a lamppost in the night, cradled in Dan’s arms. He’s not biting; he’s remaining infuriatingly committed to his role: Liam, out-of-town middle manager from a minor pharmaceutical company I’d vaguely heard of before, here for a national conference on expanding markets.

            “Another?”

            “I shouldn’t,” I answered. His eyes flash with annoyance, with frustration, with familiar threat. It’s a little exciting, the ease with which I can trigger these emotions. I glanced away, as though shy, reluctant, maybe even embarrassed by my own forwardness. Blushing, I looked up at him through heavy eyelashes and licked my lips and smiled. “But… why not?”

            He smiled and signaled for the bartender. With his stool closer to mine now, his hand rested comfortably on my knee. His skin’s smoother than expected. I’d expected him to be rough and calloused.

            “So, why’re you here?” he asked as the second round of drinks arrived. “No, wait, let me guess,” he continued, before I can even open my mouth to answer. “Booth babe?” He grinned.

            I mirrored his smile, slapped him gently on the arm. “I already told you why, silly.”
            “Oh yeah—breakup?”

            I nodded, sadly.

            “Bad?” he asks, even though by the tone of his voice he clearly doesn’t care.

            “Cheated on me.” I place my hands at my waist, pushing my chest out. “On me, can you believe it?”

            He clearly can’t. “Idiot,” he answered, openly staring.

            Sliding my hands up my side, I cupped my tits. “I mean, Liam, would you cheat on these?”

            He nearly choked on his drink, recovered, and then pulled a very serious face. “Honestly,” he drawled. “I don’t know.”

            Mock hurt, I pouted. “Excuse me?”

            “Well, I’d have to actually see them to know, wouldn’t I?”

            The moment hung heavily between us. He’s about to wince, as though realizing he’d overplayed his hand and blown his chance. And I felt a heavy, hot blush rolling up my chest and neck and setting my cheeks aflame.

            “Would you like to?” I finally answered, quietly. I couldn’t meet his gaze. “See them?”
            A moment later his hand was on my thigh. He leaned in close, and his breath was hot on my cheek. A lengthy paused, and then I cupped his face between my hands. I drew him in for a kiss, or maybe he crossed the distance first; I don’t know. For a moment, his lips remained firm, and then softened. His chin felt rough against mine. My hand slipped to behind his neck and pulled him close. For a moment, it occurred to me how easily I could kill him, like this, a sharp blow to the throat; and then with a sigh my lips parted, and his tongue pushed against mine.

            I shivered at the thought of what I was doing, a cold counterpoint to rising heat. My eyes fluttered shut. He was a decent kisser, at least. Better than Jonas; nowhere near as good as Chad.

            He broke the kiss. “I have a room in the hotel,” he whispered, hoarsely, his words smelling of gin and vermouth. His fingers tightened around my thigh, scrabbling very slightly beneath the hem of my dress, like little roots reaching for moisture. “You want to come up?”

            With a breath caught in my throat, I nodded.

            “What do you want?” he asks.

            “To show you my tits.”

            “Is that all you want?”

            Gently biting my lower lip, I shook my head.

            “What do you want, then?” he repeats, smiling with one hand still stroking my bare thigh, but the other one took mine and guided it over the growing bulge in his pants.

            The moment I feel this man’s erection under my palm, I gasped. And its not because of his words or touch but because at that very moment I’m reminded of Julia’s little gift, which suddenly erupted into life, stronger than ever and vibrating and pulsing away, rubber tip vigorously suctioning my clit. His eyes widened, first with confusion, then surprise, and then with a knowing glint as he felt the faint hum of the toy.

            “You’re a horny little slut, aren’t you?” he whispered in my ear. And because I’m about to fucking lose it, about to fall over the edge and squeal with frustrated passion, I grabbed this guy by the face and kiss him again, shoving my tongue down his throat and moaning heavily into his mouth, eyes squeezed shut against tears threatening to stream down my face.

            When we break the kiss, I’m panting heavily and he’s grinning like the proverbial cat. He took my hand. “Coming?”

            Panties soaked through and nearly trembling, I laughed. No, not yet, I wanted to say. Instead, blushing and wide-eyed, I nodded and slid off the stool. The room swayed as I found my feet in high heels. I only just remembered to tug my dress down before following him out the bar, holding the hand of my stalker.

            I don’t know if Julia noticed me leave. The moment we stepped out the bar, the choker at my neck went dead, as did the vibrator. Away from Julia’s system, I was suddenly free of her and her goddamn AI’s influence.

            Good. There wouldn’t be a record of what was about to go down between us.

            We weren’t the only ones in the elevator: a few older businessmen in suits, and a young woman with tired eyes who might’ve been an assistant, dressed like Cindy on a working day. There was also a family of four crowded in with us, suitcases, two young children under the age of ten and their parents. I felt the dad’s eyes on my ass, and the mother’s disapproval roiling around us, even as we crowded into the front and ‘Liam’ held my wrist and surreptitiously pressed my hand to his crotch, where I felt his erect cock under my palm. He moved my hand in a slow circle over his crotch and he twitched under my touch, and I blushed wondering if anyone could see.

            A few floors of awkward silence. Flustered clatter as I stumbled in heels and a tight dress, trotting to keep up with this man’s eager pull as he dragged me towards his room. The hallway was almost eerily silent, the lights a little too dim, and the dark beyond the window at the far end almost complete, devoid of stars, lightened only by the red flashing of passing drones. Identical doors rolled down either side of the corridor. We stopped outside room 2029. I avoided thinking; Cindy was in charge; my hands roamed, sliding along his neck, across his chest, down to rub his crotch. “Hurry,” I moaned. “Get this fucking door open.”

            He fumbled around in his inner jacket pocket. “Christ,” he laughed.

            Then the door slid open. He smacked my ass, and I laughingly yelped and we fell through the threshold into his room.

            Almost instantly, his hands were all over me, too, insistent and rough. “Show me,” he demanded, already groping at the front of my dress. He crushed my tits through the dress.

            “Easy.” Gently but insistently, I pushed him away. “Not so fast.”

            Instead of backing down, he pulled me to him. His arm snaked around my waist and held me close. He forced his mouth to mine, thrusting his tongue into my mouth. Meanwhile, he returned to my chest, groping and kneading with way too much enthusiasm.

            I was still weak in the knees and wet and horny as hell, but he was doing a fucking fine job of dousing the flames. Frankly, I expected better from my stalker.

            This time, I shoved him with a little more force. He fell back, nearly falling over the corner of the bed “What the fuck?”

            “I said easy,” I explained, the tone of a primary school teacher with a particularly dull child. “Slow down.”

            “You told me to hurry,” he said, petulantly.

            “And I need the little girl’s room.” I posed in the doorway, arms outstretched, hip cocked to one side, and tossed my hair and looked back at him over my shoulder. “Why don’t you make us a little drink?”

            I closed and locked the door. I stepped out of my heels and sighed with relief. Then I extracted that fucking vibrator. I wrapped it in tissue paper and buried it at the bottom of my purse. Then the choker, tricky to unlatch but a moment’s effort and it joined the sex toy. Then I took a piss, because after all those tall, fruity drinks I was genuinely desperate. Finally, I touched up my makeup in the mirror, a little flutter of mascara, a dab of gloss at the lips, and quickly brushed out my hair. Reluctantly, I stepped back into my heels and tried not to think as I fiddled with the delicate straps. Everything I did was done avoiding conscious thought. I did my utmost to avoid even acknowledging myself in the mirror. Cindy was in control. The last week’s training was fully in control. I needed this guy to see and believe in the girl I’d become.

            He smiled as I exited the bathroom. He’d taken off his blazer and tie, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. The room was small, double bed and tiny desk, and a tv screen on the wall, with a small window looking out on a central courtyard far below. The sight brought a heavy feeling of sadness, a recollection of far too many lonely nights spent in similar rooms. But the memory was fleeting.

            To be honest, I’d expected a bigger room. And in the dim light—his best effort at creating mood, I guess, overhead light off and a pair of reading lamps on—he seemed older, mid-thirties maybe, shorter and less muscular, still in good shape but much less threatening.

            He had a bottle of beer in each hand. “Beer?” he said, passing one to me. “You don’t strike me as a beer kind of chick.” He shrugged apologetically. “All that’s left in the minifridge.”

            I took the bottle. He watched me drink: raising the bottle to my lips, delicate grip and pinkie finger sticking out, pink nail white tipped sheen and the undulation of my throat with each swallow. The beer was cold and refreshing. Moisture beaded on the bottle, dripped, dotted my chest. He tracked my every movement. I dabbed at the drops along my cleavage with a finger and sucked on the tip. “Mmm, good choice,” I purred through pursed lips.

            That did it for him. He dropped his bottle. It tipped over, frothing beer onto the carpet. He crossed the room in a single stride and grabbed me. I suppressed instincts to defend myself. Instead of kicking out the knee, or cracking the bottle across his face, I… gave up; retreated and did nothing. Hummed as he swept me up in his arms and swung me around—straining a little—and slammed me up against the wall.

            Gasping at the impact, I laughed. “Show me those tits,” he muttered, groping again at my chest, scrabbling at my thigh, hand sliding up under my dress, cupping my ass.

            I ran my hand through his hair, fingers curling around his ponytail. Up close, his hair was darker than remembered, more chestnut than sandy and thinner as well, almost balding at the top. With both hands I forced his face into my cleavage. His breath against my skin, wet lips, then his tongue dragging its trail of spit across the topside of my tits. He came up for air, groaned, and his cock prodded my thigh.

            Smiling wickedly, still pinned against the wall, I hopped into his arms, wrapping my legs around his waist, arms at his neck. His eyes widened, and he groaned again and staggered under my weight.

            “Whee!” I laughed as he spun me around. We fell back a step and collapsed onto the bed.

            “Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed, panting. “You’re heavier than you look.”
            And he was weaker than expected. I swung off the bed, grinning as I reached behind for the zipper. “As promised,” and shrugged and shimmied and stepped out of the dress. Then I stood in heels and bra and lilac silk panties. They had a cute keyhole detail over my bum, lace and tulle panels, and delicate pearl ornamentation: a luxurious gift from Julia. But the exquisite finery of my lingerie was lost on this guy, his eyes fixated solely on my tits.

            “Keep going.” He watched from the bed, sitting up. He brought to mind a puppy, begging for treats: eager and excited. But the surge of confidence that brought me to this point evaporated. Instead, I began to feel indescribably shy, and blushed and my knees shook very slightly. Reaching behind to unclasp my strapless bra, I instead hesitated and then my arms dropped limply at my side. Meanwhile, he was rubbing at his own crotch. “Hey, don’t fucking stop!” he exclaimed.

            “I….” Trailing off, unable to meet his gaze, I stared at the floor. Stroked my hair and felt the return of the earlier fear. My stomach churned and the room tilted slightly, and it occurred to me that I was actually really quite drunk. “I want you to do it,” I mumbled.

            Then he was standing, standing over me, reaching around and fumbling at the clasp of my bra. I swayed in the circle of his arms, helpless for the interminable length of time it took him to undo four hook and eye clasps. He radiated heat as he cursed under his breath. ‘Jesus, got it,” as the bra came loose, and my boobs bobbled free.

            My bra joined the dress on the floor. Jeff—Liam—this man stepped back and admired the view of a gorgeous young woman standing nearly naked in panties and heels in his hotel room. But he admired the view for only a moment, before taking my tits in his hands. He massaged and curled his fingers into the soft flesh. I yielded to his touch with a gasp. “Your ex was an idiot.” His tongue darted out, flicked across my nipple, and I moaned. “A fucking idiot.”

            Trembling, I pushed my chest further into his rough hands.

            “You like this, don’t you?” He kneaded harder, pinched my nipple and I jerked, shook my head no but he threaded the fingers of one hand through my long hair and grabbed tight. “You do.”

            I bit my lip and tried to shake my head again, but his grip stilled the motion.

            “You like being a slutty girl, don’t you?” He cradled my head, thumb sliding along my chin—to my mouth—and he forced it between my plump lips and held me like that. “Yes, you do.” He forced a nod from me, pushing my head up and down, like a doll’s.

            I moaned around his thumb. His other hand left my breasts to crawl spider-like across my abdomen, stopping a moment to touch my navel ring, and I shuddered at the dimpling passage of his touch. His hand came to rest over my pussy—over my prosthetic vagina—fake flesh and his flesh separated by only the thinnest threshold of silk. His finger pressed down. He felt the wetness of my panties, traced artificial labia lips beneath. Another moan, and I trembled under his touch.

            “Suck it, babe,” he commanded, forcing his thumb deeper into my mouth, even as his other hand continued to rub my mock pussy. And I did, wet little slurping noises as he pushed me, none too gently, back onto the bed. The frame hit the back of my knees; I dropped sitting onto the mattress, his thumb still in my mouth, the other still between my legs. Summoning up some resistance, I squeezed my knees tightly together, pinning his hand.

            “Want me to stop?” He extracted his hand from between me knees and reached for his belt buckle. “I don’t think so.”

            His trousers pooled around his ankles. He kicked his feet free. His dick tented his boxer shorts, black cotton spotted with dark circles of precum. Standing over me, he fumbled at his shirt buttons. A moment later his shirt joined his trousers on the floor. Then he stood over me, slightly rounded belly, chest fuzzy with whisps of hair, pale and naked. He still had his socks on, and his shoes.

            “Touch it.” He grabbed my hand and brought it to his groin. I felt his cock beneath the cotton. It twitched when I touched it. I stroked him, rubbed him through is boxers, and looked up at him. “You want this?”
            I nodded.

            Increasingly, I felt detached from what was happening. I observed from a distance. This was Cindy’s show, not mine; at least, not yet.

            “Take it out,” he said.

            Into his boxers went my hand. His penis stiffened under my fingers’ touch. It felt hot and the skin smooth. He looked down at me, suddenly wordless. His mouth hung slightly open, and his tongue darted out to wet his lips. For the first time, I noticed how thin and pale and dry his lips were, over a weak chin. He barely resembled the man I remembered from that first encounter in the alley behind the strip club.

            His boxers were lowered by a gentle tug, and he stepped free, and the whole time his cock was held in my hand. He stood over me, and I sat at the edge of the bed, with his dick in my hand.

            “Go on,” he said.

            Eyes wide, I shook my head no.

            He hesitated for a moment. A moment of doubt clouded his eyes. The old redness was back. He looked more than a little drunk, like me, cheeks patchy and red. Then, he grabbed me by the hair and yanked me forward so that his dick bounced off my chin and I felt the slime it left there.

            “Suck it,” he said.

            Whimpering, my mouth opened. Then there was a penis in my mouth, resting on my tongue, cheek pushed out by this invasive thing. His dick had my lips wrapped around it and he shuddered as he felt my head slowly work up and down his length. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Fuck yeah.”

            It only lasted a few minutes or so. Still holding me by the hair, he pulled his cock free from between my lips. It slid free with a wet slurp. His penis hit my nose, bobbed, left a trail of spit across my cheek. His grin was mean and his eyes hard as he shoved me onto my back. I fell supine onto the bed. Then he groped at my panties. He hooked his fingers into the waistband and yanked them down my legs. I scrabbled backwards, leaving the shoes behind, bare feet digging into the hotel bed sheets until I reached the headboard and hotel pillows. Meanwhile, he took a deep sniff of my panties, then tossed them aside. He stared at my naked body with a drunken leer. For the first time, my artificial pussy was looked on by a man.

            This man clambered onto the bed and my knees were grabbed by him, parted by him as he shuffled forward into position between my legs, and his cock was hard and erect and pointed towards that space between my legs, trained on that prosthetic, aimed at me.

            From somewhere far away the thought reached me: he’s not so big; he’ll fit.

            Then a moment of panic. I can’t do this. No—but it was too late.

            This man rose over me.

            Then, with a push he was inside of me.

            His cock was inside of me.

            Yeah, he shuddered as he slid into me, fuck and you like that, baby and you’re so tight and he was inside of me as I lay supine pinned to the bed by the heavy weight of a man whose hips thrusted back and forth and back and forth and I’m being skewered by this thing moving inside—not me, but inside the prosthetic, a shell of artificial flesh laid over the real me and he’s rutting and sweating and grabbing at my tits as his pace picked up, harder, wet slapping sound and panting breath, creaking of the bed and rhythmic impact as I watched from a distance, picture on the wall over us, impressionistic swaths of colour, some alley of French boutique cafes against a night sky, tits bouncing with each thrust, God, almost there, he grunted, face red and ugly and lips curling, bitch, cunt, God, you fucking bitch and—

            His whole body shuddered. His cock swelled inside the prosthetic.

            He held me tight by the shoulders and stabbed himself as deep inside as he could and his eyes rolled back in his head as he jerked and wiggled and gurgled and finally sagged and collapsed on top of me, heavy and limp, sighing, panting, nearly laughing with release, returning from that place a man goes to when he cums.

            And I, too, returned from somewhere very far away.

            I wrapped my legs around him. My ankles locked together and held him tight. With a single strong twist, I rolled him over onto his back. He was still inside of me, but now I was on top. His eyes widened, he began to laugh, he couldn’t believe I was eager for more and reached for my hips to push me off.

            But I grabbed his hands and forced them down and pinned his wrists beneath my knees.

            And then I grabbed the pillow and forced it down over his face.

            And he’s still inside of me as he realised this isn’t some game and begins to thrash, his screams muffled by the pillow as I relentlessly pushed down on him, legs kicking and jerking beneath me, naked flesh slick with sweat. He tried to pull free. His hands clutched at my knees. One twisted, pulled free and blindly groped at me. He scratched my chest, pounded my side, grabbed at my chin and seized my hair. He writhed his whole body as I pressed down on him and kept him pinned to the bed, locked to me, cock to artificial pussy. His legs pounded the bed. I leaned my whole body down, arm over pillow over his face. I caught his ineffectually flailing hand and pinned it once more.

            His desperate efforts grew weaker.  

            Soon, he stilled.

            I should have kept the pillow at his face for longer. Another minute, to ensure that Steele’s man never disturbed me again. But then, a sudden, terribly doubt wracked me. This had been too easy. I expected more of a fight from my enemy. And so, instead of holding him down, I removed the pillow.

            Despite the fact he’d been spared any bruising, I no longer recognized his face.

            This wasn’t Jeff.

            His cock slipped free as I lifted myself off the body.

            I checked for a pulse and breathed a sigh of relief. He was unconscious, not dead. Weak, but he would recover.

            Christ. Shit. I’d almost killed—Liam, some dickhead middle manager from a minor pharmaceutical company who’d gotten lucky and picked up some young girl at the hotel bar for a quick fuck and one-stand stand. Not… an agent of Jeremiah Steele, just—some guy.

            What the fuck was wrong with me?

            I sat for a moment, catching my breath. The room was quiet but for the breathing of air conditioning. I listened for noise from the adjoining rooms but heard nothing. First, I grabbed Liam and hauled him onto a chair. I used his belt to bind his arms behind his back. His head slumped forward, so I dragged him next to the wall and propped his head so it stayed back, airway open. Digging through the closet, I found a cheap suit hanging on a hanger and another belt. I used the second belt to tie his legs to the chair legs. In the process of tying him up, I noted the pale band on the ring finger of his left hand, and then found the wedding ring on the bedside table.

            Jesus, what a fine catch this guy turned out to be.

            A little colour returned to his face, his breathing stronger, a little more stable. I took his tie and gagged him. Checking him over, he looked fine—his forearms would be sore tomorrow where I knelt on him but no real damage. In the morning, the cleaners would find and release him and other than embarrassment, he’d have no reason to make a fuss. Nothing stolen, nothing broken; just a kinky night gone weird and wrong, and how to explain that to a partner back home?

            Leaving him bound and gagged to the chair, I went to the bathroom. It took some effort and time to repair the damages of the night, but when I stepped away from the mirror my makeup was once again immaculate. As I was painting myself a new face, I felt a sudden release and trickle down my leg as the man’s cum dribbled from my pussy. Catching his goo with a tissue, I flushed it down the toilet. Finally, I pulled my panties back on, and the bra, and the dress and slid back into my heels. I checked myself in the mirror—avoiding looking myself in the eyes. I looked pretty good, considering. There were angry red scratches along my shoulder and thighs, a few at my face covered by makeup; nothing to do about that, but the damage would heal.

            Finally, I returned to the bedroom and finished off my bottle of beer, keeping an eye on Liam. I don’t know that I’d ever enjoyed a more cooling and refreshing drink. Eventually, the man began to stir, a low confused moan emerging from behind the gag. I took that as my cue to leave.

            The door clicked shut behind me.

            As I progressed down the long corridor, Cindy gradually returned to me. Step by step, I subsumed myself to the physical sensations of the walk. The precision of each step. The slight wobble of heels on hotel floor carpet. Tight dress, mincing walk, and a wet ache between the legs. Long hair sway, earrings dangle, long eyelash flutter. Waiting, at the elevator. Smoothing down the dress, quick mirror primping: emerald eyes and pale face and a smile that wasn’t quite right. I felt suddenly the phantom heavy feeling of a man’s weight over mine, pressure on my chest—I couldn’t breathe; there was a rawness at my crotch and a stickiness in my panties and—what the fuck had I just done—how did I not recognize him?—how could I?—and he fucked me, I let a man stick his cock inside of me, and….

            No.

            I smiled again, and this time it was right.

            The elevator arrived. I rode it along with two others, man and woman in business attire, both checking me out as I joined them. Could they smell the sex on me? Did the woman smirk? I was too tired to care.

            Returning to Icarus, it occurred to me that I’d been away for all of thirty minutes. There was Nadia, serving another costumer. Men in suits milled around with drinks in hand. I felt their eyes tracking me as I entered the bar. And there was Julia, still sat in the high corner of the bar by the window. Her laptop remained closed. The bulky shadowy figure of a man still sat with her.

            I returned to her. Julia smiled as she saw me, eyes flashing with amusement—no, with pleasure, with barely restrained glee.

            “Cindy!” She stood and met me halfway. She took my hands in hers. “I’m so glad you’re back. I lost track of you for a bit, sorry. Been having fun?”

            I smiled wanly.

            “I’d like you to meet someone,” she said, leading me back to the table by hand.

            I followed her passively. The heavy figure at our table, back turned to us, stood as we approach.

            “He’s an old friend of mine,” Julia said, voice simmering with excitement. “Here for the conference.”

            The man stood and turned. I looked into the grinning face of my friend, Thomas Hunter.

To be continued…