by Zoe Brown
Of course, I looked away too, but today, that didn’t seem to have quite the effect that it usually did. Although I forced myself to stare fixedly at the papers laid out on the desk in front of me, I was having more trouble pulling my mental attention away from the young woman’s curves than my sight. My mind’s eye seemed to be imprinted with the image of the round, pert curves of Miss Cho’s bottom, and as much as I wanted to focus my attention on something else, to hide my interest, bury myself in the financial documents in front of me, I couldn’t make my attention completely shift. When Markham cleared her throat, I glanced back up, and then quickly away again, chiding myself for stealing yet another look at Amy Cho’s bottom as I did so. Get some fucking control over yourself, goddamnit! I opened up the display on my phone with trembling fingers and checked the news headlines, feeling my cock stiffen eagerly underneath the table, but in my imagination, I was tracing the curves of the young woman’s ass through the thin fabric of her pencil skirt, and I couldn’t help but think how snugly her hips and bottom stretched that so-feminine item of clothing out, how it looked so perfectly tailored for her form. I felt a strangely mixed current – something both warm and goosebump-inducing – running through me, something that pulled at me, like a clutching sensation that seized my heart and reached all the way down into my guts and pelvis, tugging on already taut sensory receptors there. In my pants, beneath my boxers, my cock was rapidly hardening, going from flaccid to rock hard in a matter of seconds. Just from looking at Markham’s beautiful assistant, I was suddenly so horny that I felt like I might burst.
And of course, I knew why that was, though it wasn’t for any of the reasons that one of the other female-attracted people around the conference table might have been.
Despite becoming suddenly so horny at the sight and the thought of Amy Cho and the perfect curves of her body, I didn’t have any urge to sleep with the young woman. Not right now, anyway. I was very familiar with that particular urge – I indulged it on the regular with some of the most glamorous and beautiful women on the planet. But this wasn’t that. I didn’t want to sleep with Miss Cho, I wanted something… else… from her.
Fuck, she’s just so… I couldn’t complete the sentence at first, fumbling as I forced myself to flip through some of the open apps on my phone. 4:53. She’s just so… what – sexy? Beautiful? Feminine? Womanly? I wasn’t sure which word was most appropriate, or whether I should just apply all of the above. Blowing out a breath, I tried to dismiss the yearning sensation I was feeling, bouncing my knee beneath the table again in mild agitation. I’d been feeling this sensation more and more often of late, always in the presence of beautiful women, but most intensely around the young Miss Cho, and it had been causing me no small amount of distress, especially towards the end of this work week, as my eagerness for the coming weekend had begun to grow out of bounds.
Was I attracted to Miss Cho? Well, yes, obviously, but… also… no. Not right now. That wasn’t what I was feeling. There was a pulling sensation, a tugging need inside of me, but it wasn’t for her, not in a sexual way. It was more…
Sassani’s question of a few minutes earlier had been a fair one. After all, I was more than just an eagle-eyed corporate shark. To anyone who knew my name (and that was a not inconsiderable number of people worldwide today, thanks to the internet), ‘Ashton Rhodes’ was quite the renowned international playboy and lady’s man. I had a strict, unequivocal personal rule against dating or hitting on or sleeping with anyone who worked for me, but if she hadn’t been an employee at my firm, Amy Cho was just the sort of beautiful, elegant woman that, on a typical Friday afternoon, I might sweep out of the city and whisk off to the hottest new Los Angeles or Hollywood club scene with, or shoot across the world with in a private jet bound for Ibiza, Dubai, Shanghai, Rome, Paris, Prague, Singapore, or any of several dozen other spots where we might indulge our tastes for fine food, fine drinks, hedonistic pleasures, and one another with abandon.
Hell, if she hadn’t worked for me, if I had met her anywhere else in the world, anywhere other than in a professional environment like this one, and if it was any other day than today and the upcoming weekend was any other weekend than the one I had planned… I would have made a pass at Amy Cho. And I had fairly compelling reasons for suspecting that she would have accepted. But, today… no. In the spirit of honesty, what I was feeling today when I looked back up at Amy’s perfect bottom as she finished speaking with her boss, catching perhaps just the slightest outline of a panty through the tight fabric of her skirt and feeling yet another one of those new sensations tugging at my heart and my loins, a shivering, aching, arm-tingling sensation which made me sigh with frustration, well… I knew with absolute certainty that what I was feeling in that moment wasn’t attraction to her. Or not more than just the slightest flutter of it. But my heart started beating faster and faster as my mind lingered on what it really was.
No, I sighed heavily to myself as I watched Amy stride back around the table and across the conference room, towards her seat along the wall, casually tossing her dark, glossy hair over her shoulder as she did so, her whole body flowing smoothly as she moved, perfect curves bouncing just ever so slightly beneath the smart and sexy outfit she was wearing, with nearly every male (and at least one female) set of eyes in the room discretely following her out of the corners of our eyes, what I’m feeling isn’t attraction at all, it’s–
“I think that’ll be enough for today,” I announced suddenly and forcefully, blowing out a breath as I shot up out of my seat, moving quickly and jerkily enough to bump my thighs against the edge of the conference table as I rose. Ouch.
I shoved my chair out behind me as I got to my feet. I pulled my attaché case off of the varnished surface of the conference table in front of me and held it as innocuously in front of my pants as I could, trying to discreetly mask the erection that I was sure was tenting out the front of my business slacks. “Barb,” I breathed heavily, trying to still my racing heart, “another fantastic presentation. I’ll be sure to go through your recommendations and give you my comments on Monday at our normal time.”
I swept my phone off of the table with my free hand and felt a wash of relief as I saw that it was only two minutes before five now. Perfectly reasonable time to end this, I decided, ignoring the many surprised and confused looks turning my way.
“I’m sure you all have fascinating plans for this weekend, and I won’t keep you from them any longer,” I announced, with a brilliant smile on my face, slipping my coat off of the back of my chair and folding it over my arm (the one holding my attaché case in front of my crotch) as I waved goodbye to my senior staff. “I’ll see you all bright and early, then--” I turned away from the table, too quickly, and stepped towards the door without looking, plowing directly into—
Amy Cho.
“Oh!” The young woman exclaimed in surprise as we collided. Apparently after passing the table on her way back to her seat she hadn’t made it more than a few steps before I’d called an end to the meeting, and now here I was, running her over in my haste to get out the door. I dropped everything – my attaché case, my coat, my phone… She dropped her phone too, as well as a folder full of papers that scattered across the floor when they fell.
“Damnit, I’m sorry,” I apologized, flustered and red-faced, bending down and helping to retrieve the scattered pages as I tried to still my quaking nerves and trembling hands.
“No, it’s my fault,” Amy reassured me, untruthfully, joining me on the floor and helping by collecting my dropped belongings while I gathered her files. “I shouldn’t have been standing there, I was just so surpr—"
She stopped abruptly in the middle of her sentence, but I was so caught up in my flushed embarrassment and trembling nervousness as I tried to cover for my clumsiness with dignity that I hardly even noticed the pause. Quickly and roughly stuffing the retrieved pages back into the file folder, I handed the folder back to Amy, who blinked at me once, and then again, and then f
lashed a radiantly dazzling smile as she traded me my coat, my case, and my phone in return. “Have a fantastic weekend, Mr. Rhodes!” she enthused. I had a brief thought that she seemed … unusually intense about those sentiments. But I dismissed it without comment, just pleased to be able to make my exit at last.
“Thank you,” I returned the smile with relief and a fresh rush of excitement, pushing myself up off of the floor and throwing another half-hearted wave in the direction of my baffled senior executive staff before sweeping out of the room.
Thankfully I was out the door and heading down the hall before anyone could see through the cracks in my calm, composed exterior and pick up on the new and unusually-intense yearning sensation that I had been feeling lately in the presence of beautiful and feminine women, the full-body-longing that I experienced whenever I looked at Amy Cho’s perfectly curvy, feminine, womanly body. Before those same yearning, aching desires could wash completely through me and over me, completely consume me.
Before I completely lost myself to jealousy.
Chapter Four
Timestamp: Wednesday, First of August, 2018. Fifty-eight days ago.
One afternoon a few days after meeting – and unintentionally buying a baggie full of gender-bending pills from – the beautiful bartender on Werewoman who worked at Eden’s Lounge, I leaned back against the cushioned frame of my desk chair, hearing the slight groan of leather as it conformed to my body, easing the slight aches and pains that came with age – even a Fit Fifty was still fifty, after all. Staring out at through the spacious, panoramic windows of my office on the one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth floor of the Rhodes Multinational building, I let my eyes wander over the wide expanse of the San Francisco Bay and took in the elegant edifice of the Oakland Bay Bridge. I’d always preferred the Oakland Bridge to the Golden Gate. When our company’s building was first constructed, I’d argued with the architect that we’d brought on board for the project at some length over the positioning of my office because I’d wanted exactly this view. The architect, who treated me like some uncultured rube, kept trying to talk me around to moving my office into a north-facing orientation instead, but I would have none of it. I’d always thought that the orange hue of the Golden Gate was rather on the garish side. The softer, more Classical elegance of the Oakland Bridge was much more in keeping with my visual aesthetic.
It was my birthday. I was fifty, at last. My youthful days were officially over. The wide-open window of possibility that I had always enjoyed was finally starting to swing shut on me. The silver locks that had been such an essential component of my magnetism throughout my thirties and forties were no longer a dashing bit of flair for my look, they were just… normal for a man my age. I was… getting old.
I’d woken up in bed this morning next to a beautiful woman in her late thirties whom I had run into the previous evening at an ice cream parlor a few blocks over from my apartment building. She’d been working behind the counter when I entered, on a whim, looking for a late-night treat before bed. She hadn’t recognized me, which was something of a relief, but she’d found my smile charming, as well as the ‘unserious’ way in which I ate ice cream, licking the back of my spoon off after most of my bites, and I thought she was bright, and clever, and warm – things I was very hungry for that evening. I told her it was almost my birthday, and she made me a brownie sundae on the house. I think she could sense that I was a feeling a little bit blue: she didn’t congratulate me on my birthday, but she heated up a brownie for me anyway. When she closed up shop for the night we left together: not for my place, but for hers. She never asked me my name, and although hers had been on the name tag she’d left behind when she exited the shop, when I first tried to use it she’d covered my lips with her fingertip, so I never tried to use it again. It had been nice, sharing warmth and pleasant company with her that evening, but it had not quelled the emptiness that I carried inside me. Waking with her before the dawn, I’d made her a fancy Parisian breakfast, kissed her sweetly, thanked her for the lovely night, and slipped out of her building without rousing any nosy neighbors. To my relief, she hadn’t wished me a happy birthday.
Arriving at my office a little past nine, I’d bowed to the office staff when they showered me with birthday wishes and accolades, smiled politely at the various cheers and waves directed my way, and then slipped inside my office, burrowing into the mess of paperwork and e-mail correspondence that I’d been putting off all week for just this occasion, to keep me holed up behind my desk until the hubbub surrounding the day I turned fifty could die down outside. I’d done fairly well preparing a sizeable stack of work to keep myself busy with: working straight through lunch and into the afternoon, it wasn’t until after two-thirty that I finally ran out of things to do. Even then, though, I hadn’t elected to leave my office. Ordering a bit of soup and some salad from the restaurant built into the bottom floor of the building, I’d stayed at my desk, pretending to poke around on the computer for a little while longer until I no longer felt the pretense was necessary. By three-thirty most of the office was already starting to wind down for the day. I swiveled my chair away from the desk and towards the window, and just took in the view for a while, contemplating the refined majesty of the Oakland Bridge and letting the emptiness and disillusionment inside my heart wash through me completely.
My phone buzzed again in my right hand. I gave it a passing glance, and then groaned. Oh, Violetta. I honestly didn’t deserve her friendship, or her worry. She’d been texting me off and on all day. It had started with happy birthday wishes, then progressed to pestering me about my evening plans when I didn’t respond, and then gradually transitioned towards concern and worry. Was I alright? Was I freaking out about being fifty? Blasted woman knows me too well. Did I want to talk?
‘Hey, Vi,’ I finally sent back, deciding that there was no plausible excuse for ignoring an entire day’s worth of text messages from the woman, not if I wanted to remain friends with her, at any length. ‘Thanks for the birthday wishes. Feeling a little out of sorts, actually. Not really in a celebratory mood. Catch up with you soon?’
Violetta responded almost instantaneously, clearly relieved to have finally gotten a response from me – any response. ‘About fucking time. Starting to think I should send the police find you. Fine, darling, sulk and brood if you must. We WILL catch up soon. Happy Birthday.’
I lowered the phone again after the brief exchange, and then turned my head slightly to examine the small baggie of pink pills that I was holding in the palm my left hand. My thoughts flickered back towards my talk with Jade from five days before. I thought again about who and what she was – the sexy, illicit gender-bending secret she’d shared with me, the one that made her beauty and her femininity possible. One again, I felt a fresh surge of energy and arousal spike through my body, and I wished again that I’d recovered from my shock sufficiently that evening to convince her to come home with me. That would have been a thrilling, sexy evening, I was sure. Much better than the empty, almost boring sex that I’d had with a pretty, pink-and-purple-haired Lithuanian DJ-slash-model that I’d ‘enjoyed’ instead, I was sure. Perhaps an evening with Jade might have even become a sexually stimulating weekend, if I could have swung it right.
But I hadn’t. Jade and I hadn’t spoken any further that first night. I hadn’t really had any more conversation left in me at that point, still feeling shocked and surprised at finding out about ‘Jade’s’ double life, and Jade herself had disappeared a short while later, probably whisked off for the night by one of the many suitors she’d referred to. As I thought about that, about how ‘Jade’ made her living and what sorts of extra-curricular activities ‘she’ might be getting up to at that very moment, I felt the old familiar thrill of excitement quivering through me, and after downing the rest of my drink and anteing up for another one, I’d unlocked my smartphone, quickly searching Google for ‘How to meet Werewomen.’
I hadn’t gotten very far in that pursuit that night, however, unfor
tunately. My missing ‘friends’ had turned up again while I was browsing subreddits and internet forums looking for the answers to the questions I had: what Werewomen were like in bed, what they were interested in, how to meet them, where to meet them… I had to quickly hide my phone away and pretend to be interested in the pretty, vaguely boring young woman that they had snagged for me, and had never gotten back to my research for that evening. And then the night after that, I hadn’t felt much like looking into the subject again – absent the context of Jade’s unearthly beauty and stimulating charisma and femininity, it felt somewhat… shameful, and almost frightening, to continue looking into the idea of meeting a Werewoman for sex, no matter how arousing and stimulating the idea was to me.
But that feeling, that aroused, sexy, super-charged excitement that I’d felt when I’d realized that Jade must have been on the same gender-bending pills that she’d sold me, how she’d become the beautiful woman standing on the other side of that bar, opposite me, and how excited and delighted she seemed to be about her TCE-derived sex and feminine gender, that hadn’t gone away just because I’d been too ashamed and frightened of the feeling one night. In fact, the excitement I associated with the idea of those pills, of feeding one to a willing Werewoman, of watching ‘him’ transform into ‘her’ and sleeping with her while she was in her transformed state, only grew in intensity the more days passed, the more I kept pushing the thoughts away.
And now I was sitting alone in my office. I had just turned fifty. The sense of emptiness, of disillusionment, of boredom, had never been as strong as it was today. As I stared out across the emptiness of the Oakland Bay, I yearned for that sexy, forbidden surge of excitement. That thrill. I yearned for the thrill of a new kind of sexual pleasure. The delights and thrills that Jade had offered me. I picked up my phone again, punching up my browser app once more and continuing the search that I’d begun that night, back in the bar down in the Marina district, looking for more suggestions on where and how to meet Werewomen. The thrill of excitement and taboo sexual desires raced through me again, stiffening my cock inside my slacks. I shuffled through a variety of subreddit posts and forum messages over the next half an hour or forty-five minutes, feeling my cock stiffen and ache periodically throughout the process, until I’d finally come across enough references to a semi-obscure hook-up app from the Google Play store called Vitae to convince me to look it up myself on my phone, and download it. It took only a moment to install, and I was just opening it up—
