by Alyson Belle
I swore my heart right about thundered out of my body and into the street, but I did as she said, laying back onto the pillows. I felt her crawl up the mattress so that she could straddle me, and then we were kissing once more.
This time she didn’t linger at my lips for long. Instead, she moved down my face, grazed my chin, and then went onto my neck. Nipping, licking, leaving little marks for me to look at later and remind me how she’d taken me. Every single sensation was so new and powerful that I could hardly breathe, but I forced myself to stay conscious, so I didn’t lose a single second of it.
“You have no idea of how good this is going to feel,” she murmured into my collarbone before continuing lower.
Down, down, down she went, leaving a trail of bliss, until her lips reached the top of the stockings that she had given me to wear. Her fingers curled around the edges and she slowly pulled them down, her lips brushing lightly down the inside of my thighs as she did so.
But then the stockings were gone, vanished from my velvety-soft legs, and she was right back at my panties.
She paused for just a moment, and I looked over the heaving plane of my body to see her smirking up at me, her eyes half-lidded with lust. The expression was so sexy that I felt a strange pool of energy in my middle, and that energy jumped even higher when her finger slid lightly across the clothed entrance to my sex.
Oh, God!
I practically jolted out of my skin and it was only her hand on my lower stomach that kept in me place. Sweat started to break out across my brow, but Lyla just seemed to take that as encouragement. Her finger picked up the pace.
The feeling of it was just incredible. It was so much more intense than anything I had ever felt with my former setup. My body was electric with erotic sensations, and within seconds I was writhing and gasping. Lyla wasn’t even touching my actual skin yet.
But when she did finally pull that now-soaked tiny piece of fabric aside and let a single finger glide along my sex, it felt like the entire world inverted on itself. Stars moved, planets realigned, and the Earth’s axis shifted all in one fell swoop.
“Remember to breathe,” Lyla murmured before her head lowered, and then she pressed a chaste kiss against the apex of my womanhood.
That kiss was the only break I had before her tongue slipped out, and suddenly I was plunged into a state of absolute pleasure once again.
Not for the first time that night, I found myself completely without words for what I was experiencing. It was like someone was winding a string of ecstasy within me tighter and tighter, as she kissed and licked me from bottom to top, making sure the outside of me was completely covered by her.
And then, just when I thought it couldn’t get anymore intense, one of her fingers slid into me.
“Oh my God!” I screamed, my hips lifting up to push my sex harder against her mouth. But she took it in stride, her hands sliding under me and holding me tightly against her.
It was unlike anything I had ever experienced with sex before. I was so lost in my pleasure that I could hardly see, and coherent thoughts were right out the door. Cloud nine? More like cloud nine hundred, but I was so breathless from her oral expertise that I couldn’t even laugh at my own beleaguered mental pun.
And then it happened.
One moment my hips were arching off the bed, Lyla’s tongue circling that insane button of pleasure above my opening while her fingers curled within me, the next I was flung into another galaxy altogether. Pleasure slammed into me with the force of an actual bomb, and the world faded away to pure, white nothingness.
I’d orgasmed plenty of times in my life, but never like this. What was normally a ten second or so rush of pleasure followed by a post ejaculation slump was now a minute-long, ever-ascending high where nothing existed but me and the pure pleasure lifting me upward, upward, ever upward, carried away to untold realms of bliss.
I flew and flew, all of the tension leaving my body as all my cares and worries drained away from me. It was like someone had hit reset on my life, and I was getting a brief vacation in heaven while the system rebooted.
When I did eventually come back to reality, it was a slow, gentle descent. The clouds cleared, my vision slowly returned, and I found myself gazing into the adoring eyes of Lyla. She was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and sporting a self-satisfied sort of grin, like a cat who’d just finished off the last of her cream and was now busily cleaning her paw.
“Wow…” I whispered, unable to think of anything else to say.
“I’m glad you approve,” she answered, flopping onto her side to lay down beside me.
“But what about you?” I objected blearily, knowing that part of the occasion was missing. This was usually where I showed my gratitude with some reciprocal action of my own, right? Of course, I didn’t stand a chance of doing it nearly as well as she did, but I was still willing to give it my best shot…
Lyla just shook her head. “No need. This was all about you, tonight. Just let yourself relax and let’s cuddle.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Already I could feel my eyelids drooping after my massive, amazing release. I relaxed back into the post-coital high, enjoying the tiny electric sensations of orgasmic aftershocks that buzzed through me now and again.
Curling up into her sweet embrace, I once again felt totally safe and secure. It was in that state that I drifted away, carried off to a sweet, gentle sleep by the bliss that she had so eagerly given me.
I was going to remember this night forever.
Chapter 6
“So what, your job fired you!? Get some ambition, man! Are you even a man? You’ve been in our room sniveling for two days like a child!”
Stacey’s taunts echoed in my ears as I looked down to find myself back in my old, male body, wearing my stereotypical work button-up and tie. I was sitting at my old desk, with reports and papers stacked high and my work computer smoking. I instantly felt the same crushing pressure I had always had when I’d been in the office. The need to work, work, work to try to catch up to the impossible speed my job demanded, even though it was never good enough.
I grabbed the nearest report and started typing information into the computer as quickly as I could, ignoring the sparks flying from my machine. But just as I was about to hit my groove, hands gripped me by my collar and my body was whipped around to find my ex-girlfriend Stacey’s face only inches away from my own.
Unlike my sexy encounters with Lyla, this wasn’t remotely romantic. Not in any sense of the word. Stacey’s lips were pulled back into an angry snarl, teeth bared, and her eyes were bulging with fury.
“Do you think you’re getting a second chance just because you’re female now?” she crowed, her voice shrill and grating like nails on a chalkboard. “You may have your outsides all prettied up, but in the end you’re still a sniveling little boy just like you always were, and you’re exactly what Lyla will never want… not any more than I did. You’ll never be good enough for her! Don’t you get that?”
She started shaking me as I sputtered useless protests that tangled up on my tongue, and all around me the work papers began to go up in flames, encircling the two of us in a burning ring of fire. I tried to argue, tried to free myself from her grip, but then she was gone as quickly as she had appeared, leaving me to writhe alone in my torment.
I woke up in a cold sweat, gasping for air and looking around in a panic, half-expecting Stacey to be there in the room with me, pitchfork and all. She wasn’t, of course. Only Lyla was there, breathing softly, still laying twisted up in the silky black sheets where we’d shared our amazing, passionate night of bliss. But the perfect little bubble that the two of us had made the previous night had now popped, vanished like an escaping dream that slid through my helpless fingers. I was left instead with only a cold, twisted feeling in my stomach from the remnants of my fiery nightmares.
I got up, went to the bathroom, and splashed some cold water on my face before studying myself in the mirror.
Jess’s gorgeous features stared back at me, but Stacey’s awful words from my nightmare rolled through my head once again. Sure, it was a female face I saw there in the mirror right now. Thick lashes, pretty eyes, full lips… but they weren’t mine. Not really. This random transformation had happened while I was asleep on the airplane, and we still had no idea what had caused it.
Lyla’s research had turned up nothing except a bunch of rumors and stories, none of them reliable and none of them sufficient to explain what had happened to me. It was agonizing not to know. No matter how amazing my time with Lyla had been, there was no telling when I might suddenly stop being Jess and revert back into being plain old Tom again, with Lyla forever out of reach. Now, in the wake of our amazing night together, that was more painful than ever.
I couldn’t expect Lyla to have a real relationship with me as long as that potential reality hung over our heads. Could I? It wouldn’t be fair to her, no matter how much I might want it.
“Get ahold of yourself,” I murmured, shaking my head. “You and Lyla had a nice time together. But she’s never going to love you like you wish she would love you because you’re not really a woman. Maybe your body right now was a fun fling for a drunken girls’ night out, but it’s going to stop there.”
I let those words sink in as I stared myself down. Maybe if I said them intensely enough, I would actually believe them.
But it was hard, so hard. Last night had been downright magical, and being with Lyla like that had rekindled a spark of hope inside of me that I thought I’d extinguished forever, all those years ago on her dorm room bed. For the briefest of moments, I’d imagined a future where we might actually get to be together forever… as more than just friends. So much more.
Then my nightmare had been a cold, hard slap of reality, reminding me that none of this could be real since I wasn’t really a woman. For all I knew, my magical transformation could have an expiration date, and the clock might be ticking closer every moment to the time when I’d have to go back to being the screw-up that I once was. Even Cinderella had to leave her ball eventually, and at least she’d had a glass slipper to leave behind. How could I start something with Lyla knowing we could be ripped apart by fate at any moment?
A soft knock on the door sounded, and I heard Lyla’s sleepy voice from the other side.
“Hey, are you okay in there, Jess?”
“Yeah,” I answered, trying to make my tone reflect hers. “Just reading all the beauty stuff in here. Do you really need three different face washes?”
She giggled, and I heard her pad back towards her bed. “I need four, I’m just out of one.”
I smiled to myself, my heart warming as it always did whenever I heard Lyla laugh. The flame kindling inside of me burned that much brighter for a moment, and a strange kind of resolve hardened in my heart.
If I was stuck in a temporary illusion for now, then so be it. Why wallow in misery while I waited for the bitter end? The clock hadn’t struck midnight yet, and I was going to dance with my princess for as long as I was able to. I would treasure every second with Lyla, so that when I was finally thrust back into being Tom, I would at least have the memories to hold onto.
Yeah, that sounded like a good idea. Focus on the positive. That was the most Lyla-like thing I could do.
* * *
“Yaaas! Get it girl!” I cried, clapping my hands along with the music and bouncing up and down with a few other enthusiastic cheerers in the crowd around me as Lyla strutted her stuff on the spot-lit stage in front of us.
After I’d come out of the bathroom with my new determination to make the best of whatever time I had with Lyla, she’d kissed me good-morning and told me that she’d been asked to perform at a local burlesque show to replace another girl who’d bailed on the upcoming weekend performance. While my petite friend wasn’t a professional dancer or anything, she did have some pretty insane hooping skills she liked to show off. I remembered watching some of her routines back in high school, then college, and always being impressed by it. Apparently word got around!
That was how I ended up a few days later at another local bar, all dolled up again and watching Lyla as she lit up the stage—literally lighting it up. She had some of those fancy, high-end hula-hoops with lights inside, and watching her spin them round and round her gyrating body was a mesmerizing experience.
My heart pounded the entire time she was on stage, my eyes locked to every single twist and turn of her body, trying to transcribe every detail of the experience into my soul. Despite the intense concentration her performance must have required, her gaze strayed to mine again and again as she hooped, brightening every time our eyes locked. Once she even winked at me and sent a flutter of joy spinning through my heart.
Entirely too soon for my taste, she was taking her bow and skipping off back-stage to change out of her costume and wash off the heavy stage make-up. I saw her off with a cheering, standing ovation, along with most of the rest of the bar.
There was a break in the show after Lyla, and I swiveled on my stool back toward the bar, using the brief moment of solitude to sip my drink and turn over my thoughts about the last few days that we’d spent together.
There hadn’t been any more sex after our first night out on the town, but I didn’t mind. We didn’t need it to be intimate with one another. Wherever we walked, we did so hand in hand, laughing, joking, and flirting like there was nothing strange about it. I’d gotten to know the adult Lyla better than I ever could have otherwise, and I was thrilled to learn that we were just as compatible as we had been when we were kids.
With each day that had passed, I felt us growing closer and getting to know each other better, and we spent each night curled up in a tender embrace, cuddling and warm inside her silky sheets. It was perfect—exactly what I needed to move on from the mess of a life that Tom had had to deal with. I wanted it to last forever; an endless summer with Lyla, exactly as I’d always wanted with her. I didn’t mind being a woman in the least, as long as I got to be with her! Now that I was getting more comfortable as Jess, it was starting to be downright fun, in fact. But no matter how happy I was, and no matter how perfect our days together had seemed, that melancholy twang of doubt hung over me like a storm cloud I just couldn’t shake.
I tried to push it down, I really did, but the slivers of discontent still made it through. The ice-cold tendrils of apprehension would worm their way through my body at random moments, wrapping around my spine or seizing my heart for a sudden, chilling squeeze. I’d been able to fight them back or push them away so far, but no matter what I did, they were always lurking just out of sight to snake out and ruin my mood. I knew my time with Lyla couldn’t last forever. That wasn’t how magic worked in any story I’d ever read. Sooner or later, the good times would have to end.
“I think I need a breath of fresh air,” I murmured to no one in particular. I downed the rest of my drink and then threaded my way through the crowd and out the front door, nodding to the bouncer so he’d know to let me back in—not that I had any trouble getting into bars looking like I did now. Outside, the cool night air washed across my face, refreshing me, and I leaned against the rough brick wall of the building and closed my eyes, breathing deeply. I’d just give myself a few minutes out here to calm myself down before going back in to find Lyla and watch the second half.
“I see you are adjusting well.”
My eyes snapped open and my head jerked in the direction of the familiar voice I was sure I remembered. Sure enough, it was none other than the woman who had sat next to me on the plane when this craziness had all started. She stood before me once again in what seemed to be the same exact outfit as the first time I’d seen her.
“You!” I cried, so surprised by her sudden appearance that my brain shorted out on any other words for a moment. But then I collected myself. I’d suspected all along that my weird seatmate might have had something to do with my transformation into Jess, and her pseudo-mystical appearance beside m
e on a random street in New York basically confirmed it for me. A sudden flash of anger ran through me. “What the hell did you do to me?!”
She regarded me calmly, seemingly unperturbed by my outburst, and replied in a level, accommodating tone, like you’d use with a petulant child. “I simply gave you what your heart most desired. Tell me, are you so unhappy with your gift?”
“M-my gift?” I sputtered incredulously. I gestured angrily down at my body. “So you did do this to me! But this surprise transformation into a confusing, unfamiliar situation is my gift?” Then I paused to think for a moment, considering her words carefully and remembering the conversation she’d had with me on the plane.
Was I really that unhappy with my transformation? Well, no. It was weird at first, but with Lyla’s assistance it had actually been working out pretty great for me. It would be different without my friend to help me through it all, but I did have my friend to help. In fact, I’d enjoyed nearly every minute of my time as a woman, gotten to fulfill all my fantasies of being with Lyla, and as Jess, I was smoking hot… way hotter than Tom had ever been. Maybe it was a gift that I’d been given.
Anger dissipating, I managed to answer her honestly. “No… I’m not unhappy with it, per se, but I also feel like I can’t actually relax and enjoy it. It’s like I’m halfway in and halfway out of a completely different life, and I don’t know what to do because all of this could end at any moment.”
“Oh no, my child,” she replied with a small, indulgent smile. “That change could only happen if that was what your heart truly wanted. The sole way to return to the body you left behind is if living your new truth is truly not what you desire.”
“Wait, are you serious?” I asked. My eyes widened as I tried to figure out if what she was saying meant what I thought she was saying. Was it actually possible that I could stay as Jess forever? My heart skipped a beat or three, hope warring with disbelief that this could really be true.
