Chapter 25: Fn tryAnd just like that, I’d bouo me once more.

  Laying iangled mess of bedsheet in the dark, Julia’s nguid body curling into mine, I marvelled at how great sex felt after months of deprivation. I felt like a man trapped on a desert isnd, redisc food after rescue.

  My body still thrummed with the iy of our sex, the release, the fullness of giving and receiving pleasure. And though I’d admit to being a little out of practice, I more than made up for it with effort, keeping up with Julia’s voracious appetite. Damn those doctors for what they did to me, but an ued be of this whole-body reboot was that I could fuck like a twenty-year old again.

  Luxuriating in post-coital te, I stared up at the ceiling, listening to the quiet sound of her breathing and the distant murmur of the te-night city. I felt both exhausted and exhirated. I lost t of how many times she’d panted, moaned, juddered and cried out her asm. I’d managed a hat-triy own, pag myself acc to the brief breaks she’d allowed: here, a few minutes for a piss and to scrub my face ; there, a gss of water; we’d kept it going into the early hours of the day.

  The sliding door to her bedroom patio stood ajar—we’d fucked out there too, up against the baly railings, our tits pale iside dark, her yips and cries cutting through the night—and now the breeze caressed my legs still ivory in stogs. She’d insisted I keep them on the whole time. Goose pimples rose and fell ay thighs; nipples tightened in the cool air. A crest moon, its sliver htness hidden behind gauzy shreds of cloud, extended ivory tendrils into the room.

  And then, perhaps because of the quiet and calm and the womaing in the crook of my arm, I remembered a girl called Molly.

  And before Molly, there was one final night oreets, curled up in a doorway shivering through the long hours of cold loneliness. The night, a lumpy mattress in a tiny room over Tahir’s nightclub. And then: a soft bed, the faint st of perfume, cheap framed poster of sunflowers and a girl o me, gently sn through t.

  How did it happen, this transition? I ’t clearly remember. I purposely fot what it was that drove me to cash in the favour that got me off the streets, only that one day I made the decision t that period of my life to an end. There was a year of livih, of hollowed existence drifting through empty days, of cold and bitterness and hunger and anger and grief; though everythi muted and distant. Time, obliterated; a year, gone. Then suddenly a m in which I walked up to one of Tahir’s clubs and asked for help.

  The guy owed me from a thing a few years back, and the only problem was ving the staff to let me talk to him. He took one look at me, nose and thin moustache wrinkling with disgust, and led me to the showers. Brutally hot water hammered my emaciated body, carving rivulets through the thick dirt and caked grime. The water ran brown and I stood there ie, watg the past year slough off and circle the drain, until he cut the heating and the icy spray shocked me back to life. He had fresh clothes for me: jeans, a t-shirt, underwear still ed in packaging, clear socks. Food and a pce to hole up until I found my feet.

  I’d wo the time whether he knew what happeo me, about Persephone’s murder and my failure to prevent it. I didn’t ask; it didn’t do to pry. Tahir wasn’t one for extended versation anyway. Tall and taciturn, with an odd predile for velvet suits, once presentable he invited me to sit with him.

  “You have e to me,” he said, over steepled fingers, long and precise. “You have given me a problem to solve.” He frowned. “I do not like this problem.”

  I shrugged. At the time, asking for anything beyond a shower and a free meal seemed presumptuous. I’d saved his life, onow, he offered the same iurn.

  “Your problem,” he tinued, “is your past…,” and here, he called me by a name I no longer use. “For one so young, you have a very troubled past. Many skeletons in many closets. Much darkness.” He shook his head. “And of course, a womah know.” He opened his hands, revealing a single, pial.

  Sakura: I nearly spoke her he held a fio his lips.

  “But perhaps,” Tahir tinued, “There is a solution to our problem.” And he slid a rge, thivelope across the table to me.

  I opehe envelope, shaking out its tents. There was a flutter of dots, a brief shower of hard pstic, a key. I picked up one of the cards. It was a drivers’ lise, with an unfamiliar name: David Saunders.

  “This man,” Tahir said, “this David, he does not have a troubled past. He is a young man with a fine past. He is a young man with a bright future. A fiure, with much potential.”

  The offer was clear. Tahir would set me up with a new identity. He’d put me up for a year in a little apartment above one of his clubs, and iurn I’d work for him, first as a dishwasher and theake it from there once I sorted out my life. Waiter, maybe. Or bouncer, he suggested, and his lips stretched in the dangerous toothless smile I remember. Beyond that? We’d see at the end of the year. Afterwards I’d go my own way. David Saunders would be free to step away from the ruins of another man’s past.

  “But you must agree,” he said, gently drumming the table with his fingers. “To say farewell to that past. Your past, it remains far away, yes? Like a fn try. It is no longer yours to visit.” The implications were clear: if I accepted his offer, the person I’d been was effectively dead—gowenty-two years of my life written off as a bad debt and fotten. What family I had: gone. Friends: gone. Sakura, Persephone…

  An easy choiake.

  That first night, head swirling at how quickly everything had ged, I sat at the bar in borrowed clothes, drink untouched, feeling absolutely lost, watg as the first patrons arrived. Nominally, I was there to learn something about the job but really it was just to experienal—ha!—society again after so long out of it. And this girl came up to the bar, ordered a drink, and after a pause turo me.

  “Hey there.” The girl seemed impossibly pretty, dark-skinned and curvy with a beautiful smile, her outfit glittering with a thousand sequins and I wondered why she’d speak to somebody like me. “Haven’t seen you here before.”

  At a loss as to how to react, I tried copying her. My smile felt like an ill-fitting mask dragged over unwilliures. Opening my mouth to speak, nothing came out. Annoyance fshed across her face, but also disappoi; she began to turn away; and it seemed as though the mask I wore was no different from the one she wore, too. Sadness simmered beh the surface, loneliness and hurt, an ey own. And though it seemed the hardest thing in the world, I answered her.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She smiled. “I’m Molly.”

  Later, ying in her soft bed, her plump, beautiful body warm and f lyio mine, I bid farewell to my old life. Maybe he was still out there somewhere, cold and alone, sleeping rough, his existence coiled around ainess, a loss and a mistake that could never be fixed. He could stay there, that sad, broken boy. I looked down at the girl led up to me, the soury newfound sobsp;

  David. I savoured the unfamiliar name: a fricative bounded by two plosives. I swore then with a seriousness only possible at such times and with this strange ressed up against me, that I’d never be alone again.

  She stirred in my arms. “Hey there,” she murmured, eyes still closed.

  “Hey.”

  The girl spread one hand ft ay chest, and she led deeper into the crook of my arm, sighing. With her other hand, she patted my coce as though gratuting an eager puppy. “That was fun.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You never even told me your name.”

  My mouth formed itself around my new name.

  “David,” she said, and I was ba the present as Julia purred my name, her hand sleepily sliding its way bay breast. “I like this,” she said, squeezing the soft flesh.

  “I noticed.”

  “And this.” Her knee gently prodded my exhausted and semi-fccid penis.

  I grunted.

  “We’re going to have so much fun together,” she mumbled.

  I smiled, and lightly danced my fingers down her side.

  “I’ll help you,” she said.

  “Help me?”

  “Teach you.”

  “Teach… what?” My fingers hesitate at her thigh.

  “To be a girl,” she said, and she stirred against me, turning onto her side and opening her eyes. “To be my girl.”

  “Jules…,” I started, a warning toering my voice.

  “Oh, I just love you like this,” she tinued. “Small and soft. Submissive. So much better than the arrogant prick you used to be.”

  I went to pull away from her, but her hand at my breast, her leg over mine, restrained me. “And you, hating every minute of it! It’s more, so much more aer than I ever dreamed. The man who fucked me and ruined me a me—trapped, living a life he despises. Living as a girl, experieng everything he’s looked down on his whole life.” Speaking like this, she slowly slid on top of me, her whole body pressing down on me, breast to breast, her hands seeking mine, fingers interg, holding me down.

  “You’ll be my little doll for me, won’t you, David, wearing what I choose for you; my little puppet, ming and prang when I pull your strings? I’ll pick the prettiest outfits for you, David, the sexiest clothes, and show you off at all kinds of fun pces.”

  I tried to push her off but she had me pio the bed. “Fuck you, Jules, I’m not going to—”

  But she cut me off with a deep and passionate kiss, stifling my protest. Then she kissed my cheek, lightly licked the edge of my ear, and whispered: “But of course you will,” she said. “Or I’ll tell your secret.”

  Going limp beh her, I hissed, “you wouldn’t.”

  Kissing lightly down the neck, ay colrbone: “Wouldn’t I?”

  “You’d be responsible for my death. You don’t want that.”

  She paused, and when she spoke her voice quavered with momentary weakness. “No, I don’t,” she said. “Even after what you’ve doo me, I don’t want you dead.” Then she resumed her tender ministrations, small wet kisses and darting tongue, as she worked her way towards my tits, her whole body sliding down my length. “I’d much rather have you like this,” she said. Her tongue flicked ay ereipple; my whole body tensed; I released a sharp intake of breath. “You could enjoy it too.”

  “I hate this,” I snarled, or tried, voiadvertently squeaking as her tongue flitted out again. Throughout ht of frantic screwing, she’d rgely abandoned her early fixation on my tits, other than the occasional, almost haphazard grope. Now, she was awakeniions in my breasts that were new and, because unfamiliar, distinctly unfortable; ohreshold of painful, despite this enderness; a somehow also intensely pleasurable.

  Pleasure this feminine, I didn’t want to indulge; but shit, it felt so good, like something hot and fluttery coing in my belly, w its way free.

  “Good,” she said, her breath hot against my skin as she slowly circled the nipple with the tip of her tongue. “And here’s the thing, David. I’m still angry with you. I want to hurt you the way you hurt me.

  “And you’re right: I probably wouldn’t give away your secret. Purposefully. But in anger? Or when I’m drunk and bitter? I’m a very bitter woman, David. And I do like to drink.”

  Cat-like, she gri me over the swell of my tits. “What then? I ’t promise I wouldn’t… slip, wouldn’t fet, just for a moment.” Her hand walked up my fnk, her thumb flig ay other nipple; and my whole body twitched in response. “Like you did on Friday.”

  Intended as an angry grunt, the sound that escape my parted lips was a moan: softly sighed, distinctly feminine, intensely embarrassing; and in hearing myself, it suddenly seemed as though I could see myself, or rather dy, imagine her pinned beh this rger, supple ying with her tits. A switch flicked: the co split; heat blossomed; and leasure suddenly coursed through me as I submitted to Julia’s touch.

  “Don’t you think,” she said, “It’d be better if you kept an eye on me?” and her lips gently closed around the nipple, and softly suckled, her toill ily cirg; her other hand picked and plucked and pulled at the other nipple; and my whole body quivered, back arg. I was instantly hard, again. Her mouth was at my teat; one hand at the other breast; and the other now curled around my shaft as she slowly began to pump.

  “Julia….” I bit ba unmanly whimper, squirmih her.

  “Will you be my dy?”

  “I—”

  Her hand slowed, even as I ached for release. “We could have so much fun together,” she said. “Imagine going out together, dressing up sexy, high heels and tight dresses.” She slowly resumed stroking, and tihe nipple py, and darted down for quick, sharp kisses between words. “We could drive the boys crazy and tease them all night long. Each time we touched, knees beh the table, a finger caressing a bare shoulder, or fixing each other’s makeup, we’d know, wouldn’t we, we’d know what’s waiting whe home?”

  And again, she slowed, stopped, bringing me painfully close to climax, but this time to rise over me, her wet pussy h over my ere. And in the moonlit darkness of the room, I could make out Julia’s hungry, fierce grin, her eyes sparkling in the ivlow. “We e home and fuck,” she said, and she grabbed my tits, hard as she dropped and impaled herself.

  I gasped, and she cried out iant pleasure, her t g tight around my cock.

  And as she rode me, she told me what we could do together, how she’d take care of me, teach me to be the best dy possible, her dy, a girl nobody could ever possibly reize as that wicked, nasty, piece-of-shit man from her past. I’d be hers, she’d be in charge, but she’d keep me safe and protect me. She’d che o work, take me out for dinner, watch me as the boys hit on me, watch me squirm, watch me blush, and smile as I was forced to py the part of the girl I’d once have fucked. Another not the bedpost, used and discarded, but this time, this time, oh this time I was the fluff, the flirt, the little bitch, her bitch, her slut, and—

  If we hadn’t woken up the neighbours earlier, she must’ve gottehis time. Gasping and grunting her filth into my ear, her whole body went rigid as her voice rose through its bitter hiss into a triumphant, shuddering wail, eyes rolling bato her head as she rode my cock to climax.

  She colpsed onto me, gasping for breath, utterly spent. A few mier her breathing eased, softened – and Julia fell asleep, sn slightly. I sighed, still skewering her soppi pussy, ignominiously pio the bed beh her weight. My ere wilted and after a half-hearted effort to shift her, I gave up and resigned myself to an unfortable night.

  I grinned.

  Like I said: just like that. Bound to me.

  Julia wouldn’t turn me in now. She wanted me too mueeded me. To humiliate me, yes, aract her revenge for the past, but her need went even deeper than that. The same desires that drew her to me all those years ago remained.

  The man in the café, and the o the restaurant: two different men, of course, but it was a stroke of luck they’d been wearing something passably simir. It’d been enough to vince Julia of darick her inting me home. And once we’d crossed the threshold into her apartment, sex had been aability. Fourteen yeas ago I led her into a threesome she didn’t want. Tonight, I vinced her t me home, and I fucked her until she decided to keep my secret. Best of all, she thought she was in trol, that it’d been her decision.

  Just like the old days. Sakura could always t oo get in close with people, the people she chose, and vihem to do things they didn’t know they wao do.

  And so it was with Julia. I hope she ehe fantasy while it sts.

  Mind, she was a bit more… dominant, than I remembered but fuck me if I hadn’t e, too.

  She wanted me; goddamn, she wanted me so badly! There was a fieress and purity to her desire that bordered on the manic. Her need paired up perfectly with my own. Because refleg back over the past few days—or week, or months—I could nnize how lonely I’d been. Admitting this was more difficult than expected. But it was true, and it was affeg me in odd ways.

  More than once I’d stepped off the bus home from work early and walked the final kilometers home. By doing this, I indulged in a fleeting experience of being part of a human crowd. Staring through windows, imagining myself sat at the tables within. Even w te, arriving early, simply to be around others—even if being around others reminded me, intensely, of the role I was forced to py.

  I’d kissed Dan—another man!—willingly!—and in my drunkenness might’ve gone even further out of a desperate yearning for physical tabsp; I’d followed him to the bar that night out of need of panionship, for the sounds and lights of the city, for a beer and a chat, out of a profound desire for society, in a desperate bid to recapture, even if from the female perspective, the simple pleasure of going out on a Friday night.

  I’d long sidered myself above such petty needs. But as days rolled over into weeks into months, trapped in dy’s little life, it became clear these needs couldn’t be ignored. dy was a social creature; apparently, so was I.

  I’d lied to myself for too long. Looking back over the years I could see that sing other people’s pany had always driveo find so the arms of whatever slut—bitan—of whatever Molly I could find that night.

  Six months sihis whole goddamn ordeal has started, six months without physical intimacy, without social tact—without a good, solid fubsp; No wonder I’d slipped up so badly st Friday. No surprise, really, that I’d let slip my secret and told Julia who I was. At some level, I must’ve been desperate to share, to reach out to someoo maybe find an ally.

  Frankly, it was a miracle I hadn’t snapped earlier. And if something didn’t ge, I’d mess up again, probably worst than before, and end up dead.

  With Julia’s face buried between my tits, her quiet snores whispered their secret across the hills and valley of my chest. Our hair mingled in a dappled wave across the pillows. I needed her just as badly as she wanted me. She’d keep my head clear, keep me focused as I figured my way out of this pantomime.

  Her promise to teach me wasn’t an idle threat. But galling as it was, having someoo share the burden of pretending to be dy would be… helpful. Eveer, having someoh which I could drop the fa?ade, even if only briefly and be myself—be David—would make it that much easier to hold on to what remained of my masity.

  So I’d let her py out her little revenge fantasy for a couple of months. I’d fuck her on demand, drain my balls in her eager t, and prance around in whatever pretty dresses she bought me. And wheime finally came: goodbye, thanks and fuck you Julia, I’m outta here. Get yourself bato therapy, you crazy bitbsp;

  A couple more months; that’s what Scooter said. Then I’d go back to being a man and fet all about her once again. And meanwhile? Smiling, I slid my hands down the length of her body and cupped her ass. She sighed in her sleep and nuzzled a little closer. Her breasts and mine pressed together and her weight was almost f as I closed my eyes and slid into sleep.

  Author's Notes

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