He Will Forget

"Do you think I care how old you were before the shift? I will make you forget you were ever a 14-year-old boy. Welcome to the adult world, kid."

He had said it just like that, his eyes glinting with predatory confidence, not perversely but with the composed arrogance of someone who expected reality to yield to his will. The body that was now "hers"—though the word still chafed—was pressed against the kitchen counter, the grain of the laminate biting hard into her palms as he leaned in from behind. One hand curled possessively around her hip, fingers digging crescents, while the other traced her jaw, pushing back the fluttering hair at her neck. His scent—coffee, sweat, and some kind of aftershave that reminded her of expensive hotel lobbies—flooded her nose, and with it a heat that shocked its way down her belly.

He was hard, and he made no attempt to hide it. The press of him against her—through jeans, then her thin yoga pants—was as insistent as the press of his tongue in her ear, which, to her embarrassment, sent another unwelcome jolt through her. Her first reaction, lodged deep in the marrow of who she used to be, was to recoil and splutter a curse, but his grip held her in place, and something darted under her skin: not quite fear, not quite exhilaration. Her body responded before her mind could adapt, flooding her with impulses and sensations she had never mapped before.

"Look at you," he murmured, lips grazing her earlobe. "You want it more than you want to admit."

She said nothing; her voice was pitched somewhere between panic and arousal, and either tone would have betrayed her. He folded her over the counter, pressing her breasts flush to the cold surface, and slid a hand under her shirt, massaging her until she shivered. The pleasure was unavoidably intense, nothing like the rote guilt and boredom of her prior incarnations of sex. The more she resisted, the more her traitorous new body enjoyed it. She bit her lip and found herself pushing back into him, even as her brain shrieked: this is not you.

But what was she now, if not this? She didn't have a roadmap for twenty-eight-year-old female pleasure, didn't have any memories except the sharp, hungry craving that built inside her. He pulled her pants halfway down, and his cock was suddenly hot and insistent at her entrance. The shock of that first penetration nearly made her knees buckle, but he steadied her with a laugh, reading her so effortlessly it was like he'd always known her.

"Relax. You'll learn to love it," he said, his free hand snaking around to rub in slow, excruciating circles between her thighs.

"Fucking hell," she said, not sure if it was a complaint or a prayer.

He thrust into her, deeper, and another spike of sensation split her focus. The pace was merciless, a rhythm that kept strangling her thoughts and bringing her back to the soft, sticky now of her own body's pleasure. He had promised to make her forget, and the worst part was that it was working. She was already losing track of who she had been before the shift, her old self blurring into the approach of orgasm. The world collapsed briefly to the sound of her own involuntary moans, the animal slap of flesh on flesh, the way his hands claimed every inch of her.

When she finally came—harder than she ever had as a boy—she slapped the counter with both palms and let out a hoarse, guttural noise that startled even him.

Afterward, as she shuddered and caught her breath, he leaned in, resting his chin on her shoulder, still inside her.

"See?" he whispered. "Was that so bad?"

Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. As long as his new body's previous inhabitant never showed up, he didn't have to report himself as shifted...

Just last week, before the Great Shift, she’d been any other teenage boy with a talent for geometry and a running joke about never getting laid until graduation.

Now it was like she'd skipped a decade of awkwardness and confusion in the space of a single, fucked-up afternoon, and if this was the worst of it, maybe she’d adapt. She straightened, tugged her yoga pants back up, and turned to face her captor, or husband, or whatever he was supposed to be.

She stared at the band on her finger —a snug eternity ring fitted with a line of tiny diamonds, subtle enough to be expensive, not flashy. She wondered what the original owner had thought of her husband.

He ran his thumb over her face, tracing the high cheekbone, the skin still humming from the afterglow and the slap of the counter.

"You're beautiful when you come," he said, and even as the words made her skin crawl, she felt the flush creep up her neck.

“You’re not going to run?” he asked, and somehow the question sounded less like a threat than a dare.

“No,” she said, “No point.”

A smile flickered across his lips, as if she’d passed a test he’d been giving all along. He stepped forward, closing the gap that the rawness of their bodies had temporarily opened, and put his hands on either side of her face, holding her steady. He kissed her.

“I don’t know anything about her,” she said before she could stop herself, "The one you married."

"Does it matter?"

"I mean, not to you, obviously," She shrugged, "But I have to play her for everyone else. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to like."

His thumb drew little circles on her cheek, "You’ll figure it out."

"You can ask me," he offered, "if you want. About her, about anything."

“I’m just a kid who got dropped in the deep end,” she said, not for sympathy, but in a tone that was equal parts complaint and confession, “I literally don’t know how to be a person in this body.”

He grinned, “Just act like you belong. That’s all anyone ever does.”

That seemed both comfortingly simple and impossibly difficult, but he seemed to expect no further protest.

“And, hey. We just fucked together like we always have," he said, "so you're officially up to speed."

She almost laughed, except it would have come out as a yelp.