CHAPTER NINETEEN
My heart is running rampant as I face the Professor, his emerald eyes aflame.
"You're ready." His deep, commanding voice sends shivers down my spine.
What happened at dinner is forgotten. I have returned to my usual submissive self, Damien resuming his role as tormentor.
"To explore Shadowcraft? Or something more?" I tease, biting my lip. The tension between us is palpable, like static electricity crackling in the air.
He strides toward me, pinning me against the wall with his tall, imposing frame. I gasp, heat already gathering between my legs. "Both."
His lips crash onto mine, rough and demanding. I moan into the kiss, my hands tangled in his raven hair. He tastes of spice and forbidden desire, his tongue working against mine in the heated oven of my mouth.
He breaks away, trailing kisses along my jaw. "I have a spell to push our exploration further tonight, my pet."
"Tell me," I breathe.
"It will allow us to switch genders."
His words elicit a mix of curiosity and uncertainty. I haven’t heard of anything like this before.
But yet I wonder, what would it be like to inhabit his body, feel the power and virility of a man? But for him to possess mine...
As if sensing my hesitation, he continues, "The choice is yours, naturally."
So I do have some power here.
I stare into his fathomless eyes, seeing my own curiosity and longing reflected within their depths. To experience such forbidden pleasure, in a form not my own...
Fuck it.
"Show me," I whisper.
A smile tugs at the corner of his lips. "Lay on the table.”
I’m already naked, the garnet dress long gone.
My entire body is electric, but I do as he commands. The wooden surface is rough—worn.
He circles the table, gathering ingredients: a crimson candle, a jagged obsidian knife, a vial of silver liquid. Murmuring an incantation, he lights the candle.
None of the trials have had this much ceremony before, but blood is often used as a catalyst for transformation.
"This may feel strange," he warns, slicing his palm. Blood drips into a silver chalice as he continues the enchantment.
My body tingles, then burns, as if remolding itself into a new shape. I gasp at the unfamiliar sensations, both painful and pleasurable, coursing through me.
And then all hell breaks loose.
I scream aloud, my bones shifting, my skin seeming to stretch and pull—the very fabric of my being torn apart and pieced back together while I lie prone and helpless.
I close my eyes, willing it to stop.
I scream until my jaw aches, gripping the sides of the table.
But just as fast as the pain comes, it’s gone.
My eyes flutter open.
I stare at myself—no, at him—in disbelief, seeing my own body and face looking back at me. And between my legs...
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
I reach down to grasp my new appendage, hard and throbbing.
My thumb brushes over the glans, an arrowhead of sensation pulsing through me.
The Professor explores his own female body, my body, a wicked smile crossing his stolen lips as he brings his hands up underneath his breasts, weighing them with amusement.
I grip his cock, reveling in the hardness of it, the heat of it in my fist. He groans as I do, the sound incongruous coming from my mouth.
"How does it feel, little lamb?" he questions, in my own higher, singsong pitch, sending a fresh flush of heat through my new body.
"Powerful," I say, giving my cock an experimental stroke. Pleasure jolts through me as I suck in a sharp breath. "And sensitive. I had no idea..."
He laughs, a breathy sound, and wraps my hand tighter around his girth, “like this,” showing me how to touch him. I mimic the movements, swiping my thumb over the head, squeezing at the base, tugging in slow, drawn-out strokes.
"Yes, like that," he whispers. "You learn quickly."
His own hand has descended between his lips, fingers sawing together in the hot dark there.
I rise up to capture his mouth, my mouth, our lips and tongues tangling together. Whereas the Professor tastes of spice, of the forbidden, what I taste now is sweeter, almost gratingly so. My lips are so much softer. Breaking away with a gasp, I ask in the Professor’s deep baritone, "What else can this body of yours do?"
He shifts onto the table, positioning his/my body on his knees, my own ass before me, my own pussy open and wet.
“You should be well versed in this part, my pet.”
This is so unbelievably weird.
I position myself on the table, still getting used to the sheer bulk of this body, how every movement feels a bull in a China shop. How does he get around like this without destroying everything in his path?
But this is wrong, too. I’m not used to taking a position of power like this. I’m usually the submissive, after all.
Will this be like being pegged for him? Is it some strange fantasy of his? Maybe it’s not even a trial at all.
Still, anticipation thrums through me as I move behind my female body, running his hands over the curve of my ass, between my legs. I run an experimental finger inside, testing the slickness there.
Darkwood purrs in my voice, circling the clit between his legs with two, twined fingers. "Are you ready?"
"Yes," I breathe.
I grip the hips in front of me and reach down, angling the Professor’s cock against the waiting entrance in front of me, but it’s higher than I think, surprisingly difficult to find.
The Professor laughs, reaching between his legs to position me in place. “There, my pet. And now, you will take me, as I have taken you.”
I shift my hips and press forward with more power than I intend, a strangled groan escaping me at the delicious sensation.
It’s warm, wet, because duh, it’s a pussy, but I never expected it to feel like this. The sensation…it’s incredible. The velvety corrugations, the heat…
I hear myself groan, echo the sound in the Professor’s gravelly voice as I sink into my own wetness, the sensations doubled, blurring together and sending the shadows inside me into a feeding frenzy of desire.
Lost in pleasure and each other, we begin to move as one.
Our bodies rock together, the table creaking beneath us. I relish every sensation—the ache in my core as I plunge deep inside the female body before me, the swell of my cock trapped in that ever-present heat that presses down on it so deliciously.
The more I shift and pump away, the more the sensations from each body blur and tangle until I cannot tell them apart.
But there is something else about being in the Professor’s body, inside his head. There is a door, coal-black, and beyond it I know is everything I’ve been wanting to know, every secret the Professor keeps, but will all I want, it will not open, the larger sensations drawing my focus to the fore.
“Would you like your body back, little lamb?”
Before I can answer I’m shifting again, my consciousness filling the body before me. It’s like returning home, but I mourn the loss of Darkwood’s as well, these conflicted emotions forgotten while he thrusts hard into my depths.
"Do you feel that?" he rasps, once more himself and angling his hips to hit that precise spot that makes me see stars. "How I fill you, claim you?"
"Yes," I moan. "I’m yours."
He grabs a fistful of my hair, jerking my head back. "Say it again."
"I am yours," I repeat breathlessly. "As you are mine."
A growl rumbles in his chest as his thrusts turn brutal, chasing release. The coil in my abdomen tightens, ecstasy building with each stroke.
He leans down, whispering to my ear. “But you should really experience this from my perspective, if only once.”
My head goes loose and wooly as I shift back into the Professor’s body, pulled from my own and injected into his, into that thick, block of man who so defiles me.
He’s on the edge, but in this male body the tension is lower, concentrated on that strip just below his balls.
I can’t take it.
“Fuck,” I grunt in the Professor’s voice.
I come with a shout, gripped by the dual sensations of filling and being filled, giving and receiving pleasure. My climax triggers his—or is it my own?—warmth flooding my core as I continue to pulse inside his body.
In this body climax is an ejection, an explosion.
Cum pulses out of me, a trigger-shot of sensation.
I twitch and release, my own sex squeezing me dry with rapid palpitations.
And the shadows swarm all the while.
We collapse onto the table in a tangle of limbs and harsh breathing.
I slowly shift into my own body, caught between the strangest of sensations.
I nuzzle into the crook of his neck, savoring his scent on my skin.
"I never imagined..." I whisper.
"This is only the beginning, witchling." He kisses the top of my head, a rare softness in the motion. "There are many secrets of the flesh I have yet to show you, far more trials to explore before you realize your power fully, because it is building. I feel it, felt it when I was inside you."
What a strange way to phrase it.
“Yes,” I whisper back, “I feel it too.”
A welcome shiver runs down the side of my body at the promise in his words.
I blink open my eyes as awareness seeps back in. For a disorienting moment, I'm not sure where I am or who I'm with.
My cheeks burn as snippets of our encounter flash through my mind. The slide of his cock into my slick entrance. The ecstasy of being filled and filling. His gravelly whispers, mine, as I claimed him…or me.
This can't be real. I must be dreaming, caught in some bizarre fantasy my subconscious conjured.
Soon I’m going to wake up back in NY, the Sherrif pounding on the door to kick me out.
But no. The lingering soreness between my legs and the stickiness coating my thighs is too visceral to be a figment of my imagination.
I suddenly feel sick.
He reaches out, brushing a lock of hair behind my ear. I flinch at the intimacy of his touch. “Lingering effects from the spell. They will pass.”
I thought the teleportation was bad enough.
I nod, reaching for my head.
"Regretting your decision?" he asks, a hint of mockery in his tone. "You wanted to explore the depths of desire," he continues. "To experience pleasures that defy mortal comprehension. We have only just begun to scratch the surface, I’m afraid."
Have we? What’s to say this whole thing isn’t an elaborate way for him to use me for his own twisted pleasure? Maybe any so-called power I feel is simply something he has manifested to string me along to what horrible purpose I do not know.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been duped.
That said, his words kindle a spark of interest despite my mortification. I know he's right—having tasted such level of euphoria he’s laid out before me, I crave more.
I’ve become an addict.
I want the needle, the pipe, his big fat fucking cock killing me.
I look away, conflicted by the warring impulses inside me. Curiosity wars with propriety, passion with reason.
I’m seriously fucked up.
Darkwood tilts my chin up, gazing into my eyes. "Do not fight who you are becoming, Annabelle. Embrace it."
His lips find mine, awakening that now familiar hunger. I melt into the kiss, doubts fading as I give myself over to sensation. To him.
When we break apart, things seem clearer, more measured.
Yet even now the contours of my body feel strange again, feminine curves having replaced hard muscle, that welcome weight between my legs gone.
Darkwood clears his throat, a hint of color touching his pale cheeks. "I apologize if I take too many liberties. This kind of magic…it can be intoxicating."
Something new swells inside me, stirs the shadows.
"Give in to it," he rasps, lifting his hand and shifting his fingers. His eyes are dark with desire, gazing at me with a raw intensity that bares his very soul. "Let the shadows take you. Let go."
I feel sick, horribly nauseous again as my head thumps.
I cling to him, trembling on the edge of something vast and overpowering, waiting to claim me.
Darkwood's hands glide up to frame my face, his touch indescribably tender. "Yes," he whispers. "That’s it. Let go."
At his words, at the emotion in those sage depths, I fall. The power surges over and through me in a tidal wave of sensation, robbing me of breath and thought. I'm only aware of Darkwood holding me close, his presence the anchor keeping me from losing myself completely in the Nether.
I don’t know where the shadows start and I end. We are one and the same.
The rapture seems to go on forever, an eternity of feeling that gradually fades to stillness. I come back to myself curled against Darkwood, his heart beating steadily under my ear. We're both breathing hard, clinging to each other.
I’m completely drained. Dazed.
His knuckles glide along my cheek, a feather-light caress. "So responsive, so open to the darkest of magic. So open to me." His lips quirk. "I fear you've ruined me for anyone else, my pet."
I smile, utterly content, but the urge to sleep is almost overwhelming.
He kisses me, slow and deep, before pulling back with a frown. "Ana?" His hands slide to my shoulders, giving me a gentle shake. "Ana, can you hear me?"
I try to respond, but my lips won't move. Panic rises as I realize I can't feel anything below my neck. I can't move.
Darkwood's face swims before me, etched with concern. "Ana, stay with me," he says urgently.
I go cold—the kind of deep, all-encompassing cold that sucks the life from your very bones.
"You've depleted your magic and gone into shock.”
He scoops me into his arms and strides across the room. I struggle to keep my eyes open, to stay awake, but a heavy veil of black descends over my vision.
The last thing I hear is Darkwood calling my name before I slip into unconsciousness.
*
I come awake slowly, surfacing from a sea of darkness into a fog of confusion. For several moments I'm not sure where I am or how I got here.
Sadly, it’s becoming something of a regular occurrence.
Then it hits me, memories rushing back in a chaotic flood. The training session with Darkwood, the explosion of magic and desire, his body, mine, the aftermath that left me drained of power and sense…
Panic claws at my chest. I jerk upright with a gasp—only to collapse back against the pillows as a wave of dizziness washes over me.
"Easy," a familiar voice says. A warm hand clasps mine and I turn my head to find Damien sitting beside the bed, watching me with a concerned frown, eyebrows knitted. "You need to rest."
My heart stutters at the sight of him, at the memory of being in his arms. Heat creeps into my cheeks as I recall everything we shared, the intimacy and passion that pushed my abilities past the breaking point, the final release that consumed me so completely, and the darkness beyond—that chill.
I swallow hard, unsure of what to say.
Darkwood gives my hand a gentle squeeze, as if sensing the tumult of my thoughts. "We'll talk when you're feeling stronger," he says quietly. "For now, rest."
I nod, too drained to argue.
Exhaustion drags at my limbs, urging me back into the embrace of sleep. I fight it for a moment longer, clinging to wakefulness out of fear that this has all been some fevered dream.
But the warmth of Darkwood's hand in mine is real. I can feel it, and the memory of his touch, inside and out.
Reassured, I allow my eyes to drift shut. As darkness claims me again, I feel the brush of lips against my knuckles.