Chapter 1 — The Rut #2
The ceiling was unfamiliar. A smooth, white plane. I turned my head. The room was the preparation suite, but everything looked… different. The scale was off. The chair in the corner seemed smaller. The light from the window was too bright.
I lifted my hand to shield my eyes.
The hand that rose into my field of vision was not my hand.
It was larger. The fingers were thicker, blunt-tipped. A dusting of dark hair across the knuckles. A familiar scar across the base of the thumb from a long-ago cooking accident. Sam’s hand.
A jolt, pure and electric, shot through me.
Not an emotional jolt. A physical one. A disorientation so profound my stomach lurched.
I was looking at Sam’s hand, but I was commanding it.
The neural connection was seamless. I thought close fingers, and the fingers closed.
I thought touch face, and the hand—his hand, my hand now—rose and cupped my cheek.
But the cheek I touched was not the cheek I knew.
The skin was smoother, beardless. The bone structure finer.
My other hand—Sam’s other hand—flew up to explore.
It touched a strong nose. My nose. Sam’s nose.
A firm jaw, rough with a day’s stubble. My throat worked as I swallowed, and I felt the prominent Adam’s apple bob.
“Oh, god,” I said.
The voice that came out was Sam’s baritone. Deeper, resonant in a way my own voice never was. It vibrated in my chest, a strange, internal thunder.
I pushed myself up to sit. The movement was all wrong. My center of gravity was higher. I was taller, the world a few inches lower than I was used to. I looked down.
A broad, hairy chest. The white tunic we’d changed into strained across it. My gaze traveled lower, over the flat plane of the stomach, down to the loose white pants. There was a… presence there. A soft weight against my inner thigh. His cock. My cock. Asleep, nestled in its thatch of dark hair.
A hot, curious flush spread through me. Not an emotional blush, but a physiological response.
Blood moving differently. A low, potential hum in my groin that was entirely foreign.
Sam’s arousal, when it stirred, had a blunt, simple physicality.
It was a thing that happened, separate from thought or emotion.
I felt it now—a faint, interested thickening against my leg.
I swung my legs—his legs, long and muscular, covered in coarse hair—over the side of the bed. My feet (his feet, too big, the toes stranger than I’d ever realized) hit the cool floor. I stood up.
The world tilted. I was so much taller. The ceiling felt closer. I took a step, and the stride was enormous, confident. I walked to the mirror on the wall.
And I saw him.
I saw Sam.
But it wasn’t Sam looking back. It was me, looking out from behind his eyes.
I watched the face in the mirror—my face now—as emotions played across it.
Wonder. Fear. A dizzying, illicit thrill.
I raised Sam’s hand again, watched the reflection do the same.
I touched the reflection’s cheek. The man in the mirror looked astonished, vulnerable.
I’d never seen that expression on Sam before.
A knock at the door. “Priya? Sam? You may come out when you’re ready.” Anya’s voice.
Priya. She meant me. I was Sam now.
“Just… a minute,” I called out. Sam’s voice. My voice.
I looked back at the mirror, at this stranger who was my husband, who was now me. The first wave of exploration was over. The reality was settling in, heavy and immense.
For the next forty-eight hours, this body was mine. I could touch anything. Feel everything. I had a sudden, wild urge to explore, to put my hands—his hands—everywhere. To know what he felt when he touched me. To know what he felt, period.
But first, I had to walk out that door and face the woman who was now wearing my skin. I had to see myself through his eyes. I had to see what he saw when he looked at me, when he’d stopped really seeing me years ago.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, a breath that filled Sam’s larger lungs. I turned from the mirror, my new heart hammering against my new ribs, and walked toward the door. My hand, so much larger and stronger than I was used to, reached for the handle and pulled it open.
He was there. I was there.
Sam stood in the hallway, holding himself—my body—with a tentative, awkward stiffness.
He was wearing my face, my posture, but the expression was all wrong.
My features were arranged in a look of bewildered panic, my eyes wide and staring.
He saw me and flinched, a tiny recoil that sent a pang through me.
“Sam?” I said, his voice rough with my own disbelief.
He—she—I—nodded jerkily. “Priya?” The voice was mine, my own soprano, but the cadence was off, too careful, like someone speaking a foreign language phonetically.
Anya appeared, serene as ever. “Welcome back to yourselves. Or, rather, to each other.” She gestured down the hall.
“Your private suite is ready. The forty-eight hours begin now. You have full access to the facilities. Your personal effects are in the suite. We will monitor from a distance. Remember the safe word.”
She led us down another softly lit corridor.
Sam walked beside me, his steps—my steps—hesitant and shorter than he was used to.
I watched myself walk. I’d never seen my own gait from the outside.
There was a slight sway in my hips I hadn’t known about, a way my hair bounced.
It was surreal, like watching a very personal documentary.
The suite was a spacious, elegant hotel room. A king-sized bed, a sitting area, a fully stocked kitchenette. A door led to a garden patio. On the table sat a basket with fruit, chocolates, and a note: For your journey. It felt like a honeymoon suite. The irony was a physical ache in my—Sam’s—chest.
Anya left with a final, gentle reminder of the safe word. The door clicked shut.
Silence.
Sam and I stood in the middle of the room, several feet apart, staring at each other. I was staring at myself. He was staring at himself. The cognitive dissonance was dizzying.
“This is…” Sam began, then stopped. He looked down at his hands—my hands—turning them over. He touched my cheek with my fingers. “God. It’s really real.”
“Yeah,” I rumbled. My voice. His voice. I cleared my throat, the sensation strange and powerful. “How do you feel?”
“Small,” he said immediately, then gave a shaky laugh.
“Light. And… everything’s closer. The ground.
The ceiling. It’s like the world shrank.
” He took a tentative step, then another, getting used to the shorter stride.
He wobbled, and I instinctively reached out to steady him—my hand closing around his upper arm.
My own arm, in his grip, felt slender, fragile.
The bones were so fine. The skin was so soft.
I could feel the warmth of it through the thin linen of the tunic.
He looked up at me. I was looking down into my own face, seeing my own brown eyes wide with a vulnerability I never showed. Seeing myself through his eyes, I looked scared. Young. He was feeling that fear from the inside.
“Your body…” he whispered. “It… hums.”
“What?”
“It’s not quiet like mine,” he said, his voice wondering.
He placed a hand—my hand—over his heart.
My heart. “There’s a… a low-level ache. In the joints.
A tightness across the shoulders here.” He touched his—my—collarbone.
“And it’s… sensitive. The air on my skin.
This fabric.” He plucked at the tunic. “It’s all… louder.”
I just stared. I’d lived in that body for thirty-six years. I thought I knew its every murmur. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“What about… mine?” I asked, my voice hesitant.
He blinked, as if remembering I was in his. He stepped back, his gaze traveling up and down the form he knew so well, now occupied by me. “You tell me.”
I took a deep breath, settling into the sensation.
“Heavy. Solid. Like… walking around in a well-made suit of armor. But the joints are… simpler. Looser.” I flexed my—his—fingers.
“And there’s this… this constant, low-grade…
readiness.” I gestured vaguely toward my groin.
“It’s just… there. Present. Like a pilot light. ”
Sam’s face—my face—flushed. A pinkness I knew well crept up the neck to the cheeks. I was watching myself blush. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “That.”
Another thick silence stretched between us. The unspoken question hung in the air: What now?
The clinical curiosity was fading, replaced by a more urgent, personal need. I needed to know. I needed to feel.
“Can I…” I started, then stopped. “Can I… touch? Just to… understand?”
Sam hugged his—my—arms around his torso, a gesture so quintessentially me it was jarring to see it from the outside. He nodded, once, a tight little motion.
I stepped closer. The height difference was disorienting. I was looking down at the top of my own head, at the familiar part in my dark hair. I raised my hands—his strong, capable hands—and slowly, so slowly, brought them to his face.
My face.
My fingertips made contact with my own cheeks. The skin was smoother than anything I’d felt in years. Softer. I traced the line of my jaw, the curve of my ear. I felt the delicate architecture of my own skull beneath the skin. It felt precious. Fragile.
Sam stood perfectly still, his eyes—my eyes—closed. His breath hitched. “That’s…” he whispered.
“What?” I murmured, my thumbs stroking over my own cheekbones.
“Your hands are so… warm. And rough.” His eyes opened. They were wet. “I never knew they felt like that.”
The admission cut through me. He’d held these hands for a decade. How had he not known?