Disclosure (caption) - part 2 (Patreon)

The light in the living room spreads flat across the rug. I watch her drop the plain cotton underwear on the hardwood. The pile of her clothes looks small against the vastness of the morning. The heavy hiking boots, the faded tank top. I've seen her undress before. We've spent the better part of two months tangled up on this exact couch, or hers, drinking bourbon and keeping the lights low. I knew where to put my hands. I knew the weight of my own shoulders over hers, the simple and reliable mechanics of being a man in bed with a woman.

Now she's bare in the harsh sunlight and I'm backing up toward the couch with my sweatpants bunched in my fists. The elastic cuts into the sudden width of my hips. My center of gravity drags downward, an anchor settled deep in a pelvis I don't recognize. I manage the three steps to the couch and sit down. The faded corduroy compresses under my weight. I let go of the sweatpants. They slide down past my knees and I kick them off. I pull the t-shirt over my head and drop it on the floor next to my feet.

The draft from the hallway AC vent hits my bare chest. Flat, dusted with hair, the pectoral muscles shaped by years of unthinking routine. I reach up and rub my jaw. The four days of dark stubble grates against my palm. I'm a thirty-two-year-old wealth manager. Everything above my navel belongs to Wes Brennan. I run three miles every Tuesday and Thursday. I discuss municipal bond yields with Vance. Everything below my navel is a hairless expanse of pale flesh.

Sloane walks toward me. She doesn't cover herself. Her dark ponytail rests over one shoulder, framing the pale breasts I'm used to mapping with my mouth. She steps over my discarded clothing and looks at my lap.

The window behind the couch catches the morning sun, throwing a bright rectangle across the floorboards. As Sloane steps into the frame, the light hits her from behind. Her edges glow against the glare of the unshaded glass. The angle throws her face into shadow, stripping away the casual, level expression she wears when she bartends or adjusts the aperture on her camera.

She stops at the edge of the couch, standing exactly between my knees.

My thighs spread slightly to accommodate her stance. The skin of my inner thighs is pale and soft, carrying a thick layer of fat. The cold air blows continuously over the wetness pooling between my legs. I'm already wet. I've been wet since she knocked on the door, or maybe since she pulled the sweatpants down in the kitchen.

Sloane places her hands on the back of the couch, bracing one on either side of my head. She leans forward and kisses me, hard.

I keep my hands flat against the cushions. I let her press her mouth against mine, feeling the familiar pressure of her lips and the slide of her tongue. When she pulls back, she stays close, her breath warm against my mouth.

"I want to see what it does," she says.

I stare into the shadowed geometry of her face. "What what does?"

"All of it."

She lifts her right leg and steps over my thigh. She lowers herself, straddling my hips the same way she did on her corduroy couch the last time I saw her. The last time I saw her, I was failing to get hard, and she was watching me with an expression I couldn't read. Now I'm pinned underneath her, my male torso merging into a female pelvis.

Her weight settles over me. The skin of her inner thighs presses against the skin of my outer thighs. My legs are thick, curving out from the new hip bones. Her hips are narrow, built for hiking trails and long shifts behind a bar. She shifts her weight, settling deeper into the narrow space between my legs.

The contact sends a sharp jolt straight up my spine. The friction of her skin against mine registers with a clarity that borders on violence. The dampness is now a steady heat radiating through the soft tissue. I feel it in the folds, the sensitive tissue of the inner labia, the hood of the clitoris.

She shifts again, bracing her left hand on the back of the couch. She brings her right hand down between my legs and presses firmly against the exposed vulva.

The air leaves my lungs in a single, ragged rush.

I force my eyes wide open, locking my jaw tight enough to taste copper. The dark stubble on my cheeks scrapes against the fabric of the couch as I press my head back into the cushions.

Her palm covers the cleft. The warmth of her hand meets the wetness pooling between the folds. She presses down, hard, the heel of her hand grinding slightly against the pubic bone.

For three decades, my sexual responses were linear. A predictable hydraulic pressure pushing along a narrow path from arousal to release. Now the pressure builds wider and deeper, a wave starting in a pelvic floor I didn't possess yesterday, radiating outward through the soft tissue and echoing up into the new layer of fat on my lower stomach. I feel the muscles deep inside grab at nothing, an involuntary clenching that forces a fresh wave of slickness out to coat the inner folds.

She feels the wetness. She makes a small sound, hovering right in the narrow space between surprise and satisfaction.

She traces the outer lips, light at first, then applying more pressure. I shift my hips upward, tilting into the friction without conscious thought. Shame burns hot across the back of my neck a second later. I try to lock the muscles in my thighs and pull my mind away from her fingers resting against the swollen tissue. I force myself to think about the suit I left at the dry cleaners, or the fever I sweat through for four days, believing it was a stomach bug. None of it holds any weight against her thumb sliding along the top edge of the outer lip.

She parts the folds. I can see her face clearly while she does it. She calculates the depth of field, looking at the exact point where the male torso gives way to the female pelvis. She wears the same expression she uses when she takes pictures of flowers.

Her fingers find the clitoris and she presses.

The sound I make is not a sound I've ever made before. It's too deep in the room, a rough, ragged noise pulled straight from the unfamiliar fullness dragging my center of gravity down. My chest rises and falls in shallow, rapid jerks. I grip her thighs, digging my fingers into the muscle hard enough to leave marks.

"There," she says.

She works it slowly, circling, watching my face the whole time. The pleasure builds differently than it used to, taking longer to arrive but filling more space when it does. Every millimeter of the exploration maps directly onto my brain.

The morning sun continues its slow crawl across the hardwood floor.

I stare at the smooth white plaster of the ceiling. I remember the cold granite of the kitchen island as a phantom sensation against the base of my spine, replaced now by the soft give of the couch cushions. Sloane stays anchored over me, a lean, dark-haired weight holding me down.

Her thumb maintains the steady, circling pressure. I feel the slickness coating her fingers. I close my eyes. Without the visual anchor of the ceiling or the sight of her backlit frame, the heavy, liquid warmth pools deeper, spreading outward until I can't tell where the pleasure stops and the rest of me begins.

She shifts her hips, settling her weight more firmly against my lower stomach. I try to pull air into my lungs, but my chest is tight.

"Look at me," she says.

I open my eyes.

Sloane is looking down. The unreadable expression is gone, replaced by a quiet, intense focus. She studies the way the dark stubble on my jaw contrasts with the pale thighs spread beneath her. She feels the heavy, involuntary upward shift of my pelvis as I chase the pressure of her hand.

Sloane shifts her weight again, brushing the ends of her dark ponytail against my thighs. The movement presses her hand harder against the exposed vulva. A fresh hit of adrenaline mixes with the heavy, liquid warmth in my belly. I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper again.

It doesn't work. The pleasure absorbs the pain, folding it into a dark, humming arousal. I'm terrified of what she sees, the pale, hairless skin and the swollen inner lips, but I'm desperate for her to keep touching them.

"You really have no idea what's happening to you?" she asks.

"None," I manage to choke out. The baritone voice sounds absurd coming from a throat attached to this lower half.

I picture tomorrow morning. Sitting in my leather chair, wearing the suit I left at the dry cleaners, steering a conversation with a client while possessing a pelvic floor that clenches at the slight friction of corduroy. But the trousers won't fit over the wide flare of these hips or the thick layer of fat on these thighs. My center of gravity will alter my stride, my knees brushing together, forcing my hips to roll slightly with the movement.

I'll walk into the firm with my five o'clock shadow and my flat male chest, and anyone who looks at my lower half will see the unmistakable geometry of a female pelvis. A cold spike drives straight into my stomach, mixing sickeningly with the localized heat radiating from Sloane's hand.

Sloane slows the movement of her thumb, resting it just above the cleft. She looks at my face.

"Wes," she says softly.

I shake my head against the cushions. "I don't know what to do."

"You don't have to do anything," she replies, her voice stripped of its usual casual irony. "Just stay here. Just feel it."

She resumes the pressure. The wetness coats her palm now. I make that unrecognized sound again, a short, ragged noise pulled from the new, empty space deep inside me. My hands are in her hair, pulling harder than I mean to. I don't know when I moved them from her thighs.

Sloane hums against me, a low vibration traveling through her arms and into the back of the couch. I hold onto the sound and the smell of dark roast coffee. The wave starts to crest, a rolling sequence of doors swinging wide open, one after another, deeper than the last.

I trace the line of her collarbone with my eyes, focusing on the small smudge of dark ink on the knuckle of her right index finger, the one currently buried in the dampness between my thighs.

Sloane's thumb brushes the hood of the clitoris again, moving a deliberate, agonizingly slow fraction of an inch. The jolt of heat travels straight down. I gasp, the harsh sound filling the quiet room.

I'm a wealth manager. I manage people and steer conversations. But right now, backlit by the window on a faded corduroy couch as the heel of her palm grinds into the pubic bone, I can't even manage the involuntary upward tilt of my own hips.