Chapter 10

Ten

H ollis

When I open my eyes, I’m back in my own skin, just as I had predicted.

My first thought is, Maple will be so relieved.

The second thought is to wonder how it is that I’m standing in a flowering meadow on Halloween, surrounded by trees full of green leaves? Did I sleep until springtime?

Huh. That’s weird, but okay.

A strange feeling overtakes me, and I feel as if she’s here, somewhere nearby. In my mind, in my body, I can feel her.

I cup my hands around my mouth and call out, “Maple?”

The woman’s giggling voice answers back. “Hollis!”

Her shadowy form appears, running through the trees, and comes to a stop near the edge of the clearing in front of me, breathless. Still giggling in a way that is remarkably unlike the Maple that I know.

I run toward her, and the breeze makes me notice what I’m wearing. Which is to say, nothing.

Huh. Strange. But oddly, I don’t feel embarrassed. In fact, I feel like nakedness is perfectly normal here. Expected, even.

“Good news, babe. We’re back,” I tell her.

As I approach, I can see that she’s naked too.

“Where are my clothes, Hollis?” The question is more curious than worried.

“I was about to ask you the same thing. Are you okay? Why were you running?”

She giggles like a schoolgirl. “To find you, silly.”

Maple is behaving so strangely, based on what I know of her. And yet I don’t care. It feels so good to see her in her own body again.

In fact, it’s so good to see her smile that I’m instantly aroused, abnormally quickly.

And suddenly, I find myself ready to tell her things I would never admit to anyone.

“Maple, I have to say something.”

Her smile is so relaxed and ready, different from the woman I know. From the woman I’ve felt in my bones since I was trapped inside her. “I know,” she says. “You don’t have to say it. I could tell.”

“But I need to say it.” We have drifted across the grassy clearing into the warm sunlight. We face each other mere inches apart. “I need to tell you the true reason I didn’t choose you for the New York trip.”

“Go on with your little story,” she says, licking her lips, the sight of it causing my cock to twitch in the warm spring breeze. “Or you could just kiss me now.”

Maple’s eyes dance before I close mine, and I capture her lips in a kiss. I brush my lips over hers, warm and soft and yielding. Maple kisses back, angling her head to taste my lips more firmly. My arms come around and hitch her body closer to me, needing more skin-on-skin contact. Her warm, smooth skin wakes up every nerve in my body. I want more.

I capture her lower lip, my tongue teasing it. She opens her mouth to me and slides her tongue against mine, sighing softly into my mouth. Her small gasps and sighs have me twisted. My entire body is a tight fist of need. I can’t keep kissing her naked, her soft breasts pressing against my skin, my rigid length nudging her stomach.

“Hollis,” she breathes. My name on her tongue is a balm for this wretched day. I feel nothing but warmth and light holding her against me.

“Maple,” I grit out, kissing her hard, clasping her round ass in both hands.

She pulls back from the kiss, her eyes hooded. “Make love to me.”

“Are you sure?”

As she nods, she takes my hard length in her hand and squeezes. “I need this. Now.”

“I don’t have protection.”

She giggles. “We don’t need that here.”

For reasons I don’t understand, this makes sense.

Carefully but quickly, I lay her in the grass and stretch out next to her, admiring her voluptuous tits in the sunlight, remembering how I woke up this morning, fondling them before I realized what a predicament we were in. But now everything is normal. Better than normal. I get to see and touch the real her. Maple’s sensuous planes and curves. The dip of her waist, the jut of her hips, the tempting vee at the juncture of her thighs.

She’s breathing heavily, her breasts heaving. “Please, Hollis.”

Skimming my hands over her skin, I notice the pebbling of her nipples at my contact. Maple’s eyes flutter closed, and she bites her bottom lip.

“Please,” she begs.

“Open for me, sweetheart. Let me make you come.”

With a small whine, she opens her thighs. The wetness between her folds coats my exploring fingers, and I kiss her again, biting down gently on her pouty bottom lip.

The sound of my thumb slipping in and out of her soft, slippery cunt makes my cock surge with need. I ache to be inside her. Maple’s fingers rake through my hair as she pushes against my hand, begging for more contact. Releasing my thumb from her tight heat, I stroke soft circles around her clit. Maple moans into my mouth, arching her back off the ground.

I break the kiss and drag my mouth down her throat, licking and nipping her bare, pink flesh, teasing my tongue across her collarbone and lower, until she’s bucking under me. My mouth closes around one taut nipple and sucks while my fingers continue strumming her clit.

“Hollis…oh…Hollis.” The sound of her whimpers tears at my chest, pushing me to give her more. I let go of one nipple and blow on it, basking in her body’s reactions to my touching, tasting, and teasing. I repeat the same with the other nipple, intensifying my strokes to her clit. My restrained grunts answer her ragged whispers of my name.

I keep going, pleasuring her through her orgasm that bursts over her. “Hollis! Oh my god!” Her soft thighs clamp down around my hand, provoking me to bite back a chuckle. Her enthusiasm overflows, her sweetness filling my hand. I might spill too early, but maybe that’s fine.

I bring my fingers to my mouth and suck, savoring her essence.

“Open your eyes, Maple.”

As I’m about to show her what she tastes like, Maple disappears.

My eyes open, and I’m back in Maple’s bed. The light is dim, I’m still in her body, the scent of sex is in the air, and there’s a new, sweet taste of feminine musk in my mouth.

Nothing happened. We didn’t return to our bodies again.

I had a wet dream in Maple’s body.

I feel relaxed, as if I came…hard. But knowing it was all a dream makes me feel empty to my core. And then, overcome with guilt.

Growling in frustration, I throw back the blankets and stumble to the shower, determined to punish myself for taking advantage of my employee’s body for my own needs.

As the water scalds me, I laugh ruefully about how I will be sued over this.

“Your honor, my client’s employer used her body without her consent.”

“Counsel, do you mean while she was unconscious?”

“No, your honor. While he was literally inhabiting her body.”

I’m trying to put the entire episode behind me, deciding if and how to tell Maple about this. How do I even apologize?

I should turn myself in to the police as soon as we get this situation under control.

But what is this situation? I’ve come to accept it; this is not a drug trip, nor are we in a coma being fed alternate realities. Maple made a wish, and it came true. It’s the simplest explanation.

How fitting that her wish happened on the day she was dragged into her boss’s office to be scolded like a child? And how appropriate that I witnessed her experience in that doctor’s office?

I’ve tried to block it all out, but the scene keeps replaying in my head.

“Anything else we need to discuss?” The doctor had asked off-handedly while tapping away at his keyboard. I’d felt more warmth from cashiers asking if I found everything I was looking for at the supermarket.

Abruptly feeling a pain-memory, I tried to verbalize it as best I could. “Sometime in the middle of my cycle, I feel a weird cramp right here,” I’d said, motioning to where I thought Maple’s uterus would be and deciding I needed a lesson in female anatomy.

The doctor had barely looked up from his monitor and said, “Which day?”

“Day?”

“Which day of your cycle? And how many days is your cycle? And when did you say your last period was?”

The questions had come in quick succession, which overwhelmed me. And I was annoyed because I’d already shared the date of Maple’s last period with the nurse, giving myself a headache trying to search Maple’s memory. Don’t nurses and doctors talk to each other?

I’d answered haltingly, not wanting to get the answers wrong, but the doctor had interrupted and talked over me. “Are you currently sexually active?”

Searching for that information felt deeply intrusive, so I’d just said, “not currently,” hoping that was the correct answer.

The doctor sighed heavily and said, “You might want to take a hard look at what you’re eating. And do you sit all day at a desk at work? Consider taking more walks.”

“I…uh…” I highly doubt that what she eats or how much she sits at work has anything to do with unusual cramping between periods. But again, what do I know about internal anatomy? Not a hell of a lot.

Not waiting for an answer, the doctor simply suggested taking over-the-counter pain meds the next time I felt a flare-up.

And then he’d stared at me for several seconds when I’d gathered my nerves up off the ground enough to ask for a second opinion.

“Well, I can refer you to a specialist, but with your plan, it will be out of pocket. So it’s up to you if you want to pursue something that’s probably all in your head or can be fixed by a healthier lifestyle.”

I’ve never once had a doctor talk to me like that. One time at a routine checkup, I’d complained about a wart on my finger, and the doctor had immediately referred me to a surgeon, no questions asked. Two weeks later, I was under general anesthesia, the surgeon fixed me up, and I was sent home with night-night pills. No fuss, no muss.

No medical professional in my entire life had ever implied any health issue was somehow my own fault.

What a crock.

Time to overhaul the company’s healthcare plan from the ground up. No one should put up with not being taken seriously.

A text notification startles me while I towel off, and I struggle to grab the phone with my slippery hands.

Took a nap. Weird dream. Still in your smelly man body. No offense.

Yeah, I’m one of those sweaty guys who has to take a shower twice a day.

Maybe it’s the dream I had, but I feel like that’s kinda sexy.

Dare I ask?

You don’t want to know. It was pretty wild.

Crazy.

And I say nothing else. I haven’t had time to process.

Maple doesn’t reply immediately.

While I towel off my hair and stare at the screen, my whole body clenching as I wait for what Maple will say next, a strange text comes through from someone called Fidelity Bank.

When I tap on the banner notification, my heart drops into my stomach when I see that it’s an overdraft notice.

“Oh, shit.”

After reading and logging into her bank app, I see that the large pizza I bought for lunch using Apple Pay on her phone resulted in the overdraft. So, it was my fault.

This, on top of everything else that happened today.

There are two ways to handle this. Have Maple send a transfer to her bank from my phone, or log in to my bank’s site via the internet browser and do it myself. I don’t want to take bets on Maple letting me do what I’m about to do, so the second option is the only option.

A few clicks, and she’s covered. And then some. Give or take a few thousand dollars.