Chapter 40
“There is freedom,” I say, at last. The tangent path of my thoughts has lasted longer than I intended and my reporter friend is leaning closer, waiting to hear what whispered wisdom drops from my lips. “Freedom from desire in being unfulfilled. Freedom from wanting in intense craving. Freedom from yourself, in being so utterly possessed by another.”
There is a soft click as he turns off the capture device, recording my words for whatever newsfeed or pin-mag he works for. I have forgotten, although he must have told me.
“And now I want to ask a question just for me, not my readers or my followers, or even your followers, but just for my own curiosity.”
“As you wish,” I say. A man with an agenda, indeed. And now he will ask me something inane and personal, wish-fulfillment type. He’ll want a sample, free of charge, of course, and I’ll agree, and then he’ll take his pictures with his eye-cam, publish the whole thing. I know the type. They all think they’re so original, so smart. I don’t mind, of course. It’s what I do. But just once, I’d like to be surprised. I’d like to hear something new.
“Have you ever wanted to take the other role? Have you ever wanted someone to serve you, utterly and completely? Wanted to tie someone down, force them to submit?”
All right, so he was a littleoriginal. I’ve heard this patter before, but usually what they want out of it was the ability to deny it. To think they had snatched away the perfect opportunity and that I would be meeker and more submissive for the punishment.
I lean close enough, my lips touching his ear. I rest my hand on his knee, intimate, demanding his attention in a physical way. “I always get that. The Doms always think they run the show, that they’re doing what they want, and my will is unimportant. But the more you try to force control, the more free I am. The more you try to deny me what I want, the more I get what I need.”
He shivers under my hand. He is mine in that moment. Utterly. And whatever we do later, behind closed doors, no matter how he binds my body, or punishes my desire, he knows it.
He is mine.Zach’s Man by Elizabeth L. Brooks
They didn’t understand, back home, when I told them what I was. They’re not dumb, mind you. They know what the word “transgender” means. Neither are they inherently cruel; they wantedto understand. They tried. They read the literature, they went to the support groups, they asked the questions.
They tried. I have to give them that. They tried.
But they never could quite apply it to me. They didn’t understand how I could stand before them, round breasts making a curve even under the baggy sweatshirt, other parts hidden but there, without question; I’d been an infant in their arms and they knewhow my body was made—and tell them that I was really a man. They never could understand how it was that I loved men, had spent my unexceptional and tumultuous adolescence lusting after basketball players and actors and even, for two tortured weeks, my swimming coach—and tell them that I was a homosexual.
To them, I had a woman’s body, I had desire for men, and that made me a straight girl who maybe was a little overworked and could stand to take a vacation. Go lie on a beach and drink margaritas, they seemed to be thinking, maybe lure a dark-eyed cabana boy into my cabin for an evening, and then I’d be all right. Normal.
I knew it would be this way, though I had hoped…Well. It had been better than I feared, at least. They had tried
Zach met me at the airport. I texted as soon as we touched down: Landed now. Come get me?and the answer shivered onto the screen nearly immediately: Already at bags run run run XOXOX
He folded me in his arms and we kissed like starving lovers, and if there’s an argument to be made against my starting the medicals, it’s that no one gave us ugly looks as we reunited, just a short, skinny guy kissing a shorter girl with close-cropped, slightly butch hair. Thank God for unisex styles and the ubiquity of jeans and T-shirts.
“Missed you, babe,” Zach whispered, pulling me tight into a full-body hug, and if there’s an argument to be made forstarting the medicals, it’s that I wished to God I could push my cock against his thigh the way he was doing to me. I ground against him anyway and grabbed a handful of his hair to drag his head down so I could growl into his ear, “I cannot wait to get you home and fuck you senseless.”
I grabbed my bag off the carousel and slung the strap over my shoulder. Zach dashed ahead a few steps to open the door for me. That drives me crazy when anyone else does it, but it’s not a gender thing for Zach; he opens the door for fucking everyone. We’ve been late to movies because he wouldn’t let the damn door go for the stream of people coming behind us.