RULES OF THE GAME

The project had taken almost three years to perfect.

And as I looked at the image reflected in the mirror, I decided that it had most definitely been worth it. The idea had come to me in a single brilliant flash one night in May of Victoire's sixth year. We had taken out a room at the Leaky Cauldron for the weekend after her seventeenth birthday, and celebrated her coming-of-age for three days.

During an intermission sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning, she had looked me in the face, and broken into a dreamy grin. Still running high on adrenaline, I'd shot back a smile of his own, and asked what was so funny.

"It's like looking into my own eyes," she'd said. Then she'd flopped back into the quilt, heaved a deep sigh, and run her hands through her tangled hair. Intrigued, I had headed into the toilet and examined my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I'd checked my eyes, and found them a shade of violet that exactly matched Vicky's.

Looking into those lavender eyes, I'd wondered how much else I could mimic.

Three years later, I knew the answer.

I slid my hands across my stomach, the fingertips gliding lightly over the soft skin. My mind kept thinking of them as her hands, her fingertips, her stomach. But I pushed that pronoun aside. Not hers, I thought: mine. I dragged my hand back across my abdomen, felt the fingernails – now longer and manicured with French tips – scrape across smooth flesh. I had finally made it work, and I still couldn't quite believe it.

But I felt the wave of golden-ginger hair laying across my shoulders, streaming to the middle of my back. I saw it in the mirror. It was suddenly, incredibly real.

Electric giddiness fluttered inside my stomach.

I'd made it work.

I had transformed my own body into a perfect copy of Victoire's. As I admired my handiwork in the mirror, that giddy quivering fluttered lower, making my – her – those slender legs go weak. I knew her body as well as I knew my own, and every part had been emulated flawlessly. Every part. I traced those manicured fingernails over that satin skin, savoring the luscious tingling as I grazed the lower curve of the breasts. I cupped them, hefted them. I grinned. I'd even gotten the size right.

I marveled at that reflection for a moment more, then turned away from the mirror. I rounded Vicky's side of the bed to her bureau, and pulled open the third drawer from the top. Her underwear drawer. Just the act of opening that drawer sent another giddy tingle through my stomach, but I ignored it as I looked over her assorted bras and thongs. Most of them picked up on excursions through Muggle London.

I felt a rush of affection for all things Muggle.

I settled on a lavender top-and-bottom pair that I had always found particularly alluring on my wife. It had a simple appeal that made my think of illicit encounters in libraries with mischievous girls who got good grades. The kind of girl who would finish all of her homework before begging you to tie her to the bedposts with her house scarf.

Which reminded me: I'd have to find that scarf before Victoire got home.

I picked my panties of choice out of the drawer, grabbed the matching bra, and closed the drawer. I stepped one foot through, then the other, and grinned at how the very shape of this body was already beginning to make my movements more feminine. I took my time guiding the panties up those legs, enjoying the sensation of the material sliding across that flesh, over those hips, hugging each delicate curve.

I stood again, reaching willowy arms through the straps of the bra, pulling it around my chest. I situated the cups over the incredible breasts – even more incredible, I realized, from this angle – then drew the fabric strips across my back and hooked the clasp with swift dexterity. I adjusted the shoulder straps. The bra settled into place, displaying a stunning length of cleavage for which I now had a new appreciation.

I stepped back around the bed, in front of the mirror, assessed my appearance. It was a thing of absolute wonder. The underwear without flaw, and of course it should. It was sized for the physique that mine was now imitating. This body looked practically poured into them. I pivoted to get a look at the reverse. The sight of that – my, I forced myself to think: my own – rounded backside wrapped so perfectly in those lavender panties made my legs go weak all over again.

I turned around again to face the mirror and took inventory. If I meant to go ahead with this absurd adventure, then I'd have to get myself accustomed to the idea that the body in the mirror was my body. And, of course, it was my body. It had just been rearranged at a molecular level. It was my golden-ginger curls. My smooth and graceful face; my lavender eyes$, my upturned nose, my flushed cheeks, my plush lips. My soft breasts; rising and falling, rising and falling. My willowy arms. My trim waist and flat stomach and exquisite hips. My slender legs.

My body, already flooded with its own pheromones.

I heard the floo in the lounge burst awake in flames, and then a soft cracking. A moment later it went quiet. Then I heard Victoire call down the hall: "Babe! I'm home! You wouldn't believe the day I had!"

I looked back into the mirror, stunned.

Was I out of my sodding mind?

I darted for the toilet off the master bedroom, calling back: "Hey doll!" I nearly shifted everything back into my own body and abandoned the whole project. Didn't even consider the bra and panties fitting this petite frame so snugly. Instead, I leaned over the sink, ran the cold water, splashed my face and doused the back of my neck. I felt my fingers run through that sleek hair, felt that giddy flutter in my stomach again, and knew there was no way I was going to quit this endeavor. Not after three years; not now that I'd made it work. No bloody way.

I scooped more water from the basin, dabbed at my cheeks, patted the coolness across the swells of my breasts to get my heat under control. Two droplets raced each other down that sensitive cleft, and a surge of goosebumps erupted across my arms and down my back.

Victoire was heading down the hallway toward the bedroom. "Some witless wonder thought it'd be a good idea to take a litter of Nifflers on the Circle Line!" she called, then explained, "that's the London Underground. Muggle subway. Nine people attacked by the little needle-nosed blighters, and two dozen Muggles Obliviated." She was in the bedroom now.

I heard her drop her shoulder bag and shed her traveling cloak.

I leaned over the sink, looking into my wife's reflection as I heard my wife flop onto the bed with a sigh. "You going to come out here and welcome me home," she asked, and I heard her smile, "or do I have to come in there while you're doing your business?"

"Hang on out there for a second," I suggested. Hearing my own sandy baritone coming off the plush lips I saw moving in the mirror made me briefly lightheaded. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it, and wound up flashing the playful smile that Vicky used, sparingly, to cajole me into doing something I didn't want to do. I was startled at how easily that expression came, and that made me break into the broader smile that Vicky inevitably showed when she got me to do something I didn't want to do.

"I have something to show you," I told her.

I glanced to the small shelf over the basin. A small tumbler stood there, half-filled with a pale pink liquid shot through with streaks of silver. The Parisuono Potion.

"Really?" she asked. I heard her sit up on the bed. "Anything good?"

"Well…" I hedged. "That depends."

Now I heard caution mixed into her grin. "On what?"

"So many things," I told my reflection. To her, I said: "just promise not to freak out?"

She laughed. I gave her credit for that. "Can't promise that, but I can promise to try."

"Good enough," I conceded, and stepped out of the bathroom.

For a second, there was no reaction at all. Then she gasped, with an expression of gradual realization. She looked me up and down, top to bottom; I stood still, accepting her appraisal. If this had been difficult for me to assimilate, it must have been nigh-unto-impossible for her. She had, after all, just watched herself step out of the bathroom from across the room. She glanced to the mirror on the opposite wall, perhaps to confirm that she was, in fact, not looking at her own reflection. Satisfied, she turned slowly back to me, devoid of expectation.

My heart thudded inside my chest. Blood pounded in my ears. "What do you think?"

The sound of my voice seemed to startle her. Her eyes flicked up to my face – her face – and she cocked her head. A disbelieving grin shimmered across her mouth. "I think that's my Agent Provocateur set."

I looked down at the bra and panties. It really was a magnificent view from up here.

Vicky nodded approvingly: "you make it look good."

I grinned. She stood, stepped closer, examining the details of my work. She looked over the tumble of my hair, the features of my face. My lavender eyes that matched hers. She smiled.

"But that voice coming out of that mouth," she laughed, "is positively ridiculous."

I smiled at that, held up a finger. I stepped back into the toilet, took the tumbler off the shelf, returned to the bedroom, picked my wand up off the dresser next to the bathroom door. Vicky eyed the contents of the tumbler. I pointed toward her throat with my wand, and said quietly, "say something."

She smirked. "What do you want me to say?" As the words came off her lips, I thought the incantation – Vocce emulare – with sparkling clarity. Vicky's eyes went wide, and she watched as I drew the tip of my wand away from her throat, trailing a faint cerulean thread. I placed the thread over the lip of the tumbler, dangling it into the pink liquid, and tapped the wand to break the wisp free. We both heard the dim echo – what do you want me to say – as the fiber of light sank into the liquid. I gave the tumbler a gentle swirl to mix the contents.

Vicky watched me, fascinated. When I was satisfied with the consistency of the potion, I met her eyes, flashed her that playful smile of hers, and tipped back the glass. The Parisuono went down like ice-water, only colder, accented with hints of mint and lime.

I finished the glass in one go, set it down on the dresser. In the next instant, my throat tightened, and for one everlasting moment, I couldn't breathe. Then my airway opened again. My throat felt raw, and each breath tasted cold, but I could inhale. The air was delicious.

Vicky was looking at the tumbler on the dresser. A dim pink sheen clung to the rim. "What was that?" she asked.

I swallowed once more to ensure that my throat was, in fact, working again. Then I said: "Parisuono Potion." Except the voice that came out of my mouth wasn't my own anymore. It was Vicky's rich lyric contralto, and it was pitch perfect. I gasped at the sound even though I'd been expecting it. Vicky just stared at me goggle-eyed for a long minute. I reached for my own throat, those manicured French tips grazing the soft flesh. The air still tasted cold – a side-effect of the crushed digitalis petals – and even the timbre of my breathing sounded higher.

"Say something else," Vicky whispered, mesmerized.

I thought a moment. Then I grinned, and said, "Victoire Isabella Weasley is indisputably the sexiest witch in Greater London."

Vicky gasped again, then broke into a dazzling smile. "That is absolutely brilliant!"

"Thank you," I said demurely, and laughed. "But this is only the first half the surprise."

"Really," Vicky asked, and that tone of caution was back behind the smile again. She gestured to the totality of my transformation. "What could possibly top all this?"

I just flashed that playful smile in answer, and took her hand. She looked down to see our hands locked, and a woozy disorientation passed over her expression. Then she looked back to my face and gave me a silly why-the-hell-not smile. If she felt any trepidation about this, she hid it well. I led her out of the bedroom – I barefoot, she still wearing her Mediwizard's uniform – back down the hallway, through the living room, and into the small kitchenette.

On the woodstove stood the one-liter cauldron, set on a cooktop that applied low and steady heat to the thick, muddy stew bubbling inside. On the countertop beside the stove, I'd lain out a narrow swatch of my own mahogany hair that I'd snipped prior to metamorphosing. Next to that sat two tumblers. One held two shots of triple-distilled fire-whisky. One stood empty.

Victoire looked over the arrangements, seemed to understand, then turned to me for an explanation anyway. Maybe she just wanted to hear me use her voice again. I laughed her musical laugh, and told her: "If I'm going to be you, then you'll have to be me."

Comprehension dawned across her face as all the pieces clicked together in her mind. Her eyes sparkled, lit by so many possibilities. Her lips opened into a reflexive grin. I was surprised by the hungry desire I saw in that expression. When she looked to me, that electric giddiness fluttered through my stomach and took a swift dive toward the southern territories. The greedy need in her eyes sent a fresh tremor of frightened excitement down the hollow of my spine.

It was lust. I was sure of it. That carnal craving that has served humanity so erratically for a thousand centuries. It was glittering there in her lavender eyes, a hundred-thousand years of animalistic impulse smoldering with a heat fueled by the thought of this unique adventure.

She nodded, grinning. She was in.

"You'll want to get out of those clothes first," I told her. "I don't think they'll fit me."

Vicky laughed, stepped back into the living room, yanked off the pieces of her Mediwizard's uniform. She made no provocative show of it, which was probably for the best. She discarded her own clothes in a flurry. I picked the empty glass off the countertop, dropped the swatch of my hair to the bottom, ladled a single serving of Polyjuice. I swirled the glass. In a moment, the hair broke down into the potion, setting off a brief and dazzling psychedelic kaleidoscope of tones and shades. Then it settled into a rich mahogany, like a tea that had steeped all day.

Vicky returned to the kitchenette wearing a Bonnie Lass t-shirt and a pair of my denims that must have still been tossed over the recliner. The t-shirt was two sizes too big, the jeans about four inches too long. She had pushed up the cuffs, but they still nearly covered her feet. And yet somehow, she managed to turn my ragged old garments into alluring things of beauty.

"That one first," I told her, pointing out the snifter of fire-whisky, pushing aside the thought of how tempting my wife looked in my clothes. "It'll dull the edge of the conversion." I held up the Polyjuice, sniffed at it, smelled sawdust and cigarette smoke. I smiled at those aromas, and handed the glass to Vicky. "Then this one."

She took the tumbler, breathed in the mist curling off it, smiled. It was a transcendent smile full of expectation, and it drained the strength out of my legs again. She picked up the glass of fire-whisky, gave it a twirl in her palm. A burp of smoke coiled out of the liquor.

Vicky grinned. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," she said, and tipped back the tumbler, emptying the double-shot whisky down her throat in one go. With the fire-whisky still burning her gullet, she threw back the Polyjuice Potion and set both tumblers back on the counter.

The reaction was immediate. Victoire sucked in a hard breath and scowled as the potion diffused through her body in an instant. That preemptory swill of alcohol could only mildly dull the effects. She doubled up momentarily, struck by an acute cramp; her smooth skin bubbled and distorted like hot wax. Her body stretched to take on the new form that the Polyjuice Potion dictated, and for one brief instant I considered that this may have been a very bad idea.

Then she straightened up again, breathing deeply, all signs of discomfort faded. Except that it didn't feel quite accurate to call her she now. I recognized all the parts of myself as if looking at my reflection, though more precisely, looking at her was like looking at what my reflection had been an hour ago. An overwhelming spell of vertigo suddenly threatened to sweep me up. I felt a phenomenal out-of-body sensation, which was, to be fair, perfectly reasonable.

I was, after all, looking at my own body from across the kitchen. Except that now it was her body. And if I had to accept her body as my own, then I also had to accept my body as her own. That brought back that disorienting mental dislocation as Victoire leaned my body against the counter, brushing a hand through that mahogany hair. My hand, and my hair I felt myself thinking, and I forced the thoughts aside. Her hand, I made myself think; and her hair.

Then, startlingly, another thought rose up from some newly exposed recess of my mind: his hand, that thought insisted, and his hair. Because there could be no doubt that the body in front of me was male. It was the body I'd worn all my life; I had intimate knowledge of its maleness. But considering my own body in the third person, as if it belonged to someone else – though it actually did, at this moment – brought that sense of displacement to a stark completion.

My identity had come loose of its corporeal bindings. It felt blurry and imprecise, hovering somewhere between her and me. I thought maybe I had a vague idea of how a ghost must feel: all self with no body. Because now Victoire was wearing the body that had always been mine (along with a t-shirt and jeans that were also mine), and looking strangely at home in my skin.

She shook her head – my head – blinking briefly to break a bout of dizziness. Which made sense: my eyes were four inches further from the floor than hers. She breathed off a long breath, looking to me with an fuzzy kind of expression. "Do I need to take some—" she started to ask, and the taste of my sandy baritone in her mouth – his mouth – made her suddenly focus sharply. She coughed, cleared her throat, rubbed at her neck. She tried again: "I guess I don't need to."

She coughed again, harder, trying to dislodge an obstruction that wasn't there.

"If you mean Parisuono, then no," I smirked. "Polyjuice transformation is comprehensive."

Vicky wasn't paying much attention to what I was saying. She seemed, just then, to have realized the significant addition inside her denims. She patted at it, her eyes going wide.

"It is," she said, quietly amazed.

I nodded. Victoire's masculine physicality had her enrapt. She investigated those freshly muscled arms and broadened chest, before eventually making her way back to that new bulge at the front of those jeans. It was familiar enough to both of us, but now that we had traded our perspectives of it and connections to it, all the rules of the game seemed to have changed.

I took two slow steps across the kitchenette, suddenly aware of the cold tiles under my bare feet. "Let me see," I said. I didn't wait for an answer. I tugged at the hem of the t-shirt, dragged it up and over Vicky's head. She helped by pulling her arms out of the sleeves, and I examined that chest that was at once so recognizable and so foreign. I placed my palm to the firm pectoral muscle, my slender fingers and manicured French tips splayed against the flesh, then slid it down that chest to the rippled abdomen that I had worked so hard to achieve.

Victoire dragged in a hissing breath as all that sensation shot through her. I grinned.

"Take it slow, babe," she murmured, holding herself up against the counter.

"I don't know about slow tonight," I said, breathless. I couldn't pull my gaze away from that breadth of rigid skin. "We might have to wait `til next time for slow." My fingertips slid further toward the waist of the jeans, slipping under the fabric. Vicky drew a short breath and looked at me, and all that ancient lust smoldered in those eyes that used to be mine, but tonight were hers.

I yanked on the waist of the jeans to pull Vicky away from the counter, and she – he – bent forward to me. Her right hand reached to my cheek, brushing my face and winding through my hair around the back of my neck. That grip was surprisingly firm as she pulled my face to hers – his, I thought, his face, and that felt about right. All at once, Vicky crushed those lips to mine, sucked all my breath out as her tongue dipped into my mouth and danced across mine.

I kissed her back – kissed him back – kissed back, and tasted cigarette smoke and lime. I reached to Vicky's right arm as she held onto the back of my neck, gripping the forearm that tensed under my touch. She was kissing me harder, giving in to the torrent of adrenaline and pheromones. I yanked at the jeans again, shuffling backwards and dragging Vicky through the kitchen while her lips held fast to mine, our mouths filled with our hot shared breath.

Halfway through the living room, Vicky caught on to the scheme and wove her left arm around my waist. I gave up trying to fumble backward and let him wrap me up, pulling me off the floor and against his chest. I laced my own slender legs around his hips, feeling that bulge pressing against that hypersensitivity at my center between two layers of fabric. Vicky held onto me as I reached to that face, that unforgettable face, holding it as it kissed me and I kissed it.

Victoire carried me down the short corridor to the bedroom. As we crossed that threshold, I became aware of my heartbeat slamming against my chest, against her chest, against his chest. He – Vicky, damnit; Victoire Isabella Wea— – he settled me on the edge of the bed and started to lay me down, but I held him back. He looked at me quizzically. I answered with that playful smile, and pushed him back up until he was standing.

I slid forward until my feet were on the floor, knees apart, face level with Vicky's waist. I leaned forward, closed the few inches between us, dragged my lips across that rippling abdomen, kissed at the firm flesh. Vicky drew another hissing breath, hands jumping to my shoulders for support. I smiled against his torso, traced a line with tip of my tongue that plunged toward the waist of those jeans. Vicky's breathing was quickening, but she said, "babe; are you sure?"

I answered by popping the button of the denims, clicking down the zipper. I looked up at his face, grinned demurely: "Positive." Then I drew the jeans down to Victoire's knees, freeing that most essential length of manhood. I was utterly unsurprised to find him standing as stiff as a broom handle. I was perfectly accustomed to this particular piece of anatomy, but had never experienced it from this vantage before.

I reached for his rigidity, my slender fingers wrapping delicately around this most sensitive flesh. Victoire's breathing had gone heavy; his body tensed as I manipulated his body. Some distant part of my mind recoiled from the contact, but yielded almost instantly to the knowledge that the shaft in my fingers was actually my own, on loan to the woman I'd married.

This was ours.

My free hand took hold of Victoire's hip, and I worked him in the slow and steady cadence that always set my blood on fire. That hardness thickened in my hand, and I glanced up to see Vicky's eyes clamped shut, his head back, his lips parted as his breath streamed. Seeing just how much Vicky was enjoying my touch, I felt an insurmountable compulsion to give him more.

In one smooth motion, my hand slid his full length to his stomach, my head tilted forward, my own lips parted, my tongue darted past my lips to his tip, twirling quickly before my mouth was over him, gliding down. I took half of his erection on the first try, ignored the loud grunt I heard from overhead, then dipped again to finish the job. His tip rushed to the back of my throat. For a moment, I felt myself rejecting the penetration, and immediately reasserted control of my body to stifle the reaction. If I was going to do this, then I was going to do it right.

In the next second it was past, and my throat was full, and I was just fine.

Victoire was uttering guttural incoherencies above me. I looked up to see his head down as if looking at me, except that his eyes were screwed shut, face contorted from the intensity of pleasure. If I could have smiled, I would have; I was familiar with that particular bliss. Now Vicky's hands shifted quickly, fingers tangling into my hair, clenching into fists. Not forcing me deeper or pulling me off, but holding me still for the moment. Trying to control the sensation.

I gave him all the time he needed. When his grip in my hair eventually slackened, I drew my lips my back up along his length until it nearly slipped out of my mouth. Then I sank back down again, tongue skittering, throat muscles working. Vicky clutched at my hair, then held my head, then seized handfuls of ginger-golden curls as my plush lips slid up and back along his swollenness. His face worked through the pendulum of pleasure, and I used my mouth with vigor to please and thrill and propel Victoire to the very edges of satisfaction.

And when I saw him nearing that edge – when he was within shouting distance of the border between teasing and finishing – I dragged my lips the full length of his arousal and replaced my mouth with my hand once more. Victoire sighed loudly on one long exhale. I saw a small relief in his face along with a frustrated craving that made that primordial lust flare hotly.

She prowled toward me. I scrabbled backward up the bed on my elbows and heels, grinning all the way. Victoire climbed up my body; I stopped drawing away and felt him overtake me, his weight invigorating on top of my body. He crawled between my knees, and they fanned apart of their own accord. Vicky dipped short of my face, grazing the plump nipple of my left breast. Goosebumps flashed from my knees to my elbows, igniting a blaze deeper than my stomach and situated somewhere inland from my newest cleft.

Vicky's hand traced the left side of my body from the hip to my back, snapping open the clasp of the bra in one precise flick. The cups popped free and my heaving breasts stood out from the lingerie. I discarded it as he turned his attention to the panties, slipping them over my hips, dragging them down my legs. I did my part, angling my knees to make the removal smooth, and they were thrown aside with the bra.

His hand swept around to my free breast, kneading at the soft mound. He flicked the rocky nub of my left breast with his tongue. My back arched at the sparks of sensation, and I ran my own fingers through his rich mahogany hair, clenching, pulling just a little. Just enough. Vicky clamped his lips over my breast, applying luscious pressure to that responsive knot of nerve endings. A sweltering dampness spreading through my cleft.

I swept at Vicky's back without thinking, and my manicured French tips raked across his skin. He hissed, his mouth full of my breast; his teeth closed on my stiff nipple for one fraction of a second. A fierce shower of bright pain burst and my mouth flew open. All that came out was a half-strangled grunt, mostly shock, and even that was drowned out by the sound of Vicky growling around my freshly-bitten breast. He looked up at me, said: "Don't claw my back."

But Vicky was grinning, and that meant he didn't mean it. That was one of the rules of the game. So I reached over his shoulders and dragged my nails up the length of his back, putting enough pressure into it to make sure he felt it without leaving substantial marks. His back arched this time, and I grinned down at him, said: "Stop me."

In a flash, Vicky released my breasts and grabbed for my arms, catching hold of my wrists. He brought them down next to my sides, inching forward to lick and nibble at my collarbone. My back arched again and my hips bucked. This time my throbbing cleft brushed against his solid masculinity, and that blaze below my stomach flared strongly. Vicky sucked at the tender flesh up my throat, kissing, licking, setting off a cascade of dark sparkles across my vision.

I twisted in his grip, yanked one arm free, and scratched up his back from hip to shoulder, leaving angry red lines that would last a week. He hissed into my hair and bit down on the earlobe – not terribly hard, but enough to let me know that I'd marked him – and grabbed for my wrists again. This time he jerked both of my arms above my head on the bed, pinning my hands together, restraining both wrists with the leverage of one arm.

It was an unfair advantage, and I found myself thoroughly enjoying it.

Victoire bent low over my face, lips brushing mine. I tried to stretch my neck to meet him, but he leaned away, waited for me to lay my head back down before moving in again. This time he traced the curve of my bottom lip with his tongue. I slipped my tongue toward his, and he pulled away again. I gave in, and let him bend over me, following the outline of my plush lips with his tongue until at last he plunged back into my mouth.

My tongue dueled with his, our lips forcing against each other. My instinct to claw his back rose again and I twisted against his restraint, nearly broke free. He growled into my mouth. I felt his grin. He pulled away in a rush that left me gasping, and in those few seconds, Vicky reached to the floor where her shoulder bag had fallen. She grabbed at one of the outer pockets, drew her wand free, and flicked it wordlessly toward her bureau. The bottom drawer popped out an inch, and her blue-and-bronze scarf tumbled through the air like a fabric snake.

Vicky twitched her wand at it again in mid-flight, and the scarf did an elegant somersault. One end twisted itself precisely around my wrists and cinched them tight; the other end wrapped itself around one of the slats of the headboard and tied itself off there.

Damn her proficiency with nonverbal spells.

Now Vicky leaned back on his heels, his knees propped against each side of my bum, hands on his hips, my own knees splayed to either side of his waist. I felt incredibly exposed, and that only heightened my stimulation. Victoire looked over the handiwork and flashed that victorious smile. He liked what he saw; so did I. Casually, he slid his hands along the silky skin inside each leg, running his palms from each knee and across each thigh until he cupped my cleft.

My entire body reacted to that electrifying touch, but Vicky passed my center. His hands skimmed my flat stomach, gliding to my breasts as he rocked forward to lean over me again. He cupped each breast, lips diving for my throat again, licking and tasting and teasing. And now I felt that thick shaft pressed between us, throbbing against our stomachs with each beat of his heart. It was inches from own heated cleft, and I rocked my hips involuntarily toward it.

Victoire laughed against my throat. "Something you want?"

I nodded briskly, throwing my hips at his stiffness again. Still kissing my throat, pressing against my breasts, holding me down and keeping me tied there, he angled his own hips back and then brought them forward. Slowly. Carefully. Finding his way. He was there, pressed against me. A thrill shot through me like a streak of lightning. This was real; it was going to happen. And then he spread me open, he was in, he was driving inside me, all the way into the deepest unexplored recesses of this brand new pristine body. Taking my body, filling me with himself, giving, saturating me with the overpowering sensation of completeness.

I cried out, long and low. I couldn't help it. It came right up out of the back of my throat. Vicky froze suddenly, looking down at me with a kind of tender terror.

"Oh god," he said. Then, so soft I almost didn't hear: "did I hurt you?"

I shook my head firmly, bottom lip clamped between my teeth. "Good…" I got out, but that was all the air I had. I couldn't catch my breath. I sucked in a few short gasps, and forced out the syllable: "More." My head was spinning, lost in a bleary adrenaline haze. I saw one clear image of Vicky flashing that broad triumphant smile, and then I was swallowed whole by a tidal wave of pure sensation. He pushed into me with his whole self, one long and beautifully slow motion, then dragged his length almost entirely clear again.

Every grain of friction sizzled in that deep knot of heat below my stomach. He thrust again, withdrew, returned, retreated. Each movement burned the fuse of that heat shorter and shorter, and before I knew it was happening, I felt every muscle in my body tighten from the inside out. A supernova detonated in my brain, shutting down any rational thought. A tsunami of heat and mad ecstasy washed me up, and I rode the waves of one orgasm after another.

"Fuck me…" I whimpered, then gasped.

Vicky laughed. I felt it through my whole body. "You're a dirty little girl."

I nodded. "Very dirty girl."

Maybe it was the way I said it. Maybe it was the look on my face as the words tumbled off my lips. But as soon as they were out, Vicky's eyes flashed and she drove her shaft into me with new force. I moaned out loud as another orgasm wracked me. Vicky's hands roved my body, finding my hips, cupping my bottom and using it as leverage to plunge deeper. I lost count of the orgasmic breakers that crashed on me. Vicky pumped steadily, powerfully, giving me every bit of his length and taking every bit of my depth.

He kissed me harder, kissed me deeper, our tongues tangling. Mine got the advantage, and his quickly subdued it. He sucked on my bottom lip, made it throb. I licked across his top lip. He grunted, teeth pinching my lip, sending up sparklers of pain without breaking the skin. He sank himself into my center, faster, deeper, using my body to satisfy the greedy need of his.

Vicky's hands ventured out from under my bottom, winding over my stomach and up my thighs, caressing, squeezing, teasing, fumbling. And then his palms slid up the backs of my legs, finding the crook at the back of each knee, holding my legs up, holding them apart, stretching me, opening me to his energetic intrusion. Fucking me. I was getting fucked.

Just the thought of it brought on a seismic orgasm more intense than any so far. My mind stumbled, tripped down a dark hallway streaked with sounds in every color. One was my own voice – magenta, as it turned out – as I cried out again, louder, longer, half-screaming. Vicky did not pause at the sound, not this time; he laid on harder, pumping me faster, jostling my winsome body with every fevered lunge. I felt somehow certain that he would never, ever stop. He could keep at me with this frantic pace until the very ending of time.

Another supernova gathered, threatening to detonate in that deep nexus below my stomach. Vicky rocked against me, splitting my softness with his hardness. Seizing my slender legs by the knees to position me in a way that best suited him. And whatever best suited him best suited me, as each powerful invasion fed that gathering supernova in the pit of my belly. "Finish…with me…" I panted against Vicky's neck. Another thrust. Another. Ohgod. "In me."

Vicky growled deep out of the back of his throat. I thought he was reaching his crescendo, expected him to empty himself into me. Instead, he startled me by dragging his full length free of my slick grip. I moaned, deflated and denied, that supernova gyrating below my stomach at a furious pitch with nothing to ignite it and set off that final blinding cataclysm. My heart raced.

But Vicky still held me by the crooks of the knees, spreading me wide. My first thought – only thought, really – was that he had somehow slipped out in his zeal, that he would fill me again in an instant and complete our ascent. That was when I felt a sharp and jagged pressure somewhere lower than my sizzling cleft, somewhere forbidden and infinitely delicate.

"Whoa," I gasped. My eyes flew open; my entire body tensed. My vision sharpened in an instant, shimmering with unnatural clarity. "Not there."

Victoire froze again, and with none of that initial misgiving. "No?" he asked mischievously, as if my objection might be less than genuine. Teasing; testing. Looking for the boundaries that would determine the course of this particular adventure. Whether he would adhere to them when he found them, or simply cross them without so much as glancing back, was yet to be seen.

"I'm not ready for that," I panted. And it was true at the moment I said it. But I had an idea that this might be the sort of thing you couldn't really be ready for on the first go. You just did it despite your lack of preparation, and it either went well or it did not.

Except that now, Vicky was looking down at me with a keen insatiability. "You know there's nothing you could do about it if I decided to have you this way." That wasn't strictly true – I'd all but mastered the skill of nonverbally summoning my wand from anywhere inside a kilometer – but we weren't dealing in strict truth tonight. This wasn't about what I could physically or even mentally accomplish anymore; this was about my psychological capabilities.

Victoire understood that. He knew my strength, both bodily and magically, and had no fear of it. Because he understood that the real shift I had experienced, more fundamental than changing the form of my body, was the one that had happened in my mind. It hadn't changed into Vicky's – I couldn't imagine her ever being this docile – but it had become more feminine.

More submissive.

And he was right: if he decided to have me this way, there really was nothing I could do to stop it. Because the startling truth that I was beginning to understand was I didn't want to stop it. Not outright, anyway. It would not be my first choice given the option, and I would make my protestations now, but if he went ahead and did what he wanted anyway, I would enjoy it just the same. More than I wanted to do what I wanted, I wanted to do what he wanted. And a deep unthinking part of me wanted him to make me do what he wanted. If he made me give that part of myself – took it for her own – then I would belong to him all the way.

We'd have to decide on a safeword for next time. He rocked his hips forward, just a little, just enough to apply a steady pressure and remind me what was at stake. "Don't," I said, trying for control, but the authority had run out of my voice. What came out was a plea.

"Beg me." It sounded like a casual suggestion, but it wasn't. Not at all. Especially not when he added: "Make me believe you mean it."

"Please," I said, but he rocked forward again, and that pressure mounted. It was breaching me, I was sure of it. He was going to rip through me, tear me open, and I couldn't handle that much sensation not now it would be too much too much I would implode. "Baby: please."

And there it was. He told me to beg; I begged. And I did mean it. Not because I was that steadfastly opposed to giving that part of myself – by now I had accepted that it would certainly happen – but because it was what he wanted. Even more than Vicky wanted to fill that part of me – she too, I think, knew that it was inevitable – she wanted to hear me beg her not to.

"Next time," Vicky said simply. It wasn't a request or even a suggestion. The next time, he would not hesitate to plunge himself deep into my most intimate. And I would swear and growl and tell him how incredible he was as he drove me hurtling toward a mind-melting orgasm.

My entire body shivered in the sultry heat of the room. He let go of my right leg; I set my foot down in the sheets. He reached to my face, cupped my cheek, slid his thumb under my chin, brushed my throat. My shivering amplified. He leaned over me as his hips drew back, removing all of that exhilarating pressure. He bent low, lips tracing my jaw to my ear.

"You're trembling," he said. Smiling. Triumphant. I nodded vigorously, mutely. He reached above my head to my hands, didn't untie them, dragged his fingertips down my arms from wrists to shoulders, then continued down my side all the way to my hips. My whole body quaked from top to bottom, and I felt Vicky shift his hips to reposition himself back at my core. He rocked forward, did not enter, asked huskily: "How about here?"

The answer came naturally. "Please," I said, and while there was none of that pleading tone, it was still a supplication. I wasn't giving permission, because permission wasn't mine to give. Not any more. I was simply acknowledging Vicky's right to use my body for his pleasure. And we both understood that his pleasure was my pleasure, because whatever he did to me for his satisfaction would by its very nature give me all the satisfaction I could handle. "Please."

Vicky indulged me. His lips seared lightly up my neck, his hand against the side of my throat, his thumb sliding gently under my chin. His palm rested against that defenseless stretch of flesh, up against the underside of my jaw, as he kissed my neck, the curve of my shoulder.

The totality of my vulnerability – Vicky's fingers around my throat, not tight or even gripping, but there and tender and so easily capable of inflicting pain – intensified my sensuality. And then he nuzzled his scorching thickness back into my glistening folds, working himself into my innermost before taking up the long, strong, smooth strokes that would carry us both across the verge into completion.

His breathing quickened against my throat as he savored my tight resistance. I strained at my bindings, fingers flexing, wrists twisting, arms laboring against the immovability of my captivity. I writhed under Victoire's ownership, rolled my hips, helped him along the upward arc of his fulfillment, feeling my own approaching with frightening ferocity. I tightened down on that impending detonation that was howling from within my core for violent release.

Victoire was speeding up, approaching the apex, and I groaned out: "Yours." He moaned into my neck. "All yours," I mumbled through a clenched jaw, bucking into his thrusts with a spirit that fully matched his own. Then, in a flash of true insight: "Belongs to you."

"Yes..." he murmured absently. His whole body shuddered, his hands snaking under my back and wrapping around my waist, hugging my hips. I got my thighs around his waist and locked my ankles at the small of his back. He exhaled a deep, even groan that rose to the tenor of impulsive release as a wet heat bloomed deep in the center of me.

And that swollen rush set off my own explosive reaction. An unimaginable conflagration raged through me in an instant, burning away any stray thought, igniting every nerve ending. I was lost and adrift in a blaze of ecstasy so excruciating that it blurred my understanding of pain and pleasure. It was both at once, breathtaking and unbearable and everlasting.

The gleaming folds of my cleft pulsed like live electrical wires against the unyielding hardness that had given me this passion. Each of my breaths came out in a short, sharp howl of mindless delight. I ached from top to bottom, especially at that tender entrance where Victoire had worked me so avidly, and the hurt made the pleasure so much deeper and sweeter.

My climax culminated in one unbroken note as Vicky buried that shaft in me. He was gasping against my neck, teeth nipping at the flesh, and I didn't care if there were marks, because this had been the point of the game all along. This moment. This perfect conclusion. I rode the rolling wave of my finest orgasm, let it carry me back down into the bed and the tangle of sweat-streaked sheets, and my arms sore and screaming above my head, and the scarf biting into my wrists. And none of that mattered, because the passion of this moment was unbreakable.

I felt Victoire moving more than I saw her. I didn't see much of anything, the adrenaline of that last internal detonation still blurring my vision. She groped a moment for her wand, finally found it, waved it languidly over my arms. The knot of the scarf loosened, and my wrists came free. Despite the protestations in my shoulders, I reached around Vicky, my right hand holding the back of her neck and my left hand against her heaving back. My back, still, technically, but tonight we weren't dealing in technicalities. We were who we were.

Vicky's breath danced across my throat as we laid in those tangled sheets.

Drifting. Dozing. Already planning our next game.