I hate him. I want him. I just can’t help myself.
When I left I swore I would never come back to this tiny little town. I’d been bullied for years and humiliated time and again. But a summer alone in the woods was too good to pass up, especially with my plan to become her for every last minute of it.
I’ve got a secret. I like to be a woman. I like to feel what it’s like to live in her skin. I love feeling everything she can feel.
The plan only worked if I never left home, but this crappy little town doesn’t have delivery and when I go out to get groceries the worst possible thing happens to me. I run into Dean Draymond, my old bully. And he doesn’t recognize me when I’m in this new body, but that doesn’t mean that I should forgive him.
For all the pain he’s caused me, what does it matter that he’s promising pleasure now instead? For all the humiliation and the hurt, treating me well now can’t make up for it.
But I can use this new body to my advantage. I can tease and tempt him and get him vulnerable. I can wait until he’s exposed like a raw nerve before I burn his whole world to the ground.
And it’s going to work, because he wants me. And revenge is going to be so sweet, because he’s hurt me so. And there is only one thing that could go wrong here, one way that I could fail.
I have to get close to my bully without catching feelings. I have to make him want me without wanting him in turn. That should be easy, right?
There is no way this can fail. Right?
Excerpt
I wanted to scream and shout. I wanted to reach over and shake him and I wanted to do other things as well. To put my hands on that strong sharp jawline of his and turn it to me and crawl over his gear shift into his lap and feel those hands of his on my body.
My body that was all shocking unfamiliarity and uncertain needs. That was all bubbling heat and unrealized potential.
I hadn’t touched myself since I’d been in this body, swore that wasn’t the point. Swore to myself that I wasn’t in this for sexual gratification but just to understand and broaden my horizons.
But I felt the ache in me now. I felt the need that I couldn’t forget.
I wanted him. I didn’t like it, but I did.
And when he told me, “I’ll walk you to your door,” I knew exactly how I wanted this night to end.
My heart was pounding so loud it was all that I could hear as I put one foot in front of the other and raised my key to the lock. My hand was shaking so much that I couldn’t thread the needle and it was only when he reached for me and took the keys from me that I was able to react.
“It’s cold out,” I laughed, lying, “I’m shivering.”
“I bet,” he said, swinging the door open and exposing the void that lay beyond it.
We stood awkward for a moment on my front step and I broke the silence with an attempt at a joke that was actually a masked attempt at discerning his intentions, “Is this where you force yourself over my threshold?”
He shook his head slowly, holding out my keys pinched between his pointer finger and thumb.
“I don’t force,” he said bluntly, “I like my partners willing.”
I took my keys and he turned away and I called out to him, “How do you know I’m not willing?”
He turned back, quickly closing the distance in a step or two until he was right up in my personal space, his lips so close to mine.
“How do you know what I want?” I asked him.
“I know this,” he said, reaching a hand up and brushing his thumb across my lips, “I know you don’t want me. You might think you do, but if you let me in you’ll only regret it.”
He pulled back, once more a cocky grin on his face. He left me gasping from that momentary brush and my eyes were wide and he drank it all in.
“I’m going to let you take me out tomorrow,” I told him, “Show me around town. Like you said you would.”
He shrugged, the perfect mask of indifference, “Sounds like a date. See you tomorrow, Willa.”
And I swore it was for the plan, for revenge. I swore I wasn’t playing into his hands.
And I was lying to myself, but I couldn’t own up to that.