Disconsolate, Sharon walked back into the apartment. Before that night, she had never thought it was possible to love someone romantically without loving them sexually. She had been wrong. When Jim left, he might as well have torn her in pieces. She'd had relationships end before, had a college boyfriend of three years rip her heart out for another woman, but this was worse than all of them, sex or no sex. She wandered into the bedroom, not knowing what she was looking for; when she picked up her keys, she discovered that she was going after Jim.
As she was about to leave, she thought of something else: the ring, beckoning her. As she must as she hated it, as much as it disgusted her, it might help. After snatching it up, she held it in one open palm and questioned it. Did you engineer our suffering for your benefit, so that I would be forced to turn to you again? What curse are carrying beneath that shining exterior?
With her stuff together and tissues to clear to her tearing eyes, she went out to her car. She had already considered where Jim had gone. His old college friend Rick lived not far away; at one point, they'd worked for the same company, but then Rick had struck out on his own to start a consulting business. However, they kept in touch, and Sharon bet he'd turn to Rick tonight.
As she drove, she wrote speeches in her head, declarations of love, arguments for Jim to come back to her, promises that she'd do better, be a better person. She knew it was futile, that all the polished words would fly her mind at the sight of Jim, that nothing she said would make a difference, but it kept her mind occupied while she let her hands and eyes carry her through the misty night.
When she came to Rick's condo, she ran up to the door and rang the bell. Rick opened the door and exclaimed, "Sharon!"
"Did Jim come here?"
"Uh . . ." said Rick.
"Please, Rick, let me in to see him." She was crying again now, tears further inflaming puffy cheeks.
Rick looked uncomfortable. "Jim said not to let you come in, if you came. Look, I don't want to get caught up in a lover's quarrel . . ."
Sharon interrupted. "I've come to apologize. I've been a terrible person and I've hurt Jim and I want to say I'm sorry. Please? If Jim tells me to leave I promise I'll go."
Rick grimaced, but let her in. "She . . . he's in the bedroom, crying his eyes out. Listen, when this is all over with, I want to hear the story, ok? I can scarcely believe what Jim looks like now."
Sharon snuffled, "Ok. I just want to talk to him."
Rick backed out of the way, letting Sharon past him into the condo. She found Jim face down on Rick's bed, weeping into a pillow. When she walked into the room, her voice froze, and as she'd known would happen, her ability to speak English passed straight out of her head.
"Uh . . . Jim . . . I'm . . . um, I'm sorry."
Jim rolled onto his side and looked at her, that face she knew so well changed so much. "Sorry for what?"
"I don't know how to say this . . . Jim, I love you. But . . . but, I'm not gay. I don't have feelings for you in that way like I used. I . . . I can't help it. It's not something rational.
"But all the other parts of me still love you! I couldn't stand it when you walked out on me tonight. It's my fault, but I don't know what to do."
"I don't know what to do either, Sharon. I know what you're saying, but I love and I want you. I want to touch and kiss you like I used to before all this happened, before that damn ring came into our lives. Is that too much to ask?"
It is, Sharon's libido said, or rather the lack thereof, but other emotions ruled her. "I don't know, Jim, I don't know." She knelt on the bed and embraced him.
He hugged her back, blubbering over her shoulder. "I feel so awful inside, Sharon. My body isn't my own anymore, and now everyone has different expectations of what I can do and what I should do, and even my feelings aren't the same. I've cried more in the past month than I have in years. I'm sick but I can't get better. I feel like I'm dying inside.
"You're the only thing that's kept me going. I trust you more than I trust anyone, but even you can't stand to look at me now. I see the way your eyes slide away from me."
Sharon pulled Jim's face in front of her own. Even in the darkened bedroom, the reflected light made Jim's features clear. When she took a mental step back, and stopped mourning the loss of the male Jim, she could that in some ways this new Jim was more attractive, prettier. He still had the beautiful brown eyes and fine nose, but now his cheekbones stood higher and his crooked chin didn't dominate his face quite so much. Focus on the positives and try to forget the negatives. She kissed Jim, a slow kiss with tongue.
After pulling back, she said, "I don't know how much I can do. Whatever else, things aren't going to be the same between us as they have been. But I'm willing to try, like I should have been earlier."
Trembling, Jim brought a hand to her breast, a mimic of the gesture he had made earlier that night. This time, Sharon leaned into his hand. Then something occurred to her. "Do you think Rick will . . . um . . . mind if we use his bed?"
Jim cracked a small smile. "I don't think so. If we're loud enough, he might even enjoy it."
"Then . . . " Sharon tugged her blouse over her head and laid it aside. Jim reached behind and unclasped her bra, freeing her breasts, and then began to touch them. Sharon closed her eyes and focused on the familiar sensations of Jim's fingers. He kissed and stroked her, teasing her, exciting her in one place only to jump to another.
When he finally pulled down her jeans and panties, she was ready. She squirmed against the bed, wanting to feel contact on her genitals. He obliged her, but so slowly, starting with gentle licks on her outer labia then starting to dive into her vagina with his tongue. Only when she started moaning, begging him to move upwards, did he begin to run circles around her clitoris with his tongue. At the same time, he thrust a finger into her vagina, then another.
Jim had always been excellent at cunnilingus and now he was applying his skill to its maximum degree. When he hit just the right rhythm, she gasped, "Don't stop!" and soon after shuddered in orgasm, feeling her pussy flexing around Jim's fingers.
After he slid up to kiss her, she gently held him in place, then went down to his groin. It was strange to see his penis without his testicles, but the essential organ was the same and already hard. She took it in her mouth and began running her tongue over it, flicking the sensitive foreskin and brushing it with her teeth in the way that Jim enjoyed so much. Reaching a finger down to her pussy, she moistened it and then worked it into Jim's anus.
When Jim came, Sharon discovered that the volume of his come was much decreased, so she swallowed it without much difficulty. When she came up again, she could tell Jim was exhausted. She was exhausted too, from emotions and then sex, and so it did not take her long to drift off to sleep enclosed in her lover's arms. Her jumbled final thought, as slumber took her, was that the way their breasts pillowed against each other was not unpleasant at all.
Rick was kind enough to loan them both bathrobes, in which they sat at Rick's table eating breakfast. Jim had called in sick to work, while Sharon's duties didn't require her to be in to the hospital until later that day. Now that she had broken the block, Sharon couldn't keep her hands off Jim, and she kept reaching to rub him or hug him at the table. Her feelings about sex hadn't changed, but she wanted the joy of cuddling, touching her love's warm skin, an action for which gender didn't matter. Jim seemed happy to reciprocate.
Rick, after getting up to get his guests some milk, said, "I'm glad to see you two made up. Now, can I ask you why Jim looks like a woman? And how in the hell he got such huge real-looking breasts?"
Jim said, "They're not just real-looking, they're real. As to how . . . Sharon, can you show him?"
Sharon sighed and dug the ring out of her purse. She put it on and said, "Watch my eyes." Concentrating, she turned her eyes green, identical to the first change she had made with the ring, then back.
Rick's mouth dropped open. Sharon had never seen that happen before outside of cartoons, and she couldn't help but giggle. Rick said, "That's no trick, is it? But why did you choose to turn into a woman, Jim?"
Jim sighed. "I didn't. Let's say the ring has a few . . . bugs." Jim glossed over his gradual transformation into a woman, leaving out a few of the more embarrassing and private details, like Sharon's breast milk and how much trouble he was having adapting.
Rick listened, nodding at appropriate intervals, and then said, "Wow. That's quite a story. I'm assuming you still don't have any idea why this happened?"
"No, not really. It has something to do with the ring's magic, or least I'm assuming so. It doesn't seem likely I'd coincidentally start a magical transformation into a girl at the same time my girlfriend gets a magic ring."
Rick thought about that a moment, then said, "One of my girlfriends was a broker for the local branch of A.G. Edwards. We broke up, but before we did I remember her mentioning that one of the other brokers was into all sorts of magic. My girlfriend called her, 'The most superstitious broker I've ever met, and that's saying something.' Of course, my girlfriend was also scared of her.
"I can look her up and give you her number. I don't know if she can help, but it's worth a shot, right?"
Jim said, "Yeah, it is. Any chance is better than none."
Later that day, after they had gotten dressed and ready to leave, the three exchanged farewells. Jim and Rick shook hands, while Rick prevailed upon Sharon for a kiss on the cheek. Sharon laughed and let him. Rick said, "Good luck. And Jim, it's a good thing you're already involved, because otherwise you're too hot a woman for me not to hit on you."
Jim blushed, but he seemed to take it in light spirit; even Sharon didn't mind Rick's joke too much. Thus, they took off in their cars to their separate destinations in good humor.
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Thu Oct 09 11:31:09 2003
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