THE CRAZY PROPOSITION

Brett was still on the floor of the limo when Richard moved.

He'd been curled on his side in his white silk robe, shaking, his makeup ruined, his choker with slutty tramp digging into his throat, trying to disappear into the carpet while Richard straightened his suit and sipped his scotch like nothing had happened.

Brett thought it was over. For now. He thought he had a minute to breathe.

He was wrong.

Richard set his glass down in the holder with a soft click and looked down at Brett, his blue eyes — Lance's eyes — sweeping over the wreckage he'd made: the smeared lipstick, the trembling shoulders, the white push-up bra still holding up breasts that Brett no longer wanted, the garter belt and stockings, the six-inch Louboutins kicked half off.

"Get up," Richard said.

Brett flinched. He pushed himself up on shaking arms, his robe falling open, his knees wobbling in the heels. He couldn't look at Richard. He stared at the floor.

Richard leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his voice dropping to that low, intimate purr that made Brett's skin crawl.

"My turn, bitch."

Brett's head snapped up, confusion breaking through the shame for a second. "What?"

Richard smiled, slow and cruel and knowing. "You didn't think this was a one-way street, did you, pet? I paid for twenty-four hours. I intend to use all of you."

His eyes dropped deliberately to the white silk panties Brett wore under the garter belt, to the smooth, flat front Brett had maintained so carefully for Lance, even as the hormones left his system and everything started to feel wrong and foreign.

"Untuck," Richard ordered.

The word hit Brett like ice water.

His hands flew instinctively to cover himself, to protect the one last piece of privacy he had left. His breath stopped completely. The choker felt suddenly too tight.

"No," Brett whispered, his voice cracking, low and male and terrified. "No, please, I can't, I don't—"

"You can," Richard said, reaching out and catching Brett's wrist in a grip that was gentle and absolute. "And you will. Take it off. Show me what my son really married."

Brett shook his head frantically, tears spilling fresh down his ruined cheeks. "I'm not... I'm on... I haven't had my shots, it's all... it's wrong, it feels wrong, please don't make me—"

Richard's grip tightened just enough to hurt. "I said untuck."

Brett's whole body was shaking so hard his teeth chattered. This was the part he'd been most self-conscious about for weeks — since the estrogen ran out, since his mind started shifting back toward male, since his "girl parts," his breasts, started feeling like a costume. He'd been tucking every day out of habit, out of shame, out of a desperate need to still be Brielle for Lance, even as he stopped feeling like her.

And now Richard wanted him to undo it. To expose the most male part of him while he was dressed in white wedding lingerie and a collar that called him a slutty tramp.

It was the ultimate humiliation.

"Please," Brett begged, his voice breaking completely. "I'm begging you, Sir, don't—"

"Now," Richard said.

With hands that felt like they belonged to someone else, with sobs tearing out of his chest, Brett reached down with shaking fingers and hooked them into the waistband of the white silk panties.

He untucked.

The relief was instant and horrifying — the release of pressure, the return of his body to its natural state — and the shame was worse than anything Richard had done to him yet. He stood there in the middle of the limo, in his push-up bra and garter belt and stockings and Louboutins, exposed and male and completely broken, his face buried in his hands, his shoulders heaving.

He expected laughter. He expected disgust.

He did not expect what happened next.

Richard made a low sound in his throat — not cruel, not mocking, but almost... appreciative — and then, shockingly, he slid off the leather seat and onto his knees on the limo floor in front of Brett.

Brett froze, his hands dropping, his tear-filled eyes going wide with shock.

Richard looked up at him from his knees, his silver hair perfect, his expensive suit wrinkling, his blue eyes locked on Brett's face.

"My turn," Richard whispered again, and then he leaned forward.

Brett gasped — a sharp, broken sound of pure shock — as Richard's mouth found him.

It was warm. It was wet. It was reverent in a way nothing else Richard had done had been.

Brett's knees buckled. His hands flew to Richard's shoulders to steady himself, to push him away, he didn't know which. His head fell back, the choker pulling tight against his throat, a sob tearing out of him that sounded nothing like Brielle and everything like Brett.

"No," Brett whimpered, but his body betrayed him instantly, arching into the touch despite himself, despite the shame, despite the fact that this was his father-in-law on his knees for him in the back of a limo. "No, stop, I don't want— oh God—"

The hormones had been gone for six weeks. His mind had been going flat and male and distant. He hadn't wanted Lance like this in weeks, hadn't felt that pull, that heat. He'd started seeing his own breasts as foreign, his own body as wrong.

And now, with Richard's mouth on him, with Richard worshipping the very part of him he'd been most ashamed of, Brett felt something he hadn't felt in months.

He felt like a goddess.

And it terrified him more than anything else.

"Please," Brett sobbed, his fingers tangling in Richard's silver hair, his hips moving without permission, his white Louboutins slipping on the carpet. "Please, Sir, I can't, Lance, I—"

Richard didn't stop. If anything, he doubled down, his hands coming up to grip Brett's hips through the garter belt, holding him steady, taking him deeper, making a low, pleased sound that vibrated straight through Brett's entire shaking body.

Brett cried out — a raw, broken cry that was half sob, half moan — his head thrown back, his ruined makeup streaming down his face, his push-up bra heaving with each desperate breath.

He was supposed to hate this. He was supposed to be disgusted. This was his husband's father. This was betrayal. This was everything wrong.

So why did his body feel alive for the first time since Singapore?

"That's it," Richard murmured against his skin, his voice muffled and hot. "Let go, pet. Show me who you really are under all that lace."

Brett couldn't answer. He couldn't think. He could only feel — the white choker choking him, the garter belt digging in, the Louboutins pinching his feet, and Richard's mouth, relentless and skilled and claiming, undoing weeks of numbness and depression and dysphoria in a matter of minutes.

Tears poured down Brett's face, mixing with the ruined makeup, dripping onto the white silk robe.

He didn't know if he was crying from shame, or relief, or grief for the girl he was losing.

He only knew that when his hips thrusted violently and knees finally gave out completely and Richard caught him, easing him back onto the leather seat, Brett was shaking too hard to speak, his body spent and foreign and horrifyingly ecposed violated and euphoric bliss again.

Richard sat back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, his blue eyes glittering with triumph.

"There," he said softly, stroking Brett's trembling thigh over the white stocking. "Was that so bad, bitch?"

Brett curled into himself on the seat, pulling the silk robe tight around his shaking body, hiding his exposed self, hiding his face, sobbing silently into the leather.

He didn't answer.

He couldn't.

Because the most terrifying part wasn't what Richard had just done.

It was that, for the first time in weeks, Brett hadn't felt like a woman in a costume.

He'd felt like an irresistible goddess .