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Daisy's Girls. By Tanya H. Part One. Love. By the time Daisy revealed that when she looked at passing women she wasn't just admiring their hair, shoes and clothes, I'd already fallen hopelessly in love with her. Happily, I was laid back and open-minded enough, and secure enough in my own self-esteem, not to feel threatened - and she would have known that before she came out to me. After all, I knew something of her ex-boyfriends and that hadn't changed my feelings for her, so why would I be bothered that she'd had a couple of girlfriends? If anything it made her a little more exotic, for what man hasn't secretly, or overtly, wished his lover would embrace bisexuality? Daisy Scothern and I had been living together in a little terraced house along the Amber Valley, North of Derby for almost a year when she came out to me. I'd known her for just over three years and was so utterly happy to be hers that life before that chance meeting in a Bakewell bookshop seemed grey, unfocussed and indistinct. She was a little older than me, by seventeen months, and a little taller, long legged and athletic. With pale skin and shining black hair she'd almost been born to be Snow White, or a vampire. Instead she'd followed her dream, university grades and brain into aerospace engineering and then Rolls Royce where she did interesting things with jet engines. Her love for engineering often saw me led away to visit beam engines, steam trains, cold-war bombers and vintage cars where she would surprise crusty aficionados with her bright smile and technical knowledge. In contrast, I worked in sales for a Derby based stationery company and nurtured cosy fantasies about marrying this incredible woman before she saw through me and abandoned me for somebody more compatible. She disclosed the depth of her sexuality one evening when we were in a warm, sweaty and naked tangle under the bedclothes. Our conversation had got onto the subject of losing our virginities, something we hadn't talked about before; she politely invited me to go first. What I had thought was an interesting and exotic tale of being seduced by my best mate's older sister after being invited to join them at a villa in Portugal was knocked into the long grass by Daisy's quietly revealed account. No fumbled, uncertain exploration with some spotty lad for Daisy; no, hers had been lovingly taken by her best friend, Gemma, using Gemma's Mum's vibrator. As I'm sure you can imagine, despite being in a post-orgasmic sleepy state, barely stirred by my own revelation, the mental picture of Daisy and Gemma together had an immediate effect I could not hide from her. "I didn't think you'd be that interested," she murmured mischievously as her fingers started exploring what her words had inspired. "It sounds very ordinary." "I was going to mention that I'd already taken hers, but I'll let you get some sleep instead," she whispered, with an intimate lick around my ear. Her fingers became more insistent. "If it helps to talk..." "It was very intense," she murmured and her voice sounded a little thicker, a sure sign she was becoming aroused. "We had only planned for... you know, the actual penetration, but in the end, well..." she sighed happily, "We ended up making love, in her bedroom." By now her nipples had become enticingly hard and her pelvis rocked most happily against my thigh. We shared a long, intense kiss. "I think you must have enjoyed it," I said, when we had a moment for words. "She tasted beautiful." After that we were a little busy, but bit by bit over the next few weeks it emerged that Daisy and Gemma's coming together had blossomed into an intense romance. Until Gemma's parents had found out. They hadn't been so keen. Euan had been next, I knew about him, then there had been Rachel - a co-worker in a coffee shop, then Evie at uni, but nothing since - beyond more conventional, male lovers. Like ordinary me. "Do you miss them?" I asked one afternoon. We were playing footsie under a table in a Starbucks on the edge of town. One of the baristas had the most beautiful, round breasts and as a dutiful boyfriend I had pointed them out to Daisy - as if she hadn't noticed! It was a game we sometimes played, since she had come out, with only one rule - no staring! "Well, I do have my own." This was delivered with such wide-eyed innocence I beamed. Daisy's breasts were also beautiful, but they would have been if she had only one or if they had been tiny, or huge or floppy or anything in between. Daisy's breasts were beautiful because they were Daisy's. "But do you miss them?" She put her head on one side, thought for a moment. "Yes. I do." "Sometimes I miss them more than others." Having made our way home we were naked and sprawled over our bed, the curtains were open and the nets waved in a summery breeze. The sunlight and our long, slow lovemaking session kept me drowsy. Her tummy pillowed my head so I could look through her cleavage to her face. She softly tousled my hair. "Do you miss them more at the moment?" "A woman's body feels different under your hands, it's different to kiss a woman. Sometimes I miss those curves, that softness." She took a breath. "And the wetness." I smiled along her body for her, to let her know I was okay with that; because I was, and I understood. I loved her curves, her softness and I could still taste her wet. "You'd miss them too, wouldn't you?" I took her hand, squeezed it. "Of course." "And that doesn't mean I don't love you, or that I don't love your angles, and your hardness. And your wet." When Daisy said she loved me, I felt it from the warmth in her eyes, from her tone. Her love wrapped me when I came home to see her, or waved across a coffee shop when we might meet for lunch, or when she kissed me awake in the morning and said how much she'd missed me when she was sleeping. I learnt to recognise when she missed that softness. Always loving, always affectionate, sometimes her kisses and caresses wouldn't extend to lovemaking; even though I could see from her flushed cheeks and know from the point of her nipples how aroused she was. If we were somewhere public I might notice the way her eyes would discreetly follow some woman as she walked past. "Why don't you take a lover?" I asked her one morning. Her arms were around me, her breasts pressed to my back, her hair tickling my shoulders. This made porridge cooking slightly awkward, but I loved the feel of her there. "A mistress?" Amusement made her voice light. "I mean it. You should." "I couldn't. It wouldn't be right, I don't want anybody else." "It wouldn't be cheating. I can't give you what you need. I wouldn't mind, I want you to be happy." "I am happy, I have never been happier." Her hand wriggled its way into my dressing gown to emphasise the point. "But, there's this... itch and I can't scratch it for you. And I don't like to think of you..." "Itching?" "Needing." "Thinking of watching maybe?" Her fingers touched my cock, cool and gentle. "You would look beautiful with another girl. But, no. I wouldn't intrude. Besides, I have an imagination." Not that I needed it, right then. Her body pressed so intimately I could feel her nipples growing hard; and the way her hand moved! Our porridge would be ruined. I had to beat her back with the wooden spoon! "I'd be cool with it, as long as you didn't hide it from me," I said later. She drove me to work, my hand resting on her thigh - I enjoyed the feel of her muscles through her skirt as she worked the pedals. "I wouldn't be true to myself if I kept it hidden. And, besides... I need an emotional connection with my partner, I need to be in love with them." She turned from watching the road and gave me such a dazzling smile I fell in love a little more. A couple of nights later, I hope you're keeping up, we lay in bed together and I asked her about it - this longing. Her voice had been thick with arousal, and apology. She laid her hand on my swollen cock, but I knew her heart wasn't in it. I kissed her, lifted her hand from me, parted her legs gently and laid her fingers on her pussy. "Imagine it's her," I suggested. She kissed me, but I felt her fingers moving under mine and while she masturbated we spoke in low, soft voices about her imagined lover; the shape of her body, how she felt under Daisy's hands; how she tasted. How she moved as Daisy brought her closer and closer to her orgasm until her back arched and her free hand clenched mine and I knew she'd climaxed herself. Staring into the dark a moment, as her breathing steadied, I thought of what she had just been imagining, of where she wanted to go and felt utterly helpless. I kissed the tip of her nose, then stroked her damp brow. "I wish I could be a woman for you. Just once in a while, when you needed me to be." It must have been the right thing to say, to have struck the right emotional chord with her, for despite the way she must have been feeling she kissed me hard and long, wriggled her way under the covers and gave me the sweetest blowjob I'd ever had. We went out to dinner, a few weeks later; the 30th birthday for one of her work colleagues. I went in slacks, smart shoes and a shirt; Daisy wore a plain black dress - understated with a high neck, long sleeves and hemmed just above the knee. Her eyes sparkled, enhanced by the unusually careful application of eyeshadow and mascara, her lips gleamed ruby-red and her cheeks glowed all on their own. She wore high- heels too, which was unusual - she preferred the speed and agility flats afforded her, but moved well in stilettos and I was as pleased as any boyfriend to watch her slip her feet into them just before the taxi drew up. "You look good," I said as we headed down the garden steps, the click click click of her shoes delightfully loud around us. "You look more than good, you look amazing. Beautiful, the most beautiful girl ever." I'd have gone on some more, but we were at the taxi by then and she stopped me in mid-flow with a kiss. We held hands in the back of the taxi, she didn't say much, just gave me a sunshine smile every so often. I knew she was up to something and because I trusted her so much, I played along. Another clue came when we were at the restaurant table, I happened to let my hand fall on her thigh, quite a long way up and was surprised to feel a small, plastic nub through her dress. Another glittering smile. Through the material I explored a slender ribbon above that nub and though I had never once seen a real woman wearing stockings and suspenders I knew Daisy hadn't pulled on her habitual tights that evening. "This is a lovely treat," I murmured as her dress slipped to the floor later on. With an enigmatic look, still in her gorgeous heels, she stepped from the dress and let me look at her. The black lace of her bra, panties and suspender belt contrasted wonderfully with her cream skin, while the sheer, black nylon shading her legs seductively called my fingertips. "It's not just for you," she said. She put her hands on her hips and looked at me from under her long lashes. "Sometimes I like to feel conventionally feminine, to feel sexy." She ran her nail tips along her thigh, traced the arched lines of her stocking tops, then the ribbon connecting them to her suspender belt. "These feel lovely to wear." It became one of those evenings, those nights that never seems to end. When the stars were shining through the open curtains and even the noise from the bypass seemed gentle we lay entangled with the covers thrown aside. Her thigh lay over my belly and I was still able to enjoy the sensual interface of sheer nylon between her skin and mine. I suppose I was a little drowsy - the late hours, the wine we'd shared, the glorious sex - but Daisy remained alert; her heart raced, her breathing quick and even through my sleepiness I wondered what animated her. She must have been building her courage, for she broke the quiet that had fallen between us and asked, "Did you mean it?" "Mean what?" I mumbled. "When you said you'd be a woman for me?" "Of course." I'd never said a word to her I hadn't meant. "I'd do anything for you." She kissed me. "I know you would. But anything is a big word and when you said you'd be a woman for me, once in a while, it's an easy thing to say because you couldn't actually do it, could you?" Which was a strange turn for the conversation to take, some of my sleepiness slipped away and when I turned her eyes shone in the moonlight. "If it could be done, would you?" "Daisy?" "I know it's a lot to ask, but you know how much it would mean to me." "But it can't be done." "What if it could?" She rolled away from me and the silver light made her magical; the contrasting shades of her hair, her stockings and skin reminded me of moonbeams and midnight shadows. For a moment she fumbled in her bedside cabinet, then turned back with lips parted and a gold ring gleaming in the palm of her outstretched hand. Her nipples stood stiff and hard. "If you put this on, you'll be a girl. Temporarily." "Daisy? This is a little mad." "I'll show you." With a smile she extended her finger and slipped on the ring. For a moment nothing happened and I wondered how I was going to manage the girl I loved falling into some sex-change delusion. Then she seemed to shift, her body became indistinct - as though it was downloading through a difficult interface. Like some movie's special effect I saw her hair disappearing, as though being reeled back into her scalp. In a less than the time it took for me to start breathing again I watched her lovely breasts flatten, her body lost its curves and from between her slightly parted thighs, from those folds I'd been enjoying so much such a short time before, she rapidly extruded a limp fleshy tube that was quickly followed by a well filled and darkly haired sack. A man sat on the bed beside me, naked but for an incongruous suspender belt and sheer black stockings. At the shock that must have been clear on my face he showed his teeth in a grin that was pure, masculinised Daisy. "Told you." His voice was deeper, though still recognisably hers. Well defined muscled patterned her arms and chest, a fine layer of body hair covered her. "What do you think?" "Daisy... I" She, he reached for my hand and I recoiled from the touch. "Too male? Sorry. Look." As I stared she took that ring from her finger, held it between thumb and forefinger a moment showing me it was empty, like a magician performing a trick, before putting it back on. Shining black tresses slithered down around her shoulders, her nipples darkened and spread before her chest bulged and reformed breasts. That penis she'd grown rapidly retracted. The scrotum followed and her labia reformed leaving her as female and Daisy and beautiful as ever I'd known her. "That's mad!" "Brilliant, isn't it?" That slight, innocent looking gold ring was offered. "Your turn." "It's mad! How? I mean, where? Where did you get it?" "Aunt Roisin." She shrugged as if that were enough explanation. "She knows stuff. It's perfectly fine, no side effects." She spread her legs and made sure I could see how female she was, but the sight of that penis growing from her haunted my mind's eye. "Trust me." And because it was her asking and because I loved her more than anything in the world I took the ring from her fingers, it was warm to the touch, held her eyes a moment, then I put it on. For a moment I felt like I'd stepped from the dark into sunshine. My skin was bathed in balmy warmth. Nothing's happening, I thought. I drew breath, held it, then the muscles around my belly clenched. I experienced the most indescribable sensation as my pelvis spread, as new bone formed and pushed my hips apart. Even that wasn't as strange as the sensation of my scalp bubbling as a wave of satin flowed from it to coat my shoulders and tickle between my shoulder blades. That wasn't as wild as the feeling that each breath I took was building in my pectorals so they bloomed and swelled - and the weight of them as they grew! But even sudden breasts couldn't compare with the madness of my very own cock being drawn into me, or the lively squirming of my testicles as they were relentlessly towed inside. As they withdrew, and I felt every millimetre of their movement, I became acutely aware of the opening they left behind. When I looked down there, past the impossible breasts, and saw the new lips and mysteries a single word formed and popped out before I could stop it. "I'm sure it's a beautiful vagina," Daisy agreed. Her wide eyes swept over my body, her nipples were still so hard even her aureoles had crinkled "That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.". "Daisy?" My voice flowed like chocolate, tight in my throat. I looked down again; breasts still obstructed my view, my thighs were wider, softer. Hair spilled into my periphery, I pushed it away only vaguely aware of its weight from my scalp amongst the other sensations crowding me. She touched my hand, this time I didn't try to pull away. "It's okay. Look, you can change back, just - " I clenched my fist, so she couldn't take off the ring. "I said I trusted you, and I do." I tried to steady my breathing, somewhere under all that breast my heart pounded. My eyes went to hers, then back to my body - my body! How could all this womanliness be mine? It was though, I could feel it - goosebumps rising with the cool over my practically hairless skin. The crinckley, aching sensation of my own nipples starting to rouse - as though they had recovered from the shock of their own transformation, and the soft beds they were now laid upon, to remember what they were capable of. "Is this... am I?" I tried a smile, for her; this was all for Daisy. "Will I do?" A second later I'd been wrapped in her arms, felt her breath on my cheek, her breasts pressed into mine. I returned the embrace, ran my hands over her back. Soft kisses laid on my shoulder, my neck and tingled my skin. "Daisy. Just a minute, sorry. Give me a moment. I need to look, I need to see." She pulled away, cheeks glowing. Her breasts still touched mine. A nod. "Of course, sorry. It must be -" "It is! I just want to see." She took my hand, rose smoothly from my bed and made me follow. I stumbled, trying to take steps with my legs spread, like I'd wet myself, being so unused to my thighs brushing together. And my boobs! Even in those few paces from bed to wardrobe, where Daisy had the full- length mirror, they swayed and swung like they were tidal and following the moon. I threw an arm across them, but there was much too much breast for a single, slender, female arm like mine. "There," she said. "What do you think?" A woman stared at me from the mirror. Thick waves of auburn hair spilled over her left shoulder, curling and gleaming in the soft light. It looked a shade deeper and several feet longer than I'd been used to, but I'd always kept it short - scarring from the days at school when they'd relentlessly taken the piss out of its colour. Her face resembled mine, only softer - smoother; those cheeks had dimples, her eyes framed by longer lashes, but the blue eyes so wide and surprised were familiar. A graceful neck, unbroken by the bulge of an Adam's Apple led to her impossible, milk white chest. When you're male, a relatively fit and squared away male, nothing dangles or sways or hangs - apart from the obvious, but these breasts! They sat heavy and round, swollen out from a formerly flat chest. I turned sideways to the mirror, looking at them in profile. "You must be at least a D cup. How do they feel?" Shaking my head made all that hair tumble and shift, the aftershocks of even that slight movement quivered through those boobs. "I don't know what to say." My tummy looked slightly convex, soft - no sign of abs, though when I moved, turning to see myself from a different angle, I could feel the tight control that meant I had some muscles under those smooth, female lines. My hips were curved, my bum full and round while on the front there was just a neat triangle of copper curls and below them - just the point where my soft thighs met. "Do you like it?" I whispered. Turning my back on the mirror I faced Daisy's clear excitement and her radiance sealed the deal for me. That ring glinted from my finger - all was well, this was for her. "Do you like it?" "You're beautiful." I'd never been called that before, but I'd never had breasts before - never felt that surreal motion of my body being made female. "How?" "The ring." "Mad!" "Course it is. Mad, but true." "And Aunt Roisin gave it to you?" "Lent, I have to give it back?" "When." I looked over my shoulder, drawn to the woman in the mirror - her hourglass figure and long, well-proportioned legs. "She didn't say." "Tomorrow? Next week?" Daisy shrugged. "She was vague about that." "Aunt Roisin?" A coy shrug. "She knows stuff, does stuff - I don't know the details." Another glance at the mirror, hair spilled across my face. Daisy reached forward and brushed it clear. She smiled, I stepped forward and my breasts made pillows for hers; resting my hands on my hips I kissed her. Next morning I woke, still a woman, on my back with Daisy's arm over my chest and one of her hands laid on my left breast. She snored very daintily and I wondered what sort of picture we made, in bed together with our hair mingled over the pillows. Tingles grew in my breasts as soft images from last night came back to me; Daisy's lips softly circling my stiff nipple, the contrast between her burgundy nails and my breasts' curves. My hips started rocking sleepily, I became pleasantly aware of a pulse in my labia as I daydreamed of her kisses over my skin, the silky tickle of her hair on my inner thighs after I spread them for her; the warm whisper of her breath over my slippery lips, the first kiss there and the gasp bursting from me as her tongue tip parted those swollen labia and pressed inside me. "You taste gorgeous," she'd announced, breathlessly a few minutes later. Then she'd moved to lay atop me and kissed my mouth so I could taste for myself from her tongue. I'd never known such a hot, exciting and intimate feeling as when Daisy had slipped her longest finger into me. I'd lifted myself onto my elbows, so my eyes could chart the beautiful sensation's source until it had all disappeared into my aching vagina. "If you liked that, you'll love this," she whispered impishly a minute or two later, when she'd drawn out her fingers and licked them clean as I sighed in disappointment. But I only had to endure the empty ache inside for a moment more before I shivered at another, harder touch to my pussy. With wide eyes I watched her slowly press her vibrator deep inside me. Perhaps I shouldn't have loved it, to be penetrated like that, but when you have the body for it and your body wants it... Then she switched it on! "Are you thinking of last night?" she said, sleepily and kissed my ear. "Did anything happen last night?" "Only your nipple has grown quite hard in the last minute or so and I can feel your hips moving, ever so slightly." "Coincidence?" "You screamed last night!" "Your fault!" I turned to kiss her, cheeks warming at the thought of the scream I hadn't been able to to control and the orgasm that had driven it. Words couldn't come anywhere close. Her fingertips started moving lazily across my skin. "I want to make you scream again." I parted my legs slightly as her fingers pressed between my thighs. "What about the neighbours?" "I don't really want to share you with them at the moment, maybe later." Which made me laugh. Defeated, accepting I was Daisy's at that moment I rolled into her arms and kissed her. Afterwards we made love in the shower, though the hot water sluicing over my near hairless body felt like love making all by itself. She pouted when I suggested using the ring to turn myself back, but did let me cover up with my dressing gown while we sat down for breakfast. "What will we do today?" I wondered, around toast and jam. "What we'd planned," she said. "A walk along the river, lunch in Rowsley." "You'd better let me have the ring back." "Be my girlfriend for the day. Please. You can have your winkie back later." Who could resist a smile so dazzling? I couldn't, but in case you thought I might have just rolled over without a fight I did try a sorrowful pout and a very over-dramatic, "But, darling; I have literally nothing to wear." Wrong. She presented me with a pair of sleek, black running skins spangled with sprays of pink and purple dots, a loose chambray blouse which just covered my bum and hips, and a navy blue gilet in case it turned chilly. In this adopted shape my feet had shrunk to a size four, like hers, which made it easy to borrow a pair of her lightweight walking boots. While I looked unmistakably female, the outfit wasn't girly though the panties she handed over were very delicate and didn't cover very much. I let her brush my hair into a long, wavy ponytail - to match hers - but baulked at lipstick, until she feigned a sulk and fluttered her eyelashes. I don't want you to think I was under the thumb, but she sparkled so happily through the process of finding me some clothes and making me into her girlfriend I didn't want to spoil it for her. And the long, slow, very sensual kiss we shared afterwards made the lipstick worthwhile. The only thing she couldn't fit me out with from her wardrobe was a bra. Did I mention my boobs were bigger than hers? I may have done several times until the moment I had to walk down the steps to our car park, our house being built on the side of our hill, and discovered why chesty girls shouldn't go out braless. "Not laughing now, are you, princess?" "Ha, bloody ha," I said, crossing my arms defensively under my breasts - like that contained their movement. I swear she found every bump and kink in the road surface between our house and the Tesco superstore a couple of miles away. I waited in the car and laughed out loud to see her strolling out five minutes later with a wide grin and twirling a scarlet bra casually by one shoulder strap. A few miles down the road Daisy found a secluded layby where I could capture my breasts while she kept watch. "Better?" she asked when I'd finished making myself decent. I shimmied my shoulders experimentally, feeling much better packaged. "Much better, thanks." "You'll be desperate to get it off by the time we get home," she promised. Pushing out my chest I gave her a superior smile. "It's still better than having to shave every day." That got me a punch! Then she flashed an impish grin. "Whatever song comes on first on the radio is going to inspire a name for you today, because I am not going through the day calling you Connor." "This could go spectacularly wrong," I said as her finger went for the radio's on button. "I hope it's Beyonce, or Rhianna. Oh my god, it could be Tiffany!" "Madonna?" We both listened intently. A man was singing, "I miss the rains down in Africa," which says a lot about the crap radio station Daisy liked in her car. "Perfect," she said, grinning. "Dorothy." "Dorothy! Do I look like I'm 78! And how do you get there from Toto? Oh... very clever, I get it." "I guess we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto," she said and laughed."Come on Dot, let's go." "No, no, no, no! Not Dot, at least give me the full worth of this ancient, musty name, but not something as insignificant as a dot." She lent across the car and kissed me. "How about Dotty?" "To think I did this for you!" Playing girlfriend for the day wasn't so bad - once I got used to wider hips and a wobblier chest, even the length of ponytail bouncing on the back of my head became ordinary. I had several heart-stopping moments of imposter syndrome when I either caught my reflection and saw a slightly startled red-head looking back at me, noticed the shape of my long legs in Daisy's leggings or bumped something into my chest. People looked at me differently, Daisy said I'd get used to it, but it didn't get to me the way it probably bothered her because I didn't feel it the way a woman would. That Daisy and I were obviously close attracted some attention - she couldn't help staring, holding my hand, grinning for no reason and generally trying to maintain some kind of body contact with me. "They think we're lesbians," she whispered into my ear after the scandalised look one matured couple gave us on the train. We'd parked at Matlock and were riding behind the steam train on the preserved railway to Rowsley - Daisy the engineer loved to ride behind the old trains. I think if work had left her more spare time she'd have pulled on some overalls and volunteered to keep the steam engines running. "We are lesbians," I reminded her softly, and kissed her mouth. You'd have thought from the disapproval the woman radiated that a genteel, sedate journey in a 1950s carriage behind an even older tank engine meant we had to adhere to 1950s sensibilities. I don't think the prude's husband really minded; though his eyeballs were at risk of drying out. From Rowsley station we ambled hand in hand to the village for a superb lunch in an old-world hotel that cooked to a very modern vegetarian menu. Then we walked off the dessert all the way back to Matlock pausing to throw sticks in the Derwent, enjoy some very beautiful kisses and a very discreet, but intense and urgent session of mutual fingering under a wide, oak tree. Her fingers never tasted sweeter. Then back home, to undress each other slowly, Getting the bra off did feel good, but only because it allowed her gentle lips unrestricted access to my swollen nipples. While I still trembled and tried to catch my breath after another soul-splitting orgasm, Daisy swiftly slipped the ring back onto my finger and went on to show she hadn't forgotten the tricks and teases she knew with mouth, hands, nipples and hair. As much as I had loved being her girlfriend, and the ecstacy of being her lesbian lover, to see her spread her legs and straddle me, to feel her velvet, slippery heat slide down over me and watch her lithe body as she rode me, felt so much more natural. "Which do you prefer? Boy me or girl me?" I asked as we lay, tangled together watching the moon rise through the open curtains. "There is no distinction," she said, without a moment's consideration. "You're just you and always beautiful." A good way to end the day. Part 2 - Curiosity. When I went to university, because I couldn't think of anything better to do after leaving school, my mum waited a week or two, making sure I wasn't coming back, and then casually phoned me to tell me her plans for selling up and travelling. Apparently something she'd always wanted to do, but hadn't felt able to with a child to care for. She'd always been an aloof woman, not very tactile or demonstrative of the love a mother ought to have for her son, passively showing me the way through life with nudges and hints rather than clear direction. A very different woman to Daisy. Don't get me wrong, I wanted for nothing during my school days and I like to feel I turned out reasonably well, but by the time Daisy and I tried that ring for the first time I hadn't seen my mother for three years and our contact came via Facebook and emails. Dad was a concept I had no knowledge of; Mum would never speak of mine or offer any detail of how they'd met or lived together. As I grew older I came to realise that she probably couldn't remember him herself, some sex she'd decided on when drunk or stoned whose consequence had lasted far beyond expectation. Other people might have been angry or resentful about such a father. Not me, what I got from Mum, aside from red hair and pale skin, was a laid-back outlook on life; things happen for a reason and you just have to make the best of them. Certainly the random, uninspired turns of my life had ultimately led to Daisy's heart and to find yourself living in that warm place was a fine endorsement of your life choices. Mum did say something insightful in one of the last emails we exchanged when she said, 'you must be doing something right, be a good man with a good heart to have inspired love from somebody like Daisy.' She'd never met her, but that didn't matter - she was right. Daisy enjoyed a straggling, well spread family, with a strong Irish connection which meant there were Aunts, once or twice removed, with names like Roisin and Sinead. Her parents were stiff, beige kind of people who thought their daughter too good for a photocopier paper salesman. I did my best to show I was a better person than my job when they came to visit or we made the journey South to the family home in Dorset so they gradually warmed to me, but I never considered myself close to them. What I did feel for them was a warm, badly defined fondness that they had brought up such a fantastic woman. Without them I'd have been living my ambling, self-contained sort of life and I would never have experienced a magic ring changing me into a woman. Without really speaking about it we left the ring alone for a few days. Maybe Daisy thought she'd pushed me far enough and felt her itch to be sufficiently, intensely and wonderfully scratched, while I didn't like to say anything in case she thought it a bit weird that I had enjoyed playing Dorothy. Because I had enjoyed it, not just the lovemaking - amazing as it had been - but also the feeling of standing out a little, of the pleasant, exotic, lesbian feeling of being slightly at odds with society. You try being a sales rep for a stationary company and you'll understand how stumulating a little non-conforming can be. The Wednesday after that first weekend Daisy phoned to say she was going to be late. Her voice hung with weariness as she casually stated that a containment failure in a deliberate blade out test had gone wrong. "That sounds like something C Montgomery Scott would come up with to explain why the USS Enterprise wasn't doing what Captain James T Kirk needed it to," I said, we both enjoyed science fiction, and she laughed, tiredly. Promising to be home by eight thirty she hung up. I decided to cook her favourite tea, have some red wine breathing and meet her with glowing candles while soft music filled the kitchen. After stepping from the shower I decided to add a little more to lift her evening and slipped on the ring, waved at my naked and glowing reflection on the mirror and, like any self-respecting woman setting up for a date night, wondered what to wear. At least I had a bra of my own, I even managed to fight my way into it without too much contortions - though I did get my hair tangled in the clasp somehow. A pair of plain, black microfibre knickers felt very pleasant over the bum and then after standing before her wardrobe with my head on one side I picked a plain, knee-length, dark blue jersey dress with short sleeves and a respectable neckline Daisy always looked good in. There followed a few moments wondering about the ethics of borrowing some of Daisy's clothes before I wriggled my way into the dress. Was I somehow crossdressing? Was it furtive to be putting on her clothes? No. She would love it. I examined myself from all angles - wondered if the clingy fabric made my bum look big - and took myself off to the kitchen to get dinner on. Having never really considered the practicalities or otherwise of women's clothing I was surprised by how the narrow dress felt stretching around my thighs and constraining my steps. After the first part of preparing dinner, a quorn chilli with rice, tortilla and guacamole, I realised long hair falling around my face wasn't ideal so I fashioned a ponytail, sang along to the music and by the time I heard Daisy at the door I had practically forgotten my altered appearance. "Something smells good," she called from the hallway, no doubt taking off her boots. Then, "Wow! That's a nice surprise, you look great." "This?" I said carelessly, dismissing her dress - which I had covered with an apron - just something I threw together." "I missed you," she sighed, practically throwing herself at me then hanging from my arms. A nervous part of me had wondered if she might have been extra pleased to see Dorothy, but the more rational part recognised this was often how we came together at the end of a long, working day. I did enjoy the feel of her body pressing into my curves though. And the light kisses along my neck. Then I chased her upstairs to grab a shower and throw on her pyjamas while I finished making dinner. No sexual fireworks that evening, not that I expected anything given her weariness, but on the sofa a little later on she fell asleep happily, some movie still playing softly to itself on the TV and one of her hands laid intimately on my inner thigh, just under the dress. "Something very tingly about your fingers just under the hem of somebody you love," she'd murmured, just before dozing off. To be honest, I found it quite tingly to have a lover's hand just under my hem, but I waited until I'd helped her upstairs to bed and her soft, slow breathing told me sleep had taken her before I let my fingers into my tingly spot. For all the screaming of my last orgasms as a woman, this time I brought myself to a wonderful climax with hardly any noise beyond a little heavy breathing. "Was it good?" a little voice whispered as I was about to lick my fingers clean. I may have twitched a little, in surprise. "Very pleasant. I thought you were asleep." She rolled onto her back and parted her legs, guiding my hand to where she wanted it. "Now you'll have to do me." So I did. Part 3 - Confidence. Previously on Daisy's Girls... Did I tell you how much I loved her? How the sheer joy of being Daisy's best friend in the world or the keeper of her secrets, her lover - both man and woman - made even the most mundane, shades of grey day at work more than bearable? Have you ever felt love like that? If you have you'll know how I could nod my encouragement when Daisy held that magic ring over her own finger again. Like before, when she had first demonstrated the ring's potential, I saw her body reform; that beautiful, female shape blended and reformed into lean and haired, her labia fused and bulged with ovaries becoming testicles and her sweet clitoris pushed out and blossomed along her thigh. Perhaps the time I'd spent female had changed me; hours of sapphic lovemaking or walking the dales in borrowed leggings, making my fingers deft enough to braid our hair or paint her toenails, drinking coffee with a ponytail or going to exercise classes in leotards and tights had affected my hardwiring; when I saw her turn man it didn't bother me the way it had that first time. Perhaps because I could still see Daisy in her eyes and her mouth's gestures; I felt Daisy when that man reached out and touched my knee, then bent forward so he could kiss me. Was I a man or woman myself at that point? It's hard to remember, I'd changed so often, but I kissed him back then watched as he explored the reshaped contours of his body, always wearing an enigmatic, cautious smile and often looking to me for reassurance. His grin widened as his fingers teased life into his cock. So too did his eyes as it grew harder and harder, a little bit longer and thicker than my own if I'm honest, though he never teased me the way I teased about my breasts being bigger. The way his eyes crinkled with delight as he started caressing what he'd just made! I looked down, I couldn't help it and watched for a moment thinking I should turn away, give Daisy his privacy for this moment of discovery, but I didn't. When I felt my own arousal stir, so I must have been male, discomfort chilled me slightly - was the sight of another man enjoying his cock really going to make me hard? Even if the man was Daisy and he looked so happy to be experiencing a hand job from the other side? "My turn?" I said, reaching over to him. "Really?" Daisy's eyebrows arched and he glanced down at his erection. "The ring!" He laughed, slipped it from his finger and handed it to me. Why should it feel easier to be a woman aroused at the sight of her man enjoying himself? Were there still ghosts of the all-man me still flitting around? My body flowed into female, my nipples stiffened and heat grew inside as his hand moved confidently along his length. Shifting my weight on the bed, I parted my thighs and started softly caressing my skin, suggestively - the way he'd enjoy. "Are we really doing this?" he asked, eyes shining, watching me cupping my breasts. It was hard to be sure what we were doing, or whether we could go back to how we were once the ring was returned. I enjoyed my breasts though; almost as much as Daisy clearly enjoyed himself until the moment came when his face crunched comically, the muscles stood out on his neck and he climaxed - spectacularly! A milky white rope of his cum landed warm on my knee, most of the rest went on him or the bedding, and I stared with surprise at how he'd marked me. "Oops," he said. Then, "Wow." His cum started to run down over my skin, cooling as it went and knew nothing could be the same between us, that we'd never go back to being just Daisy and Connor. I wasn't sure if I was a man or a woman at that moment, but I knew I loved Daisy and what we'd become was something incredible. Slowly, very slowly I touched a fingertip to the little ribbon of cum on my skin, a tiny droplet stuck to my finger and I lifted that droplet to my lips and tasted it while Daisy's eyes never left me. "That wow is nothing," I whispered, my voice thick with arousal. Laying back along the bed, I spread my legs and reached for him. Kisses pressed into my mouth, his weight pushed me to the mattress and he as though he'd done this a hundred times, he quickly found the hottest, slipperiest part of me. "Dorothy, are you sure?" Without the words to reply, I pushed my hips forwards, finding his wet tip with my hot lips. Daisy had been there before, but not like this. With both hands on his firm bum I slowly, but firmly pulled him down and inside, not stopping until I'd engulfed him. He fit me perfectly. "Wow!" said Daisy. "Told you," I agreed. I'd taken her fingers and vibrator like this, but the organic, living heat of his erection felt much better. Experimentally, I clenched my pussy around him and he grinned. "I've always enjoyed doing that to you," he said. "And I love it when you do," giving him another friendly, intimate squeeze. "Now, don't just lay there. It's going to get better," I promised. Our love making went to another level in the month or so that followed that exploration of what it felt to be a woman with her man. In a long, moonlit evening into night into morning we might change our bodies four or five times and broadened ourselves as we went. Girl with girl, girl with boy, boy with girl or even boy with boy. I surprised myself with how open I became with my sexuality, I'd never had so much as a fantasy about sex with a man before, but I found myself loving Daisy's cock the way I loved her breasts, or her pretty pussy. I did have a moment of discord at the first moment my tongue tentatively tested the tip of her cock; was I really going to do this? Daisy seemed keen, from the way she looked down on me as I knelt between her thighs. "I'd consider it a personal favour if you did?" she whispered and stroked my hair. So I smiled and pressed a tiny kiss to the very tip, leaving a smeared lipstick print - date night, and she liked kissing me when we both wore lipstick and I enjoyed kissing her when we both wore lipstick. Being a little girly was surprisingly sensual. How about giving her a blow job while my lips were smoothed with her lipstick? The contradictions in this new world we'd made were breathtaking. So I parted those lips and took her a little deeper, swirling my tongue around her head and looking up as I did, curious about her reaction. Or should I say his? His lips parted slightly and I heard his breath hiss sharply as my tongue's caresses became more urgent. The shape felt intriguing in my mouth, with its curves and ridge. Was I a man or a woman at that moment, did I have a woman or a man so intimately in my mouth? Should I be so curious, or so detached? I'd crossed that line a few nights ago when I'd touched his erection, when I'd invited him between my wide open legs and inside my magical body. Anyway, this was for Daisy, so she could fully understand what it felt like to be a man with his lover. How many times had she done this for me? What if she didn't enjoy it, had done it from a sense of duty or love for me? His fingers brushed my ear, the lines of my cheek and I tried to smile, to show my contentment at doing this for her. Absently I wondered what I looked like doing this, taking her erection slightly deeper into my mouth. How many times had I looked at images of some woman sucking a cock and thought about how erotic, how sexy (how dirty) she looked? Did I look eroticsexydirty? How would I feel to see a picture of Girl- Connor giving a blow job to Boy-Daisy? Stop thinking now, Dorothy. Do it for Daisy, all the way - as deep as you can. I shivered when she touched the back of my throat and I became suddenly aware of the dull, wet pulse in my swollen labia. Not just because she'd made me cum with her lips on them not so long ago, my inner thighs were still slick, because - dare I admit it? I was enjoying it. What joy had I been missing all my boring, straight adult life up until then? Because when you've been a woman, when you've kissed a man, spread your legs for a man, happily knelt before him and felt the salt splash of his excitement across your tongue, you can't box that away when you're a man again. I'd be at work, out and about doing some errands, whatever, and find myself looking at some bloke, a colleague, barista, checkout operator, and idly fantasising about what I might enjoy with him - as a man or a woman. "I think this ring has made me bi," I said to Daisy one evening, towards the end. She laughed, a soft comfortable and loving laugh of one who had always known this about herself. "You've probably alway been like that, you just haven't let yourself feel it," she suggested. Which felt like a cool way of looking at my sexuality. "What if I get that itch you used to get, when the ring's gone?" "I'm sure Aunt Roisin will let us borrow it again," she said, and I certainly hoped that would be true. Wearing the ring, being Dorothy would never leave me, I knew that. Part 3 - Lust. Everything must come to an end. After that wild, unconventional month the ring had to go back to Aunt Roisin, for whatever off-the-wall purpose she needed it for. Before our return to plain, conventional Daisy and Connor we decided on a weekend away at a large, well appointed hotel on the edge of the Malvern Hills. We'd always fancied the Malverns, partly because of good walking in the area, but we chose it for that particular weekend because it lay an easy train journey from Derby. This had become an essential planning criteria as neither of us had a driving licence or car insurance for our alter-egos of Dorothy and Luke. The ring would be left at home for this expedition. "What if we're burgled or the house burns down while we're away?" I said, in the last moments on the Friday afternoon when the ring was about to do its thing again. I'd won the coin-toss, so I was going first and even if I was a little nervous about leaving the ring behind I was looking forward to the weight of those beautiful breasts on my chest again. "It won't," she said. "It might." "Stop fussing and get yourself changed, the taxi will be here in an hour!" So I stopped fussing and got changed, then watched as she flowed into a male shape and kissed him. For several minutes we kissed passionately, and almost succumbed to a quickie there and then. Good sense prevailed - we had a weekend of hotel sex to look forward to - so we were composed and ready when the taxi drew up to take us to Derby station. By then I was used to being in public as a woman, and the attention - sometimes unwelcome - that a well-busted, pretty red-head could attract. With years of social conditioning to tell her such overt objectification was a woman's place, Daisy had learnt to ignore it. I developed a haughty sneer and dismissive tilt to my head while appraising my admirer, before turning away to make it clear they were nothing to me. Sometimes I laughed and whispered to Daisy, as though belittling them. One or two got angry, most coloured up and turned away. Happily there wasn't much of that on the trip to Great Malvern, but the elderly, male receptionist at the hotel insisted on talking to Luke, even though I had made the bookings in Dorothy's name, as though a mere woman wouldn't be able to handle the complexities of checking in. The room was large, heavily furnished and carried a weighty air of old- world opulence. Within minutes of getting in there our bags had been thrown down, clothes were scattered about and we were energetically enjoying each other on the couch. Then the bed, the floor, in the shower and on the coffee table - which creaked alarmingly, but thankfully didn't break. Glowing with exertion and happily holding hands we went down to the bar for something to eat and a beer. After sharing a bottle of wine in the bar we used the bed in a more sedate fashion and fell asleep with Luke playing the little spoon. There were moments of dislocation the following day, after we'd slept late, had a whopping breakfast and then turned out for a stiff hike up the Worcestershire Beacon to admire the stunning views. Every so often I would find myself confused by the shifting boobs in front of me when I jumped down from a stile, or the strangeness of finding myself holding hands with a man who looked very much like Daisy. However, when we found a secluded spot under some trees and Luke's hands rose confidently under my top to cup, lift and caress my breasts I sighed happily and thought about all the ways I would miss them. Saturday evening we had a table booked in the hotel restaurant, which was slightly above our usual levels of finery and we dressed to impress - each other, if nobody else. For Luke I had chosen a simple dark red shirt, leaving it open at the neck - as I thought ties were stuffy, along with dark slacks and smart shoes. He laughed at the ease of getting ready and then turned his attention to me. As much as I had gone full girl to go out with Daisy at various points of our gender-swapping time together and while I had worn that dress to greet her when she came home from work exhausted that day, I'd never really gone for the full woman dressing thing. Tonight would be the night. It might have made an unusual sight to have a woman being attentively dressed, made-up and fussed over by a man, but it couldn't have happened any other way as I didn't have a clue what I was doing. It felt unusual too; I'd always been self-reliant and to have somebody doing so much for me dropped way outside my usual experience. But as usual, I let Daisy have her way while she dressed my long hair into a big, high bun in a soft, slightly messy, almost Edwardian style. Watching him unbox his travelling makeup kit I expected a lengthy session, with me sitting perfectly still, while he worked some magic with the assortment of brushes, powders, pencils and gloss. Instead all I suffered was a subtle smear of russet lipstick. "Less is more," he announced, examining my face critically. "It's all you need." "I'm a fish-belly white ginger!" "Makeup would be wasted on skin that smooth," he said, closing the discussion. A dress I had never seen before was produced, with a flourish. I stared for a moment, thinking about how the stars had aligned in some peculiar sequence so that I, Connor Bradley, could be contemplating going downstairs for an upmarket dinner wearing a dress like that. But I had the waist and curved hips for its straight styling, the height to carry off its calf-length hem and the full, round breasts to fill the dress's bodice and make its scoop neck interesting. Most of all, my long, sleek legs were going to look superb glimpsed through the dress's bold, thigh-high front split. "I've never seen you wearing this," I said, dropping my dressing gown, the cool evening air teasing my nipples into points. "I've had it for ages," said Luke. "I never had the chance to try it on before, and I don't think I have the boobs for it." "Not now you haven't!" Bra and panties were nothing new to me by then, though these were a matching set of satin and lace, black to contrast with my milky skin. I raised my eyebrows when Luke reached into our overnight back and produced a black, lace-trimmed suspender belt - the one she'd worn on that first night with the ring. "Really?" "This place is much too sophisticated for bare legs." "I'm going to be much too ham-fisted for those kind of stockings," I said when she produced the stockings - the packaging suggested they'd be as delicate as cobwebs. "You'll be fine," she assured smoothly, unwrapping them so the gossamer fine, black nylons draped over her hands. "Your legs will thank you for the chance to try something like these beauties on them." Watching a woman draw a pair of sheer stockings over her legs is one of those unicorn-like images that seems to have faded from modern experience; to be a man with a woman's body carefully easing your toes into expensive black nylon is something else. By then I was well past the, 'wow, am I really doing this,' stage of my development as Dorothy; wearing stockings wasn't quite the mental leap of swallowing your lover's cum, but there was something fundamentally feminine about shading my legs black and fiddling the suspender belt's clips into the stocking's tops. "I should have painted your toenails," Luke said as I fastened the second stocking. I wriggled my nylon shrouded toes at him, "Small steps." "Your feet would look really sexy with some glossy red nails." "I had no idea feet were your thing," I said experimentally rubbing my legs together. The slippery, nylon enhancement to the movement was pretty special, so I did it again. "Neither did I until just now." LIfting one of my almost sexy feet, I pressed it to the interesting place at the front of his trousers and felt how I'd affected him while dressing my legs. So I had my other foot join the first and probed his arousal with my toes. "I would imagine it might be hard to wash out the result of feet being your thing from high-end stockings like this." He grinned, and firmly pushed his erection against my feet. "You don't wash stockings like that, Dorothy - no matter what you make me spill on them - they're single use only." Recovering my feet from his excitement, I stood and after stepping into the dress turned my back for him to fasten the zip, enjoying the pleasant sensation of the dress closing on my curves as the zip went higher. Its satin lining felt sensually cool over my skin. Kicking my left leg out to one side I checked the dress's split wasn't going to reveal a stocking top and then, reassured about my modesty, I slipped on the shoes Luke handed me. That kind of dress coupled with those kind of stockings really needed some artfully tapered heels to compliment them, but I'd never worn any kind of heels, never mind that kind of gorgeous evening wear. Instead I got a pair of low-cut, perfectly flat ballet pumps in glittery black with a fine, feminine ankle strap. Luke led me to the room's full- length mirror and asked me what I thought with the expectant tone of a magician producing something spectacular from a hat. I need quite a leap of faith to believe the woman looking back at me could be any part of plain Connor Bradley. And that was without any jewellery and minimal make up. Perhaps that minimalist look helped make more of a contrasting image. My pale skin, dusted with freckles, didn't need any cosmetic enhancement, while the sleeveless dress looked good against my skin; even the flat shoes didn't look out of place. "You scrub up pretty well, Connor," Luke said, with a smug smile. He patted my bum affectionately. "It is a pretty good bit of scrubbing you've done," I admitted, turning to admire my profile. "You calling me a scrubber?" I planted a kiss on his cheek. "Take me to dinner or lose me forever." Everything about going down to the restaurant felt more sensual; the slick, nylon hiss of my thighs brushing together, the opulent rustling of the lined dress around my legs and the daring way the split bared me all came together to raise some heat in my cheeks and stiffness in my nipples. Though the barely concealed hunger in the looks from two men waiting on the lobby's sofa punctured even the male indifference I'd used up until then. As much as it felt good to be wearing an eye- catching beauty, it felt somehow belittling to be judged and admired merely for the way I looked, like I was nothing more than the shape of my body and the combination of clothes I used to cover it. I was only a sales rep, how did that feel for Daisy, the accomplished engineer when she dressed up? The tall, Mediterranean aired waiter was oily in his over-attentiveness to me, the man at the table next to ours couldn't keep his bright gaze from my exposed leg or cleavage, even when his own dinner-partner glared at him - even when I curled my most dismissive sneer his way. "You have to learn to ignore them," Luke said, squeezing my hand across the table. "He just wants to cum on my tits," I said, almost loud enough for him to hear. Luke leaned forward. "Maybe he's jealous of your body, he wishes he could be as beautiful as you." "I'm going to enjoy myself this evening, no matter what!" I decided and leant back in my seat, pushing my boobs forward. The man got a kick from his partner about then and turned away, red faced. It was easier to concentrate on Luke, on his lovely smile and Daisy eyes, to lift my foot and balance it on his chair between his legs and enjoy the light caress of his fingers on my ankle. The food was excellent, the company exquisite, but my mind drifted far from fine dining. I became increasingly conscious of a soft, slick and insistent pulse in my labia, as if they knew their time was nearly done and they had a last hurrah in mind. "We should have a turn through the grounds," I said, when the food was done. Standing, I offered my arm. My cheeks felt warm and flushed, I was certain my nipples must be showing through the dress and that warm feeling at the head of my thighs had turned wonderfully slick. Luke took the hint; arm in arm we left the companionable restaurant and stepped sedately into the night, no words spoiling the intimacy between us. The silken caresses of my dress over my legs, the sensual hiss of my nylon sensual thighs and subtle sway of my breasts all heightened the heat building inside me. I steered Luke away from the lights and the places where people might be, until my feet scuffed through a short, well kept lawn and we found ourselves in some arbour where, even in the dark, climbing roses filled the still air with a sleepy, feminine fragrance. I kissed him hard, pushed my tongue into his mouth, pressed my body hungrily against him. He made some small noise of surprise, but I didn't give him space to speak. His body gave him away as I started unfastening his trousers. He pushed me back so he could find my breasts, but I burned too hot for that. Freeing his cock, letting my fingers explore its length, I turned my back to him and lifted my dress, finding the hard line of his cock with the satin covered curves of my bum. "You're being a little forward here, Dorothy," he murmured, kissing my neck. I had nothing to say to that, other than to bend smoothly at the waist, taking my weight on a convenient low wall and pressing my bum to his erection. The night air felt wonderfully cool as he peeled away my soaking panties. "I'm going to miss this," I murmured, my voice thick with arousal as his tip slipped between my lips. Shivers ran through me and I smiled happily, sighing to feel him smoothly and very slowly open my pussy and fill it. To be so full was enough to make me want to purr. Lifting my right hand, I reached between my legs to touch my swollen clitoris and then the lips stretched around the base of his cock. It seemed impossible for this to be happening to me and that I should be loving so. "Then we'd better make the best of it," he whispered, placing his hands on my hips and starting to move inside me. *** I admit that in the taxi ride home from Derby Station I grew more and more anxious that we'd turn the corner onto our street and find a gaping, smoking hole where our house and the ring should have been. Or there would be a Police CSI van outside, or a sagging line of attention grabbing Police Line Do Not Cross over our smashed in front door. Happily all was as it should have been and the ring remained in it's hiding place. "Would you mind a last, girly evening with me?" Luke asked, before I could slip it on. "As long as you're gentle," I said with a soft smile, which came easier now I knew I could be at work tomorrow morning looking as Connor as ever. We'd been a little busy last night and my lady parts were slightly worse for wear - not that I would have changed anything. "Just kisses and caresses," he promised, taking my hand and leading me upstairs. I undressed him slowly, kissing his skin as I bared it until I could kneel before his naked beauty and guide him into my mouth. I only got the briefest, most intimate moment enveloping him with my tongue, lips and mouth before his lovely erection dwindled and slipped from between my lips. I smiled to see Daisy's very pretty pussy reform and went closer to kiss the clitoris I'd been sucking happily just a heartbeat before. Tumbling to the bed and tangled together as two women I found myself enjoying the curves and smooth softness I'd always loved about Daisy's body. Maybe I preferred her like that, but the difference was minimal. I loved Daisy how she was; man or woman. Some time later, as we lay together, our black and red tresses flowing together on the pillows she said one word, "Enough." Then swung herself up and over me, legs spread as she straddled my mound, before leaning forward to press her breasts to mine and kiss my lips. "Now, you get your winkie back and I am going to show you all the things I learned were so intense over the last couple of weeks." She bit my nose fondly, kissed my stiffening nipples in turn then placed the ring back onto my finger to return my body. Nothing happened. Part 4 - Joy. I looked at Daisy. Daisy looked at me. We both looked down at my persistent breasts. Ring off: ring on. Nothing happened. It sat on my finger as innocent as something orginary from a high street jeweller and steadfastly refused to make me male. "Let me have a go," Daisy said, holding her hand out. "What if you change but it won't change you back again?" She went to male and back without a flicker. So I had another go - nothing. "Daisy?" "I don't know," she shrugged. "I'm supposed to be at work tomorrow morning!" She passed me her dressing gown and shrugged on a nightshirt. "We'll get it sorted. Put the kettle on and I'll call Aunt Roisin." Clearly not authorised to be party to a conversation with the mysterious Aunt, I sat tight in the kitchen wrapped in my female body and girlfriend's dressing gown listlessly making tea and thinking about 'what ifs' for the morning. All my options seemed like gloomy ones. Daisy wore a thoughtful expression when she returned. She sat beside me at the breakfast bar, thanked me for the tea and cradled her mug while staring into its brown depths. "We might have fucked up," she said after a couple of minutes. This was an unusual event in itself - Daisy only rarely used language like that. She looked at me from under her lashes and pulled a little, rueful smile. "Sorry." "Sorry! What for, am I stuck like this? What did she say?" Daisy gave a long sigh. "There aren't any instructions that come with a thing like this, just what Aunt Roisin told me when I borrowed it. You put it on and it changes your sex. You take it off and nothing happens, then you replace it and you change back." "That's all we did!" "She's never heard of it not working like this before." "Brilliant! Did she have any helpful advice?" "She suggested you have a pregnancy test." Daisy said that so softly I thought I'd misheard. My hand started shaking as I replayed the words through my mind. I put down the mug before I spilt anything. "How can I be pregnant! Don't answer that. I know we've been at it like rabbits, but I haven't been like this long enough to have a... to..." "Ovulate," she said helpfully. "Shit!" I said, pressing my hands to my belly, as if I could feel whether there was in fact anything untoward in there. In my womb! Jesus! I'd not given the plumbing at the head of my vagina any thought at all - the weekend we'd just enjoyed had been the longest period I'd spent as Dorothy and even with my secondary school biology know-how that wasn't long enough for my changed body to get the womb ready and then send an egg down into it. "It's probably something else," she said, brightly, and held my hand. "Roisin's on her way up to York tomorrow and she says she'll stop by and chat through some ideas." "What about work? Do I push my hair under a big head, bind my boobs and affect some gruff voice?" She called in sick for me, passed on a tale of misery about food poisoning, a horrific night vomiting and currently passed out in bed, looking like death warmed up, with a convenient bucket nearby. Wednesday was suggested as the earliest I might get back, maybe the day after. After seeking assurances I'd be okay, she left for work and I spent the day moping around the house, ignoring my phone and trying not to think about the possibility of being pregnant. You can imagine how that went. I could hardly stop rubbing my tummy and the imagined squiggle of growing cells in there. Impossible of course - I couldn't be having a baby. Any more impossible than actually being a woman? Around two in the afternoon I heard activity outside, peeped around the net curtains and saw Daisy reversing her Mini onto the drive. A tall, raven haired, older woman in a black trouser suit waited at the foot of the drive, and then followed Daisy to the front door. I met them in the hallway. "The mysterious Aunt Roisin, I presume?" "Roisin will do, thanks," she said, with a mellow, smokey voice enlivened by a soft, Southern Irish lilt. "It's good to meet you." We shook hands, she had a firm grip and soft, long fingers. Close up I judged her to be somewhere past forty, but not too far. "You make a lovely girl, Connor," she said, looking over shoulder as I followed her and she followed Daisy into the kitchen where I'd already set the kettle to boil. "I was kind of hoping to be back to normal by now." I muttered. "Who's to say what's normal?" Roisin asked, arching one eyebrow. "What's normal for the spider is chaos for the fly." She put her head on one side. "Morticia Adams said that, so I read. Oh, a nice cup of Earl Grey please." "So, are you some kind of witch?" I asked when tea had been made and we were sitting around a kitchen table; like three women gathered for a catch-up. She smiled, baring her teeth. "Ha ha, no. Don't be silly, there are no witches. Or are there?" "But the ring is magic, right?" Daisy said. "If you took your smartphone back a thousand years or so and showed it to somebody back then they'd burn you as a witch." "You're being evasive," I suggested. "Well done." Roisin reached down to her handbag and rummaged out a small cardboard package she pushed across the table towards me. "Now, take this and pee on it." "Really?" "We need to know one way or the other, Dorothy." "And if I am?" "Away and get peeing then!" "Can you manage?" Daisy wondered, rising to her feet. "I just pee on it, right?" "He's smart, for a man." "Ha ha!" "Has it really come to this?" I muttered to myself, sitting on the toilet with my leggings and panties pushed down, legs parted to reveal the folds and loveliness I'd thoroughly enjoyed, but wanted rid off. Previous experience suggested I wasn't going to be very accurate, so I just persuaded my reluctant body to let go and pushed the test wand into the stream. While rearranging my clothes and washing my hands I stared obsessively at the wand and willed it to be negative. After a couple of minutes I had to sit down again, bending forward until my chest pressed my thighs and my hair swung forward to blank me from the world. A soft tap on the door; Daisy let herself in and squatted down beside me. She stroked my back and moved some hair aside to look at me. "What are we going to do?" I whispered. I couldn't trust myself to speak any louder in case I started blubbering. (Like a girl.) "I don't know," she said. "I'm so sorry. I never -" "You weren't to know. I don't understand..." "Come on, we need to talk it through with Roisin." "What's she going to do! Magic it away, turn it into a... Oh God, there it is - it. I just referred to It - the baby. Foetus? I suppose it's only an embryo. I'm going to have a bloody baby, Daisy." "We're going to have one," she said firmly. "We'll do it together." I snorted miserably at that offer, I could have said something biting, but that wouldn't have done - not for Daisy. She meant well, generations of men had probably been saying stuff like that to their surprised girlfriends. She took my hand and led me back to the kitchen. Roisin didn't need either of us to say anything - she saw our faces, pursed her lips and shrugged. "Congratulations," she said, too brightly I thought. "We're not quite there yet," Daisy said heavily. "No? It's a fine thing you're doing together, unconventional, but I think you're just the couple to bring a baby up into a fine person this world needs." "This is not quite how I saw our family coming about!" I said. "I hadn't thought about it for a few years yet," Daisy admitted. "Not with work." Roisin's eyes narrowed. "You're not thinking about having the poor, wee thing scraped out are you?" I turned my eyes to my knees. An abortion? The thought had crossed my mind. Surely I couldn't be that far gone that a morning after pill wouldn't work. It was hardly murdering a viable baby, was it? The thought came uncomfortably hard, but so did the idea of my belly swelling and filling with a new human. "What else can I do?" I said, almost desperately. "According to all the things that identify me to the bloody world I shouldn't need to access pregnancy care! How am I supposed to explain this to my bosses, my Mum? Hi Mum, it's me - honest - you're going to be a granny, isn't that great. No it really is me, your son - Connor!" Pausing to take a breath I sneaked a look; Daisy was spinning her mug around in her hands. Roisin watched me carefully, but her eyes looked warm - friendly, like she was worth putting my trust in. "Don't kill it," she whispered. "Roisin, this is really difficult for us, for Connor." "I mean, what else can I do? I can bluff work for a few days, but nine months! What do I tell them?" Roisin nodded and from nowhere flashed a brilliant smile, as disarming as it was beautiful. "I have to go to York, duty calling and all that. I'll come back tomorrow evening, we'll talk, see what we can do." I didn't really see how things would look any different by then, but in a new world where mysterious Irish aunts could borrow magical rings who knew what other arcane possibilities might exist. "Will I be able to change back afterwards?" "When it's born?" said Roisin. "Maybe you'll need to wean the bairn first." Weaning? My breasts growing heavy with milk, feeding a baby with them! And having to give birth. That never looked good on the hospital documentaries. Screaming women shitting themselves and their bodies tearing and ... "Oh fucking hell!" "I'll help you," Roisin said into the cold sweat I'd descended into at the thought of having to squeeze a child from my vagina. "Help?" I whispered. "I got my hands on the magic ring didn't I? That's not all I can do." *** On Tuesday Daisy got home from work in a state of excitement, almost completely lost on me as I showed her the table I'd set, the meal (pasta bolognese) I was preparing and made some weary comment about being the dutiful wife having her pipe and slippers ready. "They've offered me an exchange position in Germany," she said, almost bouncing up and down. "They want our engines with the new Airbus design. The guy who was supposed to go has broken his pelvis abseiling and they want me to go instead." "Germany?" "Two world wars and one world cup? Remember them?" "That's great, but how does it help us?" "We find some way of going together, it's an eighteen month attachment - I get a flat and car and everything in Hamburg. When we come back, me and male you with a baby we'll get some story together about adopting or whatever. Come on, we can make it work." Her enthusiasm, delivered through bright smiles and hand holding, came through loud and clear and it did seem, right there and then, to be perfectly feasible. Then she must have read my expression because she frowned. "You've decided on an abortion." If only any of this were that simple. I'd thought about it all day - the ease of finding a clinic or taking a pill, of putting the ring back on walking away from it back into my old life. I shook my head. "I did want to, but can't. Doesn't seem right." "We will manage," she said and I knew she was right, we would. Though managing would never be an endpoint with us; having a baby would just be the next step in the adventure of being with Daisy. "Connor?" Daisy took my hand. "However it's happened, this might sound daft, but it's our baby, Daisy. We made it with love, sounds cheesy I know, but love and happiness made it. We should look back on that weekend, all of it, like it was something amazing. Not that we killed a baby at the end of it." "You need to think about it." "I'm done. My job was shit anyway, I'll resign and be a kept woman for a while. I don't know how we can get me to Germany though, I don't exist at the moment. Dorothy doesn't exist!" Dorothy's existence was proved at that moment when Daisy pulled me into a tight squeeze, pulling me tight against her and kissing my neck. Despite everything, being able to nuzzle my face to her neck and smell her body, to feel her breasts pressed to mine and her hands on my back felt good. Nothing could go wrong while Daisy loved me. We thrashed out the bare bones of a bare-arsed plan. 1 - Connor and Daisy split up; he doesn't want her to go to Germany and she won't compromise her career. He announces plans to go to Australia to find his mum and get over the break up. 2 - Connor leaves work and home. 3 - Daisy goes to Germany. Dorothy follows and moves in with her. 4 - Baby is born and weaned. 5 - Dorothy changes back to Connor, he and Daisy bring up the baby as their own (which of course it is). 6 - The three of them live happily ever after. Roisin looked weary when she drove up an hour or so later. Something like chalk dust stained her trousers and her shoes were muddy enough that she left them in the hall. While she excused herself into the loo I asked Daisy, in a whisper, what Roisin did for a living. 'Stuff' was the unhelpful answer I got. "I actually don't know," Daisy said. "What do you actually do, Roisin?" I asked as she tucked into some bolognese and I poured us all some wine. "I work for the government," she said, mysteriously. "Ours or theirs?" That made her laugh. "Is there a difference?" She raised her glass in a toast. "To the wee bairn who will have two fine Ma's." "For a short time, at least," I said. Glasses clinked, wine was sipped. Then Roisin reached into her handbag and produced a passport with a stylised harp embossed on the cover under the words, Eire and Ireland. "Take a look," she said. Inside a picture of me looked sternly from the back page, my hair in a glorious tumble down each side of my face. "How do I pronounce that?" I asked, pointing to the name, Aoife, between Dorothy and McCormack. "Eefer?" said Roisin, "It's a good Irish name, my favourite Great Aunt was an Aoife. She made the best soda bread you ever tasted." "How?" I said, carefully closing the passport and placing it down on the table. "To make soda bread?" she asked, all childlike innocence. I raised my eyebrows at her. "I know people." "You know people! Anyway, I'm not Irish, I don't sound Irish." She thickened her accent into a comedy caricature. "Sure ye don't have to sound loike some kind of yokel, colleen. Besides, this time last month you wouldn't have thought you could pass as a woman, would you? Now you can go to Germany with Daisy and you'll have access to world- beating maternity care." "How did you know about the Germany offer?" Daisy said. "Tell me you didn't arrange for Pete Jones to have that fall!" "Daisy!" she said, with reproach. "I'm not a monster, a broken pelvis is a serious and extremely painful injury. I did get you bumped up from two to one on the replacement list though." "Which people do you know?" I asked. "Detail." "I think I should know," I pressed her, alternating between studying her face and the passport. Dorothy Aoife McCormack shared her October birthday with me, but her place of birth was shown as Rosslare rather than Lancaster. Roisin smiled sweetly, but shook her head. "You're in a pickle, Dorothy - and I'll take some responsibility for that. That ring is thought to be a couple of hundred of years old and doesn't come with instructions, clearly it needs a little more research. But, you don't get any more than a fleeting peep under my cloak of mystery. Accept a little, no-questions-asked, fairy godmothering. Okay?" "It's for the best," Daisy affirmed. Clearly there was some unwritten, family rule to cover asking about Roisin and I could hardly press the matter, as much as the curiosity in me practically spewed questions at her. Curiosity hadn't been good for the cat and feeling very clearly where the power and help lay in this room I nodded and bit back any more questions. Which seemed to settle it. After she'd gone, with promises that admin would get sorted, Daisy and I cleared up in the kitchen, occasionally gently bumping our hips together, but keeping our silence until I found exactly the right word to describe our situation. "Wow!" Daisy arched an eyebrow. "Is that all you've got?" "I'd been looking for ways to get out of my shitty job, but..." "We'll make this work." "With Roisin's help?" "She won't let us down." "I'm sure, it just seems so... Jason Bourne." "Just pretend you're a beautiful, but compromised spy who needs to lay low." "Compromised!" I rubbed my tummy to emphasise the point. "And beautiful," she affirmed, putting down the plate she was drying to kiss my cheek. Two days later, at the kind of outrageous hour of the morning that was ideal for compromised spies to slip away in, but not so good for recently unemployed pen salesmen, I left the house Daisy and I had made into a home. It was the kind of moment when I could have decided to make a shame-faced trip to the local health care centre and begged a morning-after pill. We'd been happy in that house, made a good space for ourselves and now some magically induced biological accident meant I had to leave it behind. "We'll come back," Daisy said, softly. "I'd have come with you anyway," I said. "If they had offered you that Germany job, I'd have given up everything and come with you." Which got me another hug. Work wasn't happy with the resignation email and my point blank refusal to work my 28 day notice period - they were going to stop some of my pay because of it. I switched off my phone after messaging my small circle of friends about Daisy and me breaking up and that Thailand beckoned. Mum was running a bar there, it seemed as plausible as any other place to ride out the fictional, emotional aftershocks of breaking up with her. "I hate even writing lies about us splitting up," I'd said to her. Roisin had assured me she'd create an electronic trail suggesting I'd flown to Bangkok. How? Don't ask. Daisy dropped me at the railway station. She'd wanted to take me to Cambridge, where I'd be lying up for ten days in an apartment Roisin had arranged, we referred to it as a safe house. She had too much going on professionally for her to give up time driving me around; there was her current project to hand over before updating herself on the Airbus project. She would fly to Hamburg on Friday, have the weekend to sort out the apartment they'd found for her there and she'd be at work there on Monday. If it sounded like a lot to ask from a junior engineer, Daisy was hugely excited about the opportunity and would probably have hitchhiked there to take it up. Rolls Royce were paying her handsomely for the inconvenience, and were going to pick up the financial penalties we'd incurred with leaving our house so suddenly. Everything moved very fast and left me feeling very much like flotsam in a flood for others. "Everything will work out," Roisin had promised and I suppose it did. The trains and safe house bookings went smoothly. Nobody at Stansted Airport paid my passport any more than passing attention; as I took my seat on the plane and then watched Essex fall away, I wondered again about Roisin's influence in whatever organisation she worked for. Anxiety started twisting up inside me as the jet rumbled to the ground at Hamburg. Looking out at the airport as we were taxied to the terminal I thought about how it looked like any other busy, international airport, but felt completely different. Here I was, a man carrying a child as a woman who didn't exist, walking through the terminal of a city and a country I'd never visited hearing announcements made in sounds I didn't recognise. I would have turned and run if I had any place to run to. The damp, hair-lifting anxiety morphed smoothly into trembling fear as I approached border control and followed the signs for EU Citizens. My imagination created scenes of snarling, teeth gnashing police dogs and ice-eyed, pistol-toting border police hauling me from the hurrying line of passengers to a chill interview room where my assumed life would be ripped from me. Instead the single, bored looking official didn't even look up from her screen and I was free, almost running into the arrivals area of the terminal, casting my eyes through the crowds until Daisy appeared by my side, slipping her arm through mine and pulling me in for a rapid embrace and sisterly kiss. She rushed some questions about my flight and the hotel, even though I'd spoken to her before boarding the jet, grinned some more, kissed me again and welcomed me to Hamburg. "Wait until you see the flat," she enthused, leading me through the swirling groups of folk. "It's really big, we have a balcony with a lovely view - and a massive bed, wait till you feel that!" They'd given her a car, a white VW Golf, and she eased into the airport traffic happily, not seeming bothered with driving on the right or my nervousness being in what I felt should be the driver's seat. Strange road signs, buildings, people; a strange city moved steadily past us, but all I had eyes for was Daisy. She looked bright and alive, wearing a patterned, pale sundress that split up the front to bare her legs and I enjoyed the feel of her thigh under my hand as she drove. Daisy - my love, my life, my girl and the father of my child. The flat was lovely - airy, spacious and well furnished, conveniently close to the Airbus plant. I did love the wide bed where Daisy didn't give me a chance to feel like a stranger in a strange land. Afterwards, naked and wonderfully glowing, watching the clear blue sky through billowing net curtains I wondered if this could be home. How would it feel when we'd filled the spare bedroom with a crib and the things our baby would need? I won't go into the details of our day to day life there. Left in the position of a wife left at home while her breadwinner went to work each weekday, I resolved I wasn't going to sit within the flat's walls waiting to go back to England. The first job was to learn some German and when the online tutorials didn't seem enough I went out into our suburb and forced myself to learn. The tutors at my yoga and pilates classes were very patient, but willing to boost my language skills when faced with my bumbling enthusiasm to master German. 'Ich bin irisch,' was a common phrase to cover up the assumption that I must be 'aus England'. That was a common misconception when I met Daisy's UK colleagues over there, usually followed up with, 'you don't sound Irish' to which I countered with a vague story about growing up and going to school in Lancaster. Luckily there were no proper Irish people on the team. 'Sprechen Sie bitte langsam,' and 'auf Deutsch bitte,' helped encourage the locals to slow down their talking to assist me with my schooling, rather than defaulting to their English while I dismissed any questions about the supposed father of my developing child with, 'er ist nicht wichtig,' because explaining how Daisy, meine Freundin, could possibly have fathered my baby wasn't important. From my new German friends (who struggled with the 'thy' sound of my name) I learnt that the German equivalent was Dorothea, with a harder 'taya' sound at the end which I very much liked. However, on the subject of names, I couldn't wait to tell Daisy that her pretty name translated into a more Wagnerian, G?nsebl?mchen. I joined a gym, went swimming, shopped and found some cafes I liked so I could finesse my grasp of the language. I made friends and went to their houses, bounced their children on my knee and as my confidence grew, nurtured in their welcoming atitiude towards the pregant, evasive, Irish lesbian they'd found themselves friendly with, Daisy and I started socialising together with them. They were good times, I felt happier as Dorothy in Germany with Daisy than I had back in Derbyshire. Though I remained in sporadic email contact with Mum it felt easy to gradually close off my contact with the people I'd left behind in Derby and after a few months I closed down the last of my social media accounts and concentrated on being Dorothy. I could take up those links again, when Connor returned. Being a woman, living as a woman, became my normal. As part of my determined inclusion into the city I started to enjoy going to get my hair done every few weeks, where its thick, deep red length aroused much envy in some of the other clients and a few of the stylists. I learned the simple, extravagant pleasure of having a pedicure. Why are these things kept secret from men? To have a skilled operator smoothing and pampering my feet, particularly as I got bigger and they ached more, was wonderful. After the first session I even let Claudia paint my toenails and then I rode a slippery slope into a manicure and had my fingernails varnished. "You won't have time for this in a few months," Claudia promised. She'd already shown me pictures of her two teeneagers, "Make the most of looking good now." One evening, relatively early on, when a glimpse of my azure toenails could still surprise me, I saw Daisy shaving her legs in the bath and climbed in with her asking if she'd do mine. Being a redhead I wasn't blessed with excesses of body hair, but as spring stretched into the promise of a hot summer I was thinking maybe it would be pleasant to get out of jeans and leggings. She was wonderfully gentle, and I found it sensual - intimate even - to have her brushing the razor along my legs. After that she did my armpits and then took out some of her wax strips to tidy my bikini line (not so sensual). All that hair removal wasn't very continental, or porogressive, but there was something very pleasant to have silky smooth legs. Shortly after Daisy had shaved my legs that first time, she bent to kiss me, deliberately teased my nipples with her own, then smiled. "You're really growing into being a woman, you know." "Do you think I'm being too girly?" That made her laugh. "I think you're beautiful, now and back then. But, if you're worried, I don't think you've changed - you're still the person I fell for. Different packaging maybe, same best friend. And it's good to see you taking care of yourself, it makes me think you're happy." Daisy liked my nails, she started going to see Claudia too. Somehow we got introduced to Claudia's boyfriend's brother, Erik, who ran a photography business, and were persuaded into sitting for some portraits together. The Germans have a very casual approach to human bodies and nudity, which took some getting used to for a pair of prudish British girls on their first day out in a very posh spa, and we were further persuaded to pose naked together. It was very arty, we wore our hair down to cover our breasts, and Daisy was mostly behind me - Erik was captivated by the swell of my pregnancy and wanted me at the front. Erik and his wife did a fantastic job putting us at ease and in the final shot, our favourite, Daisy and I were laughing, uncaring of our nudity. Still with hair artfully covering our nipples, with Daisy mostly hidden behind me, I had my arms lifted, fingers linked behind her neck as I looked over my shoulder to my beautiful lover. She rested one hand on the swell of our baby and the other covering my mound, with maybe the tip of her longest finger aligned with my vulva. If you ever come into our close circle of friends we'll show you the picture - it hangs in our bedroom. Erik made me promise I'd go back for another session when I'd had the baby, he thought the three of us would look incredible together. Of course, living in Germany wasn't the main event of my life then. Morning-sickness hit me hard for a few weeks, left me wrung out and unable to face even opening the bedroom blinds, but I did and I went out every day. The local maternity care system carried me along and the medics learned not to converse with me in English, in which most of them were fluent, but to manage the sessions through my adolescent German. I remember standing, naked before a mirror in our bedroom running my hands over my pregnancy's tight, smooth bulge and laughing with the sheer impossibility of what I was seeing, caressing. My body's changes fascinated Daisy, she loved to sit with her hands resting upon my bump, or sleep spooning me so she could hold our baby through me. Sometimes I'd feel a spike of fear when I saw my bloated abdomen, brushed it against something, or had some well-meaning friend or passer-by comment on it. I felt so strange that my body could be on a biological and hormonal auto-pilot that I, as the sentience sitting in the box at the head of it all, had no control over. As my body grew and managed my baby it started planning for the moment when it would decide enough was enough and expel the child to take its chances in my arms. I laid down more fat, my breasts grew uncomfortably heavy and my back started aching. Happily the scans showed my daughter alone in her warm womb, but I couldn't help comparing the growing size of her to my slender vagina and I really started worrying about the labour; like I'd said, none of that seemed to be pretty. Daisy was a rock, as you can imagine - worrying about me like any father would, often apologising for the supposed offence of putting me in this position, but necessity and her love made me more and more relaxed to be a woman and a pregnant woman. As I grew larger, and more confident, I found dresses more comfortable and learned to enjoy their movements around my legs and the way they would drape and flow around my changing shape. When Christmas came we'd established ourselves so well as the friendly, foreign lesbians within our circles that we decided to stay in Hamburg. Feeling every hour of my seven months growing a baby I hadn't much fancied a flight back to the UK to see Daisy's parents, and a drive would have been excruciating, so they came out to us for a few days. Connor wasn't mentioned, to me at least, which left me a little sad - like he hadn't been important. Daisy's mum softly followed a common line of questioning of who my baby's father was and how Daisy and I had come together. I sensed disapproval that Daisy should so publicly fall in love with an unsuitably pregnant woman, and did my best to ignore their coolness. They thought I was some kind of freeloader, taking advantage of Daisy's vulnerability after Connor had left and you could somewhat forgive them for that - she was providing everything for me. The funny thing was that it would all be proven correct, publicly at least, when Dorothy McCormack vanished after her baby was born, leaving Daisy and the returning Connor to bring her up. Nothing could be done about that - they would find me a doting stepfather and magnanimous returning boyfriend when I 'came back' from Thailand. On February the 16th, while chopping vegetables for our dinner, with Daisy in her post-work shower, a hot rush from under my marquee-like dress made me imagine that incontinence was some secret result of late pregnancy. After standing, open mouthed, staring at the puddle spreading around my slippered feet for a second or two I realised what was happening. The auto-pilot again! I found myself clasping my huge tummy and shouting down the hallway for Daisy. The contractions started thirty minutes later. It seemed incredible that my magically modified body could know what to do in childbirth, but it performed admirably. Being in labour was horrible - I screamed in a mixture of German and English, must have looked like some straggle-haired, demonic banshee and came close to damning Daisy and her ring for doing this to me. She endured it all, even wept a little until, after an eternity of seven hours of labour, somebody new started screaming between my legs. The midwives cheered and Daisy cried while some dripping, squirming purple and cream creation was lifted from between my shaking legs. In the sudden empty collapse of my contractions I laughed, cried a little, smiled, bit my lip and then reached for her, stretching out my arms as they cut the cord that had bound us together all this time. They wiped her a little, weighed her and finally gave me her to hold. Everything I had gone through, from the moment that ring had decided to leave me as a woman, the upheaval, aches, funny looks, dislocation, breast pain, back pain, sickness, inability to sleep, everything, became an insignificant price to pay for the privilege of holding the helplessly disorientated and beautiful infant in my arms. My daughter, our daughter. Daisy wept openly, maybe too much for a woman who shouldn't have had an emotional link to the baby, but who could keep up such an act when your child has just been laid in her mother's arms? Daisy stroked the wet, wisps of dark hair over her head and laughed when a fist closed tight on her little finger, as though the baby recognised her father. "Hello, Louisa," I whispered, bending to kiss my baby, then to kiss Daisy. I can't pretend it was easy. Yes, you have instinct and the years of scholarly experience from the midwives and health visitors, but ultimately it's you and a baby which depends on you for everything. Let me tell you of the wonder the first time I held Louisa to my breast and felt her enthusiastically suckle at the milk I'd made for her, but the joy didn't extend to the small, dark hours of the morning when she howled with hunger and I dangled with exhaustion. Daisy would sit by us, rubbing my back or holding my hair wishing, like many fathers before her perhaps, that she could help. When Louisa screamed with colic I'd be terrified of some illness I'd missed. But there were glowing moments too - when she first smiled at me, a beautiful, radiant expression of what she felt for me, or the simple pleasure of watching her sleep or follow a butterfly's flight with bumbling curiosity. Daisy was my anchor, when she wasn't having a break by going to work of course, and she seemed to accept that all my love wasn't reserved for her any more, as I accepted I wasn't the centre of her world now. We wrapped little Louisa in our happiness and that carried us through those low points when nothing went right, Daisy would be at work, Louisa wouldn't settle and I cried wearily with fatigue from behind tangles of my unkempt hair. "You're doing the next one," I murmured around two o'clock one morning, tucking Louisa back into her cot, my breasts still bared from the latest feed. "The next feed?" she said, innocently, reaching to pull me back into bed. "Baby!" "Are we having another one?" I lay with my back to her and she cupped my breasts, massaging them softly to ease their aching. Louisa hadn't wanted much and a little milk trickled out over Daisy's fingers. "I'm not." "I think I'd like to, in a couple of years, when Louisa's older." I twisted so I could kiss her, enjoying the feel of her hands, the warmth of her body and contentment of her love. "She wasn't very hungry," said Daisy, still gently stroking my breasts. "Maybe I should express some." She was quiet for a moment, so quiet we could hear Lousia daintily whiffling in her sleep. "Do you think...?" I kissed her again, then gave my answer by rolling from her arms and sitting for her. "You don't think it's a bit odd?" "Odd, after the things we've done together, Luke!" That made her laugh, then go quiet, looking from my to my breasts. Scooping her hair aside, she bent and kissed my left nipple, looked up to see me smiling and then gave a short, cautious pull. "What do you think?" "You're a very clever girl. It's delicious." I would have liked a picture of her right then, as she drank steadily, but whenever I close my eyes I can easily find the memory and it always makes me smile, and tingle - just a little bit. Seven months later, still happily in Hamburg, Roisin came to see us. It wasn't the first time she'd met the latest member of the family, and though she might have remained steadfastly cool about her niece, she did express her satisfaction at our contentment. Louisa was growing so long I was struggling to keep up with her appetite and we'd started weaning her onto formula. I could sense this was more than just a social call and once Louisa had been put to bed, with songs and stories, the three of us settled around the kitchen table. "To the three of you," Roisin said, raising her glass. We only had fruit juice for the toast, Daisy having given up wine for as long as I had to. Our glasses clinked, we sipped our juice and then Roisin reached into her bag, like she had done when she gave us that Irish passport and as I had expected her to. She carefully placed that ring on the table before us. Daisy had brought the subject up a few times, in the weeks leading up to the visit, but I'd moved the conversation on. Now I had nowhere to go. There was the ring, gleaming softly in the late evening sunshine and making its silent promises. Tentatively I reached out and touched it. That uncanny warmth came as before and I thought about being a man, about Connor, Daisy and Louisa. I'd been thinking about them at all sorts of waking moments in the day and night. Using the tips of my fingers I pushed the ring back towards Roisin. "I can't bear the thought of Louisa looking at me and not recognising me," I said. "She'll soon grow to love you again," said Daisy, reaching to squeeze my thigh. Roisin just watched me. "But I'm her mum." "Mother is the word for God on the lips and hearts of small children," Roisin said. She nodded, closed her hand around the ring and dropped it back into her handbag. Until I let my breath go in a long sigh, I hadn't realised I'd been holding it - from the fear of not being allowed to leave things as they were. Hopefully Roisin could smooth it all again, she didn't seem too concerned. I glanced at Daisy, her eyes were wet, but she smiled so I hugged her and in her arms I found all the assurance I needed. Connor wasn't coming back, I'd miss being him, perhaps, but Dorothy would remain; Dorothy and Louisa - Daisy's girls.