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Chapter 7 - "The Passions That Collide In Me"
McDaniel arranged for Jayla to meet him at their favorite restaurant that Friday, planning to surprise her with his next step in finding ‘interesting’ things to do for her. When she arrived, wearing a knit minidress that made it clear she was . . . unencumbered beneath the body-hugging material, he stood to help her with her chair.
"You left your hair down," she said as she approached.
"Do you like it?" he asked casually.
"Very much. It looks good on you that way," she said, reaching out to touch the thick locks that hung to his collarbones. That revealed at least one of her own surprises. Her nails, usually trimmed neatly but unremarkably, were now long ruby spears that flashed in the lights.
"Nice nails," Logan said, brushing his hair behind the shoulders of his leather sportcoat.
"Nice earrings!" Jayla replied, noticing another change. Discreet golden loops peeked out from behind his auburn tresses. Then she noticed another change. "Hey, you’re as tall as I am!"
She was wearing heels again, accenting her lovely legs, yet this time Logan was looking directly into her eyes.
"I, um, found some new shoes - boots actually - when I was in Denver," he said. After Jayla as seated, he pulled out his own chair, then lifted his pants leg a little as he sat. Jayla could see western style boots with several inches of heel, slightly tapered but by no means the spikes she herself wore. Still, the design was definitely more common on women’s boots than on men’s.
"I didn’t notice when I walked up, until I got close to you," Jayla said. "Your pants must be new, too, for the hems to be right."
"They are," admitted Logan. "I had to get something with a bit of flare in the legs, too, in order for them to cover properly."
"Flare? Flares in men’s jeans went out over 20 years ago."
"That’s, uh, right."
Jayla caught a note in his voice that was half-embarrasses, half-proud. It revealed more than Logan might have expected, or perhaps she was just using married-telepathy, but she realized something else about his jeans and whispered. "Well, they’re not old. You’re wearing women’s jeans!"
Logan’s first answer was a blush, but after a second he nodded as well.
"Are they, ah, comfortable?"
"The waist is a bit snug," admitted Logan. "But they’re not too bad.
Apparently this style is designed for, um, slim-hipped women."
"I know," Jayla giggled. "Now that I’ve noticed, I see they’re the same style that I wear."
"Not any more," Logan chuckled. "It seems you don’t wear pants much any more."
"Nope," she said smugly. "At least, not when you’re around."
With that she let her knees spread beneath the concealing table cloth. Logan felt her thigh nudge against his, then saw an invitation in her eyes. His cheeks flushed again, something she had found easier and easier to bring about, and she laughed. It was a friendly, loving laugh though, one that Logan could share.
"So, do you like my nails?" she asked after they had placed their orders.
"Very much," Logan said, then reached out to hold her hand. "You are so damn gorgeous that I never thought much about things you might do to be even more attractive. But I have to admit, they’re fascinating. I guess I’ve got buttons I never even knew about, until you started pushing them."
"Me, too," Jayla claimed, then giggled again. At Logan’s questioning glance she sat very straight and took a deep breath.
"I already knew about *those* buttons," Logan claimed. "But if you want them pushed . . ."
"Promise?" Jayla breathed, a promise of her own echoing in her quiet words. Then she spoiled her own effect by giggling again. Before Logan could say anything, she asked a question of her own. "What made you decide to get your ears pierced?"
"Well, I had to think up something to ‘catch up’ to all the incredible things you’ve been doing lately," he replied, reaching a finger out to trace the gold inlaid in her shiny bracelets. "I decided if you are going to wear these as a sign of your, um, commitment to me that I would do something, too. Something, ah, semi-public. You don’t mind, do you?"
"Not at all. I love it," Jayla declared, then her bright eyes took on a serious look as she studied Logan’s face. After a moment, she said, "Hair down, which makes it look, um, ‘androgynous’. Pierced ears. Boots with heels and women’s jeans. Are you trying to tell me something?"
"Just the usual," said Logan, softly but with resolution. "I truly love you, and I’ll try just about anything that makes you happy."
"You know I don’t want you to do anything that makes *you* unhappy, though, don’t you?" Jayla protested.
"Yes, beautiful, I know that. But this is no big deal. On the other hand . . . "
"What?"
Logan paused to spend a moment in his own intense examination of his lovely wife. Whatever hidden message he expected to find in her eyes stayed hidden, so he shrugged and said, "I guess I’ve been wondering just how far you want me to go with this feminization thing."
Jayla frowned. "Feminization? What makes you think that?"
"Look, love, whether you realize it or not, the things you’ve been, um, urging me to do are all things that take me toward looking like a woman. I just wondered how far down that path you want me to go."
"I don’t want you to be a woman!" Jayla whispered sharply. "Geez, Logan, I should have thought that would be obvious!"
"I didn’t say you wanted me to *be* a woman," Logan whispered back. "I said that the things you had done were making me *look* more like a woman. There’s lots of difference between changing external appearance and changing completely."
"Do you really think I want you to, um, ‘look’ like a woman?" asked Jayla with a worried frown.
"I don’t know. I guess I think it’s possible. Do you?"
Jayla paused, looking down at her gleaming nails, at Logan’s hand where it still held hers, at the bands around her wrists, at everything except her husband’s gentle eyes. "I don’t know," she finally said, looking up at him. "I know I love you, and I love making love with you, and I love doing things that arouse you. It makes me proud to have such a terrific life between us . . ."
Logan let her pause to get her thoughts in order, squeezing lightly on her fingers in support.
"I just don’t know," Jayla said again. "I would have said ‘no’ even a day ago, before I saw you tonight, but now . . . "
"Now?" he urged her to continue.
"I can’t deny it interested me to see you with your hair down. And when I realized you were wearing women’s jeans . . . I, um, it . . . Oh, hell, it aroused me."
"Just like it arouses me to see you wearing these bands," Logan said, touching one again.
"I didn’t think you liked them," she said.
"Lordy, Lady, I have dreams about you wearing them. I don’t, won’t ever do anything to hurt you, but they are tremendously ‘arousing’ to me," he declared, then said, "But here’s the point. I love you for a lot more than these bracelets, even with what they represent. Just because they push a button or two within me doesn’t mean I’m dissatisfied with the rest of who you are. It’s another thing we can explore, as long as it doesn’t become an end in itself. If putting makeup on me, or doing my hair does something for you, then where’s the harm? I never need to hide from you, do I? Then why should you feel you need to hide your feelings from me?"
Jayla asked, "But it doesn’t really interest you? Dressing up, I mean."
"Not particularly," Logan said, "aside from the fact it definitely interests you, of course."
"What about these?" she said, pointing to her wrist bands.
"Those are ‘interesting’," Logan admitted with a smile. "I told you I find them arousing, but I’m sort of conflicted about it. I’m so hung up on worry about hurting you that, well, I just don’t know. It’s like, um, well it’s okay to dream about - and I do - but doing it for real, tying you up, I’m just not sure about that."
Jayla nodded, but sadness showed in her deep, dark eyes. "So it seems that all the things we’re doing are for me. I’m the one who’s not satisfied with the way you look. I’m the one who wants kinky sex."
Logan interrupted her litany with a laugh. "Oh, yeah, this is all one-sided all right. I’m married to the most beautiful woman in the world, who happens to like lots of hot and heavy sex. She’s creative, attentive, willing to do anything for me, and oh by the way, she’s rich. Have I left anything out?"
Jayla smiled despite her concerns, but in a moment she was serious again. "So, what do we do now?"
"Eat our meal," Logan suggested, still trying to lighten the mood.
"I’m serious."
He nodded and said, "I know you are, beautiful, but I’m serious about not taking ourselves too seriously. What we do is have fun, enjoy our lives and each other. Right now, and I don’t really care how long or how far we go down this path, we’re experimenting. I think that’s great. We can try anything either of us wants, knowing that even if something doesn’t work particularly we will always have our love to rely on. I’m very comfortable with that."
Jayla nodded, but the wheels were still turning behind her eyes. Logan gave her a few seconds to work things out, but when she didn’t seem to be making progress he tried to help. "Look, Jayla, I’m an organized sort of guy. If you’re really bothered by this, we can treat it as a problem - analyze it and find our answers."
"Not right now," she said, but she smiled and started eating with more energy.
The rest of the weekend passed quietly. Too quietly, in a real-life demonstration of the cliché. It wasn’t that there were no problems, only that they were visible more by the absence of energy than by an outward show. They didn’t argue or give each other a silent treatment. But their conversations were limited to the business at hand, steering well clear of deeper topics. They did not retreat from their explicit decisions. Jayla still wore no underwear. Logan still made up his face when they would be in the house for an extended period, now in fact leaving his hair down in the more-feminine way. They even made love, quietly, tenderly, with caring compassion. But it was not the rowdy, high-energy explosion of passion they knew they could share.
McDaniel started packing on Sunday evening for his week’s trip, almost as though he were anxious to be on his way. Like a lot of the weekend, the outward appearance of peace in his actions was really a sign of inner turmoil, a problem they both realized. He was standing there, holding his curling iron uncertainly, when Jayla entered the room.
"I’m ready to talk, now," she said, as though their restaurant conversation had been only momentarily interrupted.
"Okay," he said as simply.
With that opening, though, she seemed to run out of steam. She moved to sit at the vanity in their bedroom, idly poking with her elegant nails at the less-extensive array of cosmetics she used for her own makeup. Logan tossed the curling iron in his bag, then sat on the bed watching her. At some point, her eyes came up to look at him in the mirror, something he noticed after a moment when his own eyes saw her reflection regarding him.
"So talk," she ordered softly.
To his credit, Logan did not ask what she wanted to talk about. He remembered his last offer - to analyze the problem - so he started with that. "Okay, it seems to me that there are several aspects to what we’ve been discovering about ourselves. They can be interfaced in lots of ways, but maybe we can work on them as separate objects."
"Try not to get too far into your computer lingo," she asked, smiling a little but still pensive.
"Um, okay. Sure," he said with his own little smile. "Well, I guess I see three or four aspects to this. One is making me look more like a woman. I have to admit, I find that more interesting than I would have expected."
"You do?" Jayla asked, surprised.
"Yes," he confirmed. "It’s not so much erotic with me as, well, pride I guess. I like looking good. I like looking better, using the tricks you’ve shown me, than I would have otherwise. To me, this is more like wearing a sharply tailored suit, neatly pressed, shoes shined, and so on than any particularly sexual thrill. But I’ve sort of gotten used to looking better than I did and I don’t really want to go back."
"How about going forward?" she asked.
"In what way?"
Jayla shrugged and said, "I don’t know. I was just asking."
"Maybe," Logan said, shrugging too. "But part of that might get into what I think of as the second part of all this. Doing things in public."
"I don’t want to do that again," she said quickly.
"Don’t be too sure," he cautioned. "I think we both get a kick out of the *risk* of public exposure. You not wearing panties in public, with a short skirt, is a risk that I would imagine keeps you very aware of your femininity the whole time, right?"
"Well, yes, I guess so, but I don’t want anyone else to know."
"Of course not. It’s for our eyes only, but the risk is still a thrill."
Jayla nodded, and Logan continued. "There’s more, too. A lot of what I’ve been doing is skating on the edge of exposure as ‘weird’ in one way or another, mostly along the lines of seeming less masculine. I’ve realized in the last day or so that I found that thrilling, too. It wasn’t that I wanted to be exposed, any more than you wanted to flash strangers by not wearing panties, but the risk added . . . excitement to things."
"So," he said, "I’ve been wearing my hair in a less-masculine style, not distinctly feminine, but androgynous at least. And I wore women’s boots, mostly hidden beneath women’s jeans that could be merely unstylish for men rather than definitely feminine. None of those things were obvious, but all of them added to the thrill - added to the risk of . . . whatever."
"Embarrassment?" she offered.
"Probably, though in all honesty I wasn’t all that bothered when we went out with me wearing makeup. It was more tiresome to be gawked at than, well, humiliating. Does that make sense?"
"I guess so," she said thoughtfully. "Like, sometimes, we’d be on a photo shoot and people would be staring at me. I mean, I could be nicely dressed, and I know I look good so there wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about, but after a while I wished they’d just go get a life and leave me alone."
"Exactly. Yet, right up until the point that people actually started staring, I was intrigued by the thought that they might, well, really react in some outlandish way. Yelling and pointing, maybe laughing. Instead, all they did was snicker and pretend not to notice even while they stared. After a while, it was just irritating."
"I wish we hadn’t done that," she said.
"I’m glad we did," he declared, surprising her. "I learned a lot from that, and I wouldn’t mind walking that line again, right on the edge of being noticeable. Plus, like I said, I like looking good. For you, but also for me."
"But what if you, what did you say? Are noticeable again?"
"Well, if there’s no real risk then after a while the excitement would fade. So sometimes I guess I’d need to do something just *over* the line, to know for sure where it was."
"What would you do then?"
He smiled. "Laugh and walk away. What I said before still holds. The only people whose opinions matter to me are you and me. The rest don’t really count."
Jayla nodded, smiling again, though hardly with her accustomed bright happiness. "You mentioned that there were three or four parts to this."
Logan nodded, too, then said, "Then there’s the, um, naughty sex aspect of all this. Part of that is tying you up, maybe other control things. Part of that is the blatant sexuality of no underwear. Part of that is the fetish clothes you wore, the corset thing and thigh-high boots. Of course, all of that is enhanced by the risk of public exposure."
This time Jayla’s confirmation was more apparent in her blush than in any other motion, but that blush was more than sufficient. After a moment she asked, "Anything else?"
"Isn’t that enough?" he asked, smiling to try and lighten the mood.
"Probably," she replied, smiling a little, too. "Um, to get back to where we started, what do we do now?"
"Push things," he said firmly. "I don’t know where we want to end up, but if we don’t push in all three areas, we’ll always wonder. At least, I know I will."
"Which means?" Jayla asked.
Logan took a deep breath and said, "Which means we need to be creative again, even if - maybe especially if - it might make us uncomfortable."
Jayla looked like she was going to ask another question, but Logan lifted his hand to stop her. "I know that’s not really specific, yet," he said, "but I do have an idea that’s a little more useful."
"This week, while we’re apart," he explained, "you think of something that will make me look, or act - whatever interests you - more feminine. If it’s too obvious to have any chance of hiding it, then we’ll stay home when we give it a try. But if you think we can ‘get away with it’ in public, then okay."
"Whatever I want?" she asked.
"I trust you. I’ll even trust your judgment on whether we should try it outside the house."
She nodded, then said, "And you? What are you going to work on while we’re apart?"
"I’m going to think of something to crank up your own thrill factor a bit," he said, grinning.
"Oooh, I can hardly wait," she said with a bimbo giggle. But in the next heartbeat she was serious again. Standing, she walked over to sit next to him on the bed.
"Darling, I’m still worried. This was so much fun when we started, but I’m scared it might get out of control."
"I know, beautiful, but I’ll tell you what. There’s nothing to worry about, really. I was happy before we started getting, um, strange. Weren’t you?"
"Of course."
"Then the worst that can happen is we go back to the way we were. Everything else will either be better, or temporary. I can live with either of those. Can’t you?"
"Well, when you put it that way," she said, smiling.
Wrapping her arms around him, she held him for a long moment. Their embrace turned into a caress, the caress into a stimulation, the stimulation into passion, and their passion turned the night into morning before Logan ever got his packing done. Neither complained.
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