Potion for My Chauvinistic Husband

The copper cauldron had been whispering since dusk. Nadia stood barefoot on the cool tile of their apartment kitchen, twenty-seven and already tired of being laughed at in her own home, and watched the potion climb from amber to a deep rose. Steam curled off it in ribbons that smelled of crushed raspberry, warm skin, and the sharp green bite of vervain. She had braided her dark hair back so it would not fall into the brew. The sleeves of her black robe were pushed to her elbows. On the counter, labeled jars of dried petals and moonwater sat in a neat row she had measured twice.

Nikolai came in from the living room with his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled, thirty years old and still carrying the day’s swagger like a coat he refused to hang up. He leaned in the doorway, took one look at the cauldron, and let out that short, fond, infuriating laugh.

“Playing with soup again,” he said. “If it tastes like the last one, I’m ordering takeout.”

Nadia did not look up. She stirred once, counterclockwise, the way the old notes demanded. “It isn’t soup. And you won’t be eating it. You’ll be drinking it, if you have the nerve.”

“Nerve.” He crossed the kitchen and set his hands on her hips from behind, chin near her shoulder, peering into the pot as if he expected a frog. “Babe, I love you. I also love that you have hobbies. But you’ve been muttering about teaching me a lesson all week, and I already know how to load a dishwasher. What is this, exactly?”

She turned in his arms. Up close his mouth was crooked with amusement, the same mouth that had called her craft cute at dinner with his coworkers, the same mouth that had told her last month that women made everything emotional and that was why she believed in herbs and moons. He had kissed her after, as if the sting were a joke they shared. It had not been.

“A night,” she said. “One night. You spend it in a woman’s body. Mine stays mine. You wake up yourself in the morning. No tricks, no surprises after. You wanted to know why I get sharp when you talk like the world was built for you to stand on. This is the only way I know to hand you the feeling instead of another argument.”

His eyebrows went up. For a second the laugh almost came back. Then he saw her face and swallowed it.

“You’re serious.”

“I am always serious about what I brew.” She tapped the wooden spoon against the rim. “You mock it because you’ve never had to live inside anything but the body you were given. So. One night. Full breasts. A pussy. The whole gorgeous inconvenience. You can say no. If you say yes, you drink it knowing what it does, and you don’t get to pretend later that I slipped it to you.”

He studied the rose-colored liquid. The steam kissed his throat. Something in his expression shifted, pride wrestling with curiosity, the old reflex to dismiss her warring with the fact that she had never once lied to him about her work.

“And if I hate it?”

“Then you hate it, and in the morning you’re you, and we talk like adults.” She held his gaze. “If you want me, during, you say so. If you want me to stop, you say that too. I am not interested in a husband who only learns by being trapped.”

A beat. Then the crooked smile returned, smaller, edged with heat he probably didn’t want her to notice.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“A little.”

“Chauvinistic husband gets turned into a babe so his witch wife can gloat.” He took the spoon from her, sniffed it, and made a face that was half bravado. “Fine. One night. If I wake up with a beard and a lecture, I’m never letting you live this down.”

“You won’t.”

She ladled a cup, not a drop more than the measure, and set it in his hands. The porcelain was warm. Nikolai looked at her over the rim, still himself, still smirking like a man who thought empathy was a costume he could take off.

“To your craft,” he said, and drank.

It went down sweet and then electric. Heat flooded his tongue, his chest, the pit of his stomach. He coughed once, laughed once, and set the cup down harder than he meant to. Already his skin felt too tight across his ribs, as if something underneath had started to listen. His nipples drew into sudden, startling points against his shirt. He pressed a palm there and went still.

“Nadia.”

“I know.” She touched his wrist, steady. “It’s starting. Bed. I’ll be right there. You’re safe.”

He wanted to say something cutting. What came out was a rough breath. The laugh had nowhere to land. He let her lead him down the hall anyway, ego loud in his skull and the rest of him already humming, unfamiliar, awake.

Sleep took him like a hand over his eyes.

The nightmares were not nightmares in any way he would have admitted out loud. They were vivid, relentless, and soaked in want. He dreamed of hands that were his and not his, smaller, sliding over a waist that dipped. He dreamed of weight on his chest, heavy and tender, nipples so sensitive that the drag of a sheet felt like a mouth. A voice, his own and higher, begged without words. Between his thighs there was no familiar hardness, only a slick, aching openness that clenched when phantom fingers circled a place he didn’t have a name for yet. He dreamed Nadia above him, smiling the way she smiled when a spell took, her dark hair a curtain, her mouth at his throat saying good, that’s it, feel it. He came in the dream or something like coming, a long rolling shudder that started deep and spilled out of him in pulses, and the sound he made was a woman’s sound, shocked and greedy. He reached for his cock and found nothing but wetness and the terrible, gorgeous knowledge that he wanted more.

He jolted awake on his back in their bed, sheets kicked down, gray morning light at the blinds.

The first thing he registered was weight. Full, warm, undeniable weight on his chest. He looked down and saw breasts, high and heavy, pale where the blanket had slipped, nipples flushed dark rose and peaked in the cool air. His hands flew up. They were narrower. The fingers that closed over those breasts were his in memory and not in shape, and the squeeze sent a bright shock straight down his belly. A moan broke out of him, higher than any sound he had made in his life.

“Oh,” he said, and the voice was velvet and startled. “Oh, fuck.”

Between his legs the ache from the dream was real. He shifted and felt slickness, a soft swollen seam, nothing of the cock he had gone to sleep trusting. Panic and arousal hit at the same time. He sat up too fast. The breasts swayed. The sensation made his new thighs press together.

Nadia was in the chair by the window, robe belted, watching him with open wonder and no mockery at all. She rose and came to the bed, slow, giving him the moment.

“You’re all right,” she said. “Look at me. You’re Nikolai. You’re thirty. You’re my husband. This lasts until morning. Breathe.”

He breathed. It came out shaky. “I had—Christ, Nadia, I dreamed I was—and I woke up and I am—”

“Gorgeous,” she said, simply, and meant it. She sat on the edge of the mattress and did not touch him until he reached. When he did, grabbing her wrist like a man reaching for a rail, she let him pull her closer. “May I?”

He nodded, throat tight. She brushed his hair back. It had grown in the night, thick and dark past his shoulders, framing a face he almost knew: his eyes, his mouth made fuller, cheekbones a little higher, a beauty that would have stopped him on the street if he had seen it on anyone else. She traced his jaw. His skin shivered.

“I look—”

“Like trouble,” she said, and smiled. “Like someone I’m going to have a very hard time keeping my hands off, if you want them on you.”

The male pride in him wanted to scoff. The body under it leaned into her palm. “I can feel everything. My chest. Down there. It’s—wet. From the dream. I think I—”

“I heard you,” she said, gentle and hot. “You sounded like you liked it.”

Color flooded his face, the blush startling on this new skin. “Don’t gloat.”

“I’m not gloating. I’m here.” She kissed his forehead. “Shower with me. Let me show you how this body works before the day gets away from us. You can tell me to stop any second.”

He swallowed. The ego muttered. The rest of him was already standing, legs unsteady, breasts shifting with each breath, a trickle of arousal cooling on his inner thigh. “Yeah. Okay. Shower.”

The water ran hot. Steam fogged the glass. Nadia dropped her robe and stepped in first, familiar and beloved, small breasts, the curve of her ass, the dark triangle he had worshipped on ordinary nights. Nikolai followed and nearly slipped at the first hit of spray across his nipples. A broken sound left him. Nadia caught his elbow, laughing softly, not unkind.

“Sensitive,” she said. “Good. That’s information.”

She soaped her hands and started at his shoulders, slow circles, asking with her eyes before each new place. He nodded, again and again, pride fraying into honesty. When her palms slid over the full breasts, lifting, thumbs brushing the peaks, his knees softened. He braced a hand on the tile. The sensation was nothing like his old chest. It was bright, deep, wired straight to the slick heat between his legs. She pinched lightly. He gasped her name in that new voice and hated how much he loved the sound.

“Still with me?”

“Yes. God. Don’t stop.”

She didn’t. She washed him the way she wanted to learn him, down the dip of his waist, over hips that flared where his used to cut straight, along the smooth stomach. When her fingers slipped between his thighs he grabbed her wrist, not to push away but to hold on. She waited. He spread his feet on the wet tile, face burning, and guided her hand the last inch.

“There,” he said, rough. “I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You don’t have to.” Her fingers parted him carefully. He was soaked, swollen, the clit a firm little pearl under her touch. She circled it once, slick with soap and his own need, and his whole body jerked. “That’s your clit. Small. Mean. It likes patience and then it likes more.” She demonstrated, slow, then a little firmer, and watched his mouth fall open. Two fingers stroked lower, along the entrance, not pushing in, just introducing him to the soft give of it. “And this. You’re dripping, husband. From a dream and from my hands. How’s the ego doing?”

“Shut up,” he breathed, and rocked into her palm, shameless, water streaming over both of them. “It’s—it’s losing.”

She kissed him then, wet mouths, her tongue stroking his, her fingers still working that bright spot until his thighs shook and a small, sharp climax flickered through him, not the huge dream-wave, just a bright pop of pleasure that made him whimper into her mouth. He clung to her, breasts pressed to her chest, stunned.

“Again later,” she murmured against his lips. “If you want. First we’re going out.”

He blinked water from his lashes. “Out. Like this.”

“Like this.” She rinsed him, tender and thorough, and shut off the tap. “You need something to wear that isn’t my robe slipping off those gorgeous tits. Lingerie. A proper education.”

The shop sat on a side street that smelled like coffee and rain. Nadia had loaned him a soft dress from the back of her closet, deep green, a size that clung in ways his old clothes never had, and a pair of flats. No panties. She had said, lightly, that they were about to fix that, and the lack of anything between his thighs and the dress lining had kept him flushed the whole cab ride. He kept his arms crossed under his breasts until Nadia tugged them down.

“Walk like you paid for the sidewalk,” she said. “You look expensive.”

Inside, warm light and racks of lace. A woman about Nadia’s age looked up from the counter, dark curls pinned, name tag reading Francesca, and smiled the professional smile of someone who had seen every kind of nervous.

“Welcome in. Something special?”

“Everything,” Nadia said, pleasant and sure. “My wife needs a fitting. Bras that actually hold her. Panties she can blush in. Maybe a set that comes off easily.”

Wife. The word landed in Nikolai’s stomach like a hand. He shot Nadia a look. She only raised a brow, waiting to see if he would contradict her. He didn’t. Francesca’s smile warmed.

“Gorgeous canvas,” Francesca said, already pulling blush pink and black and a deep red. “Come on back. I’ll measure. You can tell me if anything pinches.”

The fitting room was a curtain and a mirror and too much light. Francesca worked with quick, respectful hands, tape at his ribs, under the breasts, asking him to lift his arms. Thirty-four, full D, she announced, and Nikolai stared at his reflection as if the numbers might blink away. The green dress on the hook. This body in the mirror, narrow waist, wide hips, nipples visible through the thin chemise Francesca had given him to try underthings over. He looked like a woman who got looked at. The old Nikolai would have looked. The new one couldn’t stop staring, torn between vanity and vertigo.

Francesca stepped out to fetch another size. Nadia slipped in and stood behind him, chin on his shoulder, both of them in the glass.

“Still think women’s bodies are simple?” she asked quietly.

“I never said simple.”

“You said soft. You said easy. You said we make a fuss over nothing.” Her hand settled low on his belly, proprietary, and his breath hitched. “Tell me this feels like nothing.”

He covered her hand with his. In the mirror the gesture looked intimate, married, hungry. “It feels like I’m going to soak through this chemise if you keep talking.”

“Good.” She kissed the side of his throat. “Pick what you want to be ordered out of later.”

He picked. Blush lace that barely covered the breasts. A black set with a bra that lifted him obscenely and panties cut high on the hip. A red thong that disappeared between his cheeks and left the front a scrap of silk over his mound. Francesca wrapped them in tissue, took Nadia’s card, and told them to have a beautiful afternoon in the mild voice of a woman who knew exactly what kind of afternoon it would be. Nikolai thanked her in his new voice and fled to the sidewalk with the bag clutched to his chest, heart pounding, panties still absent under the dress, thighs slick from the mirror and Nadia’s hand and the simple fact of being seen.

At home Nadia locked the door, set the bag on the couch, and turned with the look she wore when a circle was closed and the working began.

“Bedroom,” she said. “All of it. I want you to try every piece on. Slowly. And I want you to do it because I’m telling you to, and because you want to hear me tell you.”

Heat climbed his neck. The chauvinist in him opened his mouth to negotiate. What came out was, “Yes.”

She smiled. “Good girl.”

The words should have rankled. They went through him like a finger on his clit. He carried the bag down the hall on unsteady legs, and she followed, already unbuttoning her own blouse, eyes on the sway of his ass under the green dress.

In the bedroom he stood by the foot of the bed while she sat in the chair, blouse open over a plain black bra, skirt rucked, one knee crossed over the other like a queen waiting for tribute. Afternoon light cut across the sheets. His hands shook on the zipper of the dress.

“Off,” Nadia said.

He let it fall. Naked, he was all new geography: breasts rising with his breath, waist, the soft dark hair trimmed neat above a pussy he could see if he looked down, lips already glistening. He reached for the blush set first because it felt like armor, thin as it was.

“Panties first,” she ordered. “Then the bra. Turn when I tell you.”

He stepped into the blush panties. Lace whispered up his thighs and settled over his mound, the crotch immediately damp. The bra took longer. Hooks, straps, the weight of his breasts caught and lifted. He looked at her, waiting, cheeks hot.

“Turn.”

He turned. The panties clung. The bra made his chest look obscene and perfect. Nadia’s gaze dragged over him, slow, approving, hungry.

“Again. The black.”

He changed. Each scrape of lace over his nipples made him bite his lip. The black bra shoved him up until he nearly spilled. The panties sat high, framing his ass. When he bent to adjust a strap he heard her inhale, sharp. He stayed bent a second longer than he needed to, newly cruel, newly aware of what his body did to her. The ego purred in a different key. Look what I can do to you now.

“The red,” she said, voice lower. “And come here when it’s on.”

The thong was a shock, a string between his cheeks, silk hugging his swollen lips, the damp spot spreading as he walked to her. She opened her knees. He stepped between them. She ran her palms up the backs of his thighs, over the bare curves the thong left exposed, and squeezed.

“You look like every woman I have ever wanted,” she said, “and you are still my arrogant husband under it. I can see him in your eyes, furious that he likes this.” She hooked a finger in the front of the thong and tugged, just enough to drag silk against his clit. He gasped and grabbed her shoulders. “Kiss me.”

He bent, breasts spilling toward her, and kissed her like he had been waiting all day, which he had. Her mouth opened under his. She tasted like the coffee she had stolen on the walk home and like herself, familiar, devastating. His new lips were softer, fuller; the kiss felt deeper for it. She sucked his lower lip, bit gently, and slid her tongue against his until he was making small helpless sounds and grinding, barely, against the finger still hooked in his panties.

“Bedroom’s already the bedroom,” she murmured, absurd and breathless, and stood, walking him backward until his calves hit the mattress. “Lie down. I’m taking these off you.”

He lay back. The red bra stayed for a moment, a frame, while she peeled the thong down his legs and dropped it on the floor. Cool air hit wet skin. He was spread without meaning to be, one knee fallen wide, pussy shining, clit peeking from its hood. Nadia looked at him the way she looked at a finished spell, reverent and ravenous, and reached behind him to unhook the bra. It loosened. She drew it off. His breasts settled, heavy, nipples tight. She bent and took one into her mouth.

The sound he made was not polite. Her tongue flicked, sucked, teeth grazing just enough to spark. She moved to the other and did it again while her hand smoothed down his stomach, possessive. When she kissed lower, over his navel, he lifted his hips without shame.

“Nadia—please—”

“Please what?” She settled between his thighs, shoulders under his knees, breath hot on his soaked folds. “Use the words. The man who mocked me can ask properly.”

“Eat me,” he said, wrecked, face flaming. “Eat my pussy. I need your mouth. I need—fuck—I need you to make me come like this.”

“There he is,” she said, pleased, and licked him from entrance to clit in one long, slow stripe.

He shouted. His hands fisted the sheets. She did it again, learning him, broad tongue flattening over the swollen lips, then the point of it circling his clit the way her fingers had in the shower, patient and then meaner. She sealed her mouth over him and sucked, gentle pulses, and his thighs tried to close around her head. She held them open, strong, and hummed against him until his back arched off the bed. The pleasure was enormous and strangely public, everything outside, nothing hidden behind a stroke of his own fist. He could hear how wet he was. He could feel her nose against his mound, her hair on his stomach, the obscene kiss of her mouth.

“Fingers,” he begged. “You said—inside—please, Nadia, I want to feel it.”

She slid one finger into him, slow, and the stretch made his eyes roll. He was tight and slick and fluttering around her, a clutch he couldn’t control. She pumped once, twice, then added a second finger, curling, searching, while her tongue never left his clit. When she found the spot inside that made his voice break, she stayed there, rubbing firm and rhythmic, fucking him with her hand while she ate him like she was starving.

“That’s it,” she said against his flesh, words messy. “Take it. Look at you, dripping on my fingers, this pretty pussy sucking me in. All day you walked around like this was a costume. It’s not a costume. You’re going to come on my mouth. Give it to me.”

He broke. The orgasm tore up from the fingers inside him and burst at his clit, longer than the shower, deeper than the dream, a rolling clench that gushed against her tongue. He sobbed her name, hips jerking, breasts bouncing, one hand flying down to hold her head there while he rode it out. She licked him through every pulse, fingers still working, until he was twitching and pushing at her shoulder, oversensitive and laughing and almost crying.

“Too much—wait—God—”

She eased out, kissed his inner thigh, and climbed up his body, mouth shiny with him. He tasted himself on her kiss, salty-sweet, and groaned into it, arms around her, the red bra forgotten on the floor, the black set and the blush set witnessing from the chair.

“Your turn,” she said against his mouth. “I want that new tongue. I want to sit on your face. You tell me if you need air. You tap my thigh twice and I get off. Understand?”

“Yes.” His voice was hoarse, eager, the ego somewhere far behind him. “I want to. I want to make you come. Show me how you like it.”

She stripped fast, skirt, bra, panties kicked aside, and straddled his chest first, letting him look. Her pussy was flushed, slick, the clit swollen from watching him fall apart. She moved up, knees by his ears, and lowered herself onto his mouth with a shiver and a soft, filthy sigh.

“Lick,” she ordered.

He licked. The angle was new, the taste of her flooding him, familiar from a dozen nights on his knees and brand new because his mouth was different, his nose buried in her, his breasts pressed by her weight when she settled. He found her clit and sucked the way she had sucked his, clumsy at first, then better when her hips rolled and her hand fisted in his long hair.

“There. Right there. Don’t get cute. Flat tongue, then suck—yes. Yes, husband. That’s my good girl.”

The praise burned. He moaned into her and the vibration made her gasp. He slid his hands up her thighs, held her ass, and pulled her down harder, learning the rhythm she wanted: circles, a suck, a flick, again. She rode his face in earnest, grinding, thighs trembling around his head, talking down to him in a voice gone ragged.

“You feel that? That’s what you called a fuss. That’s me using your mouth because you asked for it. Eat your wife. Make me come on that pretty face.”

He did. He sealed his lips around her clit and sucked steady, two fingers sliding back to stroke her entrance, not pushing in until she bore down and took them herself with a broken cry. She came hard, pulsing on his tongue, flooding his mouth, grinding through it while he held on and licked and swallowed and felt, absurdly, proud. When she lifted off, shaking, a string of wetness connected her pussy to his swollen lips. She stared down at him, undone, and laughed once, bright and wrecked.

“Look at you.”

He licked his mouth, dazed, smiling the crooked smile in a softer face. “Again?”

“Together,” she said. “I want to feel you against me. Tribbing. Scissor me until neither of us can talk.”

She shifted down, hooked one of his legs over her hip, and aligned them. The first press of pussy to pussy punched the air out of both of them. Hot, soaked, swollen lips sliding, her clit catching his, a slick drag that made his toes curl. She braced a hand by his head and rolled her hips, finding the angle, and when it locked in they both moaned, loud, unashamed.

“Move with me,” she said. “Grind. Don’t be polite.”

He wasn’t. He planted his heel and met her, breasts swaying, the wet sound of them obscene in the quiet room. Each stroke mashed their clits together, slippery and perfect, a rhythm that built from slow and filthy to desperate. Nadia’s hair stuck to her throat. Nikolai’s hands gripped her ass, pulling her in harder, the male memory of fucking translated into this new grammar of pressure and slide. She reached between them once to spread him wider, to make the contact meaner, and he sobbed and bucked.

“I can feel you,” he gasped. “Every time you—fuck—Nadia, I’m going to come again, I can’t—”

“Do it. Come on my pussy. Soak me. I want to feel this gorgeous cunt flutter while I grind you through it.”

The dirty talk snapped the last of his resistance. He came with a cry that cracked, hips jerking, pussy clenching and gushing against hers, the orgasm bright and endless because she didn’t stop. She rode the slick mess of him, chasing her own, clit slipping over his oversensitive one until she shattered too, collapsing onto his chest, both of them shaking, grinding out the aftershocks in messy little circles. Their breasts pressed together. Their mouths found each other, sloppy, grateful, laughing into the kiss. He held her and felt the echo of it in a body that was not the one he had been born with and, for this night, entirely his.

They lay tangled until the light went gold, then gray. Nadia cleaned them both with a warm cloth, slow, kissing the inside of his knee, the curve of a breast, the mouth that had made her come. He pulled her back into bed and slept with his face against her throat, the red thong still on the floor, the potion’s work humming quietly under his skin.

Morning came in ordinary stripes through the blinds.

Nikolai woke on his back, and the first thing he noticed was the absence of weight on his chest. His hand moved there out of habit and found flat muscle, the familiar scrape of stubble when he touched his jaw. Between his legs his cock lay heavy, morning-hard, ordinary and astonishing. He stared at the ceiling and tasted her still, salt and sweetness on his lips, as if the night had refused to rinse out of his mouth.

Nadia was awake beside him, propped on an elbow, watching his face the way she had watched the cauldron. No gloat. Just attention, and a small hopeful curve at her mouth.

He turned his head. His voice, when it came, was his again, rougher than usual.

“I would very much like to repeat the entire experience.”

The smile broke wide. She touched his cheek, thumb at the corner of his mouth. “Say it again so I know the chauvinist isn’t just being polite.”

“I’m not polite.” He caught her wrist and kissed her palm, cock twitching at the memory of her grinding down on a clit he no longer had and already missed. “I want the potion again. I want the shower, the shop, you ordering me into lace. I want your mouth. I want to wake up tasting you and knowing I asked for it. Soon.”

“Soon,” she said.

She was already scheming. He could see it in the way her eyes went distant and bright, counting days until the moon was right, listing the jars she would need, deciding whether the next brew should last a night or a weekend, whether she would take him back to Francesca’s or keep him home and make him model in the kitchen while the cauldron cooled. A plan, forming behind her smile, specific and hungry. She leaned in and kissed the taste of herself off his mouth.

“Rest today,” she murmured. “Tomorrow I start the next batch. And this time, husband, you’re going to help me measure.”