Sweetness and surprise flashed in his face. “People don’t, usually. I’m just a means to an end.”
“The genie in the bottle?”
He touched my cheek so lightly, as if it were eggshell porcelain. “Something like that.”
“Let’s get going,” I said, dropping my eyes.
“One final question … what’s your ideal body type?”
I’d never thought about it, mostly because I preferred to believe it didn’t matter what I looked like, at least it wouldn’t with people who cared about me. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, right? So all my life, I had been holding out for the day somebody thought I was fine the way I was, but now I was sacrificing that potential for the sake of my plan. My stomach twisted with nerves.
“Slim hourglass, I guess. I always envied girls who look gorgeous in anything.”
With great tenderness, he set gloved hands on my face. The heat quickly built to unbearable levels, and soon I was choking back my screams. As he’d hinted, it was like surgery without anesthetic. Tears streamed from my eyes as he stroked shaping fingers down my cheekbones, along my jaw, over my lips and brow. When his thumbs smoothed across my lids, my vision winked out and I followed.
Much later, I awoke … and my clothes didn’t fit. My muscles burned with a low-grade heat, as if I had been training for a marathon. I lifted a slender, toned arm and marveled at it. Which was when I noticed I didn’t have on my glasses. And the world was crystal clear.
“Kian?”
I heard his footsteps on the stairs before I saw him. “How’re you feeling?”
“Not bad, considering. Is there a bathroom where I can—”
“Over here.” He bounded with an odd, nervous energy that I couldn’t interpret, until I realized he was nervous. He wanted me to approve of his work. “I left some things for you on the top of the hamper.”
Keeping my pants up required one hand pinching in the waist. I minced toward the bathroom and shut the door with a quiet terror that I was crazy. Or dreaming. You’re not. You were chosen. With glowing exultation, I turned to the mirror to meet the new me.
My mouth dropped open.
I did not know the girl in the mirror. I mean, she had a few things in common with the person I had been, but it was like someone had removed most of my imperfections in Photoshop. With shaking fingers, I touched my cheekbones. So many minute changes and refinements. The best plastic surgeons couldn’t have done what Kian had with his fingertips. From my small, straight nose to my slightly fuller mouth to the piquant point of my chin, I was the best possible version of myself.
He hadn’t stopped at my face. Delicate color flared as I stared, imagining him shaping my body like modeling clay. He’d had no choice but to go all the way to third base to do the job right, and it figured I hadn’t been awake. It’s just work for him, I told myself. Get over it. My hair was still long, but the mousy brown had gone. Instead, it held a coppery tinge with streaks of gold and red, giving it a gorgeous luster. I shook my head experimentally and it bounced away from my throat in what seemed like a flirty move. Not that I had any moves.
I needed some.
Kian knocked on the bathroom door, sounding anxious. “You okay? If you don’t like how you look, I can tweak. It’ll hurt, of course, but—”
“Relax,” I said. “You give good makeover.”
“Thanks.”
“Let me get dressed, okay?”
“Sure.” His steps moved away.
I went to the neat pile of clothes on top of the tan wicker hamper. When I found underwear and bras at the bottom, I almost died of embarrassment. They were the cute kind like I’d never worn. I chose a pair of white, pink, and black–striped boyshorts along with the matching bra, then shimmied into my new undies. I had no idea how I would face Kian, knowing he’d bought me underwear, but what the hell, he was so totally my Svengali, that maybe it didn’t matter. We were beyond all that. I heard him moving around, pacing it sounded like.
Wow, he’s really tense.
I faced my reflection. From the graceful curve of my shoulders to the flat, toned stomach, the mirror showed me a body I didn’t recognize and the change was startling, frightening even. Normal weight loss would’ve given me a chance to get used to being lighter by increments, but I had to get accustomed to all at once. It would take me a while to assimilate my new shape. By societal standards, I definitely qualified as pretty, but it felt like I was looking at a stranger, one whose body I had snatched. Deliberately I turned away. There were a couple of pairs of jeans, one plain, the other spangled with rips and faded spots. Though I’d never worn anything so stylish, I pulled them out of the pile and checked the size.
“Right.” I huffed out a skeptical sigh.
Still, my old pants didn’t fit, so why not try? I eased them up over my hips, thighs, and then buttoned them. They fit skinny, but they fit. No way. Euphoria sparkled through me, a low-grade fizz in my veins as I rummaged through the tops. I chose a black baby-doll T-shirt with white Japanese characters and a pink dot in the middle of the design. This time I didn’t check the size before I pulled it on. Shifting, I assessed myself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.
Incredible.
Taking a deep breath, I popped the door open before I could lose my nerve. Kian stopped, arrested in his progress across the front room. His gaze swept me from head to toe, and then he offered an approving nod.
“Obviously I think you look amazing or I would’ve kept working. But it’s more important what you think.”
“Perfect. I wouldn’t have been able to say, this is what I want, but you knew.”
“I’m good at seeing the potential,” he said quietly. “You have any pain?”
“A little. Nothing dramatic.”
“There may be a little blood, nothing to worry about. It’s a result of the internal shifting I had to do.”
I froze. “Blood? Like … where?”
“I had some when I brushed my teeth afterward, sometimes. And … in the bathroom. You know.”
The toilet? Oh my God. My parents would rush me to the hospital. “You swear it’s not indicative of hemorrhaging or something?”
“No, it’s definitely not. It’s just a reaction to the procedure. It’ll ease back as your body adapts to the transformation.”
“Okay. You haven’t lied to me so far, though ‘some pain’ was a massive understatement. It felt like my whole face was on fire.”