Two week later...

If someone, equipped with binoculars, directed their gaze toward the third floor of the Goltz residence in the early hours of the national Ascension holiday, that someone would be astonished to recognize Jenny Goltz dressed only in a short silk nightgown, with a young bare-chested man with a shaved head standing behind her, holding her waist and kissing the neck of the wife of the Empire’s most influential senator.

“It’s inevitable. I have only a few days left. Soon I’ll have to return to my crippled body. And you’ll have to return to the front, Sorel.”

“Shhhh. Don’t think about that now. Let’s take advantage of Peter’s absence. The military parades, tributes, and speeches by Maagael will keep him busy at least until late afternoon.”

“I wanted to see you taking part in the parade. In your turquoise-blue officer’s uniform—” and as she said this, the woman turned to face the young man, sliding her fingers across his nearly hairless chest, rubbing imaginary buttons.

“I’m a deserter, Karen. Ask me to run away and we run.”

“Who’s going to run? Karen and Sorel, or Jenny and Sorel?”

“You know the answer.”

“Do I? The only thing I know is that my boyfriend likes strange fantasies.”

“The current circumstances may have awakened my perverted side, I admit.”

“I like you for still being cute even when you’re sordid.”

“Do you know what I like about you, Karen?”

“I think so, darling. But you can call me Jenny.”

“That’s exactly it.”

Sorel lowered the straps of the nightgown, squeezing his lover’s bare shoulders and almost immediately feeling the softness of the silk brushing against his toes.

====

Even before the body switch, Karen had planned a list of activities to do once she recovered her mobility. Visiting places, doing push-ups, rolling in the grass, playing volleyball… sex was not a priority. The idea of using her mother’s body to have sex could not even be seriously entertained. Making love required a degree of intimacy and trust that was simply impossible for Karen under those conditions. Her curiosity allowed her to touch her mother’s clitoris. She saw no problem with self-stimulation. Sex, however, was out of the question. With which partner could she go to bed? Her old father, her mother’s legitimate husband? Grotesque and sordid. Her young boyfriend, with whom she already had prior intimacy? Ridiculous and bizarre.

Karen’s scruples and prudishness had a short life. She did not hesitate to flirt and, at the first opportunity, raise her ass for Sorel. The cunt at her disposal differed from the tighter, wetter one she had at eighteen. Orgasm took longer, but it came in multiple soft waves, making the fifty-two-year-old woman drain the vitality of the twenty-year-old man. Despite the delayed and less intense orgasm, the mature body had its advantages. Since Jenny had already gone through menopause, the lovers could forgo condoms and fuck freely without fear of an unwanted pregnancy. Mature beauty also more than compensated for any physiological restrictions. The absurd and forbidden aspect of the relationship exerted a sharp fascination on Sorel. Squeezing Jenny’s hips and seeing her smile in response set the young soldier’s imagination on fire. Taking in his arms the mother of his own girlfriend! Putting horns on the bald head of Senator Goltz and fucking one of the most elegant and respectable women of high society! A perverse and delicious scenario that stimulated him to thrust with greater ardor and to plant kiss after kiss on the protruding vein at the right corner of his beloved’s forehead. Karen’s relaxed personality embodied in Jenny’s noble and slender silhouette — whose maturity was noticeable through her reserved behavior, conservative attire, and intellectual skill — had from the beginning been a delicious source of contrasts.

The daughter reformulated her mother’s body language and wardrobe. When she undressed Jenny for the first time, Karen simply confirmed what she had already intuited some time earlier: aerobic exercise and the practice of yoga had kept the body in shape; the signs of age — creases, spots, pronounced pores, wrinkles — highlighted Jenny’s late physical glory, just as lichens, stains, and vines make a tree majestic. She tried on the khaki ribbed pants and the white cropped top. Flat leather sandals completed the look. It was with this same outfit that Karen, on various past occasions, had walked around the City in the company of friends. Although unusual, there was nothing especially extravagant or inappropriate about a mature woman dressed in clothes associated with the young-adult style. Deliberately, Karen sought in her mother’s vocal cords the cadence and rhythm that best fit the verbal lexicon of an eighteen-year-old girl. As a result, the new Jenny expressed herself in a sweet or enthusiastic, coquettish or sulky manner, without giving too much importance to the judgment of those who claimed to know the “good old” Jenny Goltz thoroughly.

“Have I told you about the conversation I had with Anoka after the transfer?”

“Countless times.”

“But I haven’t told you about ‘The Dark Side of the Moon.’”

Sorel rested his head on Jenny’s abdomen, one ear pressed against her skin, entertained by listening to the mysterious intestinal noises, when he sat up again on the bed, curious. His shrunk penis still retained a residual sheen. They had fucked for hours on end. He did not feel tired or sleepy, but he had reached a state of languid emptiness, a kind of happy insomnia. Besides Karen having raised no objections to Sorel’s fetishistic desire — who could have imagined she would play so well the role of a mother reluctantly seduced by her own daughter’s boyfriend? — she had also treated the young man to a blowjob for the first time. Karen had never done that before. The make-believe left the couple truly exalted; the positions followed one another without any discernible transition. Sorel did not even have time to dodge Karen’s acidic kiss, receiving a generous mouthful of his own semen directly from Jenny’s lips.

Sorel only wanted to prolong that moment of intimacy, even if both of their sexual appetites would take a few hours to return.

“The dark side of the moon? I don’t remember that part. Tell me.”

“It’s a silly detail, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since…”