Lance just stood in the doorway of the Cocoon with snow melting in his dark hair, his overcoat open, his hands hanging useless at his sides.
He couldn't think of what to say.
For eleven weeks he had imagined this moment on the fourteen-hour flight from Singapore, in boardrooms, in hotel beds alone. He had imagined walking in and finding Brett in a bad blonde wig and a dress from Amazon, looking like a comical drag queen, looking like his best friend playing dress-up. He had imagined laughing, hugging him, telling him he looked great, writing the check for a million dollars, and sending him home to Whitefish with a story.
He had not imagined this.
This woman in front of him was six foot two in towering patent 140 mm Mary Jane platforms, her endless legs sheathed in black seamless stockings with the back seam running straight up the center of her calf. Her black semi-sheer bodycon dress clung to a body that was no longer a boy's body at all, a tiny twenty-three inch waist nipped in, hips flared wide and womanly, D cup breasts high and round under the high neck. Her long honey blonde hair fell straight and glossy past those breasts. Her face was perfect smoky glam, big blue eyes lined in charcoal, cheekbones carved, full nude lips parted over perfect white veneers with those slightly sharpened canines that made her smile look dangerous.
She smelled like vanilla and jasmine and sex.
Lance's brain, the brain that negotiated billion-dollar mergers, short-circuited completely.
Brett tilted his head, his hair sliding over his shoulder, and watched Lance struggle. He felt a rush of power so intense it made his nipples tighten under the lace bra. This was Lance Sullivan, the most confident man he'd ever known, the man who'd offered him a million dollars like it was lunch money, and he was speechless.
"Wow," Lance finally managed, his voice hoarse. "Brett... I..."
He stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "You look..."
Brett's perfect eyebrows lifted, his dangerous smile spreading slow across his face. He took a step forward on his red soles, hips swaying, and closed the distance between them until he was close enough that Lance had to look down to meet his eyes, even in the platforms.
"That's your best pickup line?" Brett purred in his low smoky alto, the voice he'd spent months training in front of mirrors. " 'You look...' ?"
He meant it to come out like a guy would tease his buddy, like the old Brett would have elbowed Lance in the ribs and called him an idiot. But it didn't come out like that at all. It came out like the confident goddess he'd become, low and teasing and dripping with feminine power.
"Loser," he added softly, and let his sharp canine catch his lower lip.
Lance actually flinched, then laughed, a short, stunned sound that was nothing like his usual boardroom laugh. "Jesus Christ."
"A million was a bargain," Lance whispered, more to himself than to Brett, his blue eyes dark and roaming over Brett's body like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "I would have paid ten."
Brett felt his breath catch in his corseted chest. The hormones made everything feel bigger, the compliment landing like a physical touch. He reached out with a pink-nailed hand and flicked a melting snowflake off Lance's overcoat lapel, his fingers lingering just a second too long.
"You've been gone a long time, handsome," Brett said, his voice dropping even lower. He leaned in, letting Lance smell his perfume, letting him see down the high neck of his dress to the swell of his breasts. "Three months. I had a lot of time to practice."
"Practice what?" Lance asked, his eyes dropping to Brett's mouth, exactly the way Matteo taught him men do when they want to kiss you.
Brett smiled, wide and toothy and white, letting his dangerous canines show fully. "Being unforgettable."
Lance stared at that smile, at those teeth, at those full lips, and his hand came up without permission, like he couldn't stop himself, and brushed a strand of Brett's long blonde hair back behind his ear. His fingertips grazed Brett's cheek and Brett leaned into the touch, just a fraction, his big blue eyes fluttering closed.
The touch was electric. Lance's hand was warm and big and familiar and completely new at the same time.
"Brielle," Lance whispered, trying out the name for real for the first time, not on a text, not on a phone call. His voice broke on the second syllable.
Brett's eyes opened, wet and shining with hormones and triumph and eleven weeks of waiting. "You like it?"
"I..." Lance shook his head, his confident mask completely gone, replaced by something raw and hungry and shaken to his core. "I don't have words. I came here thinking I'd see my best friend in a costume. And you're... you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life."
Brett felt tears prick his eyes and blinked them back furiously, not wanting to ruin his smoky makeup. He stepped back, just enough to let Lance see all of him, and did a slow, deliberate turn on his towering heels, letting the tight black dress ride up over the tops of his stockings, letting Lance see the back zipper, the curve of his ass, the long line of his back.
When he faced Lance again, Lance's hands were fisted at his sides like he was physically restraining himself from touching.
"Say something else," Brett teased, his voice shaking just a little now with emotion. "You flew fourteen hours. You must have practiced a speech."
Lance stepped forward then, closing the space Brett had made, and he was so close Brett could smell the airplane and the cold and the familiar Lance cologne underneath. He reached up with both hands and cupped Brett's face, his thumbs brushing under Brett's eyes, careful of his makeup.
"I missed you," Lance said simply, his voice wrecked and honest. "Every night at nine pm I missed you so much it hurt. And now you're here and you're not Brett anymore and I don't know what to do with my hands."
Brett laughed, a bright, musical sound that showed all his perfect teeth, and leaned his cheek into Lance's palm. "Then don't think. Just look."
Lance did. He looked at the goddess he'd paid a million dollars for and realized, with a clarity that stole his breath, that a million dollars was a bargain. It was theft. He would have given everything he owned for this moment, for this woman looking up at him with big blue eyes and a dangerous smile in his doorway.
"Hi, Lance," Brett whispered again, softer this time, intimate, his glossy lips inches from Lance's mouth.
Lance closed his eyes for a second like he was in pain. When he opened them, they were dark with lust and wonder and something that looked a lot like love.
"Hi, Brielle," he whispered back.
And for the first time since this insane, beautiful, impossible transformation began, Brett felt completely, utterly seen.…