Passages
On the way home, Jasmin sat beside Ray deep in thought. Curious about her quietude, Ray kept one eye on the road as he reached for the small change they kept in the car. He selected a penny, and placed it on the dashboard in front of her. His hand entering, then leaving, her field of vision roused Jasmin from her reverie. She saw the penny, reached up and took it between her fingers, then studied it for awhile.
"I'm thinking of what happened back there," she said, sounding a bit tired.
"Back where?" Ray asked, wanting her to be more specific.
"On the street," she answered, "after we got out of the shoe store."
Ray sifted the many events of that time frame through his memory, and selected the only one that he could really understand.
"You sure handled that truck like it was nothing," he commented, still amazed at what she'd done.
"Not that," said Jasmin, dismissing it as if it was, to her, really nothing. "I was thinking of the man in the truck."
"What about 'im?" Ray asked, his interest here diminishing in proportion to his understanding of what had happened.
Jasmin's brow knit as she thought for a moment, then she answered softly, "I don't know yet."
She put the coin back with the others, then settled back in her seat again. Her eyes observed the arrogant swells of hard muscle in her thighs. It brought to mind the heightened sensitivity of her skin, so she took out her little bottle, and began applying some oil to relieve the irritation.
"Hey, that's my job," Ray told her with a loving, sidelong leer.
Jasmin smiled his way, then returned to her task. She relished the attention - needed it - loved him for it. She felt her slickened fingers glide over her satiny skin. The huge muscles of her upper body quacked, and bulged, aggressively from the mild exertion. She marveled at the way her body moved. The initiation of even the simplest of movements was greatly amplified, and boldly proclaimed. She wondered at such movement being at her command, to be employed to any end that she might deem, and Jasmin came to be astounded by herself.
"Whoa!"
An invasion between her legs. Instinctively, her knees squeezed shut. The hardening muscles expanded to a degree that her knees were actually forced apart by the very muscles which sought to close them.
"Ray!"
Her fingers closed around his wrist, and pulled his hand from between the jaws of her ebbing vise.
"Oh God, Ray, I'm sorry!"
"Impy?"
"I'm so sorry!"
"Jasmin!"
"I didn't know! You surprised me!"
"What's wrong?"
"Oh . . . please, I'm . . . sorry . . . !"
"Jasmin, tell me what's wrong!"
She held his hand within her own. She'd never seen Ray look so terrified. She couldn't figure why he wasn't screaming from agony.
"Ray . . . ?" she wondered of him quietly.
He held her from within her grasp. He'd never seen Jasmin look so terrified. He couldn't figure why she was screaming from agony.
"Jasmin . . . ?" he wondered of her quietly.
They looked on one another. The terror eased.
"Ray?" she asked. "Are you alright?"
"Of course I am," he told her. "What's with you? What happened?"
"I felt something I didn't know was you. I closed my legs, instinctively - I mean I really clamped down hard. I didn't mean to, but you surprised me. It's . . . just something a woman does when . . . "
"Jasmin," Ray assured, finally finding enough of a break in her relating to tell her, "I'm alright."
"But . . . you had your hand between my legs, and I really squeezed you hard. I wasn't thinking - I didn't know it was you until . . . "
"Impy," Ray called to her. Jasmin gave him her attention. "It was a joke," he tried to explain. "Y'know . . . your thigh, the oil . . . y'know, I wanted to play, the oil's slippery - voomp! - just slip right in." He wanted to laugh, but couldn't in the face of how she looked at him. "It was a joke. That's all. I was playing."
The terror eased. She felt his hand within her own. She felt him through her touch. She ascertained his state of being, and judged that, "You're alright."
"Yes," Ray affirmed. "Of course I am." He clutched her tight within her grasp. "You didn't hurt me."
"No," she said, releasing him. She sounded quietly amazed. "I guess I didn't."
Ray took his hand back as he got his attention back on the road ahead. He flexed his fingers gingerly.
"You've got a hell of a grip there," he remarked lightly.
Jasmin's eyes fastened on him.
"You did not hurt me," he specifically pointed out. "Really. I'm okay."
Reluctantly, Jasmin looked away. She was deeply troubled, and confused.
"But how?" she wondered. She tried to reason it out for herself. "I am very strong now. I mean, picking up that truck . . . it was . . . almost like nothing to me. I hardly felt any effort at all, and yet . . . when I closed my legs just now, I used every bit of strength I had." She looked to Ray for an answer to, "How did I not hurt you?"
Ray considered what Jasmin had said. She was making perfect sense. If the distributions of her now super human strength were equal, and followed through, then there was no reason why she shouldn't have reduced his hand to the thickness of a piece of paper. Something else had to be going on.
"Maybe it's like we discussed while we were making up lunch," he offered. "Y'know - like you can still cut vegetables," he smiled her way, "and you can still put a good squeeze on me."
"You're sure yer alright?" she asked.
"Yes," he took care to tell her. "I'm fine."
Jasmin revised her thinking in light of Ray's contribution.
"Maybe it is like you suggested," she speculated. "Maybe there's something . . . guiding me, so that I'm not destructive."
"I like that term."
"What?"
"'Guiding', you said."
"Hm," Jasmin murmured thoughtfully. "And if it applies to all of my activity, then the whole thing is like . . . a guidance system."
"Experience," Ray considered out loud without going any further.
"What about it?" Jasmin asked.
Ray frowned thoughtfully.
"Experience teaches you the amount of strength required to perform a given activity."
"True," Jasmin readily acknowledged, "but then I've never lifted a truck before."
Adding to his frown, Ray pressed his lips together, and scrunched his chin.
"Yeah . . . ," he softly exhaled.
Jasmin tried to put it all together.
"It's a guidance system that includes, yet goes beyond, my experience," she suggested.
Ray nodded his agreement, but then he wondered, "What the hell is the beyond part?"
"Haven't got the foggiest," Jasmin uttered. She took a moment to look over her transformed body. "Maybe this can be good," she said at the tail end of a sigh.
"It is good," Ray stated.
"No," said Jasmin with a shake of her head. "You can't make it a blanket statement. There are too many 'maybes', too many 'what ifs'."
She paused for a bit to reflect, then rubbed her thighs firmly with her hands. The movement that such a slight expenditure of effort could elicit baffled her.
"It's not just the strength," she said, trying to think her way through what she was experiencing. "There're other things," she ventured tentatively, "new things . . . sensations, feelings. All new . . . " Her mind struggled to understand, but clarity evaded her. "I don't know if I should welcome these new things, or if I should resist them, and, if the later, I don't know if I could, even should I try."
Ray thought it was time for her to get her mind off certain things.
"Don't worry about it," he advised.
She turned to him.
"Deedee, I have to worry about it," she quietly stated.
Ray admired her conviction. He thought a bit as he drove along.
"Why not just . . . let your guidance system do the walking," he counseled. "Trust it. Trust yourself. What good is it going to do if you're scared to death to do anything?"
"I don't know myself anymore, Ray," she tried to confess. "Trusting the unknown is always risky."
Ray glanced at her. He wanted nothing more than just to hold her.
"I think you know yourself better than you think."
Jasmin took this in, and didn't argue it. She'd consider it for future thought.
"You said that I'm continually getting stronger," she recalled.
"Mmm, that's what the math, and your initial reaction are telling me," Ray replied. He glanced her way to qualify though, "but that's just a hypothesis until I check it out."
Jasmin regarded him.
"Do I look bigger?" she wanted to know.
Ray glanced away from the road a number of times to give her a critically visual once over. When he'd assessed her size, and mass, to his satisfaction, he returned his full attention to driving.
"No, not really," he answered easily. "How do your cloths feel?"
Jasmin looked down at herself, then went about improvising what amounted to a 'stress test' of her clothing; breathing deeply, and generating movement, here, and there, in her extraordinary muscles.
"The shirt doesn't feel any tighter," she reported when she was done.
"How about the shoes?" Ray asked before he noticed that she had removed every stitch of clothing from her feet. Her nakedness brought forth in him a particle of their private Heaven. "Aw . . . ," he cooed, "there are those little foots."
Jasmin raised her feet, and splayed her toes the way he liked. Ray delighted in her showing off, then returned his sites back to the road.
"It never ceases to amaze me how you can do that," he sighed in wonderment.
Jasmin smiled, and relaxed her toes from what was, to her, a simple, yet affective, trick. She took to looking at her feet.
"They're not so 'little' anymore," she quietly observed.
Ray glanced her way to better determine her mood. He felt needed, so he reached for her, and began to stroke her thigh. Jasmin felt his touch, and closed her eyes. It was just as he had done so often while they were driving. It was just the same - no different. Then Jasmin opened her eyes, and studied his caressing hand. It felt the same as always, but the sensation was on a surface that she barely knew, or understood.
Watching his hand give, and take, the pleasure they both enjoyed, Jasmin wondered and thought, and dreaded and hoped, and then she dared to risk. She extended her knee, and tightened. The cambers of her thigh expanded. The separations deepened. Cross-striations appeared beneath her skin. The volume of her thigh increased dramatically as she hardened her transformed flesh as much as she could.
She watched his hand traverse over the numerous peaks, and valleys, of her fully contracted thigh muscles, searching for any sign of difference in his touch. There was no difference, as far as she could tell. His touch was still the same - just as sure, just as loving, just as firm as it had always been.
But it was different, and yet the same, as she watched his hand caress her hardened flesh.
"It's different," she softly noted for his benefit. "Isn't it."
Her tone belied her inference, as well as her concern. Ray thought it best be in the open, where they could deal with it, once and for always.
"Are you asking if I think it's better?" he wanted to know of her.
She gently brushed his hand away from her as she relaxed her leg. She clenched her jaw, and closed her eyes from shame.
"I'd never ask you that," she said. "It wouldn't be fair."
Ray listened to her. He knew it was safe to press the issue further.
"But you are thinking about it, aren't you?"
He listened, and waited, until Jasmin whispered, "Yeah."
Ray drew a breath, then let it out, watching the road ahead. His touch was still the same.
"I'd like to think of it as . . . more of your inner beauty brought out."
Just as sure.
"That's how I'd like to think of it."
Just as loving.
"So that's how I'm going to think of it."
Just as firm as it had always been.
Jasmin thought about his answer to her unasked question. The results of her reflection, and his answer, made her glow inside.
"I'm trying hard to hate this," she admitted, then she looked his way, "but you are not making it easy."
Ray diverted his attention long enough to briefly meet her gaze, then returned his eyes to the road ahead.
"Good," was all he said, or needed to say.
His touch returned. She closed her eyes. Her inner glow intensified.
"Whoops!" Ray suddenly exclaimed. "There's that oil again!"
Jasmin squeezed, then growled with pleasantly ambivalent delight.
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