Side Effect: The Day Souls Got Mixed Up

"What are you staring at, son?" The voice issuing from those perfectly shaped lips was soft, yet the tone still carried the commanding firmness of a fifty-year-old man. "I’m just here for a father-son night..."

"That’s not how it looks." The young man took a step back, fists clenched. His brain was short-circuiting at the sight of his girlfriend standing there. "You show up at my apartment, dressed like that, after the accident that swapped your body with Nathalie’s? And you expect me to think that’s normal?"

His father sighed, crossing his long, shapely legs in a careless sprawl—a purely masculine habit that clashed with the minidress he was wearing.

"But son... you don’t answer my calls or reply to my messages. I miss you. And I knew how much you loved Nathalie; I knew this was the only place she’d come to. I was forced to break into her closet and come here."

"That still doesn't explain the choice of outfit." The son looked away, his stomach churning with a mix of attraction and revulsion.

"Son, after all this madness, my bank accounts were frozen due to identity fraud. Who’s going to believe that the company CEO now wears a size 36 heel? Believe me, I’d love to be in a suit and tie like always... but it’s hard to maintain one's dignity without a penny to one's name. And her wardrobe was the only option. Let’s face it... your girlfriend knew she was beautiful. She always had that provocative appeal." His father ran a hand over the dress's tight fabric, adjusting it in a way Nathalie never would have. "Now, wipe that scowl off your face. Come sit right here next to me. Let’s talk..."

His girlfriend’s body took a step toward him. The father finished with a faint, lopsided smile—the same cynical smile he used in business meetings—while maintaining a posture that was open and far too inviting. His gaze lingered on his son’s eyes for a few seconds longer than was socially acceptable.

"You aren't going to run away from your old man, are you?" He finished with that faint, lopsided smile.

But that open, inviting posture wasn't entirely calculated by the father. Beneath the businessman's commanding mind, Nathalie’s body was operating on a purely instinctive level. After weeks of isolation and withdrawal from that love, the girl’s cellular memory and chemistry had taken the reins. The accumulated physical longing simply took command, regardless of who was at the "control center."

While the father’s mind sought submission, respect, and filial support, the body he inhabited was desperately begging for a romantic touch, for the scent of her boyfriend, and for the comforting embrace only he could provide.

Without the father realizing it, the body’s breathing involuntarily quickened. Her delicate fingers—which should have been making only authoritative, paternal gestures—began to tremble with suppressed desire, yearning to caress the young man’s face. The gaze the father had intended to keep steady and business-focused softened, shifting into an expression of raw physical need and emotional longing. The girlfriend’s body was seducing the man’s own son, and the father’s mind could barely contain that hormonal avalanche.

The young man took a step forward. The sight of his girlfriend weeping from physical need—even knowing who was operating that mind—shattered his last barrier of sanity. The intense longing radiating from that body was magnetic. Unable to resist Nathalie’s scent and the silent call of the flesh he knew so well, the son gave in. He reached out and wrapped his arms around the girl’s impossibly slender waist, pulling her into a tight embrace.

The impact on the "command center" was devastating. The moment their bodies touched, the father’s mind triggered a full-blown panic alert. He wanted to push his son away, scream that this was a terrible mistake, and assert his authority as a man and a father. But Nathalie’s biology was faster. Upon feeling her boyfriend’s touch after weeks of abstinence, the young woman’s body released a massive surge of endorphins and oxytocin.

A wave of relief and overwhelming physical pleasure numbed the father’s brain. Against her own will, the girl’s delicate arms acted on their own, wrapping around the young man’s neck with desperate intensity. She buried her face in his chest, breathing in his scent deeply.

"Son... stop..." the father’s mind tried to voice a protest, but what escaped Nathalie’s lips was merely a trembling, needy, and plaintive moan, begging for more contact.

The son closed his eyes, deliberately ignoring the paternal voice echoing beneath that plea. He began to stroke his girlfriend’s hair, feeling the soft skin of her back beneath her tight dress. It was heaven and hell on the same sofa. The young man knew he was embracing his father; the father knew he was surrendering to his son’s embrace. But, lock...