Drew gets out of his hardworking life by using a strange device to steal his wife’s seductive body in Returning the Favor.

Drew has hit a dead end. He’s in his mid-forties. Tired of his job. His life. His wife. Melissa is in her late forties and sits at home all day, lost on the internet, barely taking care of the house or him or even herself. Drew can’t even remember the last time they had sex. Though he’s still attracted to her, she shoots him down every time, preferring to nag him over every little thing rather than become intimate.

Drew’s only happiness is with his online role-playing partner. Together, they act out their body swapping fantasies where Drew pretends to steal his wife’s body and improve her life while having some intimate time with his partner along the way. Too bad it could never actually happen.

Until the day his role-playing partner reveals he found a scientific device that claims to do just that.

Intrigued and desperate, Drew uses it to steal his wife’s body while leaving his old body an empty husk. Inside his wife’s body, he sets to work repairing her relationship with her friends and getting herself back in shape. All the while he takes the time to enjoy the pleasure of his new body, and reward his role-playing partner for the opportunity.

But even with his new life, Drew is still missing something: youth. So he embarks on a plan to swap again for a younger model.

The taxi pulled up the driveway of Drew’s house. As the driver got out to retrieve the bags from the trunk, Drew sat in the back seat with his eyes closed for another few seconds. Exhausted from his flight and mentally preparing himself for his wife’s reception, Drew only opened his eyes after the driver cleared his throat a few times. He paid the driver and stood near the front stoop as the taxi reversed down the driveway of Drew’s modest two-story suburban home and disappeared down a road surrounded on either side by almost identical modest two-story houses.

Jetlag got worse with every trip. Maybe it was Drew’s age that made it so. At 43, he couldn’t just shrug off a bad night’s sleep anymore. The prescription for liquid melatonin—and a business class seat—helped him get through each flight, but he still awoke at every destination with a crick in his neck and a throbbing pain down his back. In the three years since he’d become Executive Director at a large auto parts company, he’d been sent all over the country. Often multiple times a year. Travelling was a young man’s game and, not for the first time, Drew thought about quitting. He was nowhere near the age where he could tap into his retirement, plus it would mean their medical coverage would lapse. Then his wife, Melissa, would have to get a job.

Boy, they’d had that conversation enough in the past year to last a lifetime.

Drew pulled up the handle of his suitcase and bumped it up the porch steps. Unlocking the door, he stepped inside and was greeted by no one and nothing. They didn’t have a dog who would have been overjoyed to see him. All the kids and stepkids were fully grown and had moved out. Even Melissa didn’t even bother to come see who was at the door and she had no excuse.

Drew could hear the television on in the living room from where he stood. Some woman was bitching about another woman, all undercut by overly dramatic music. Another one of Melissa’s dreadful Real Housewives shows.

He closed the door and dragged his suitcase down the hall. It opened up onto the living room, the stairs to his right. Melissa was sitting in the dark brown leather couch across from the television, her face in profile to him. Her thick red glasses were perched on her nose and she jabbed at her phone every now and then, chatting with some strangers online about something. It was exactly the same position she’d been in when he’d left. Maybe even down to the same plain tee shirt and jeans. Except for the fact that the house was neater and tidier than he left, it was entirely possible that she hadn’t moved the entire week. She certainly didn’t look up as he came in.

“Hey, honey,” Drew said, as he came up to give her a kiss on the cheek.

She jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to face him so that his kiss landed awkwardly on her nose.

“Oh, Drew,” she said, bringing a hand to her chest. “You scared the heck out of me. I didn’t know you were coming home so soon. You should have texted me.”

“I did,” he said, trying to keep his tone level. It was depressing how little she noticed him these days. And when she did notice him, it was usually to nag.

She scrolled up through her phone. “Oh, yes, you did. Well, if I didn’t reply then you know I didn’t read it so you should have sent another one.”

Somehow it was his fault she hadn’t get the message. He knew that any retort would just escalate but he couldn’t help himself. He was jetlagged and exhausted and she didn’t even seem to care that he was back.

“You know,” Drew began, against his better judgement, “Maybe if you’d turn off this dumb show once in a while you might get your husband’s messages.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’ve been back two minutes and already you’re going at my choices.”

How the hell did she turn it around on him? It was no wonder she couldn’t hold a job. She’d quit her last job out of ‘stress’ and refused to get another one, telling him how people in the office were so spiteful and out to stab each other in the back. Drew suspected it was her attitude, which had grown worse over the years. How had the lovely-but-strict woman he’d know over the years lost so much of the lovely but kept so much of the strict?

Nowadays her job was to stay home and look after the house and herself. She looked after the house well enough but herself only sporadically. Her weight tended to yo-yo depending on her mood, which dictated how often she went to the gym. She was in a slimmer phase now, having lost the few sizes she’d gained last year. At 46 years old she was a little soft around the middle and her butt had rounded out yet Drew still thought of it as totally grabbable. Though she never let him grab it these days. Her breasts hung down heavy and low on her chest, and they jiggled hypnotically when she rocked back and forth. At least, that’s what Drew assumed. He hadn’t seen them in a while.

She’d lost all interest in sex about six years ago, leaving Drew to have to take care of himself. She seemed completely uninterested in working on any issues she may have had. Completely uninterested in everything, in fact, except for that fucking show and her goddamn phone that was practically glued to her hand.

“There’s a package for you in the bedroom,” she said dismissively, turning back to her show.

Alex’s package! It was here! Drew stopped arguing and hurried upstairs, his heart suddenly thudding fast. It was a chance to change everything.

The one good thing that had come out of Melissa’s disappearing interest in sex was that Drew had become online friends with a guy named Alex. Drew didn’t remember how he found the online forum where he met Alex. He’d been following the rabbit hole of other blogs. Blogs about men becoming women. Captions. Body swap stories.

Somehow it led to the forum where he found Alex, who was looking for someone to roleplay with and they became regular partners. Usually it was Drew roleplaying becoming his wife because, despite everything, he was still attracted to her. He would give up his thinning hair and his craggy face and his long, lean body in a heartbeat to take over Melissa’s busty form, grab her bouncy butt and run his hands through her curly hair. Both the hair on her head and in between her legs. He roleplayed about being in Melissa’s body and going to visit Alex, giving Melissa to him and enjoying her pleasure as he made her body do the most degrading things. Things Melissa herself would never do. Things Drew would never dare ask for even if they were still having sex.

Drew and Alex got to know each other gradually through their shared body swapping kink. The roleplay eventually opened up to discussions on their real lives. Two weeks before Drew had left for his last work trip, Alex had dropped a bomb on him.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was some way to swap bodies in real life? Drew wrote to Alex one night as Melissa lay asleep in front of the TV.

Well… Alex replied. What would you do if there was?

I’d do what we just did. Become my wife and bring her to you.

There was a long pause and Drew thought Alex had gone to bed when his reply came.

What if I told you there was a way to do it in real life?

Read the rest in Returning the Favor.