THE HUSBAND SWAP (bound to the wrong body)

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOUR HUSBAND AND HIS BEST FRIEND ACCIDENTALLY  SWAP SOULS AND TO SWAP THEM BACK YOU HAVE TO BE MARKED BY BOTH OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME OR JUST PICK ONE?

MAYA. 

The water was perfect.

Not too hot, not too cold — just that sweet spot where you could sink down until it was touching your chin and feel every single muscle in your body just... let go. The bath salts I had poured in were doing their job, making the water smell like lavender and something warm and sweet that I couldn't name, and the candles I had set around the edge of the tub were flickering low like they were tired too. Just like me.

I had my head tilted back against the rim of the tub, eyes closed, arms floating at my sides. The whole bathroom was quiet except for the soft sound of water moving whenever I shifted and the distant hum of the city outside our window. Thirty two floors up and the city still found a way to whisper through the glass.

I loved nights like this. Quiet. Still. Just me.

I felt him before I heard him.

A presence behind me — warm and familiar, the kind of warmth that your body recognizes before your brain catches up. I felt his hands first, sliding slowly over my bare shoulders from behind, big and steady and sure of themselves the way his hands always were. I smiled without opening my eyes.

"You're late," I murmured.

He didn't answer. He just lowered his head and pressed his lips to the side of my neck, right below my ear, and I felt that kiss move through me like warm water. I let my head fall to the side to give him more room and he took it, his mouth moving slow and deliberate down the curve of my neck to my shoulder.

"Yulian," I breathed.

Still nothing. Just his hands moving, his mouth on my skin, and that warmth that surrounded me like a second bath.

I smiled and finally turned my head to look at him.

And my whole body went cold.

It wasn't Yulian.

It was Kayden, my husband's bestfriend.

Kayden Hale was behind me, his dark eyes looking right back into mine, steady and unblinking, one corner of his mouth curved up like he had been waiting for me to notice. His jaw was sharp, his dark hair slightly pushed back, and there was that tattoo creeping up the left side of his neck.

I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I just stared at him and he stared at me and his hands were still on my shoulders and it felt—

It felt like it was supposed to.

That was the worst part. It didn't feel wrong. It felt like something that had been paused and was finally, finally pressing play again.

"Kayden—" My voice came out barely above a whisper.

"Maya." His voice was low and rough and he said my name like it meant something.

I shoved him back. Hard. Water splashed over the sides of the tub as I scrambled, pulling my arms across my chest to cover my tits, spinning around to face him fully — and that was when I saw Yulian.

My husband was standing a few feet away, just inside the bathroom doorway, still in his suit, his tie loosened at the collar, watching me with those dark calm eyes of his. He looked exactly like himself. Composed. Certain. Quietly powerful the way he always was, like the whole room rearranged itself around him without being asked.

"Baby," he said, reaching his hand out toward me.

"Maya." That was Kayden's voice from behind me, and it curled around my name differently, lower, like he was saying it from somewhere deep in his chest.

Both of them were calling me at the same time. Both of them reaching for me. Both of them saying my name over and over and the bathroom felt like it was getting smaller, the candles brighter, the water rising—

"Maya."

"Maya."

"Maya, baby—"

I gasped so hard I nearly choked.

—---------------------------------------------------------------

My eyes flew open and I was on the couch.

Our living room. I was on the couch. The television was on low across from me, casting a soft blue light across the room, and I had my good throw blanket pulled up to my waist, one of the couch pillows squashed under my cheek. A half empty glass of red wine was sitting on the coffee table in front of me, right next to the book I had definitely not been reading tonight.

I had fallen asleep on the couch again.

And Yulian was crouched in front of me.

My husband was right there, still in his work clothes, one knee on the floor, his big hand resting warm and gentle on my arm where he had clearly been shaking me awake. His tie was loosened and there was that small crease between his brows that only showed up when he was worried about something, and when my eyes finally focused on his face he let out a slow breath like he'd been holding it.

"Hey," he said quietly. "Hey, there you are."

I pressed my hand to my chest. My heart was still going too fast.

"What's wrong? I have been calling your name" he asked, his eyes moving over my face. "Baby, you look like you've seen a ghost. You alright?"

For a second I just stared at him. At his face. Checking, I know that sounds crazy but I was checking. Making sure it was him. Making sure those were his eyes, his jaw, his hands on my arm.

It was him. Of course it was him.

I exhaled and pushed myself up to sit properly, running my hand through my hair which had gone all loose and messy from sleeping on it.

"I'm fine," I said. "Bad dream. I'm fine."

I was lying. Obviously.

I was not fine. I had just had a dream about Kayden Hale's hands on my skin and his mouth on my neck and the absolutely unhinged part was that I hadn't even been horrified in the dream. I had been horrified when I pushed him away. Which was so much worse. Which was the kind of thing I was absolutely, one hundred percent going to take to my grave and never speak about out loud to another living soul as long as I lived.

I reached for my wine glass just to have something to do with my hands.

"You sure?" Yulian was still watching me. The man missed nothing. It was one of the things I loved most about him and one of the things that made being married to him feel like living under a very handsome, very attentive spotlight sometimes.

"I'm sure." I pulled the throw blanket off my legs and tucked my feet under me on the couch, turning to look at him properly as he straightened up and sat beside me. He had already taken his jacket off at some point, his crisp white dress shirt untucked now on one side, and he smelled like he always did at the end of the day, his cologne faded and warm and underneath it just him.

I set my wine glass back down and turned to him with my arms folded.

"How was work?" I asked. Then, before he could answer — "And before you say anything, I called you. A lot. Like, a concerning amount of times, Yulian. My phone was starting to feel embarrassed for me."

One corner of his mouth lifted.

"I know, princess. I'm sorry."

"You should be."

"I was in back to back meetings with the investors from overseas, the ones I told you about last week," he said, reaching over and smoothing a piece of my hair back from my face with his fingers. "And then I had to meet with the pack after. It ran long. You know how it gets."

I sighed. I did know how it got. That was the thing about being married to Yulian Voss — you were never just married to a man. You were married to the Alpha, the CEO, the head of the Voss pack and the face of Voss Enterprises, the man that forty-something wolves across the city looked to whenever anything moved wrong. His time was never fully his, which meant it was never fully mine either.

I had made my peace with that. Mostly.

"Fine," I said, not quite hiding my smile. "I forgive you. But only because you look tired."

"I am tired."

"How tired?"

He raised an eyebrow slightly, reading my tone immediately the way he always did.

I felt the mood in the room shift, just a little. The way it did sometimes when it was late and the city was quiet and it was just us in the low light of the living room with nowhere to be and nothing between us.

I leaned in just slightly toward him.

"Tired enough that you don't want help with all that tension?" I whispered, and I let the smile do what it was doing, slow and deliberate, because I knew exactly how to talk to my husband to turn him on. "You look like you're carrying the entire East Coast on your shoulders right now."

Yulian looked at me for one quiet moment.

Then he said, "Who am I to say no to that?"

I laughed, low and soft, and then I reached for him.

It started with a kiss — just a kiss, slow and easy, his hand coming up to cup my face the way he always did, like he was making sure I was real. I pressed into it, my fingers curling into the front of his shirt, and the wine and the low TV and the leftover fog of that dream all started to blur together at the edges.

I moved first. I swung my leg over and settled into his lap, both knees on either side of him, I could feel his erection pressing against me, and I felt him exhale slow against my mouth as his hands found my waist. 

I was still in my silk robe from earlier, I had changed after my actual bath and then apparently fallen asleep before I could make it any further than the couch and it had gone soft and loose, the tie barely holding.

His hands were warm through the fabric.

The kiss deepened and I forgot about the dream. Or I tried to. I focused on him — on Yulian, my husband, who was right here, who was always here even when he was late, who looked at me like I was something worth coming home to.

His lips moved from my mouth to my jaw, slowly, and I tipped my head back slightly.

"I really cannot wait," he said against my skin, his voice dropped low, "to put a baby in you."

Something warm moved through my chest. Mixed with something that ached a little bit, quietly, the way it always did when he brought it up. But I pushed the ache down and I smiled at the ceiling.

"Mmm," I breathed. "Me neither."

I straightened up and looked down at him and reached for the loose tie of my robe. I let it slip.

The fabric fell open at my shoulders and I watched Yulian's eyes move over me the way they always did, like he was grateful, like he was never going to take this for granted, and something in my chest pulled toward him so hard it almost hurt—

"Yulian! Yo, where are you man?"

I froze.

Yulian froze.

That voice came from the direction of the front door — loud, easy, familiar in the way that only someone who had been walking in and out of this apartment for years could sound. Like he lived here. Like he belonged here.

Kayden.

My whole body went stiff.

"Shit."