You’d think that dying and being reborn into a different body in a strange place, having been molested by my pastor and now stalked by my Mother Superior would put a damper on your girl’s libido.

But no.

The way Makayla’s aquamarine eyes looked up through her long, silver lashes sent my heart racing. If the heat between my thighs had been simmering before, it now burned hot.

Still, I retreated a step. My foot sunk into the spongy surface, then sent me tumbling.

I had the presence of mind to throw my hands back to keep from giving myself a concussion. Not that it would’ve happened, the way my fingers sank into the floor. My weight shifted back to my elbows, which likewise pressed into the softness.

Just what was this surface? I looked over my shoulder.

At first glance, the floor might’ve been covered in the shag carpets from Stranger Things. On closer inspection, though, the surface turned out to be some kind of moss, with tiny florets in millions of shades of green and purple. It emitted a soft white light. Indeed, that’s what illuminated the chamber.

Pressure from Makayla’s fingers on my chin turned my face to hers. She knelt with one knee up and another between my legs. Her crooked smile might’ve belonged to Satan as he bargained for my soul, and I was looking for a pen to sign on the dotted line.

Now you’re probably wondering if I liked men or women. Truth is, in our world, I always found anyone who smiled the right way attractive, a melodious voice inspiring, a smoky gaze arousing. Bonus points if they could make me laugh, and a walk-off grand slam dunkin’ donut if they were pleasant on the eyes.

Makayla checked all those boxes, like a delectable fusion of Selena Gomez and Jin. Or Jung Kook. Or Jimin. Heck, any of the BTS members’ whose names began with J, with the exception of J-Hope.

Why I scuttled back, I couldn’t explain; but with a feral grin, she prowled on all fours, claiming the distance between us. I now had no doubts that this abbess was a predator, and Alyna was her victim.

I might be occupying Alyna’s body, and maybe Alyna had been coerced; but I wasn’t her, and I was choosing this. Every fiber of my new being tingled with need.

My shoulders bumped up against cold metal. It tolled like a bell, and the moss glowed brighter. Makayla was on top of me now, her body heat rolling off in waves. She leaned in, her mouth approaching mine.

Lowering myself down to the moss, I closed my eyes, waiting for the kiss…

Which never came.

Instead, her lips pecked the tip of my ear. An electric jolt shot from there, only to intensify wherever her kisses touched along the angle of my jaw to where they tugged at my neck. I let out an involuntary gasp, and her decadent sigh answered.

Her fingers traced lazy whorls along the inside of my arms, tantalizing in their light pressure. Her knee brushed the apex of my thighs, and I pressed against it. The firmness ignited places I’d never felt before, and I gyrated against the hard slickness.

Slickness that came from my arousal.

Through my panting, I opened my eyes and turned my face into her silver hair, which smelled of fresh gardenia. She withdrew and turned so that we gazed at one another. Nobody had ever regarded me with such adoration.

No, she was looking at Alyna with adoration.

And I wasn’t Alyna, not really. I had no idea if I’d go to sleep later and wake up in a hospital bed back in the hell that was our world. I was just borrowing this body. Makayla wanted Alyna, not me.

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Nothing douses passion quite like guilt. I might’ve chosen to engage in what had just happened, but Makayla didn’t know. I was taking something that wasn’t mine.

With all desire draining away, I squirmed out from under her, crossing one arm over by chest and covering myself with my hand…

…and froze at the texture. Gone was four inches of limp meat, replaced by silky wisps covering a soft and supple mound. Of course I’d seen this earlier, but it came as a shock now.

I had little time to dwell on it as Makayla sat up, her face again contorted in hurt. “Don’t you want me?”

Did I ever. But how could I explain that I was an interloper from another world?

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I just don’t feel like myself.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You sounded like yourself just now.”

Heat burned in my cheeks. “I… I still feel lost.”

Folding her arms across her chest, in such a way that it propped up her boobs like a push-up bra, she tapped her elbow. Her expression bared me even more naked that I already was.

I forced myself to avoid her suspicious glare, and busied myself by scanning the room. My eyes fell on a bronze-looking vase that rose to chest height, occupying the center of the room, beneath the hole in the dome. Runes intertwined with latticed symbols across its surface. That’s what I’d back into earlier, whose ringing had lit up the moss.

A cobalt gown puddled near its base. I crawled over to it, rose up to my knees, then held it up.

Apparently, nuns in this world didn’t wear frumpy habits like they did back home. Just how was I supposed to wear this tangled mess of ribbons? I tried to slip my arm between two of the bands.

Whatever suspicions she might’ve harbored melted away as she covered a giggle. “That’s mine. Yours is over there.” She pointed to another pile of tousled cloth.

Keeping an arm over myself, I sheepishly proffered her dress, then shuffled over to mine. I was becoming more accustomed to this new body, and managed to reach the garment without falling on my face.

It looked to be the same design as hers, dangling in my grasp like burgundy streamers in a Chinatown New Year’s parade. With no idea how to don it, I followed Makayla as she slipped into hers.

My head fit through a cloth loop that looked like the care ribbon car magnets where people wouldn’t have to lift a finger to show support some cause. In this case, the ribbons supported my breasts, before crossing through a silver ring in the middle of my back. My arms reached back with ease, my new shoulders supple compared to my virtual armored paldrons back home. The two strips stretched down to the crests of my hips—which flared out from a slim waist, unlike my puffy plushy body back home. There, the cloth strung through a dangling belt of intertwined silver rings.

It draped so low, a Brazilian micro thong would’ve been jealous.

Another band of cloth threaded under my crotch and between my butt cheeks and tied back into the rings. I can’t say I’d tried a thong on before, but unlike my past experiences, this didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. A skirt like slave Leia’s hung from the belt in front and back, the fabric so thin it was translucent.

I’d eked out an existence in the wrong body for two decades, and even with Alyna’s perfect form, anxiety squeezed my chest over wearing something so revealing.

Makayla, on the, wore a few ribbons like a swan wore its feathers. She studied me.

“You really don’t other hand remember, do you?” She drew closer and traced her fingers down my jaw.

My consciousness might’ve replaced Alyna’s, but this body remembered that touch. A shiver coursed through my spine, and without realizing it, I leaned my cheek into her palm. The warmth felt right.

Still, this was wrong, at least until I confirmed I wasn’t going to be whisked back to Earth. And I didn’t want Makayla to do something she’d regret with an actual stranger.

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember a thing.” All I could do was bob my head. I pulled back and looked up at the paintings on the walls and dome again. “She is Kavala?”

“Yes.”

“And this place is the Sanctuary of Kavala’s Vessel?”

She nodded, concern scrawled in her pretty expression.

“How did I come to be here?”

“We came together as refugees. Human cultivators killed our parents.”

There was that word again. A voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like Vizzinni said that maybe that word didn’t mean what I thought it meant. “Farmers?”

“If only they remembered their place and stuck to agriculture!” She shook her head. “It’s some unnatural power they discovered fifty years ago.”

Fifty years… just how long was a year? “How old was I when I came here? How old were you?”

“Seven.”

“Both of us? Which one of us is older?”

“Me.” Her brow furrowed. “By an hour.”

However long an hour was in this world. Then I shuddered. I was not one to judge love, and perhaps in this culture, things were different; but I did draw a line. “Are we… twins?”

Makayla’s expression pinched. “Of course not. Kavala celebrates love in all its forms, but besides choking, the only other restrictions are carnal knowledge of humans and of family members. We’ve been best friends since birth.”

My gaze shot up to the mural, where the elf woman was seducing a human. Was that not sacrilege?

“Abbess!” called a frantic voice. “A human cultivator has penetrated the sanctuary!”