Synopsis: When Daniel gets offered a temporary job in the mail room, he little realises just where it will quickly lead him. Nor does he realise the consequences.

Author Notes: This story does have extensive breast feeeding content, along with some sexual content.

Breast is Not Necessarily Best
by Lin Dale

It was ten pm on a Sunday evening when the staff agency rang Daniel.

“We’ve just had someone report sick for tomorrow morning. Could you be at Hall’s Internet Despatch for seven am tomorrow?”

Daniel had left school a few weeks ago and was temping until he got his exam results. Some might have been perturbed at being assigned a job at such short notice, but it didn’t bother Daniel. His family had a second home in Spain and had gone there for the next six months. Working was much nicer than being at home alone.

“No problem,” he said, and took down the address details. He was to report to Joanne Simmons in the mailroom.

When he arrived next morning, the modern warehouse building was locked up and looked completely deserted, and he was standing around like a lemon, when a female voice called to him, “Please say that you're our new temp.”

He turned to see a woman who looked slightly younger than his mother peering at him through an open wicket gate in a roller shutter vehicle entrance.

He smiled at her with a confidence he didn’t feel and said, “That’s right. I’m Daniel White. The agency sent me.”

"Come on in," she said, pulling the wicket gate fully open. "I'm just waiting for the postman to deliver. He normally arrives just after seven."

Daniel had to bend his head slightly to step through the gate and it brought him directly facing the largest pair of boobs he had ever seen. They were like footballs, although admittedly, not the full-sized ones, more like the ones he had played with as a teenager.

"I guess first of all," Joanne said with a smile, having seen the way his eyes had wandered, "we'd better talk about the elephant in the room."

"Elephant?" he asked, surprised. He glanced all around the loading area they were standing in. There were a few pallets loaded with parcels, but definitely no elephant.

"Have you not heard the term before," she asked with a kindly smile.

"No," he said, trying not to look at her boobs.

"It's an expression to mean something large and very obvious, which people try not to look at, as you are doing now."

"Oh," he said, uncertain what to say.

"Breasts," she said. "Boobies, titties, knockers, bazookas, Bristols. Call them what you will, but they are here, in this room." She grasped a boob in each hand to emphasise her answer.

"Er, right," he said, staring, but trying not to, hopelessly confused.

"Daniel, you and I are going to be working together in the post room. It's not particularly big, particularly when we're sorting mail, and we will be very close together. We will bump into each other occasionally, and since these stick out more than any other part of me, you will be coming into contact with them. And as long as it's accidental, that's all right. Start bumping into me every five minutes and you'll get my knee in your groin, but occasional contact is all right. So to summarise, you are allowed to notice they exist, even – since you're a male – stare a bit at them, and I don’t even mind a bit of friendly banter, as long as it's not overdone. That's all OK, so don't get hooked up on them. Now, postie is just arriving so let's pull this trolley over so he can load it from his van."

Daniel helped her push the trolley so that it was against the open wicket gate as the red Post Office van came to a halt outside.

"Morning, Hooters," the postman joyfully called to her as he jumped down from the cab. "Got a new helper. What's happened to randy Sandy?"

"I suspect she's doing what she's usually doing when she's called in sick," Joanna joked back. "Got her legs wrapped around some hunky bloke she's just picked up."

"Well, I always gave her a chance with me," the chubby, middle-aged postman said, as he threw three mail sacks from the rear of his van into their trolley, "but she never took it up. Her loss and all that."

"Thanks, Stan," Joanna said. "See you this afternoon."

"Bye, love." He got back in the van and drove off.

"So much for political correctness," Daniel remarked.

"Political correctness is bollocks," Joanne said. "Come on, you can wheel the trolley into the mailroom."

She led the way and he followed her out of the loading area, along a corridor and into a windowless room, about eight feet square. As Joanne had said, it was not particularly big.

Joanne told him to take the first mail sack out of the trolley and empty it onto a sorting table which ran along the one wall with pigeon holes behind and to the sides. "Ok," she said. "It's all fairly self-explanatory. Read the envelope and then stick it in the appropriate pigeon hole. Ask me if you're uncertain about anything. We have to get this lot done by eight forty-five, ready for distribution. That’s not too onerous, even though I won't be able to help you all the time.

She was right, it wasn’t too difficult and after a while they started to chat. Joanne asked him about his life and he told her, then he asked the same about her. It turned out she was on her second marriage and was desperately trying for a baby.

"The clock's ticking," she said. When he looked up at the wall clock, thinking they were running out of time, she said, "Not that clock. I mean the biological clock." Since he didn’t seem to understand, she added, "It's OK for men, they can continue siring babies into their nineties. But for women, it's different. I'm forty now, and gradually the risks start to increase: of not conceiving; of a miscarriage and of there being something wrong with the baby. Within ten years, I'll have had the menopause and be biologically unable to conceive.

"After a year of being married to Tom, I hadn't conceived and we both went through a whole series of tests. Tom was fine, the problem was with me, and they said I probably wouldn't even be successful if I had IVF. But I found a doctor who said a dramatic increase in hormones might just tip the balance. It was the hormones which made my bust start increasing; I was a 36B two years ago. But over the last two years, my bust and hips have increased dramatically, so I'm now shapelier than a 1950s film star."

"You mean they just grew and grew," Daniel said, staring at that wonderful pair of footballs.

"And grew some more," Joanne said. "It was great, at first, getting wolf whistles from blokes half my age, but now I only have to walk down the street to get really nasty comments about my bust."

"I'm sorry," Daniel said.

"And I still haven't conceived," she said. "My doctor can't understand it, Tom hasn't been on top form recently, and I'm just wondering if his sperm count has gone down since he was last tested.

"Sorry to be such a bore about this," she added, "but it's my way of building up to something else I need to tell you, and that's that I'm lactating." Seeing the blank look on Daniel's face, she added, "The hormones are making my breasts produce milk, lots of it, so I have to breast pump at regular intervals, simply to stop them inflating even further."

"You mean they'd grow even bigger if… What's a breast pump?" Daniel had visions of something like a bicycle pump.

"It's the most ungainly thing any woman has to use," she said, "and I'm going to have to show you in a minute since I have to pump at eight am and then every two hours throughout the day."

"Oh, do you want me to leave?"

"It's all right, love. I am fairly discrete about it, but if you want to leave the room because you're disgusted, I'll understand."

"I won't be disgusted. Intrigued, I guess because I've never heard of this before, but I'll try not to gawp."

Just then, Joanne's phone started to beep and she said, "That's my reminder, as if I'd forget. I'm married to my breast pump more than to my husband." She reached down beneath the sorting table and produced one of those voluminous bags that he'd seen women with young children carry around with them. She pulled out a white, draw string bag and emptied its contents onto the table. "This is the motor," she said, lifting up a small unit with plastic pipes coming from it, "and these are the pumps." She showed him two funnels which clearly fitted over her breasts, each equipped with a plastic bottle and some kind of valve.

"If you'll just excuse me for a minute…" She sat down in one of the swivel chairs and turned her back on him, lifted her smock top at the front and fiddled with her bra, inserting the funnels around her nipples. "Now I only have to switch on," she pushed a button on the pump and it started to whirr, "and the milk starts to flow." Once she had ascertained everything was working properly, she swivelled the chair back so Daniel could see it operating.

It actually all looked quite respectable. Her smock rested across the tops of the funnels which seemed to be emerging from slots in her bra so her breasts were completely covered, except that, Daniel suddenly realised, he could see her large nipples inside the transparent pump being sucked forwards and backwards again. Within a few seconds, milk started to drip into the two bottles.

"Fantastic," he said, trying hard not to stare at those huge nipples. Hell, they were as big as his thumbs. "So normally," he added, trying to think of something else, "the milk would be used to feed, your baby, but since your baby's not yet born, what do you do with the milk?"

"I throw most of it down the sink, although Tom's got to quite like the odd bottle instead of a beer in the evening," she said.

"Oh!" Daniel couldn't help feeling a little repugnant about that.

"I know," Joanne said. "I feel the same, but of course it's good healthy food that would otherwise go to waste so I can hardly complain."

"No." All the same, Daniel preferred not to think about that aspect. "How long does it take to pump?"

"Ten to fifteen minutes," Joanne said, "which reminds me, we have to crack on and get all that post sorted. I can do a little whilst I'm pumping but it's all quite unwieldy, so I'm relying on you to do the bulk.

Daniel was glad of a distraction and he turned back to the sorting table.

***

Later on, when the rest of the building filled with people, Joanne took him around, delivering the post and introducing him to others he would meet during the course of his job. Daniel was disappointed to learn that the company used a separate call centre, so there were few young people similar to himself. Most of the warehouse people were middle-aged and seemed inclined to surliness, although the office staff were pleasant enough. Again, none were his age.

The phone was ringing when they returned to the mailroom, ready for Joanne's ten o'clock breast pumping.

Joanne picked it up. "Joanne Simmons?"

The voice on the other end was so loud that Daniel could hear every word. "Hello, Joanne. It's Alexa from the agency. I wanted to apologise for sending a male round this morning. It was done by the duty officer and he simply didn't appreciate we should have found a female. I am so sorry…"

"Let me stop you there, Alexa," Joanne said. "Our company has an equal opportunities policy and I'm quite happy to have a male working alongside me. Daniel is performing very well."

"Oh. But I understood you were breast pumping and you made a complaint about the previous male we sent along, prior to Sandra."

"That's because he was an obnoxious sod who made personal remarks about my breasts. Daniel is a perfect gentleman and not only am I happy he has come to work here today, I'd like him to stay on in place of Sandra. Can you arrange that, please?"

"Yes, of course, Joanne. If you're quite sure. I know there are…"

"Thank you Alexa," she said, putting the phone down on her. She looked up at Daniel who had been following the conversation. "I should have asked if that was all right with you," she said. "You probably hate it here. There's no one your age to talk to."

"That's true," he said, "but I quite enjoying working with you, so I'm happy to continue." Not to say, he thought, looking forward to seeing those wonderful nipples doing their work in the breast pump.

Joanne grinned. "That's great, Daniel," she said, thinking that she'd have to give Daniel plenty of nipple flashes to stop him asking to be moved to another job.

***

They developed an amiable companionship between them. To Daniel, Joanne was a bit of a mother figure, only much younger, interesting to talk to and more attractive than his own mother and – let's face it – sexy with it. To Joanne, she wasn't certain whether she thought of him as her son, or a prospective toy boy. It was a week later when their relationship changed.

***

“Damn!” Joanne said, searching through her capacious bag one more time. “I’ve left my breast pump at home. What am I going to do?”

“Can’t you nip back home for it?” Daniel asked.

“It’d take ages this time of day, and in any case, I’m always being told off for taking off too much time for all these consultations.”

“I could cover for you,” Daniel offered.

“Oh, bless you, Daniel, but I’m not going to let you put your job on the line. However, if you were offering...”

“What?”

“No, you’d never agree.”

“What?”

“It would be unfair to ask you.”

“Joanne, for heaven’s sake, tell me what you want me to do.”

“Well, this sounds really weird but I wonder if you’d let me breastfeed you?”

“What!”

“I knew it was stupid. I’m sorry I asked, only...”

Daniel simply couldn’t describe the emotions sweeping through him at that moment. Embarrassment, yes. Curiosity. But perhaps most of all, desire. Desire to be on the receiving end of those fabulous breasts, desire to touch them, to squeeze them and particularly, to suck on those nipples.

He tried to appear as calm as possible, hoping Joanne had no inkling of the thoughts passing through his head. “Only what?” he asked.

“Without a breast pump, there’s only one way to stop my breasts getting bigger and bigger, which gets extremely painful. And that’s to put a baby to them, and since I haven’t got a baby, I need a substitute.”

“So you just want me to be a substitute baby?” Put like that, it didn’t sound at all weird or kinky or even erotic.

Joanne clearly felt the same. “That’s it. I want you to be a substitute baby. Will you do it for me?”

“Well it would be churlish not to,” Daniel said. “I mean, we’re both grown-ups and we help each other out when we can.”

“Exactly,” Joanne said. “So you’ll do it?”

Daniel tried to nonchalantly shrug which didn’t really come off, but who cared? “Sure,” he said.

It took Joanne a few seconds to work out how to arrange things in that cramped little room. She normally locked the door when breast pumping and she certainly made certain she did so that day. “I think the best way,” she said, “is if you lay on your back on the sorting table, and I’ll sit in the swivel chair next to your head.

“On the sorting table?” Daniel protested. “That sounds a bit weird.”

“It will take the weight of your body and I can adjust the height of my chair so you will be at the right height for my breast,” she said. “If you sat on the other swivel chair, I’d have to support your entire upper body, and I’m not certain I have the strength to do that. It would be a shame to drop my baby on the floor. Especially if you were injured and we had to explain it to the Health and Safety inspector.”

Daniel could understand the sense in Joanne’s argument and climbed onto the table, then carefully lay back. It wasn’t really long enough and he had to bend his knees right up, with his feet stuck into the pigeon holes at the end.

Joanne sat onto the swivel chair, adjusted its height and rolled it on its castors until she was right next to Daniel’s head. Then she lifted her smock, unclipped her bra strap to allow the cup to flop down revealing her magnificent breast, and slid her one arm beneath Daniel’s head, the other across to his opposite shoulder and pulled him towards her breast. “Come along, my little baby,” she said. “Feedie time.”

“Er,” Daniel muttered, “I’m not really certain what...” Further words were prevented as Joanne slipped her huge nipple inside his mouth.

“Go on,” Joanne said. “Start sucking.”

For both of them it was a seminal moment. Joanne had dreamed for years of this moment when her baby would first suckle her breast. Now it was happening and she sensed deep satisfaction sweep through her entire body. It just felt so good, so meant to be that she could feel tears pricking at her eyes. “Oh my beautiful baby,” she said. “You’re Mummy’s perfect angel.”

For Daniel, he’d been fantasising about Joanne’s breasts ever since first stepping through that wicket gate and clapping eyes on them. To actually be first within inches of one huge, naked breast and then, to close his mouth over a grape-sized nipple, was almost orgasmic.

Then there was the milk; he could still remember being given an expensive brandy after his family's Christmas meal, taking a tentative sip and feeling it coursing throughout his body until every part of him was tingling. So it was with those first few drops of milk; but the drops became a trickle and the trickle a flood, surging through every part of his body. Surely, this is how a baby feels on taking its first suckle, realising that this is the very essence of life. Daniel sucked as though his very life depended upon draining every drop of milk from those magnificent orbs.

But if every part of his body was tingling, there was one particular part which really wanted to tingle but was prevented by his underpants. It was ironic; his whole body was feeling so good, apart from the most important part of all which was positively painful. His arm nearest Joanne was hanging uselessly down between the table and the chair; his other had been pulled across him by Joanne’s motherly grasp and his hand was gently squeezing her breast in rhythm with his sucks so he had no free hand to attend to his discomfort. He tried wriggling his hips a little, but his movement was severely restricted by his feet wedged into the pigeon holes: no relief. He tried to wriggle a bit more: still no relief and by now his penis was screaming to be released. He wanted to ask Joanne to give him a moment to get more comfortable, but that would have meant stopping sucking and releasing that wonderful nipple; he continued sucking.

“Oh my poor little baby. Is your little willy uncomfortable?” Ever the attentive mother, Joanne had noticed his discomfort. He could feel her sliding her hand down his chest, over his tummy until it reached the waistband of his trousers. Then it slid beneath the waistband, beneath the elasticated waist of his underpants and into the tangled mess of penis and underpants. He sucked harder.

“Oh, your poor little willy has got all tangled up.” With a flip of her hand his penis was free.

“There. Is that better, little willy? I think I’d better take care of you, hadn’t I? We don’t want you getting into a tangle again, do we?”

He felt her hand doing things to his penis that mothers do not do.

“There. Is that nice, little willy?”

Daniel sucked all the harder.

***

He had a moment of sheer panic when Joanne removed her hand from his penis, slipped a finger into his mouth and broke the suction, and the nipple sprang free.

"It's all right, my little darling. We just have to swap to the other breast."

A second later, his mouth found a nipple and started to suck on a whole new supply of wonderful milk.

“Now we need to ensure that little willy doesn’t mess up your nappy, because silly Mummy hasn’t got a spare for you.”

All he could see from his position was her enormous breast and her smiling face above, but he could hear her fumbling in her bag.

“Yes, I thought I had some,” she said.

There was more fumbling as she used both hands to open some packet, then he could feel her hand sliding down his stomach and into his underpants. For a second, he couldn’t work out what she was doing, then he realised she was sliding a condom over his penis. That alone almost made him orgasm, but not quite. Then the hand started doing quite delicious things to him. With his mouth sucking on the most wonderful tit in the world, he really didn’t know whether he was coming or going.

Joanne smiled down at her baby, remembering back to the days when she had been a true expert at hand jobs. Maybe, she thought, that had been her undoing; she should have concentrated on being impregnated, instead. But it was certainly no coincidence that her baby had a mind-blowing orgasm just as he was sucking the last drops of milk from her breasts.

***

”Thanks for helping out, Daniel,” Joanne said in as matter-of-fact voice as she could. “That was very useful. Erm... would it be all right with you if we repeat that throughout the day? I'm afraid it’ll mean making up time by missing your lunch break, but with my constant feeding, that’s probably the last thing you’ll need.”

“Erm... yes, of course, no problem,” Daniel said, trying to show he was nonchalant rather than that he’d do anything for just a single repeat of the most wonderful experience he had ever had in his life. For Joanne to suggest they would repeat it another four times that day must surely mean he had gone to heaven. He’d miss a thousand lunch breaks for that although, he recognised, he was unlikely to be in the position of receiving all the benefits that he just had.

Actually, he did. Sucking Joanne’s breasts made him have the same reaction each time and Joanne dealt with it in the same way. At the end of the day, she told him that he sucked her milk so much better than her breast pump, so could they do that every day and he allowed himself to look delighted, rather than punching the air and shouting, “Thank you, God!” a zillion times.

But what Daniel did not appreciate was that after each feeding, Joanne took his used condom out with her to the toilet and there used a syringe to suck up the considerable quantities of semen and squirt it into her vagina.

***

“Daniel. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. Isn’t that wonderful!” She threw her arms around him and held him as tightly as she could. She didn’t know for certain that he was the father-to-be of her child but with the way Tom, her husband’s performance had been declining, she’d take bets on it. Not that anyone else was ever going to find out, if she could help it.

“Thank you so much for the way you’ve helped me over the last few weeks.”

Daniel smirked at her. “Well, all I’ve really done is to provide a sympathetic ear and sympathetic lips. But your being pregnant, it’s er... not likely to mean any change to our arrangement, is it?”

Joanne had thought about the question quite carefully beforehand, and she said the absolute truth. "I still need a substitute baby so why should it make any difference?" Of course, she no longer needed his semen to assist her fertilization, but she did enjoy attending to the both types of needs of her substitute baby. "There's no reason why we shouldn't go on until you depart for university."

Suddenly, the idea of going to university filled him with dread.

***

"Daniel," Joanne said, "I've just been talking with my boss, Mr Sullivan. I've told him I expect to start maternity leave in February. He wants to fill your role permanently now, so that they have someone experienced when I go off. I've discussed you with him and he'd be perfectly happy to interview you for the job – and you'd probably get it – except that you're off to university in the autumn. It probably means we've only got another two or three weeks together. I'm sorry."

"I have been thinking about this," Daniel said, "and I was considering taking a gap year. Do you think Mr Sullivan would be happy with that?"

"Daniel." Joanne was really touched that their time together clearly meant so much to him. "Is it the breastfeeding and… things we do which means you want to delay university? Because once you got there, you're bound to find lots of girls your own age who'll want their breasts sucking, I'm sure." Although, she silently thought, I bet they're not as good at hand jobs as me.

"I guess I'm totally hooked on it. I can't bear to think of life without you. And I'm hopeless at chatting up girls. I'll just spend lonely nights in my room studying and thinking of the time I could have been having with you. Please, Joanne, help me. I really need you."

Joanne suspected she should be cruel to be kind, and split up their relationship as soon as possible, but she also believed she owed him more than she could ever say. "I'll have a word with Mr Sullivan," she said.

***

"Mr Sullivan's agreed that if you take this year out from university," Joanne said, "then he'll give you a quick interview for the job and if you're as good as I've told him, he'll take you on our permanent staff."

"Joanne! Oh Joanne, thank you." He hugged her tightly and she grinned back at him. It was nice to be liked so much by an employee.

"I haven't told him about your highest qualification," she said. "Your ability to breastfeed."

"And I won't tell him how good you are at looking after little baby's willy," he quipped.

"Talking of which," she said. "It's almost two o'clock. Get up on the table whilst I get my milk jugs out."

***

“Daniel, apart from my milk, what do you eat?”

It was approaching Christmas and Joanne now had a serious bump on her tummy. Daniel had taken a gap year from university and been employed on a permanent basis in the mail room. And he had continued to service her lactating breasts and she had serviced his willy. But of late, she’d noticed he was putting on weight. His hips and thighs had really thickened and he’d developed man breasts as well.

Daniel thought over her question and said, “Well, hardly anything, actually. Ever since you started providing me with extra bottles of your milk for me to take when I’m at home in the evenings and weekends. That is really all I live on. I feel great on it. After all, it is completely natural.”

“I’m just concerned that you’re putting on weight around your hips and you’re developing breasts.”

She paused a little, uncertain whether to say it or not. “I’ve also noticed your willy is getting smaller.”

Daniel nodded; he'd noticed it as well, but when he felt so good, it could hardly be something wrong, could it? "It still works though, doesn't it? After all, they say that size doesn't matter."

"Daniel, I think you ought to go to see your GP."

"But I feel quite healthy."

"Daniel!"

"OK, I'll go."

***

"So, Mr White. What seems to be the problem?"

"Well, I've been putting on weight around my bum and my man breasts seem to have really grown in recent weeks. And also…"

"And also?" the doctor queried.

"Well my penis seems to have reduced in size."

"OK, do you want to slip off your shirt and we'll have a look at your chest." As Daniel stood up and pulled his shirt over his head, he was saying, "Lots of males have breasts and usually it's nothing to worry… Bloody hell!" Fortunately, he managed not to say, "What a huge pair of knockers!"

"Do you mind if I examine them?" Daniel nodded and he proceeded to check them for lumps. "How long have they been like this? I'm just going to squeeze your nipple. It may be slightly uncomfortable."

"They've been growing over the last two or three months," Daniel said.

"Oh," the doctor said as he squeezed a nipple, "they're lactating. That means they're producing milk."

"They have been doing that a bit," Daniel admitted.

"I see. Well that certainly indicates a hormonal issue. Would you like to lower your trousers and underpants and lie on the bed, please?"

Daniel did so.

"I see. It appears your testicles haven't yet dropped."

"They did drop," Daniel said, “when I was thirteen, but they seem to have popped back up again now. And my penis was much larger than it is now."

"It's about the size of the end of my little finger," the doctor said. "Does it still get erect? How big does it grow then?"

"It doesn't change much in size, and I don't ejaculate much when I masturbate," Daniel said.

"Well, I'll take a blood test, now, if that's all right with you, Mr White. What's your diet like?"

"I only drink milk at the moment."

"You only drink milk? How much do you drink a day? And what sort of milk is it? Cows' milk, goats' milk?"

"I drink over a litre a day and it's breast milk."

"Breast milk! You mean human breast milk?"

"Yes."

The doctor shook his head. "Well, I'll get your blood analysed, but in the meantime, I suggest you start eating a more balanced diet. Meat, vegetables, salads, all that will be better than human breast milk."

"The breast milk fills me up so I don't really have room to eat anything else."

"Then stop taking the breast milk."

Daniel shook his head. "I can't."

"You can't? Explain why you feel you have to drink it. And whose milk is it? A girlfriend?"

"No, no, it's rather embarrassing. I'd rather not say whose milk it is."

"Is she feeding a baby at the moment?"

"No, it's not born yet."

"How long have you been drinking it? Is this the woman's second child?"

"No, this is her first and I've been drinking it since before she became pregnant, about six months ago.

"She was on hormones in order to help her conceive," Daniel explained, “and they made her lactate. I started breastfeeding to help her with the problem, and now I can't seem to give it up."

"Hormones? What hormones is she on… No, I need to speak with her doctor. Do you know his name? If not, you'll have to ask your friend."

***

"So he wants the name and contact details for your doctor," Daniel explained to Joanne.

"Well, he's called Dr Xen," Joanne said. "I can probably find you the address but it's somewhere in China."

"China! But you must have a doctor here."

"Well, I have, but the one who prescribed the hormones is in China. I found him on the internet, and the pills get sent to me in the post. Costs a fortune, actually, but it's well worth it."

“You mean you’re taking pills prescribed by some guy you found on the internet! How do you know he’s any good?”

“I read the reviews, of course. There were dozens of women like me who the doctors had given up on, and who conceived after taking Dr Xen’s treatment.”

“And these reviews, I suppose, were all written in English?”

“Well, obviously I was looking at the English site. It would all have been translated into English.”

“The whole thing could be a sham.”

“But Daniel, look at me. It worked, didn’t it?”

He nodded. “I guess. You’d better let me have a copy of the prescription.”

“Better than that, I’ll let you have the website I order from, although all it says is Dr Xen’s Conception Pills. It’s all a deadly secret, you see. Obviously, all the drug companies would mercilessly copy it if he told them what it was. I’ll bring some into work tomorrow and your doctor can get them analysed.”

She paused for a moment, thinking, and then said, “Daniel, I suppose I’ve been a bit stupid, haven’t I, taking these pills without knowing what they are. I mean, will my baby be all right?”

“You’d better talk to your GP,” Daniel said. "And you'd better tell him to get in touch with mine."

***

"So Mr White," his doctor said. "The analysis of those pills has been difficult but we have identified a number of important components. Perhaps the most important is an opioid, which explains why you quickly became addicted to the milk. It also explains why Mrs Simmons continued taking the pills after she became pregnant. That does create some risks for her pregnancy and baby. Her doctor will be managing those risks as best he can. It would appear that the only reason the opioid was included was to make the pills addictive. The plus side is that it has meant the Chinese police have taken action and arrested Dr Xen, who is actually a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, can you believe it?

"We will have to manage your addiction, but I am hopeful we can do that. More importantly for you is that the pills – and hence the milk – contained massive doses of every type of female hormone known to mankind. They appear to have swamped out your own hormonal system. You have stopped making testosterone, which is the reason why your testicles have all but disappeared and your penis is not far behind."

A grim faced Daniel nodded.

"The specialists you have seen are not optimistic about how you will react now you are no longer taking those hormones. It is possible your body may slowly recover and start making testosterone again, and that your testicles will recover. However, the specialists think that is unlikely. It is possible that your body simply starts creating its own supplies of female hormones to replace those which you are now no longer taking. They are reluctant to try to second guess that reaction, so, for the time being, we're simply going to manage your opioid addiction and monitor your hormonal situation on a very regular basis. Is that clear? Do you have any questions?"

"If my body takes that latter route," Daniel said, "does that mean my breasts will continue to develop. Might I develop a vagina?"

"Yes, your breasts would continue to develop, but no, you're unlikely to develop a vagina. Obviously, surgery could provide you with one, should you decide to go that route. Do you feel as though you want to?"

"I'm not certain at the moment, but that would allow me to have a sexual partner if my testicles don't pull through. I'd better tell you that Joanne's husband has now left her because he accused her of irresponsible behaviour with the conception of his child, and she told him she thought the child was probably mine, anyway. So it looks like I'm going to be a father. If I did have a vagina, is it possible that I might eventually mother a child?"

The doctor shrugged. "It certainly can't be done at the moment but I suspect it will be feasible in the not-to-distant future. How would you feel about that?"

"I'm not really certain, but it certainly doesn't repel me. Apparently, after Joanne became pregnant, she started freezing the semen she was still collecting from me, in case things didn't work out with her pregnancy. Perhaps I could be simultaneously father and mother of my baby. Now that really does excite me."

The doctor looked at him for some time, considering. "I think there would be considerable discussion over the ethics of such a pregnancy, but I suspect if you really wanted to do that you would find some doctor prepared to handle your case. But that would be another story entirely."

"Yes," Daniel said. "I thought it might be."