Archive of Our Own

Some things Caitlyn Kiramman knows for sure:

Relationships tend to work best when the rules are clearly established. Her parents taught her this. Their expectations of her were extremely clear: attain the highest level of achievement in every area of life (academic, sporting, renown), go to the highest status law school program in Piltover, work the highest profile cases as an intern, work at the most prestigious law firm, gain the highest accolades and reputation, and transfer those gains into a political career. As long as she is on track for all of these goals, her relationship with her parents functions. It is a blessing, really, that the rules are laid out so clearly.

In social relationships, she has fumbled in the absence of clear rules. Her classmates always seemed to be expecting something … different of her. She had no clear understanding of what that might be, but she could tell she was constantly behaving in ways that puzzled them, and that puzzlement was excruciating because not only did it feel terrible, she could not work out the cause. She could not work out the cause, which meant she could not figure out the solution, which meant she couldn’t solve the problem. There were few things more unacceptable to Caitlyn than not being able to solve the problem.

In romantic relationships – well. It would be a stretch to call them relationships. But in romantic encounters, she had found rules that functioned somewhat better. If someone was interested in her, they would gaze at her relatively frequently, more frequently than a typical peer. If Caitlyn wasn’t interested in that person, she would avoid their glance, and typically that would end things. If she was interested, she could gaze back until one of them approached the other. Then, Caitlyn could ask questions about available topics. Asking the person’s opinion about the setting seemed to work fairly often. Asking about classes or internships usually yielded further conversation. A phrase of enthusiasm, something like, “That’s so interesting,” would usually lead to a satisfied smile. From there, a simple touch to the shoulder, an attentive expression, and a gently cocked head would lead to a second location, usually her apartment.

There were rules there too, of course. No spending the night. Never there for more than three hours. Never more than three times. And these rules were in place because in the absence of them, a yawning confusion opened up. Either the person would trouble her relentlessly, wanting access to her constantly in a way that swiftly made her uncomfortable, or, far more often, she would want to see more of them and they wouldn’t respond to her texts, they would begin to avoid her in class, they would be cold with her in the office. Both of these were unpleasant, but the latter was so, so painful. It seemed so unfair that being vulnerable with someone would lead to them being increasingly standoffish with her. She didn’t understand it, but after it happened enough times, she knew she never wanted to experience it again.

Caitlyn knows she likes girls who are slightly defective. One girl in her law school cohort had a chipped tooth and after she noticed she couldn’t stop thinking about her for a week. A chipped tooth! How exotic! Bitten nails, or rust-colored cuticles – the angst that suggests is irresistible to her. She likes evidence that life has left a residue on someone, left or taken something – something she herself has had very little chance to experience. That something bad could happen to someone and leave them marked for life, not just internally, but externally. She finds that fascinating and very alluring.

She knows she is in good stead with her parents because she just graduated law school at the top of her class which means she has met their expectations. There is no more satisfaction to it than that. Now she is home studying for the bar over the summer, for which she has an elaborate 400 hour study schedule featuring daily, weekly, and monthly goals and a strenuous number of practice exams. Between this schedule, her daily workouts, and continuing to practice her marksmanship, her summer is spoken for.

She knows that Jayce is not impressed with these plans because he keeps telling her to “have some fun” and “live a little,” but he has no meaningful suggestions for how she might do that. Nightclubs are a sensory nightmare. The apps are a relational nightmare. Her parents had her take a year off after undergrad to travel and visit various relatives and “see the world” and it was lonely and isolating and boring and she felt like she was twiddling her thumbs waiting to get back to moving the plot of her life forward and get to work. What she wants to do is work. Is that so terrible?

After a week of no one but her parents for company, she begins to reconsider.

*****

Here is the moment things changed.

The early summer is coming on mercifully softly and sitting by the pool to study in the afternoon is still a pleasant proposition. Caitlyn is wearing a cream-colored hi-cut bikini and a sunhat, marking up a textbook about real estate law (yuck). The sun has just begun to saturate into her bones, and the resulting languor means that she has read the same page three times now. She is just beginning to accept that she has fallen out of her hyperfocus when the nasal buzz of a weed whacker in the distance calls her attention.

When she observes the figure holding it, it now has her attention completely.

‘It’ because at first Caitlyn is puzzled. What she sees is an almost comically over-muscled landscaper in a white t-shirt, khaki overalls, and a baseball cap, wielding the wand of the weed whacker in precise arcs, efficiently trimming the grass beneath round shrubbery. The first thing that startles her is the figure’s shocking pink-red hair flowing out the back of the cap, cut into an asymmetrical mullet. The next is the bold black tattoos peeking out of the t-shirt, trailing down the back of the person’s arms and up to their neck.

But the thing that really keeps her attention, the thing her brain gets stuck on, is that she can’t ascertain the person’s gender. Her brain is accustomed to gendering a landscaper as a man. And certainly a physique this muscular, her brain also tags that as a man.

But something about the pink hair and the fluidness of this person’s movement makes Caitlyn uncertain in a way that is so captivating to her that she finds she cannot look away. Her gaze falls over the figure’s chest. Flat, but that could mean anything. Hips? Hard to say, the shoulders are so wide and dense. The face? Too far to pick out any features.

Caitlyn realizes she is staring. As she realizes this, the figure glances her way.

And holds her gaze.

A bolt shoots through her, a tawdry little bolt of shame and excitement. She’s been caught, but she needs to look. She needs to know about this person. She needs to be able to sort them, to satisfy her curiosity.

If they are a man, she doesn’t need to look again.

If they aren’t, she can do nothing but keep looking.

Long seconds go by, but Caitlyn can’t make out any features of the person’s face. She can feel the excitement and discomfort rising like a flood within her, and she knows she’ll be oversaturated any moment, but she’s so fascinated -

The figure raises a hand to the brim of their baseball cap, tips it at Caitlyn insouciantly, and then returns to their work.

It is an image that replays in her head for the entirety of her subsequent shower.

*****

The next day she wears a skimpier navy blue string bikini to the pool but the figure does not appear. Keeping watch doesn’t interfere with her studying – it takes quite a bit more than that to derail Caitlyn Kiramman’s studies – but she notices a bland disappointment, a nagging emptiness at the end of the day. She doesn’t know if it had been there before.

The following day is legitimately hot, and the thought of studying by the pool is a bit oppressive, but she can hear the sound of yard work as the afternoon rolls around, so she throws on the skimpy string bikini, ties a sheer beach robe around her hips, and steps into a pair of espadrille wedges that she knows make her ass look irresistible. She hopes the figure is not a man because if he is the attention this is likely to get her will be annoying.

She fills a tall glass with ice water, drops in a straw, and makes her way out to the pool. Once there she is not kept waiting long before the pink-haired androgynous figure appears, this time handling a hedge trimmer, waving the undulating saw-teeth back and forth over the shrubbery and dropping brush to the ground. Bush by bush, the figure makes their way towards Caitlyn, smoothly and efficiently operating the equipment and their body to meet the demands of the task. Caitlyn pretends to read about tenants’ rights for fifteen minutes before the figure gets close enough to effectively make out their face.

What she sees packs a taut little wallop to her belly. Huge eyes, a line face tattoo stamped across their right cheekbone, pouty lips. A sweetheart chin and a sharp jaw.

Pretty.

Before Caitlyn even realizes, her hands are wrapped around the ice water, the glass sweating beneath her hands, her tongue seeking out the straw, blindly sweeping towards it.

And now the figure is gazing back.

Caitlyn takes the straw onto her tongue, purses her lips around it, and pulls a long sip of water.

The eyes are grey-blue, defiant, and seasoned by a hint of humor. The full lips, pulled up in one corner, bear the notch of a scar. There is a matching notch in the brow on the same side.

Caitlyn takes in a slow gulp.

God, she loves a scar.

She can feel the weight of the figure’s gaze as the eyes flick down her body and flick back up to her face. Not performatively. Not disrespectfully.

Just because they couldn’t seem to help it.

Caitlyn realizes her jaw has dropped ever so slightly, and the straw has come to rest upon her bottom lip, her mouth open of its own volition.

The smile reaches both sides of those bruised pink lips.

Caitlyn feels a matching one coming to her face before she finds she needs to turn her eyes back down to tenants’ rights or she’s going to combust.

This time in her subsequent shower, she imagines soft scarred lips as a pillow for her clit, a tongue cradling her straining hardness. She has never gotten herself off faster in her life.

*****

There is no doubt from the looks that Caitlyn received that this person is interested in her. Normally, by the rules she has discovered through trial and error, this means one of them is welcome to approach the other. But this person is at their job, and Caitlyn’s family is their employer, so somewhat more complicated dynamics are at play.

Regular dynamics typically being somewhat too complicated for Caitlyn to parse out on her own, she calls Jayce.

Jayce is no paragon of social graces, but she has no one else to ask and she figures that it’s better than nothing.

“Sprout! Good to hear from you. How’s the studying going?”

“I want to sleep with the landscaper.”

“Oh!”

There is a pause while Jayce tries to figure out how to tactfully say what he is thinking.

He settles on: “I haven’t noticed any women landscapers at the estate before?”

“They are more of an androgynous figure.”

“Ah.”

“I have been trying to figure out their gender for the past few days. It’s enough of a question that I want to investigate further.”

She can practically feel him laboring to find the right response through the phone. “Okay. And how is it you’re planning on doing that?”

“Uncertain. We have caught each other’s eye. Usually when that happens I know it’s welcome for one of us to approach the other. But they’re at work and my family is their employer, so I’m unclear on what would be appropriate in this situation.”

“You want my advice on how to ethically seduce the landscaper.”

“I don’t need to seduce them. I can tell that they find me appealing. But do you think it would be okay for me to approach them? Or would that put them in an uncomfortable position?”

And now Jayce’s alarm begins to fade away somewhat and he is drawn into colluding with her. She can hear him starting to get excited to scheme now. “You need a pretense. Some reason to talk to this person to get a chance to get more information without explicitly making your interest clear. Flirting is about plausible deniability. You want to use double entendres. You want to say things that insinuate sensuality that could also be about something innocent on their face.” He pauses. “You want to avoid making a direct pass at someone at their job. But you can give them an opportunity to let you know that they’re interested.”

“Hm.”

“It’s getting pretty hot outside, Cait. Maybe they’re thirsty.”

*****

The summer is beginning to come on with teeth when Caitlyn spots the landscaper next. She puts on an outfit consisting of actual clothes, including a white ribbed racerback tank that offers a peek at her back and shoulders, and approaches with a glass of ice water in hand.

Having seen Caitlyn coming, they are leaning against the riding mower in repose, hands resting behind them on the machine, their powerful shoulders flexed and broad. Their pretty face glistens with sweat, dripping down their temples, breaking over their jaw, sending rivulets down the side of their neck, adorning their tattoo. Caitlyn notices it pooling in the divot of their collarbones, soaking the collar of their t-shirt. Their forearms are a relief map of veins, their hands huge and powerful. Caitlyn can feel her heart beat in her stomach, and not just from the heat.

“Hello there, miss,” the pink-haired figure says as Caitlyn approaches. “Awfully hot out today.”

The voice is husky, conversational. A little rumbling purr in it, a bit deep for a woman. Caitlyn can feel it in her chest, feel it resonate down to her toes.

“I was just thinking that,” Caitlyn agrees. She pauses, nods her head at the glass in her hand. Almost to her own surprise, she hears a hint of teasing in her voice when she says, “I found myself worrying you might be getting thirsty.”

The slow smile this gets in response shows the landscaper’s incisors.

“I suppose I am,” they say.

Caitlyn steps closer with the glass and offers it to them, and their fingers brush.

The landscaper pulls the straw aside with their thumb and gulps greedily at the water, tossing their head back. The front of their powerful neck jumps with each swallow. Caitlyn can smell the exertion on them, the sweat and sun and grass mixing into a scent that is tangible and alluring and making Caitlyn feel slightly stupid.

“You seem to be working awfully hard … sir? Miss?”

“Oh, I don’t particularly care for either of those,” the landscaper says. “Just Vi is fine.”

“Vi, then.”

“And you? What should I call you?”

“You can call me Caitlyn.”

“Caitlyn.” The smile that spreads across Vi’s face now is more playful, slightly less wolfish. “Well. Thank you for the drink, Caitlyn. You seem to be working pretty hard, yourself. I hope I haven’t interrupted your studies.”

Caitlyn is thinking about plausible deniability. She is thinking about double entendres. She says, with what she hopes is just the right amount of humor: “Now that you mention it, I have found you to be a bit of a distraction.”

“Hm,” Vi says ponderingly, taking that in. “You don’t say.”

A long moment passes between them. Vi shifts against the mower, displaying the biceps rolling beneath their cuffed sleeves. Ever so slightly, their chin drops suggestively.

“Is there anything I could do to help you with that?”

The heat in their purring voice goes straight to Caitlyn’s core. This is going better than she could have possibly dreamed. “I don’t know,” she says thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from doing your job.”

“It wouldn’t be any trouble,” Vi says, and now there is an eagerness, a hunger in their voice that tugs at Caitlyn’s gut. “It’s my pleasure to be of service.”

Fuck.

“Let me think on it,” Caitlyn says. “So that I have a concrete request. When are you back next?”

“Thursday.”

“Very well. Thursday, I’ll come talk to you.”

“Please do. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

******

Is Vi a girl or a boy or an other third thing? What would each of these mean to Caitlyn?

Caitlyn has known she was a lesbian since she was twelve years old. The girls at her boarding school have known since she was ten, speculating about Caitlyn Kiramman behind her back being a very popular pastime among Caitlyn’s peers.

When Vi said they didn’t care for sir or ma’am, well, fair enough, neither one of those words particularly suit them. But does that mean they don’t consider themself a boy or a girl? Caitlyn isn’t unfamiliar with this kind of identity conceptually but she hasn’t encountered it yet in real life, doesn’t yet have a frame of reference for it.

This is far from the first time Caitlyn’s eyes have caught on a figure due to their androgyny, but usually after a few moments of looking it is clear to Caitlyn if she is looking at a woman performing masculinity or a baby-faced boy who has not come into his manhood. She does not want the latter. She very much wants the former. She is not yet sure about the in-between or outside of that.

Whatever Vi considers themself, gender-wise, Caitlyn is on board for and fascinated by and would like to investigate further. But if they are going to hook up, and it seems very much like they are –

In brief, what genitals does Vi have, and how would Caitlyn feel about the possibilities?

If Vi is a woman, Caitlyn is absolutely fucking chuffed. She is beyond excited.

If Vi is a man, Caitlyn will continue to enjoy looking at them, with amusement at herself and the complexity of queer sexuality, but she will not want to touch them.

If Vi is a third, other thing, then Caitlyn is intrigued but needs to have a conversation beforehand to emotionally prepare. If Vi's gender is neither of those things, then that is something Caitlyn wants to understand better.

If Vi is a woman with a penis, well, Caitlyn has no personal frame of reference for that so it makes her feel trepidatious, and the amount of trust that she would need to have in Vi in order for her to navigate that with a sense of emotional and sexual safety is beyond what they have between them right now.

So, Caitlyn needs to ask. She needs to use her words to ask Vi about their gender experience before they take their pants off so that neither one of them is caught out in a situation they are not prepared to be in with their pants off.

As for what those words will be, Caitlyn has no clue.

*****

The following day, she strolls the grounds of her estate with an eye towards privacy, trying to remember if she’s ever seen anything that might serve the purpose, and finds a storage shed full of garden equipment. Of course Vi knows this is here. Caitlyn has never stepped foot in it in her life.

What is her concrete request? That depends.

“So? Did you figure out what you wanted to ask me?”

Caitlyn has brought Vi another glass of water and an apple. The glass of water was quickly vanquished and now Vi is sitting with one leg thrown over the other, polishing the apple against their shirt absent-mindedly, a teasing expression on their face as they sit at a patio table beneath an umbrella. Caitlyn is wearing her navy string bikini and a long linen cover up shirt that hangs down to her thighs, no shorts. She crosses her legs as she sits down, watches Vi watch her do it. It is the same polite but helpless interest as before – that looking at Caitlyn this way is something that they cannot control, but don’t particularly want to make a show out of.

It sends a little surge of power through Caitlyn to notice it.

“There is something I wanted to ask you. Not a request, exactly. More of a prelude to a request.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You had said …” Caitlyn swallows, and then says thickly: “... that it’s your pleasure to be of service.”

The teasing in Vi’s eyes abates somewhat, and their expression grows more serious. They nod. “That’s true about me.”

“I have some speculations about what services you might be referring to. Outside of the professional context.”

Vi nods again. “Mmhmm,” they say, their husky voice rumbling in their chest.

“Those services …” Caitlyn can no longer avoid blushing, but she fixes her jaw in determination. This is an important conversation. “Typically I have … a very strong preference for the gender of the provider.”

Vi’s eyebrows raise in surprise and then their mouth opens before a smile spreads across their face. “Caitlyn,” they say patiently, with humor. “Are you asking if I’m a boy or a girl?”

“Well – I just – I don’t know that it would be a dealbreaker, per se, as I’m certainly very intrigued by you, it just so happens that – I find – I just want to be prepared.”

Caitlyn looks down and lets out a huge breath. When she looks up, she finds that Vi’s expression is still warm and open.

“I’m a girl,” Vi says simply. “Whatever that means. Or close enough. I like being in the middle. Lately I say I’m a butch who takes testosterone. I take it to look more masculine, because that feels more like me right now. And because it’s fun and I like it.”

“Oh,” Caitlyn says, feeling a bit daft. She begins to notice the reddish pink arm hairs on Vi’s forearms, the lascivious spray of soft fuzz atop her lip. She again takes in the span of her shoulders, the sheer width of her, her mass. The gravity of Vi, how dense she is and how close Caitlyn is to her now, makes Caitlyn shift in her seat a bit. “That’s … I didn’t know that was a thing. How fascinating.”

“Was that an answer you were hoping for?”

“I was open to a lot, for you,” Caitlyn says, and that feels like a bit of a confession. “But I like that answer.”

“Good.” Vi tears a bite out of the apple and leans back in her seat, regarding Caitlyn intently as she chews. She swipes the moisture away from her mouth with the back of her huge hand. Caitlyn’s attention is drawn to the bold tattoo on the underside of her forearm.

“Do you have any other questions?”

Caitlyn shakes her head.

“Now what would you like me to do for you?”

It turns out Caitlyn did not get this far in her calculations. As she contemplates the answer, Vi reclines in her chair and perches her ankle atop her opposite knee. Caitlyn’s gaze traces the seam of her pants all the way up to her fly, and what she sees there makes her swallow. A bulge. A soft little tent in her rough carpenter pants.

Vi sees her see it, and her incisors show again. The hand not holding the apple, which had been resting on the crease of her thigh, now slowly moves down towards her crotch. Her big fingers gently trace over the outline of the mass there, first down then up again, and then again, more slowly.

Vi is clearly so pleased with this development, with herself, that she generously offers Caitlyn the question. “Do you like this? My packer?”

All of these currents come to a swirl inside Caitlyn as she takes stock of her understanding. Vi is a butch on T, a masculine woman, broad and muscled, gently sprayed in downy hair, sporting a bulge in her crotch. She seems so soft and so hard at the same time, so patient but so eager. It is the mix of all these things, of the masculine and the feminine, the fusion and friction between them, that has Caitlyn utterly entranced.

“For you I do,” she admits. “It’s exciting … because it’s you.”

Vi clearly likes this answer. Her mouth falls gently open, a longing in her eye. The hunger in her face makes Caitlyn need to squeeze her legs together, uncross and recross them. As she swings one long limb over the other, she can see Vi’s chest rise and fall, her breath coming heavy.

Caitlyn does not think it’s just the heat.

“Please,” Vi says, her low voice heavy with a sudden urgency. “What can I do for you?”

The speculation in Vi’s gaze feels as heavy as the humidity in the air, something material pressing a tingling sensation against the skin on the inside of Caitlyn’s legs. The gist of it is, looking at Vi is so powerfully distracting – fantasizing about her is so compelling – that the only solution for it is to feel her.

Vi’s hand has moved away from her packer and is gripping tightly onto her own thigh, trying to keep control of herself, distract herself from the pain of her own need. Caitlyn can make out the individual divots of her powerful fingers digging into her pants.

Caitlyn wants to know what those fingers feel like gripping her thighs.

“The tool shed,” Caitlyn says brusquely, surprising herself. She stands up. “Meet me there in twenty minutes. Wash your hands.”

Vi stands up immediately and nods. The sound that she makes is not a word, but it is certainly assent.

*****

What came over Caitlyn just then? Certainly she’s no stranger to being bossy, but –

It is so invigorating to want something just for herself.

The twenty minutes is to give Vi time to prepare. Caitlyn is prepared. She began the conversation prepared. She took an extra long shower that morning, performed an extremely thorough depilation, scrubbed and then oiled every inch of her skin. She is so soft and smooth she feels practically dewy. She spritzed her favorite perfume along her wrists, amber-scented, with a certain soft and resinous smokiness that invites further investigation. That is what she wants. To be investigated. She has wrapped herself up like a package to be opened. She tied on the navy string bikini imagining Vi untying it, roughly tracing out the lines of her pristine body with those working hands.

When she arrives at the tool shed, she pulls her shoulders back, opens the sliding door just enough to accommodate her body, and slips inside.

Her eyes are thrown into darkness. As they begin to adjust, she makes out old patio furniture, bags of soil, stacks of bricks. It is cooler inside, the slight chill a break from the relentless heat. It smells of dirt and concrete, slightly musty, and also Vi, that aroma of grass, sun, and exertion. The physicality of that goes into her lungs, and from there into her bloodstream.

God, she needs to feel her.

Vi is standing against the workbench, quietly regarding Caitlyn. In the shadow, her featureless form is so broad, so immense, that Caitlyn is overwhelmed by the desire to be engulfed. By way of greeting, Vi offers a noise, a warm and satisfied grunt, an animal noise of satisfaction that is akin to a laugh, and it puts Caitlyn at ease, the sensuality and the benevolence in it.

Caitlyn unbuttons her shirt and shrugs it off, leaving it to pool at her feet. She steps forward, and Vi’s features begin to come into focus.

Caitlyn is of course too rule-abiding to have ever done drugs, but she cannot imagine that any drug could possibly feel more powerful than the look of anguished need on Vi’s face as she regards Caitlyn in her string bikini, finally allowing herself to feast her gaze on her body unashamedly. Her huge eyes scan up, down, and back up again, catch on her hips, her breasts, her mouth. Vi’s mouth is open in a kind of disbelief, which brings a soft smile to Caitlyn’s. Vi’s hand begins to clench and unclench, helpless with the need to touch her. Even as Caitlyn approaches her, she does not speak, does not insinuate. And so Caitlyn is able to walk right up against her and feel the tension crackle in the sliver of space between their chests, the warmth radiating from her body, the hint of the hard bulk of her dense core.

Vi’s hunger is a beast on a leash. She is working very hard and being so, so good.

Caitlyn slowly reaches out a hand and notches her first two fingers on the angle of Vi’s jawbone. Vi shudders as Caitlyn’s thumb lightly brushes against the downy smear of pink hairs atop her lip. There is something salacious about this pubescent display, it suggests the hysterical horniness of a teenage boy. That does seem to be what Vi is suffering when she looks at her.

“Soft,” Caitlyn whispers wonderingly.

Vi nods silently, her expression so serious. And the nod brings her full lower up to brush beneath Caitlyn’s thumb, which is even sweeter, even softer.

“Can I touch you,” Vi rasps out, practically vibrating with desperation, and Caitlyn nods.

Vi’s hands come to the small of her waist, the weight of them going straight to her center. Vi’s thumbs gently rest on the triangles of skin just above the strings of Caitlyn’s bikini, her fingers draping across the rising curve of Caitlyn’s ass, applying a respectfully calibrated pressure just this side of firm. Just the heaviness, the possessiveness of those hands has Caitlyn throbbing. How small her waist feels encircled in Vi’s grip. She can feel how intensely Vi wants to grab her, how valiantly she is working to be measured. How coarse her palms, how effortful her restraint.

This is nothing like being touched by a law student. This does something entirely different to her, and infinitely better.

“I want you,” Caitlyn whispers longingly.

This is the permission that Vi needs.

One hand grips down tightly around Caitlyn’s hip, bringing such luxurious pressure there that she emits a breathy moan right into Vi’s mouth, which is already there to meet it with a shock of plush wet and warmth. The fingers of Vi’s other hand have claimed a fistful of Caitlyn’s hair at the nape of her neck, clutching tightly there as Vi’s lips meet hers, heavy and searching, pressing the want into her mouth. The low groan that Vi pushes down Caitlyn’s throat is long and sordid, the release of a frightful pressure, a slow rumbling hydraulic hiss. And Caitlyn surrenders, opens, receives, accommodates. She wants to feel Vi’s want inside her.

Oh, Vi’s mouth tastes good, Caitlyn recognizes, in more of an animal impression than an actual thought, a searing torrent of satisfaction, of rightness, flooding through her chest. Of course it does. Of course she does.

Their tongues are tangled, slick and searching, desperate to connect. The force of Vi’s hunger bulldozes Caitlyn, entitles her to embrace her absolute rapaciousness. She’s kissing Vi, tasting her, feeling her, but she feels like she wants to eat her alive, like she can’t possibly get close enough to her, get enough of her inside of her mouth. She can feel her hot breath, her helpless groans, the sheer radiant power of Vi’s longing coursing out of her and into Caitlyn, where it is meeting something equally potent, equally greedy. She spreads her hands up her back, feeling her magnificent bulk of the span of her lats, so wide and thick and heavy –

So physical. Vi is so physical, the way she inhabits her body is so natural and sensual, it is so magnetic, she wants to feel her so badly she practically wants to crawl into her skin with the magnitude of it.

“I want to ride you,” Caitlyn says urgently, sort of wonderingly, transfixed at the thought of it. “I want to feel you. I want to be on top of you.”

“Yes,” Vi rasps immediately. “Yes. Yes.” She grabs Caitlyn’s waist in her hands, casts about in a frenzy, locates a chair and starts tugging her towards it, kissing her hungrily, like they are underwater and Caitlyn’s mouth is the only source of air. Her hands move down towards Caitlyn’s ass as she tugs, and the weight of them there, warm under Vi’s palms –

God, Caitlyn feels so desperate –

She pushes Vi down into the folding patio chair and immediately climbs astride, swinging a leg over and settling into her lap. Her hands press over her broadness, come to feel her shoulders, down her arms. She pinches the front of the shirt between her thumb and forefinger, tugs in protest.

“Off,” Caitlyn says firmly, and her only complaint is that Vi has to briefly take her hands off her ass to do it, yanking her shirt over her head in one smooth motion and tossing it dismissively. What remains is just a tight sports bra. What she reveals – the smooth boulders of her shoulders, the divot there between her broad pecs, the span of her chest, the relief lines of her abs – literally makes Caitlyn gasp in awe. She barely has time to savor it, gets a single reverent touch of her rippling ribs, before Vi’s hands return, first wrapping around the bulging curve of Caitlyn’s ass, then cupping around the outside of her thighs, then – finally –

Caitlyn lets out a hiss as Vi’s hands clutch her greedily, squeezing the supple skin where her ass meets the outside of her thighs, gripping her voraciously. This brings gravity into Caitlyn’s hips, makes her legs squeeze tight around Vi’s. The hiss evolves into a groan as her thighs find purchase, and then – the bulk of the packer –

Nestles right into where she’s aching and throbbing, sending a cascade of need flooding through her, drenching through her bikini. The thought that it is Vi, that it’s Vi’s bulk, that it pleases her to consider this her cock and that it is pleasuring Caitlyn, does something wild to her brain, and quickly she is desperately, shamelessly chasing her pleasure, rocking into her urgently, filling the tool shed with whimpering moans.

“Fuck,” Vi whines in astonishment. “Fuck, Caitlyn. You look so good, you sound so good, you feel – amazing – you’re so fucking hot, I need you so fucking bad, fuck.” Her hips are bucking beneath Caitlyn’s in a helpless frenzied rutting, something so delirious and involuntary it is almost humiliating. “Just like that, just like that, baby. You’re driving me fucking insane, watching you walk around like that, showing off for me. Fuck, you’re so hot I can’t stand it, I’m losing my fucking mind –”

Caitlyn can only moan in response, in a kind of agreement. “Mmhmm, mmhmm,” she agrees, panting, feeling the pressure of Vi’s cock against her mound, the breadth of it hitting so much of her, giving her so much pleasure she’s practically blacking out. Her back arches almost involuntarily and her tits find Vi’s mouth, and Vi knows what to do, frantically clutching at the string tied around the back of her ribs, the back of her neck, fumbling with her hands as she kisses the soft plane of her chest, exquisite mouth smearing downwards and downwards as the strings come loose and Vi tugs ferociously at the flimsy garment and throws it across the shed, lapping desperately, chasing Caitlyn’s nipple as Caitlyn chases her pleasure.

“Suck me,” she demands to her own surprise, pressing her chest against Vi’s face. “Suck on me, you make me feel so good, ahhh –!”

Vi’s soft wet horny mouth is wrapped around her stiff, aching nipple, taking her in and tugging on her, capturing her between her sharp teeth and thrilling her. How exquisite Vi looks beneath her as Caitlyn rides her, how solid she feels beneath her –

She has no words for it. Only shameless, hopeless moans of bliss. She’s gone. What a joy to be able to be made to sound so pathetic.

Vi’s hands are wrapped around her legs, her mouth worshiping Caitlyn’s tits, her hips thrusting into Caitlyn’s. Every part of Vi is completely absorbed in tending to her and touching her and pleasing her and sating some of this oppressive hunger, this expression that has been on her face making it so clear, her want for Caitlyn is so intense it is a kind of agony and she needs some fucking relief –

The thought that needing Caityn’s body being the thing that causes Vi suffering and that touching her is the only thing that can give Vi relief is so potent and alluring that it sends a little extra flood of warmth to Caitlyn’s center, right where she is riding Vi’s bulge. That is the first hint that she’s at the edge of her climax, this relentless building thrill that is starting to become undeniable. She throws her arms around Vi’s neck and starts kissing her there, that sweaty glistening swath of tattooed skin, an incredible-smelling expanse of soft firmness, the cords of the muscles writhing beneath her tongue. Vi’s neck is an absolute marvel but Caitlyn is too close to linger there. She impatiently seeks Vi’s mouth, wanting its attention back from her tits, demanding it with her own, placing wet smearing kisses down the side of Vi’s face urgently until she reaches her lips, licking at them until Vi’s neck arcs up to offer up her slutty little mouth, her tongue sloppily reaching for Caitlyn’s, and meeting her there brings that feeling again, the rightness –

Everything in Caitlyn is twisting towards one point, a building tautness filling up and bearing down on her, a surety piloting her body on its own, grinding against Vi’s bulge with a mindless ferocity, bringing her closer and and closer to precious release.

Her entire being feels perched on the tip of a knife blade, she’s so tight and close. “Vi – oh my God, Vi –!!”

Two things happen at once. First, every cell in her body opens up to a torrent of rippling ecstasy, her eyes clenched tightly shut to bear the burden of the pleasure, teeth gritting at the intensity of her rolling climax, groans torn out from deep in her belly transforming into loud shocked cries.

At the same time, the chair has collapsed beneath them in a rude and abrupt clatter, Vi is now on the ground, and Caitlyn is sitting astride Vi, riding through her orgasm, helplessly grinding her into the floor of the tool shed.

“Oh! Oh, I –”

“No, baby, don’t stop,” Vi begs, pulling her down atop her, still thrusting up into Caitlyn. “Don’t stop baby, keep coming.” Her breathy voice is so thick and hungry that it sends a fresh surge of lust through Caitlyn, bringing a fresh gravity to her hips, bearing down and chasing her pleasure all the way to the end, on and on, tremors and aftershocks arriving and abating, thrashing her around a bit, seemingly relentless until finally they begin to fade away.

After the supremely important matter of Caitlyn’s orgasm is taken care of, they are able to start laughing.

“Are you okay?” Caitlyn asks, bringing a hand towards the back of Vi’s head as she winces and begins to push herself up. It hovers in the air tentatively, too far away to make contact.

Vi is out of it. As she begins to look around, her eyes rest upon Caitlyn anew, and a dazed smile comes to her face. “Perfect,” she says, marveling, her grey-blue eyes warm with delight. “I’m absolutely perfect.”

“Can I – I guess –” Caitlyn scrambles to get up off the ground and stands, offering the hand to Vi, who takes it and allows herself to be hauled up. Now they are squared up, and the expression on Vi’s face is so sweet, so lovely, Caitlyn finds that she just wants to touch her, wants to please her, just wants to go again. “Can I – do you need –”

“I should – probably get back to work?”

“Oh, I –” Caitlyn is surprised at how disappointed this makes her. “That makes sense. I wouldn’t want to –”

“Yeah, no, I think – I know I shouldn’t be disappearing for too long. But –”

“Yes?”

How is this the most vulnerable moment so far? Why does sex always open up something in Caitlyn that is so awfully terrifying?

It is soothing, a bit, to notice the look on Vi’s face says the same. It pierces something extremely soft in Caitlyn when she asks, “Can we do this again?”

“Yes,” Caitlyn says instantly. “Please.”

Vi’s shoulders sag a bit. The relief on her face is so contagious Caitlyn can feel her own stomach unclench. “Good,” Vi says, extremely genuinely, and smiles.

Caitlyn smiles back. She wants to touch her but for some reason she feels much less certain about what is appropriate than before, and she feels uncertainty rising up in her. She casts about for her swim top, spots it near the door, and it is almost a relief from the pressure of Vi’s gaze to step away to snatch it up. “Could you –?”

Vi nods, and Caitlyn turns her back and holds her hair up to allow Vi to tie the bow of her bikini top. Vi’s calloused fingers graze against the skin of her back, rustling the little hairs that escaped her grasp. She was just riding this woman into the ground but for some reason just the soft brush of her fingers is raising the hair on the back of her neck, in anticipation of … what?

Caitlyn turns back and says, “I’ll go, and then give me a couple of minutes? My parents –”

Vi nods, understanding. “Okay,” she agrees.

She looks at Caitlyn searchingly, and Caitlyn wants to kiss her, but now that the ravening hunger is gone and this familiar awkwardness has arisen in Caitlyn she can’t tell if that’s the right move, and she’s made the wrong move by being too much so many times before –

She gathers her linen cover-up shirt from the floor, slips into it and closes two of the buttons, and exits the tool shed.

*****

Caitlyn has just had by far the most exhilarating and fulfilling sex of her life, and though her frequent flashbacks to scenes from the encounter over the following days leave her elated and aroused, somehow she is also left with the lingering sense that she has done something wrong.

For every time she sees herself riding Vi as the furniture collapses beneath them, Vi entreating her to keep going, keep coming, Caitlyn sees Vi’s searching eyes and remembers turning away and leaving without a word. This sends a stab of regret to her stomach. Did that hurt Vi? Did Vi want something more? Would Vi have turned away from her if she had kissed her again, after they were done fucking? Sometimes girls do that, they don’t want to be close after they’ve fucked, they don’t want to kiss, what they wanted was some kind of physical release, and not the closeness that Caitlyn seems to crave. Too many times she has seen her desire for connection turn out to be a total misinterpretation and bring something casual to a premature end. Surely a hookup with a laborer on her parents’ estate wasn’t meant to be anything more than a quick screw, a bit of experimentation? Surely that searching look Caitlyn thought she saw in Vi’s eyes is Caitlyn projecting?

She spends the days afterwards in a bewildering blend of bliss and anxiety, delighted by her experience and concerned that she messed up her opportunity to have it again by either being too standoffish or wanting too much. The only thing that can alleviate that anxiety is seeing Vi again, so she waits, and tries to study, not especially successfully.

The heat does not relent, and neither do visions of Vi, nor cravings to be handled firmly and decisively by her. Studying outside is made nightmarishly difficult by the humidity sapping her clarity — she finds herself surrendering into a weighty fog that only the base needs of her body can puncture.

Caitlyn becomes preoccupied with notions of being filled. Her mind worries over it relentlessly like her tongue over the gap in her teeth in a sort of disbelief, each time checking if her body’s response is truly as intense and instantaneous as the time before. It is shocking to her how aroused she can become within moments of speculating about it, how merely imagining Vi inside of her sends a flood of warmth to her center, leaves her instantly wet. Fingers, tongue, cock – any of them. All of them. It is absolutely humbling how automatically it happens. It is so unlike the cordial reception she has greeted the notion with in previous experiences – a pleasant enough maneuver, a nice sensation. This is more like a fixation. It feels like a pebble she is constantly toying with in her pocket.

Thoughts of Vi have taken her clarity of purpose away, or rather rearranged it. She feels aimless without Vi around to focus on, as her occupation of Caitlyn’s mind is relentless. She takes a trip to the tool shed and finds that Vi has reassembled the chair. Caitlyn is oddly touched at the gesture, imagining her with a screwdriver in one hand, a screw dangling from her soft lips, attentively laboring, hopefully quite pleased with herself for the circumstances that called for it. At the same time, it is sort of shocking to find no sign that their tryst occurred, given how momentous it felt to Caitlyn. It seems to Caitlyn that when a girl’s life has been changed completely, there should be some sort of external sign that it happened.

The following day Vi appears, her substantial form lumbering about a touch less gracefully than usual, a hitch in her gait. Aside from some very light hickeys on Caitlyn’s breasts, Vi’s new limp is the most concrete material evidence of their exchange. For that reason, and because obvious physical defects are such a turn-on to her, Caitlyn is extremely gratified by this development. She invents tasks that bring her across the estate to get a glimpse of Vi. Caitlyn pretends to check on the chlorine level of the pool for some reason. Even if there were a problem with it, she wouldn’t be able to recognize it and she wouldn’t know how to solve it.

Vi catches her in the ruse, ambling towards her in the oppressive heat, her stride slanting sideways. “Could have sworn you have a guy for that, Cupcake,” she says amiably, casually giving her a once over. Her smile, when it breaks over her face, evinces a shyness Caitlyn has yet to witness on her, and it grips Caitlyn’s stomach instantly. There is a little bit of extra weight to Vi’s voice when she asks: “Everything okay?”

“Hello,” Caitlyn replies uncertainly, unsure if she should feel embarrassed or not. She stands to her full height and feels the awkwardness in her limbs resting stiffly at her sides. She laughs a little, nervously. Like usual, she simply replies with the truth. It may not be the most elegant implement but it has a cleanliness Caitlyn favors. “I guess I wouldn’t know.”

And then the rest of her brain catches up. “Cupcake?”

A smile lifts up one side of Vi’s lips. “Mm,” she responds, pleased at the reaction. She shrugs a shoulder suggestively. “On account of you being so soft and sweet.”

“Is that so?” Caitlyn asks, a bite of humor rising to her voice almost despite herself. She’s glad to be teased, glad for the affection there, but it also brings out her natural combativeness. “Is how soft and sweet I am what’s given you that limp?”

“No,” Vi responds, instantly serious. A darkness flashes in her eyes, and she licks her lips before she speaks next, tossing out a wager. “That was you riding me into the ground like a rocking horse, being a good girl just like I asked.”

It turns out all of Caitlyn’s angst was for nothing, because now she is bent over the workbench in the toolshed with her weight on her forearms, her shorts and panties in a pile around her ankles, Vi down on one knee eating her out from behind.

“Fuck, you taste so good,” Vi pants between strokes of her tongue, her nose buried in Caitlyn’s wetness, eagerly tending to her. “So sweet, just like a –”

Caitlyn turns back and fists her hand in the hair on the top of Vi’s head, tugging her flush against her pussy, muffling the sounds coming out of her mouth.

Once she’s there, the power of it is so intoxicating Caitlyn can’t let go, clenching her fist tightly and pressing her ass back into Vi’s face, feeling the vibrations of her obscured protest, the suggestion of delighted laughter, and then the grunts of Vi’s renewed fervor, the sounds of her sucking in huge gasps of breath punctuating rounds of Vi’s mouth avidly servicing her throbbing clit. Knowing that she’s struggling to breathe, that she’s working hard to please her, that she’s so happy and pleased with herself, gives Caitlyn an ease and freedom in her building pleasure that she only recognizes from the time before.

That rightness. The rightness that this person’s body seems to bring her body. The certainty. Certainty that she can trust Vi with her body. Certainty that Vi knows just how to make her feel good. Certainty that Vi is going to make her come.

And that certainty is what has her building and then breaking effortlessly, gushing all over Vi’s lips, deep into her mouth, saturating her chin, dripping down her neck, crying out over and over. “Yes! Yes! Vi — God, yes! Don’t stop – please don’t stop –”

She lets go of Vi’s head now, her hands futilely scrabbling for purchase against the workbench, arching her back and presenting herself and wriggling back all over Vi’s mouth. Vi’s arms wrap tightly around her legs and keep her upright, the back of her thighs braced against Vi’s chest as Vi’s face is buried deep in her cunt, groaning luxuriously, spreading warmth all the way down to her toes until her legs give way.

Vi has her. She absorbs the shock of the impact with her body, clutching her legs with one hand, now wrapping an enclosing arm around her torso, holding her upright with the flat of her huge hand. She is laughing into Caitlyn’s pussy again. It is a wonderful sound.

“Good girl,” Vi purrs as she pulls away, and as Caitlyn looks back a strand of slick stretches from her body to Vi’s mouth, keeping them connected for a moment. This makes Caitlyn throb so intensely it is a revelation. It is nearly a demand.

As Vi slowly stands, gently bringing Caitlyn up with her until she finds her footing, Caitlyn twists around to meet her mouth, lapping at it with her tongue, wrapping her arms around Vi’s neck, tangling her fingers in the back of her hair, close and needy. The animal desire of her body is at the helm, commanding that she stay touching and entreating. She barely has her feet under her before she starts kissing Vi’s slick mouth, hungrily tasting herself, her own juices smearing both their chins.

“Fuck me again,” Caitlyn whispers hotly between kisses, licking her salt off of Vi’s top lip, sucking her sweetness off her bottom lip. “Please. I can’t stop thinking about you inside of me.”

“Yes,” Vi responds urgently, helplessly springing into action, kissing her, keeping her mouth against Caitlyn’s as she fumbles to unbuckle her belt. “God, yes,” she groans, kicking off her boots, awkwardly kicking off each leg of her pants, wrapping her hands around Caitlyn’s waist, grazing her rough palms back around Caitlyn’s ass, bringing her flush against her.

Caitlyn feels the pressure of Vi’s glorious firm body against her, and also something small and cold against her pubic mound.

“What –”

“Oh, I –” They both look down, and Caitlyn sees thick black leather bands wrapping around Vi’s boxer briefs. Her harness. The coldness was the buckles of her harness, which she wore to do landscaping work that day.

Vi looks up at her, a little bit embarrassed, a little bit pleased with herself. A gutsy smile spreads across her face. “I, uh, was hoping you would say that.”

Caitlyn can’t resist sliding the first two fingers of each hand beneath the straps of the harness and tugging appreciatively. Part of her is impressed, and another, different part of her is shuddering at what a sensory nightmare that would be for her, all that leather abrading damp cotton chafing against her skin. “This must be very hot,” she says, in a tone that splits the difference.

Vi shrugs as if it is of no concern to her. “I want you very badly.” She smiles with a sweet earnestness, an expression that brings a grip to Caitlyn’s belly. “Look. I –”

She steps back now, sock-footed, and approaches a stack of nested flowerpots in the corner. She lifts a pot from the middle, separating the stack, and places it on the ground. She reaches into the opening of the newly exposed pot and reveals a tupperware container, and in that –

Caitlyn’s mouth gently falls open. “Vi –”

Vi shrugs again, more expressively this time. “You had asked me to wash my hands – I figured hygiene is important to you –”

In the sealed container is a flesh-colored cock, lifelike, silicone, seemingly soft to the touch.

Vi has evidently put quite a lot of thought into fucking her.

It certainly feels that way when Vi turns her around, bends her back over the workbench, lines up the head of the cock with her hole, and gently presses home inside of her. They both let out a heady cry at the same time, Caitlyn’s high and sharp, Vi’s low and relieved.

“Fuck,” Vi whines helplessly, overcome. “What – how – Cait –” Her hands are wrapped around Caitlyn’s hips, pulling her back to nestle onto her cock. She slowly retracts before thrusting home again. “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” Caitlyn responds immediately, her voice high and urgent. “Yes, please Vi, please –”

The sound of Caitlyn’s wetness taking Vi’s cock is almost comically obscene. Caitlyn loves it. Has it ever sounded this way before? Has she ever wanted it this badly? She pushes back to take her fully, delighted by the lewd noise of Vi’s thighs clapping against hers, of Vi filling up her pussy. Vi takes her slowly and steadily and deliberately, grips her possessively and guides her onto her cock, fucks her purposefully and intently. It feels so freeing to simply present her hole to be filled, to be used this way, to be pleasured by someone so competent and sweet and hungry for her, to let the pleasure mount so swiftly and surely –

To be fucked senseless. Isn’t that what people say? They talk about fucking each other stupid, about fucking the thoughts of out each other’s heads. That had seemed frankly impossible until now. Caitlyn Kiramman unthinking? Never. But now? The thoughts of Caitlyn Kiramman?

She feels good. She feels good. She feels so fucking good.

“You’re so hot,” Vi groans, as if it were causing her suffering, this lovely anguish in her voice raising the hair on the back of Caitlyn’s neck as she receives Vi’s firm thrusts. “Fuck, Cait, you’re so fucking gorgeous, fuck. I need you so fucking badly, you’re so good, you’re so good —”

These helpless statements, these little prayers, send a rolling thrill through Caitlyn’s stomach. It is so potent to be desired like this it almost hurts. It sends a surge through her that is immediately followed by a groan so animalistic it feels ripped out of her. “Please,” she begs, shockingly unashamed. “Please, Vi, fuck me harder, please.”

“Cait – Cait, I –”

Just as Vi escalates, begins to drive into her with a few rough thrusts, she lets out a bark of laughter, and now Caitlyn is empty. Bereft. “Shit!” Vi exclaims, and another laugh comes. “Sorry, sorry – Cait, you’re so tall – can you –”

It feels so rude to be suddenly so empty but Vi’s laughter makes her laugh in return as she softens and reorients out of her frenzy. “Can I help?“

“Could you spread your legs a little more?”

“Sure, but there’s nothing for me to grab –” Caitlyn tries to spread her legs further, feels the stretch in her thighs, but her ankles aren't quite stable, there’s nothing for her to hold on to to steady herself. “Can you – is there anything –”

“Okay, hold on, hold on –”

Caitlyn turns around and finds Vi with a stack of patio bricks in her hands. She sets them down with a clatter and starts spreading them out in a layer behind Caitlyn.

Caitlyn lets out a little laugh, flushed and sweaty. She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Is that really necessary?” Even as she asks she notices it doing something to her, watching this hot muscular woman on her knees, putting down a layer of bricks to better service her.

“Nah,” Vi replies cheerfully. “But it’ll help me stay inside of you, and it’ll give me a better angle.”

The proof, when Vi sinks back inside of her, is undeniable, hitting the front of her in a way that sends a flood of pleasure through her body. The moan Caitlyn lets out is completely automatic. “Oh,” she breathes helplessly. “Oh. It’s so good.”

She can practically feel the smugness radiating off of Vi as she goes back to work on her. “Mmhmm, mmhmm,” Vi purrs, panting effortfully as she thrusts. It is not long before she is fucking her hard, just as requested, her praises a little bolder than before. “Such a good girl for me, such a sweet girl. You’re so good taking me like this, do you know that? Do you know how good you are? Does it feel good for you, baby? Is it just like you've been dreaming about?”

And God, she has, Caitlyn has been dreaming about this, just like this, bent over taking Vi in the middle of the day on the tool shed, the clap and wet sound of her pussy taking Vi’s cock, the firm possessive hands gripping her hips, the smell of exertion and grass and dirt and sex and sun and sweat and Vi – Vi, this sweet brawny butch who can’t seem to resist her, who is rendered anguished at the sight of her body, who schemes on ways to pleasure her when they are apart, who is so incredibly strong and intimidating but approaches her so gently, converses with her delicately, looks at her so vulnerably –

“Yes!” Caitlyn cries out, feeling herself gather and tighten around Vi, so happy to agree, happy give her what she wants, anything. “Yes, Vi, you’re so good, you’re so good – fuck, you’re so good – ah, I’m close, don’t stop, don’t stop!”

There is that rightness again, that certainty that makes Caitlyn so eager and unashamed. Vi takes her plea as permission to fuck her fast and hard, grip her tight and pull her close. She is practically wailing now as she comes undone around Vi’s cock, feeling each thrust fuck her deeper and deeper into a hole of bliss, her vision going dark and starry, feeling cosmic. She is out there for quite a while before she narrows back in on her body. Now Vi wraps one arm around her waist and the other grips the rail of the bottom of the workbench and Caitlyn is pushed against it and right as she notices but before she can wonder why her legs give way and Vi has her again, holding her tight, keeping her hips locked in against her as she slows her thrusts, driving into her slowly and purposefully and intentionally as Caitlyn’s cries soften, as her entire body collapses, boneless, into Vi’s firm and ready embrace.

Vi plants soft kisses on her hairline behind her ear, lips sliding against the sweat there. “Good girl, good girl,” she murmurs affectionately, her voice husky. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, baby.”

This sends an anxious little thrill all the way down to Caitlyn’s toes when she suddenly notices how badly she wants that to be true, how maybe she wants it to mean more than simply holding her body upright after she’s fucked her legs out from under her.

It is terrible to realize how much having this special thing makes her want more of it, already makes her afraid of losing it, already has her thinking of all the times she’s fumbled girls before through not understanding what they wanted from her. It is terrifying to realize how obsessed she is with Vi, how much she wants her for hers, wants to keep her – how excruciating it feels to imagine it coming to an end.

They have fucked twice and Caitlyn already feels like she won’t survive this ending.

Perhaps it is this fear that once again makes her too shy to kiss Vi after she has turned around, brings the awkwardness back from last time. It is certainly this fear that sends her out of the tool shed with a gnawing pit in her stomach, unable to absorb the softness in Vi’s expression.

*****

This time after Caitlyn has once again gotten what she wanted and discovered a new way to suffer from it, she finds herself fixating on the idea of service. “It’s my pleasure to be of service,” Vi had said, making her interest in Caitlyn as clear as she could under the circumstances. Since then, Vi has gone to work on her, getting her off handsomely, putting in absolutely top notch effort in the name of fucking her. It has been her pleasure to be of service, clearly – Vi has loved every second of it, there is no doubt about that, and yet –

Vi is also employed by her parents, a laborer, going around tending to her estate.

And Caitlyn has not gotten her off once. She has not even offered to.

Worse, this will be their third encounter, and according to Caitlyn’s rules, she doesn’t go beyond third encounters. The rules keep her suffering to a minimum. She feels things so hard and so deeply, and handles interpersonal interactions so clumsily, that if she lets this go on any longer she’ll be in a position to be completely obliterated when Vi lets her know that this is just a casual thing, that she got what she needed out of it, that she’s done with Caitlyn, that Caitlyn is too much, too needy, too intense –

That Vi just works at her estate and Caitlyn is just a rich girl that she’s fucking like an animal in secret. How could it possibly be anything more than that? There’s no chance of this becoming something lasting, no chance of them being with each other beyond physically. The fact that Caitlyn is beginning to notice that she wishes it were different is borderline pathetic. The fact she is having life-altering sex with someone so sweet to her is already too good to be true. She should just be satisfied with that.

So if for the sake of her own emotional safety this is the last time she gets to be with Vi, she should at least get to taste her and know what she sounds like when she comes.

When Caitlyn meets with Vi next she has been stewing over this idea for two full days and has no patience for pleasantries.

“You’re both working on my estate and working to get me off,” she announces practically the moment she enters the toolshed. She has barely closed the door behind her before she begins speaking. “That hardly seems fair.”

Vi looks blown back as if by a hot wind, her brows nearly up to her hairline. “Well hello to you too.”

“I’m serious. I’m very sensitive to our positions. I don’t want to only take from you. There’s already an imbalance of power here and I’m concerned that you’re just doing whatever it is you think that I want.”

“What if I want what you want? What if I just want to fuck you? It’s not an uncommon fantasy, the boss’ daughter. Even on the surface, I’m not getting nothing out of this.”

“But I want to please you. I want to make you feel good.”

“Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how hot you are? How good it feels to touch you?”

Caitlyn begins to feel frustrated. “I want to get you off. I want to give you an orgasm.”

“I mean sure, I’m into that, but that’s not like – the point of this, of whatever it is we’re doing – you don’t owe me anything, you’re not taking advantage of me –”

“Vi,” Caitlyn growls, becoming annoyed now. “I want to make you come. Are you going to make me beg?”

And that gets through to Vi, silencing her, making her beautiful grey eyes turn huge. She is quiet for a moment, during which Caitlyn notices her cheeks turning red. Eventually she asks, “Did you … have something in mind?”

“I want to give you oral sex. I want to take you into my mouth. I understand that …” Surely there is a sexier way to say this, but here she goes: “When a person assigned female at birth takes testosterone, their sexual organs become enlarged. I’m very curious about that. I want to know what it’s like to suck you off.”

Vi blinks at her, her face still red. Her mouth has fallen slightly open. “Well, um …” She swallows now, seemingly uncertain what words to use, but then her tongue comes to her lips, considering. “Is now good? I’m pretty sweaty –”

“That’s okay,” Caitlyn says immediately. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness thus far, but I’m not completely obsessed with hygiene. I just don’t want to get a yeast infection.”

“Oh!” Vi responds awkwardly, and then starts laughing, nervously Caitlyn thinks. “Well, no wonder. That makes sense.”

“Have I –” Caitlyn sighs in frustration. “Have I made you uncomfortable? I didn’t mean to, I just – sometimes I say what I am thinking and I find that I have completely confounded someone –”

“No,” Vi interrupts firmly. “Please don’t worry about that. You just constantly surprise me, that’s all. Just because I don’t know how to respond sometimes doesn’t mean that I don’t like it.”

No one has ever said this to Caitlyn before. For whatever reason, Caitlyn finds it stokes her desire to feel Vi in her mouth.

“Well,” Caitlyn says bluntly, pleased, blushing a bit, but certain. “Can I go down on you?”

Nodding, Vi goes for her belt buckle.

“Wait,” Caitlyn says, suddenly struck with an aching tenderness. She knows, she knows this is the very thing that leads to her feeling devastated and alone at the end, she knows that allowing herself to open up to this feeling is going to lead to her demise, but if this is to be the last time then what does it even matter?

The vulnerability in Vi’s eyes sucks the air out of Caitlyn’s lungs. She looks up at Caitlyn expectantly, and Caitlyn steps close, presses against her body, takes her chin into her hands, and kisses her.

The long and short of it is, Caitlyn thinks Vi is perfect and she wants to show her with her mouth. What an exquisite creature! Her soft lips, her horny little strip of pink peach fuzz, her quiet desperation reverberating in the hands that come up around Caitlyn’s back, not so quiet now, a little groan spilling against Caitlyn’s lips. The willing arch of her neck, how salty she tastes there, how firm the muscles beneath Caitlyn’s tongue. The sheer bulk of her mass beneath Caitlyn’s hands, how taut her core beneath Caitlyn’s fingers – now Caitlyn moaning just to feel her, tracing her hands up her thick sides, lifting her shirt over head as Vi lifts her arms helpfully.

Caitlyn takes it all in, running her hands across the rippling bulge of her shoulders, the wide wingspan of her lats, the grid of her abs. She brushes the back of her hand against the soft red blonde fur on her belly, brings her thumb to the coarse red-pink trail leading down beneath her waistband.

Without realizing, she lets out a little marvelling sound of lust.

“You like it,” Vi says thickly, somewhere between a statement and a question.

Caitlyn nods mutely. Feeling her mouth begin to water, she presses against Vi, cups her hands against her back, and walks her backwards until the back of her knees meet the patio chair. From there it takes only the gentlest push before Vi is seated and Caitlyn is on her knees, unbuckling her belt, placing kisses further and further down the trail of Vi’s hair.

“Hnngh –”

“You like that I like it,” Caitlyn whispers into her belly as she scoops her fingers into the waistband of Vi’s pants and tugs them down, Vi helpfully arching her hips, her eyes wide and transfixed.

“Uh huh,” she says dumbly, staring.

With Vi’s pants around her ankles, she’s left in just a pair of grey boxer briefs. Her muscular thighs are coated in soft curving brushstrokes of red, and Caitlyn can’t resist nuzzling her nose against them, her lips finding the soft skin beneath. She breathes in, is hit by the muggy aroma of salt and want and musk, and hears Vi gasp in response, notices her hands going for the bottom of her seat, grasping tightly.

“Fuck,” she says, very quietly.

“Look how excited you are,” Caitlyn says, marveling, nodding towards the prominent wet spot at the seam of Vi’s boxer briefs. She brings her mouth to it, brushes her lips against the moist fabric, and Vi twitches, lets out a little grunt that turns into a soft gasp when Caitlyn’s lips make to the hard protrusion above the wet spot.

Her clit. Her cock? Hm.

She places her lips around it and purses them, giving just a little squeeze hello, and Vi’s hips jump again and she gives another lovely grunt, shifting in her seat. Caitlyn sees her forearms flexing as she grips the seat of her chair. Is it her gentlemanly restraint that makes Caitlyn want to tease her so badly, or just the wonder of discovery? She draws her tongue across the rough cotton over the bulge in Vi’s underwear and now Vi whimpers.

“Cait –”

She licks at it again as she brings her fingers to Vi’s waistband and begins to draw her underwear down, over her ass and down her thighs, to join her pants pooled around her ankles. Caitlyn finds a thick but tidy bush of red-pink hair, glistening with slick where it spreads across her folds, thinning out somewhat as the hair makes its way down her thighs.

And then, a hard clit that has just the beginning of a shaft, about the size of one of Cailtyn’s fingers from the first knuckle to the tip. An eager red head pokes out lewdly from beneath the hood.

“What do you call it?” Caitlyn asks.

“My clit is fine,” Vi says, in a low voice. “Sometimes I call it my button. I’m on a low dose of T – it’s not like I’m huge down there.”

“It’s lovely,” Caitlyn says, so earnestly she can see it’s making Vi blush even in the dim light of the shed.

“It’s not all that much bigger than average –”

“It’s like a pearl,” Caitlyn says softly, and brings her mouth down to it, again placing her lips around the hood and pursing, kissing it gently. The little whimper, the little twitch of Vi’s hips, is already beginning to make Caitlyn feel drunk with power. Vi is so wet beneath her mouth, smells so good and hungry, so desperate for her. She dips a kiss into her wetness and brings her slick lips back to the hood of Vi’s clit, sliding against the sensitive hardness in her mouth, her head bobbing back and forth suggestively as she strokes Vi’s hood with her lips.

“It’s like a pearl I can take into my mouth,” she says, delighted. “Or a cherry pit. So hard and red.” Now she delivers a testing broad stroke to the side of Vi’s shaft, tasting her salt and tang and sweetness, tasting her sweat and desire, feeling the firmness pressing against her tongue. Vi’s groan, the sound ripped out of her as she shifts in her seat, sends a burst of joy blooming in Caitlyn’s stomach.

She lets out a contented sigh before saying: “I want to roll you around in my mouth like a bead.”

At this, Vi’s gentlemanly restraint fails her, and she thrusts herself into Cailtyn’s mouth.

And so Caitlyn goes to work, sloppily kissing Vi’s big hard clit, tasting her delicious slick and servicing this tender ache. At the end of the day it is just a clit after all, it’s not all that different from clits Caitlyn has licked before, except for that first of all it is Vi’s clit so it is absolutely the most exhilarating clit she has ever licked in her life, and second of it is undeniably bigger and as it turns out that is fun, it is fun to play with in her mouth, to suck on it gently and rock her mouth back and forth along it and to feel like she is actually blowing this person she is extremely horny for. Psychically, it puts her into place of receiving, of not just pleasuring Vi but of being fucked into, of having her mouth used –

There it is. She feels like she is offering her mouth to be used as a fuck hole for Vi’s pleasure.

She digs her fingers into Vi’s ass and tugs, wordlessly encouraging her to thrust into her mouth.

“Nggh –”

As Vi bucks her hips against Caitlyn’s face, she loses whatever previous eloquence she had. “Fuck,” she grunts, wonderingly, her eyes blazing and jaw dropped in a kind of anguish. “Fuck, baby, that mouth – nggh – you’re so – you’re so – fuck –”

Caitlyn’s hands wander, running her palms along her haunches and then down to the hair on top of her thighs. The muscles are so dense beneath her hands, the skin so soft, the hair so virile, not soft but not coarse, just … robust and vigorous. Her thumbs skim across Vi’s inner thighs, stroking as they tense and loosen beneath her hands, moving upwards towards her pussy. Even as her thumbs reach the seam of her legs they are already sliding with slick, and then Caitlyn finds she needs to feel how wet Vi is, just with her thumb at first, and when she does she and Vi groan in unison, because she’s so, so wet, dripping down her own thighs and onto the chair and down Caitlyn’s chin.

Wordlessly, because her mouth is full of Vi, Caitlyn presses her thumb deeper into Vi’s opening, testing her, and receives the sweetest little noises in response. “Yes –” she groans helplessly, urgently. “Yes, fuck, Cait, please –”

God, Vi’s desperation is so unbelievably hot. Caitlyn is feasting on her, sloppily drawing her into her mouth and sucking, not hard, but purposefully, just offering her mouth to be used as a hole to satisfy Vi’s lust, and it is electrifying to have this woman go to pieces beneath her, to feel herself work so effectively on her, to have Vi at her mercy like this.

“Mmhmm?” Caitlyn asks teasingly, because she knows Vi wants her inside and she knows her little hum of pleasure reverberates all the way up into Vi’s core.

“Baby please – I’m close – inside – please –”

Caitlyn happily obliges, pressing two frictionless fingers into Vi’s opening, and feels her intoxicating warmth grip her. She hardly gets time to savor the reality of being inside of her, delivering just a handful of strokes before she already starts coming.

“God – yes – fuck – Cait!” Vi cries out frantically, her hips jerking wildly against Caitlyn’s face as Caitlyn keeps fucking into her, delivering firm rhythmic thrusts of her fingers as she sucks her off, her lips puffy and soaked from being used. Vi’s cries are plaintive and expressive, and they just keep going, so loud and unashamed, so intense and frenzied. The sounds of fucking into her are so exquisite, Caitlyn feels so powerful and desirable, she gets what Vi was saying now, about feeling good just by touching her. Not that Caitlyn hadn’t given someone pleasure before, and felt good because of it –

But it was nothing at all in comparison to this. This powerful muscle butch falling to pieces in her mouth and hand, keening, hopeless, anguished for her, needing her for relief. The absolute thrill of it is so erotic, it makes her feel so smug she nearly wants to purr in satisfaction. She licks Vi through, moves to broad strokes with her tongue, tapers off the pressure, starts allowing her to come down, her cries slowing –

Maybe it is the lust for power that seizes Caitlyn, or she’s just not wiling to be done with Vi yet, but suddenly she finds herself sliding a third finger into Vi and pounding hard, fucking her mercilessly and lapping at her pussy in a frenzy.

“Fuck! Fuck!”

To her delight, she finds she has finally demolished Vi’s self-control. Vi’s fingers find the back of Caitlyn’s head and grip tightly, shoving her face down onto her clit, fucking hard into her mouth, grunting low and deep, this rumbling animalistic groan that builds into a bellow as her next orgasm arrives and she fucks Caitlyn’s face as she comes, laid absolutely bare and raw, her back arching, head thrown back over the chair, grinding and whining and coming and dripping down Caitlyn’s face and arm, spilling slick onto the ground.

When this round slows and they begin to come back to themselves, to some kind of rational human condition, they once again find themselves laughing in pleasure, at what a state they have just been in.

Vi bends over to lean down to kiss her, cupping her face in her hand. These are soft, languid kisses, Vi sighing happily into her mouth, and Caitlyn sighs back, and then draws her to sit up as Caitlyn is starting to get to her feet.

She has a wet spot, she notices, all the way through her jean shorts.

“Wow,” Vi says, completely blissed out. “You, uh – you’re really good at that.”

Again, why is this the moment that makes Caitlyn blush? She smiles in shy satisfaction, feeling warmth spread through her – and the now familiar post-orgasm anxiety comes directly on its heels, roiling in her chest, and it hits harder than ever, because she knows that this is the last time she can let herself do this, and it’s the only thing she wants now, nothing she’s ever experienced remotely compares to this, and she knows if she lets herself stick around until Vi becomes cold to her like everyone else she’s ever slept with the switch will simply not be survivable.

Caitlyn swallows, and tries to put those thoughts away for a moment. “Thank you,” she says, trying to sound normal, but she has to get out of the shed, and now.

Vi’s expression changes, her brows furrowed and a soft frown weighing down her lips. “Is something wrong?” she asks, beginning to pull her clothes back on. “Was this okay?”

The fact that her anxiety is causing Vi discomfort sends a stab of shame into Caitlyn’s stomach. “No, no,” she says. “This was wonderful. I just – have to get back –”

“Of course,” Vi replies, but her expression is strained and she doesn’t mean it at all. She has said it for Caitlyn’s benefit.

Caitlyn knows there is no salvaging this, not while the urge to flee is so present at the surface of her skin. “Have a good day,” she says, absolutely hating how flaccid she sounds, what a useless statement that is, how tight the smile she gives Vi before she escapes the shed. By some minor miracle she makes it entirely across the estate to her bedroom before she starts to cry.

There, she cries for a very long time, hard and rough and ripped out of her sternum. It’s not just about what is happening with Vi but everything that has ever happened, every loss she’s ever experienced, every time someone has responded to her as though she were some sort of bizarre creature, every time behavior that feels perfectly natural to her drives someone away – every time being herself has repelled someone and removed them from her life. It seems to happen over and and over again, and she feels so helpless to prevent it. All she can do is cut things off before she gets hurt too badly, and that is awful, it is wretched, it is so unfair and painful that Caitlyn cries until her stomach hurts, completely desolate and abandoned. God, it hurts. It’s painful to be Caitlyn Kiramman.

It is only after fully half an hour of this that she is able to get up and wash the tears and come from her face.

*****

Caitlyn tries to return to her studies but she is constantly distracted by the haunting sadness that fills her chest cavity like some sort of thick fog. Maybe it spreads to her brain, because her thoughts are noticeably not clear. She wants to see Vi and she knows she cannot. This is the tension she holds inside of her, this bristling thing that is some species of despair. She haunts the mansion like a ghost, unwilling to go outside and risk seeing Vi. She doesn’t know what she would do if she did. Avoid her gaze? That doesn’t seem possible. Walk away? That doesn’t seem possible either. Better not to go out there at all. Maybe just wait out the summer, attend to her studies, pass the bar, get a job at a law firm somewhere far away and only come back for winter holidays –

The unhappiness that radiates off of her is so obvious that even her mother picks up on it.

“Darling,” Cassandra says to her over coffee the following week, unusually gently, “I have the afternoon free and I’m concerned you’ve been spending a bit too much time alone. I’ve taken the liberty of inviting Jayce over for lunch. I assume you will be available?”

That is a very fair thing to assume. The idea of being perceived like this is unpleasant, but perhaps it would be good for her to be perceived by someone, instead of skulking around and, frankly, wallowing.

When lunch comes around, Cassandra says: “Jayce is due to be here any moment. Would you be a dear and go out and fetch him?”

“I would prefer not to,” Caitlyn says immediately, surprising them both.

Cassandra grimaces at her. “Caitlyn, please,” she says, exasperated. Reasonably so, too. Caitlyn realizes there’s no excuse she can give that will sound credible at all, so she screws up her courage – actively dissociates, more like – and ventures outside for the first time in a week.

At least she had the opportunity to wash her hair and change out of the depression sweats she’s been living in. She’s wearing a chambray linen jumpsuit and a pair of huaraches, and thank God she is, because at least she has a little steel in her spine as she walks out to the gates. It’s hot and it’s bright and she doesn’t want to be out here at all and she feels like she’s walking to the gallows instead of letting her oldest friend in for lunch.

Jayce is strolling up casually as she reaches the gates, greeting her with a big friendly wave. “Hey there Sprout!” he calls exuberantly, seemingly happy as could be. “Long time no see!”

“Hello,” she answers despondently, and she sees his demeanor shift.

“Hey,” he says softly as she approaches, and brings her in for a hug.

She remains stiff in his arms. If she lets herself soften she’s going to start lunch with a hefty portion of tears and she’s not in the mood.

“Your mom said you could use some company,” Jayce says, his hug quickly relenting. He steps back and looks at her, seeing how tightly her jaw is set, the tension in her shoulders. “Everything okay?”

“No,” Caitlyn replies shortly, and he falls into step with her as they head towards the mansion. “But I don’t want to talk about it just now.”

“Okay,” he agrees gently, and remains quiet as they walk. She is enduring the discomfort of creating the silence, her gaze grimly focused on the house –

When of course a shock of pink catches her attention out of the corner of her eye, and there was never any possibility that she wasn’t going to look, and what she is greeted with when her gaze jerks in that direction is the handsomest person she has ever had the pleasure of looking at, with the saddest, most strikingly beautiful pair of eyes that she has possibly ever seen.

Who knew a pair of eyes could scoop the guts straight out of her belly.

“Cait? Is that the landscaper?”

She has stopped cold for a split second, but now she turns back towards the house and walks with relentless purpose. “Yes,” she says tightly, walking as quickly as she can. “Come inside.”

*****

Caitlyn simply cannot help herself. She puts Jayce and Cassandra through a lunch so unpleasant it is almost comical, their gracious and wide-ranging questions gaining them only her terse and combative responses, as though she is punishing them for caring about her. She has no excuses. She is doing her best and her best is absolutely terrible, really truly abhorrent. She dislikes herself so much at this moment that she is no longer even feeling sorry for herself about being unlovable and constantly abandoned, she thinks now that she must deserve it, that if Vi even wanted her – if that’s what that heartbreakingly miserable expression meant – then she wouldn’t for long once she knew what Caitlyn was really like: a bratty, truculent rich girl who is callous with the people who love her.

On the way out, Jayce pulls her aside to the solarium.

“Cait,” he says, extremely carefully. His brotherly hand is on her shoulder and his brow is furrowed in concern. “That person can’t keep their eyes off you, and you’re clearly unhappy avoiding them. What are you doing?”

“I’m protecting myself,” she says coldly. “You know how it is with me. People – when they get to know me – it’s only a matter of time.”

“So you’re hurting her to avoid being hurt?”

She clenches her jaw.

“Are you avoiding being hurt right now, Caitlyn?”

“I told you I didn’t want to talk about this,” she says, and flees, yet again.

She takes her terrible mood back to her room, which only gains her respite for the rest of the afternoon because as soon as she emerges for dinner she is immediately next confronted by her mother, who is wearing a tentative but undeniably sour expression.

“Darling,” Cassandra says, as carefully as Jayce did, both of them handling her like a land mine in need of disarming. “I am glad that you have been enjoying your summer up until now. It is good to get such things out of your system before you begin your career. If this mood is due to it having come to an end, surely you can see the inevitability of that? Intimacy with a person like that is always going to be temporary. It’s no great loss.” Unaware that she is making things worse with every word, Cassandra gives her a kind look. “In short, Caitlyn, you’re an incredible girl with a bright future, and a landscaper simply isn’t good enough for you.”

If Cassandra was hoping to defuse Caitlyn, she couldn’t have chosen a worse tack. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she declares hotly, and then the truth begins to dawn on her in stages as each word falls out of her mouth. “Vi is the loveliest person I’ve ever met. Every time I have interacted with her she has made no issue of being understanding and nonjudgmental and kind. It seems to come naturally to her. It’s no great effort to her to tolerate my idiosyncrasies – she has noticed them on her own, and gone out of her way to accommodate them uncomplainingly. She’s gallant and open and warm and thoughtful. She is the only person I have ever met who has never made me feel defective, and I’ve been too caught up in being afraid to even recognize that! I’ve been so afraid she couldn’t love me I have hardly worried about what I’ve done to her at all. I am the one who isn’t good enough for her.”

What an idiot she’s been! Why hasn’t she been able to see this before? Vi hasn’t been perplexed or put off by her, hasn’t treated her as though she were odd or unreadable. Caitlyn is the one who took her mouth off Vi’s genitals and immediately fled, didn’t talk to her for a week, and then ignored her the next time she saw her. Caitlyn is the one whose family is paying her wages, who owns the property on which she works, who seems to have all the agency in this situation. God, what a fool Caitlyn is. She’s ruined something incredible by sticking to the rules when she’s finally met the one person who didn’t require them.

She doesn’t wait for her mother’s response. She needs to fix this, but Vi is gone for the evening, and now they’re going into the weekend. Caitlyn’s despair feels more urgent now, less laden with loneliness and more with guilt and shame and purpose. She needs to explain, she needs to apologize, and she needs to get her girl.

Bristling with all this energy but with nothing to do about it, Caitlyn throws herself into her shooting and her calisthenics with grim determination, her clarity of purpose burning off the fog that has been inhabiting her. She wants Vi. She wants Vi not just for an encounter but for as long as she’ll let her have her and she is willing to be hurt to have the experience of being with her for as long as that may be available, provided that Vi is willing to give her a chance after how hurtful she’s been –

Those grey blue eyes. That’s the image that keeps intruding as she sweats and shoots and studies. That achingly sad expression that followed Caitlyn back into the house. The one she caused by pulling away, because she was afraid Vi would pull away. Every time she gets a flash of those eyes she feels a stab of shame so potent her entire body flushes. What a coward she’s been.

No longer. She’s going to clean up the mess she’s made. She’s going to be brave.

She’s going to apologize, she’s going to humiliate herself if she needs to, and she’s going to subject herself to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

*****

Caitlyn waits through the weekend for Vi to return. When she hears the sound of weed whacking she is wet and heart-poundingly scared all at once, both, immediately. She puts on a little outfit, a short-sleeved striped poplin shirt left open over a white bandeau, relatively modest jean shorts, the huaraches again. She’s not trying to get fucked, she just needs to have a conversation.

Vi, she thinks. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, please let me explain.

Vi. I can’t imagine what you must be thinking, my behavior must have been so confusing to you, please allow me to apologize –

When she gets outside, the mowing has stopped, and when she goes to approach the landscaper –

It is someone else entirely.

A skinny young man with huge black eyebrows, and an unkempt bush of hair pushed back on his head, his cheekbones coming to a sharp point at his chin. When he sees her approaching, his expressive face cycles through surprise, interest, and nervousness, before it seems to settle on sarcasm. He is wearing a borderline unpleasant smile by the time she reaches him.

“Hello there, good afternoon.”

“Yeah?” he says, a little shortly. “Something I can do for you?”

“Well, yes, actually,” she says, not seeing the point in equivocating. “The woman who has been working here this summer. Vi. I was hoping to talk to her.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, shrugging. “She quit.”

“Quit?”

“Yeah,” he says. “She doesn’t work here anymore. I work here now.” He runs the weed whacker over a patch of grass beneath the hedges, as if to punctuate his statement. This goes on for just long enough to be annoying.

“So I see,” Caitlyn replies, frowning.

“Yeah,” he says again, resting an arm on the weed whacker, crossing one leg behind the other and resting the weight on the toes of his boot, striking what he seems to think is an insouciant pose. “That’s what ‘quit’ means.”

By the way he’s speaking to her, either he’s a complete asshole, friends with Vi, or both.

“Thank you for enlightening me,” she says dryly. “Nonetheless, I’d still like to talk to her. Do you happen to know if there’s a way I could get in contact with her?”

His eyes narrow a bit. “You’re the Kiramman girl.”

She nods, keeping a neutral expression. “I am.”

She sees his lips curl a bit, a sharp smile growing on his face. “What’s it worth to you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Supposing I know the bar where Vi works, and her schedule. How much is that worth to you? In cash?”

“Oh,” she replies. She raises an eyebrow and looks down at him, sees him flinch a bit nervously at her height. “However much you want. Name your price.”

“You first.”

“Fine. We’ll both go on three. One, two –”

“Fifty dollars,” he says, while she says –

“A thousand dollars.”

His eyes bulge as he starts shaking his head trying to disown his own number, and then the head shaking jostles his shoulders, and that displaces the weed whacker, and now he is literally falling all over himself, catching his balance before he looks back up at her, sputtering.

“A thousand dollars!” he yelps in disbelief. “Damn, she must be a really good lay!”

The side of her mouth quirks up. “I take it that number is acceptable to you?”

“Hell yeah,” he says, running his hand through his ridiculous hair, and then holding it out expectantly. “Let’s fucking go.”

*****

Vi works at a bar in the undercity called The Last Drop every night of the week besides Sunday and Monday. Caitlyn has never been to a bar alone in her life, much less one in the undercity, so ever action-oriented, she begins her apology tour with a phone call to Jayce.

“Yes?” he says warily, by way of hello.

“You were right,” she says, with no preamble whatsoever. Presumably he’s accustomed to this by now. “I’m sorry for being so unpleasant. I have feelings for Vi and I’ve made a huge mistake.”

“Oh, Cait. How’d you get there on that one?”

“My mother told me I was too good for her. Needless to say, by the time I was done defending her I realized how badly I’ve misjudged.”

Jayce snorts into the phone. “Well, I’m sorry it took you so much suffering to get there, but I’m glad that you recognize that now. What are you going to do about it?”

“She’s quit, but the fellow who replaced her gave me some information about her other job. It’s a bar in the undercity called The Last Drop and I was hoping you might go with me. I need to talk to her and I don’t want to go alone.”

“And I’m wonderful company.”

“I was also hoping you could drive.”

*****

The Last Drop is a dark wood-paneled spacious neighborhood pub, a no-frills kind of place where everyone seems to know each other. It’s busy enough that Caitlyn and Jayce can enter without being noticed, but probably not for long – they tuck into a booth where Caitlyn can keep an eye on the bar without being likely to receive attention.

From there she can watch Vi, watch her graceful movement and easy charisma, the appealing expression on her face, the air of competence and authority that she brings to the room. The whole bar feels safe because she is in it, she is in charge. If anything untoward happened it is easy to imagine Vi taking care of it, the same as she is taking care of everyone by serving them alcohol, or not as the case may be. It is the same calming attitude that has led Caitlyn to feel at ease enough to completely be herself with Vi.

To say nothing of how muscular and gorgeous she is – wearing a sleeveless white muscle shirt, as she is turning back towards the register Caitlyn can see more of her tattoos than usual, see them rippling across her triceps as she reaches for a glass, the bulge of her bicep as she turns back and holds it up to the tap, and then the curl of her scarred lip as she gives a cheeky smile to a customer and pushes the glass across the bar, the movement of her hair as she shakes her head to bring it away from her beautiful eyes –

“Caitlyn, you’re drooling.”

“I am not,” she declares reflexively, but she may as well be.

Turns out a busy bar isn’t a sensory nightmare when she has a hot bartender to hyperfocus on.

Soon enough, there is a lull in customers approaching the bar. Everyone seems content and settled into their place for the time being. Before she can lose her courage, Caitlyn stands up decisively.

“Wish me luck.”

“Good luck, Sprout.”

The best part about being here is being able to watch Vi in her element, seeing her so clearly at ease, dressed in her own style, interacting with people who are familiar to her.

The worst part is watching Vi’s face crumple as Caitlyn approaches, and then fill with hurt and anger.

“Well, what a surprise!” Vi says, a stinging tone in her voice, her brow furrowed and head cocked to the side in disbelief. “Look who’s finally ready to talk. Here to ruin another job for me, princess?”

This takes the breath from Caitlyn’s lungs completely. Vi has never once been cold to her and it is so physically painful to experience, it feels like her two giant hands have taken her insides and twisted them decisively, leaving her with a giant corded knot in her gut.

“Vi – I’m so sorry –”

“Seriously. I don’t want to do this here. I don’t want to do this at all.”

Caitlyn’s mouth opens and closes. A little noise comes out. That is so fair, that is more than fair, and she has no defense against it. Reeling with hurt and shame, all she can think to say is, very quietly: “I care about you.”

If anything, now Vi looks even angrier than before. Her arms cross and her lip curls as she says: “What is this, some kind of rich girl game? I’m worth the effort now that I’m not available whenever you want me? I don’t need care like that, Caitlyn. I’m not just a toy to get you off, I’m a real fucking person with real feelings –”

“No, I know, I know that,” Caitlyn says, frustrated. “I was just so afraid –”

“What do you have to be afraid of! It’s been your world, your estate, your parents’ money, your lawnboy to pleasure you –” Vi huffs. “You know what, no. I said I didn’t want to do this and I actually really don’t. Please take your boyfriend and leave.”

“Boyfriend –”

“That man, whatever he is to you. The two of you need to get out of here.”

She turns to look back at Jayce and he is wearing the most undignified expression imaginable, having been caught staring while being talked about. He looks as though not only did he get caught with his hand in the cookie jar but it was also subsequently trapped there, his shoulders up to his ears.

“Okay,” Caitlyn says softly when she turns back, seeing Vi’s face hard and indignant. She feels the fight leak out of her like the plug has been pulled from a drain, her voice quiet and defeated. “I understand. I’ll go.”

She can’t resist looking for another few seconds. She can feel how pathetic her face must look, knows her eyes are huge and her lips are starting to quiver, but Vi’s expression is determined and unmoving, self-protective and defended. If Caitlyn didn’t feel like she so richly deserved this, she might feel sorry for herself, but as it is she just doesn’t want to make things even worse. She turns, grabs Jayce, and they walk out arm and arm. They barely make it out the door before she sags into him and a single tear drips down her cheek.

“You okay?”

Caitlyn nods grimly. She can taste the salt of the tear as it makes its way past her lips.

It tastes like determination.

*****

It makes sense that Vi feels used when every time Caitlyn finished coming she ran away as fast as she could. It makes so much sense that Caitlyn is flabbergasted that she hadn’t considered it before. That all the times that Vi regarded her with a soft and searching expression weren’t Caitlyn projecting her own neediness, but in fact Caitlyn rejecting Vi’s desire to connect. And then she thinks about how sweet Vi was, after the first time, when she asked if they could do it again. How vulnerable she looked in that moment, and how relieved she looked when Caitlyn acquiesced.

Caitlyn has been so caught up in her own fearful agony she has not considered Vi’s interiority at all. She is so unaccustomed to someone being so soft with her she merely assumed she was projecting her own softness. And so she’s done exactly to Vi what she feared Vi might do to her. How to make amends for such a selfish blunder, when all Vi has at her disposal to protect herself is to reject her?

It is Caitlyn’s turn to be vulnerable.

The next night Caitlyn returns. Why wait? Nothing in her life feels more important to her in this moment than this does, than making this right. She’s perfectly willing to embarrass herself to get what she wants – she probably needs to, in fact. That doesn’t feel unwelcome at all.

Facing Vi’s hostility is much more uncomfortable to endure.

“I told you I didn’t want to talk here,” she says flatly when Caitlyn approaches the bar the next night.

“So let me take you out on a date,” Caitlyn responds hopefully.

“I also said that I didn’t want to talk at all.”

“That makes sense,” Caitlyn says. “You’re not the one who needs to ask for forgiveness. You don’t have anything you have to explain about your behavior. You’ve been absolutely lovely. But I haven’t, and I would like to do those things, if you’ll let me. Can I please take you out on a date?”

There is a moment where Vi contemplates her and she sees a little flash in her eye and Caitlyn thinks Vi will say yes.

But she doesn’t. “I don’t think so,” Vi replies, and now her arms are crossed again. At least there seems to be a little bit of regret in her voice, like it’s hard for her to sacrifice the opportunity in order to maintain her dignity.

It’s the biggest win Caitlyn is going to get today, so she takes it.

“Alright, Vi,” she says, getting pretty accustomed to the heaviness in her abdomen. It feels terrible, but at least she knows what she’s done, how she got here. She swallows, and tries to work up a smile that she can feel is actually a wince. “Goodnight.”

For whatever reason, Vi gives her a pained smile in return, and that is what she sees in her mind’s eye on the way home, puzzling over it, trying to interpret what it might mean.

*****

The next night Caitlyn returns again. So Vi doesn’t want to talk. At least Caitlyn can look at her, show her how much effort she’s willing to put in to get another chance.

“Caitlyn –”

“I’m not going to bother you again,” she says, preemptively. “I brought my studies. I just want a glass of wine.”

“I told you I don’t want to go on a date.”

“And as disappointing as that is to me, I respect your wishes. May I have a glass of wine, please?”

Vi sighs. “You don’t want to order a glass of wine here. Can I make you a martini?”

Even though she knows it will make her too drunk to study, just the whisper of consideration in that question makes Caitlyn’s heart sing. It’s not like she’s going to get any studying done anyway. “Yes, please,” she replies. “Vodka with a twist, if you would.”

She tries not to eye Vi too hungrily as she prepares the drink for her, moving efficiently behind the bar, pulling bottles with a smoothness that demonstrates her obvious experience. How elegantly her hand stirs with the long bar spoon, how dexterously her big fingers twist the skin of the lemon as she expresses the oil. How she cannot help the showmanship as she presents the glass to her, even though her expression is wary as she meets her in the eye.

“Do you want to start a tab?”

“No,” she says, puts down a fifty, and walks away as Vi is making change.

She settles into the same out-of-the-way booth that she and Jayce had occupied two nights ago and opens up her books. She doesn’t waste much time actually reading them. She notices the lanky landscaper again, the fellow who told her where Vi works, sees him approach Vi and sees Vi pull him into a chat. She’s clearly annoyed with him, and though she avoids looking over at Caitlyn while they’re talking, he doesn’t. She catches his eye for a moment as he looks in her direction and smirks. She holds his gaze until he looks away. If anything, it’s a friendlier expression than the ones from his conversation with Caitlyn earlier in the week.

She re-reads the same paragraph for about fifteen minutes and when she looks up next she next sees the fellow talking to a slender girl with light blue hair pulled into buns and a sharp, cogent expression. Now they are both looking at her, and she is looking at them looking at her, and it is not too long before they sidle into the booth across from her without asking permission.

“You’re the Kiramman girl,” the girl says in a raspy voice, blunt, but already warmer than her companion.

“Yes,” Caitlyn agrees. “And you are?”

“I’m Powder,” the girl says, and points her thumb at the fellow. “And you know Mylo. We’re Vi’s siblings.”

“A pleasure to meet you both,” Caitlyn says. “My name is Caitlyn.”

“Oh, we know,” Mylo says.

“This is our bar. Ours and Vi’s. Our dad left it to us. So we’re like … Vi’s siblings, and also small business owners.”

“How nice,” Caitlyn replies, beginning to have an idea of where this is going.

“We have a business opportunity for you,” Mylo says.

“Yes, I suppose that you do.”

“Okay, so,” Powder begins. “I’m not going to beat around the bush here – we’re up to speed on everything that’s happening. Kind of put two and two together. You’re the rich girl Vi has been hooking up with and you royally whiffed it, and now you want to get her back and she won’t talk to you. Am I right so far?”

Caitlyn sees no purpose in defending herself, especially since she doesn’t deserve it and it will only delay the process of getting to the point. “Right enough. Go on.”

“Are you familiar with a bar buyout?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“It’s when a person with too much money rents a bar out just for them and their people. Usually it’s like an engagement party or a holiday party for a business or something. A bunch of people who want to hang out and be served alcohol without anybody else around.”

“I see.”

“We’d like to give you the opportunity to buy out the bar for a night. A private party, just you and Vi. We’d close the bar down and have our guy out front keep everybody else out. All you’d have to do is pay us all the money we’d usually make in a night to make it worth it for us. What do you say?”

Caitlyn takes a deep breath and once again decides honesty is her best option. “Well, since you’re already well-apprised of the situation, I’d say I don’t know if it would be right to use my money to get access to Vi, given how it has already influenced our relationship.”

“Well, sure, I thought you might say that,” Powder replies easily. “The thing is, she likes you. She’s been moping ever since you left her high and dry but before that she was practically floating around the house for weeks. That was annoying but in a fun way. This is annoying in a not fun way. It’s been a real pain to have her sulking all night, and frankly it’s starting to impact our tips. So, really you’d be helping everybody out.”

“And supporting small business,” Mylo adds.

It’s the whiff of actual sentiment here beneath the obvious fleecing that has Caitlyn actually considering it.

Caitlyn steals a glance at Vi, catching her in conversation with a customer, and is bowled over by the wave of tenderness that floods her chest at merely the sight of her profile. It’s clear to Caitlyn she would do anything to get a chance to explain herself, and she’s all out of ideas.

“I accept. How much would you like?”

Powder says, “Two thousand dollars,” and at the same time, Mylo, having learned his lesson, says: “Ten thousand dollars.”

“Fine,” she says, having no desire to haggle with them. Let her money be a blessing to them, it could not matter less to her. She just wants a chance to get to talk to Vi. “When can we do this?”

This interrupts them jostling amongst themselves, visibly freaking out a little bit at the realization that their scheme is succeeding so wildly. Powder pulls off the pivot into professionalism admirably. “Next Tuesday,” she says firmly. “That’ll give us time to set it all up so that she isn’t suspicious. We’ll open up at 6 for you. Does that work?”

“Perfectly,” Caitlyn says, a tone of satisfaction in her voice.

She’s going to do this. She’s going to give it her last, best shot. She’s going to risk it all and lay herself absolutely bare for a chance to make things right.

Maybe, just maybe, if she completely humbles herself and Vi can find a way to forgive her, next Tuesday night Vi will put her hands on her body again.

*****

Powder, Mylo, and their older brother Claggor meet with Caitlyn out front of The Last Drop the following Tuesday. Powder and Mylo are beyond pleased with themselves when they verify that the money has hit their account. “Best decision you ever made, princess,” Powder says, barely peeling her eyes away from her phone.

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Mylo says, unable to keep the smugness out of his tone.

“Good luck in there,” Claggor says, seeming to genuinely mean it.

Well, she’ll take the warmth where she can get it.

She has settled on a sleeveless a-line blue linen shirt dress, belted, unbuttoned to the third button. It is classic but casual, attractive without openly insinuating sexiness. She brushes it off, running her hands down it reflexively, and takes a deep breath before she goes in.

When Caitlyn steps inside and the door falls shut behind her, it is dim and still and the silence is a bit of a shock to her system. The room feels too big when it’s this empty and quiet, like the space is pressing down on her lungs, making her breath hitch. Or maybe it is Vi that takes her breath away.

She is so handsome Caitlyn finds it literally painful to look at her. She has dressed up just a little for the occasion, wearing a ribbed tank top beneath a short-sleeved red button down with white piping, a serpentine gold necklace draped across her collarbones. The cog tattooed at the base of her neck seems to pop as her exquisite grey blue eyes sharpen. “What are you doing here? It’s a private party tonight. Claggor shouldn’t have let you in.”

“Vi,” she says, pauses for a moment, and hopes for at least a neutral response, something she can work with. “I am the private party.”

“You – “ Vi’s face cycles through a few different expressions. Caitlyn watches like a gambler at the slot machine, hoping it settles on something that doesn’t ice her out completely. What she gets eventually is surprise, a sort of open honest surprise that doesn’t seem to include defensiveness or hostility. She might even be impressed. “You’re the rich lady?”

Caitlyn nods queasily, unable to tell what Vi is thinking.

“Cait, you shouldn’t have spent ten thousand dollars on this. That’s insane.”

“I genuinely don’t care even a little bit. I don’t mind if your siblings treat me like an ATM as long as I get to talk to you.”

Vi’s pained expression holds so much. Embarrassment about her sibling’s behavior, uneasiness about money, discomfort at the pending conversation. There is even, possibly, a bit of compassion for Caitlyn’s position.

Right on the heels of that, almost too quick to notice, is Vi taking her in, looking her up and down despite herself.

Caitlyn swallows.

“Okay,” Vi says, and the relief that washes through Caitlyn is so all-encompassing it feels like dropping into a warm bath. She can feel it all the way through the very ends of her fingertips. “Let’s talk.”

The thing is, Caitlyn had an entire proposition planned. She was prepared to beg for the opportunity to plead her case. Part of her is still convinced Vi deserves that. “Are you sure?” she asks, eyes big and brows furrowed. “I don’t want – I didn’t buy the right to talk to you, I wasn’t trying to do that, I just didn’t want to put you on the spot at work. I still want to ask you –”

“You want to ask me to talk?”

“I want – well, yes. Or, I want to ask you to listen to my apology.”

“The answer’s yes,” Vi replies. She tugs the rag out of her back pocket and drops it onto the bar, and then makes her way around to a barstool, where she takes a comfortable seat, one leg crossed over the other, elbow on the bar, leaning back with her head tilted attentively. Looking at Caitlyn, she scoots the neighboring stool towards her with the top of her foot, and then nods at it, inviting Caitlyn to sit next to her.

Gingerly, Caitlyn perches atop it. Compared to Vi, she looks as though she’s never sat on a barstool in her life.

“Go on,” Vi says. “Tell me I’m not just a toy to you.”

Caitlyn winces, shifts in her seat, screws up her courage, and begins.

“People have always been confusing to me. Or, they have found me confusing. All throughout my life I’ve behaved in ways that seem perfectly logical to me, only to find the people around me completely perplexed. Surely you’ve noticed I … have some idiosyncrasies.”

The hint of a smile pulls at Vi’s lip. “I don’t know if I would call it that. You’re a bit of a strong personality.”

Instead of protesting, Caitlyn gives a wan smile in return. “Perhaps. At any rate, I’ve found it very difficult to form connections with people. I’m accustomed to finding that I’ve done something that has made them pull away, and it’s usually something I can never anticipate or quite understand. I can start things, but it always seems like once people get to know me … they don’t like what they find. So I’m very accustomed to starting things. And I’m very accustomed to people disappearing on me just as I am starting to be vulnerable with them.”

Vi nods, following, generously listening.

“It has seemed to me that there are secret rules underlying everyone’s conduct, and that maybe if I can figure those out, I can minimize my anguish and humiliation. But I haven’t been able to figure out how to get people to like me. I’ve just figured out how to protect myself enough so that I can still function when people inevitably leave my life.

“And so I have found a set of rules for my romantic life that seem to limit my suffering. Brief encounters. No spending the night. Never more than three times. These have served me … well enough to get through law school. But …” Here she pauses, and lets out a big sigh. “They have completely failed me with you.”

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Vi replies dryly.

“I haven’t been prepared at all to have someone like you in my life! I’m so unaccustomed to having someone be so soft and open with me, I didn’t even realize it was happening, I didn’t even think it was possible. I thought, surely I’m imagining this, surely this is just wishful thinking, surely I’m just too intense, too needy, too much – it’s awful, Vi, I’ve been so, so scared with you. Not – with you, with you I feel so safe and free and excited it’s unbelievable, you’re a wonder to me, I’m so delighted by you. But after, after I keep thinking – I’m too much, I want this too much, I want her too much, I’m going to find I’ve ruined it somehow, I’m going to push her away, she’s going to leave and I’m going to be absolutely devastated, I have to protect myself, and then all of this is going through my mind and I’m just frozen, I’m terrified –”

“I’ve seen it,” Vi says quietly. “I just … thought it was something else.”

“Of course you did!” Caitlyn says, exasperated with herself. “Of course you did, and I didn’t talk to you, didn’t say anything, I just left you to think I was being cold, using you for sex, and still you were so kind and thoughtful with me –”

“Because you were so sincere,” Vi says, swallowing. Her eyes are clouded with recollection as she tries to make sense of it. “You kept leaving, you kept walking out after in these ways that left me hurt and confused, but you were so sincere before. The way you talked to me about my gender was so charming to me, it was so straightforward. I really liked that, your genuine curiosity. It doesn’t feel like you have any kind of secret agenda with me – it doesn’t feel like you have any secrets at all. Except for this part, this way you’ve been feeling.”

“I’m afraid I’m defective,” Caitlyn says thickly, starting to feel the tears brewing in her chest. “It’s been something I’ve been worried about for as long as I can remember, this sentence that hangs over me. If I can’t get it together, if I can’t figure out how to be with people, I’ll never be normal, I’ll never be happy. But you’ve never once made me feel that way. You’ve never made me feel like I need to behave differently in order for you to accept me. You’ve just let me be me … and you’ve liked it. You’ve never made me feel ashamed. The only thing I’m ashamed about is how I’ve treated you.”

Vi’s eyes are clear now. They are focused on Caitlyn in front of her, and she is completely present behind them. They are glimmering and soft, so, so soft, and the warmth in them is making the tears rise to Caitlyn’s throat. Vi sits up straight on the barstool, placing her hands on her thighs, inching closer to Caitlyn. Sounding a bit stunned, she says: “Oh.”

“So,” Caitlyn says roughly, her voice starting to catch. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving so abruptly when I just wanted to kiss you more. I’m sorry for begging to go down on you and then running away the moment you finished. I’m sorry for hiding in my room for a week and then ignoring you when I saw you next. I’m sorry for making you think I was using you, and for making you want to quit your job, and for bothering you at work –”

“Cait –”

Vi reaches out and grabs Caitlyn’s hand with her own warm, calloused one. Caitlyn finds herself shocked into silence, breathing in sharply.

“You can stop,” Vi says, gazing at Caitlyn searchingly. “I forgive you.”

Caitlyn can’t bring herself to look back. Face turned downward, she can feel moisture pooling in the seam of her eyelids, her lungs slowly emptying, hot and heavy. The following in-breath arrives just as a tear breaks over her lashes and slips down her cheek, and she almost has to figure out how to breathe from scratch again when Vi brings her other hand to her cheek, gently cups her chin, and wipes the tear away with her thumb.

Now she looks up, and Vi’s face is welcoming and warm. It’s almost too much to bear, how kind she looks. “It’s okay,” she says, and stands. “C’mere.”

Caitlyn is left trailing as Vi keeps her grip on her hand, bringing her over to the glowing green jukebox by the door. Caitlyn stands silently and watches as Vi enters in a song, as if by heart, and a disc is selected and begins to spin.

Sentimental mid-tempo soul music begins to fill the bar, watery guitar carrying the melody before the stab of horns and soaring strings join in. Caitlyn is still having a little trouble breathing normally, she’s feeling too much to name or catalog. Her hand remains cradled in Vi’s.

And then there is Vi’s other hand on her hip.

“Dance with me,” she says firmly. “I heard this was a party.”

Caitlyn doesn’t dance. Or, that’s what she would have told someone until this moment. Still, it takes her a while to find her footing in the truth that this is really happening. Part of her is still caught up in the machinations of pursuit and apology, of chasing Vi and being rebuffed and feeling she deserved it. Correctly taking her quiet trepidation as consent, Vi tugs Caitlyn flush against her, slides the broad palms of her big hands to nestle into the small of her back. Caitlyn grounds herself in the warmth and pressure of those touches, in the benevolence of Vi’s regard. These are the things that melt her resistance to reality, the things that begin to loosen the stiffness in her limbs.

They dance together without speaking, pressed in snug, hips rolling from side to side. The nostalgia of the song keeps them relatively chaste for a bit, giving Caitlyn a chance to appreciate the circumstances beyond the press of Vi’s body against hers. She sees them from outside herself for a moment, dressed in blue and red, two figures alone in a dim pub, swaying gently just the two of them, finally finding some ease.

Vi forgives her. She likes her. She wants her.

Caitlyn brings her arms to Vi’s shoulders, encircling her neck, and feels a hot swirl of desire swim through her. Immediately she sees it reflected in Vi’s mien, in how her eyes grow dark and hazy looking up at her.

“Do you know how hard it is to resist you,” Vi says quietly, her voice a velvety grumble.

This sends a hypnotic heat blooming through Caitlyn, making her limbs feel heavy. Caitlyn doesn’t want to be chaste anymore. She leans harder into Vi, bringing her mouth in towards her temple.

“Tell me,” she whispers.

She feels the vise of Vi’s hand clamp down tight on her hip, and in response a humid sigh escapes her lips and sinks into Vi’s ear.

Vi shudders against her as she presses in to speak, a lovely low hot groan that sends Caitlyn throbbing. “Can I show you instead?”

Caitlyn doesn’t wait to answer with words. She slips her fingers into the hair on the back of Vi’s neck and Vi is already doing the same, anchoring her hand beneath Caitlyn’s jaw with her forefinger. Caitlyn finds herself held still, pinned down by Vi’s gaze.

“Caitlyn,” she says emphatically, staring into her eyes. “I like you. I want to fuck you, but I want to do more than fuck you. I want to get to know you.”

It makes her want to kiss her so badly her brain is completely empty of words. She just lets whatever is on her tongue spill out. “I want that,” Caitlyn says hotly, feeling herself leaning towards Vi, needing her. “I have no idea how but I’ll figure it out for you. I want to see you over and over again. I want to see you as long as you’ll let me.”

“Deal,” Vi says, and Caitlyn falls into her mouth, meeting her with the homesick hunger of a sailor kissing land.

It is everything Caitlyn remembers. That rightness is like an arrow shot right through her. Her blood is singing with it, her little whimpers making a song of it, harmonizing with Vi’s low hum of pleasure, their lips vibrating against each other, the thrum of her heart as the backbeat with a single theme: want, want, want. The taste of metal, something organic, some drug brewed in Vi’s lungs that makes Caitlyn fogged and dazed when she breathes it in. She wants: Vi’s mouth, Vi’s hands, Vi’s weight. She wants to be enclosed by her body, completely absorbed, lapped up. She wants the boundaries where they meet to blur and blend.

Vi is licking at her tongue, biting on her lip in a way that expresses the same want, melting into her with sweet sighs, each one seemingly sending a fresh influx of heat between Caitlyn’s legs. And then Vi has her against the jukebox, rucking up Caitlyn’s dress to get her hand on her ass, squeezing. And the sigh that comes out of Vi is so long and slow, expresses such relief, that Caitlyn thinks it must have been very hard for Vi to resist her after all.

“How private is this party?” Caitlyn asks between kisses, bringing her mouth down to the soft skin behind Vi’s jaw, licking her there, nibbling on her earlobe.

Vi’s response is a frustrated groan, pushing her into the jukebox, grinding into her. “Not very,” she mutters, bringing her hand beneath Caitlyn’s dress around to her front, pressing her palm there, her fingers feeling over her underwear. “Wet,” she grunts brutishly. “Need you.”

“Vi –”

“Not here. Not down here.”

“Do you have a room upstairs?”

“Yeah, but –” Vi gasps as Caitlyn places her teeth onto the cog tattoo on Vi’s neck and squeezes slowly, increasing the pressure until Vi lets out a girlish whimper. “Sharing it. Powder’s home for the summer.”

“Would she bother us?” Caitlyn traces her tongue along the bite mark she has left behind, wriggles into Vi’s palm against her clit.

“If she thought it would be funny –” The end of the sentence comes out high and clipped as Caitlyn tightens her fist in Vi’s hair and drags her tongue across her collarbone.

“So yes.”

“Mmhm,” Vi agrees, rubbing circles on the outline of Caitlyn’s clit through her underwear. “Wanna feel you,” she groans, struggling to keep focus as Caitlyn chews on her chest. “Wanna touch you. God, my hands are finally clean.”

For a surprisingly long moment Caitlyn considers simply letting Vi pull her underwear aside and fuck her against this jukebox with her siblings outside. “Where?”

“Mmh –” The grunt of frustration Vi lets out sounds like it physically hurts. “Your place?”

“Too far,” Caitlyn sighs, rocking herself onto Vi’s fingers. She could just pull her underwear aside herself and then those rough fingers would have no choice but to slide in, Caitlyn figures there’s no way Vi could stop herself from plunging deep inside her in this state. She’s so wet, she would take it so easy. “Mother’s there. Too much talking. Can you lock the door?”

“They all have keys. Too many windows.”

“I’m hearing an awful lot of excuses.”

“Well I can’t fucking think,” Vi grunts, still touching her as Caitlyn sinks her teeth into her shoulder, resuming grinding into her as she strokes the soaked cotton. Suddenly she wraps her arm around Caitlyn’s waist and pulls her in tight against a thrust of her meaty palm, and then takes her hand from beneath Caitlyn's dress and tugs her away from the jukebox. “Okay, okay,” she exhales. “Liquor room. Follow me.”

Caitlyn can’t help herself. Even as Vi is at the door of the liquor room going through her key ring, Caitlyn's hands are skimming across her rib cage, nose buried in her hair, huffing in her scent, placing kisses on the back of her head. The smell of her scalp, too, is a drug to Caitlyn – this person was made to do things to her, the way that her body works on Caitlyn’s body is astonishing. Vi finds the key, inserts it purposefully into the deadbolt lock – in the state Caitlyn is in this brings a little thrill to her – and the door swings open.

The next thing Caitlyn knows her back is against it, her dress is up around her waist, her panties have been pulled aside, and Vi is two knuckles deep inside of her, reaching.

And she is letting out the loudest, most unapologetic moan of her entire life.

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck. Please, please Vi, please – mmmmh –”

“Oh,” Vi breathes, the word long and reverent, worshipful, this tone of delirious wonder in her voice. “Wow, you –” She’s in disbelief, her arm wrapped tight around Caitlyn’s waist, fingers wrapping around and digging into the front of her hip possessively, head tucked into her neck, shoulder pinning her against the door. “Yeah,” she says, so breathy and entranced, punctuating her next thrust. “Yeah,” she says again, as if she’s trying to soothe her, calm her into complete surrender, fucking into her hypnotically. The sounds of Caitlyn’s wetness taking her are delicious, evidence of the ferocity of her want, moist percussive sounds that make her feel absolutely shameless.

“Oh, fill me, fill me, fill me,” Caitlyn murmurs dreamily, rocking her hips onto Vi’s hand, hooking her arm around Vi and clasping onto her shoulder, keeping her tight against her. The pressure of Vi’s body subdues her all the way down to the center of her being. She wants to give everything to her. She wants to break apart just for her. Contented little sighs give way to plaintive little moans and Caitlyn already knows she is going to come pathetically quickly.

So be it. She has possibly never been happier than in this moment.

“Vi,” she breathes, stretching the word out as she is wont to do. “You’re so good, you’re so sweet, you’re so hot – mmmmhhh – so strong, so soft –”

“You’re perfect, baby,” Vi murmurs into her ear devoutly, the bulge of her bicep flexing into the nook of Caitlyn’s rib cage with the effort of keeping her close and upright each time her other hand thrusts inside of her. “So real, so fucking bold –” As if moved by her own testimony, she fucks into her harder. “I can’t believe you – can’t believe I get to touch you –”

“You –” Caitlyn whimpers, meaning, no, you. And a surge rises in her, syrupy and swift and sure.

As if on their own, Caitlyn’s fingers tangle into the hair on the back of Vi’s neck and pull her head back from Caitlyn’s shoulder. Caitlyn gets to see the euphoric look on her face and know that she has done that to her before she greedily kisses her, taking her in her mouth, bruising her probably, wanting her to feel the full force of her adoration, wanting to feel connected as her climax comes.

Honestly she is trying to not come too soon, to be in this moment a little longer, but now Vi’s thumb is kneading into her clit and her entire physical being is coiled into the promise of ecstasy and it is over for her.

“Ah –!!” She lets out a pinched moan as she feels herself start to seize up, clenching, a rhythmic tumble spinning inside of her, swelling and swelling. “Vi, fuck – I’m going to –”

“I know, baby,” Vi purrs softly, kissing the side of her mouth. “I know. Good girl,” she breathes, and now it is really over for Caitlyn, and she bursts apart all over Vi’s hand.

All of her spills out of her, her wetness and want and everything that makes her her. She lets go completely for Vi, letting out every sound to show her how well she works on her, how good she makes her feel, how free she feels with her, how effortless it is to simply be herself with her, how grateful she is, how moved, how delighted, how absolutely blissed out and boneless and stupid and satisfied. “Thank you,” is what ends up coming out, at the end of it all, as she arrives back in awareness and finds herself babbling helplessly. “Thank you, thank you,” she keeps saying, as she finds herself back in the liquor room, feels Vi holding her tightly in one arm, slowing inside of her with the other. “Thank you,” she says, feeling herself start to settle, reeling, feeling her heartbeat start to slow.

And then she looks at Vi, and sees the wonder and warmth in her eyes, and kisses her.

It turns out it is absolutely lovely to kiss Vi after she has made her come.

“Mmm,” Caitlyn murmurs contentedly, and Vi does the same back into her mouth, and they laugh in pleasure, once again slowly returning to reason together after being seized by some kind of frenzy. This time, they remain there together. The openness and softness Caitlyn finds in Vi’s eyes isn’t Caitlyn projecting. It’s Vi, being open and soft. It’s been Vi being open and soft the whole time. And now Caitlyn can allow herself to be open and soft in return. She knows she has found someone worth being open and soft with.

“Think you’ll stick around for a minute, Cupcake?”

“Yes,” Caitlyn says decisively, figuring Vi deserves to hear it. “I think I’ll stick around for as long as you want.”