Absolute Lesbian Sex

by Vanessa de Sade

  Here, there was none of that. They weren’t afraid of Tessa, but didn’t seem angry with her either. John went out of his way for her, picking up sandwiches and bagels from the local bakery in the morning and leaving them on her desk, though she rarely ate them. I’d have thought his attentions amorous, but the few times I caught him staring at her, his expression was full of pity, rather than lust. Sometimes, if school was out and she couldn’t get a babysitter, she bought her son, Ben, to work, and John made much of him, showing him how to work the tools or lifting him into the branches so that he could thin the trees. It was rare that I saw Ben and Tessa together, but when I did, he clung to her, and she laid her arm loosely over him, wrapped like a vine around his shoulders.

  Few people stayed at the orchard long. Tessa and John had worked there most of their lives, but new workers came and went as quickly as the apples fell from the trees in picking season. The workers didn’t get paid if they didn’t work, but still, they were unreliable on sunny days, as well as days with only the slightest threat of rain. I worked every day, and I enjoyed it even more when the other workers stayed away, when the orchard was quiet, when it was too hot and the other workers abandoned their ladders and disappeared to the creek to swim, or when it rained, and they stayed indoors.

  We had one week of unseasonably and particularly stormy weather, weather predicted to be so rough that Tessa and John spent most of the week before the storms began helping the other workers fix plastic sheets over the younger Golden Apple trees to protect the fruit from hail which would ruin the crop.

  On the Friday before the storms, the sky gathered into ominous grey pools of cloud, and we pushed hard to get all the sheets in place before the weather turned worse. Tessa worked alongside me, though she didn’t speak, for most of day. She was slimmer than I was, but much stronger. She helped me to pull my end of the sheets taut, and fix them to posts hammered into the corners of each row. The wind made the sheets as stiff as sails, and as she held her hand down over mine her grip was strong and firm, though the sheets, the post, and my hand were slippery with the beginnings of rain. She leant into the wind, and whispered into my ear.

  “Pull tighter.”

  I felt a strange jump inside, at her hot breath against my ear, and her quiet command, and I nearly lost my footing and stumbled, letting go of the sheet. She grabbed my right hand with her left, to stop me from falling, and grabbed the sheet with her right, so that I fell forwards against her in a strange kind of embrace between her arms, the post and the plastic sheeting. I lay there for a moment, and felt her press against me. She didn’t wear a padded bra, and was very flat chested. She often, I suspected, wore no bra at all, and I imagined that only the thinnest layer of material protected our breasts from touching. She quickly shifted her weight so that I was upright again, and took the hammer and bolt from me, fixing the sheet to the post herself.

  “Go back to the office,” she said, “dry yourself off. It’s too wet to work today.”

  I walked back to change, and she stayed behind, to check that the protective covers were secure. I caught a few glimpses of her, from the staff room window, her sodden jeans pressed tight against her skin and her long russet-coloured hair blowing a tangle in front of her face. I noticed, as I pulled my own wet trousers down to my ankles, and rubbed myself with a towel, that the thought of her wet body brushing through the leaves aroused me, and I lingered with the towel, rubbing it between my legs furiously until one of the men interrupted me with a knock at the bathroom door.

  It wasn’t the first time that I had thought about women in that way, but I’d never been with one. I’d often been a little awkward around girls as I grew up, and awkward around women, because I did think of them that way. I thought of men sexually too, but men were so much easier than women. I knew, for the most part, when they wanted me, and it was easy for me to run a finger around the top of my glass at a bar, whilst meeting the eye of a man on the table opposite, or to pretend that I needed to use the bathroom so that I could press my body against the man sitting next to me while I scooted in and out of my seat, or to lay a casual hand on a friend’s shoulder and ask if he wanted a drink. Or to make eye contact, with any man at all, the grocer or the petrol station attendant or the trainer at the gym and then think of a reason to bend over so that whatever I was wearing stretched provocatively across my arse which I always made sure to wiggle a little when I walked.

  But women, I didn’t know what to do with women. For one thing, I could never tell whether they were interested in women as well. And for another, I couldn’t bring myself to make an obvious move, to accept the possible rejection from a woman if she wasn’t attracted to other women at all, or if, worse still, she just wasn’t attracted to me. There had been friends when I was growing up, we had showers together and touched each other’s secret places, there was even one girl who wanted to suck my nipples, as if I were her mother. But all of this open sexuality ended when we pubesced, and touching a friend suddenly became a much heavier thing. I looked at women, when I was in swimming pool changing rooms, or in bars, watching the way that their skin glowed through the flimsiness of a Friday night dress. But I was too afraid to do anything about it.

  I didn’t speak to Tessa for two days into the next working week. She worked in the office, catching up on overdue paperwork while the weather prevented outdoor work. Most of the other staff didn’t bother to come in at all, using the rain as an excuse for a lay-in. I enjoyed it, the wind whipping my skin and the way my shirt clung to my breasts as I stretched my arms up to pluck the hardest to reach fruit. But I didn’t get much done, because the rain made me move so slowly, the ladder too slippery for me to be sure of my footing. I returned to the office several times, more often than necesary, to make cups of tea and use the toilet. I didn’t usually use the toilet at all during the day, I just crawled under a tree with low hanging branches, peeled my trousers and knickers down to my feet, and pissed against the trunk, careful to aim away from my clothes. In the break room, I caught Tessa glancing at me through her open office door several times, as I bent over to take a cup from the lower shelves, although I could have easily rinsed one already in the sink. I wondered what would happen if I walked into her office, pulled my jeans and knickers down and sat on the desk in front of her. I had a vision of myself with my arse resting on her accounts and my legs spread directly in front of her so that she could see straight up between my thighs.

  On Wednesday, the storm really began, the wind blowing so fiercely it nearly knocked me over walking from the house to my car, and still, I went to work. I was the only one, in the whole orchard, again, this time for safety reasons. It was insanity, of course, to climb to the top of a seven foot ladder in wind and rain like this without anyone to hold the bottom steady, but still, I went right to the top of the trees and stood at the top step of the ladder and leaned into the wind as it sang a merry gail through the leaves, and the rain flew in my face so I couldn’t see, but I could feel which apples needed to be taken off the trees. Eventually, I heard the steady thrum of Tessa’s quad bike, as she sped through the rows, coming to an abrupt halt next to the tree I was swaying at the top of.

  “I knew you’d be here,” she yelled, her voice flying into the wind like a scream.

  I couldn’t see her, because I was too unsteady to look down, and keep my balance, but I felt a slight shift in the weight of the ladder as she braced her weight against it.

  “Come down!” she shouted up to me.

  It took me a minute or two to reach the bottom of the ladder, each step feeling precariously slippery under my thick boots. As I reached the bottom, she put a hand on either side of my waist and lifted me onto the ground, turning me around so I faced her.

  “You’re mad,” she said, and then she kissed me.

  Her kisses were rougher than I had expected a woman’s to be, and consuming, she flicked her tongue not just in and out of my mouth,
but licked my face too, as if she wanted to eat me. She tasted like rain, earthy, and she smelled like the orchard. Her hands were rough, her skin cracked from years of working with her hands, and she was eager, eager and rough, and much quicker to get to the point than I had expected. She untucked my shirt from my jeans and ran her hands immediately up the small of my back, unclipping my bra so that my breasts fell free, wet against my damp shirt. She ran her hands over my front, grabbing my breasts and tugging, pulling and squeezing each of my nipples with a thumb and a forefinger until I yelped. She kept one hand under my shirt, grabbing my left breast, and with her right hand, she pulled my hair back and half dragged, half carried me under the low hanging branches of the tree, sheltered from the worst of the weather.

  She lay down on the ground, pulling me on top of her. I tried to roll her singlet up, so that I could suck her nipples, but she stopped me, taking my wrist in her hand.

  “No,” she said. “Lick me out.”

  I obliged, unpeeling her from her jeans with the same tentative movements that one might apply to unwrapping a gift from an unknown relative, which might turn out to be either wonderful or disastrous. I ran my tongue from her navel down to her pubic hairline, seemingly slowly, as if to tease her, rather than as a means of assuaging my panic. I didn’t know what to do with a pussy. Despite having had two long term boyfriends and several lovers by the time that I was 22, I had never had an orgasm, and I was swept with a sudden fear that I wouldn’t be able to find her clitoris.

  She picked my head up by my hair and pushed my face between her legs, so that I felt her cunt might swallow me up. She wasn’t wearing any knickers, and the smell of her sex rose like steam from her mound of pubic hair. I buried my face in it, obligingly, flicking my tongue around the edge of her lips. She moaned, and thrust her hips forward, pushing closer against my mouth. She tasted of sweat, and salt, but sweet with it, an unusual but not unpleasant juice which coated my mouth and chin as I pushed my face against her. My own inner lips were small, hidden inside my outer lips like a gift sealed inside an envelope. Her labia hung down, vivid and red and unashamed, and as I took turns flicking my tongue through her folds and pressing it inside her she raised up her hips and ground her cunt against my face, until she let out an almighty shudder and then collapsed back against the wet earth. She lifted me up into a soft embrace, and I tangled one leg inside hers, as she kissed my face.

  “Was that an orgasm?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Yes,” she replied, “thank you”.

  I still wasn’t sure if I’d found her clitoris.

  It was cold now, freezing, and she shivered against me. She grabbed my hand and pulled me up, then stooped down again to pick up my muddied shirt, but she didn’t return it to me. I sat behind her on the bike, my bare breasts pressed against her wet back as we drove through the rain, back to the shelter of the office. She took my hand and pulled me into the bathroom, turning the shower on, the water up as hot as it would go so that the room filled with steam. She pulled off my jeans, and her own, so that we were both naked, other than her singlet. I began to peel it up, over her torso, and she lifted her arms over her head so that I could pull the singlet over her breasts. As I did, I realised that her breasts were not where I expected her breasts would be. Both had been removed, and two diagonal scars ran across her chest and up to her underarms, one on each side, where her breast tissue and nipples had been.

  “I had them removed,” she said softly. “Cancer. My mother had it too. She died.”

  “They’re beautiful,” I said, of her not-quite breasts, because they were. I had never really understood what people saw in large breasts. I found my own annoying, and ungainly, and always admired the bodies of flat-chested women who seemed so graceful in their androgeny. Her scars had faded to a soft furrow, like a seam joining two parts of her together, and I ran my tongue all along first one, and then the other. When I had finished, she took my hand and pulled me into the shower.

  There wasn’t any soap, but still she ran her hands over me as if in a lather, running her palms down over my shoulders and then cupping my breasts gently. She ran a hand down my torso and then between my legs, and then she dropped to her knees, and parted my lips with her tongue. I always shaved, and suddenly wished that I didn’t, I felt more than usually exposed to her, and ashamed of my hairlessness now, as she seemed so confident in her own womanhood.

  I had felt much more at ease having my own head between her legs, much as, when I was with men I liked to have their cocks in my mouth. It felt good, her tongue pressed against me, but I didn’t orgasm. She stopped, eventually, and pulled herself up to standing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” she replied, and she pulled me out of the shower, and into the embrace of a dry towel.

  The next day, the sun came out again, and all the workers returned to the trees. She stayed in the office, although it was the first dry day for a week. We didn’t speak to each other in front of the others, though she rested her hand lightly on my waist as she bent forward past me in the kitchen to flick the kettle on, making my cheeks flush. I worked even more slowly than usual that day, distracted by thoughts of the smell of her.

  She came to find me, amongst the trees again, at the end of the day.

  “Come home with me,” she said “leave your car here, no one will know.”

  I had seen her son, Ben, a few times at the orchard, but we had never been formally introduced. Tessa told him that I was someone she worked with, and he nodded his head and then disappeared into his room to play computer games, leaving us alone together in the kitchen. Her house was small, just two bedrooms, and littered with small piles of DIY equipment, she was renovating. She had a small yard, but no garden, just a couple of apple trees.

  “Don’t you get sick of apples?” I asked her, looking out at the trees through the kitchen window.

  The sound of her laugh suddenly made the room seem warmer than it was.

  “No,” she said. “Those ones are Pink Ladies,” she added, “they’re my favourite fruit.”

  “I prefer Coxes,” I replied.

  She laughed again.

  We spent the rest of the night, and the next, and then the weekend, in her bed, tangled up in the sheets and in each other. She was determined to make me come, but I didn’t. I always felt as though I would, it was like swimming in the ocean, and watching a wave rise into a crest and then fall back softly into the sea, instead of breaking.

  “Don’t think about it,” she said, “it will happen.”

  But it was hard not to think about it, because she came so easily, sometimes three or four times in a row, and if I flicked her clit with my tongue in a certain way while I fingered her arsehole, then she sprayed salty liquid into my mouth.

  One night, we were lying together in her bed and she had half wrapped herself over me, so that the weight of her thigh pressed against mine.

  “What would your friends say,” she asked, “if they knew you were in bed with a woman twice your age?”

  “I won’t ever tell them.”

  She lay still, for a few minutes, until I broke the silence.

  “Will you have any more children, do you think?”

  “I doubt it,” she replied, with a throaty laugh. “The cancer spread to my ovaries. I had both of them removed too.”

  She threw the blankets off and walked out of the room, leaving me alone with the weight of her words. I lay still for a while, and then got up to find her. She was standing outside, naked, beside the apple trees. She stood so straight and erect, from the kitchen window, I couldn’t tell which was her and which was the trunk of a tree, until I saw the light of the moon gleaming on her hair. I stood alongside her and leant my head against her shoulder, until the moon disappeared into the night, and we returned to the house, and to bed, without saying another word.

&
nbsp; It wasn’t the same after that.

  To my immense shame, whenever she opened her legs to me, I imagined something dead inside her, something rotting beneath her sex, and it filled me with a strange sort of grief which overpowered my arousal. I began to avoid her, eating my sandwiches under the trees instead of in the break room, and finding reasons to go home alone after work instead of visit, and soon, the summer, and the apple season was nearly over, and I still hadn’t orgasmed.

  One day, I called in sick, and I broke into her house while she was working. I crawled in through the kitchen window, walked to her bedroom, took my clothes off, and lay naked on her bed. I found a pair of her dirty knickers on the floor, and laid them over my face, inhaling the musty smell of her sex, mixed with the faint scent of her urine. The day-old smell of her sent a sudden rush of arousal through me, and I unfurled her panties further. I lay on her red cotton sheets with my legs spread, and nothing on me at all other than her knickers, the gusset covering my mouth and nose, filling me with her smell each time I inhaled. I pulled the fabric tight over my face with one hand, and fucked myself with the other, imagining that she was standing over me, smothering me with her dirty underwear, and suddenly, suddenly it was as though I was filled with the heat from the world’s sweetest fire, and I moaned, and then lay still.

  The following week, I resigned. I drove from the offices along the bumpy track to the main road for the last time. I had my foot on the clutch, waiting for a gap in the traffic so I could turn onto the road, when she stepped out from between the trees and leaned through my car window. She handed me a Golden Apple, one of the forbidden fruit, the apples meant for the Buddhist temples. It was large, round, perfectly formed, and an unearthly pale yellow, almost white, like some strange moon fallen from the sky. It had a symbol on it, though I don’t know what it meant. She watched me bite into it, and lick the stream of juice that ran down my chin, and then she disappeared, back into the trees.