by Sacchi Green
I returned her smile. “Seems the least I could do, as a friend.”
I moved closer to her on the couch, resting my hand on her thigh. She reached over to stroke the short hairs on the back of my neck.
Again, that wicked smile. “So, stud, you gonna show me what you’re made of?”
WELDER BOI
Axa Lee
Why be a boi on a farm?” I asked her once. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just be a lesbian?”
She snorted. “Have you ever tried being a woman on a farm?” She slammed the drawer of the big toolbox shut, making me jump.
“I’m not asking them to think of me as another gender, just as something other than ‘Harold Milford’s daughter.’ It shouldn’t matter if I have a cock or not, just as long as I do good work.”
Gender is the only thing fluid about her. In the rest, she is metal and flame.
“But you didn’t want to be butch?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Why do you have to label everything?”
We got back to this often, and she already knew the answer. Gays label everything, in my opinion, all the while insisting on the limitations of labels. Bitches be cray, I tell her, and that’s why we love them.
With a sharp nod of her head, she tipped the welding helmet over her eyes and sparked her rod.
I love watching her weld. She ties that bandana around her cropped blonde hair, tips that helmet down with a sharp motion of her chin, her spark ignites, and she’s nothing but liquid flame. She’s an artist, a true creative. Though she laughs when I tell her this and says she’s only welding fence posts.
Sweat drips down her back beneath the leather protective gear, her arms are veined and strong beneath those heavy gloves, her leather boots with the steel toes peeking through… there’s just nothing that isn’t sexy.
She comes to me later, stripped down to her white wife-beater and favorite battered jeans that ride low-slung across her narrow hips, so worn they’re as soft as a T-shirt, her muscular chest almost as flat as a boy’s, a real boy’s. She’s not one for labels and laughed when I told her what hers was, then pulled me across her lap and kissed me, the scent of steel and fire wafting between us.
There’s always a tang of fire in her hair, a breath of metal about her, as if she took the elements of her craft into herself and continued to exude them. Or was made of them all along.
She doesn’t believe in feng shui or astrology, so when I talk to her of elements, of water signs and fire signs, of dragons, wood or Taurus, she rolls her eyes and lets her beer bottle dangle between her fingertips.
“Dialing psychic hotline, Crazy speaking.” She holds her fingers like a phone, thumb to ear and pinkie to mouth.
I read her palm once, traced the heart line, the lifeline, and explained that the squared tips of her fingers and close nails meant she was a very practical person.
“You’ve met me, right?” she said. “Is there any way to describe me other than practical?” She laughed and cupped the back of my head, bending me in for a kiss.
“Just let it be, Jess,” she said.
But, as she said, she’s met me. I can’t let it be.
I’m tending my herbs in the south room, shifting them from window to window in the makeshift sunroom until next fall when we renovate and can add bigger windows for more light. I’m so absorbed in pruning my ailing aloe plant that I don’t hear her come in. Her voice startles me out of the plant haze I’ve lost myself in.
“What does this card mean?” she asks.
I jerk and my eyes fall to the tarot spread I’ve left on the only clean space available on my worktable. I repot all my plants there, but this morning, while sipping my coffee, I did a spread. The cup still sat beside the cards that lay faceup in a classic Celtic cross pattern.
“The page of cups,” I say. “For you.”
She doesn’t look up at me, merely studies the spread. “And this one?”
She points to the card crossing her significator, the one that indicates present circumstances.
“The hanged man,” I tell her, “for attaining wisdom.”
She nods. “And this one?” She points to the tower card, four cards away from the next one in the reading.
I shake my head. “This one,” I correct her, and point to the next card in the reading, the one that strengthens or weakens the first card. “The queen of cups. For happiness and”—I grin at her—“wise choices in relationships.”
She rolls her eyes. I ignore her and point to the next card. “Your goals, the nine of cups, a very good card. All you want will come to pass.” I’m warming up now, liking how she’s listening to me, nodding, intent on the reading, as though if she squints at the cards hard enough she’ll be able to divine them for herself. “The world, meaning you understand the world around you, and how you came to be here. The tower, something disrupted your life for a while…”
“Gee, big surprise there,” she muttered. We’d talked a lot about what coming out as not just a lesbian but as a boi, a term virtually no one knew about, meant in a closed, northern farm community like the one she lived in.
“…But didn’t mean the end. This next card, it tells you what to expect, what you can look forward to—”
But she doesn’t let me finish. She lays her hand over mine and suddenly we’re close. I feel her entire body along the backside of mine. I don’t remember how this happened. One moment we were across the room from each other, now we’re nearly touching. I can’t control how my body reacts to her as she speaks this last, her breath trailing down the column of my neck, her words moving within me as if she stroked me with her voice. I close my eyes against the force of the immediate and violently visceral physical reaction. My pulse races, I’m suddenly wet, as the smell of her, the tang of metal, the sharp puff of flame, like a burnt-out candle, burns through me with the jolt of immediacy akin to being shocked by an electric fence.
“You,” she says. Her voice is husky; it sounds like it does after she’s been welding all day, breathing smoke and fire, like a confused dragon, breathing it in instead of out. “I can look forward to you.”
“It’s…it’s…” But I can’t answer. And I can’t let it be. I can’t do anything as she caresses the side my neck with her fingers first, followed by her mouth, lingering in the way she knows I like, drawing out the sensations so that when I finally open my eyes after she pulls away I know it will take several seconds for my eyes to refocus.
In almost one motion, she jerks down my cutoffs and panties. It’s too hot for niceties, too hot for making love; this is sex, raw lust. We need each other, badly, that connection of spirit through flesh. And we’ll both take what we need, giving back that much and more.
She grabs my hips and sets me up on the worktable. The cards scatter. She’s deceptively strong, wiry, all lean muscle from long hours in the forge.
She spreads my legs before her on the counter, hands resting on my knees to keep them apart. And without preamble, she bends her head and uses the thickest part of her tongue to lick me, from the bottom of my slit to my clit. I arch my back and shake, gripping her shoulders for an anchor, before I’m lost to the bliss of her mouth on my cunt.
I’m not feeling the hard tabletop beneath my ass anymore or thinking about how anyone driving up the driveway can see me, legs spread wide, fingers tangled in her sweat-spiked blonde hair as she pleasures me with mouth, lips and fingers. The smell of crushed lemon balm and basil is in my nose, and I can’t catch my breath.
She rims my slit with her tongue, stabbing into me with enough suddenness to make my head fall back in ecstasy. My pussy is so wet and swollen—every time I think she has me as wet as she ever has, she ups the ante.
I love the strong length of her back. It’s displayed as she bends beneath me, the play of muscles beneath pale skin, and the point where farmer’s tan meets the natural alabaster of her own skin. For me, she embodies strength, the juncture where masculine and feminine merge, making me feel both protected an
d nurtured, spinning in my head until it all jumbles and all I feel is her.
She’s not soft. She’s the very opposite of soft. Not to say that she’s unyielding; she’s simply everything that is not soft. She’s strong. She’s firm. She’s all hard angles and tough resolve. No, there is nothing soft about my boi.
I worry about being the kind of girl who’s soft. I often think she’ll someday want someone as solid as she is. I worry that she’ll stop valuing my creativity and zest for life and want someone more grounded. I worry the contradiction of our own natures will be the rock our love breaks itself against. The psychology grad student in me wants to unravel her, to untangle all her motivations and dichotomies, while the lover in me only wants to hold her close.
She strokes my nether lips with her tongue, sending a shock straight through me. It doesn’t matter how many times we do this, I react to her instantaneously, as I never have with anyone else. She plays it cool and controlled, but I know that beneath that cool exterior, she’s just as affected as I am.
I rake my nails over the upper part of her back and drag her white wife-beater up and off over her head. Where city bois might opt for breast binding at the least, double mastectomy at the most extreme, where my breasts would spring free, Natalie’s remain tightly pulled up to her chest, the nipples rigid twists of flesh against an almost board-flat chest. Her nipples are pink and tiny, nubs of tightly puckered flesh that I love to flick my tongue against. Those same city bois would spike their hair with gel, trying to look sophisticated, or soph, whereas at the end of the day her hair is spiked by dried sweat and soot.
They’re different animals, those bois and mine. Or maybe this is just the image of a country boi.
As I said, dykes like me love labels.
But there’s so much fluidity to a label.
I flick my tongue over the intensely sensitive nub of her nipple until she shivers. I bite a little then, nipping her with my teeth. She likes pain more than I do. It gets her off faster than anything. Dripping wax on her bare skin gets her hotter than I can explain.
She groans, pressing into me for a moment, almost yielding to my teeth, before thrusting me so that I lie back on the table. She slides her hands beneath my ass and my legs go over her shoulders and her mouth is on me again and I can’t contain the cry that escapes me. Our fucking is raw and real and the closest thing to a religious experience I ever hope to encounter.
I feel the pressure building, that deep weight in my pelvis, those tingling jolts shooting outward from deep in my belly. But I’m not ready yet.
And suddenly, with the scent of crushed peppermint and lavender in my nose, I realize, with the greatest clarity, that there’s nothing to unravel here—boi, grrl, dyke, butch—there’re only two people, in love with each other.
I shove against her, sit up and drag her to the floor with me. I need her mouth on mine, I need to look into her eyes, I need to hold her as I come.
We roll and writhe against each other on the floor, amidst the spilled potting soil and dried, dead leaves. Her hand is on my pussy, her fingers taking the place of her mouth. Our tongues mesh against each other, warring for space, teeth striking and parting, as her fingers alternately tease my clit and thrust inside, stroking my G-spot. She has me on the edge again, rolling and spinning in pleasure, writhing and grunting, barely feeling human anymore, nothing but sensation, throbbing with lust.
As she brings me closer, those jolts suddenly exploding within me, like warm whiskey glaze made electric, I cling to her, babbling nonsense. She holds me, clutches me, presses her face into my neck and hair, letting me know that she will never let me go. And as I come, I look up at her, meeting her eyes. And I notice her eyes.
They’re soft.
For me.
I’m shaking. I can’t seem to stop. She slides up my body and suspends herself above me, our foreheads the only thing touching above the tangle of our legs.
“I fucking love you,” she says. “You know that right?”
“I know, baby,” I murmur. “I love you too.”
She crushes me to her, pelvis to pelvis, breast to breast, rolls us onto our sides and hugs me like she’ll never let me go. I hope she never does.
TEAMWORK
Dena Hankins
Sun baked the concrete pier and heat seeped into the boat shed, abandoned and echoing on Labor Day. Tilly shifted the wide straps of her sports bra. They cut into the muscle she’d put on for the racing season.
“Come on, Tilly, don’t just stand there.” Spin stood next to her, legs spread.
“Yeah, yeah. Hold your horses. We’re supposed to stretch between sets.”
“You weren’t stretching. You were playing with your bra.” Spin nudged Tilly with a sweaty elbow.
Tilly rolled her eyes and set up for the two-person rope pull. She leaned back against Spin’s pull, letting the rope out slowly, and watched Spin’s triceps flex at each push backward. She increased the resistance to make Spin work harder and sighed at the shifting muscles in Spin’s arms. Envy and desire, and nothing to do about either one.
When Tilly reached the end of the rope, they switched jobs. Tilly pulled against Spin’s resistance and her upper lip rose in a sneer of effort. The forward arm had the easy job. It was the push backward that fucked her up every time. Sweat ran down her temples and her shirt clung to her back. Her stroke shortened and Spin barked, “All the way back.” Tilly pushed harder and her sneer turned into grunts of effort. After ten sets each, with a different arm forward each time, Spin pulled the rope free with a flourish. She walked to the ceiling beam with as much swagger as ever, but Tilly was gratified to see that her shirt was soaked in sweat too.
Tilly hooked her fingers on the pillar and stretched out her chest, watching Spin toss the line over the ceiling beam and pull into her own stretch. Arms flung wide and eyes closed, Spin leaned forward, pulling both arms back. Tilly’s mouth went dry at the sight of her bunched shoulders, lean arms and the slight curve under the front of her shirt. When Spin twisted her hips to stretch her back and sides and belly, Tilly’s mouth was the only dry part of her body.
Sweating even harder than a moment ago and wondering if she was wet enough to soak through her tight running shorts, Tilly turned around and hooked the pillar with the fingers of her other hand. She twisted away from the post, feeling the warmth and ache in her bicep and pecs. She enjoyed stretching more than working out.
A hot hand grabbed her wrist and Tilly jerked. Spin’s arm came around her waist and drew her a tiny bit farther from the pillar. Breath arrested, Tilly stiffened.
Before she could sort through her confusion enough to respond, before she had a clue how she wanted to respond, Spin released her. “Just touch with the ends of your fingers and turn farther away. That way you stretch your hand and your forearm along with the rest.”
Cold disappointment turned into embarrassment and rage. Spin’s touch had torched Tilly’s body like a cigarette thrown from a car during a drought and she had to have felt the quiver.
Running a racing sailboat required a cool head, but that cool was nowhere to be found now. Fair or not, Tilly ached to fist her hands and lay into Spin for teasing her. She vibrated with the urge to grab Spin and jerk her close. Tilly whirled around, snarling. She didn’t know what was going to happen when she looked Spin in the face.
Spin was walking away, already several steps from Tilly.
She swallowed her anger. For the best, anyway. She prized the work they did together and the way they excelled as a team. On the boat, Tilly called the shots and Spin scrambled. Off the boat, Spin ran team training, her wiry build and sheer energy giving her an edge on strength. Their nicknames—Tilly for the tiller she never released and Spin for the big spinnaker sail she handled so deftly—were so natural that even their families back home had adopted them.
As she’d done so often before, Tilly shoved her attraction aside. She finished her exercises, stretched her way back to serenity, then sat up tall on a mat and
pulled her feet together in front of her, sole to sole. She felt grounded, much better. A couple of feet away, Spin finished her own stretches and leaned back on her hands.
“Why did you freeze up when I touched you?”
Tilly closed her eyes and sighed. The pleasant hum of her hard-worked body continued in the background, but the vast and hard-won emptiness in her mind began to teem with questions and emotions. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. We’ve crewed together for three years and I’ve never made a move on you. Do you think I would fuck with our partnership by trying to push you into anything?”
Tilly opened her eyes. Spin sounded calm, but tension pulled her mouth flat. “You’re really upset about this?” Her voice expressed mild curiosity. Tilly decided she was proud of herself for holding it together in the face of the topic she’d hoped to avoid forever.
“Damn right I’m upset. Don’t sit there like you are above it all. I felt your body tighten. Your belly turned hard as rock. And that’s saying something.”
Tilly narrowed her eyes at Spin. “Are you seriously making a crack about my weight?”
“Shut up.” Spin sighed. “You know that’s not what I was saying.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” Spin struggled for words. Tilly had never seen Spin struggle for anything that wasn’t physical. She softened at Spin’s discomfort.
“Don’t worry about it. Nothing happened.”
“No!” Spin sat forward. Tilly was surprised by the vehemence of the denial. “I’m tired of tiptoeing around the subject with you, Tilly. We’re going to have it out, once and for all.”
“Have what out?” Tilly was bewildered. In the nightmares where she made a move on Spin and got brushed off, it never went like this. “What are you talking about?”
