“You want to go in?” a voice to my side asked, and my stomach bottomed out because it was Rae’s.
Around us, the carnival buzzed and whirled. I realized she meant the fun house I’d stopped in front of to check a text just before she’d appeared, close enough to touch and raising her dagger-sharp eyebrows at me, Well?
Well.
I’d wanted her for three months, since she’d first arrived at the community women’s center where I worked in development. She was an almost-counselor, checking off internship hours toward her license on a rotation with our health services department, and had instantly become my chief workplace distraction. I’d pegged her for queer in Week One from the way we smiled at each other—suggestive at the edges, holding eye contact a beat too long. I’d tried to uncover if there was someone waiting at home with dinner. There never seemed to be, but Rae was as elusive as she was teasing. Keeping it office appropriate, I’d guessed.
It was her last week at the center, and that Friday coincided with a work team-building night at a carnival. I was doing a shit job of building anything with my team; all evening, I’d been imagining getting Rae on her own since we suddenly, technically, no longer worked together.
I scanned the fun house. Standard county fair kitsch, one of those fold-up, clanging metal horrors painted on its front with a goofy theme. This one seemed to be generic fairy tale, with a knight sword-waving at a dragon and a wispy blonde princess fainting on the sidelines. But the doorways were dark, and it seemed almost creepily deserted, the crowds lured away by flashier attractions. We’d be alone.
I took a breath. “I’m game if you are.” I paid for my entrance and hers, handing a pinch of tickets to the slouching kid manning the door and feeling a little thrill at how the gesture made things feel more date-like. At the way Rae smirked, pleased and knowing, when I did it.
Dim, colored bulbs lit the passages we crept down. Jets of air burst from unseen vents, or the floor gave way to rollers, leaving us laughing and grabbing hands for balance. Rae’s laugh was like her voice: smoky, languid. Killer.
Then came the obligatory room of trick mirrors. In the first, we were all crazily stretched legs and even then, proportioned like a heron, Rae had my mouth watering. But I also noted what I had from the beginning, that she and I actually looked alike. Hair dark and jaw length, hers curly, mine straight. Similar lines to our faces, same build and height.
Initially, it had felt almost weird to be attracted to her—would she diagnose me as a narcissist, if I were her patient? But the boil in my blood told me this wasn’t self-worship; I wanted to worship her, toes to tits to teeth. Rae was also prettier, no false modesty, and wore “our” features perfected. I was a jeans-and-T-shirt girl. I liked boots. I’d throw on some brown eyeliner when I had to meet with a donor but mostly didn’t think about how I wanted to look. How I wanted to be.
Rae, on the other hand, was stunning, all business hard-ass with a very feminine edge. Silky camisoles peeking from chic blazers, dangerously sharp pencil skirts with the attitude to match. That night she wore a tight sweater and even tighter jeans. Black kohl on her eyes and lips painted red as a candy apple. Or a poisoned one.
In our reflection, Rae watched me watching us. “You like mirrors?” she asked. Instantly I thought of how we’d look in some glassy surface, tangled—my head between her curvy thighs, the fall of her breasts as she leaned over me—and swallowed hard.
“Depends on what I’m looking at,” I said. We stepped to the next mirror to catch each other’s gaze, finish the volley of flirtation, and busted up when our eyes blinked back big as dinner plates.
“Come on,” she said, pulling me along by the hand. The walls of the next passage were all glass, and then we took a corner and were swallowed by mirrored angles. A maze.
We wove around turns and backed out of dead ends. Whichever way you looked, there you were, but different sides—in profile, the back of your own head. It was dizzying, seeing all of myself at once, and my heart beat faster. Or maybe that was just Rae, and the scent of her finally, finally right there.
We hit another end, and I turned to get out. But Rae just stopped, only inches between us, and then backed me up until my head softly tapped the glass. From every angle, I stared at myself over Rae’s shoulder, twelve of me, twenty. An infinity. And an infinity of Rae, facing me. My pulse going wild.
Watching me intently, Rae tipped her head. Considering something. Then she said, “So when do you want to go out?”
“Um, Sunday?”
“Where’s your phone?”
I pulled it from my pocket and handed it to her. She whisked her fingers over its lucky face and gave it back. “You have my number.”
Then she leaned in. Her hair whispered over my cheek. Her lips pressed softly against the side of my neck, with that slight, maddening point of wet at the center that cooled instantly as she pulled away.
“So Sunday,” she said, and turned. I followed her. She seemed so sure of where she was going.
And she was. She led us directly out of the maze, the end of the fun house, and turned to wink at me just before she disappeared into the jostling crowd. It wasn’t until later, undressed, that I saw in my own bathroom mirror what my shirt collar had concealed: the perfect stain of her red lips on the side of my neck. Like I’d been marked.
When we texted over the next couple of days, it was to up the ante with hints of how we were going to basically wreck each other. So when I got one saying, Can’t wait to see you tonight. A request? Please dress femme for me. Your girliest, if you dare, I was surprised—was that her thing?—but ready to bring it. I could dare if she could. Little black dress, glossy lips. I even busted out one of my two pairs of lace-waisted panties, which, because they were black, managed to match my only push-up bra, hallelujah. I sexy-messed my hair and, nerves prickling, waited like a good girl for her to arrive. She’d asked to pick me up—as if she hadn’t been doing just that since we met.
A text buzzed in. I’m out front. I clipped down the stairs of my building, assuming she’d be waiting at the curb. She was, but the sight of her stopped me cold on the sidewalk.
Rae leaned against her car in the streetlamp light, smiling wickedly, in full drag.
So this was the game. I’d still play. I pulled it together and did my best saunter up to her, hyperaware of my clicking heels on the pavement. Ran my eyes up her tailored suit pants and a finger down the lapel of her charcoal jacket. The only makeup she wore was a touch of mascara on those long lashes. Her lips were as naked as I wanted the rest of her.
“Shall we?” she asked in that phone-sex voice of hers, opening the car door, and I let her hand me gallantly in, completely unsure of where we were going in every sense possible.
Our date was classic bordering on cliché. Candlelit restaurant, good bottle of wine (which she poured, like a gentleman). The verbal conversation was mere backdrop to the one our bodies had. She spent dinner running the toe of her wingtip up my calves, and when we pulled our chairs close to share a dessert, she snuck a hand under the tablecloth to skim her fingers along my bare thigh, to the edge of my skirt. Stopping.
I would have sworn I teased her back just to take the dare, to play into the competition that lent an edge to our courting, but acting the femme fatale started to feel surprisingly easy. Surprisingly good. I bit my lip when I laughed, like a reflex. I leaned to offer a view of my cleavage, breathing deep whenever her eyes caught on where I swelled out from my dress. When she picked up the check I felt with a dirty little thrill like she was buying me for the night, and more than ready to provide the services purchased.
In the car, Rae didn’t ask whose place to go to. I silently let her make a couple of turns out of downtown and to wherever she wanted. I should have guessed I was in some kind of trouble by the way I had fallen pliant, supplicant—all those terrible descriptions of female abandon from shitty romance novels. But I could feel it: I would let her do anything to me for the night. She looked so damn good, hand capable on the steering wheel, jacket tailored to the nines. That pretty, pretty face in profile.
When she shut her front door behind us we fell against it together, no cues needed, to bite and lick the other’s kiss, hands already everywhere. She worked so far under my dress to squeeze my ass, my skirt bunched around my hips. I pushed her jacket off and she ordered, “Bedroom.”
The switch she flipped turned on only her bedside lamp, lighting everything in a soft peach glow. Her bedroom was just like her, unfussy yet ornamental, with exotic flourishes against competent practicalities. You could definitely tie someone to the bed’s footboard, with its carved-wood slats.
But I wasn’t there to admire her decorating. I undid her pants and she stepped out of them, leaving her in just her button-up with those miles of smooth leg beneath. She sat on the bed, pulling me to stand in front of her and sliding my dress from my shoulders, revealing my nonsensical bra. She cupped me, pressing the prickly-edged lace into my skin and running her thumbs over my silk-covered nipples before leaning in to nip them with her teeth. Wondering if she saw the goose bumps she conjured all over me, I slithered the rest of the dress down my hips, then shrugged my feet from my heels. I probably could have made a better show of taking them off, bending over to slowly unstrap them, but I was nearly shaking with hunger. I needed us both naked and grinding and coming. Now.
Then she dipped a foot under her bed and slid out a hatbox. More conjuring. Flicking the lid off with her toe, she leaned down and began to pull out its contents, and I laughed like some silly coquette when she produced a leather harness and then, a healthy-sized cock.
As she sat back up I slung a leg over her lap and lowered myself so our thighs slid and stuck. Toying with the shirt button at her throat, I all but purred. “So you want to fuck me, huh?”
She unhooked my bra and let it fall to my elbows, giving my neck a long lick, her tongue hot, soft. Said, “No, you’re going to fuck me. You up for it, stud?”
For the second time that night, I froze.
It wasn’t the request—it was the context. I’d strapped on, sure, but always with steady girlfriends, when we were both comfortable enough to drive each other like cars and, admittedly, needed some extra oomph in the bedroom. I didn’t do it the first time I hooked up with a woman. And definitely not after I’d spent the evening tripping around town in my hottest come-fuck-me heels.
I suddenly had no idea what part I was playing in the night’s bedtime story. Why had she dressed me up? Why hadn’t she led some hard-muscled, well-hung butch back to her lair? I felt flustered, and knew that was the point from Rae’s smile, which was all triumph topped with a femme’s heavy-lidded bedroom eyes, the ones she’d been hiding for hours behind her suit and swagger.
From her box of tricks she’d also pulled out lube and a small bullet vibrator. She slid the toy into a pocket at the harness’s front, asking, “Have you ever come inside a woman before?”
I shook my head no, mouth too dry to speak. But through my queasy nerves some other feeling was building—curiosity. Want.
Rae wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and nuzzled my face with hers. “Well, tonight you’re going to. I want to watch you empty out into me.” She matched her tongue on my earlobe to a dance of fingers over my clit, which was pressing against the lace of my lovely lady panties like the most aggressive hard-on. I meant to say, Can we talk this over? or even Okay, but instead made an animal noise and took her mouth in mine, shoving her back onto the bed.
She rolled my underwear off and the harness on in a few expert moves. My hands shook as I worked the buttons of her shirt, starting at the top. She began to unbutton at the bottom so we met in the middle and both undid the last one at her sternum, fingers tangling, and parted the fabric. Her bra was silky and red as that mark she’d left on my neck. I kissed her breasts, her belly, trailing down and lapping at the mound beneath her perfectly matched, ruby satin panties.
She gasped but gently pushed me from her. “Not here,” she said, standing and shrugging her shirt off. My premonition about the footboard had been right in a sense. She led me to it and pressed her back against its rounded wooden edge to face me. “Here,” she said, brushing my lips with hers.
I peeled down her underwear and we both gasped when my fingers hit the slick of her, hours-thick with desire. While I stroked her she retrieved the cock from the mattress and tugged the harness ring away from my body to slide it through, giving it a quick shot of lube as I tightened the straps.
She perched her ass on the edge of the footboard, just enough to anchor herself, and lifted one leg to spread herself open, placing her foot on my calf. “Are you ready?” she asked, and I didn’t answer; there was no point. I was and I wasn’t and she knew that. The fingers of one hand still behind the ring, she expertly flipped the vibrator on as she slid onto the cock.
The vibes crashed into my clit, perfectly timed with the feel of gliding along the tight, slick walls of her, a direct link between her body and mine, between my body and the cock. No, my cock. I choked out a cry and forgot to be careful, pushing all into her in one stroke. But she was just fine. Her head fell back with a pleased, throaty moan. I wanted to hear her repeat it. I drew out and pushed in again. And again. She grabbed my face and mashed her mouth into mine, muffling her yelp.
We fucked trading breath and sounds, me bending deeper in the knees until I was almost lifting her with each stroke. Rae kept one tiptoe anchored to the ground—I had grabbed her raised leg behind the knee and slung it high around my ass, where it scraped the harness strap into my hip bone as she ground onto me.
Then she stilled, and slid me out.
The wet of her glinted on my cock, and seeing it, I felt like a fish that had been tossed out of water. I’d die if I wasn’t in her element. But she quickly turned, giving me her back, and bent forward to rest her elbows on the footboard so her cunt tipped up to me as an invitation, slippery, begging. I cupped her smooth ass with my palms and fitted myself into her again, and as I started thrusting, slid my hands into that great notch where a woman’s thigh meets her belly. All the better to hold on to you by, my dear.
It was easier to fuck like that—or should have been. But soon, I couldn’t catch my breath. The vibes I was packing were killing me. I rode torturous rises and plateaus, and through the delicious agony a worry pulsed in my head: that it was terrible for her, that I wasn’t fucking her properly. I felt like I was spasming and then stopping still while every muscle in my pelvis tightened almost unbearably in response to the relentless titillation. I made noises I hadn’t known my throat could produce.
On a cresting wave I gritted my teeth, and when it broke my fingers tightened around Rae’s hips as I buckled and dragged her farther onto my length. And I heard her pant, “That’s right, baby, yes. Like that.”
I opened my eyes; I’d squeezed them shut. I saw Rae’s head turned to the side, gaze locked feline-sure on something to our left. I looked.
We were framed like a painting in a full-length mirror hanging on the wall, showing feet to heads and every sweating, trembling, curving inch between. All of Rae’s unbelievable inches, her belly swayed with the arch of her back, luscious tits still held up by her ruby bra. Center of the reflection, our hips met, my pelvis smacking into the swell of her ass and every moment captured in the glass and thrown back to us.
Like lock gears slipping into place, I suddenly understood what she had said earlier. I want to watch you empty out into me. She wanted to play her own voyeur. And consume me by sight.
So this was the game—I’d still play. Watching our private live movie, I ran my hand up her side just to see what it would look like. It looked damn good, her in my hands. Me fucking her with me.
That ripped me out of my head, and suddenly, the intensity on my clit was exactly what I needed. I pushed harder to feel more, thrusting steadily with one hand on Rae’s hip, the other hooked over her shoulder, holding her tight in place against me. She moaned long and high while in the mirror, the muscles in my sides and ass clenched in bands, shuddering and tightening as I moved. My body looked powerful but vulnerable, controlled yet unhinged. I looked strong. I looked utterly helpless against what I was feeling, against what she made me feel. And I saw what she was so into, sketching and re-sketching my body and what I could be in it through her gaze.
Our eyes met in the reflection, and her creeping half smile told me she knew that I saw. She reached a hand back over her shoulder and, reading her mind, I took her fingers in and sucked, getting them good and wet. She plunged them between her thighs and I could see her take the rhythm she needed in the movement of her wrist at her belly. Her own mouth was fallen open, her brows knitted, but she kept her eyes on me in the mirror, drinking, roving. I gripped her breast, kneading as the pressure in me built again, Rae urgently whimpering yes on every stroke I pounded into her.
She rose onto her toes, knees straightening helplessly as her final build flexed through her thighs and ass, and then cried out, her cunt wringing my cock, tugging me deep into her against my stroke. That sent me over the edge. I curled over so my cheek pressed to her spine, and I rushed out, everything in me pouring into her. Never taking our eyes off us.
We breathed, Rae trembling beneath me. Shakily, I leaned up and pulled out the vibrator, switching it off and dropping it to the carpet at our feet. Rae rose, too, pressing back against me with her head on my shoulder, bathing my sweat-streaked face in her damp hair.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly shy, feeling like someone new. Someone who needed introducing.
She gave my bottom lip a bite. “Hey yourself. How was that?”
I didn’t know how to answer. It seemed like I’d been kissed awake after a long sleep. I dragged my hand up her thigh, mouthed her shoulder. I wanted more but didn’t know, any longer, where that would take me. I studied our matched hips in the mirror, hers bare and soft, mine crossed with leather. The ways we were similar and how we were so different.
Rae watched me watching us. “What do you see?” she asked.
I shook my head—like Nothing, or I don’t know—but said the truth. “Everything.”