“Leslie? Leslie Goosemoon?” Dina cried, chasing after the rodeo champ. “Wait up, will ya?”
The remarkable rider stopped in her tracks twenty meters ahead, and Dina slowed her gait from a gallop to an amble. It felt like a good five minutes before the mysterious stranger turned her head. Even when she did, the brim of her tawny cowboy hat obscured her eyes until she took it off to wipe dusty sweat from her brow.
“Well?” Leslie Goosemoon prodded.
Dina’s blood ran cold. She wasn’t anticipating such piercing blue eyes on a rough-and-tumble rider. Her eyes should be brown like the mud spray across her cheek.
“Hi,” Dina began, forgetting why she’d chased her down in the first place.
“Whaddya want?” the rider grumbled, her quick-draw stance keeping Dina at a distance.
“It just seems strange that nobody came to congratulate you. All the other girls in competition have their legions of fans. Here you’re the big winner and you’ve got no one telling you how great you rode today.” Dina tried to sound casual, taking a tentative step forward.
With a shrug, Leslie Goosemoon replied, “Lots of folks on the circuit could do without me.”
“Well, of course they could. If you weren’t around, those other girls might have a chance in hell at winning. Do you always ride like that?”
Another shrug, and a fraction of a smile.
“This is my first time,” Dina went on with a keen grin, “at a rodeo, I mean.”
“That so?” Leslie asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yup.” Silence made Dina nervous, so she filled it. “My roommate’s boyfriend, Rod the Clod, commandeered our TV during the Calgary Stampede last year. I never liked cowboy stuff before that, but when you’re subjected to something night and day….”
“It grows on you.”
“Exactly. Although, I never did warm up to Rod the Clod.” Dina hesitated, but what the hell. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “I probably hated him so much because that rat bastard totally crushed my chance to get with Vicky. Hard to make a move with him on the couch twenty-four-seven.”
With a wolfish smile, Leslie gave her a blatant once-over. “You lookin’ to get over Vicky?”
Dina shrugged, meeting her penetrative gaze straight on. Leslie took two steps closer. In one fluid motion, her arm swooped around Dina’s waist and a dusty hand brushed through her hair, firm against her scalp. Those pink lips hovered like Tantalus’ water glass, so close she could nearly sip them.
“Best way to get over someone is to get under someone,” Dina whispered, giving herself in to a searing embrace. Leslie’s mouth was hot, her kiss fierce. It mixed Dina up until she felt thoroughly liquid and smooth.
When Leslie backed away, it was too soon. “Is that all you’ve heard?”
“I don’t know…” Dina stammered, eyes closed, senses reeling. Maybe Leslie was fishing for compliments? “I’ve heard you’re the best cowboy on the circuit.”
“Cowgirl,” Leslie snapped. Without notice, her countenance turned harsh. She wasn’t looking at Dina anymore, her gaze was locked on her oxblood and tan cowboy boots kicking up dust underfoot.
“Not the way you ride!” Dina cheered. “I’ve never seen a girl do calf roping before. They don’t let women into competition at the Stampede, except in the barrel racing, but what fun is that? Christ, you’re so rough-and-tumble you could easily compete against the men. I bet you’d take the cake.”
That was obviously the wrong thing to say, because Leslie Goosemoon turned on her heels and walked away, her long black ponytail whipping side to side. She hadn’t gone six strides before turning around. “Go to hell.”
Strutting off, she stopped again but didn’t turn around this time. Her voice broke as she shouted, “I don’t ride with the boys. Not anymore.” She didn’t look back as she marched toward the parking lot where her trusty pickup awaited. When she slammed its rusty door, Dina jumped.
Perplexed, she watched Leslie drive off. What else could she do? She hadn’t expected the great Leslie Goosemoon to be so volatile, and it haunted her all the way back to Aunt Jo’s old farmhouse. Even as she opened the front door those baffling words burned her brain.
“How was the rodeo?” Aunt Jo asked from the open kitchen.
“Pretty good. You should have come with.”
“Scrabble tournament’s not going to run itself, kiddo.”
“I think I’ll check out day two tomorrow. Want to join me?”
Setting down her menacing carrot-chopping knife, Aunt Jo replied, “Tomorrow’s my turn to lead Yoga for Seniors. And, hey, I had to force you to take in the rodeo in the first place, and now you’re champing at the bit for the next installment? What happened, see a boy you liked?
“A girl,” Dina wanted to say, but the words stuck like a fishbone in her throat.
“I need to look something up on the Internet, Auntie.”
“Off to the library with you, brat!” Aunt Jo chuckled. “Jeeze, my favorite niece comes to visit for the long weekend and spends the whole time out on the prowl!”
“If you weren’t such a Luddite, I wouldn’t have to leave the house just to check my e-mail. I don’t know how you survive without a computer.”
“Like my parents, and their parents, and their parents before them.”
Dina sat down at the library computer with one eye on the clock. Fifteen minutes to closing time. Into the search engine she typed: Leslie Goosemoon. The results made her gasp. Page after page of competition stats, articles and commentary, some positive but most not. Leslie Goosemoon had competed with the boys because Leslie Goosemoon had been a boy.
Pale-faced, Dina clicked the window closed and her throat released one of those impossible-to-contain shrieks. The librarian in a cat sweater shot her a piercing glare. So did the woman with a mess of orange curls who’d been picking her nose and wiping it into her paperback every time she thought no one was looking. Dina asked the woman in the cat sweater, “Do you know where I could find Leslie Goosemoon?”
The librarian clicked her teeth. “Some people would tell you he’s from our town, but that is most certainly not the case.”
“Now Linda, you were singing a different tune back when he made it to Stampede,” the nose-picker interrupted. “Oh, you loved him then alright.”
“A bald faced lie, Shelley. I was the first to call him a nancy-boy, if you’ll recall.”
“Well, I never liked the kid. Those Rez brats should stay put if you ask me,” Mrs. bad-dye-job rejoined.
With a combination of nausea and anger, Dina spat, “And I’m sure everybody in this time-warped town is just dying to hear your illuminated opinions. If you’ll excuse me, I’d rather be anywhere but here.”
“Well of all the rude little…” the librarian muttered as Dina slammed the entrance door. Shaking out her arms, she tried to get that prickly anger feeling out of her body. She had to find Leslie. She had to see her again and there’s no way she could wait until tomorrow.
It didn’t take much asking around to locate someone in a small town, particularly if that someone was adored or despised. “Aren’t you Jo’s niece?” replied the man outside the pharmacy when she inquired after Leslie. “What does a nice girl like you want with that pansy?”
If she weren’t after the whereabouts of the town misfit, Dina would have cried, “Get a fucking clue, asshole!” but for the sake of information she held her tongue.
Leslie Goosemoon lived somewhere between the reserve of her upbringing and the town that wouldn’t have her. Her property was large, her home modest. Little more than a log cabin in fact, but it suited her. When Dina pulled up she found Leslie under the overhang, rocking in an ancient porch swing, still wearing her dusty rodeo gear.
“Mind if I join you?” Dina asked.
Leslie set aside her journal. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see the rodeo fan again. “Have a seat,” she offered. “Can I get you anything?” but she didn’t give Dina a second to answer before wrapping an arm around her shoulder and laying a smoldering kiss on her lips. Leslie’s mouth tasted like the scent of sawdust and pine. She tasted like the woods, like she was an extension of where she lived. It was those eyes though, blue as still water, that really made her melt. “The people around here are a bunch of idiots,” Dina sighed, dazed by Leslie’s hot affection. “They all seem to think you’re gay.”
“Have I not given you that impression, darlin’?” Leslie teased, planting hot kisses down Dina’s neck. Then chuckling she clarified, “They seem to think post-op trans woman somehow equals gay man. I don’t get it, but that’s the consensus.”
Leslie stopped kissing her neck. Bolting upright, she gazed across her property. “When I presented as a guy I liked girls,” she replied a little forlornly. “When I presented as a guy girls liked me. It’s rare now, fans like you. And you only came chasing after me because you didn’t know who I was before.”
“You were Leslie Goosemoon.”
Leslie nodded.
“And you’re still Leslie Goosemoon.”
Leslie nodded.
“Why would that be a problem?”
Leslie shrugged. “Most folks have some or other issue with me. Like it’s not bad enough to switch from man to woman, I’m a dyke on top of it—and an Indian on top of that. That’s three strikes against me far as these fine individuals are concerned.”
“Hey, you’re a cowboy and an Indian?”
“Cowgirl, I’d say, but yep. That was always the joke at home, we’re Indians but we do all the cowboy stuff, too. The Stoney are cowboys and Indians.”
“Is that how you learned to ride?”
“Learned from my granddad, yep. When I look back on life, on being in the wrong body and all, it makes sense now.”
“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty, right?”
“Sure is. See, my granddad didn’t teach my sisters to ride. That’s how he was—thought women had their place and they should sit there huskin’ corn and having babies. He was a mean old son of a bitch, my granddad, but I learned to ride ‘cause he looked at me and he saw a boy. In fact, he was hardest on me ‘cause I was a sissy according to everyone on the Rez. He wanted to toughen me up, and he did.”
“Sounds like a hard life.”
“Sure, but if I hadn’t lived it I wouldn’t have made it to the Calgary Stampede and earned a shit load of money. And without that money I could never have afforded my surgery, and I’d probably have killed myself by now.”
Dina wasn’t sure if she should chuckle at that. It didn’t sound like a joke. “Must have been tough in competition.”
Leslie shrugged. “Life was hard. Competition was escape. When I’m riding, I’m in my body in the moment. It’s life or death out there, you get distracted, and pow! You’ve got three broken ribs—if you’re lucky. When I’m at the rodeo I’m not thinking about who I am, I’m just concentrating on not getting killed.”
“There’s one thing I kind of don’t get,” Dina began. She wouldn’t normally have asked, except that her affinity with Leslie was so powerful and so immediate. “You’re a rough-and-tumble girl. I mean, you’re tough and you do guy stuff so…I don’t know how to phrase this…if you’re just going to do guy stuff and dress all masculine anyway, why didn’t you just stay a guy?”
Releasing an agitated puff of air through her nose, Leslie leaned back and pulled her cowboy hat down over her face. “Go to hell.”
But Dina wouldn’t be dissuaded. “What? It’s a fair question.” Grabbing Leslie’s hat, Dina perched it on her own head. For a split-second a vicious glare shot from Leslie’s eyes and Dina didn’t dare move a muscle. When that passed she continued, “I’m not judging you, I’m just wondering.”
Snatching her hat back, Leslie said, “Answer your own question.”
Dina reflected and said, “Being a woman is fundamental to your being. That’s who you are. It doesn’t mean you have to act in a certain way, like a stereotype of femininity.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to anyone,” Leslie replied with a resolute nod. “And for the record, I do look good in satin and silk, but you don’t wear your little black dress to the rodeo.”
“Yeah, mud and silk don’t mix,” Dina chuckled. “You know, it’s kind of weird that you didn’t change your name.”
“No, Leslie’s more a woman’s name than a man’s anyway.”
“But to start your new life as a woman, I mean, didn’t you want a new name?”
Leslie shook her head. “I’ve been a woman all my life, it just took time and money to get me the right parts for the job.”
With a chuckle Dina replied, “You’re cute.”
With half a grin, Leslie cast her gaze down at her cowboy boots. “Now that I don’t hear too often.”
“Cute, but dirty,” Dina replied, brushing tawny dust from Leslie’s thighs.
“You callin’ me a dirty girl?”
“If the boot fits.” Squeezing that dusty denim thigh, Dina pressed her lips against Leslie’s. She kissed her hard and fast, sweeping them up like a tornado.
“Want me clean?”
“Clean or dirty, I’ll take you either way,” Dina panted, lingering close to Leslie’s lips.
Rising to her feet, the rodeo star marched straight to the far end of the porch before turning around. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
Dina wasn’t aware she was supposed to follow. “Where are we going?” she asked, hopping like a puppy along the wrap-around porch and down the stairs behind the house.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m taking a shower,” Leslie replied.
Warmth like a sunburst exploded in Dina’s core. She felt giddy. “I wouldn’t say no to a shower.”
Behind the cabin sat a huge tank with a solar panel. Leslie turned the knob and water surged from the tank through a garden hose that snaked its way across the lawn and climbed into the branches of a great oak. A showerhead big enough to bathe an elephant hung down from the canopy. Kicking off her cowboy boots, Leslie stripped off her bottoms in one smooth move. Dina’s gaze shot straight for the patch of black hair barely concealed by the plaid top, which was next to come off.
“This is your shower?”
“Sometimes backward-thinking is forward-thinking,” Leslie said, stepping under the flow.
“Not always,” Dina replied as the sour face of that nose-picker at the library flashed across her mind.
“Don’t argue, just take your goddamned clothes off and get over here.”
Leslie was a war goddess, her fit body purging the tawny stains of dirt and blood. Elbows concealed small tits as she cupped water in her hands, splashing it against her face. When she reached up to release her long black hair from its ponytail her nipples went hard, crying out to be sucked.
Tripping over her feet, Dina pulled her jeans down before her shoes were off. She heard Leslie cackle as she landed on her knees in the grass, struggling to get out of her clothing. Naked at last, Dina crawled into the sun-warmed shower as Leslie picked a bar of white soap out of a plastic container in the tree’s hollow. The suds ran all down her sun kissed flesh as Leslie soaped her body. “Do me next,” Dina pleaded, rising to her feet.
“Do you?”
“Soap me up.”
Grinning ear to ear, Leslie instructed her to turn around. Soapy hands massaged her back with ruthless vigour, sliding down against the slopes of her ass. Dina giggled as friendly fingers parted her cheeks for a thorough clean. Erect nipples brushed her back and her knees went weak. When the rodeo champ pressed her perky little breasts against Dina’s back she just about collapsed. That tuft of soft hair between Leslie’s thighs mingled with suds as she rubbed her pussy against slippery ass cheek. The bar of soap crossed Dina’s chest, hands moulding her big breasts and grasping slick but hard nipples. “Oh god, yes!”
“Like that, do ya darlin’?” Leslie hissed, taking a bite out of her shoulder.
“Yes, yes do it again.”
Rolling a nipple between callous fingers, Leslie laid a trail of kisses along her neck, surprising her here and there with a good hard bite. Those hands travelled down her sensitive belly until a rough and ready finger slid into her wet slit, rubbing like crazy at her clit. Leslie Goosemoon did everything full out it seemed. God, if it weren’t for that strong body holding hers upright, she’d have fallen on all fours by now. The soil underfoot was getting spongy under the barrage of water flowing downhill toward the garden patch.
Dina’s feet were starting to sink a little when Leslie whipped her body around and warned, “I’m gonna kiss you.”
“Then kiss me, already.”
And she did, like a banshee, wrapping the melting Dina in her powerful body. No way she could collapse in the tight grasp of Leslie’s arms. As the rodeo star rubbed her pussy against Dina’s slick-with-soap thigh, her body trembled. Dina mimicked Leslie’s motion, writhing against her solid flesh. God, it felt so good to press her wet pussy into that girl’s thigh and feel the rodeo star’s engorged clit trace a hard path along her soapy flesh. She rode Leslie’s leg until she cried out in ecstasy, words of praise muffled by her kisses.
Leslie didn’t cry out the same way Dina did. She didn’t call to the heavens, “Oh my god! Yes, yes, yes!” She only grasped Dina’s slippery body in a stronghold as her form gyrated rhythmically against it. Whimpering, she pressed her tits against Dina’s slick chest. Their tongues mingled, tangled in hot mouths, battling vicious teeth out of the way. Leslie stopped kissing her. She held her tight, tight, tight, stroking her pussy in circles against Dina’s thigh. Yelping with delight, she released the dazed Dina and headed straight for the cabin to turn off the water.
“My back’s still soapy,” Dina called out, trying to rinse the suds in the drips from the showerhead.
Shrugging, Leslie replied, “I want to lie out before sunset.”
“So it’s all about you, is it?” Dina muttered, following the rodeo champ down the hill to lie in the green grass. The summer breeze kissed her damp skin as she stretched the orgasmic muscles in her legs and arms. With her eyes closed, Leslie looked like a dead warrior woman.
“That was two firsts for me,” Dina stated.
“What was?”
“One: I’ve never has sex under a tree. Two: I’ve never had a shower outdoors.”
Next to Leslie, Dina lay on her back, head in hands, and closed her eyes. It could have been seconds or hours later that Leslie asked, “Which of the town’s upstanding citizens told you about me, anyway?”
“What? Oh, I looked you up online. I’m not great at reading stats, but I know enough to realize you were high profile on the men’s rodeo circuit.”
“Yeah,” Leslie sighed.
“Don’t you miss that?”
“I was never in it for the glory, I just like to ride. I took a lot of time off in transition. I wasn’t welcome in men’s competition anymore. Women’s rodeo didn’t want me either, even though I had more estrogen in my system than half those rodeo girls.”
“Cute,” Dina chuckled.
“Yeah, I’m the cutest,” Leslie replied, rolling her eyes. “But there was no way I’d give up my livelihood. I put pressure on the women’s rodeo organizers and they eventually agreed to let me into competition after my surgery. Of course it was years before I got to that stage, and straight from gender reassignment surgery, riding a horse isn’t the first thing you want to be doing. I was in enough pain without pounding my pussy against a saddle. So here I am, keeping a low profile but back in competition. I’m ancient next to these girls, but I’ve had a good run.”
“A good run? You’re the best.”
“In nobody’s eyes but yours. They all see me as the guy crashing the girls’ slumber party. I have an unfair advantage, they want me out.” She shrugged. “Maybe my time has passed. Maybe it’s time for me to mosey off into the sunset.”
“Don’t you dare!” Dina protested. “Who gives a shit what those assholes think? If you love rodeo, stick with it until your dying day. Do what you love, Leslie Goosemoon.”
A self-satisfied smile bled across her lips as she trapped Dina’s nipples between her fingertips and pulled her in for a kiss. “I think I just did darlin’.”