Mieko: A Catalogue

"You're perfect," she said.

"I'm not perfect," whispered Callie. Her eyes were closed.

"No, it's perfect. I've only seen a woman's body like this in pictures. I can't stop running my fingers over it everywhere."

"I work as a personal trainer on the side," Callie said quietly. "So, I kind of have to... I'm like my own advertisement. These are my quals."

She curled up against the statuesque blond and began to suck one of her breasts as she drew her fingers over a soft pale chevron of hair before parting the warm wet folds beneath.

"Can I put my mouth on it," she said.

"Yes," Callie whispered, and spread her legs to accommodate the small, dark sylph slithering down her body.

The Bees

"I'm sorry about Wednesday," said Callie on her next visit. They were walking her yard: the large, fenced-in northern portion where she would later build the studio structure that she was already sketching out specs for. Much of the space was shaded, mostly black cherry, locust, and some pines, and sloped gently away from the house. It was a type of terrain she was still getting accustomed to treading, soft and irregular, unpredictable. Her old canvas sneakers were rimmed wet with dew.

"Don't be sorry," she said. "Don't say that, you'll make me feel bad. Two consenting adults and all."

"I know, but I just... I probably shouldn't have."

This day was clear, a canopy of China blue, and through occasional breaks in the trees, they could still see the moon like a powdery thumbprint in the morning sky.

"I'm not looking for a girlfriend or anything. Not saying that's what you're worried about, but if it is."

"No, I wasn't worried about that. I knew... That's not..."

"Maybe I didn't make you come hard enough."

"Stop," said Callie. "You made me come beautifully. It was lovely. I told you so."

"Because I haven't been with a woman for a while, so I was probably a little bit rusty."

"Stop!" Callie grabbed her arm roughly, held her fast.

"Ow, hey," she said. "I'm just—"

"No, literally, stop, halt," said Callie. She pointed to the ground directly in front of them. A clutch of ground bees were swarming nervously, hovering in and out of a hole in the grass, a short pace or two from their path. Callie released her grip and moved her arm around her waist.

"Here's a good opportunity to practice walking backwards," she said. "Slowly."

"That could have been ugly. I don't think I know how to run anymore."

Thirty minutes later, the blonde was spread out naked on her bed, panting, her forearm thrown across her eyes. Mieko crawled up and flopped down next to her.

"Was that lovely?" she asked.

"No," the other woman panted. "That was... fucking intense."

They lay in silence for a while. She moved the tips of her fingers lightly over the woman's stomach and abdomen and hips, tracing the contours, the dips and rises, the unyielding firmness. It mesmerized her. This was the definition of voluptuousness, this Braille of musculature.

"I have to draw this," she said.

"This?" said Callie.

"You."

Callie draped a hand over the other woman's hip, let her fingers dandle at the cleft at the bottom of her ass.

"Dash warned me about you," said Callie.

"Warned you? What does that mean?"

"That you were extremely beautiful."

"I'm not beautiful."

"You are. Really."

"I don't really think about myself in those terms. But I suppose it was nice of him to say. Though I'm not sure why it had to be framed as a warning."

Callie didn't say anything. Mieko squirmed and pressed herself tighter against the other woman, allowing Callie's probing fingers greater purchase.

"I was actually in a relationship with another woman for a while," said Callie. "Five years."

"But not anymore?"

"No, not anymore. Not for a few years now."

"Do you miss it?"

"I miss the person, but... It wasn't really a normal relationship. I mean, not a healthy one. She already had a partner and was cheating on her with me. But I thought... I really thought... Anyway. She couldn't go through with it for whatever reason. Then I just felt used. So I broke it off. That was my big foray into same-sex relationships. But that part didn't really matter to me, the sex part. It was emotional. It was about the person." She laughed. "I even introduced her to my parents."

"That's a serious marker, right?" said Mieko. "I've never introduced anyone to my parents."

Callie kissed her hair.

"Do you have a toy?" she said. "Something I can fuck you with while I lick you?"

"I'd rather have your fingers," said Mieko and rolled onto her back.

She thought of the blond woman's perfect naked body. She thought of her firm breasts and hard round ass and beautifully rippled back and shoulders, like slow clear water moving over smooth stones. She thought of the night nurse's cock: hot, insistent, sliding between her own breasts while the therapist down between her legs licked and finger-fucked her. She thought of Callie pressing a cunt-slick finger into the nurse's ass, spurring his spasm, his warm cum spilling over chest and throat. She thought of him turning and spurting his generous load over her pubic mound while the blond continued to vigorously lick her, tonguing his semen against her sensitive clit as her orgasm began its hectic swarm through her limbs to the flashpoint of her enflamed cunt, bursting there, incandescent.

The Secret Sharer

Callie told her that she'd been in a relationship that had recently come to an end. It was her fault and it wasn't her fault. She would think about it and think about it, when she was getting ready for the day, when she was clanking about her kitchen emptying the dishwasher, and she would realize, without question, that it wasn't her fault. Then she would go about her day, doing the things she always did and suddenly, in the middle of a therapy session or workout she would feel a pang, like a stitch in her side, that said it was you.

"I was happy with the way things were," she said. "I thought everything was fine. Then he wanted to change it and I didn't understand why."

"How did he want to change it?"

"He wanted to get married."

"That's a big change."

"He said it wasn't. Just a formality. I felt like, well, if it's just a formality, what's the point? I didn't like that. I felt like, almost like, it was a trick. 'Oh, it's no big deal.' That seemed dishonest to me. So then do we live together? Do we have to start welding together the infrastructures? Establishing things jointly? He said, 'Well, that would make the most sense.' But it didn't make sense to me."

"He didn't give you any hints about this? Any idea that this was on his mind?"

"None. I thought we were the way we were always going to be. I've always been very independent-minded, I've never been married before. He had been, once, and of the two of us, I would have thought he would be the one less inclined to do it again. We had a nice, steady situation. No drama. No pressure. He said that it 'had no arc,' and he appreciated that; that it was, what did he call it, 'unwavering.' So he claimed."

"Unwavering?" she said.

"So now suddenly there's a waver," said Callie. "There's an arc. I didn't think that was fair to me. I thought about it, I seriously thought about it. But I always came away feeling that agreeing to it would just be so as not to disappoint him. That wasn't reason enough for something like that."

"So you broke it off?" said Mieko.

"Not really. I just said no, that I liked things the way they were. But he said he needed something more."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'm just pissed. Which is better than being hurt. I can live with pissed. What would you have done?"

"I'm not really the marrying kind," said Mieko, gliding her hand up the woman's taut, bare thigh. "Obviously."

That night, she sent Dash an email, giving him a brief update on her progress, and asking him if he'd like to come to her house for lunch the next day.

She served fresh tuna that she'd pressed into sesame seeds and seared and sliced thin. Strips of grilled eel from a tin that her grandmother sent her from Japan. Hard cooked eggs pickled in soy. Clear, golden miso broth with matchsticks of carrot and bamboo. The kind of lunch her mother made for her when she was a little girl. They sat at her kitchen counter.

"You look really well," he said.

"I still sleep a lot," she said.

"Yeah," he said. "It can be tiring. But that'll go away. I'm sure Callie told you that."

"She did. She's been great. That you for setting me up with her. I couldn't have asked for better care."

"I think she's one of the best at what she does."

"So," she said. "I'm curious about why you 'warned' her about me."

"I... I didn't..." He looked at his broth.

"She doesn't seem to find me very dangerous, though. Not as far as I can tell."

"I didn't warn her. I just mentioned that you were... extremely attractive. And very charismatic." He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I don't know why she told you that."

"It just came out. A couple of gals sitting around chatting. Callie is 'extremely attractive' too. Why didn't you warn me about her?"

"She very pretty," he said. "But not like you. You're... beautiful. There's something about you, something..."

"Don't say 'exotic,'" she said. "If you say exotic I'm going to stab you in the neck with this chopstick."

"Whatever it is, I just found it very difficult not to be preoccupied by it. Not something that I'm used to. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in person."

"I'm sure you say that to all the one-legged, half-Asian girls."

She waited for him to look at her but he couldn't. She watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. He plied his chopsticks open and closed nervously but didn't reach toward any of the food.

She laid her chopsticks alongside her bowl of miso and scooted off the stool, stood.

"Just so you know," she said. "I'm not a serious-relationship type of person. Way too unsteady. Wavering as all fuck."

He looked at her then.

She wondered if he recognized the smell of his ex-girlfriend in her bed, the faint, beachy, coconutty smell of Callie's sunblock that had seeped into her sheets from the blond's sweaty orgasms of the day before. She thought maybe he did, considering the pounding he was giving her. She grunted from the impact of his hard thrusts. It had taken her a little time to get used to the girth of his cock, especially since she hadn't had a real one inside her since she'd left the hospital. But once she had, he proceeded to hammer at her, unbidden, as if it was a race, as if he wanted to break her. She was shocked and a little frightened and desperately turned on all at once. It was remarkably good for the first time with someone new, and she came massively, clawing at his sinewy arms and boney shoulders as he continued fucking her.

"Finish... uh... in... my... uh... mouth," she said, still clutching his arms, holding on, two people grappling at the edge of an abyss.

He withdrew and straddled her chest, and she propped herself up on her elbows to take the slick, crimsoned cock between her lips, muscling her tongue against the underside of the head as his cumload poured thickly into her mouth, filling it and flooding her senses—the unmistakable taste and smell, that familiar earthiness that yet, somehow, also reminded her of the sea.

"Full disclosure. I was with someone yesterday. A man."

"Oh. Okay." Callie had been kissing her along the inner curve of her breast. She paused after receiving that information.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not trying to be provocative."

"That's okay. I just... Someone you know?"

"Yes. But have never been with before. It just seemed safe. Uncomplicated." She placed her small hand on the blond woman's taut thigh and gently pushed, trying to part her legs.

"It was safe," she repeated, her fingertips teasing at her bed partner's mons. "Very clean. Very healthy." Kissing the woman's neck behind her ear. "It was just a thing. A needing-cock-thing. You know."

"Yeah," Callie sighed. She spread her legs a little wider, maybe mollified, or willing to be: let herself be touched.

"In fact, I got the distinct impression that he hadn't been with someone for a while."

"Like, hasty?"

"No, not that. There was just... there was a hunger there. It was... a little sad."

Callie spread her legs wider still and thrust her cunt at the hand that was ministering to her.

"Did he come in you?" she asked.

"In my mouth." Mieko was laying a trail of kisses down her partner's neck and along her collarbone. She moved back up and touched her lips to Callie's ear, slipped two fingers of her caressing hand into her slit. "He shot his load in my mouth," she whispered, "and I swallowed it. I drank his cum. It was... mmm, thick and warm."

Callie moaned and flexed her hips, bucked at the fingering she was getting, then turned her head on the pillow, offering her mouth to be kissed. Mieko put her tongue in it and the two writhed against each other, damp and struggling with breath.

"You're such a slut," said Callie, bucking against the fingers slipping in and out of her.

"I know you are, but what am I?"

"Cum slut," she breathed. "Fucking cum-eating slut."

"I'm rubber and you're glue. You wish I was kissing a warm load of cum into your mouth right now."

"Oh, fuckkk," the woman bucked and thrashed.

Redux

It occurred to her that Rez was the first person she'd been with since her accident who had seen her disability and wasn't some kind of caregiver. That all the others had seen, and had experience with, the injured. However unintentionally, she'd exposed her disability to him, and it hadn't made a difference. Or not much of one.

"I know who you are now," said the dark boy when he brought her next order of groceries.

"I know who you are, too," she said.

"No, I mean... You're famous. You're a famous artist. I Googled you."

"And you're a budding engineer. I fucked you."

The boy looked down at his feet, dismayed it seemed.

"You're going to help me," she said. "I need to stretch a large canvas. Eight feet by ten feet. And I need you to build me a kind of scaffolding that I can move around on easily so I can get to every square inch of it. I need to draw on it. I need to work in very close and move over all of it. I'll pay you."

"You don't have to."

"Of course I do. But we'll talk about that later," she palmed his cock through his trousers.

In Media Res

"Va bene, va bene," said the man. "Is okay. Aspetta."

"I'm cold," she said, remembering how difficult it was to try to stay her teeth from clacking together. The harder she tried, the more they chattered.

Someone laid a topcoat over her that smelled of cooking odors and pipe smoke. Someone cradled her head.

"Si, si. Aspetta, Signorina.

It was early spring but still brightly cold, and the only thing she saw in the glassy blue sky was a vapor trail, unfurled and billowing until tapering down to a fine white rule at its lofty origin, stretching across an azure heaven. But the beautiful, perfect pattern of the dispersing vapor: God's glyphs. Shapes and lines, she thought. Heat and cold. The frozen pavement left her spine stiff and stung; the topcoat was smothering.

"Oh jeez, oh jeez," a man in a uniform, a bus driver's uniform, hovered over her. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." Someone whispered Jesus. Someone brushed hair away from her face.

"It's okay," she closed her eyes. "Va bene."