“Ten years ago I was just a boarding school tomboy,” Jamie said, trying to conceal her embarrassment.
She was surprised Charlie was hitting on her. She hadn’t even known two butches could get together. Though perhaps Charlie wasn’t all butch…. Her former crush on a man suggested she might not be. As for Jamie, she’d never felt the slightest attraction for a man, no matter how hotly she desired his bike. She wanted to be the Brylcreemed bikers, and steal their girlfriends. But she couldn’t, even though the girls seemed keen enough, because what would they think when they found out she wasn’t really a man? She’d let them think she only cared for hot driving, that girls were beneath her.
But this Charlie, who had seen through her right away because she was the same, seemed to want her all the same. This was new to Jamie. She’d always been the pursuer, never the pursued. She’d thought she wanted it that way, or rather, she’d never really thought about it at all.
They smoked their cigarettes in silence. When they’d put them out, Charlie asked Jamie where she was going. Jamie shrugged—truthfully.
“Me too!” Charlie said. “Fancy company?”
“Sure.”
Jamie didn’t mind. She put on her black leather gloves and the shades she’d kept hanging from her belt and they kick-started their bikes again. Jamie led the way to Girona. For some reason—it was too late in the afternoon for siesta—the town was completely quiet. They had trouble finding an open grocery but finally got hold of a few bottles of beer to wash the road dust from their throats. The yawning, balding, middle-aged man behind the counter stared but made no enquiries as to their sex or business in town.
Then they made their way up to the cathedral on a hill overlooking town. They didn’t meet a soul in the narrow alleys, the square in front of the church was empty too, and no one bothered them when they sat down on a low stone wall and blasphemously opened their beers. The sunset painted the roofs a fiery yellow and in the far distance the mountains were blue. Charlie had removed her leather helmet and the evening sun made her short, red hair even redder. With her face framed by unruly curls she looked even less like thirty.
“How come you’re driving around Spain on a borrowed bike?” Jamie asked, curiosity making her more talkative than she was used to.
“I’m on the run,” Charlie said and made a face.
Jamie didn’t want to pry, but after a little while Charlie went on by herself: “I’m on the run from my woman, you see. Not for good—I couldn’t quit her any more than a puppet could quit its puppeteer. I’m just running around as far as the strings will reach, pretending to have a life of my own.”
She said it with a smile, but the light tone seemed forced. Jamie frowned in sympathy but said nothing.
“How about you? What are you running from?”
“How do you know I’m running from something?”
Charlie didn’t even bother to reply.
Jamie shrugged. “All right, I’m on the run from my woman, too.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way before, but when she said it she knew it was true. She was running from the Doris who liked her steady job as a journalist better than a carefree life on the roads with Jamie. The Doris who made her feel superfluous, like the housewife she’d never, ever be. Sure, she could blame the spring that was in the air and in her blood, but she nevertheless knew it was true.
“Your woman, is she… like us?” Jamie inquired.
It wasn’t like her to be this nosy, not like her at all, but she’d rather think of Charlie’s love life than her own. Besides, this butch-on-butch thing intrigued her.
Charlie laughed. “She’s all woman, if that’s what you mean. But just you try treating her like one! You may be tough, but she’d have you on your knees in no time.”
Jamie was silent for a while before she inquired, “What makes you stay?”
“Have you never felt the allure of submission?” Charlie seemed to shrug off the pulp fiction phrase, as though it was a mere matter of taste, like preferring a black leather jacket to a brown one.
Jamie said nothing. They sipped their beers and enjoyed the view and each other’s company in silence. Charlie put down her bottle so abruptly it foamed, threw her arms around Jamie, and kissed her with childish impatience.
“Whoa,” Jamie said when she was done.
She was going to say something more, something about how she couldn’t do this to her woman just because she was on the run, but somehow she didn’t. Doris didn’t kiss her like that. Doris willingly let herself be kissed, and swept off her feet, and carried to the bed, and—Jamie didn’t want to think of that now. She knew she would do Doris wrong, so she chose not to think about it.
“Let’s go someplace,” Charlie said, so irresistibly sure of getting her way.
She would, too. Jamie nodded agreement and they went around the church looking for a reasonably secluded spot. They found one hidden from view by a protruding piece of the cathedral wall and another nearby stone wall. It was risky as hell—if they were caught they’d be more or less trapped, with nowhere to run easily with their jeans around their ankles. Homosexual acts were illegal in Spain, and shagging against a church wall in a Catholic country might be, too, for all that Jamie knew.
For a moment they stood facing each other, not sure how to begin. Jamie hadn’t followed another butch behind a church to take command of the situation. The absurdity of treating Charlie like a femme struck her and for a moment she imagined they’d laugh at their mistake and go back to their beers and their buddy talk.
Then Charlie kissed her insistently and pressed her against the wall. It felt odd but not unpleasant. The kiss soon made her breathless, and the grinding of Charlie’s jean-clad crotch against her own made her clit swell. Charlie didn’t waste any time before she undid Jamie’s belt buckle and button fly and stuck her hand in her jeans. Charlie’s fingers tugged slightly on the damp tuft of dark hair, out of recklessness rather than any studied sadism.
Jamie winced a little when Charlie touched her sensitive clit, and Charlie perceived it and avoided direct contact. Instead she let her hand slip and slide in the hot wetness of Jamie’s cunt. Before Jamie knew it, Charlie had shoved a finger inside her. Jamie never let anybody do that, not even Doris. That was simply not the way it went. But she let it happen now, surprised at how easily she succumbed to the bittersweet pleasure of being taken. She’d thought her armor more solid than that. But it only took one cocky tomboy, unlike any she’d met before, and she was done in.
Charlie fucked her with her hand for a bit, kissing and biting Jamie’s lips. She had her other hand around the back of Jamie’s neck, tickling the short, downy hair there and teasing the nerves, making goose bumps all the way down Jamie’s back. Jamie had hardly known she had such a sensitive neck. There was a lot she hadn’t known about herself. Like how she longed to lose control, for instance.
Charlie turned her around, making her face the wall, still fucking her with her hand. The other hand had left Jamie’s neck and was pinching and kneading her pale, muscular buttocks instead. Then the hand left her arse and fumbled with something else, presumably Charlie’s own fly.
Something slid into Jamie from behind, something larger and smoother than a finger. Though not cooler—it must have been warmed to body temperature inside Charlie’s slacks. Jamie was shocked. Not even she had one of those! Charlie’s cruel mistress must be well equipped.
It stung ever so slightly but that was to be expected, since technically, she was—had been—Anyway, she was not the one to whine about a little pain. It felt right somehow, like penitence. She knew she had no other choice than to relax and receive. Bracing herself would only make it hurt more, and she wasn’t sure she needed to repent that badly. Charlie wasn’t going to stop. She’d seemed like a sweet enough kid, a bit forward but no match for Jamie. Or so Jamie had thought. But she must have some pent-up frustration from being that lady’s toy—Jamie could tell from the determined way she thrust into her.