It was Ramona’s day off, and Feather’s bedroom smelled like sex and weed and Hunan Palace. The thick, sweet scent of plum sauce and the oily tang of scallion pancakes clung to their fingers and tongues. Ramona jammed half a soy sauce–soaked pancake into her mouth and chewed. “You can’t get this in Baltimore,” she mumbled through it, spraying golden crumbs, and laughed at herself. Weed made her stupid. It slowed everything down until her thoughts felt caught in crystallizing syrup.
Feather, their big brown eyes glassy and half-lidded, made a sleepy sound of assent. Ramona wondered idly where they kept their estrogen, if they had it squirreled away in a cool, dark cistern under the apartment building, or if they bought it from one of the city’s freelance testicle collectors. They weren’t really a tranny, not in the dangerous way; they’d had their balls cut off sometime before T-Day, so there was no chance they’d catch it even if they stopped taking their E. She couldn’t imagine them like that anyway, not soft, daydreaming Feather with their doughy arms, round face, and untoned thighs. They could never have turned into one of those monsters.
She swallowed, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and rolled over, throwing herself across Feather’s legs and wriggling around until she could straddle them. They squealed and kicked when she clenched her muscled thighs against their little belly and round hips. She bent to lick the bluish stretch marks on their upper arms, her blond hair brushing their teacup tits. The spicy musk of their armpit flooded her nostrils as they squirmed underneath her. She pushed her face down into it, lunging across their body to nip at the tender skin and sweat-damp hair.
“You taste so fucking good,” she breathed.
Feather giggled. The soft, smooth press of their flesh formed a seal around Ramona’s mouth and nose as they squeezed their arms against their sides. She bit down, savoring their squeal of surprise and pain. She pressed the flat of her tongue to their sweaty skin, gripping their wrists as she did. They fought her. She pinned their arms against the rumpled sheets and licked the shivering, tender skin of their armpit.
Feather shifted under her. Their little cock pressed hard against her ass cheek. She rose up, hair falling across her face, and grinned at them as they whined, straining against her. “Please?” they whimpered. “Please, daddy.”
She ground against them, getting wet, growling low in her throat. “Please what, princess?”
“Kiss me.”
Ramona dipped low enough to graze their softly pointed chin with her lips, then pulled away with a mocking laugh when they lunged at her, mouth open. She curled her lower lip, letting saliva gather between it and her gums, letting the resultant loogie dribble from her mouth to dangle glistening over Feather’s face. She pushed her tongue against her lip and let the rope of cloudy sputum fall. It struck just above their parted lips and dripped into the dark, wet cavern of their mouth. Feather shivered with delight, their hands curling into trembling fists where they lay pinned to the threadbare sheets.
She dug her nails into their wrists, grinding harder, smearing wetness on their cock, their belly, the sweaty stretch of skin between them with its thicket of pale reddish curls. Her high was coming on in earnest now, washing her brain in a cool fizz of dissociative release. Her limbs felt loose and clean and weightless.
I’m dirty.
“You’re a dirty girl,” she murmured into Feather’s ear, and she ran her tongue along the ridges of pliant cartilage—pinnea, concha, helix, antihelix, she heard in her bio teacher Mr. da Costa’s voice, which made her snicker—probing at the mouth of the canal. She bit their earlobe, hard, and relished the sudden tensing of their body under hers. She growled again, low and slow and lazy this time. They let out a piteous whine that was equal parts frightened and horny, a pre-tantrum snivel that sent a filthy thrill of arousal up through Ramona’s stomach.
“Kiss me, kiss me, daddy.”
Their voice broke and she let go of their ear and kissed them, a fluttering warning shock of her orgasm growing at the crux of her pelvis, just above her cunt. They tasted like greasy takeout and baby powder, like lilacs and sweat and weed and pussy. She forced her tongue into their mouth, choking them for a moment before pulling back and biting down on their plump lower lip. They squealed.
I’m disgusting.
“Fucking whore,” she whispered, letting their lip slip through her teeth, and spat full in their face. She let go of their right wrist and reached down between them to slip a finger between her slick lips. It was coming now. Like clawing at an itch she hadn’t been able to reach in days. Feather looked up at her with those big, soft eyes, like a newborn fawn. Spit glistened on their cheek and the labial fold of their nose. They were smiling at her. She wanted to slap them, to scratch their shoulders and their soft little breasts, but she was so close and her whole body was aching for it. She stroked and thrust without restraint at her swollen cunt, her breath coming in choppy little gasps.
A blatt of static cut through her oncoming release. Her walkie, crackling somewhere in the heap of discarded clothes at the foot of Feather’s bed. She thumbed her clit frantically, biting her lip, but she knew it was gone. Hot frustration bled down through the still-tense muscles of her thighs. She blew her hair out of her face, every sensation—from the slight chafing on her inner thighs to the tickle of her own hair against the back of her neck—suddenly irritating.
The walkie crackled again. An older woman’s pack-a-day voice fuzzed through the speaker.
“Central for Lieutenant Pierce, Central for Lieutenant Pierce. Report to City Hall ASAP. Acknowledge. Over.”
She scrambled off Feather, kicking them in the hip in her rush to the edge of the bed. “Sorry!” she hissed, though really she was angry with them. She didn’t know why. She dropped to her stomach and fished through her pants until she found the ruggedized black plastic brick and clicked the PTT. “This is Pierce. On my way. Over.”
“Don’t keep her waiting. Over and out.”
Ramona scooted off the edge of the bed, getting her feet under her, stepping into her fatigues, and yanking them up without bothering to look for her underwear. She was dripping a little, but the dark fabric would hide the worst of it. Sports bra, undershirt, putting her head through an armhole and almost ripping the worn cotton trying to get it right. Her high felt suddenly like suffocating. Her fingers fumbled with buttons and zippers. She nearly forgot to buckle her gun belt.
Feather sighed, rolling over and reaching for the piece and lighter on the stacked milk crates beside the bed. Ramona felt a surge of horny frustration at the sight of their wide, round ass. She wrestled for a moment with the temptation to retrieve the paddle from the closet by the painted-over inner door. It made the most delicious sound against their creamy skin.
Don’t be a fucking idiot.
“Sorry,” she said lamely, feeling suddenly awkward in the doorway of the messy bedroom. “Sorry I kicked you.”
“No big,” said Feather, shrugging. They held the lighter to the piece’s bowl, the weed inside kindling into reddish embers. They sucked smoke, then let it stream out from their nostrils before pursing their lips to blow a ring. She wanted to hook her fingers in their mouth and yank their head up until they were staring helpless up at her, drooling on her hand. But it was over. They’d moved on from the scene, their shoulders relaxing, their manner shifting from bratty panic to an almost lizard-like calm.
Ramona picked at her right cuff, teasing a loose thread and telling herself that she didn’t want to cry, that this wasn’t a big deal. Just a fat hooker doing their job. “Settle up tomorrow?”
They smiled. The sunlight coming through the window and the leaves of the pear tree outside fell in dappled tatters across the goldfish sleeve tattooed on their left shoulder. “Sure, honey.”
She left by the back stairs, cutting through the apartment’s cramped little kitchen and taking the narrow, whitewashed steps two at a time. In the building’s deserted first-floor hall she paused before a water-spotted mirror to center her septum piercing and straighten the collar of her jacket where, embroidered in golden thread, the words MARYLAND WOMYN’S LEGION XX-XIII-V stood out bold against the green.