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“What’re you thinkin’ about?” she asked, drawing a line from my ice cream cone, up my belly, to my breast. She lowered her head, sucking my nipple slowly into her warm mouth. With the heel of her hand pressing hard on my hip bone, she flicked her tongue lazily over the stiff peak. Her fingers reached around to dig into my ass cheek, like she was branding me with her handprint, leaving a mark, claiming me again.

“I was just thinkin’ that you’re insatiable.”

“Mm. Now I’ve got you in my bed, I may never let you go.”

Releasing my breast, she lifted up and straddled me. Her lips were wet and rosy, matching the blush of her cheeks. The flush of color made her look younger than thirty-two, but when she settled her body over mine, her soft pubic hair rubbed against my belly, and there was no innocence left lingering in her gaze. “But now tell me what you’re really thinkin’.”

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with her honey scent. “I was thinkin’ about what we just did.”

“Was it… Was that okay for you?”

“Okay?” I breathed a laugh. “Abey, it was…” I was at a loss for words. How could I explain to her how it had felt? The physical feelings were easy, but the other stuff, not so much. Sliding out from under her, I sat up, and she kneeled in front of me on the bed, sitting back on her heels. “It was beautiful.”

“Yeah, but was it, I dunno, too much? The harness and the…”

“No.”

She looked down at the bedspread, plucking at the fabric. “I always kinda felt ashamed.” She looked up, pegging me with her gorgeous eyes, blue like the endless clear sky over our little mountain town. “I know what you’re thinkin’. But I meant I was embarrassed about the dildo.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t know much about that kinda thing. I mean, I’ve never watched porn. I was always too afraid of who might know, like maybe there are internet bots who keep track of that shit, and somehow it’ll get out to the public.” She laughed. “But I saw this TV show once where two women used a strap-on. I think it was on Netflix. The minute I knew somethin’ like that existed, I wanted it. But does that make me… Does it say somethin’ about me? About the kind of lesbian I must be if I like that?”

I could feel my brows furrowing. “I don’t understand.”

“Remember that date you picked me up from a while back?”

Seriously? Did I remember the first time she’d touched her lips to mine? Of course I did. I could never forget that night. “Yes.”

“Well, my date—cute Kayla was her name.” I laughed, but she said, “I don’t wanna talk about her. Her eyelashes traumatized me.”

I giggled, reaching out for her, drawing my fingertips slowly over her collarbones.

“I’m tryin’ to be serious here,” she said with a smirk. “Anyway, cute Kayla asked if I was butch. And she asked what kind of women I liked. So, does usin’ a dildo mean I’m butch? That I think of myself as a man or that I want to be like a man?” She blinked fast, uncertainty making her nervous, and it all made more sense now, her question about the definition of butch in my truck that first night. “’Cause I don’t. Not that I’m sayin’ there’s anything wrong with butch lesbians. I dunno why I can’t get this outta my head, but I mean, I guess I don’t know what I am, but that’s not why I like what we did.”

I climbed up on my knees, too, facing her. “Why did you like what we did?”

As she breathed deeply, thinking about what she wanted to say, I reached for her hand and twined my fingers between hers, then did the same with her other hand. The vulnerability in her smile made me want to reach forward to kiss her, so I did. A light kiss on her mouth, then little baby kisses down her jaw.

Squeezing my fingers gently, she said, “Because it was with you. Because I made you feel good. And if you want to, you can wear it. You can do that to me too. It’s not a power thing. I wasn’t tryin’ to dominate you or anything like that.”

My voice hummed softly against her neck. “It’d be okay if it was a power thing. I might like you to dominate me.”

She bit the inside of her cheek, her lip dipping down with the movement, when I leaned back a little to look at her.

“Really?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. But if you don’t feel butch, you don’t have to be butch. You don’t have to be anything. Just be you.”

She smiled. Her face lit up like there was a sixty-watt bulb behind it. “Thank you.”

She wrapped me up in her arms and turned, pulling me down on top of her as she fell back to the bed.

I straddled her this time, loving her warmth beneath me, loving the way her shiny, freshly washed blond curls spread out over her pillow, how the pink in her cheeks deepened and how her smile felt like it was just for me. Like I was the only person on the planet lucky enough to see her shine.

A light glinted in her eye as she spread her arms out wide across her bed. “C’mon now. Smear that ice cream cone all over me, baby. Do your worst.”

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