Circus IV
FFFF Bevy of lesbians
The morning mist leaves the distant wheat fields stretching dull silver. I let my dress twirl round my thighs.
I feel different. I feel a woman. A whole woman.
Viktor spinning a knife through the air asks, "Well, are you staying?"
He catches the knife by its handle, the motion abrupt and final.
"I'll take you to the Big Top."
The Big Top breathes around us, canvas walls swelling and collapsing with wind-like lungs.
Nearby, I hear the rustle of animals, the clank of chains.
"No chains for you," as he pats my rump.
Viktor turns his head. His mouth is close enough that I feel his breath on my cheek.
"If you are running, this isn't the life for you, Matilda."
Running?
Seeking?
Desiring?
God, I left the mending basket with the clowns.
"Nothing," I say. "I'm running toward."
He laughs, a sound like a knife being sharpened.
"Toward what?"
"The Big Top for a start."
Under the top is always a surprise.
My eyes are lured upward.
The elevated performance space.
The trapeze rigging sways.
Three lithe young women move beneath the apparatus, stretching, wrapping their wrists with leather straps, laughing with voices that carry the lilt of accents I cannot place.
"The Flying Delacroix Sisters," Viktor says. "Though none are sisters, and only one is Delacroix."
They pause at his approach, and I feel their attention shift to me like spotlights, warm and assessing.
The tallest has dark hair cropped short as a boy's, her body lean and muscled in a man's undershirt and trousers. The middle one is rounder, with copper hair piled under a scarf, her breasts heavy and free beneath a thin camisole. The youngest, or so she appears, has skin the colour of polished mahogany, her limbs long and graceful in a silk wrapper that hangs open to show a corset beneath.
"Fresh blood, Viktor?" the tall one asks, her voice a sexy rasp.
"Matilda."
He says my name as an introduction.
"She's considering joining the circus."
The copper-haired woman laughs, a rich sound that makes her breasts shake.
"We all considered, once. Then we simply stayed."
"Show her your act," Viktor says. "The practice version. She needs to understand what we value here."
The three exchange glances, some silent communication passing between them that excludes us. Then the dark-haired one shrugs, unwraps her wrists, and begins climbing the rope ladder toward the trapeze platform high above.
"Come up," she calls down. "Or watch from below. Your choice."
I choose to watch from below, standing beside Viktor as the three women take their positions on separate platforms. The rigging creaks as they swing out into the empty air of the tent, and then they are flying, catching each other, passing between trapezes with bodies that seem to defy the gravity that holds me anchored to the sawdust and sandy floor.
They move as one creature, six hands finding six wrists, legs scissoring around bars and each other, the copper-haired woman hanging by her knees while the dark-haired one somersaults through the space between her spread arms. The dark-skinned woman flies highest, her wrapper falling open to show the corset's hooks straining against her exertion, her breasts moving with each arc through the air.
I watch them catch each other, trust made flesh, and feel something twist in my stomach that is not entirely desire, though desire is there, thick and unexpected.
It is recognition. The way they move together, anticipating, responding, bodies speaking a language that needs no translation.
Bodies melding into bodies. A trio of flesh.
They finish with a final pass, the dark-haired woman landing on the copper-haired one's shoulders, both of them swinging from the same trapeze while the third circles them in a lower arc, reaching up to touch their ankles, their calves, the backs of their knees.
When they descend, they are breathing hard, skin filmed with sweat, and they move toward me with the loose-limbed grace of bodies still remembering flight.
"She's pretty," the dark-skinned one says, her eyes on my mouth. "Viktor has good taste."
"She's curious," Viktor corrects. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
The copper-haired woman steps closer, and I smell her—rosewater and sweat, something darker underneath like musk.
Her fingers, when they touch my chin, are rough from the trapeze bar; they remind me of Viktor's hands.
"We could show her. If she wants to learn."
I look at Viktor, but his expression gives nothing. This is my choice, then. The gate and the yellow window of a country town, or this—three women who fly, who touch each other with the same ease they show catching wrists in midair.
"I want to learn," I say.
The tall one smiles, her teeth white against her sun-darkened face. "Come, then. Our tent is still standing. For now. Catch you later, Viktor, unless you want to watch."
My arms are looped. Viktor is nowhere to be seen.
Their tent is small, a private space of faded rugs and pillows, trunks with costumes spilling sequins, the smell of perfume and resin and female bodies.
The three of them move through it with the comfort of long habitation, shedding layers as they go—the dark-haired one pulling off her undershirt to show small breasts with nipples dark and erect, the copper-haired woman loosening her camisole until it hangs open, the dark-skinned one stepping out of her wrapper entirely, corset and drawers her only covering.
I'm in a tent with three naked women. All washing around a basin of water.
Wet clothes letting water drip between cleavage, coolness making teats taut, runnels stream both sides of perfectly shaved mounds.
Puffy folds and crinkly, twisted flaps and clit-hoods on display.
"I see your eyes are betraying you, Matilda. Never seen the smooth fanny?"
"No," I say, honest.
"Our costumes," they answer as a chorus.
The dark-skinned one—her name, I learn, is Celeste.
"We have time. We could shave you."
Celeste approaches me, her movements fluid as her flight.
She touches my collar, my first button, her fingers more delicate than I expected.
"May I?"
I nod, unable to speak, and she undresses me with the patience of someone unwrapping a gift. Each button releases a small tension in my chest. The dress falls. The camisole ribbon unties beneath her fingers.
She pauses at my corset, looking to the others.
"Leave it," the tall one—Yvonne—says. "The contrast is pleasing. Soft flesh, hard structure."
They arrange me on the rugs, my corset digging into my hips, my drawers still tied, my breasts exposed to the tent's dim light.
Then they arrange themselves around me, and I am surrounded by female flesh in ways I have never imagined—Yvonne's lean hardness, the copper-haired Marguerite's generous curves, Celeste's long limbs dark against the pale rug.
"First," Marguerite says, "we show you what we show each other. What no audience sees."
She kneels beside Yvonne, and they face each other, breast to breast, nipple to nipple. They press close, and I watch their flesh flatten and merge, dark against pale, soft against firm, the small hard points of their nipples meeting and sliding apart with the friction of their movement.
They do not kiss. They move against each other, a slow rhythm that makes Marguerite's breath catch, that brings colour to Yvonne's throat.
"Like this," Yvonne murmurs, and her hands find Marguerite's waist, pulling her closer, harder.
"Skin knows skin. No need for more, sometimes."
Celeste moves behind me, her hands on my shoulders, guiding me to watch. Her breath warms my ear.
"You try. With me."
She turns me, and we kneel facing each other; my corset stays pressing into my ribs. She is taller, and she adjusts, lowering herself until our breasts align.
When we press together, I gasp.
The softness, the give of her, so different from Viktor's hardness.
Her nipples brush mine, and I feel the contact in my spine, in my knees, in the wetness that spreads between my legs despite my drawers.
"Move," she whispers, and we do, a slow sway that makes our breasts slide and catch, nipples dragging across each other, the friction building heat that has nothing to do with the tent's stuffy air.
"Like flying. You trust the air to hold you."
And my breasts and hers take on a free-form life. They jiggle together. They buffet in tandem. Jounce and quiver. Wobble and bob like ocean buoys on a sea of skin.
And my teats and her teats. Heavenly shards of bliss as they caress and stroke. As they tap and dab. As they dance around each other. As they seek each other's sensitive nuances of giving and taking.
I lose track of time.
I lose track of Marguerite and Yvonne, though I hear them somewhere nearby, breathing, murmuring.
Celeste and I move together, breast to breast, and I feel her heartbeat against my own, the double rhythm confusing my senses until I cannot tell which pulse is mine.
"Now," Yvonne says, her voice rougher than before, "we show you more."
They separate us, gently, and rearrange the pillows.
Marguerite lies back, her thighs open. Yvonne kneels over her, facing away from her head, and lowers herself until her mouth finds Marguerite's centre and her own fanny hovers above Marguerite's mouth.
"Sixty-nine," Celeste whispers to me, her hand finding my waist again, guiding me to watch from the side.
"Giving and receiving. Neither first nor second. No waiting. Instant mutual taking."
They move in concert, Yvonne's hips lowering to press her cunt to Marguerite's mouth, her own mouth buried between Marguerite's spread thighs.
I hear the wet sounds, the soft desperate noises Marguerite makes that are muffled by flesh, the way Yvonne's back arches when Marguerite's tongue finds the right spot.
Squishy, spit-splattering tongues. Lips locking on crinkled pink flaps.
Lush, lingering licking.
Licking. Flicking. Licking. Flicking.
"Your turn," Celeste says, and before I can protest or prepare, she is lowering me to the rugs, positioning herself above me, her dark thighs framing my face, her mouth hovering over my corseted stomach.
"Trust," she says, and lowers herself.
Her cunt presses to my mouth, and I taste her—salty, musky, the essence of a woman my age that I have never known I craved.
At the same moment, her mouth finds me through my drawers, hot breath soaking the cotton, her tongue pressing the fabric against my swollen flesh.
"Oooh! Aahh!"
I moan against her, and the vibration makes her shudder above me.
We find a tempo, awkward at first, my tongue uncertain against her folds, her mouth more skilled, pulling my drawers aside with teeth and tongue until she can taste me directly. The sensation doubles back on itself—pleasure given becoming pleasure received, her moans against my cunt making me lick her harder, which makes her moan more.
I stab with my tongue into her centre. My tongue inside her slit. Twisting. Turning. Manipulating.
I feel Marguerite and Yvonne watching, feel their hands on my breasts, my thighs, encouraging.
The four of us become a single breathing creature, tangled in ways that have nothing to do with the trapeze and everything to do with flight.
Celeste lifts her mouth from me, gasping.
"Scissoring," she says. "You must learn this. The way women fuck when they have no cock between them."
They rearrange us again, and I find myself facing Celeste, our legs interlocked, our cunts pressed together.
She holds my hands, our fingers interlaced, and we begin to move, grinding against each other, clit to clit, the friction building a heat that centres in my belly and spreads outward until my toes curl, until my spine arches of its own accord.
Tipping the velvet. Combined fem-slick, rubbing and grinding. Absolutely sensational.
Her grind. My rubbing.
Her rub. My grinding.
The slick joins. The slick slides through each other's silky, tacky velvet, exposed folds.
"Like this," she pants, rolling her hips, and I match her, finding the angle that makes us both cry out.
"Aaah!"
"Ooohh!"
Our wetness mixes, our flesh slides, and I understand why they call it scissoring—our legs scissoring open and closed, our bodies cutting through the air of the tent like blades.
Occasionally, an amazing escalating detonation of bliss as clits collide. Cowls roll back. Polished nubs mate in fem-joy. Bead tickles bead. Her private pink jelly bean is best buddy with my cute sweet pea.
Marguerite and Yvonne join us, not interrupting but adding, their bodies pressing against our sides, their mouths finding our breasts, our throats, each other.
Throats nibbled. Ear lobes sucked. Collar bones snuzzled.
Four soft bodies tangled, and I lose track of whose hand is where, whose mouth tastes my nipple, whose moan vibrates against my shoulder.
I come first, the orgasm ripping through me with a force that makes me scream, my hips jerking against Celeste's, my fingers crushing hers.
"Hnnghh!"
She follows moments later, her cunt pulsing against mine, her cry muffled in Marguerite's shoulder.
"Aaahhh!"
The floor is a heap of limbs and sweat and spent desire, and I lie there with three women I met maybe an hour ago, my body marked by their mouths, their hands, the friction of their skin.
The corset digs into my ribs, a reminder of the structure I have not fully abandoned, even here.
"Will you stay?" Yvonne asks, her voice lazy, satisfied.
I think of my mother, the yellow window, the wheat fields that stretch empty toward a horizon I have never crossed.
I think of Viktor, who brought me here and then left me to these women, trusting me to choose.
"I don't know," I say, and it is the truest thing I have spoken.
Celeste laughs, her hand finding my hair, stroking.
"Good. The ones who know too quickly never stay. The ones who don't know—" she pauses, her fingers tracing my collarbone, the hollow above my breastbone that Viktor kissed, "—they become the circus. They become the flight."
I lie among three women, my body singing with new knowledge, my heart beating a rhythm that matches no clock I have ever known.
The reversed Lovers card waits in my discarded dress, and I do not reach for it.
Some fortunes, I am learning, make themselves.