Emily 21

Her name was Emily. That what she told us soon after we moored our boat on the long wooden dock at the edge of her farm. She came out, wiping her hardworking hands on her jeans, with a smile that shone with genuine honesty. She reached for each of us in turn, pulling us into a hug that said "welcome home."

Later that night as we unpacked, my father commented on that hug, saying how lucky we were to find someone who would open her world to us so completely and with such ease. I agreed, already dreaming of her soft blue eyes; they wrinkled ever so slightly at the corners, and I imagined all of the secrets that hid in those creases as I tucked my dresses into the chest at the foot of my new bed.

My father had chosen Emily's farm, tucked away on a small island in the north end of Lake Huron, because he wanted no one to bother him as he finally finished his newest novel. That first morning he waved his arms over his head, crowing "NO TELEPHONE!" Frightening the goats, who scampered away until their legs locked and they toppled into the grass. That was the first time I heard Emily laugh. She stood on her porch, dressed only in her nightshirt, woolen socks bunching at her ankles, and cried with laughter. I watched her, awkward in my teenage body, and longed to be exactly like her.

The rest of that first day I was allowed to wander, my knapsack on my back, through the woods of her property. The island was tiny, one of a chain that stretched through the blue-green water of the lake. It was all hers, and ours, for the rest of the summer. I found a shelf of rock that leaned like Narcissus over the lake, it was instantly mine. Removing my shoes I dipped my feet into the icy water, feeling goosebumps shiver up my skin. From within my knapsack I found the book I had already dog-eared in over a dozen places. It had been my companion on the journey, I was reaching the final pages, and I didn't want anyone to see as I cried.

As I was grieving the loss of my literary friends, I heard the soft clanking of a bell behind me. I turned and came face to face with a goat, it's beard graying. "Are you lost?" I asked, reaching out to let it sniff my hand like I would a dog. The goat stretched toward my hand, smelling me, and nibbled delicately at my fingers. Then it reached out with it's strong jaw, and bit me as hard as it could.

I screamed. The goat turned and ran, disappearing into the trees as the bruise from its bite blossomed purple on my hand. I stood, clutching my hand to my chest, and cursing the goat as best I could. My tears began anew. I ran, my feet bare in the grass, back to the farm house. Upstairs my father was pounding at his typewriter, down, Emily bent over a ball of dough, kneading it with her strong hands. I stopped short and stayed silent despite my need to cry out. I watched Emily. The way she moved the dough, her shoulders bunching under the men's shirt she wore. It had fallen open slightly and as she moved I could catch a glimpse of her pale breasts beneath. That curve of flesh mesmerized me and I stood there, watching her, until she stopped at the sight of me. "June?" She called out. And I felt suddenly silly, with my bruised hand bunched in my summer cardigan, my dress stained with dirt.

"A goat bit me." The minute I said this I felt even more the fool, then more greater when she broke out in her laugh once more. She stopped when my eyes filled with tears.

"Oh dear." She cooed, and brought me to a seat at her table. "Let me take a look." When I pulled my hand away from my sweater she took a deep breath, then prodded my hand with her own flour-coated fingers. I squeaked in pain as she touched my bruised flesh. When she finished her examination she leaned back and smiled. "You are fine, nothing's broken. It's rare that my goats bite hard enough to bruise, he must have really liked you." She winked at me then turned to her ice chest, filled a rag with ice and brought it back. "Hold this on the bruise, it will help with any swelling."

I sat there, my bottom lip between my teeth and held the ice to my hand. It felt good, and another rush of goosebumps coated my skin. Emily returned to her kneading. She was quiet at first, humming to herself under her breath, but after a while she spoke, "So June, how old are you?"

I sat up a little straighter, "I just turned eighteen this past May."

"That's a good age, are you planning on going to college?"

I shook my head. "No? That's a shame, education is good for girls."

"Did you go to college?" I ventured, watching as she dropped the ball of dough into a large bowl and stretched a checkered cloth over top. She looked up at the clock for a long moment, then took her finger and scribbled 2:30 into the flour remaining on her table.

"No, when I turned eighteen I inherited this farm. And here I am, four years later, surrounded by goats." I was shocked, she was so near me in age and yet she seemed so much older. She moved elegantly around the kitchen, pulling another large bowl down and starting the bread making process once more. "What will you do if you won't go to college?" I shrugged, I hadn't really decided. My father kept pushing secretary school on me but it felt so uninspiring. "Do you have some football playing sweetheart that wants to settle down?"

"No!" I blurted, a little too forcefully. Emily looked up at me, surprised. "I mean, not really, I haven't really found a boy I like enough yet."

She smiled, something a little like mischief creeping into her expression. "Boys are trouble, that's for sure. That's why I like my island, not a boy in sight." She began humming once more as she mixed her ingredients, I watched as her hand crept to her shirt and unbuttoned another button. My body felt foreign as she did it, I lost feeling in my toes. She just kept humming to herself as she mixed her batter, we stopped speaking but I wasn't sure I could have responded if she asked me another question. When she dumped the dough on the table and reached her hands into its stickiness, she leaned forward. Her shirt gaped open, revealing her delicate breasts. She wore no undergarment and I could see everything, I couldn't tear my eyes away from where her soft flesh tapered and turned from white to the deep pink of her excited nipples.

I sat, stiff in my seat, unable to think. Emily just kept humming, pretending to be unaware of anything that was happening. My chest tightened and I could feel my heartbeat, first in my chest, then in my belly, before it dipped lower to the curve between my legs.

The pounding of my father coming down the stairs jolted me to my feet, "Thank you for the ice." I practically shouted at her, before rushing back out into the open fields of the island. I ran back to my Narcissus rock, heedless of whether or not my father would think I was fleeing him. When I got there I plunged into the water up to the hem of my skirt, trying to calm the fire in my flesh. My heart was pounding and I could feel small spasms radiating from between my legs. I leaned against the rock, breathing heavily.

When the vision of what Emily had shown me in the kitchen would not leave my mind or unsear itself from my flesh I found myself glancing around, though I knew there was no one there who could possibly see me. I pulled myself up until I was seated once more on the rock.

My girlfriends and I once stole a bottle of wine from my father's collection and passed it between the four of us until there was none left. In the secret-telling that followed, Kelly and Mary-Anne revealed that they pleasured themselves, I was shocked, as was Doris, who insisted that was only for your boyfriend to do. When Doris had asked how they described something both exciting and completely foreign. I had been too terrified to try, yet now their instructions came to mind alongside what I had seen and I found myself unable to resist.

Pulling the hem of my skirt up to bunch around my hips I reached my hand between the elastic of my panties and my hot flesh. I pushed through the thick hair that covered my mound and parted my lips, revealing a warmth that immediately spread into my belly. I ran a single finger down the length of my slit and shuddered. My legs opened even more and I lay back against the rock, already panting. Using two fingers I rubbed at myself once more, finding the pulsing center of pleasure at the top of my mound. I stroked at it, feeling the first waves of exhilaration and thinking of Emily. Not just of her breasts, bare and free underneath her shirt, but of her hair, pulled back from her cheeks in a silken braid, of her strength, and of her beauty. She was beautiful, her features were narrow, her eyes wide, her mouth a small bee sting. She didn't look like any woman I knew, with their perfect hair and skirts. She dressed like a man, and worked like a man, all while being irresistibly female.

My fingers were slick, I chased my pleasure with rhythmic strokes until I could feel a new warmth spreading down my thighs. My toes curled inward and I arched back, feeling my first orgasm like a tidal wave. I collapsed against the rock, spent, my cunt twitching. I loved that word: cunt. It sounded like everything a woman shouldn't be but was.

When I finally found my way back to the farmhouse it was getting dark and the scent of dinner was drifting over the grass. My father was seated at the table, Emily next to him. They were laughing as he shuffled through the day's pages. Neither of them noticed as I walked in. Until my father finally looked away from Emily and saw me standing at the end of the table, "June-Bug! There you are!" He seemed nervous, like a child caught with chocolate before dinner. His head, balding at the top, shone in the lone light hanging above the table, his glasses had slid down his nose.

Emily broke in with her musical voice, "We've kept dinner warm for you, the bread I made earlier should still be hot." She emphasised the last word, and both my father and I flinched. She just smiled and swept into the kitchen, leaving the two of us alone. He tapped his papers into a neat pile and handed them to me solemnly.

"Editor." He said, and I took them from him, slipping my red pencil out of its home in my skirt pocket. I set at the pages with pleasure, I loved my father's writing and it helped dissipate the tension that filled the room like some strange toxin. My father cleared his throat, "Emily said you hurt your hand?"

I waved it at him, "Just a bruise, she gave me some ice." I paused, then leaned toward him with a page, "Did you mean to put a comma here? It turns this into a list I don't think you want." He took the page from me.

"Oh definitely not, take that out. That was very nice of her. I was saying that maybe you'd like to help her with some of the farm work. She told me summer is a very busy season for her." I felt another rush of blood into my belly.

"Sure, sounds fine." I said, attempting to sound casual, the pencil in my mouth.

When Emily returned with dinner she found us both hunched over my father's work, interrupting ourselves with casual conversation here and there. It was how we were at home and it was strange to have her present for something so familiar. She soon pulled us away from our work with stories of our lives and of hers, we spoke familiarly, with ease. We found a Canadian station that came in clear over the radio and ended the night around her fireplace, her and my father drinking brandy, me drinking the sight of her.

The rest of the week passed with infuriating speed. Emily had told the truth to my father, there was a lot to do at the farm, she worked me hard through the day and each night I sat with my father's writing. I learned how to wear men's pants - though I still preferred my skirts - how to milk a goat, weed a garden, shovel out a barn. I developed blisters on my hands and an ache in my back, but every day I spent next to Emily.

Now that she knew she could tease me she began to do so, infrequently, but enough that every evening I found myself racing to my rock to release the desire that built up inside me with her every action. She would press herself against me as she showed me proper milking technique, her hands "accidentally" grazing my breasts until my nipples ached. She spent more time in just her nightshirt, which seemed to have grown much shorter since the first morning, so when she bent over I could clearly spy the soft moon-curve of her bare ass. She buttoned her shirt with fewer and fewer buttons, until late in the week I found her hauling hay into the loft, her shirt flapping open and her breasts bare to the world. Always, however, she would just wink and act like nothing was different.

I began to explore in my self-ministrations, trying fingers in new parts, changing the speed at which I stroked myself. I felt as if I had lost years in my prudish reluctance, and now I attacked my body with the hunger for pleasure Emily had awoken inside of me.

Yet she would not say anything to me, would not acknowledge what was happening between us. It drove me wild, and each time I brought myself to orgasm I wondered why it couldn't be with her.

My father seemed to have fallen under her spell as well, I could see Emily in the women he was writing, feel the strained eroticism. Until one day he gave me only half his usual pages. When I asked he explained that he didn't feel comfortable with me reading what he had written, that it was better suited for a man's eyes.

Later that night, as I walked down the hall of the farmhouse, Emily's door had been left slightly ajar. I glanced in, mesmerized, she was holding some of my fathers pages. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, her night shirt had ridden up to her waist, her mouth was open, and her hand was tucked between her legs. She moaned low, then looked out the door into my eyes; her smile grew wicked and she spread her legs further. I watched as she rubbed herself languidly, bringing herself to climax with my father's words. When she was done she set the pages aside and walked slowly to the door, she beckoned me toward her with a glistening finger. I approached, shaking. "Hey June-Bug." She practically purred.

"H-hey." I replied. She kept beckoning until I was right at the threshold and inches away from her. She traced my cheek with that finger, still wet with her come. I opened my mouth and she ran it over my teeth. I closed my lips around her finger, tasting her for the first time. She let her finger trail over my bottom lip, then, with a giggle, she closed the door.

That night I touched myself until I wept with desire. I had to have her.

The next morning Emily excused me from my chores, she told me to go exploring, to shake off the week's work. I could not hide my disappointment but did as I was told, setting out in my men's trousers to seek the other shore of Emily's Island. Halfway through my hike I realized my mistake, my knapsack was empty of the canteen I thought I had packed. My throat was dry, my limbs already exhausted. I doubled back.

I heard them before I saw them. Their passion rose over the usual sounds of the farm. I could hear her laugh. So bittersweet. I kept walking through the field, determined to see. When I came in sight of the barn there was Emily, naked. Her body pressed against the rough wood of the barn as my father stood in front of her, just as bare. His wiry body was brown in the sun. I crouched low, unable to tear myself from the sight of her in ecstacy.

"Frank, Frank..." She repeated his name as a mantra, he knelt before her as if in prayer. His mouth pressed against her sex, he feasted on her. She squirmed and cried out as he explored her with his tongue. Twice she pulled away from him as if unable to bear his mouth any longer before she finally came in great, shuddering spasms. She collapsed against him into the dirt. There he slipped himself inside her, slowly at first, easing her apart, opening her to him. She rode him, her head thrown back, her breasts lifted to the sky.

I felt the jealousy for what they shared begin to eat me from the back of my throat. It did not matter that my father was my father, he was only a man, giving Emily something I could not. I watched, my eyes only on her as she bucked and moaned above him. I could hear each time he thrust into her, the wet sounds of flesh meeting flesh. She bent and kissed him, hard. Then she rose back up and laughed. She was so foul, so uninhibited.

My father flipped her onto her back and she was lost to me, I left them as he came upon her stomach with a great groan. I slipped around the long way to the farmhouse, found my canteen and took off once more to the far end of the island. As I walked I thought of her, of the sight of her naked body so free in the sunlight. Of how only women had ever made me feel this way, low in my cunt. I knew that I was wrong in that way for a long time, it was what made me duck from the kisses of the boys at my school. It was what made me obsess over friendships with other girls who could care less. It was what made me want the life that Emily was living now, alone on an island, making her own rules.

When I returned there was no evidence of the lovemaking I had witnessed. My father and Emily sat at opposite ends of the table, he with his pages, her with her accounts for the farm. When I entered they both looked up and smiled. My father handed me some pages and I seated myself between them, each holding the secret of that morning close to ourselves.

I fell asleep with the exhaustion of my hike and found myself dreaming, not of Emily, but of myself. I stood on an empty plain that reflected the sky. I stared down at myself. I was beautiful. Women clustered behind me, touching me, removing my dress until I stood bare. I was calm. Happiness spread through me. When I awoke it did not go away.

That morning my father once more began working at his typewriter, disappearing into the world he was creating. I made my way downstairs dressed in my favorite dress, it was light pink with a graceful embroidery of blue flowers at the hem. Emily was there, pouring coffee, her hair bound back in a braid. She glanced up at me, then stopped mid-pour to take me in. I'm sure I looked different, a blush reddened my cheeks and lips, my black hair was curled. She was as she always was: her flesh without decoration, her clothes without pretense.

I approached her and she set down the coffee pot. She faced me full on and I could see the curve of her body beneath her loose shirt. Before she could speak I pressed my body against hers and slipped my hand beneath the worn cotton of her shirt to feel the soft flesh beneath. My lips found hers with a hunger, and her mouth responded to mine, parting and allowing her tongue to run over my lips. My hand crept from her waist to the warm pillow of her breast. I squeezed, then stroked my fingertips over her nipple. She gasped and pulled away, staring at me. "June?"

"Emily." I responded, and kissed her once more. I pulled at the shirt that confined her, pushing her against the ice chest as I undid the buttons. She allowed me to do it alone, watching me, breathless with desire. I freed her, baring her torso. The shirt dropped to the floor, forgotten. I ran my hands over her flesh, clutching at her breasts while I kissed her, first at her mouth, then at her neck, then between her breasts, before finally taking each of her nipples into my mouth. Her chest heaved with my every touch. I reached down, undoing the buttons of her jeans, and slid my hand down until I found her mound as I did my own that first day. I rubbed at her cunt, once, twice. Then brought my wet fingers to my mouth and licked them clean.

Emily whimpered. I walked away. She followed me, obedient as a dog, as I led her from the farmhouse and the pounding of my father's typewriter. I took her into the woods. There I pressed her against a tree and slid my fingers over her cunt once more, twice more, and walked away. She continued to follow me, allowing me to stop and touch her whenever I wanted. Sometimes I would kiss her, other times I would hold her away so I could look at her respond to my touch.