Ce Verre Levé aux Prêtresses de Cypris !

     Well, here she was. She stood, crowned by the gold of her hair, in the frame of the door. Balancing her weight on one foot, then the other, she looked almost playful in the falsely coy, purposeful tilts of her hips — dazing, vertiginous. She caught Yulia’s gaze right off her face like one picks ripe orchard fruits. She liked the taste of it. She invited it, guided it from her lips to her neck, shoulder, down the cliff edge of her flank and into the hollow of her waist, and back to her lips, then higher even, her eyes. 

« How did you get in? Yulia asked, and she couldn't bring herself to sound even a hint reprimanding.
— How I usually do, Eva replied. By slipping through the cracks… »

Her sinuous silhouette drank the low light of Yulia’s home. 

« Invite me in? » she teased, voice light and airy, knowing damn well she would be. 

And she was. Yulia closed the door behind her, took her shawl off her shoulders, and followed the gentle chime of her ankle bells to the salon.
Eva threw herself on the red sofa, draping her legs over an armrest, reclining into the luxurious throws and cushions. She carried herself with confidence, as if she had always been there—and she had. It had been a while since her last visit, but the house seemed to have wanted to keep her in, to selfishly hold onto her—her, free, light on her feet, light on the earth, escaping and slipping from grasps with a grace unmatched—the house had wanted her to stay. The curtains hiding away the small salon were still alit with her perfume—her scent, rather, high-pitched, sugary, tart under the tongue when it crawled its way inside of Yulia, who spoke first:

« Would you like a tea?
— Ah, Eva laughed, I was hoping you’d offer me another drink… »

Yulia laughed too. 
Eva liked the buzz. Eva liked the spin, the spiral; she always managed to climb out of it rather than sink down into its depths. Twyrine was kind to her, perhaps because she was kind to twyrine. Yulia liked how Eva’s honeyed eyes caught slivers of the golden greens twirling in her glass as she poured the drink. Twyrine was not kind to Yulia, likely because she wasn’t kind to it, and held onto it like onto cigarettes: as a vice that helped her sleep at night. However, Eva was kind to her. So, they drank.

Shaking off the heavy blanket of silence that had fallen over them, Eva asked: « Have you been smoking a lot?
— ... Quite, I would say, Yulia answered after a pause in which she tried to detect the smell of smoke on her skin. Why? Do I reek of tobacco?
— Not reek, Eva shook her head,  I wouldn't say reek, but your clothes have the scent of it and rolling paper.
— Ah, well… It helps me think. Or... not-think? Helps me keep in my mind what needs to be kept and push away that doesn’t. Allows me to see… numbers, paths, roads, structures without the fog of waltzing thoughts.
— And what do they look like without this fog? »

Yulia didn’t have an answer.

     Eva catches a drop that threatens to spill past her lips with the edge of her glass. Her eyes are on Yulia. They have been on Yulia for a while, which Yulia is not going to pretend she didn’t notice. She likes to come over and drink, come over and watch Yulia smoke (she doesn’t smoke, not cigarettes, she prefers the sweetness of dried herbs in her lungs). She likes to lounge in the silk throws, into the holds of velvety pillows. She likes to watch Yulia play chess alone, she likes looking at her hands. She likes Yulia’s hands. She likes to come over and feel those hands on her—they’re nervous and precise in ways foreign to Eva, they’re heavy with a soberness she thinks is touching. Yulia has quite Adoring hands, for an atheist.

Eva breaks the silence first: « Yulia, may I be honest?
— Certainly.
— I came into your house wanting you to make love to me. Wanting to make love to you. With you. »

Yulia drinks her twyrine loudly. It’s not the first time Eva seeks her company for this, and it’s not the first time she says this—perhaps even word for word. There’s something in her voice that Yulia struggles to look at straight on, something that feels like staring into the sun. Something that Yulia struggles to swallow—something profoundly delectable, sensuous in ways she’s not sure her pale long hands are made for. 

« Love, huh? » she tries to keep her voice light, airy in Eva’s way, playful. « This is what you’ve come to my house for. Because you're overflowing with it.
— Oh », Eva replies, and her voice is keen, intense in ways that almost-do not match her, « you have no idea.
— Was the twyrine to loosen me up?
— No, that was to mask the scent of tobacco. (She laughs, loudly, frankly, almost delighted by her own joke.) Not that it will matter now… »
As if punched out of her by the sugar in Eva’s voice, Yulia blurts out: « I'd like to undress you.
— And I'd like to undress you », Eva replies. Her voice has lost its edge. It’s thick and piercing under the haze of twyrine that seems to bring warmth to her cheeks. « Or see you undress. »

One of them springs off the sofa at some point, they meet where the free, ecstatic birds of Eva’s hands fly to land on Yulia’s face and pull her in, pull her on, welcome her weight all over. Eva gets her on her feet, or maybe she pulls Eva by the hand, and the house sighs heavily when their mouths meet, when their hands wander, relieved. They bump into table-chair-door-door again—before they make it to the bed. 

Eva just short of throws herself on the mattress, legs rubbing together in a genuine, overwhelmingly sweet gesture of excitement before parting hungrily, wide enough for Yulia to settle between. Eva looks at her, arms raised above her head as if drawing her own halo, blushing face lost in a sea of golden, silky hair. She’s sinuous, she’s uncatchable, and yet she throws herself into Yulia’s hands, offering arms, hips, thighs, letting Yulia’s cold touch be kissed fiercely by the warmth of her skin. When Yulia bends to her to kiss her, to catch a cheek, a mouth, a flushed-pink inch of skin, Eva undoes her cravat, tugs on her vest, seems electrified in gestures that she’s done many times and yet that come crashing against Yulia’s body with airs of an over-excited inexperience. 
Yulia’s hands pull on strings, wander into the partition of the slit of Eva’s skirt, pull on straps, slide under the silk of her top and over her breasts, offering the gentle hold of her cool palm. Meticulous, careful, focused, she undresses her. The warm peach of Eva’s skin catches the colors that bounce off the blanket, duvet, pillows like a canvas holding onto pigment. The entire house seems to throw itself to her, onto her, drunk too on the exhilarating novelty of Eva’s unabashed, ataraxic voluptuousness.  

Undressing Yulia feels like scraping gravel off a dirt road, peeling the layer of pebbles to uncover the sand, the soil, the flower stems, the suffocating earth that then welcomes the touch of Eva’s stars-fingers. Yulia’s skin seems translucent, drinking the moonlight like summer peaches do the sun. The trip-wires of her veins adorn her lean arms, her bony wrists, her deft hands — Eva’s fingers follow them like tightropes.

With a heel, Eva pulls Yulia’s bent knee to her, holding it in place between her thighs. She hitches her hips, the warmth of her loins climbing up Yulia’s thigh like vine does a tower.

« You know you could have me cum just from this », Eva breathes, pulled out of herself right above the breast, against Yulia’s mouth as she bends to kiss her. « From letting me… Just like that.
— I know. I prefer a more hands-on approach.
— Hands-on? That's unlike you. I saw you lost so deep in thoughts you barely even breathed. You seemed to feed off calculations and minutiae, like your own thoughts could sustain you. Your fingers twitched involuntarily, as if nothing but comatose reflexes. Few believe that your iron peg of a heart could flow into a vena amoris. Few believe there is warmth in those hands of yours…
— I know what I am capable of. This is not what I want this time... This is not what I know you want. You feel something, don’t you? When you hold my hand… »

As if trying to offer proof, she squeezes Eva’s palm, and Eva holds her hand back — it is warm — pushing her thumb in the hollow of Yulia’s wrist and finding the pulse.

« Oh », Eva hums with her wide smile betraying her tone she wanted serious and grave—just for fun, « don't you know a lot!
— I want to taste you. I want to feel you around my fingers. »

A laugh leaps out of Eva, meeting Yulia’s lips, and she replies: 

« Exploration through the touch? You sound like you're asking me for a dance. Isn't that more of my thing? Say, the caress of velvet, the languid brush of silk — the silk of your pillows and throws, the grazing swirls of incense smoke, isn’t that more of my thing? 
— You’re chatty.
— You’re lost in thoughts. You’re as chatty as I am, inside. You love my voice.
— Can we say it's our thing when we're like this?
— Come kiss me. Let me have one more taste before you unravel me, mathematician. »

And Yulia, alive with an electric current that ran through her like blood pouring out, pushes herself into the overflowing cup of Eva’s lips — her wordless libations and the votive flame flickering in the golden cradles of her eyes powerful enough for Yulia to find it holy in itself. 
Eva bites into the offered treat of Yulia’s mouth, pulling her closer to her face, to her chest, into the hold of her legs as they wrap themselves around Yulia’s thighs. She seeks the aniseed taste of her Twyrine-coated tongue like of a red, sickeningly sweet apple; diving once more as if to pull it out of her like a beating, excited heart.

Bodies are like towns except in the ways that they're not — and this is not Yulia’s area of expertise, if area of expertise there is; but her fingers know, they've known. Here are the paths of Eva's ligaments, diving south from the sides of her jaw to the alcove of her collarbone — here is the road of her sternum, traveled trail between the hills of her breasts and, lower, of her ribcage — here are the bridges of her ribs, leaping across her lungs — here are the hidden streets of her veins sprawling all across her, as if drawn, erased, drawn again, a frantic draughtswoman's work to make her alive, to capture her glow, and constellations-eyes, her empyreal smile. 
Here are the wells, their waters are honeyed and they catch the low light below the canopy of her heavy lashes ; 
here are the bushes of drygrass and wildflowers nestled in the niches of her armpits, south of her navel, covering the hilltop of her mound of Venus ;
here, as Yulia takes the road long-traveled down Eva's eager, febrile body—or rather, the road takes her, pulling her to it with promises always kept—are the springs. 
Her fingers part the lips of Eva's cunt in the way actors peek through the curtains, eager, fiery, overflowing with nerve, and find their way inside of her. It doesn't even feel like prying her open. She’s slick with hunger. She offers the bare resistance of closed doors that come ajar under a glance, of empty houses hungry for guests. 
Eva is not empty. She’s loud of voice, heavy in the mattress, full in the chest and belly of a love spilling over. Yulia’s fingers part her in the middle like the pages of a red, savored book. It isn't unlike peeling a sweet fruit with bare hands, finding where the skin gives way, where the flesh fits around the fingers, where the juices kiss fingertips and knuckles — it is like one gently picks apart an orange, and then — eats. 

Eva inhales sharply — breath wrung out of her — holds it — lets go. Her hands find the back of Yulia’s head, her short, uneven hair that she can’t quite run her fingers through. 
Holds suspended — very high — on unstable scaffolding — it’s about finding your balance — it’s about finding your footing — before a leap that is coming, that Eva knows is coming.

Yulia is purposeful. The metronomy of her tongue and fingers is calculated—wants to be calculated, fails as it unravels. As she unravels. As Eva’s Astartish hips seek her, making her heart swell with pride.

Yulia coats the welcoming calyx of Eva’s cunt with her own sap, with her spit /
Yulia laps up the lips of her offered chalice — her taste more potent than twyrine, its alcoholic bitterness barely a mirage in her, light like ghosts of graphite lines on white-again sketch paper /
Yulia finds the lines to trace to let herself in, to let her shape fit, to be one into another /

Yulia is not a botanist, Yulia is not a devotee, Yulia is not an architect, Yulia is not a mathematician, Yulia is proud and prideful and impudent, Yulia is Eva’s, Yulia is busy, Yulia welcomes the nectar-sap-syrup-cyprine on her tongue like she drinks the emerald twyrine. The « I » (subject) of her own self is lost in the sating of her thirst, the I is the line drawing Eva bold and gold, is the path into her, is Yulia’s two fingers, meeting in one.
Eva tenses — body a string, a cello string, Yulia’s expert hands on her-in her-fingertips finding the note, the chord, the hint/point/stigma (botanical) or anther (botanical) or (god what else, what else), tongue finding the peak the point the divine curve the lost logarithmic spiral. Yulia makes passageways (opens/parts/bares her open), and Eva comes by slipping through the cracks…

Eva's voice escapes her, thin, high, wrung out not thicker than a sewing thread as she toes the edge, as she almost-hesitate — Eva's voice leaps out, followed by a loud, almost-relieved exhale when she jumps, when she cums, when the hesitation before the plunge recedes like a wave to let an endless string of others wash ashore, and she lets the warm sea strike her like waves a cliff.
She had pushed herself on her elbows. She lets herself fall back limply, almost comically. 
Yulia pulls her fingers out, and Eva's body seems to want to keep her in, keep her close, tightening around her knuckles as if wishing to graze her fingers with teeth. Yulia’s hand is wet, coated a translucent honey — she lets herself have a taste, which pulls a hiccupped, electrified laugh out of Eva. She puts her hand by Eva's hip, palm to the sheet and fingers off (careful of stains), and pushes herself up right as one of Eva's hands finds her arm, her shoulder, the back of her neck, and pulls to kiss her. Eva's legs tighten around her thighs. She's mellow, she's molasses, she's messy in her kiss — wet as spit and cyprine meet, mirror lovers both bubbly and warm.

« Hey, Eva whispers against Yulia’s cheek, would you teach me how to play chess? Would you teach me how to sprawl roads? You’re pale. I could draw on you. I could draw you. »

Yulia laughs, a bit hoarse, and lies down on her side, tucking Eva’s head in the hollow of her neck. 

« I’m a bad teacher. I don’t even know how I learned—I doubt I even learned at all. You don’t need to learn how to trace roads. You wouldn’t gain much from it. You don’t need roads… You slip through the cracks.
— Is it some kind of secret you want to keep for yourself? Do you alone want to know where each street leads, where each house is missing a limb under which to seek shelter, so you can hide?
— I’m not hiding », Yulia speaks, low and a bit evasive—then, after a pause, as if to show her good faith, she takes Eva’s offered hand and brings it to her neck, her breasts, lets it loose to run through the trail of syrup-bronze hair that blossoms below her navel and thrives between her thighs, observing how Eva’s appreciative fingers comb through, delighting her. 

After a pause, as if she had put her curiosity away for the sake of the shared instant, Eva finally says:

« That’s fine. » A glimmer of light ignites the matches of her eyes, and Yulia can feel their warmth.  « Would you rather I teach you to dance instead? »

Yulia smiles wide, a little bit crooked.

« Not sure my bad leg will allow me to follow », she says, knowing damn well what Eva has in mind. « Can’t hurt to try. You lead? »