Most erotic stories are, of course, pure fantasies (mine are). And who hasn’t stood scanning the dance floor in a club, eyes lighting on a hot girl, heart beating faster while waiting for the first eye contact—is she or isn’t she? Most of the time our mind takes us much further than reality, but not so for L.C. Spoering‘s narrator in Steps. This shy butch gets hit on and, step by step, she and her seductress go all the way. I chose this story for Anything She Wants because of the poetic quality in the writing, the journey of the main character—from being picked up to taking the lead—and because of how totally different it was from all the other submissions I received, which, for me, made it a perfect fit.
Here’s a snippet:
I do not wear dresses. This is not who I am, nor who I have wanted to be, once I grew out of that spell-bound adoration of my mother. I am wearing black jeans, black button-down shirt, and a vest of charcoal with the slightest sheen. My thick-soled boots make me a whole inch taller and I stand a full head over most of the women in the club, dark hair spiked and eyes hooded. I bit my nails all day in anticipation. That anticipation was both correct and incorrect, and I’ve started muttering my friends’ names under my breath, devising ever more creative methods of torturing each of them for dragging me here.
It’s one of those situations where people are more well-meaning than polite, or even thoughtful, and I am a pushover. I’m not a club person, and my friends find this to be some kind of deficit in my personality, something to be corrected, to be modified—this notion that if I just loosened up and had some fun, maybe I’d become more sociable, more outgoing, maybe even get laid.
I drain my drink and look over the heads of the dancers out on the floor before dropping my gaze down to the crowds. It’s not a lesbian club, but the floor seems to be filled exclusively by women, and, out of idle curiosity, I do a scan of the surrounding faces, picking out, as far as I can tell, three men.
“Looking for someone?”
My gaze snaps down like a rubber band and comes to light on the speaker: a full head shorter than I am, wearing something I’d never venture to even try on: a short, black dress, tight like a coat of paint applied to her skin. I’m surprised at her appearance, both in presence and the sheer look of her, like a coiled snake at my feet. My heart is suddenly in my throat.
“Not really,” I manage, over the booming noise of the bass that shakes the surface under my feet, and my blood with it. I reach up, almost without conscious thought, to touch my hair, to find out if it’s blowing in this artificial movement, too.
“You here alone?” Despite the overwhelming sound of the place, and the close quarters beside us, I can feel her shift, lean against the railing next to me; her arm is warm, even through my shirt, and I feel the hairs on my arm and along the back of my neck rise.
L.C. SPOERING (lcspoering.wordpress.com) is a Denver native and a graduate of the University of Colorado, with a BA in Writing. Sharing her home with a husband, two kids, and a plethora of pets, she writes novels and short stories about the human experience, relationships, and the lives lived in between.
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