She Smiles with Her Eyes

I notice her the minute I first set foot on this job site. Immediately, I fall a little bit in love.

She wears coveralls and the same N95 mask we all have to wear. (For the drywall dust and, now, because of COVID-19.) She's shouldering a bundle of base molding that looks like it weighs more than she does.

Even though she's mostly covered, there's something captivating about her.

She's short and compact, but she moves with wiry strength. Her hair is shaggy, like an elf or a hobbit or something. She wears winged eyeliner.

Maybe that's it. Her stubborn glimmer of femininity, in a place otherwise choked with spitting, swearing masculinity. Like a flower growing through a crack in the pavement.

You hear all the jokes, the rumors, the cruel aphorisms.

"Women are so rare in this line of work that a chick who's a 5 anywhere else is a 10 on the job site."

"If she'll date one guy on the job, she's dated all of them."

"She's only here because she sucked her way up the ladder."

Now, I'm a red-blooded all-American guy, like most of the people here. Even so, I cringe when I hear that last one. Someone notices me glancing at her from across the lot, and it takes him only seconds.

A guy I never met, who I'll later learn is a longtimer named Russell, approaches me and doesn't bother to introduce himself.

"You know she sucked a guy's dick in his truck the other day, right?"

"She did?" I say.

"That's the only reason she has this job. Would have stayed a receptionist, but she keeps the guys happy enough that nobody gets rid of her."

My eyes follow her from across the room.

Through an uncovered area of the wall, I watch her set the bundle down in the next room with a heavy whump and slit the plastic ties with expert efficiency.

"Did this happen to you?" I ask.

"Hell no," he says, sounding faintly embarrassed, then goes back to whatever he was doing.

She already has the base boards out and organized according to where they attach to the wall.

I doubt the thing about the guy in the truck is true.

~

For the next week, as a foundation and a wooden skeleton slowly grows into walled rooms, I glance at her whenever I can. She never seems to notice me. I wonder, by chance and by nerve, if I'll ever talk to her.

Instead, she talks to me.

There's an open break area, away from the work. At the moment, I'm sitting there alone on a prefab bench. I've worked harder this week than I have in years, and my arms feel like they're on fire.

I worry that I've been out of the game too long.

As I try in vain to massage the discomfort out of my elbows, I hear the dull beating of workboots approaching.

She sits next to me.

Up close, she's even smaller. I'm twice her size.

I can't smell her--with the mask, I mostly just smell this morning's coffee--but I imagine she smells like sweat and grime.

She says, "You know, if you keep using your fingers like that, it's going to prolong the pain."

"Excuse me?"

"Your fingers. If you just give your hands and your forearms time to relax, your elbows will heal faster."

"Oh."

"I'm Allie."

"I'm Nick."

Her eyes narrow. She has vivid hazel eyes. I think she's smiling.

She nods, and says, "Nicholas and Alexandra."

Then she gets up and leaves without saying anything else, headed for the mess of vehicles on the street.

Well. That was cryptic.

I have the next day off. I do my best to follow Allie's advice. I keep my arms relaxed, avoiding the temptation to mess with my elbows. It's like trying not to scratch an itch, but I manage.

They do start to feel better.

~

I go back to work the next day, and they start to hurt again.

By the end of the shift, only a few people are left onsite. Being new, I'm going to be the last one to leave. Shit detail.

I think it's only me, standing there in the unfinished house. I catch myself rubbing my elbows again.

From behind, I hear her voice.

"Stop that."

I turn around, blushing, my arms frozen in the pose she found me in. Caught in the act.

She stands there. She smiles with her eyes, over the top of her mask, her hands on her narrow hips.

"I was just," I start.

"Mmhmm," she says.

I lower my arms.

"Okay, relaxing now," I say.

She says, "If you're going to do it the moment you're out of my sight, you should just let me do it."

I feel like I must look puzzled. I don't know how much of it shows through just the uncovered part of my face.

"Unzip your coveralls," she says. "Get your arms out."

I do as she says, undoing the coveralls and taking them down to my waist. I'm wearing a white tank top underneath.

I'm covered in dark body hair, and I'm pretty doughy, which I've always been self-conscious about. But she doesn't seem to notice.

Without asking, she takes one of my wrists in her hand and starts massaging my forearm--not my elbow. Her hands are small, but callused and strong.

I wish I could say the pain is melting away. It isn't.

But what she's doing is soothing. Soon, she has it down to a dull background hum.

Her closeness and her touch are having an effect on me.

It's not that she's making me horny, though she is. I feel oddly vulnerable and safe right now, alone with her in the open air of an unfinished building.

I pray she doesn't notice my erection.

With my coveralls bunched around my thick belly, I don't think she does.

I'm contemplating asking her out, and the line "If she'll date one guy from the job site, she's dated all of them" enters my head. I do my best to dismiss it.

I realize she just asked me if I'm ready to switch arms. Dimly aware, I say yes.

Again, she massages my forearm, and again, over the course of several minutes, the pain gets duller and less persistent.

Then she releases me, and says, "Now. You only use your fingers if you have to. Otherwise, relax."

I nod.

She turns around and leaves without another word. As she did before, that day on the bench.

~

The next day, I pull the same shit duty. This time, I don't mind.

I hope Allie and I are the last ones here again, and we are.

She says, jokingly, "Are you sticking around for another massage?"

Standing in the midst of a mess that I'm halfway through cleaning up, I joke back.

"Yup," I say. "It's why I do this job."

She busies herself while I finish my work.

Then, once again, she has me half-out of my coveralls, massaging my arms, beating back the encroaching soreness and discomfort.

Again, I pray she doesn't notice my erection, but I'm starting to wonder what would happen if she did.

I think about taking her mask off, taking my mask off, kissing her, and it occurs to me that neither of us even knows what the other looks like.

She finishes.

"See you tomorrow?" I blurt out.

She narrows her wing-tipped eyes. Smiling, or, at least, I think she is.

"It's a date," she says.

Then she leaves.

~

The next day, I have to call in. My arms just don't feel up to it today.

Rich, the team lead, firmly advises me to take the day and come back tomorrow. He sounds a little nervous, like he senses potential liability in the wind.

I almost ask him to apologize to Allie for me, but then I realize how absurd that would be.

~

The next day, I'm on shit duty again.

This time, I volunteered.

Everyone filters out, and, at last, she's there, and it's just the two of us.

"I missed you yesterday," she says, smiling with her eyes.

"I, uh," I say.

I was going to say, "I'm sorry." Then I remind myself that she's just a coworker, and 99% of our closeness exists inside my head.

"Are your arms feeling better?" she asks.

I nod. "I think I just needed a day off to recover. Like after a workout, when your muscles are trying to get stronger."

She nods back.

She says, "I haven't had a day off in a while. I thought, maybe, if you're not too busy..."

Oh shit, is she about to ask me out?

Then she says, "...could you do my arms this time?"

Before I can fully process what I'm being asked, she's unzipping her coveralls and pulling them down to her waist. Instinctively, I flick a look around the job site. She and I are totally alone.

She stands with her bare, muscular arms and torso out, her small bust contained in a no-frills black sports bra with a wide elastic band. Her shoulders and her pale belly shine with the day's sweat.

She offers me her wrist, and I accept it.

I rub the tendons in her forearm with my thumb, trying to emulate what she had been doing to me. Her skin is surprisingly smooth and soft. The musculature underneath it feels like rebar.

She giggles. "Harder. You're tickling me."

I obey, and soon, her arm feels perceptibly more relaxed.

Without exchanging any words, she offers me her other arm, and I accept it.

When her arm is done, she says, "Shoulders?"

Without waiting for my response, she turns her back to me.

Her shoulders and back are small-framed but heavily muscled, mottled in faint bruises. From carrying heavy loads, no doubt.

Hesitantly, I reach out to her narrow shoulders. She gets impatient and backs up towards me.

Through the bunched cloth of our coveralls, her ass comes into contact with my cock. I nearly jump out of my skin.

There's no way she doesn't feel it.

But she doesn't startle, doesn't move away, doesn't react at all.

"Today," she says, raising and lowering her shoulders.

I touch her shoulders. She flinches.

"Firmer," she complains. "You always tickle me at first."

I do as she says. My fingers leave little grubby marks in the sweat on her skin. Anytime I press into a particularly tender spot, I hear her sigh inside her mask and I feel like I'm melting.

Eventually, she feels soft and loose. I keep it going, lingering for as long as I dare, until she pulls away and turns to me.

"Thanks, Nicky," she says, "you're a stand-up babe."

Then she wriggles her arms back into her coveralls and zips up. She walks away, leaving me standing by myself in my tank top and my slow bewilderment.

~

After finishing up, I get into my truck, the last truck on the street. I relieve myself of the N95 for the night. The sun is going down. I feel pent-up, full of something I can't even name.

I think, fuck it.

In my head, I replay the moments between Allie and me from the last few days. I don't elaborate on them--it feels disrespectful to imagine her giving me anything that she hasn't given already.

Sitting there in the driver's seat, I get my cock out. It's half-soft.

I think of her stroking my arms, her hands like vice grips, her gentle spirit.

My cock quickly gets to full hardness in my hand.

I think of her closeness, the wiry power in her body, the narrow smile in her eyes.

I begin to jerk off, slowly at first, my foreskin slipping back and forth on my dickhead.

I think of her baring her torso to me--her pale, sweaty skin, her arms, her bra.

I'm going in earnest now. My hand finds a brisk, regular rhythm that works for me.

I think of how it felt to touch her, dotting her flesh with grayish smudges as I felt her hard muscles through her soft skin.

I'm going to come.

I think of how her ass pressed into my cock, and how she didn't step away...

Grunting, sighing softly, the relief flows through me. I use my hand to catch the semen. It streaks the dirt on my rough palm.

I wipe the mess with an errant fast food napkin. I sit there for a minute to collect myself before starting the truck.

~

Allie isn't at work the next day. She must have gotten that day off she wanted.

She's there the day after, and it's all business as usual. There's very little communication between us during the shift.

Then, at the end, it's just us.

We get our torsos out. We take turns massaging each other's arms.

I don't know how much either of us really needs it this time. I've acclimated to the rigors of the job, and my arms no longer feel like shit at the end of the day.

Once each of us has had our turn, we stand there facing each other, looking into each other's eyes over the tops of our masks.

Wordless. Frozen in an uncertain moment.

Then I blurt it out.

I say, "I'd like to kiss you."

She shakes her head no. "The masks stay on. If I get sick and can't do this job, I'm fucked."

"Okay," I say.

It doesn't escape my notice that her refusal had nothing to do with the idea of being intimate with me.

She smiles with her eyes.

She says, "If you show me yours, I'll show you mine."

I feel my face go red and my breath go heavy.

Oh shit. Oh fuck.

You know that feeling when you're on a roller coaster, teetering at the edge of a precipice, in that moment just before you go over where you're weightless and nothing can touch you?

We're in the open air, on a job site we've been entrusted to work on. We can see the other job sites for blocks in either direction. The low sun on my exposed arms, the cooling breeze in my body hair.

For a moment, I hesitate.

But only for a moment.

I start to bend over to undo my boots, but she stops me.

"Don't worry about them. Just get your pants down."

I obey. At once, I push my coveralls and my black boxer-briefs down to my calves, then stand back up.

My hard cock and my scrotum protrude from the thick patch of dark hair beneath my big, hairy belly. My tank top suddenly feels far too short for my comfort.

This isn't something I like to show people. Most of my sexual conquests have been under the covers with the lights off. I feel hyper-aware of her gaze on my big body.

Her eyebrows go up. She seems to like what she's seeing.

Somehow, the way she's looking at me makes me feel better, makes it easier not to feel shy.

After taking her moment to ogle me, she pushes her coveralls down her powerful legs. She wears sporty boyshort panties that don't quite match her bra. Her thighs are pale and sinewy.

Then she pushes her panties down and stands upright, and her own cock and scrotum are on display to me.

She's flaccid, shaven completely bald, pinkish tan against the pale of her thighs. The head is dull purple. Her genitals are small, delicate-looking.

I hate myself for staring. I hate myself for being speechless. But I'm fixated.

Very carefully, she says, "I take it you've never seen a clit this big before."

I shake my head no.

Then, belatedly, I laugh. So does she.

Then, still careful, she says, "If you wanted to stop now and forget this ever happened, I wouldn't blame you."

"No," I say. "It's just... I've never done this before."

"I think I understand," she says.

As she's done many times before, she takes my wrist.

This time, she guides my hand to her--

Her clit, I remind myself.

She doesn't make me touch her. But the invitation is clear.

I cup it loosely in my hand. It feels soft and warm and velvety on my rough palm.

I almost ask her if it'll get hard, but I notice that it's pulsing faintly. It's noticeably bigger than it was a moment ago.

"How do you like it?" she asks.

She sounds a little hesitant. I just now realize how self-assured she's been at every step, until now.

"I like it very much," I say, honestly.

"I like yours, too," she says.

I put my free hand around her waist, touching the small of her back, drawing her closer. It's a little awkward with our ankes in our coveralls, but we both manage to not trip ourselves.

Our bodies come into contact. My cock presses heavy and hot against her taut abdomen. Her nipples poke my belly through our clothes. My hand is between us, holding her plush, throbbing clit.

We rest our faces on each other, hers against my chest and mine in the crook of her neck. It's as close as we can get without taking the masks off.

Though still small and soft, her clit has grown fat in my hand.

I bring my cock and her clit together. I feel that first time thrill, her genitals touching mine, crossing like swords.

She lifts her hands, puts them on my chest, looks up into my eyes. Her hazel, winged eyes.

I let my cock rest in the crook between her clit and her pubic bone, and I begin to move my hand on her. It's awkward at first, but I start to get the hang of it.

I think to myself, wryly, that I've been training for this since I was 12 years old.

"A little gentler," she murmurs. "With your fingertips. It's more delicate than you might be used to."

I do as she says.

I handle her with as much delicacy as I've ever handled anything. I bring my callused fingertips down her shaft to her scrotum, back up to her glans, down again, luxuriating in the give of her half-erection.

"Mm," she says. "Feels good."

She holds my gaze, but her eyes fall partway shut. She sighs inside the mask. I watch the upper half of her face intently--her cheeks flushing, little changes in expression, as I slowly masturbate her.

Soon, her eyes, already heavy-lidded, fall closed. Her head comes to rest on my chest. She's groaning, little bursts of soporific delight welling up from the back of her throat.

Ungh... unff...

Inside the mask, I can only smell my own heavy breathing.

I wish I could breathe her scent. Bury my face right in her shaggy hobbit hair. Instead, I thread the fingers of my free hand through it, so greasy and sweaty from the day's work.

I hold her head to my chest as I slowly, carefully jerk her off. I feel exhilarated every time her hot, damp glans makes incidental contact with my cock or my thigh.

In my rational mind, I know I would only smell the airborne hazards of the job site. But I can't help imagining the smell of Allie's body, so sweaty, so sexy.

So warm in my hand.

The frequency of her unffs is getting brisker and more insistent, and I realize that I have no idea what to do when she comes.

As if on cue, she says, "Nicky boy, I'm going to squirt."

I feel her body go rigid against mine.

She groans and gasps, and my fingertips are suddenly covered with sticky liquid. It feels thin and delicate under my fingers.

She's panting inside her mask, radiating body heat, more cum welling up from her body with each powerful contraction of her abdominal muscles.

I can't really see what's happening down there, not with my belly in the way.

I regret that we're doing this here, standing up in the middle of a cold, hard construction site. Not in a nice soft bed with soft orange light where I can get a good look at Allie's body when she comes.

It's hard to tell if she's peaked or not. I keep stroking her. I've smeared her whole clit with cum.

I'm not quite sure why, but the thought crosses my mind of putting her clit in my mouth, of cleaning her whole shaft and scrotum with my tongue.

Eventually, her body just sags into mine. She lets out a long, airy breath inside her mask, and I realize she's done.

"Oh, Nicky," she sighs, as if to herself.

While she recovers, I hold my hand in front of my face, making a V with my fingers, stretching her cum between them. There's very little of it. It's clear, fragile, a little mottled with dirt from my hand.

I'm so fucking horny.

"Are we about to..." I start to ask.

"Fuck?" she says.

I nod.

She says, "That's a little upper level, don't you think?"

"I guess so."

"Don't worry," she says. "I'm still gonna get you off."

"How?"

"Turnabout is fair play."

She backs away a little, letting my cock stand free in the air. She cups my balls in one small hand and grips the shaft with the other.

Expertly, she starts to masturbate me. She holds me loosely, minding the fact that we have no lube, letting the back and forth slippage of my foreskin do most of the work.

This whole time, almost since the moment I first saw her, I wondered what it would be like to have her hands on me.

It feels exquisite.

I start to touch her arm, but she stops me.

Smiling with her eyes, she says, "Feet apart. Hands behind your back."