She told you to use her or steal the dress. Your cock answered first.

It jumps in the air between you and the well-walk, hard enough that it lifts on its own, and the throb of it is stupid and simple and you do not ask how you got to a yard with a woman tied through stone. She can see your face from this side. She can see the dress. That is not the side the hole is for.

You go back around.

The dress stays in your left hand because you never decided to put it down. The hem drags your shin when you close the last two steps, and then the yard-face of the wall is in front of you again and there is no portrait to look at. Ass first. Cunt under it, still moist, shinier now that you know she heard you walk away and walk back. Her legs are planted in the dirt. The shift is hiked and bunched into the rim. Her hands come through the rings on either side of the hole, fingers flexing when your shadow hits her thigh.

She cannot see you from here. Her voice comes through the thickness of the wall and then over the collar, the same tired voice as before.

"Well," she says. "You found it."

You set your right hand on the stone first. It is warm from the afternoon. You set the other hand — dress and all — on the small of her back where the shift is bunched, and she is damp when your knuckles find the inside of her thigh. Not dripping. Ready enough that your fingers come away slick and you wipe them on your own stomach without thinking.

"Don't take all day," she says. "The wall ain't for me."

You line up. The hole is a little low for you because you are tall, so you have to bend your knees and tilt, and the first push catches her folds and slides up instead of in. She makes a noise that is not a moan.

"Lower. No — there. Are you new?"

"I—" Your voice goes quiet. You find her and you push and this time you go in, heat and wet and tight around the head of you, and your mouth opens on nothing. She is a woman in a wall. You are in her. The dress is crushed between your fist and her hip.

You give her the next inch because your body wants all of it at once, and she rocks back onto you as far as the rings will let her, which is not far. Her ass meets your hips and the stone meets your stomach and you have to take a half-step wider so you do not scrape yourself raw on the edge. The rope creaks. Her fingers flex in the rings on your side of the wall, close enough that you could cover one of them with your hand if you let go of the dress.

"That's it," she says, flatter. "You can move."

You move. It is not good movement. You go too deep too soon and your hipbone knocks the lip of the hole and the shock of that runs up into your cock while you are still inside her, and you hiss and she hisses for a different reason. You try to settle into a rhythm and it comes out a short slap of skin and stone, your hair falling forward into your mouth, grazing the small of her back when you fold too far over her. The dress keeps getting in the way. You try to keep it and still hold her hip, and the cloth bunches, damp now from her and from your palm.

She talks to the well-walk, not to your face. "Slower if you want it to last. Faster if you don't. I am not grading you."

You last less than you meant to. The heat stacks in the base of you too early, and you feel it going and you try to pull the thought away — the empty hole beside her, the cream stripe, the fact that you are naked in a stranger's yard — and none of that helps. You shove in to the root and spend yourself in a sloppy jerk that makes your knees dip, and you keep the dress smashed to her hip the whole time because letting go of it still feels like losing the only thing you have.

You stay in her a second too long after, breathing into the stone. When you pull out, a smear of you follows and sits on her cunt in the late sun, and more of it is on the inside of the dress where your fist was.

Your ears go hot. The flush is in your throat and your chest and there is nothing on you to hide it.

"Bit quick then aye," she remarks, from the other face. "Bucket's on the collar if you need water. Don't use my drinking ladle on your cock."

The bucket hangs where you already stood when she looked at the dress. You do not take it yet. Your heartbeat is still in your groin. You can see the wet of her through the hole, used, a little of you in it, and your cock gives one more stupid kick as if it had not just spent itself. The empty slot is still empty. Late sun has moved down the fence. Somewhere in the cottage a chair scrapes and then does not come toward the door.

She tests the ropes. They hold. Her hands open and close in the rings next to her hips.

"If you are going to steal the dress anyway, steal it," she says, to the stone more than to you. "If you are going to stand there dripping cum, at least tell me you have a name, so I don't have to call you boy."

The hem in your hand is dirty now, and damp in a way that is not wash-water. Your knees have come back enough to stand straight. The rings on the open hole catch the last of the sun and throw it in a cheap line across your hip.