"Come for me, Delaney," he whispers, and his words bring me higher. "Come for me right here, right now, or you're about to be discovered in the garden at your father's house, with your sophisticated little black dress around your waist, your stepbrother's handprints on your ass, and his fingers in your pussy."
That's it. The filthiness of his words push me over the edge and send me hurtling toward a climax. I'm clutching at his arms and at the shirt that covers his chest as I come hard on his fingers. Gaige covers my mouth with his to mute my moan.
Then he pulls away from me and grins. "I knew you were fucking dirty," he says. He doesn't even let me recover, just slides his fingers from between my legs and puts them in his mouth, making a show of licking them. "You'd better pull that skirt down fast."
"Shit." My pussy is throbbing and my heart is about to beat out of my chest as the voices, a man's voice and a woman's drunken giggle, get closer. "Shit, Gaige."
"Come on," he says, far more casual than I feel, as he bends down to grab our cocktail glasses, and nods in the opposite direction. "We'll go out this way."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GAIGE
"Oh my God." Delaney stops, just outside of the maze, her hand over her chest and her breath short. "We could have gotten caught in there."
I hold my glass up in the air, in a mock "cheers" gesture. "But we didn't."
"We should get back," she says, her expression panicked.
"Oh, I don't think so. I'm not done with you yet." I take her hand and place it on the front of my pants, and she laughs.
"How are you hard after we just ran out of there because people were coming?" she asks, her eyes wide. Then she pauses. "Oh. You're hard because we might have gotten caught."
I shrug. "Maybe," I say. "Or maybe it's just you that got me hot."
"There's nowhere to go," she says. "If we go inside the guest house or the main house, someone will notice."
"Good thing we're not going either of those places," I say. "Come on."
Delaney follows me across the path to the golf cart, parked on the side of the outbuilding where the gardeners keep their supplies. "I don't get it. Here?"
"No, not here," I say, gesturing. "Get in."
"Where are you taking me?" she asks. But she slides into the seat in the golf cart.
"Don't trust me, darlin'? That's awful hateful of you, given where my fingers just were."
Delaney raises her eyebrows, grinning as she holds onto the side of the golf cart. "I definitely know not to trust you," she says.
"Shameful." I shake my head, steering us along the path that winds down the back of the property.
"So what's it going to look like to anyone who sees the golf cart just roaming around back here?" she asks.
"Like one of the groundskeepers is doing work."
"At night."
I shrug. "No one will give it a second thought," I say.
Delaney glances over at me. "My father was right," she says. "You're trouble. You definitely need a babysitter."
"I do. Will you wear a plaid skirt?"
Delaney laughs. "That's schoolgirl, not babysitter."
"Ooh. Schoolgirl then, even better. What do babysitters wear?" I ask, pulling the golf cart up to where I want to take her. We're parked on a hill on the far end of the developed part of the property next to a pond that's stocked for fishing – man-made, I think -- and overlooking the garden, which just tonight became my new favorite place. Well, it's a close second to the sunroom.
"Mine wore jeans and a t-shirt. Nothing sexy," she says. "Sorry to disappoint. Didn't you ever have a babysitter?"
"I had a nanny," I say. "German. Not very pleasant."
"Was Anja around a lot when you were a kid?" she asks.
"Nah," I say, shrugging. "Which is probably for the best. She's not really the most motherly person there ever was."
Delaney is silent for a minute. "It looks so pretty from afar," she says, looking at the party from our vantage point in the distance, where the white lights glitter against the backdrop of the tents.
"Yeah, it's when you have to actually go down there and interact with everyone that it's not as pretty," I say. That came out a lot more bitter-sounding than I intended.
Delaney tucks her hair behind her ear and looks at me. "Are you happy?" she asks. "I don't mean, like are you happy with you and I or whatever. I mean it more generally."
"What the hell, Delaney? That's an uncomfortable fucking question."
"You think?" she asks. "It shouldn't be, right? It should be easy."