She wanted to move her hand higher, feel all of her, but she wanted this to last. Hell, she could’ve kissed Claire all night, nothing else, and been totally happy. The thought was so strange, so unlike her, she pulled her mouth back from Claire’s, staring down at her for a few seconds. Claire stared back, her body shaky and needy. Her leg curled around Delilah’s calf and her brows dipped.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Delilah swallowed. She wasn’t sure. She was . . . god, she was nervous and turned on as hell and wanted nothing more than to eat Claire for dessert right now, but under that simmering layer of lust was something else, something she couldn’t put a finger on. She shook her head, trying to push it out of her mind. She’d done this dozens of times before. She knew how to fuck a woman. Knew how to make her cry out, knew how to make sure she herself had a good time, knew how to think of nothing but skin and mouths and coming.
Delilah crushed her mouth to Claire’s. Tongues, hands, thighs.
Claire met her, touch for touch, shuddering when Delilah’s fingers reached the lower curve of her breast. Delilah paused, but Claire pressed their mouths into another kiss, pushed her hips against Delilah’s in clear acquiescence, so Delilah kept going and let her thumb sweep over Claire’s hardened nipple.
Claire ripped her mouth from Delilah’s, her chest rising and falling so rapidly Delilah was almost worried she was going to hyperventilate.
“You okay?” she asked.
Claire nodded.
Delilah grinned, then tugged Claire’s bottom lip between her teeth, which pulled a groan from deep in Claire’s throat so fucking sexy, Delilah had to release her own.
This. This was what she understood. Pure animal need. She knew her underwear was soaked and was pretty positive Claire’s was too, but god, she wanted to know for sure. She squeezed Claire’s nipple gently before soothing it with one more sweep of her thumb, then let her hand drift southward. Claire’s hips undulated against hers and her own hand drifted down to the top of Delilah’s ass, covered only by her royal-blue cheekies.
Delilah’s fingertips had just dipped under the band of Claire’s sleep shorts, her mouth on Claire’s neck and the most perfect whispered sounds falling from Claire’s lips, when someone knocked on the door.
Both women froze, humid exhales swirling between them.
That better have been my fucking imagination, Delilah thought. But then another knock echoed through the quiet room, followed by the worst possible sound in the entire world—her stepsister’s voice.
“Claire? Delilah? Are you awake?”
“Oh my god,” Claire whispered, scrambling out from under Delilah like she was on fire. She was out of the bed, straightening her tank top and fixing her hair on top of her head before Delilah had even sat up. “Shit.”
“It’s okay,” Delilah said. “Take a minute.”
“Claire?” Astrid called again, knocking even harder.
“Yeah!” Claire yelled, clicking on the lamp. “Just a sec!”
She stood there with her hands on her hips while Delilah watched. When Claire’s gaze fell on her, her eyes widened.
“Your hair.”
Delilah lifted a hand to her locks, feeling the curls Claire’s fingers had pulled loose from the hair tie. “It’s a mess, huh?”
“It’s sex hair,” Claire said, panic lacing her voice. “Can you fix it?”
Delilah never broke eye contact as she fully released her hair and then pulled it back up into a neat, sexless pile.
“Claire—”
“We can’t tell her,” Claire said, twining her fingers together. “Okay?”
Delilah just stared at her. That something else feeling from before started closing in on her thoughts. This had happened before. A potential partner shutting things down for some reason or another. Delilah always handled it fine. Shit happened. People were complicated. She was disappointed, but she got it, and she’d simply go home and rub one out, and that would be that.
But this . . . didn’t feel like that. This felt different, a hollow feeling expanding in Delilah’s chest, and she wanted to scream. Claire was just another lay. A vengeance lay at that.
But something in Delilah’s face must’ve given her away, because Claire’s shoulders slumped and she took a step closer to where Delilah still sat in the bed. “It’s not . . . It’s just . . . with Spencer and the wedding, we can’t . . . She’d freak out and I—”
“I get it,” Delilah said calmly, but that hole in her chest just kept growing, eating up all her normal. She looked away, inhaling quietly and slowly while she fixed the tangled bedsheets and draped them serenely over her lap. When they were smooth and crisp, when her heart had retreated back to its rightful spot behind her ribs, she looked up at Claire and smiled. “Okay, you can let her in.”