Chasing Chelsea by Maren Smith

the strap-on.
    “We had to go the long way around,” Selena laughed back, already bending down to wrestle off her knee-high sandals. “I wanted to make sure no one was following us.” She grinned, wrinkling her nose. “If they want to find us tonight, they’re going to have to work at it.”
    “They?” Chelsea jumped when she heard the snap of a not-so-distant twig.
    “The guys,” Selena said, shielding her eyes from the lights of the garden to better see out into the night. She breathed another soft laugh at the sound of feminine giggling coming from beyond the fence. “I told everyone, starting with Kade, so they’re sure to find us eventually.” She threw a wink back at Chelsea, and then waved as the women of the Castle emerged from the darkness—Kaylee, the diminutive Hannah, a woman Chelsea didn’t yet know, and even the newly-pregnant Sara, who was smiling, but sporting dark circles under her eyes. She looked thin, too thin, and tired. But, at least she was smiling. Obviously, a little mischievous relaxation was something she needed.
    Maybe it was something Chelsea needed too.
    They were all dressed the same, white slave outfits and sandals that laced to the knee, and together they ran the gamut from blonde to brunette. Chelsea wasn’t the only redhead, but she was the tallest by at least four inches and she felt every inch the gangly clumsy teenager amongst these four elegant ladies.
    They were taking off their sandals.
    “Come on,” Selena laughed at her. “You can’t go swimming dressed like that.”
    “But you said you told everyone. Aren’t you afraid we’ll get caught?”
    “I wouldn’t call it fear,” the other redhead, Sinclair, said as she shucked out of her clothes, giving them a toss onto the grassy bank of the pond. “It’s more like acute anticipation.”
    “Getting caught is the whole point,” Kaylee told her, stripping out of her own now as well. It was like high school gym class all over again. She’d been too tall, too skinny, and too awkward then, too. And good Lord, they were all beautiful. Kaylee was flippin’ gorgeous. So was Sara, if one didn’t look too closely at her burns. Sinclair was the plumpest, but what little extra weight she carried fit her frame, rounding out all her curves in all the right ways. And then there was Hannah, scarred in strange places, albeit nowhere near as bad as Sara, and with the most perfect grapefruit-sized breasts that Chelsea had ever seen. Compared to them, Chelsea was an ugly duckling among swans.
    “Oh my God, the water’s cold!” Hannah gasped as she lowered herself to sit on the grassy edge and dangle her feet into the water.
    “Where are the steps?” Sinclair circled the water’s edge. “I can never find them in the dark.”
    “They do that on purpose, you know,” Kaylee laughed. “It makes it so much easier for them to catch us if we’re still fumbling to get out of the pond.”
    “You do this on purpose, knowing you’ll get in trouble?” Chelsea asked incredulously.
    “Aw, it’s the only fun they get,” Sinclair said, dipping her foot in the water. “They work too hard. Sometimes they forget they get to have fun here too. I’ve found the stairs, by the way.”
    The other ladies gravitated around to her side of the pond, but Chelsea hesitated.
    “Coming?” Selena asked, and reluctantly Chelsea lowered herself to sit in the grass and remove her sandals.
    “So this is a game?” she asked, not so much dawdling now as trying to understand. “You like getting caught?”
    “It’s a good kind of trouble,” Kaylee said, while Hannah and Sinclair exchanged quick grins. “The kind that makes your heart flutter and your insides melt, if you know what I mean.”
    Actually, Chelsea didn’t, but as she sat watching the ladies submerge, gasping and laughing in the chilly water, she found herself thinking about Kade.
    Tongue deep…
    She shivered, and she wasn’t even in the water yet.
    Squealing softly, Selena