Summer was only a few weeks away. It was starting to get warm, and the sun, more often than the rain, beat down upon his back as he worked the earth.
There were flowers: the seeds of autumn and winter had burst into spectacular bloom in neat rows and among tastefully arranged bushes. Colour: colour was everywhere.
He straightened up; wiped his hands on his trousers; stretched up and back and rolled his shoulders. He was knelt before a rose bush – open buds of pale pink parted to drink up the sun and entice the wandering bees – with his pruners, trowel and garden wire beside him.
“They’re coming on well.”
It was the voice, he knew, of the lady of the house. He knew it well enough not to start, not to scramble to his feet and bow, but to shrug nonchalantly and keep his smile to himself.
“You think so?”
“Gorgeous,” she stepped forward and the hem of her skirt and a pair of short, heeled boots appeared beside him. She cupped a rose in her hand. “And such a beautiful colour.”
“They’re the same as last year.”
“They’re more beautiful than last year.” He allowed himself to look up at her at last, pretend to be unaffected by the cut of her dress and the thick lock of hair that escaped her hat and tumbled down her neck to her shoulder. “Whatever are you doing with them?”
“Trade secret,” he said, shifting so that if she were to turn, he would be knelt before her. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
“Well that certainly won’t do. I expect I’d be missed at the house.”
“If you say so.”
She looked down at him. “I do.”
There was a heavy moment. He slipped his hand under them hem of her skirt and lightly brushed the back of her calf.
She pursed her lips – was that a smile? – and whisked her skirt out of reach.
“Do you have more roses to attend to this afternoon?”
He glanced at the sky. “I’m sure they can wait, if there was something you wanted.”
“Yes,” she said briskly, gesturing for him to rise. “The hedge maze is in desperate need of attention. I cannot believe you’ve let it go unattended for so long.”
He inclined his head. “Would you be so kind as to show me where? I looked over the maze just yesterday, and it seemed – ”
“It’s capricious, to tell the truth. It needs a great degree of care and attention.”
He stooped to collect his tools and washed his hands under the tap until the his skin shone. “‘Capricious’. Some would call that needy.”
“Some would be wrong.”
They walked to the hedge maze, staying a respectful distance apart.
It was the prize of the estate, the maze: almost eight foot tall, verdant in the spring air, and large enough to have confounded several well-to-do guests in the past.
(He knew it intimately. He had spent enough time there over the past six months.)
They walked in silence for a while. The path were narrow, and the distance between them necessarily closed as they took forks and turned corners with such confidence anyone would think they followed a familiar course.
At last they reached a secluded corner. It looked very much the same as many others they had passed – but both stopped, and breathed, and waited.
After a moment, he let his hand brush the back of hers.
Something hung in the air for a moment.
She did not move, but he approached, slowly, and stood behind her.
The hand that had brushed hers found her waist, and the other pushed the stray lock of hair aside. He kissed her neck, slowly, softly.
His mouth gently moved trailed from her neck to her shoulder, his touch barely there. He carefully moved his hand from the side to the front of her waist. The bodice of her dress was rigid and hard, but slightly warm from the heat of her body beneath.
He could feel her tremble and hear her breath quicken, uneven and hitching as he grazed her skin with his teeth.
Then he pulled her back against him, hard, and she gasped. Pressed against her, he moved his hand up to her chest, running his thumb along the exposed skin just above the low neck of her dress. She pushed back against him, and he knew, now, as familiar with her many layers of absurd clothing as he was, where the heavy fabric ended and where the curve of her hips and legs began.
She turned, though his hand remained on her breast. She kissed him with an edge – something forceful, keening – one hand in his hair and the other fumbling for the hem of his shirt. She found it: her hand against his chest, her impossibly soft fingers cold against the heat of his skin. She moved her hands up to his shoulders, round his sides, pressed them against the muscles of his back. She moved down to feel his stomach, his hips; she found the waistband of his trousers and pressed her palm against the fabric covering him.
“Fuck.”
She grinned.
He pulled her closer with both hands, needing to press their bodies together – his hands moved down from her waist to her ass, and he moved her against him, pushing their hips back and forth.
He needed to feel her without corsets and bloomers and petticoats. Needed to feel her skin on his and needed to feel her legs around his neck.
They found their way to the ground, to grass and earth. Her hat had come off, as had his shirt, and she lay on her back, head tipped up, her arms spread above her head. He hooked her legs over his shoulders and pushed her skirts up roughly until they fell back over her waist. He rolled down her stockings, dropped them on the grass, and ran a hand all the way up the inside of her leg to where it met her body. She shuddered and gasped again, as he knew she would.
He was teasing her. As he did, almost every time.
She made an impatient, almost whining sound, and obliging, he ran a finger across her. She was so wet already. The look on her face sent a shudder of want through him.
“Please,” she said. “I can’t –”
“Are you begging me?”
“No,” she gasped, grabbing his wrist. “I am *ordering* you.”
She took her free leg from his shoulder and pushed her foot against him. He swore again and moaned, a deep and sensuous sound that went straight through her, a hot, heavy pressure that moved every inch of her to guide his hand between her legs.
He pushed his finger inside her, beckoning, moving in and out and she twisted on the ground before him, jerking her hips to press him in further, deeper.
“Yes, yes – please, yes –”
He moved her foot back onto his shoulder and held her leg steady and she bucked and rocked her hips, moaning, her hitching breath and soft exhalations all he needed to keep going, keep pushing, edging her closer, and closer, and closer.
“Christ – I’m – yes, there, there –”
He had to shush her, grinning, as she let out an unintelligible cry that might have been his name.
“Come for me. You’re so close.”
“I am, I am –”
“Yes, yes – that’s it, come for me, darling –”
She arched her back, eyes shut, her breath held and the world stopped for a moment.
When she came down from the climax, slowly, floating, smiling, pulling her legs up to her chest, he almost growled.
“Don’t think I’m done with you yet.”
She giggled – *giggled* – and reached up to pull him down to her. She spoke close to his ear, each word curling with something like an invitation.
“I’m going to have grass stains all up the back of my dress. What will the maids think?”
“Well we can’t have that,” he replied, and rolled onto the ground beside her. With a wicked grin, she gathered her skirts and sat astride him. Her fingers worked the buttons of his trousers and – almost certainly deliberately – brushed against him. He was so hard that every time she did so, he felt himself twitch. She was the one taking her time now, and he was not a patient man. He needed to feel her – be inside her – have her ride him in that pretty yellow dress until he, the gardener, with dirt on his knees and sunburnt forearms, came deep inside her.
At last, she conquered the trouser buttons. She moved forward and slowly, agonisingly slowly, lowered herself onto him.
She ran her tongue over her lips and cocked her head to the side.
“Yes?”
He growled in reply and grabbed her hips, pushing himself completely into her. She moaned but said “No, slowly, slowly. You’re such a brute, but you must be patient.”
He didn’t think he could do that, but allowed her to slide slowly up and down, again, again, hard but slow, testing him beyond endurance.
“There. It isn’t too difficult, is it?”
She spoke with a sweetness that was unbearable: he grabbed her, smug at the sound of her surprised squeal, and sat up, her still straddled across him. With his hands on her waist he began to move her up and down, roughly and quickly, and growled low in her ear, “If I’m such a brute, then you best let me fuck you like one.”
So he did.
Discarded clothes, birdsong in the air – the hedge maze knew and hid all, and hid them as she said his name with an intimacy that was too much and he came, hard, every part of him tense, his face pressed against her breasts, pleasure crashing like waves –
It ebbed. Both breathed heavily, arms tight about each other.
Eventually, she fished a handkerchief from her bosom and carefully climbed off him. Stockings rolled back up, hair fixed, hat in place – she looked perfect. Perfect and as though nothing had happened.
(He meanwhile still lay shirtless on the grass, watching her redress as though nothing could be more normal.)
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“As you were, then. I certainly think you’re doing a wonderful job with the hedge maze. I shall let you know if I find any more sections in need of your special attention.”
She glanced about – unnecessarily – and half knelt down to kiss him softly.
And with a final adjustment of her skirts, she was gone.
——
[Great Sexpectations](https://www.reddit.com/user/_greatsexpectations_)
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/kwjn64/the_gardener_mf_historical_victorian_powerplay