Chapter 18: The Dinner Table Directive
The candle flame shivered, trapped in a draft from the hallway. Jenny’s thighs, bare and sticky against the cool mahogany, trembled in its shaky light. Aidan’s weight was a fading warmth against her back, his breath still harsh in her ear. The table was a battlefield of displaced normality: a wine glass on its side leaking a crimson puddle near her elbow, a smear of chocolate ganache from the abandoned dessert plate glistening by her forearm.
Catriona’s lips, when they touched Jenny’s inner thigh, were startlingly soft. The contact was intimate, clinical, and devastating all at once. Jenny jerked, a whimper catching in her throat. She felt the wet swipe of Catriona’s tongue, cleaning a trail of Aidan’s release as it escaped her.
“God,” Catriona breathed, pulling back. She looked up, her green eyes reflecting the candle flame. A tiny, shining streak marked her upper lip. She didn’t wipe it away. “The taste of it. Both of you.” Her voice was raw, stripped of its earlier theatrical control. This was hunger, plain and simple.
Aidan had stepped back, hastily tucking himself into his trousers. The sound of his zipper was obscenely loud. He looked shell-shocked, his gaze skipping from the ruin on the table to his wife’s blissful, smudged mouth. The engineer in him was screaming about cause and effect, about structural integrity failures. The man was just gone.
“Help her down,” Catriona said, not to him, but to the room. She stood, smoothing her dress with hands that weren’t quite steady. “Clean up can wait. We’re not finished.”
Aidan moved robotically, offering a hand. Jenny took it, her legs unsteady as she slid off the table. The silk robe was a lost cause, crumpled on the floor. She stood naked in the dining room, the formal portraits on the walls seeming to look the other way. She felt dizzy, used, and more powerful than she ever had in her life.
Catriona led the way, not to the guest suite, but to the master bedroom at the end of the hall. The message was clear: no retreat to separate corners tonight. The sanctum was being redrawn.
Their bedroom was a study in curated calm—pale walls, a massive upholstered headboard, everything in its place. The peace was a lie. Catriona flicked on a single bedside lamp, casting a soft, intimate glow that felt more exposing than the dining room candle.
“Sit,” she said to Aidan, pointing to the edge of the bed. To Jenny, she nodded towards the center. “Lie back.”
Jenny obeyed, the duvet cool against her skin. Aidan sat stiffly beside her hip, not looking at either of them, staring at his own hands clenched on his knees.
Catriona didn’t join them. She stood at the foot of the bed, an overseer. “You’re thinking too much, Aidan,” she said. Her tone was softer now, almost conversational. “I can see the gears grinding. You’re calculating the damage. The morality of it. Wondering what happened to your wife.”
He finally looked at her, a muscle working in his jaw. “Aren’t you?”
“No.” The answer was immediate, flat. “I’m not wondering. I know. I got bored. And then I got curious. And then…” Her eyes traveled over Jenny’s sprawled form. “Then I saw a solution. A very, very beautiful solution.”
She walked around the side of the bed, stopping near Jenny’s shoulder. “Look at her, Aidan. Really look. She’s not a victim. She’s not a mistress hiding in a hotel. She’s here. In our bed. Because we both want her here.”
Jenny turned her head on the pillow, meeting Aidan’s gaze. She didn’t look away. She let him see everything—the shyness that was now a memory, the want, the claim she felt every time he filled her.
“It’s my turn to watch,” Catriona murmured. She reached out, her fingers just brushing the tight, dark peak of Jenny’s nipple. Jenny arched into the touch, a soft sigh escaping her. “I want to see you make her come. Just with your mouth. I want to see you lose yourself in it. No performance for me. Just for her.”
The command was a different kind of shock. It wasn’t about possession or a power play. It was a demand for authenticity, for him to connect to the girl beneath the fantasy. It was, somehow, more intimate than anything that had happened on the table.
Aidan’s shoulders slumped, a long exhale leaving him. The resistance bled out, replaced by a weary, deep-seated need. He shifted, his movements slow, deliberate. He nudged Jenny’s thighs apart and knelt between them on the floor.
His first touch was his lips, a soft press against the inside of her knee. Then his tongue, tracing a path upwards. Jenny’s hand found his hair, her fingers tangling in the salt-and-pepper strands. She didn’t pull, just held on.
He took his time. This wasn’t the frantic claiming of the guest room or the brutal punctuation of the dining table. This was exploration. Worship. His hands cupped her ass, lifting her to him, and his mouth found her core with a focus that made her breath hitch. He wasn’t just trying to make her come; he was learning the rhythm that would destroy her.
Catriona watched, one hand absentmindedly stroking her own throat. She saw the way Jenny’s back began to arch off the bed, a silent plea. Saw the tremble start in her stomach. Saw Aidan’s complete absorption, his world narrowed to the taste and feel of the girl in his bed—their bed.
“That’s it,” Catriona whispered, more to herself than to them. “Just like that.”
Jenny’s climax built slowly, then crashed over her without warning. It was a silent, breathless thing for a second before a broken cry tore loose from her chest. Her body bowed, heels digging into the mattress, her grip on Aidan’s hair turning fierce. He held her through it, his mouth relentless, until the last shudder passed and she collapsed back, boneless and gasping.
He pulled back, resting his forehead against her thigh. His lips were glistening. He looked wrecked.
Catriona moved then. She didn’t go to Aidan. She climbed onto the bed, stretching out beside Jenny. She propped her head on her hand, looking down at the younger woman’s flushed face. With her other hand, she gently brushed the damp hair from Jenny’s temple.
“Good?” Catriona asked, her voice tender.
Jenny could only nod, her eyes glassy.
“Me too,” Catriona said. She looked over Jenny’s body at her husband, still kneeling on the floor. “Now you,” she said to him. “However you want. She’s ready for you again.”
Aidan stood, his movements fluid now, the hesitation gone. He didn’t go for a condom. That rule was bedrock now. He pushed his trousers and briefs down, his massive erection springing free. He covered Jenny’s body with his, not with the earlier frenzy, but with a deliberate, heavy possession. He guided himself into her, and her wet, spent body welcomed him with a soft, hot sigh.
Catriona didn’t look away. She watched his face, every grimace of pleasure, every slip of control. She watched Jenny’s legs wrap around his back, locking him in. She listened to the wet, rhythmic sound of their joining, the creak of the bed, the low, animal sounds they made into each other’s skin.
When Aidan finally stiffened, a raw groan ripped from his chest, and she knew he was emptying himself deep inside Jenny again. She saw Jenny’s eyes roll back, a second, smaller peak triggered by the feel of it.
After, they lay in a tangled, sweaty heap, the three of them side-by-side in the wide bed, the boundaries of bodies blurred. The silence was thick, complete. The only light was the lamp, illuminating their shared ruin.
Catriona was the first to speak, her voice a sleepy murmur in the dark. “Her class schedule is on the fridge. She has anatomy lab at eight a.m. tomorrow.”
It was the most mundane thing imaginable. A reminder of the world outside, of Jenny’s other, separate life. It was also a claim. A declaration that this, here, was now part of the domestic routine.
Jenny, half-asleep, smiled against Aidan’s shoulder. Aidan said nothing, just stared at the ceiling, feeling the weight of both women against him, and wondering, dimly, if he would ever find his way back to the surface.