Chapter 12: The Cabin's Secrets
The only sounds were the wet, rhythmic suction of Freya’s mouth and the low, choked groan Aidan couldn’t suppress. His head was tipped back against the chair, eyes screwed shut, fingers clenched on the worn wooden arms. Every nerve was a live wire, endings screaming from the heat and pressure of her throat.
She knelt between his spread thighs on the rough wool rug, her blonde hair a curtain over his hips. Her movements were not tentative. They were fluid, deep, and devastatingly efficient. She took him to the root on every downward stroke, her nose pressing into the coarse hair at his base, her throat working around him. A practiced ease, just as Jenny had ordered.
Catriona watched from her chair, one hand idly cupping her own breast, thumb circling a peaked nipple. The other was tucked into the waistband of her crimson panties. Her breathing was shallow, her lips parted. “Fuck, Freya,” she whispered, almost to herself. “You’ve been holding out on us.”
Jenny hadn’t moved from her seat at the head of the table. She’d won the hand, claimed her prize, and now she observed its execution with the focused intensity of a strategist. One hand rested on the table, fingers lightly drumming. The other was out of sight, below the table’s edge. The slight, regular tremor in her shoulder, however, betrayed her. A slow, secret rhythm.
Aidan opened his eyes, his vision swimming. He looked down at the top of Freya’s head, at the elegant line of her naked back, the knobs of her spine highlighted by firelight. The sight, combined with the relentless sensation, was pushing him to a ragged edge. He tapped her shoulder, twice.
She pulled off with a soft, slick pop, looking up. A strand of saliva connected her lips to his glistening tip. Her blue eyes were hazy, dark with wanting. “Too much?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“The… opposite,” he managed, his chest heaving. “I’m not going to last. And the game…”
He left it hanging. The unspoken rule: this was a forfeit, not the finale. Jenny’s tournament wasn’t over.
Freya understood. She gave his thigh a soft squeeze and stood, her legs slightly unsteady. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, a strangely casual gesture amid the chaos, and retrieved her discarded sweater from the floor. She didn’t put it on, just held it in front of her like a shield as she returned to her chair, her skin flushed a deep, rosy gold.
The room settled into a brittle quiet, punctuated by the fire’s crackle. The space between them all felt charged, different. A line had been irrevocably crossed. Jenny slowly brought her other hand back above the table, lacing her fingers together. Her expression was unreadable.
“Right,” Catriona said, breaking the silence. She slapped the table lightly, making the cards jump. “My deal.” Her voice was a husk of its usual boisterous tone, scraped raw by arousal. She gathered the deck, her movements less fluid than before. The black tank top she still wore was twisted, one strap slipping down her freckled shoulder.
The cards whispered as she dealt. Five facedown. Aidan forced himself to look at his hand, to process the shapes. A ten, a jack, a queen, all hearts. A flutter in his stomach. He drew two more cards. A king of hearts. His breath caught. He needed the ace.
The betting was silent, communicated by pushes of matchsticks. Freya folded early, clutching her sweater. Catriona saw Jenny’s raise. Aidan, his pulse thundering in his ears, pushed all his remaining matchsticks to the center. “All in.”
Jenny studied him. Her eyes flicked from his face to his bare torso, down to where he was still thick and wet from Freya’s mouth, then back to her cards. She had a tell, he realized. When she was truly considering a fold, she pressed her thumbnail into the pad of her index finger. She wasn’t doing it now.
“Call,” she said.
Catriona grinned, a wild, feral thing. “Let’s see it, then.” She fanned her cards: a pair of aces, a pair of eights. A strong full house.
Jenney laid hers down with calm finality. A straight, eight to queen. She exhaled, a short, sharp burst of air. Beaten.
But Aidan was still in. He turned his cards over, one by one. Ten, Jack, Queen, King of Hearts. He paused, the final card trapped under his thumb. The air left the room. He flipped it.
The Ace of Hearts winked up from the scarred wood.
A royal flush.
For a second, no one moved. The sheer statistical absurdity of it hung in the air, a dare.
Then Catriona erupted. “No fucking way!” She laughed, a loud, shocked bark that echoed in the small room. She threw her cards down. “You have got to be kidding me!”
Jenny stared at the perfect red run of cards. The controlled mask slipped completely, revealing stark, hungry frustration. She had lost. To him. To that.
Aidan sat there, the victor, utterly exposed. The thrill of the win was instantly tempered by the reality of the prize. Winner chooses what happens next.
Freya was watching him, her earlier confidence softened into something like apprehension. Catriona leaned forward, her cleavage straining against the cotton of her tank top, her eyes bright with challenge and promise. Jenny had composed herself, her face a careful blank, but her knuckles were white where she gripped the table’s edge.
He had the power. He could stop it. He could declare the game over, laugh it off, retreat to the loft and let the awkwardness reclaim them.
But the fire was too hot. The memory of Freya’s mouth was too vivid. The sight of Catriona’s bitten lip and Jenny’s coiled tension was a siren call. The old friendship was already a ghost in this firelit room. This was the new compact.
He looked at Catriona. “You lost the hand,” he said, his own voice sounding strange. “A forfeit.”
She didn’t look away. “I did.”
“Your choice,” he said, echoing Jenny’s original rule. “What comes off.”
A slow smile spread across Catriona’s face. It wasn’t her usual brash grin. This was darker, more intimate. She held his gaze as she hooked her thumbs into the sides of her crimson panties. She stood, bent slightly, and peeled them down her thighs, over her knees, stepping out of them with a dancer’s grace. She tossed them onto the table, where they landed over his ace.
She was now clothed only in the thin, twisted black tank top. The firelight painted the curves of her hips, the shadow between her thighs, the full, pale swell of her arse as she turned to reclaim her seat.
“Better?” she asked, her voice a low purr.
Aidan could only nod. The game was still his. He looked at Jenny. She met his gaze, her chin lifted. Waiting.
“My deal,” he said, and reached for the cards.