Chapter 14: The Embarrassment Deepens
The buzzing phone lay between them like a live wire. The grainy image on the screen seemed to bleed into the warm wood of the bar, a crack in the idyllic scene. Aidan’s body had gone still in that particular way Freya recognized—a tactical stillness, every sense tuned to a threat.
“Shit,” she breathed, the word swallowed by the quiet of the empty pub.
Before either could move, the kitchen door swung open. Maureen emerged, wiping her hands on a tea towel, her expression shifted from earlier amusement to soft concern as she took in their postures. Sarah and Emily followed, the levity gone from their faces.
“Everything alright?” Maureen asked, her eyes darting to the phone in Aidan’s hand.“Pap shot,” Aidan said, his voice clipped. “From our arrival.It’s hit the tabs.”
A heavy silence fell. Emily whistled low. “That was fast.”
“We should head back to London,” Freya said, the model’s instinct for damage control overriding the woman’s desire to stay. “I need to call my publicist, spin this before they dig…”
Maureen stepped forward, placing a firm hand on Freya’s arm.“You’ll do no such thing tonight. Those vultures can wait.You’re safe here.” She looked at her son.“Take her out. Get some air.The moors are empty. Just… be careful.”
Aidan nodded, already shifting gears.“Right.A walk. Clear our heads.” He pocketed the offending phone, a deliberate gesture to shelve the crisis, and took Freya’s coat from the stand.
As he helped her into it, his hands resting on her shoulders for a beat too long, Maureen called out, “And be safe this afternoon, you two.”
Freya, her mind a chaotic swirl of tabloid headlines and legal strategies, heard the phrase through the filter of her own anxieties.Safety. Protection. Her brain, still raw from her earlier overshare, latched onto the most immediate, physical interpretation.She turned, nodding earnestly.“Oh, absolutely. I’m on the pill,” she said, her tone pragmatic, as if discussing a route map. “I know I love Aidan’s gigantic cock creampieing me multiple times a day, but I’m always careful.”
The silence this time was different.Not stunned, but suspended. Then, Emily choked, a sputter of laughter exploding from her.She doubled over, slapping her thigh. Sarah’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes crinkling above her fingers as her shoulders shook with silent, helpless mirth. Maureen simply closed her eyes, a slow, weary smile spreading across her face.
Aidan let his forehead drop onto Freya’s shoulder, his body vibrating with a suppressed laugh.He straightened, pulling her back against his chest, his arms wrapping around her waist. “My love,” he murmured into her ear, his voice thick with affection and amusement. “She meant with the press situation.”
Heat flooded Freya’s face, a fiery wave of déjà vu and profound embarrassment.She covered her eyes with her hands. “I have got to learn to install a filter between my brain and my mouth,” she groaned.
“Don’t you dare,” Sarah managed between giggles. “It’s the best thing about you.”
The laughter, warm and inclusive, did its work. The sharp fear of the paparazzi receded, blunted by the absurdity of the moment.Aidan kissed her temple, then took her hand.“Come on. Before you decide to outline my entire sexual history.”
They escaped into the afternoon, the crisp air a slap after the pub’s warmth. He led her not towards the road, but around the back of the building, across a sodden field dotted with sheep, toward a thicket of bare-branched trees that clung to the hillside. The tension from the phone began to unravel stitch by stitch with each step away from the walls.Inside the woods, the world changed. The wind softened, filtered through a network of creaking branches.The light was muted, a grey-green twilight. The only sounds were their footsteps on the damp carpet of moss and dead leaves, and the distant bleating of sheep.
Aidan stopped in a small, natural clearing where an ancient, fallen tree formed a mossy bench. He turned her to face him, his hands coming up to cradle her jaw. His thumbs stroked her cheekbones.
“You are magnificent,” he said, his voice low and serious now, all trace of laughter gone.“You know that?In there, with them… you’re just you. No shield. It’s the most terrifying and beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Her eyes pricked with unexpected tears.“I just outed my birth control regimen to your mother, Aidan. That’s not magnificent. It’s deranged.”
“It’s honest,” he insisted.“It’s you trusting us.Trusting me.” His gaze was intense, searching. “That photo… it wants to turn this into something dirty.A secret. What we have isn’t a secret. It’s just… ours.”
He kissed her then, a slow, deep affirmation.Her hands came up to grip the rough wool of his jacket, pulling him closer. The kiss quickly shed its tenderness, morphing into something hotter, more urgent. The adrenaline from the confrontation, the raw emotion of the day, channeled into a sharp, physical need.
Aidan’s hands slid down from her face, under her coat, pushing it from her shoulders. It fell to the moss with a soft thud. His fingers found the hem of her sweater, then her shirt, and skated up the bare skin of her back. She gasped against his mouth at the contact, his palms warm and rough.
“They think they’ve found something,” he muttered, his lips moving to her jaw, her throat. “They have no idea what they’re looking at.”
He backed her gently until her legs hit the fallen tree. She sat, and he knelt before her in the damp leaves, his hands pushing her knees apart. His eyes, dark and hungry, held hers as he unbuttoned her jeans. The cold air hit her skin, followed an instant later by the devastating heat of his mouth through the thin lace of her panties.
She cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the woods.Her head fell back. He hooked his fingers in the lace, pulling them down just enough, and his tongue was on her, licking a slow, torturous stripe through her folds. He worshipped her with his mouth, his lips and tongue working her with a focused intensity that made her thighs tremble. He didn’t just seek her pleasure; he mapped it, learning the sensitive swell of her clit, the hungry pulse at her entrance, as if committing her to memory.
“Taste so good,” he groaned against her, the vibration sending shockwaves through her core. “You’re so wet for me already, love. So perfect.”
His words, filthy and reverent, unraveled her. She tangled her hands in his hair, holding him to her as his tongue pushed inside her, fucking her with shallow, relentless thrusts. The world narrowed to the sensation: the slick heat of his mouth, the scrape of his stubble on her inner thighs, the tight coil of pleasure building low in her belly.“Aidan… please,” she begged, her voice ragged.He understood. He rose up, fumbling with his own fly.His cock sprang free, thick and already dripping. He rubbed the head through her wetness, coating himself, his eyes locked on hers. Then he pushed in.The stretch was exquisite, a fullness that stole her breath. He seated himself to the hilt with one slow, deep roll of his hips, and she arched off the log, a choked sob escaping her. He braced one hand on the mossy trunk beside her head, the other gripping her hip, and began to move.
This wasn’t the gentle, exploratory lovemaking of the night before.This was a claiming, a defiance. Each thrust was deep, deliberate, pounding into her with a force that shook her whole body. The sounds were obscene, the slick slap of skin on skin, their ragged breaths, her low moans swallowed by his mouth when he kissed her.“You take me so well,” he rasped, his breath hot in her ear. “This gorgeous, tight pussy… fuck… it’s heaven.” He shifted his angle, hitting a spot that made her see stars. She cried out, her nails digging into the muscles of his back through his shirt.“Harder,” she demanded, the word a gasp.
He obliged, his thrusts becoming punishing, animalistic.The fallen tree groaned beneath them. He drove into her, over and over, his control fragmenting. She could feel his own climax gathering, the rhythm of his hips growing jagged, desperate.“Come with me,” he gritted out. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”
It was the only permission she needed. The coil snapped, pleasure detonating through her in wave after wave of blinding intensity. Her body clamped around him, milking him, and with a raw, guttural shout, he followed her over. He plunged deep, shuddering, and she felt the hot, sudden flood of his release filling her. He held himself there, pulsing inside her, his forehead resting against her shoulder as they both gasped for air in the cold, silent wood.For long minutes, there was only the sound of their breathing slowing. Finally, he softened and slipped from her, the aftermath trickling down her thigh. He tenderly pulled her clothes back into place before attending to his own. Then he sat beside her on the log, pulling her into the warmth of his side.He kissed her hair. “They don’t get this,” he said quietly, his voice husky with spent passion. “They can’t even conceive of it.”
She leaned into him, spent and peaceful. The world outside, with its cameras and headlines, felt galaxies away. Here, in the damp and the quiet, with the scent of earth and sex lingering in the air, they had built a fortress of their own.He stood, offering his hand. “We should get back before Mum sends a search party.”
She took his hand, standing on slightly unsteady legs. As they walked back through the gathering dusk, the lights of The Snug a golden glow in the distance, her phone, silent in her pocket, felt less like a threat and more like a trivial object from a faded, unimportant life. The real world was here, in the grip of his hand, in the ache between her legs, in the profound, unshakeable certainty that had rooted itself in her soul.Let them print their pictures. They were only shadows.