Chapter 15: The Family Interrogation
The walk back to The Snug was a silent communion, their joined hands swinging between them like a pendulum measuring a new, quieter time. The cold air had cleared the last of the adrenaline from Freya’s veins, leaving a deep, weary contentment. The warm, beer-scented air of the pub hallway enveloped them, a blanket after the exposed moor.
Before they could even shed their coats, Emily and Sarah materialized from the dimness near the stairs, their expressions a mix of concern and unmistakable curiosity.
“There you are,” Sarah said, her eyes scanning them for damage. “We were starting to think the paps had ambushed you in a sheep pen.”
“All clear,” Aidan said, his voice relaxed. “Just needed air.”
“Right,” Emily drawled, a slow smile spreading.“Is that what the kids are calling it these days? ‘Air’?” She looped her arm through Freya’s, steering her toward the empty public bar while shooting a look at Aidan.“Borrow her.Go help Mum with the cellar trap. Man’s work.”
Aidan raised an eyebrow but complied, giving Freya’s hand a final squeeze before disappearing through a door behind the bar. Freya found herself ushered into a velvet-upholstered booth, Emily sliding in beside her, Sarah across the table. A half-finished glass of red wine sat before Sarah, and she pushed it toward Freya.“Medicinal,” she stated.
Freya took a grateful sip. The sisters watched her, their similar sharp eyes holding a friendly but unnervingly direct focus.“So,” Emily began, leaning her elbows on the table. “The pill, eh?”
Freya choked on the wine, setting the glass down with a clink. “Oh God.Please don’t.”
Sarah laughed.“It’s fine, really. Mum’s over the moon.Thinks you’re brilliantly honest.We do, too. It’s just… a lot to take in over shepherd’s pie.”
“It just came out,” Freya muttered, tracing the rim of the glass. “My mouth engages before my brain.”
“Seems to be a theme,” Emily noted, her tone light. “Earlier, with the… ahem… ‘multiple times a day’ comment.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur.“Is he… is he really that… you know? Our baby brother?”
Freya felt a flush creep up her neck, but it was accompanied by a strange, defiant pride. This was it, the unspoken test. Not about her career or her fame, but about this—about him.About them.She met Emily’s gaze, then Sarah’s.
“Yes,” she said, the word firm. “He is.” She took another fortifying sip of wine, the liquid courage mingling with the afternoon’s boldness. “I’ve never encountered anything like it.It’s monstrous.In the best possible way.”
Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. Emily let out a low whistle.
“But it’s not just that,” Freya continued, the words coming easier now, fueled by a need to make them understand the core of it. “It’s… the way he is with me.During.He’s so… verbal. He tells me I’m beautiful.He tells me how smart I am. He whispers how lucky he is that I let him inside me, that my… my pussy is so skilled, so tight for him.” The vulgarity felt liberating here, in this confessional space. “He makes me feel like a goddess, not a conquest.He never says he owns me. He says he’s lucky to have me.”
The silence that followed was thick. Emily and Sarah exchanged a look Freya couldn’t decipher—a rapid, silent communication born of a lifetime of shared history. Then, simultaneously, their expressions dissolved.The tension cracked. They didn’t just laugh; they slumped back in the booth, a shared release of breath that turned into genuine, shoulder-shaking laughter.
Sarah wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Oh, thank Christ.”
Emily reached over and gripped Freya’s forearm, her grip strong. “You have no idea what that means to hear.”
“What?” Freya asked, bewildered.
“Aidan… he’s always been the strong one.The quiet one. Carried the weight of everything after Dad died, never showed a crack,” Sarah explained, her voice softer now.“We’ve seen him with girls before.Polite. Detached.A complete fortress. We worried he’d sealed himself off for good.”
“But what you’re describing,” Emily chimed in, “that vulnerability, that worship… that’s him.The real him.He’s not just fucking you, Freya. He’s utterly, completely gone for you.”
The truth of it landed in Freya’s chest, warm and expansive. She hadn’t passed a test; she’d simply described their reality, and in doing so, had given his sisters a window into a brother they thought they’d lost. The validation was a heady, powerful thing.
Aidan reappeared then, dusting his hands on his jeans. He took in the scene: his sisters recovering from laughter, Freya glowing with a serene smile.“What’s this? Ganging up on her?”
“Quite the opposite,” Sarah said, standing and kissing his cheek.“We’re endorsing her. Don’t fuck it up.”
As the sisters melted away to deal with the evening regulars filtering in, Aidan slid into the booth opposite Freya. “Endorsing you, huh?”
“Something like that,” she said, her foot finding his under the table.
The pub began to fill, the noise level rising in increments.A few glances were thrown their way, curious but not intrusive. The local protection Maureen had promised seemed to be in effect. Yet, with each new person, Freya felt the walls of their private world thinning. The memory of the paparazzi photo, the feel of his release inside her in the woods, the intense confession to his sisters—it all coalesced into a single, pressing need.A need for a different kind of privacy.
Her gaze locked with his across the table.She let one hand drift below the table edge, out of sight of the room. She watched his eyes as her fingers found the bulge in his jeans, already half-hard. She gave a gentle squeeze.His nostrils flared.He didn’t move.
“I need you,” she mouthed silently.
He held her stare for a long moment, then gave a nearly imperceptible nod.He stood, casually tossing some coins on the table. “Going to show Freya the upstairs storage. Mum needs an inventory check.”
It was a flimsy pretext, but delivered with such bland authority that no one questioned it. He led her through a different door, up a narrow, creaking staircase lined with framed black-and-white photos of the pub in decades past. At the top was a short landing with two doors. One was a small, neat bedroom—Maureen’s, presumably.The other was a bathroom.
Aidan pushed the bathroom door open and drew her inside, locking it behind them.It was an old, large room. A deep claw-foot tub dominated one wall.The air was cool, smelling of lemon cleaner and damp linen. The only light filtered through a frosted window from the neon pub sign outside, casting the room in a dim, shifting cerulean glow. The sounds from below were muffled, a distant rumble of conversation and clinking glass.He didn’t speak. He backed her against the cold porcelain of the sink, his hands cradling her face, and kissed her with a consuming hunger that tasted of wine and desperation. His tongue plunged into her mouth, a prelude. Her hands scrabbled at his belt, his button fly, her own urgency mirroring his.He broke the kiss, breathing heavily. “Turn around.”
She obeyed instantly, bracing her hands on the cool sink. He pushed her sweater up, dragged her jeans and panties down to her knees in one swift movement. The cold air hit her skin, followed immediately by the heat of his body pressed against her. He kicked her legs wider apart with his foot.
She heard the tear of a foil packet—he’d thought ahead, plucking one from his wallet—and the soft, wet sound of him sheathing himself. Then the broad, insistent pressure of his cockhead, probing through her slick folds.
“You’re dripping,” he growled, his hands gripping her hips. “Thinking about it all through dinner, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
He pushed into her, a slow, devastating invasion that filled her utterly.She cried out, the sound echoing off the tiles. He paused, buried to the hilt, both of them panting. From below, a burst of laughter seeped up through the floorboards.The juxtaposition was electric. The public merriment below, the raw privacy here. He began to move, pulling almost all the way out before driving back in with concentrated force.Each thrust was a deep, punctuated statement.The sink creaked in protest. Her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror was a blurred shock of platinum hair and clenched eyes.
“So good,” he chanted against her shoulder, his voice ragged.“This perfect pussy.Taking all of me. God, Freya…” His pace increased, becoming less controlled, more frantic. The slap of skin, the slick, rhythmic sounds of their joining, filled the small room. He reached around, his fingers finding her clit, circling roughly in time with his thrusts.
The pleasure was sharp, almost too intense, amplified by the risk, by the emotional catharsis of the evening. She felt her orgasm building not as a wave, but as a critical mass, a detonation at her core.
“Come for me,” he demanded, his voice a guttural command. “Let me feel it. Squeeze my cock.”
His words, the relentless friction of his fingers, the deep, pounding fullness—it tipped her over. Her orgasm ripped through her, a silent scream contorting her face as her body clenched around him in violent, pulsating waves. The intensity made her legs buckle.He held her up, his own control shattering. With a choked-off groan, he pistoned into her twice more, deep and final, and she felt him shudder, the hot pulse of his release filling the condom inside her. He collapsed over her back, his weight a solid, comforting anchor as they both gasped for air, the only sounds their labored breathing and the distant, indifferent hum of the pub below.Slowly, he softened and slipped out. He attended to the condom, disposed of it, and then gently pulled her clothing back into place. He turned her around, her back against the sink, and gathered her into his arms. They stood like that for long minutes, holding each other in the blue dark, listening to the world continue just a few feet away, a world that no longer seemed to have any claim on them at all.