Chapter 24: The Edits Arrive
Three days later, the email arrived.
It was a Tuesday. She’d spent the morning reshelving philosophy, her fingers tracing the neat spines of Kant and Nietzsche, a mundane ritual that failed to quiet the hum in her nerves. Her lunch break was in a silent corner of the staff room. When she saw the sender—Leo—and the subject line—Proofs—her turkey sandwich turned to paste in her mouth.
She waited until she was home, in the cave of her bedroom. The late afternoon sun sliced through a gap in the curtains, illuminating motes of dust over the chaos of boxes and discarded clothes. She sat cross-legged on the bed, the laptop a cold weight on her thighs. She clicked the link. It asked for a password. Aidan’s birthday. She typed it in.
A grid of thumbnails loaded.
Her breath stopped.
The first was almost artful. The white chemise, the fall of her hair, the collar a dark band. She looked like a pre-Raphaelite ghost, a study in melancholy. It was a lie. The second showed the moment Aidan’s hand had touched her back. Her expression was unreadable, her body a line of tension. The third, the chemise rucked up, the shadowed vulnerability of her exposed skin. She clicked through them faster now, a silent film of her own undoing. The arch of her back. The press of Aidan’s body behind her, his face a study of fierce concentration. The explicit, shocking moments of penetration, captured with a clarity that made her throat tight. Her own face was a revelation of strain and something else, something raw and accepting.
She reached the final image.
The close-up. Her lips, swollen and slick with his release, smeared across her cheek. Her eyes were wide, glazed, looking directly into the lens. They weren’t the eyes of a librarian. They were the eyes of a girl who had been broken open and found a twisted kind of peace inside the wreckage. She made a small, punched-out sound and slammed the laptop shut.
She sat in the quiet, heart hammering against her ribs. The room smelled of her perfume and the lingering scent of sex from the night before. Shame washed over her, hot and cold. Then, beneath it, a low, insistent throb. She was wet. The recognition was a fresh wave of humiliation. She’d gotten turned on by pictures of herself being used.
She opened the laptop again. Stared at the grid. Her fingers trembled as she hovered over the trackpad. She opened the final image once more, full screen. She drank it in. The proof. This was her. This was the truth under the cardigan.
She heard the front door click open, his keys hitting the bowl in the hall. Panic seized her. She tried to close the window, fumbling.
“Cat? You in?” His footsteps came down the hall.
“In here,” she called, her voice too high.
He pushed the door open. He was still in his work clothes, a faint smell of metal and diesel on him. He saw her, saw the laptop, saw her face. A slow smile spread across his. “They came.”
She couldn’t speak. He kicked the door shut and came to the bed, leaning over her shoulder to look. He was so close she could feel the heat of him. He reached around her and tapped the right arrow key, cycling through the series from the beginning. He didn’t say a word. His breathing deepened.
“Fuck,” he exhaled finally, on the final image. His hand came up, his thumb brushing roughly over her bottom lip on the screen, as if he could feel the wetness there. “Look at you.”
His other hand settled on her hip, through her skirt. “You been looking at these long?”
She nodded, mute.
“And?”
She swallowed. “I… they’re…”
“They’re fucking perfect. You’re perfect.” His hand slid from her hip to the inside of her thigh, pushing her legs apart. He felt the dampness through her tights. A low chuckle vibrated against her back. “Yeah. You like them. My filthy little star.”
The term landed, branding her. He nudged the laptop aside and turned her to face him, kneeling on the bed between her legs. He didn’t kiss her. He just looked at her, his eyes darting between her real face and the frozen one on the screen.
“Put it back,” he said, his voice rough. “I want to see it while I’m in you.”
She shifted, grabbing the laptop, reopening the final image. She propped it against a pile of pillows beside them. Her own debauched reflection stared back.
Aidan pulled her tights and knickers down in one quick, efficient move. He freed himself, already hard, and pushed her back onto the duvet. He didn’t hurry. He leaned over her, one hand pinning her wrist above her head, his eyes locked on the screen. “Watch it,” he ordered.
He entered her in one slow, deep stroke. She cried out, her body arching. Her gaze flicked to the laptop. There she was, used and marked. Here she was, being used again. The feedback loop was dizzying. The past and present collapsed. The shutter click was replaced by the sound of his skin against hers, the creak of the bed.
“You see that?” he grunted, his pace measured, punishing. “See what you are? It’s right there. Proof.”
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t look away from the screen. The woman there was her, but separate. An object of dark beauty. Aidan’s rhythm stuttered. He was close.
“Where do you want it?” he breathed, his forehead damp against hers. “Tell me. Like the picture?”
The shame was a wildfire. The arousal was a flood. “Yes,” she whispered, the word tearing from her. “Like the picture.”
He drove into her, once, twice more, and stilled with a ragged groan. She felt the hot pulse deep inside. For a long moment, he stayed there, buried, both of them panting, staring at the captured version of this same act.
He pulled out, shifting down the bed. He looked from her face to the screen, then back. He dipped his fingers into the mess between her legs, gathering his own release mixed with her. He brought them to her mouth.
“Clean it.”
She did, her tongue swiping over his skin, the taste metallic and intimate. He watched her, then glanced at the photo, comparing. A smile of pure, dark satisfaction crossed his face. “Even better in person.”
He collapsed beside her, an arm thrown over his eyes. She lay there, spent, the image still glowing beside her. The silence stretched, thick and charged.
After a few minutes, he spoke, his voice lazy with contentment. “Leo knows a guy. Runs a private membership site. Very discreet, very high-end. Pays stupid money for exclusive content.” He turned his head, looking at her. His expression was serious now. “They want a test clip. A short one. Just you. A solo performance, following instructions from a script.”
The air left the room. This was new. This wasn’t a still photo in a private studio. This was motion. This was distribution, however cloistered.
“My face?” The question was a thread.
“Your choice. They’d prefer it, but a mask is an option. The money is less.”
She stared at the ceiling, at a crack in the plaster she’d never noticed before. The woman in the photo stared silently from the screen. This was the momentum. This was the next logical, terrifying step. The fantasy was solidifying, gaining weight and currency.
“Okay,” she said, the word barely audible.
“Yeah?”
She turned to look at him, finding his gaze steady, waiting. “What would the script say?”
He traced a finger down her sternum. “It would tell you to show them how much you love being their little anal whore. It would tell you to use the toys I buy you. It would tell you to look at the camera and say thank you when you come.”
A shiver wracked her, deep and fundamental. It wasn’t a no. It was a kind of horrifying yes, whispered from a place she was only just beginning to explore.
“When?” she asked.
“Soon.” He pulled her against him, her back to his chest, both of them now facing the glowing laptop. He reached over and closed it, plunging the room into twilight. In the sudden dark, his voice was a warm rumble against her ear. “We’ll practice. I’ll write the script. You’ll learn your lines.”
He kissed her shoulder, a strangely tender gesture. The last of the sun disappeared. The room was full of shadows, and in them, the shape of what was coming solidified, waiting for its cue.