Chapter 25: The Test Clip's Command
The silence after her ‘okay’ stretched, thick as the dusk settling in the room. Aidan didn’t move for a long time, just held her, his breath evening out against her neck. She thought he might have fallen asleep. Then his arm tightened.
“Right,” he said, the word a soft punctuation in the dark. “No time like now.”
He shifted away from her, the bed groaning. The click of his lamp was blinding. She blinked against the sudden yellow light, pulling the duvet up over her nakedness. He was already pulling on a pair of sweatpants, his movements brisk, purposeful.
“Where’s the script?” she asked, her voice raspy.
“In my head. Mostly. But I jotted the beats down.” He rummaged in the drawer of his nightstand, pulling out a folded sheet of lined paper, torn from a notebook. He tossed it onto the bed beside her. “Get up. We’re setting up.”
She unfolded the paper. The handwriting was his—all caps, angular, utilitarian. DRESS: Librarian look. Cardigan, skirt, glasses. Hair up. START: Stand facing camera. State name, date. STRIP: Slow. Talk to viewer. Tell them what you’re doing. Tell them why you’re doing it. TOY: Use the glass one. Show them. Demonstrate capacity. BEG: Specify for what. Be explicit. FINISH: On command. Maintain eye contact.
It was a technical brief. A dismantling manual. Her hands trembled, making the paper flutter.
Aidan was dragging her desk chair into the centre of the room, clearing a space. He grabbed his phone from where it was charging, fixed it to a small tripod he produced from a bag, and set it on the seat of the chair. He peered at the screen, adjusting the angle so it captured the bed, the rumpled duvet, the wall of torn magazine cutouts behind it.
“Will the phone be good enough?” she heard herself ask.
“For a test? Yeah. Leo’s guy just needs to see you can follow direction, that you’ve got the look, the… vibe.” He glanced over at her. “The vibe is you looking like you’d rather be anywhere else, while your body does the exact opposite. You’ve got that down.”
It wasn’t a compliment. It was an assessment. She nodded, clutching the paper.
“Get dressed. The clothes you wore to work today are fine.”
She moved like an automaton, picking her cream cardigan and navy A-line skirt off the floor. She found her tights, a fresh pair, and stepped into them, the material whisper-soft against her skin. She pinned her hair back into its habitual neat bun, perched her reading glasses on her nose. When she looked in the foggy mirror above her dresser, Catriona the librarian looked back. Anxious. Pale. Ordinary.
“Perfect,” Aidan murmured from behind her. He was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, phone in hand. The red recording light was already on. He’d started without telling her. Her stomach swooped. “The chair. Stand in front of it. Look at the lens.”
She walked to the centre of the room, her flats silent on the wood floor. The phone’s black eye watched her, unblinking. Beyond it, Aidan was a shadow, his face illuminated by the phone’s screen he held, monitoring the feed.
“Go on,” he said, his voice low. “Step one.”
She took a shaky breath. “My name is Catriona. It’s Tuesday the… the nineteenth.” She faltered. “Do you need the real date?”
“Doesn’t matter. Keep going.”
“I’m here to… to show you…” The words on the page blurred. Tell them why you’re doing it. Her throat closed. The silence stretched, prickly with her failure.
Aidan didn’t prompt her. He just waited.
“I’m doing this because I need it,” she whispered finally, the confession tearing free. “Because I think about it all day. At the library. Sorting books. I think about… being shown. Like this.” Her fingers went to the top button of her cardigan. She undid it. Then the next. She shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor. “I think about being told what to do.”
Her skirt zip was loud. She pushed the fabric over her hips, let it pool around her ankles. She stepped out of it. She stood in her tights, a plain beige bra, her glasses. She felt absurd. Exposed.
“The glasses stay on,” Aidan said, his voice a guidewire in the dark.
She reached behind, unclasped her bra, slipped it off her shoulders. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her tights and peeled them down, bending at the waist. She remembered to talk, her voice a monotone. “I’m taking off my tights. Everything. So you can see.”
Now she was just glasses and skin, standing in a pool of her own clothes. The air was cool. Her nipples tightened.
“Toy,” Aidan said.
She crossed to the bedside table, her movements stiff. The glass dildo was heavy, cool in her hand. She carried it back to the space before the camera. She held it up, as if presenting evidence.
“This is… mine. He bought it for me. To prepare me.” The clinical words felt filthier than slang. She looked directly into the lens. “I’m going to show you how I use it.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, the duvet rough against the backs of her thighs. She spread her legs, angling her body so the camera had a clear view. The glass was slick with the lube she poured into her palm. Her first touch was a shock, a foreign intrusion. She gasped, and the sound was embarrassingly loud in the quiet room.
“Talk,” Aidan commanded, his voice closer now. He’d moved.
“I’m putting it inside myself,” she whispered, pushing the smooth, cool tip against her entrance. It slid in, a slow, impossible fullness. Her head fell back for a second before she snapped it up, forcing her eyes to stay on the camera. “It’s cold. It’s… big. It stretches me. He says I need to get used to it.” She began to move it, a shallow, awkward rhythm. It felt performative, ridiculous, until it didn’t. Until the familiar heat began to coil low in her belly, and the slick sounds of her own body filled the silence. Her breath hitched. “It feels… I feel full.”
“Beg,” Aidan said. He was right beside the tripod now, watching her through the phone, not looking at her directly.
The script said Specify for what. Her mind was fogging, the pleasure blunt and insistent. “Please,” she whispered to the black lens. “Please, I want… I need to be fucked. Properly. I need to be stretched more. I need his cock. I need him to… to finish in me. I want to be used for it. Please.”
The words tumbled out, raw and grating. She was close. The mechanical motion with the toy, the humiliation of begging to a machine, the knowledge that Aidan was hearing every word—it was a friction that ignited her.
“Now,” Aidan said, his voice guttural. “Look right at it and come.”
She held the lens’s gaze, her hazel eyes wide behind the glasses, glazing over. Her mouth fell open as the sensation crested, a sharp, shocking wave that shuddered through her. She cried out, a short, broken sound, her body bowing as she worked herself through it with the glass toy.
Before the last tremors had subsided, Aidan was moving. He stepped into the frame, a blur of motion. He pushed her forward onto the bed, her chest landing on the duvet. He pulled the toy from her with a slick pop. He wasn’t gentle. He positioned her hips, and then he was driving into her from behind in one brutal, deep stroke.
She screamed. The camera saw it all—the way her back arched, the way her face contorted, the precise moment of re-entry. He set a relentless pace, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. The phone on the tripod captured the jarring motion of her body, the sweat gleaming on her spine, the utterly dominated angle.
“This what you begged for?” he grunted, each thrust punching the air from her lungs. She could only nod, her face pressed into the bedding. “Say it!”
“Yes! Yes, please!”
He fucked her like that, a steady, punishing rhythm, until his own control snapped. With a final, deep grind, he stilled, his release hot inside her. She felt the pulse of it. He held himself there for a long moment, both of them breathing in ragged sync.
Slowly, he pulled out. He stepped to the tripod, reached out, and the red light vanished. The recording stopped.
The sudden cessation felt louder than any noise. He put the phone down, came back to the bed, and gathered her into his arms. She was pliant, boneless, her glasses digging awkwardly into his chest. He plucked them off her face and set them aside.
For minutes, there was only the sound of their breathing settling.
“You did it,” he said quietly, his lips against her hair. “You really fucking did it.”
She didn’t answer. The aftermath was a hollowed-out quiet. The shame was there, but distant, muffled by a profound, debilitating exhaustion.
“I’ll send that clip tonight,” he said. His hand stroked her arm, absently. “If he likes what he sees—and he will—we’ll get the proper gear. Lights, a better camera. A contract.”
The word contract landed with a concrete finality. This wasn’t a game in their bedroom anymore. It was a transaction. A vocation.
“What’s his name?” she asked into the darkness.
“Does it matter?”
She thought about it. The man on the other end of the email, the one who would watch her tremble and beg. The one who would pay. “No,” she said finally. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
Aidan’s hold tightened. “This is what you wanted, Cat. A safe way to be filthy. No strangers. No risks. Just me. And an audience who pays for the privilege.”
He was right. This was the logic of her own desperate proposal, followed to its natural, extreme conclusion. She had wanted to be used. Now she was being utilized. The distinction felt razor-thin, and in her drained state, she couldn’t find its edge.
“I know,” she whispered.
And she did. The fear that had driven her to him—the fear of dark alleys and cruel, anonymous hands—was gone. It had been replaced by this: the clean, clinical fear of the camera’s red eye, the structured degradation of a script, and the terrifying certainty that she was going to be very, very good at it.