Chapter 27: The Unexpected Client
The money burned a hole in the world. For a week, Catriona walked through her life at the library like a ghost haunting a familiar building. She processed returns, her fingers automatically scanning barcodes, while her mind replayed the heat of the lights and the cool weight of the new camera. She’d bought a ridiculously expensive cashmere cardigan with a fraction of her share, a private joke she wore against her skin. It felt like a disguise.
Aidan had upgraded everything. New lenses. A reflector. A dedicated, soundproofed hard drive that he called “the vault.” The flat’s second bedroom was now a storage locker for their other life, boxes of equipment stacked beside his old engineering textbooks.
It was a Thursday evening, rain smearing the windows, when the next message came. They were on the sofa, a documentary about deep-sea vents murmuring on the TV. Aidan’s phone buzzed, not the normal chime, but a specific, sharp vibration he’d set for Leo’s contact.
He read it, his face going still in the blue light.
“What?” she asked, pausing with a spoonful of yogurt halfway to her mouth.
“New client. Different ask.” He scrolled, his thumb moving slowly. “A private commission. Not a pre-recorded scene.”
“Then what?”
“A live session. Encrypted video stream. One-way. We perform, they watch. In real time.” He looked up. “Triple the last rate. But there are no retakes, Cat. No editing. It’s just… live.”
The spoon clinked against the bowl. The documentary showed a strange, blind shrimp thriving in unthinkable pressure. Her heart began a slow, heavy knock against her ribs. “A live audience.”
“One person. A username. That’s all we get.” He was watching her, assessing. “Theme is specified. Binding.Blindfold. Narrative control. I talk to them. I describe what I’m doing to you while I do it.”
The air in the room thickened. The fantasy wasn’t just being filmed anymore; it was being broadcast, consumed as it happened. There was a terrifying purity to it. No safety net of post-production. One continuous take of whatever they chose to do.
“Triple?” Her voice was faint.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night. 10 PM.” He put the phone down. “We don’t have to. It’s a bigger step. It’s… interactive, in a way.”
She thought of dangerous strangers, the fear that had driven her to him in the first place. This was the antithesis. A stranger, yes, but channeled through him, through layers of encryption and cash. A stranger made safe by procedure. The thrill that shot through her was electric, sharpening the edges of the room.
“What’s the safe word?” she asked.
He blinked, then a slow, understanding smile touched his lips. “Cobalt.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Yes. Do it.”
The next twenty-four hours were a stretched wire. At work, she shelved books on European history and felt the ghost of silk on her wrists. Aidan spent the day testing the stream, the encryption, running cables from the bedroom to the router. He bought lengths of black silk rope and a blindfold made of padded velvet. They didn’t rehearse. The client, the brief said, wanted authentic reaction.
At 9:45, she stood in the center of the black sheets. The lights were on, but the camera’s red eye was dark. It was connected to a laptop now, a thin cable snaking away like an umbilical cord. Aidan held the blindfold.
“Nervous?” His voice was steady, but she saw the pulse in his neck.
“Terrified.” She smiled. It felt real. “It’s good.”
He nodded. He looped the silk rope around her wrists, not tight enough to hurt, but with a firm, inescapable expertise. The binds were intricate, a series of knots that looked decorative and felt absolute. He guided her to her knees at the foot of the bed. Then he lifted the blindfold.
The world vanished into a deep, velvet black. It was utter. Her other senses rushed in to fill the void. She heard the rustle of his jeans as he moved, the click of the laptop keys. She smelled the ozone of the lights, the clean scent of the rope, his familiar skin.
“We’re live in thirty seconds,” he said, his voice shifting. It lost its roommate softness, gaining a resonant, deliberate calm. It was his director’s voice, but warmer, closer to the mic. “Remember, you don’t perform for them. You react to me. Everything you get comes from me.”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
A pause. She imagined him putting on his headset, adjusting the camera angle to frame her kneeling, bound, and blind on the pristine black satin.
“And… we’re live.” A different silence followed, charged and pregnant. She felt the weight of the unseen gaze like a physical touch on her skin. “Good evening,” Aidan said, his voice now a smooth, intimate baritone directed at the lens. “As requested. She’s prepared. You’ll note the ties are purely restraint. No gag. I want to hear everything.”
He moved. A hand, large and warm, settled on the crown of her head. She jumped at the contact, her breath hitching.
“She startles easily. It’s not an act. She’s a librarian.” His thumb stroked her temple. “You can see the innocence in the line of her neck. It’s about to be permanently altered.”
His words were a clinical, poetic degradation. They wrapped around her, tightening the silence. He described the fall of her hair, the slope of her shoulders, the nervous flutter in her bound hands. His narration was for the client, but it was also a script for her, telling her who she was in this moment: a prepared object.
His hands went to the hem of her simple cotton dress. He gathered it slowly, the fabric whispering up her thighs, over her hips, until he pulled it off entirely. The cool air touched her skin. She was naked now, on display for a void she couldn’t see.
“Perfect exposure,” he murmured, half to her, half to the mic. His palms ran down her spine, over the curves of her ass. “The site is pristine. Never been used commercially before last week. Now it’s her primary function. Watch.”
She heard the click of the lube bottle. The sound was obscenely loud. The cold drizzle on her lower back made her gasp.
“Listen to that,” Aidan said, a hint of genuine amusement in his voice. “The sound of anticipation.” His fingers, slick and firm, began to work her open. It was slow, methodical, a preparatory ritual narrated in real time. “The resistance is still remarkable. It’s a tight, hostile fit. She’s fighting it on a muscular level, even as she pushes back into my hand. The contradiction is the entire point.”
He was right. Her body was a battleground, every instinct clashing, every nerve screaming. The blindness amplified it all. She had nothing but his voice and his touch, and the crushing awareness of the anonymous, paying witness.
When he positioned himself behind her, the blunt, familiar pressure of him notching against her, she let out a shaking whimper.
“Now,” he said, his voice dropping, grating with effort. “The primary penetration. I want you to hear the exact moment her body accepts its purpose.”
He pushed.
The stretch was a white-hot continuum of feeling. The blindfold trapped her inside it. She couldn’t see the ceiling to anchor herself, couldn’t see his face. There was only the splitting fullness and his voice, a relentless commentary in her ear.
“There it is. The surrender. You can see the tension break in her shoulders. She’s taking it. She’s taking all of it. Her body is learning to be a sheath.”
He began to move, a deep, dragging rhythm that felt less like fucking and more like a deliberate, spoken-word demonstration of ownership. Each thrust was punctuated by his low, descriptive growls to the client. Observe the dilation. Note the trembling in her thighs. Listen to the change in her breath, from pain to pleading.
And she was pleading. “Please,” she heard herself slur into the sheets. “Please, more.” She didn’t know who she was begging—him, the client, the feeling itself.
“She’s begging,” Aidan translated coolly. “But she has no agency. She’s begging for what I’m already giving her. It’s a beautiful, empty noise.”
The orgasm, when it ripped through her, was a cataclysm of helplessness. It was sharper, more violent than anything before, torn from her by the perfect storm of restraint, blindness, and the haunting spectre of the watchful eye. She screamed, a raw, unraveling sound that felt like it came from the room itself.
He followed, his control snapping, his narration dissolving into a guttural groan as he emptied himself into her. The only sound for a moment was their ragged breathing.
Then, the director’s voice returned, slightly winded but composed. “Session complete. I trust the presentation was satisfactory.”
A few seconds of silence. A notification pinged softly from the laptop.
“Payment confirmed,” Aidan said. “Thank you for your business.”
A click. The hum of the laptop changed pitch. The red light behind her blindfold, a presence she’d felt more than seen, vanished.
He let out a long, shaky breath. She heard him remove his headset. Then his hands were on the blindfold, untying it. The light was a blurred, golden shock. He looked down at her, his face slick with sweat, his eyes searching hers. He didn’t speak as he gently, meticulously, began untying the intricate knots at her wrists.
The blood rushed back into her hands in a painful, tingling wave. She was trembling uncontrollably, a fine, seismic shaking that started in her bones. He pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her, holding her through the tremors. He didn’t call her a natural or talk about the money. He just held her, his chin resting on her damp hair.
“That was different,” she finally mumbled into his chest.
“Yeah.”
“He liked it.”
“He loved it.” Aidan’s voice was quiet. “Sent a message. ‘Flawless execution. The authentic distress was particularly notable.’ He’s booked two more sessions. Same terms.”
The shaking deepened for a second, then began to subside, replaced by a profound, liquid exhaustion. She was ruined, well-used, and financially significant. The three facts were intertwined.
“I’m your dirty little secret,” she whispered, the words from the first script taking on a new, heavier meaning.
He pulled back, cradling her face. His thumbs wiped at the tracks of tears she hadn’t even felt. “You’re not a secret anymore, Cat. You’re a product.” He said it without cruelty, a simple statement of fact. “My star product. And this is just the beginning.”
He helped her up, guided her to the shower. Under the water, she leaned against the tiles, feeling the echoes of the performance in every muscle. The client was a username. The money was a number in an account. But the feeling of being simultaneously erased and magnified, of being hollowed out and filled for a paying audience of one—that was hers. It was horrifying. It was the most real thing she’d ever done.
Later, in her own bed, she stared at the ceiling. Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. A notification from her bank. The transfer. The triple rate.
She didn’t open it. She just lay there, feeling the ghost of the silk rope on her wrists, and wondered what the next request would be, and if there was a version of herself left who would ever say no.