Chapter 39: The Virgin's Confession
The villa’s routine was a metronome. Morning light, coffee, the low hum of cameras powering up. Aidan was a revolving door. Bella in the editing suite, Marta by the pool, a brunette named Sofia in the gym. Catriona watched, assisted, handed over towels and water bottles. Her body ached with a hollow static. The jealousy had hardened into a permanent, low-grade fever.
She sought the garden for quiet, the one place the cameras weren’t permanently rigged. The bougainvillea was a violent splash of colour, the scent of roses thick and cloying. And there, on the weathered stone bench, was Chloe.
She wasn’t just sitting. She was curled into a tight ball, shoulders shaking, the sound of her crying muffled against her knees. Her fiery hair was a dull mess.
Catriona almost turned back. Her own turmoil felt too heavy to carry anyone else’s. But the girl’s distress was a physical pull. She walked over, her sandals whispering on the terracotta tiles.
“Hey.”
Chloe flinched, her head snapping up. Her face was blotchy, her eyes red-rimmed and terrified. “Oh god. Sorry. I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Catriona said, sitting beside her. The stone was warm through her linen shorts. “What’s the countdown?”
A fresh wave of tears. “Tomorrow. After lunch. Leo says the ‘virgin niche’ has peak engagement in the first forty-eight hours. They want it… documented. The fear.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, a childlike gesture. “I thought I could do it. The money… I just keep thinking about him. About how big he is. The sounds he made last night. I heard you. I heard you, too.”
Catriona didn’t blush. The shame had been cauterized. “It’s loud here.”
“I can’t. I’ll freeze. I’ll ruin it and they’ll sue me or something.” Chloe’s breath hitched. “You do it all the time. How do you… not break?”
The question hung in the fragrant air. Catriona looked at her own hands, neatly folded in her lap. The librarian’s hands. She saw the ghost of the girl she was a year ago, trembling before Aidan in their shared hallway, her proposal a desperate grenade tossed between them.
“You practice,” Catriona said, her voice quiet but clear.
Chloe blinked. “Practice what?”
“Breathing. First. Then the mechanics.” Catriona stood. “Come on.”
She led Chloe not back to the villa, but deeper into the garden, to a more secluded corner shielded by a wall of jasmine. The murmur of the pool was distant here. “Sit. Legs out. Close your eyes.”
Like a dutiful student, Chloe obeyed. Catriona guided her through the breathing she used when the cameras felt like insect eyes—in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. The panic in Chloe’s shoulders slowly loosened.
“Okay,” Catriona said, after the air between them had softened. “The fear is about the unknown. So we make it known.”
She reached for the hem of her own simple cotton dress and pulled it up and over her head, dropping it on the tiles. She stood in just her plain underwear. Chloe’s eyes flew open, wide.
“What are you doing?”
“Demonstrating.” Catriona’s heart hammered, but it was a clean, sharp rhythm. This was a script she could write. Control, of a kind. “You’re scared of his size. It’s a rational fear. The first time with him was like being split in two. It’s about angle. And patience.”
From the pocket of her discarded dress, she retrieved the smooth, cool object she’d brought from her room. A glass dildo, substantial, slightly curved. Chloe gasped.
“It’s not him. But it’s a good approximation.” Catriona lay back on the sun-warmed tiles, the grit pressing into her shoulder blades. The sky above was a brutal, perfect blue. She hooked her thumbs into the sides of her underwear and slid them down her legs. “Watch. Don’t think about porn. Think about geometry.”
She brought the glass to herself. She was already slick, her body responding to the taboo of the lesson, the exposed sky, Chloe’s stunned gaze. This was different from touching herself in the dark to the sound of his betrayal. This was clinical. Commanding.
“You go slow. You let the body adjust. It’s not about taking it all at once. It’s about convincing the muscles it’s safe.” She pressed the tip against herself, breathed out, and let it begin to sink in. A sharp, full sensation. She kept her face calm, her eyes on Chloe’s.“See? No panic. Just breath.”
She worked it deeper, a slow, deliberate glide. Her own arousal was a secondary note, a hum beneath the primary goal of instruction. Chloe was mesmerized, her earlier terror replaced by a stunned, open-mouthed focus.
“Your turn,” Catriona said, her voice only slightly strained. “Take it. Get used to the weight.”
She held out the glistening glass. Chloe, moving as if in a trance, took it. Her hand shook.
“On your back. Now.”
Chloe fumbled with her shorts, lying back awkwardly. She mimicked Catriona’s position, her freckled skin glowing against the terracotta.
“Breathe,” Catriona instructed, kneeling beside her, a teacher at her desk. “Now. Slow.”
It was then that Aidan found them.
He came around the corner of the jasmine wall, a towel around his neck, sweat cooling on his skin from some earlier scene. He stopped dead.
The tableau was undeniable: Catriona naked from the waist down, kneeling with authority; Chloe prone, legs apart, the glass tool poised at her entrance. The air was thick with the scent of crushed greenery and salt and something else, something taught.
For a long second, no one moved. Aidan’s eyes went from the dildo to Catriona’s face. She saw the fatigue there, the strange distance that had entered him since the master suite, but also a spark of dark, intrigued heat.
“Private lesson?” he said, his Yorkshire accent rough.
“Preparatory theory,” Catriona replied, not covering herself. Her power here felt fragile, but real. “She’s terrified of you. I’m reducing variables.”
Aidan walked closer, his shadow falling over them. Chloe whimpered, covering herself with her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m—”
“Hush,” Catriona said, not looking away from Aidan. “Can we have the room? Our room. This afternoon. Before the official shoot.”
He understood. His gaze travelled over her, then to Chloe’s trembling form. “Leo wants the first-take authenticity. The fear.”
“He’ll get a better product if she knows what she’s doing,” Catriona countered, her voice low and urgent. “If she can think about performance, not just survival. Let me warm her up. For the scene. For you.”
The implicit offer hung between them. She was giving him curated access, framing the deflowering as a collaborative act. She was also inserting herself back into the center of his dynamic. His eyes darkened.
“Alright.” He nodded slowly. “Two hours. I’ll tell Leo we’re doing a rehearsal. For chemistry.”
When he left, the garden felt both emptier and more charged.
That afternoon, their bedroom smelled of the expensive, unscented lube the production provided. Chloe lay on Catriona’s bed, breathing in the pattern she’d been taught. Catriona was dressed in a silk kimono, her hair down. Aidan stood at the foot of the bed, already hard.
A small, handheld camera was on a tripod in the corner. Leo’s concession to a “test shot.”
“Okay, Chloe,” Catriona murmured, sitting beside her. “This is just us. Watch me first.”
She opened her kimono, let it slide off her shoulders. She went to Aidan, her movements deliberate, and sank to her knees. She took him into her mouth, not to frenzy, but to demonstrate—the use of the tongue, the pressure of the hand, the rhythm. She showed her. Chloe watched, her fear softening into a kind of rapt, technical study.
When Aidan was trembling, Catriona guided him to the bed. “Now. Slowly. Like we practiced. I’ll help.”
She positioned Chloe, her hands practical, her voice a soft, steady stream. She guided Aidan’s tip, she coached Chloe’s breathing. When he pushed in, and Chloe cried out—a sharp, real sound—Catriona was there, holding her hand, stroking her hair.
“Breathe through it. It passes. Look at him. There you go.”
And as Aidan began to move, a slow, relentless tide, Catriona stayed close. Her own arousal was a live wire, sparked by the control, by the sight of him filling this girl she had prepared, by the sheer forbidden filth of the mentorship. She whispered instructions, corrections, praise. She watched Chloe’s face transform from pain to shock to a dawning, overwhelmed pleasure.
Aidan’s eyes kept finding Catriona’s over Chloe’s shoulder. His gaze was no longer distant. It was hungry, focused, recognizing the architect of this moment. She was no longer just the witness. She was the director.
When it was over, and Chloe lay spent and tear-streaked but smiling, a tiny, bewildered thing, Catriona collected the data card from the camera. The test shot. It was perfect. Raw, but coherent. Tender, but explicit. A story.
She handed it to Leo later, her kimono tied neatly shut. “The fear’s gone,” she said. “Now she can perform.”
Leo watched the footage on his monitor, his expression unreadable. He glanced at her. “You’re a natural producer, Cat.” It wasn’t quite a compliment.
Back in her room, Chloe was already asleep, a deep, exhausted slumber. Catriona stood at the window. The sun was dipping, painting the pool in blood-orange and purple.
Her body still hummed. She had taken the chaos—Chloe’s fear, Aidan’s detachment, her own jealous static—and shaped it into something usable. She had gotten her hands dirty in a new way.
It felt less like sacrifice, and more like strategy. The price was still being paid, but for the first time, she felt she might be setting some of the terms.