Chapter 20: The Secret Pact
The silence in their bedroom was a physical thing. It pressed against Catriona’s eardrums, thick and muffled, broken only by the frantic drum of her own heart. She lay on her back, staring at the water stain on the ceiling she’d memorized years ago. Aidan’s weight was a solid heat beside her, but he felt miles away.
The smell was inescapable. It rose from her skin, from his, from the very sheets. Lavender laundry detergent, undercut by the sour tang of flour and yeast from the stolen dough, and beneath it all, the musk of sex that wasn’t theirs alone. Jenny’s perfume, something soft and vanilla, clung to Aidan’s chest hair. Catriona turned her face into it and breathed deep.
“I can still smell her on you,” she said, her voice scratchy in the dark.
Aidan didn’t move. “I know.”
“I can feel it.” Her hand drifted to her own stomach, flat and empty. “Knowing she’s… full of you. Right now. While Mark sleeps next to her.” She let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. “It should feel wrong. It does feel wrong. But it also feels… electric.”
She felt him shift then, turning onto his side to face her. In the sliver of light from the streetlamp outside, his eyes were black pools. “What are you saying, Cat?”
“I want to feel it too.” The words tumbled out, raw and unfiltered. “Not just the idea of it. I want to be her, for a minute. I want to know what she felt. I want you to… finish in me. Tonight. While she’s still carrying you. So we’re all connected. So it’s not just her.”
Aidan was silent for a long moment. Then his hand, calloused and broad, slid over her hip. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” She was already turning, pressing her back against his chest, guiding his hand between her legs. She was slick, had been since they’d stumbled breathless through the back door, since she’d watched his climax spurt into her best friend’s trembling body. “Like you did with her. Do it just like that.”
His answer was a low groan against her neck. His arms locked around her, one banding across her chest, the other sliding down her stomach. There was no tenderness now, no slow build. The animal he’d unleashed in Jenny’s kitchen was still loose, and it knew its mate.
He pushed her onto her stomach, the brocade sheets rough against her cheek. He didn’t guide himself in. He mounted her, his weight forcing the air from her lungs, and drove into her with a single, brutal stroke.
Catriona cried out, her fingers clawing at the headboard. It was different. He was rougher, his rhythm jarring and deep, a reenactment of possession rather than love-making. Each thrust slammed the reality of what they’d done home. She could picture it—Jenny’s wide, hazel eyes, her slender legs hooked over his arms, the sounds she’d made.
“Is this how she was?” Catriona gasped, her voice mangled by the pillow.
“Yes.” The word was a harsh punch of air. His hands gripped her hips, holding her still for his pistoning drive.
“Did she take all of you?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.” She was sobbing now, from the brutal friction, from the devastating rightness of it. “Give me everything you gave her. Mark it. I want to feel it tomorrow. I want to remember.”
His pace became erratic, frantic. His body locked, shuddering, and he buried himself to the root with a sound that was pure anguish. Heat flooded her, a scalding, claiming rush that seemed to have no end. It was a violence. A sacrament. They collapsed together, a tangle of sweaty limbs and heaving chests, the room spinning.
A long time later, when their breathing had evened to shaky draws, Catriona spoke into the darkness. “She can’t go back to normal. Not after that. We opened a door. We can’t just close it and pretend we gave her a casserole.”
Aidan’s arm tightened around her. “What are you thinking?”
“We need to keep her close. Not just for appointments or updates. I mean… close. Where we can see her. Where we can… manage it.”
“Manage what?” His voice was guarded.
“The lie. Her state of mind. Everything.” Catriona rolled to face him. “Mark travels for work next week. Three days in Frankfurt. We tell him it’s a perfect opportunity. That Jenny should stay here. For… support. For monitoring. First trimester can be tricky, he’d want her to have help. We sell it as concern.”
Aidan was silent, thinking. She could almost hear the gears turning in his methodical, astronomical mind—calculating trajectories, assessing risks. “He’ll agree. He’s desperate to do the right thing.”
“Exactly.” Catriona’s mind was racing ahead, plotting the geometry of their new truth. “She sleeps in the spare room. We take care of her. We… observe.”
A faint, dark smile touched Aidan’s lips. “Observe.”
“Yes.” Catriona’s hand slid down his stomach, feeling the dormant, heavy weight of him. She was playing with fire, and the heat was intoxicating. “And if, while she’s here, under our roof… if she needs reassurance. If the pregnancy needs… reinforcing. Who better than the father?”
Aidan caught her wrist, his grip firm. “You’ve thought this through.”
“I’ve done nothing but think since we left her kitchen.” She met his gaze, unflinching. “This is our responsibility now. We created this situation. We have to steer it. For her good. For the baby’s good.”
He released her wrist, his hand coming up to cup her face. His thumb brushed her cheekbone. “You’re terrifying sometimes.”
“I’m practical.” She leaned into his touch. “And I want this to work. I want that baby. I want our friend. I want my husband.” She paused, letting the next words hang. “I want all of it, together, in this house.”
He kissed her then, deep and slow, a seal on the pact. It tasted of salt and conspiracy. When they broke apart, he nodded, a single, decisive dip of his chin.
“We’ll tell them tomorrow.”