Chapter 6: My Turn
The door clicked shut, sealing them in the sudden, profound quiet. The ghost of Elena’s discipline still hung in the air, a stark contrast to the feverish energy that had preceded it. Aidan lay utterly still, the aftermath of that controlled release leaving him floating in a hollowed-out space behind his eyes. The candles had burned lower, their light now pooling in deeper, more intimate wells across the room.
Catriona watched him. The playful orchestrator was gone, replaced by something more contemplative. She saw the slow blink of his eyes, the way his breathing was just a fraction too measured, as if he was manually reminding his lungs to work. The vibrant, needy redness of his cock had softened against his thigh, a spent thing.
She rose from her chair and approached the bed, her movements silent on the rug. She didn’t speak. Instead, she began to untie the silk restraints from the bedposts. The knots gave way under her fingers. She freed his left wrist first, then his right, her touch clinical as she examined the dark, raw circles left behind. She chafed the blood back into his hands, her thumbs pressing into his palms.
Aidan groaned, the sensation painful and sweet. He flexed his fingers, the freedom feeling foreign, overwhelming.
“Look at you,” she said softly, her voice the first real sound in the room for what felt like an age. “My magnificent wreck.”
He turned his head to look at her. His brown eyes were glassy, unfocused. “Cat…”
“Shhh.” She placed a finger over his lips. “Don’t try to talk yet. You’re not done.”
With practiced ease, she undid the ankle restraints. His legs fell heavily to the mattress. He was free, completely, and yet he didn’t move. The permission to move hadn’t been granted; the mindset of surrender was bone-deep.
Catriona stood and, with a slow, deliberate grace, peeled her damp dress over her head. She let it fall to the floor, a puddle of emerald silk. The candlelight loved her body, painting gold over the curves of her breasts, the flare of her hips, the fiery triangle of hair at her junction. She was a vision of lush, untouchable confidence. But her eyes were on his, watching, always watching.
She climbed onto the bed, straddling his hips, but not taking him inside. Not yet. She lowered herself, letting her wet heat slide along the length of his semi-hard cock. It was a tease, a promise, a remapping of his nerve endings after Elena’s precise, distant use. This was familiar. This was her.
He twitched beneath her, a pathetic, involuntary little jump of muscle. A raw sound tore from his throat.
“There he is,” she murmured, a smile touching her lips. She leaned forward, her hair creating a fiery curtain around their faces. The scent of her—jasmine and her own unique musk—drove out the last of the party’s perfume. “You gave them everything they asked for. You were so good.” She kissed his sternum, right over his pounding heart. “But you gave it to them. This last one is for me. And it’s for you. Nobody else gets an invite.”
She reached between them, her fingers slicking through her own wetness before wrapping around him. She stroked him slowly, patiently, coaxing blood back into tired flesh. It wasn’t the frantic grip of Petra or the curious measurement of Elena. It was a reclamation. Her thumb swiped over his tip, spreading a bead of fresh moisture.
He hardened under her touch, the response slower, deeper, born from a well of exhaustion that had somehow transformed into a different kind of vulnerability. It wasn’t the eager, straining arousal from the start of the night. This was something quieter, more surrendered, wholly given.
When he was fully hard again, she positioned herself and sank down onto him in one smooth, encompassing slide. They both gasped. For him, it was the shocking fullness, the acute sensitivity of overused flesh accepting her. For her, it was the profound, possessive stretch, the feeling of his complete physical submission nestled inside her.
She began to move. Slow. Deep. Each rise and fall was a study in unbearable friction. She set a rhythm that was entirely her own—a lazy, rolling grind that made him see stars behind his closed eyelids. She braced her hands on his shoulders, her nails biting in just enough to remind him she was there.
“This is what it’s for,” she whispered, her breath hot against his ear. “All of it. The waiting. The watching. The giving. It was to bring you right here. To this edge. Not the frantic one, but the quiet one. The one where you have nothing left to offer except the one thing only I get to take.”
She shifted her angle, hitting a spot that made his back arch off the bed. A broken sob escaped him.
“You want to come?” she asked, her voice dangerously sweet.
He could only nod, his jaw clenched tight.
“No.” She stilled completely, seated fully on him, letting him feel the frantic pulse of her own climax hovering just out of reach. “Not until I say. You’ve been coming on command all night. This one is different. You’re going to come when I allow it. When I take it from you because I want it, not because you need it.”
She started again, a fraction faster. The build was agonizing. It wasn’t a climb; it was a slow, flooding submersion. Every muscle in his body was rigid, trembling with the effort of holding back. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.
Catriona watched them fall. Her own control was a razor’s edge. Her inner muscles clenched around him, a rhythmic spasm that pushed him closer to the brink. She felt her own peak building, a tight, coiling spring in her core.
“Please,” he begged, the word shredded and raw. “Cat, please.”
She leaned down, her lips brushing his. “Now.”
It was less an explosion and more a total systemic failure. His climax ripped through him silently, a deep, soul-emptying convulsion that locked his body rigid beneath her. He spilled into her in hot, endless pulses, a surrender so complete it felt like dying.
The feeling of him coming untouched inside her, the final, total gift of his agency, triggered her own release. She cried out, a sharp, unfettered sound, as her orgasm clamped down around him, milking him dry, weaving her pleasure tightly with his. She collapsed forward onto his chest, her face buried in the sweat-damp hollow of his neck, her body shuddering through the aftershocks.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing syncing, the pop of a candle wick, the faint, dying echo of music from downstairs.
Finally, she pushed herself up. She looked down at him. His eyes were open now, clear, looking back at her with an awe that bordered on fear.
She smiled, a real one, tired and triumphant. She slid off him, the separation a necessary sadness, and fetched a warm cloth from the ensuite. She cleaned him with a tenderness that hadn’t been present all night, wiping away the evidence of the party, of Elena, of everyone. She dabbed at the raw skin on his wrists.
When she was done, she crawled back into the bed, curling her body around his, her head on his shoulder. She pulled the rumpled sheet over them.
Downstairs, a door slammed. A car engine started, then another. The party was over.
“They’re gone,” she said into the quiet dark.
He found his voice, hoarse and used. “What was I tonight?”
She was silent for a moment, her fingers tracing idle patterns on his chest. “Mine,” she said simply. Then she added, softer, “And more yourself than you’ve ever been.”
They lay there as the candles guttered out, one by one, until the only light was the cold blue stripe of dawn under the bedroom door.