Chapter 15: The Blindfold Game
The risotto was a slow, deliberate torment. Aidan stood at the stove, the wooden spoon making a soft, rhythmic scrape against the heavy pot.Arborio rice needed patience. It drank the warm broth in sips, swelling incrementally, demanding constant attention.He gave it. He focused on the grains, on the simmer, on the precise moment to add another ladleful.
It was easier than focusing on the women.They were a curated portrait on the sofa. Siobhan still wore the emerald kimono. Catriona had changed into a thin cashmere wrap dress the color of rust. They each held a crystal tumbler of amber whiskey, the ice cubes catching the lamplight. Their conversation was a low, melodic hum—deliberately ordinary talk of an upcoming art exhibition, a scandal at Siobhan’s children’s school, the merits of different brands of olive oil. Yet their eyes kept drifting to him at the stove, their gazes heavy as another ladle of stock.They were watching the cook.Assessing the instrument.
“Smells incredible, Aidan,” Siobhan said, breaking from a story about a misbehaving guinea pig.Her voice was warm, normal.It was the most unnerving part.
“It’ll be another twenty,” he said, not turning around. He could feel the heat from the stove on his face, or maybe it was something else.
“We’ve got all night,” Catriona purred.The ice clinked in her glass. “Don’t we, Siobhan?”
“Mmm.Andrew thinks I’m at a spa retreat. Deep-tissue trauma from book club.”
They laughed, a light, conspiratorial sound.Aidan stirred. The rice was releasing its starch, the mixture becoming creamy. He added a final ladle, then a generous heap of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, the butter melting in silken swirls. He killed the heat, gave it one last stir, and covered it.
“It needs to rest,” he announced, finally turning.They were both looking at him, their faces soft in the dim light. The pretense of casual conversation had evaporated.In its place was a waiting silence.
Catriona uncurled herself from the sofa and padded to the sideboard. She returned not with bowls, but with a simple strip of black silk, the one she sometimes used to tie back her hair in the garden.She let it dangle from her fingers.
“Siobhan’s rules,” Catriona said, her voice a low thrum. “Remember?”
Aidan’s mouth went dry.He gave a single, tight nod.
Siobhan rose, the green silk whispering.She took the black strip from Catriona and approached him. Her eyes searched his, not for permission—that had been granted—but for connection.“Okay?” she breathed, just for him.
“Okay,” he managed.Her hands were sure as they lifted the silk. The world narrowed, then went dark.The lamplight became a faint, golden halo at the edges. His other senses screamed to life. The smell of the risotto, rich and fungal, mixed with Siobhan’s jasmine-and-sleep scent and the bite of Catriona’s perfume. The soft wool of the rug under his bare feet.The distant, rhythmic tick of the kitchen clock.
Hands, cool and small, landed on his chest.They pushed his t-shirt up. He raised his arms, docile, and the cotton was peeled away. The air hit his skin, raising goosebumps. Fingers traced the hard lines of his abdomen, the old scar on his ribcage from a training exercise. They weren’t Catriona’s—her touch was more possessive, more familiar.These were Siobhan’s, exploratory, mapping.
Then the button of his jeans popped open.The zip descended, a loud, tearing sound in the quiet. The denim and boxers were pushed down his hips in one firm motion. He stepped out of them, left standing naked in the center of the room, blindfolded.
He felt utterly exposed, more than if they were just looking.The darkness amplified his vulnerability.He could be any man. They could be doing anything.A soft, warm mouth pressed against his sternum.A kiss. Then a tongue flicked his nipple.He flinched, a sharp inhale. A low, feminine laugh—he couldn’t tell whose—drifted from his left.
“Guess,” a voice murmured in his right ear.Catriona’s?The acoustics in the dark were distorted.
Hands slid down his flanks, curving to the front, stroking the tensed muscles of his thighs.They avoided his cock, which was already thickening, betraying him. Another mouth, on his shoulder blade this time, teeth grazing the skin.Different.Softer.
“Whose?” the same voice taunted.He shook his head, mute.Words were gone.
They moved around him like silent predators.A brush of cashmere against his back—Catriona. A waft of green silk and a touch on his hip—Siobhan. Lips closed around his earlobe, sucking gently.A hot breath against his neck. Fingertips traced the length of his spine, from the knob at the base of his skull all the way down to the cleft of his ass. He shuddered.His cock was fully hard now, a heavy, aching weight. They continued to ignore it.A mouth captured his, sudden and deep. The taste was familiar—Catriona’s strawberry lip balm. He groaned into the kiss, his hands coming up to touch her face, but she caught his wrists and guided them back down to his sides. “No,” she whispered against his lips.“You don’t get to touch. You just get to feel.”
She was gone. Another body pressed against his back, soft breasts flattening against him, arms wrapping around his waist.A different perfume.Siobhan.She nipped at the back of his neck. “Can you feel it?” she breathed.“Can you feel how much we want you like this? Helpless.”
He could.It was a current coursing through him, a dark, electric thing. His pride, his control, it had all dissolved in the darkness.He was just sensation. A vessel.Finally, a hand—smooth, uncalloused—wrapped around his cock. He jolted.It stroked him, once, twice, a slow, torturous pump.
“Mine,” Catriona whispered from somewhere in front of him.
But then another hand joined it from behind, smaller, its grip slightly different, sliding over the head where pre-come had beaded.“Or mine,” Siobhan countered, her voice a vibration against his shoulder blade.
They worked him together, their hands a confusing, exquisite syncopation. He was panting, his head thrown back, the black silk damp with his sweat. He was lost in a sea of touch and scent and sound, utterly at their mercy.One of them sank to her knees. He felt hot breath on the tip of his cock. A tongue, broad and wet, licked a stripe from base to tip.The hands fell away.He was going to come. The build-up was a tsunami at the base of his spine, unstoppable.A mouth took him in, deep and sudden. It wasn’t the practiced, knowing pressure of Catriona. It was eager, a little clumsy, breathtakingly sincere.Siobhan.
The thought, the certainty of it, even blind, was the final trigger. He cried out, a raw, unfettered sound as his hips jerked forward.He spilled into the welcoming heat, pulses of intense, blinding release tearing through him. He bucked, his hands finally lifting, tangling in soft, piled-up hair—auburn, not copper—holding her to him as he emptied himself completely.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of his ragged breathing.Then, the mouth withdrew. He heard a soft swallow, a quiet sigh.
Hands—Catriona’s, he knew them now—came up and untied the blindfold.The lamplight was painfully bright. He blinked, his vision swimming.
Siobhan was still on her knees before him, her lips slick and parted, her eyes wide and dazed. She looked up at him, then over at Catriona, a flush of profound accomplishment on her cheeks.
Catriona stood to the side, her rust-colored dress perfectly in place. Her green eyes were fixed on him, on his spent body, on Siobhan’s satisfied face.Her expression was one of pure, unadulterated rapture. She wasn’t smiling.She was drinking it in.
Then, as Aidan’s breath began to slow, she finally let out a soft, breathy laugh.It wasn’t light-hearted. It was deep, rich, and full of a dark, perfect joy.
It was the last sound he heard before the world settled back into fragile, trembling pieces.