Chapter 22: A Request from Siobhan
The morning light was different.Sharper. It cut across the kitchen tiles and picked out the dust motes dancing over the ruin of breakfast. Empty coffee cups, crusts of toast, a smear of jam on the granite. Aidan stood at the sink, his hands moving mechanically through the hot, soapy water.He was scrubbing a pan that was already clean. The mundane rhythm was an anchor.Behind him, the low murmur of voices had stopped. He heard Siobhan’s light footsteps retreat down the hall, the soft click of the guest bathroom door. Then Catriona was there, her warmth pressing against his back, her chin resting on his shoulder blade.She smelled of sleep and sex and her own particular sweetness.
“You okay?” she whispered into his shirt.“Yeah.” He rinsed the pan, set it on the rack. “Just… processing.”
“Mmm.” Her arms slid around his waist, hands splaying across his stomach. “You were incredible.”
He didn’t answer.He felt incredible, in a way. A hollowed-out, powerful, used-up way. His body thrummed with a residual energy that had no place to go now except into the washing-up.
Catriona’s fingers tapped a rhythm on his abs.“Siobhan had an idea.”
“Oh?” He kept his eyes on the sink.
“For next time.” Catriona’s voice was a conspiratorial thread. “She wants to be in charge.Set the scene.”
Aidan’s hands paused in the water. He remembered Siobhan’s choked cry, the tremble in her thighs, the way she’d collapsed afterwards, silent and stunned.The shy one. “In charge of what?”
“Of you.” Catriona nipped at his shoulder through the cotton.“She was very specific. She wants you blindfolded.”
A pulse of something hot and dark tightened low in his gut. It wasn’t disgust.That was the confusing part.It was intrigue. “Blindfolded.”
“Yes.She wants to… explore.Without you seeing. Without you knowing exactly what’s coming next.” Catriona’s tone was analytical, dissecting a fascinating new specimen. “She said she’s never felt that free.That wanted. She wants to see if she can make you feel the same way.”
Aidan turned off the tap.The sudden silence was loud. He turned within the circle of her arms, leaning back against the counter. Water dripped from his fingers onto the floor. Catriona’s face was upturned, her green eyes wide, lit with a fire that was entirely her own. This wasn’t just about his pleasure, or even Siobhan’s.This was her theatre.Her design.
“And you’re okay with that?” he asked quietly. “Her calling the shots?”
“Are you?” she countered, a sly smile playing on her lips.He thought about it.The loss of control.The surrender. It should have scared him.It did, a little. But beneath that was a heavier, more seductive weight: the absolute trust Catriona was placing in him, and in her own vision. She wasn’t giving him away.She was directing him. “It’s your show, Cat.”
Her smile blossomed, radiant and fierce.She kissed him, hard and possessive. “Our show.” She pulled back, her mind already racing ahead.“Tonight.After dinner. I’ll tell her.”
“Tonight?” The word came out strangled.
“Why wait?” She released him and glided toward the kitchen doorway, pausing under the frame. The morning sun caught the copper in her hair, set her robe ablaze.“She’s texting her husband now. Telling him she’s having a girls’ night. That she’ll be late.” Catriona’s gaze drifted toward the hallway, toward the faint sound of a flushing toilet. “She’s already buzzing with it.You can smell it on her.”
And Aidan realized he could. Under the clean soap smell from the bathroom, a thread of that same sharp, linen scent from yesterday, tinged now with anticipation.His mouth went dry.
Catriona watched him process it, her head tilted.“You don’t have to do anything until I tell you to. You know that, right?You just have to be there.Be… available.”
Available. The word hung in the sunny kitchen.It wasn’t passive. In this context, it was a form of intense, focused action.He nodded slowly. “Okay.”
Her eyes held his for a long moment, searching.Whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her.Her expression softened into something almost maternal. “Good.” She pushed off the doorframe.“Now finish the dishes. I’m going to go… brief our director.”
She disappeared down the hall.Aidan turned back to the sink. The water had gone cold.He stared at his reflection in the faucet, distorted and elongated. Blindfolded.The unknown.A shiver ran through him, part dread, part desperate want.
From the living room, he heard the low murmur of their voices resume. Catriona’s, calm and instructional. Siobhan’s, higher, peppered with hesitant questions that soon grew more assured.He dried his hands on a towel. The ordinary kitchen sounds—the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the clock—seemed like a recording from another life. He was already elsewhere, in the coming dark, waiting for a touch he couldn't see, guided by a voice that wasn't his wife's, all for the pleasure of the woman who owned every part of him. The contradiction should have split him in two.
Instead, for the first time since this began, it made a terrible, thrilling kind of sense.