Chapter 24: A New Proposal
The whiskey warmth had long since faded, leaving behind a sharp clarity. Aidan lay on his back, the sheets a tangled ruin around his hips. Catriona straddled him, her knees pinning his shoulders, a silhouette against the deep blue dark of the room. The single candle on the vanity guttered, making the shadows on her face dance.Her expression was unreadable.
For a long time, she just looked at him.Her fingers traced the lines of his chest, through the coarse hair, over the ridges of muscle. Her touch was speculative, like she was re-mapping territory she owned.
“You were incredible,” she said finally, her voice low.“The way you let go. The sound you made.”
He placed his hands on her thighs, feeling the flex of muscle beneath smooth skin. “It was… intense.”
A smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.“Intense. Yeah.” She leaned forward, her breasts brushing his chest, her hair a curtain that smelled of smoke and her shampoo.“It was everything I dreamed it would be. And it fucked me up, Aidan.In the best way.”
He could feel her heart hammering against his. Or maybe it was his own. “Fucked you up how?”
She sat back up, her gaze drifting to the window, to the nothing beyond.“I came harder than I ever have. Watching her… own you like that.Knowing I told her to.It was power. It was this sick, beautiful power.” Her green eyes snapped back to his, catching the candlelight.“But after. When she kissed me and left.I felt… empty.”
Aidan’s thumbs stroked circles on her skin. “Empty?”
“Like I’d given away a piece of you. Like I was just the director in the wings, and the play was over.” She swallowed, her throat working. “I don’t want to be in the wings.”
He started to speak, to reassure her, but she pressed a finger to his lips.“I want to be on stage,” she whispered.“With you. With someone else.But me.In the middle.” Her voice gained strength, a brittle confidence. “I want to feel her hands on me while you’re inside me. I want to watch you kiss her, taste her on your mouth, and then have you look at me while you fuck me. I want to be the one they’re both desperate to please.” She leaned close again, her confession a hot breath against his ear. “I want you to give her to me, Aidan. I want you to fuck her while she eats my pussy, and I want to feel you come in her while I watch.”
A shiver, violent and unbidden, racked his body. His cock, half-hard from her proximity and the raw, graphic hunger in her words, thickened against her thigh.The imagery was immediate, blinding. Catriona arching beneath another woman’s mouth, her eyes locked on his as he moved in someone else. The possessiveness of it, the sheer, taboo ownership, struck a chord deep in a place he was still learning to name.
“Jesus, Cat.”
“Does that scare you?” she asked, pulling back to search his face.He considered it. The traditional blueprint of his life—wife, loyalty, simplicity—lay in ashes at his feet.This was something else, built on those same ashes.He loved her. He loved the wild, hidden country of her mind. And his body, traitorous and eager, was already voting yes.“No,” he said, the word surprising him with its certainty. “It doesn’t scare me. It… it turns me the fuck on.”
A real smile broke through then, dazzling and relieved.“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The thought of you… being the center of everything.Of us both focusing on you.” He cupped her face.“Who? Siobhan again?”
Catriona shook her head, a sly glint returning to her eyes. “Siobhan was the test run.She’s lovely, but she’s… reverent. I want a spark.I want a challenge.” She paused, letting the silence build. “Clara.”
Aidan blinked. Clara was Cat’s oldest friend, a sharp-tongued graphic designer with a laugh like shattered glass and a perpetually unimpressed eyebrow. Married to Mark, a quiet banker. He’d never gotten a vibe from Clara, not like he had from Siobhan, whose glances had always held a certain heat.“Clara? Seriously?”
“She’s been dropping hints for years.Little comments. ‘Your husband is a mountain, Cat, how do you climb him?’ ‘God, the way he looks at you, I’d kill for that.’ She’s bored. She’s curious.” Catriona’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur. “And last month, at the lake, when you came out of the water… she stared. She didn’t look away.”
The memory surfaced: Clara on the dock, her sunglasses lowered, her mouth slightly open.He’d written it off as nothing.
“You think she’d…”
“I know she would,” Catriona said, her confidence absolute. “I’ll talk to her.I’ll set the scene. But this time… this time I’m not watching from the doorway.” She lowered herself onto him, not taking him inside, just the hot, damp pressure of her through her panties against his erection. She ground down slowly, her eyes fluttering closed. “This time, you’re both mine.”
He gripped her hips, anchoring her, pulling her harder against him.The friction was maddening, exquisite. “Whatever you want,” he groaned, the last of his resistance melting under the heat of her ambition and his own awakened hunger.
“Good,” she breathed, riding him with a slow, deliberate rhythm through the fabric. “Then it’s settled.” She opened her eyes, and the look she gave him was pure, unadulterated possession.“My stage.My show. You just have to perform.”
She lifted herself off, leaving him aching and wanting, and slid under the sheets beside him, her back to his chest.She pulled his arm around her waist, his hand splayed over her stomach. The candle flame finally died, plunging them into total darkness.
Her final whisper was almost lost in the rustle of cotton. “Wait until you see what I have in mind.”