Page 15 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

Silver

Walking away without looking back was hard, but it’s the way it had to be.

Marco texted to tell me Julian had agreed to meet with Dr. Woods, and I had to laugh. He didn’t actually have a choice for this particular thing, but since he thought he did, I supposed it was good he’d agreed to it.

When Mythic Beast is on tour and we stay in a hotel, we all have our own room.

We’re crammed together on the bus, so when we can get some alone time, it’s good.

However, for music festivals, our travel person often finds a huge suite with enough bedrooms, we all have our own, but we also have a shared space.

The penthouse suite only had three bedrooms, but Hailey said she was good with her and Ghost having their own room one floor down.

They had a keycard for our suite, so they could hang out in the living room whenever they wanted, and they were goofing off with Mikey when I came out of my bedroom the next morning at ten minutes to twelve. Technically still morning.

“There are breakfast burritos in the fridge,” Mikey said. “Minute and a half in the microwave.”

I shook my head and walked to the table with the room service menu. “I want waffles, bacon, eggs, and potatoes.” It only took a few seconds to submit the order through the hotel’s system. “Anyone else want something while I’m ordering?”

“I want hot chocolate and a half pound of bacon,” Hailey said.

I added it to the order and looked at the windows — blinds down, curtains drawn. Or, since Hailey wasn’t burned to a crisp, I assumed all the layers I’d noticed the night before had been closed.

The nighttime view of Rio de Janeiro had been incredible, but if I wanted to see it in daylight, I’d have to go to my bedroom and close the door.

Hailey can handle short bursts of filtered sunlight — heavy rain, or extremely overcast conditions — but Julian’s a different kind of vampire and can’t handle any daylight at all, even if it’s raining.

It really wouldn’t work for me to bring Julian, but I missed him more than I wanted to admit.

Especially since I wouldn’t even be calling him over video, or texting him, or anything .

But he needed time to figure out an answer. This was a big deal, and he needed to make it without my input. It had to be completely his decision.

“It’s supposed to rain in about an hour, but the forecast says it’ll be cleared out long before we go on tonight,” Hailey said.

“We can open the blinds and curtains for a little while when the rain hits. The bacon and chocolate help pull the wolfie parts of me to the surface and push the Lugat parts down.”

“I’m good either way,” I told her honestly, because I’ve learned it’s stupid to lie to supernaturals. “If I want to see the view I can go to my room, but I’m good out here with ya’ll.”

She shrugged. “I’m not. I’d like to see the daytime view, and I’ll have a chance while it’s raining. Ghost took a picture of it for me, but it isn’t like seeing it for yourself.”

Davy came out while I was eating, naked except for the shiny little cock cage he so often wears.

He grabbed two orange juices and a bottled water from the fridge, nodded to all of us, and returned to the bedroom.

I heard the sound of a belt hitting flesh about three minutes later, and damn if it didn’t make me horny as fuck.

But here’s the thing: I wanted to feel the belt, not wield it, and that meant the next nine months were going to royally suck for me.

Not just blue-balls suck. Existential suck.

Whole-body-ache suck. That bone-deep frustration of denying myself what I wanted most — the surrender, the helplessness, the absolute clarity of being owned — but I’d do it in a heartbeat because I love him.

Because we both wanted him to be free, to be his own man.

I closed my eyes and let the sound of leather on skin echo through me. My body ached for it. My mind craved the surrender. But I’d chosen this, and I’d wear this role like armor and fucking deal with it.

I could survive nine months with Julian, seeing him every day, spending time with him, a hell of a lot easier than I’d survive him being sent somewhere else, where I wouldn’t know what was being done to him, and likely wouldn’t be allowed any contact at all.

But the bottom line was that Marco worried someone else might break him rather than shape him, and no way in Hell could I risk that.

As promised, Ghost opened the curtains and blinds on the two biggest windows when the rain came down in earnest, and I looked out on the mountains, the ocean, and the city — all in one view. Magnificent .

That night, we rode through Rio in the back of a limo, the windows down, city lights flickering off wet pavement. The rain had stopped hours earlier, leaving the air clean and sharp, a half-moon hanging low in the sky.

We were taken to the festival grounds, close enough to see the main stage, and we moved from the limo onto golf carts waiting to take us the rest of the way.

The moment we stepped out, I felt it — that buzz of barely contained chaos, the electricity of eight hundred thousand bodies primed for a show that would rattle their bones and light up their memories.

Magic only live music can create. The crowd was already wild, and we hadn’t even made it to the stage.

I was flying high on the thrill of it when we ended our set with a crowd favorite, and Will clearly felt the same, center stage with his feet at the very edge of the front, sweat soaked, belting out the final chorus like his life depended on it.

When Mikey stood and stepped around his kit, Hailey handed her guitar to him and catapulted herself to the front of the stage with a roundoff-back-handspring into an aerial flip, and the crowd’s roar shook the metal scaffolding holding the stage.

My smile spread from ear to ear, and I basked in the energy of the night, the crowd, the heat, the fucking magic of a perfect night, a fantabulous set with people I’m meant to make music with. This — this — is what it means to be alive.

Ghost was waiting at the edge of the stage for Hailey, and Davy and Micca were waiting for Will when we climbed down.

Did I want Julian waiting for me? I did, but it was okay that he wasn’t.

He used to be a performer, and I worried that giving him constant reminders of what he’d lost might hurt him.

It would bother me, I think, to no longer be able to perform.

It’s such a big part of my life, and I love it.

I want to still be performing at eighty, and there are plenty of aging rock bands who still go on tour, so it was absolutely a possibility.

Though, it might not be if I was turned into a vampire. I mean, I’d likely be able to keep it up until I turned fifty or so, maybe later if the creams and surgeries got even better than they are now. Seventy would probably be a stretch, though.

But the payoff — to live forever, or at least until someone kills me — would be worth it. Right?

I spent a good part of the flight home reworking the contract I wanted Julian to sign. It was only the umpteenth time I’d gone through it and made changes, but I wanted it to be perfect.

Marco had texted me daily updates, and he’d told me on the second day he felt certain Julian was going to agree to it. He’d also let me know the gist of Julian’s sessions with Dr. Woods.

Basically, Julian had thought he’d forgiven his parents for selling him to the opera, but he hadn’t, and Dr. Woods had helped him see he’s still pissed at his parents, at fate, at the people who ran the opera.

Especially the doctor who’d been responsible for the vocalists. The one who’d raped Julian’s formerly-virgin ass about ten minutes after he’d rolled his testicles flat that first time. Later, he’d raped him before and after. Every time. Every third day. For weeks .

And once that first rape happened, he was open season, so any of the adults over him could bend him over and take him whenever they wanted.

I could understand the sick, twisted purpose — once he was on stage in a leading role, the opera company whored him out after shows to whoever offered the highest price, so teaching him he didn’t own his body at an early age made his sexual training easier when he was older and had to learn how to please men and women in every way imaginable.

Easier on him, them, everyone. The whole thing was fucked up, and I wished I didn’t understand it as much as I did…

No, that wasn’t accurate. I was an adult the first time someone broke me to be the kind of slave they wanted, but still, understanding as someone who’s been trained to that extent was going to help me be the kind of Top Julian would need.

And it seems Dr. Woods knew his shit, because there’d been a breakthrough on their second session. Small when compared to everything he still needed to deal with, but still substantial.

Julian realized, after Dr. Woods asked him questions until it clicked — that if his parents hadn’t sold him, if the opera had never happened, if all the terrible shit that followed had never come to pass, if he’d lived a normal life in his little village, he’d be dead. Long gone. He’d no longer exist.

Instead, he was alive and on the verge of gaining his freedom. Maybe with a thousand, two thousand, even five thousand more years ahead of him.

He wasn’t quite ready to thank his parents, the opera managers, or the doctor who’d destroyed him, but he could see a time when he might get there.

Once he was free, once he could build a name of his own, he planned to perform again. Every few hundred years, he’d find his way back to the stage.

And if I could live that long life with him? Could we maybe, someday, figure out how to get onto a stage together?

Marco wanted me to talk to Dr. Woods about my plans for the scene to destroy Julian’s balls all over again, and I had an appointment with him the morning after the plane landed.