Page 17 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

Julian

The contract scared the fuck out of me, and yet, it was also reassuring.

Silver wasn’t going to wait for me to act up so he could prove he could be the Master I need — he was setting the tone from the start, making sure there was no doubt whatsoever who was in absolute, complete, total control.

Harsh from day one. Unflinching and unapologetic.

We were outside on the patio, seated at one of the stone tables, the waterfall tinkling in the distance, gentle lighting so we could easily read the contract. It was peaceful. Grounding.

Silver was dressed as a man today. Tailored black slacks, a light-indigo dress shirt, polished men’s dress shoes. His hair was pulled back in a low ponytail.

But it was more than clothes. I could scent male, and more than that — dominant male. I could feel it, too — the steadiness of his gaze, the calm finality in his movements. There was no indecision, no hesitation. He wasn’t wavering. He wasn’t trying this on for size.

He was my next Master. He already knew how to wield it.

“I feel as if I should argue and negotiate,” I told him, “and I want to argue about having to ask permission before I can leave my hidey-hole when life returns and reanimates me, but it also feels as if…” I shrugged. “Either I give myself over entirely, or I don’t.”

“I appreciate that. As an exercise in letting me see where you are mentally, I’d like you to list the things that are hardest for you to agree to. At least five things. Tell them to me as you go. I’d prefer there be ten to twenty, but I’ll only require a minimum of five.”

I gave him the list as I went — having to remain in my hidey-hole until being allowed out, being locked into a cock cage, having to drink bagged blood from a glass, being shackled throughout the day, even while I worked for Marco.

The hardest of them all, however, was the requirement I’d have to crawl everywhere while being led on a leash, rather than walk.

I’m pretty sure Silver expected me to try to negotiate out of at least a couple of his rules, but I kept telling myself, either I give myself over to him or I don’t. The only way to show him I was serious about accepting the change in ownership was to surrender in every way to my new owner.

“Look at me,” Silver said, and I met his gaze. “I love you, and that means I’m going to have to be harder on you, in some ways. If this is to work, if I’m to help walk you into being a responsible adult who can make good choices, we can’t do it halfway.”

I wanted to rebel against some of it. The leash, the crawling, the fucking cock cage.

Part of me clenched at the thought of bagged blood, of being shackled while I worked — the humiliation of it, the exposure.

But I kept circling the same truth: either I give myself to him, or I don’t.

That’s the cost of freedom. Full surrender now, so I can someday stand on my own.

Marco had said this was my crucible, so I’d take the heat. I’d endure it. Not because I liked the terms, but because I trusted the man setting them.

* * * *

Silver

Technically, we were equals while we negotiated the contract, but it was clear Julian was looking at this as his slave status merely moving from Marco to me, which meant no negotiations.

I hadn’t planned to actually put him on a leash and make him crawl, but it looked like it was going to have to happen at least the first couple of days.

That could be one of the first rules I backed off on, though.

Without negotiations, I still needed to know what he’d have tried to negotiate if he wasn’t fully submitting from square one, and my heart broke a little for him when he gave me his list, one item at a time, his voice steady but his posture betraying the tension rippling through him.

And still, he gave it. No argument, no bargaining. Just trust, raw and whole.

It hit me like a blow to the chest — the weight of what he was handing me. Not just control, not just obedience, but faith. Faith that I’d wield this power without cruelty, that I’d hurt him only in the ways he needed to be hurt, and I’d protect him from everything else. Including himself.

And after I told him I was going to have to be harder on him because I loved him, he still didn’t falter with his trust.

“I love you, too, Master. I almost…” He looked pained, his voice wavered, but he took a breath and kept going.

“I almost refused the offer simply because I didn’t want to put this much responsibility on your shoulders, but because I love you so much, I want to be free so I can become the man we both need me to be, and I think you’re in the same boat.

You want me free, so I can come to you on my own terms. As a man.

Not a slave.” He took a shaky breath. “So I’ll trust you to lead me through this.

To help me become that man. One worthy of your love. ”

“Oh, dear Julian, there’s nothing you need to do to be deserving. Let’s work together to help you be the best version of yourself possible, before and after you’re fully emancipated.”

He gracefully moved his impossibly large body sideways off the chair, and the next thing I knew, he was kneeling on the concrete, hands palm-up on his thighs. “I know what has to happen for me to formally agree to the contract. What are my instructions, Master?”

He knelt in front of me, open and willing and unbearably brave, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t a scene, not like any we’d played before. This was history and healing and sacrifice, all braided into one brutal, necessary act.

And I had to be the one to carry it out, to hurt the man I loved in the exact way the world had once broken him — because the man who legally owns him and wants the best for him asked me to, but mostly, because I was the only person we trusted to get him through it without breaking him.

And that meant I had to answer him with authority, with clear orders. First test — would he balk at being led through the house naked and crawling?

“Stand, strip, put the collar on, hand me the leash, and go to all fours. I’ll walk you to the underground, and you’ll quietly allow me to bind you once we’re in your suite. You’ll follow every instruction the very second it’s given.”

The collar and leash were on another table.

I knew he’d seen them, but he hadn’t mentioned them.

He stood and did as ordered, and I gathered his things, put them into a bag I’d brought for that purpose, and walked him through the kitchen and living room.

I stopped briefly to talk to Cora about Rio, my leashed slave on all fours at my side.

I let Julian stand to walk down the steps, but ordered him back to his knees at the bottom, where he had to crawl another forty yards to his suite.

While we were above ground going over the contract, Marco had ordered someone to re-do Julian’s suite, with a huge bondage table in the center of the sitting area. The sofa was against the wall, but all the other chairs were gone. The coffee table, too.

The armoire with all the BDSM tools was still in place, of course.

“Put the cock cage on and then kneel with your arms to your side,” I told him while I removed the torso sleeve from the armoire.

He was kneeling, so it wasn’t terribly hard to get the tube of dense elastic over his head, and I smoothed it around and over Julian’s arms and torso, from his shoulders to just above his hips, effectively locking his arms to his sides.

Once it was smooth, I used cloth straps with heavy-duty buckles to make sure Julian’s arms were secured.

The straps are the sturdy material seatbelts in cars are made of, and Marco assured me they’d hold even a vampire when used this way.

“Lean over the table and spread your legs, slave.”

I’d originally intended to go straight into the rolling, but Dr. Woods had helped me see why it needed to happen this way instead. Every session after the first, all those centuries ago, hadn’t begun with the rolling. It began with rape.

So I found the thickest dildo I could — soup-can fat at the tip and double that at the base, made of hard plastic rather than silicone. Mounted to a handle for leverage. Designed not just to penetrate, but to punish.

* * * *

Julian

I didn’t know what Silver was using, only that it was too big, too brutal, and he wasn’t holding back.

The pressure was immediate, the stretch unbearable.

I tried to breathe through it, but there was no easing into anything.

Just force. Just pain. He shoved it in fast, again and again, like he was trying to hammer it through me.

Every thrust stole my breath. Every inch deepened the stretch — blunt, merciless, unrelenting.

I’ve been raped by a troll before, on display, on a stage, where patrons paid to see the big opera star scream out of tune.

This was worse.

I’d been bound in place on that stage, but I could stand up and walk away right now. I could say a safeword and make it stop.

But I had to submit to it.

Silver didn’t say a word, didn’t pause, didn’t offer comfort.

Just mercilessly drove that thing into me until my legs shook from the strain.

I was panting despite not needing to breathe, my knees threatened to buckle, and my cock was hard the whole time — throbbing uselessly inside the cage, fighting for space it couldn’t have.

Pain bloomed through me, low and hot and hungry, and the worst part was that it didn’t kill the arousal. It twisted it. Amplified it.

I’d been trained to get hard when I was hurt. Shamed when my cock responded, like I wanted it. Punished worse when it didn’t, like I was broken. Defective.

The cruelest were the paired sessions — punishment when we failed to get erect when hurt. Two soft boys shoved into what they now call a sixty-nine, told to make the other hard while we were whipped, paddled, raped. Or worse, if the trainers were especially annoyed.