Page 28 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

Silver

I undressed while Julian sank his fangs into Atlas’s inner thigh and took more than a few sips from him. I knew he’d drink deeply from him later, but he can take more from shapeshifters than he can a human, so he could drink before and after, rather than mostly just after, as he does with me.

I’d waited nine months for this and now that we were here, I needed each second to settle into my skin. Technically, my clothes should’ve come off the moment Atlas could no longer see, but I was dumbfounded by the way Julian took his sight and hearing, so it took me a moment to remember.

The man was dangling in a silent, senseless void — and I was too stunned by the quiet brutality to remember the old rules.

Julian telepathed me while he fed. I took his sense of smell as well as his voice. He can telepath me, but I was clear I’d close the path if he annoyed me with it.

I glanced at Atlas, hanging upside down, one arm trembling with the effort to fight for balance, the other shaking while it searched for the spot that hurt the least in any given moment, testing and experimenting between hurting his balls or his nipples.

He’d soon learn there was no good spot for his arm — only varying levels of hell.

“That’s pretty extreme, as far as sensory deprivation.” Sight, hearing, and smell. That left him with tasting and feeling, but there was nothing to taste. So, he had tactile feeling and nothing else.

“It is,” he agreed, walking to me without even a tiny spot of blood on his lips. He sneers at vampire shows or video games where they feed like rabid animals with blood dripping down their chins. Real vampires prefer to be neat and tidy when they feed. It’s a point of pride.

“Trapped in the hell we’ve put him in, but he’s finding a level of…” He shrugged. “Not meditation, but it’s as close as I can come. He’s on friendly terms with this kind of misery and suffering. For whatever reason, he’s at peace in the nightmare we’ve put him in.”

I had a friend a few years earlier. We’d drifted apart, but she’d cut herself horribly as a teen, and I’d researched it, trying to understand why she had all these scars on her belly and thighs.

Hundreds of them in each location. She’d explained that the physical pain had overrode her emotional pain at the time — the angst of the teen years.

Also, she’d said that it was proof she was still alive.

The pain had been a lifeline when she went numb to life in general.

I had a feeling those applied to Atlas, and I hoped it wasn’t also some kind of atonement, a way to pay for the things he had to do in the military, but I had a feeling that was part of it too.

Mostly because earlier, when I’d first talked to him, I’d had the idea he’d come out of the military a completely different man than the one who’d gone in.

I didn’t know what had happened, but I had a feeling it was worse than anything I could imagine.

I also got the sense Julian had learned a great deal about him while poking around in Atlas’s head, but he didn’t know that — not the deep, dark, secret stuff.

“It’s easier for you to look through people’s heads now.” He’d just told me it was, but I still had to say it.

He raised his brows. “It is.”

“I don’t have any secrets.”

Days earlier, about an hour after Julian was fully back to himself after the hellacious test that nearly killed him, I’d told him all the things I hadn’t thought he should know while I was his Master.

I told him about going to the pro in Nashville a couple of times, about having sex with another musician at a music festival in Europe — someone I’d fucked before, so it wasn’t like he didn’t already know what he was getting into when he brought me a beer and asked if I wanted him to wear a ribbed condom or a nubby one.

Julian knew everything about me, past and current.

He tilted his head. “You probably have secrets you don’t know, or don’t remember without prompting, but it’s okay. You’ll tell me what you want me to know. I’ll observe your thoughts while I hurt you, but I won’t delve into your brain. Your secrets are yours, to tell me or not.”

I smiled. “But not my thoughts. Once upon a time that would’ve freaked me out, but I find I’m oddly okay with it now.”

“Enough stalling, mostriciattola . Get into a backbend, dear Silver, amore mio bellissimo .”

The last phrase was calling me his beautiful love , but it took me a minute to remember the first, and I considered it while I held my hands over my head, leaned back, down, and caught myself with my arms. My muscles stretched and locked, spine curving, chest open, dick and breasts vulnerable.

And it came to me, the first Italian word was him calling me a little monster , and I supposed it was fitting, after he watched me enjoy torturing Atlas.

My cock throbbed in the air-conditioned room — half from position, half from anticipation. Julian’s fingers wrapped around it, long and sure, and he stroked me once. Twice.

Not gentle. Not rough either. Just right, because it filled and pulsed, suddenly so hard it ached.

We were back.

While I wasn’t paying attention, he moved away from me and retrieved something, because out of the blue, pain bloomed across my cock like a flashfire.

A scream tore from my throat before I even registered what had hit me.

Stinging, sharp — a damned plastic cock whip, a helluva lot more intense than the squid whip he sometimes uses on me.

It bit into sensitive nerve endings with every lash, and it was all I could do to keep my arms straight, so I didn’t crumple headfirst into the floor.

Without warning, he moved up to my chest. No pause, no reprieve, just shifted his angle and lit up my tits with the same relentless sting. I choked on my screams, and he waited, quiet, until I could breathe again.

Then picked up right where he’d left off.

Back and forth, thirty lashes to my right tit, thirty to my left, thirty to my dick, and then back to my right tit.

Over and over in a vicious, cruel triangle of agony until my muscles shook with the effort of holding me up.

But I didn’t dare move without permission.

“One more round,” he warned. “Your pussy is next, but if you drop to the floor before you have leave to do so, it’ll be so much worse.”

Fuck .

Having him in my head was going to be significantly more invasive than I’d realized. I was tempted to form my shields, but either I was open to him completely, or I wasn’t. I’d told him I have no secrets from him, and that meant trusting him to hear my thoughts.

Did he hear them? Or did he just know them, somehow?

The flogger rained down the lashes harder, crueler. More screams ripped from me, raw and high and ragged.

“There we are,” he said when the scream ended. “If you’re thinking in complete sentences, I’m not hurting you anywhere near enough.”

* * * *

Julian

I carried her to the bed like something precious and fragile.

Her body was hot to the touch, trembling with pain and arousal.

I stretched her out on the mattress and bound her legs wide, ankles secured to the corners above her head, so her cunt was completely exposed — red, swollen, throbbing for more.

Her scent was salt and sweetness and need, and I let it coat the back of my tongue while I held the same cruel little flogger and waited a few beats for her fear and adrenaline to ramp up yet again.

She expected me to lay into her fast and furious, as I’d done before, but I worked her slowly, making every strike count. I didn’t want welts, not yet. Just enough sting to make her hips jolt, enough heat to bloom redder, deeper. I could hear her whimpering even before she made a sound.

Her thoughts gave her away. Her craving. Her need for me, for this .

I put more muscle into it, harder and harder, but not faster. She’d be swollen and a thousand degrees, and needy , when I finally sank into her.

I kept at it long enough to punish us both, my dick throbbing with need, her pussy flaming hot and begging .

When I couldn’t wait another second, I took my time pressing into her, taking ownership of her all over again. Not her pussy, but my cunt, tight and pulsing and soaked.

I groaned aloud. It’d been too long. Too many months of distance and restraint. Rules and protocol.

She clenched around me and I pushed in deeper, savoring every inch.

When she was close to finding release, I bent to her neck and sank my fangs in, sliding the arousal cocktail into her bloodstream with expert control. Just enough to make her feel like she might fly apart. Just enough to make her crazy with desperation for a release I wouldn’t allow her. Not yet.

She bucked. Begged. Pleaded. I took small, careful sips. Her blood was exquisite. That impossible blend of savory masculine strength and delectable feminine sweetness, magic and wildness and need. No other tasted like her.

I fucked her slow and deep for at least fifteen minutes, holding her on the edge. Denying her. Keeping her right there, trembling and wordless. Watching her unravel.

Eventually, I released the chains and ordered her to knees and chest, and she moved to obey as if in a dream. Her breath came in panting gasps. When she was in place, her back arched instinctively, offering me more.

“Hold your cheeks open, piccolina .”

My tiny girl, with her tiny little asshole I was about to heat up with this wonderful little flogger of brutality.

I whipped her asshole until it was bright red, until she was grinding her ass in the air, lost in a haze of lust and arousal, unable to find release, unable to soothe all the heated places I’d created.

“ Mia stellina, amore mio .” My little star, my love.

Watching the rock group tonight made me want to see my Silver perform in person even more, but tonight, she wasn’t a rockstar. Tonight, she was my little star. My treasure.

Mine .