Page 35 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

Julian

Benji was with us a little over three days, and I was happy Silver had the time with her brother. They needed that — all the easy laughter, all the hard conversations.

It also gave me opportunities to enforce our sex-on-demand dynamic, and that felt important.

Silver doesn’t want twenty-four/seven control over her life, but she absolutely wants that for sex. Rules. Boundaries.

She wants to be used. Not asked.

And I needed to give that to her — not just because she wanted it, but because I needed it, too.

It settled something in both of us.

The predictability. The clarity. The silence between command and compliance.

When I force her body open even when she’s tired or aching or wrecked from a long day? That is all mine.

And her scent when I push her, it’s like my own personal aphrodisiac.

My Silver doesn’t get all hot and bothered by the gentle romantic stuff, but when I shove her knees up and force my cock into her pussy or her ass whether she’s ready or not? She comes so hard I can feel it in my bones.

I love being rough with her. I love the way her breath catches before she moans. The way her body tenses right before I enter and take her. Those moments turned me on more than any sound or word.

I can’t go full tilt on her, though. Can’t fuck too hard, can’t drink too deeply, have to follow infection protocols if the skin gets broken, can’t bruise too deeply.

Silver can take pain, and plenty of it, but I could break her if I let myself forget what she is.

She’s human, and humans are breakable.

Shapeshifters, on the other hand, can easily heal if you break them.

Which brings me to Atlas.

I fed from him one of the days Silver was out with Benji. It was supposed to be a quick fuck-and-feed — nothing complicated — but the moment I stepped into the room and caught his scent, I had a feeling nothing about Atlas would ever be simple and straightforward.

And I was right, which was more than fine, it turned out.

Atlas was already naked and positioned on a feeding station when I entered — lubed, feet planted wide, hips bent over the crossbar, left hand gripping the forward brace situated far from his hips to stretch his body long and taut. Right elbow anchored on a platform to help support his chest.

A setup meant to simplify the feed-and-fuck process. It’s meant to dehumanize the food — for both vampire and daywalker. It isn’t comfortable for the human, but it’s about making it convenient for the vampire to enter the room and proceed without any niceties.

Atlas was rock-hard when I walked in, and I decided perhaps our Atlas needed some pain without arousal.

I didn’t speak. Didn’t warn him. I leaned over the heated length of his torso and sank my fangs into his neck without anesthetic, and instead of the usual cocktail, I injected one that burned like acid and blocked arousal entirely. No stimulation. No pleasure. Just pure, writhing pain.

I knew without looking, his cock went flaccid within ten of his heartbeats. His scent told the story. The acid of my venom pulsed through his arteries, veins, and capillaries. Every cell in his body hurt, and all of that without arousal to buffer the torment.

I stood and shoved my cock into his ass like I was claiming territory — no care, no finesse, no buildup, just one brutal drive and then I was fucking him hard , vampire-fast, piston-deep and relentless. The slap of my hips against his body echoed back to me.

There was no mercy. No slow buildup. Just force and venom and agony. I didn’t hold back.

It would’ve broken the hips of a human, but shapeshifters have stronger bones.

There were screams when the venom first burned him from the inside out. More when I entered and pounded him.

But his screams turned to something else.

He sobbed .

He hadn’t cried while Silver and I tortured him, but on this night, he bawled. Full-body sobs that racked his entire being.

And I knew without probing past those walls in his head — this was the release he needed. The results of a different kind of pain. A surrender that wasn’t about submission or the normal, civilized rules of consent, but one that gave him a catharsis the other never could.

I came hard inside him, flooding him deep in his bowels while his body shuddered through violent sobs — and I bit his neck again, drank deeper this time, taking in his pain, his adrenaline, his exhaustion.

Nectar for the monster my maker created.

But I’m no longer that monster, so I injected the antidote for the cocktail di dolore e sofferenza — the cocktail of pain and suffering.

However, I reinforced the cocktail to block arousal.

It would wear off in four to six hours, but he wouldn’t come tonight because that edge of denial mattered.

To complete the catharsis, he needed to suffer through the aftereffects — unrelieved, wrung out and emptied, without pleasure to soften it.

Denied the positive effects of arousal while he dealt with the physical and emotional fallout of our short session. Well, short for me. I have a feeling those fifteen minutes felt like hours to him.

My cock was still half-hard. My thighs ached. My fangs pulsed. There was something animal in my chest, still pacing, still hungry. I shoved it down.

He was crying too hard to stand. I lifted him off the station and carried him to the nearby couch.

He didn’t want to be touched, didn’t want to be held.

I held him anyway. Wrapped my arms around his shaking body and cradled him to my chest while the storm of grief and pain crashed through him.

He tried to push away, tried to resist, but I needed to give him a safe place to lose himself — human contact while he came apart, so he’d know someone cared enough to be here when it was over.

In an attempt to make him stop resisting, I told him, “If you were mine, we’d do that on a schedule.

Not the same scenario every time because I wouldn’t let your body learn the pattern, but no arousal while I dole out more pain than you can handle.

Pain without arousal. Total overload. Real tears once a month, or maybe every other week.

” I considered the timing to keep it a rare-ish event, with anticipation and mounting fear as it neared, and said, “Once a month. Something to look forward to and dread at the same time. First Wednesday of the month, without fail.”

My ruse had worked. He stopped fighting my hold. He wasn’t relaxed, but he stopped trying to escape my embrace.

We sat like that for long moments, with him breathing through the aftermath, gaining control piece by piece until his breathing leveled out, still shaky, but steadier.

His eyes opened and he met my gaze. “Would you be interested in that? In taking me home?”

His voice was steady now, but underneath it, I could hear the anchor of restraint — that low, simmering control he utilized like armor.

He stared at the wall a few seconds and looked back up.

“Having your own private security, someone you trust to keep you alive? I’m not looking for a traditional relationship, but working for a couple who can hurt me when it suits them would be the ideal situation for me — where both partners are comfortable involving me sexually on a regular basis, but without making me part of their emotional relationship.

Outside the intimacy. That would be ideal. ”

I wanted to stroke his face, but that would’ve been the wrong way to go. When he moved to sit up, I let him, but shifted him beside me on the couch, lest he try to walk to another chair, to put more distance between us.

Silver and I weren’t looking for a third, but both of us had been intrigued by Gavin’s idea of finding a live-in pet.

Not a submissive, not a poly thing, but someone who wanted to be a human pet.

Someone without an income who’d be mostly non-vocal throughout the day, servicing us when ordered, feeding me three or four times a week, handling simple tasks when commanded, and then tortured far beyond reasonable pain when my Silver and I were in a mood to do so.

In my mind, we’d bring someone in who didn’t understand English, and we’d only train them to the commands we wanted them to know.

But how realistic was that? To find a shapeshifter with these desires and wishes, who’d actually fit into our lives?

Billy was great as a playtoy when we wanted to hurt someone together, but he belongs to Marco and is available to me through the coterie and my job.

Atlas would never be a pet, but his proposition sounded intriguing.

Also, it would solve the problem Silver had mentioned — we’d be able to trust him to know what Silver has in her jeans.

I was intrigued by the man, and by the sadistic aggression his very presence created in my mind. Violent, thrilling things.

Having a man like him with no boundaries? A man who could endure without breaking? It made my dick twitch and threaten to pulse back to life, but I absentmindedly redirected blood flow.

Bottom line, he’d survived more than I could imagine. And not just survived — endured . Whatever his story was, whatever trauma he kept locked behind those walls, it hadn’t broken him. He’d found a way to function, to serve, to be useful. To keep going.

I admired that.

I wanted that.

I wanted him.

I met his gaze. “I’ll talk to Silver, and then the three of us can talk if she’s open to it.”

“If she’s open to it, we’ll need Gavin in the conversation from the start, Sir.”

Of course he wouldn’t negotiate for real without bringing Gavin in. I respected that.

This meant I needed to give Atlas a better idea of how things would be, so we were absolutely on the same page before we brought Gavin in.

“If you become ours, there will be rooms that you only enter naked. What we call you in those spaces — submissive , slave, toy , or something else entirely — we’ll have to figure that out.”

He didn’t flinch.

“Silver’s interested in taking on a pet,” I continued.

“Not a third. Not someone with their own income. Someone who belongs to us. A well-behaved, obedient, useful thing . That setup won’t work for you, and I’m not pretending it will, but I’m intrigued by your proposal — bodyguard most of the time, pain-toy when you enter specific secure underground rooms while others guard the house. ”

I paused, watching the way he breathed. The way his eyes stayed focused, calm.

“Marco pays for my security, so you’ll be on his payroll, but in practice? You’ll take orders from us. You’ll be ours. Our bodyguard. Our pain-toy.”

His expression didn’t change. Not even a flicker.

But I felt it — the interest, the quiet yes buried under his silence.

The part of him that had already made the decision.

He just needed us to say yes. To make the offer official.