Page 47 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

Julian

Silver wanted to look through her townhouse and decide what we were bringing to the new house versus what went to charity. We left the minute the sun went below the horizon, with Atlas driving — the norm when we leave Homewood.

He’d be a huge part of our lives without being our toy, but that intensifies it. For me and Silver, anyway. Not so sure about Atlas.

Tonight, he wasn’t going to be our guard all night, but he didn’t know that yet. We’d fill him in on it later. The rules are, if he isn’t on duty and we initiate a scene, he obeys. Silver liked the idea of him not being mentally prepared for a scene when we initiated her diabolical plans tonight.

We walked in and Silver tilted a large, framed mirror and then swung it on a hidden hinge away from the wall, and proceeded to enter a combination on a keypad, and open a safe.

“That’s a terrible spot for a safe,” Atlas said.

“I know. Plus, it was here when I bought the place, so I have no way of knowing how many people know about it. But it’s fireproof, so I keep documents in it.”

She unloaded documents from it and put them into a fireproof document safe she’d brought, closed the wall safe, moved the mirror back over it, and turned to us. “Obviously, all of this goes with us. Let’s do the kink stuff next.”

I felt like we’d already taken the items we wanted to use to Homewood, but I understood her wanting to go through everything a final time, to be certain.

I was still considering the cock cages in her drawers.

I wouldn’t use those — special-ordered by a former Dom — but he’d had her pierced, to hold them on, and I was considering whether to make the same requirement and then special order the ones I wanted her in.

Not now. Maybe next year. Or the next. We had time, and using a harness to lock a cage on her dick worked fine for our needs in the short term.

“You should come up with us,” Silver told Atlas. “If you want something we aren’t bringing with us, you’re more than welcome to it. I’ll just be throwing it away — it isn’t like I can donate sex toys and kinky shit to charity.”

While Silver and I were in the closet, Atlas stood outside of it, looking in. He wanted to hear a potential problem before it arrived.

“Can I ask how you came about being a switch?”

I glanced up, and he was looking at Silver, so I waited to see how she’d answer.

She looked up from her sorting. “As a teen, I first lost my virginity as a guy, fucking a girl. I had this idea I needed to use my dick on a girl, my pussy with a guy.” She shrugged.

“Sounds silly now, but eventually, I realized I like fucking men, no matter which gender I feel like on any given day. While I was working that out, I played around with both sides of the power dynamic. I…” She sighed.

“I really liked being owned. I thought, once upon a time, I’d found my true Master. A leather daddy who made me his twenty-four/seven slave. Fully micromanaged, and I loved it at the time, but then he decided something that would’ve been detrimental to my career, so I left him.”

“Sounds like it was a good call, since you’re now Silver with motherfucking Mythic Beast,” Atlas said.

“Yeah, it was, and I decided I’d never again go so far into power exchange.

” Another shrug. “I only Topped people for, I don’t know, maybe a year after I left him.

I love Topping people, and I guess it’s no secret I’m a sadist, but after a while, I missed submitting — the pain, the discipline, the whole thing. ”

Silver looked at me, and I knew she wanted me to explain for her.

“Silver is only submissive to me under specific circumstances. The rest of the time, we’re partners.

Lovers. We’re more than scene-only, but only for sex.

I don’t control the rest of her life. She only submits to me, but she has sex with other people, and my little torturatore loves hurting you, and I love watching all the things she comes up with. ”

He nodded. “Okay, sorry if that was probing into something too personal. I enjoy dominating women, and yet, I clearly need to bottom to sadists. You don’t run into a whole lot of true switches. People who really feel both and aren’t just, you know, playing around with it for games.”

“I don’t judge other’s paths,” Silver said. “Whether they feel it in their bones or are just like playing around with it… not my business.”

“Maybe, but if you found a Dom who was just playacting, you wouldn’t have given him the time of day, I’m guessing.”

She grinned. “Point.”

Atlas didn’t need to know my history. He didn’t need to see me as anything except the sadist he’s handed his safety over to.

Silver smiled at him. And I knew she was thinking about her plans for him later tonight.

I wasn’t exactly excited about the devious, truly demented scene she’d devised, but I couldn’t argue it was likely something brand new for Atlas. At least, I hoped so, because fuck .

* * * *

Silver

When I first told Julian what I wanted to do, he’d looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

He’s uncut, as are nearly all the older vampires.

In fact, even modern-day boys in Italy aren’t circumcised.

He hadn’t seen his first circumcised penis until Marco purchased him and brought him to the U.S.

, where it’s disturbingly common — mutilation treated as hygiene.

I don’t remember being cut, of course. No one does, when they do it to you as a newborn, but I’ve wondered what it must’ve felt like — to be so tiny and helpless and raw.

Julian’s horrified they do this to babies, and the idea I wanted to do it to an adult male took him a few minutes to adjust to.

He’d called me one of his Italian endearments, though I’m not sure mostriciattola , his little monster, is as endearing as his other words and phrases when used in this context.

He nearly got sick when I showed him an online video explaining how to do it. There’s a way to do it really fast, and a way to do it so you draw it out. I, of course, wanted to draw it out.

When Adelaide arrived to take over security, I told Atlas, “I have special plans for you tonight, something I’ve never been able to do, since it’s kind of permanent if you do it to a human. We’ll get you all tied up in the tub before I tell you my plans, though.”

Consent issues, my own little morality thing.

I wanted it to be a surprise when it happened, wanted him to have the fear of the unknown, but I also wanted to be clear this would be worse than what’s come before.

He could choose whether to follow the next order or not, based on that info.

“Undress on the second floor, go to the bathroom on the third floor, and put the rubber wrist and ankle cuffs on.”

We gave him five minutes alone in the bathroom, standing at attention, holding his elbows behind his back, looking at the tray with all the tools we’d put together for this scene, before we went up.

Right off the bat, Julian stepped behind him, wrapped one arm around Atlas’s chest, tilted his head with the other, and slowly sank his fangs into the bare neck this presented.

Tonight, our toy would be desperate with lust, but without an erection.

He’d be drenched in need, maddened by it. Aching and frantic, but flaccid.

Julian had explained this cocktail is sometimes used as a punishment for the flock or for slaves, instead of using a cock cage.

The very idea short-circuited my brain and lit me up like a switch — I was hard before he finished the sentence.

Would Julian want to do that to me, someday?

But this was about Atlas, so I focused back to our little project.

I have a huge whirlpool tub, and we had him kneel up on one end of it and then bend backward.

We connected his right wrist to left ankle, and vice versa.

Julian lifted him, rotated him counterclockwise a little, and settled him back down, so he was in something of a backbend, but with his feet and shoulders supporting him.

His hips stuck into the air, and his dick was exactly where I wanted it. Perfect .

“He needs the magic cuff, too,” I told Julian, and he turned to the tray, lifted it, and leaned down to fasten it on Atlas’s arm above a wrist cuff.

We didn’t want a real-life jaguar to suddenly appear in the tub, bent backward the wrong way in restraints.

Atlas has excellent control, but it felt best not to test it to this extreme.

I picked up the scalpel and took my time arranging the clamps, the gauze.

No need for most of the operating room protocols — antiseptic isn’t necessary with shifters, and if he bled more than we wanted, Julian could bite him and inject a coagulant.

I also had a spray for that, one I’d chosen mostly for the pain involved, but I’d have to decide about it once we were into it.

Still, I wanted to draw things out before sliding the scalpel in and getting started. There’s something sacred about the moment before a scene so big, it’s an event.

Rather than watch me slowly cut the foreskin from Atlas’s dick, Julian watched his face, and kept ordering him to open his eyes and watch, which probably made the whole ordeal that much worse for our playtoy.

Julian can’t get past Atlas’s shields very far, but what he’s picked up is that Atlas did some really bad things in the military, and he feels like he deserves pain, but it’s a whole lot deeper than that.

It isn’t just that it negates the guilt, though that’s part of it, but the ritual of it.

The pain anchors him, gives him control over the chaos still echoing in his head.

Helps keep the worst memories at bay. Also, he’s been upfront about trading hard drugs for vampire venom, and people do crazy things for their next fix, right?

I figure people have sold their souls for less than what Julian’s bite can do.