Page 50 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

Three months later

Julian

Our house is about a quarter mile past the main house, hidden in the woods.

I can quickly fly between the two so long as I stay below the treetops.

Silver usually walks, but we have an electric bike she can ride back and forth if she isn’t up for walking, or if she’s in a hurry and doesn’t want to run.

Her car stays parked at the main house, since we didn’t run a road to it.

We like it being nestled in a grove, super-private.

The power lines are buried, so other than the scent of us walking back and forth, there’s no trail to follow.

It’s both small and large. Aboveground is a spacious living room, a dining room, and a kitchen with an adorable nook so my Silver can eat and feel like she’s in the forest. Which she is.

Also, a tiny half bath, and a combination workout room and office.

Every room is big except the bathroom, so the space feels large, it’s just there aren’t many rooms.

Downstairs has twice the footprint and includes our oversized bedroom, a sitting area, a kink area, and a super-fancy bathroom, including a massive jetted tub plus a shower big enough for four people, with jets coming in from every direction.

We have three vast walk-in closets — two for Silver and one for me.

The kink area isn’t huge, but it has what we need: a cross, a winch, and a multi-use bench that’s most often set up as a spanking station but can be configured for other purposes.

We bought a sturdy, stainless steel bed that’s strong enough for me to bind her into pretty much any position.

It looks bronze and it’s beautiful, but super functional.

We can still use the dungeon and playroom in the main building, but it’s nice to have our own space.

Atlas only comes downstairs to be hurt. Everything with him happens on a schedule, now.

Every fifth day, whether he’s ready for it or not.

I kept a log of how soon he needed pain again, and it tended to be between four and nine days, so I experimented around with the timing and landed on this.

It’s especially powerful when he doesn’t think he’s ready for it yet, but there’s also value in making him wait a day.

Also, the sadist in me loves watching him walk in when he doesn’t want to be hurt on this day, but comes because he agreed we get to make the rules about how often it happens.

And, of course, he and I still do our once-a-month session where he feels zero arousal.

I repeated the ball-rolling scene during one of our monthly sessions, and there was something devastatingly right about holding the roller this time.

Feeling the weight of it in my hands. Feeling every shift, every shudder from the outside instead of the inside, and remembering what it meant when I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe through it, could only scream.

It was brutal, it was cathartic, it was pretty fucking therapeutic, and we both cried at the end.

There was power in hurting him when his dick wasn’t hard, as mine hadn’t been. I thought I’d dealt with it long, long ago, but I didn’t. Not really. I set it to the side and ignored it, which worked okay, but now that I’ve faced it head on, it no longer has so much power over me.

This is who I am — a giant of a vampire. Even more, it’s who Silver loves, so I wouldn’t change a thing.

I’d never picked out furniture before. It was overwhelming, at first. Silver helped me find a favorite color, a style, a wardrobe.

Our space looks like us now. Feels like us.

Our kitchen, dining room, and living room are all decorated in hunter green and a pale sage that works with it, while our bedroom and bathroom are indigo.

I thought Atlas would live with us, so our original plans included an upstairs bedroom for him, but he chose to live in the main house. He’s at our place a great deal, guarding us, but he’s never downstairs unless he’s our toy.

Undressing upstairs, walking downstairs naked, offering himself for our use and his pain — it’s become a ritual for him, and he thrives on those.

Always, he’s our friend, and we’re quite close to him.

He cuts up with us, shares things with us — he teases Silver about her bad coffee, critiques my fighting stance, and loves watching old war documentaries with me.

He’s still Mr. Silent when away from the property, but he relaxes enough for conversation at Homewood.

I’ve managed to get a little farther into his head while he sleeps, and I can see that he’s not ready for a romantic relationship and isn’t likely to be for many years.

I still can’t see his deepest, darkest secrets, but it’s clear the military fucked him up.

He can maintain and pretend to be okay, but he really isn’t.

I want to help him, but I’m pretty sure you’d have to break him something awful before you could help put him back together, and I’m not sure he’d survive the process.

Also, as Marco said, if we insist on therapy or anything close to it, he’ll likely quit and find other employment.

Being close to us is helpful, though. It’s a symbiotic relationship — he trusts us to see to his needs, and we trust him to keep us safe.

Maybe eventually, that trust can help him heal enough to take a bigger step toward being okay.

I’ve been busy making preparations to host a few Master Vampires at Homewood this week.

Not a summit, nothing like that, just a friendly meeting of the four most powerful vampires in the new Senatus, plus Gavin since he and Zander are so closely aligned.

Also, I’m pretty sure, because it brings Lauren to Homewood for a visit.

It bothered me when Benji basically invited himself to the house while the vampires would be here, but I didn’t mention it to Silver.

However, everything made sense when Benji organized a meeting with Marco, Zander, Silver, and me — and he talked about the fact he and Silver both want to be vampires, and they want to be turned by the same maker, so they’ll be vampire siblings.

I, of course, want Silver turned by Marco, so she’ll be here those first decades, but I listened to Marco and Zander talk through the pros and cons of one versus the other.

In the end, Silver and Benji decided on Zander, and they set a date for three and a half years out. Zander recommended they plan it for when the nights are longer, because sometimes new vampires can’t survive the length of a summer day in Alaska.

And that was a whole different concern of mine — the fact about fifteen percent of people who are bitten don’t survive the transformation, and another ten to fifteen percent never find the control necessary to live in society.

But Silver is made of strong stuff. She’ll be fine. She has to be.

But what if she wasn’t? What if I lost her?

I shook my head. Madness lay along too many what if scenarios. We had three and a half years to prepare Silver for what was to come. Plenty of vampires are turned with zero prep, and they do just fine. I’m an anomaly, a slave all my life and then not properly trained after.

She’d be fine.

I was beyond surprised when Marco negotiated for me to arrive in Alaska two months after Silver is bitten, to work for Zander. I’ll be there four months, and Marco expected me to learn a lot so I could return to him and make suggestions of how Marco can be more efficient.

Silver and I have been through hell to earn this quiet. We’ve fought monsters, demons, old masters, our own pasts. I’d trade blood and pain for this peace a thousand times over.

* * * *

Silver

The bracelet is apparently gone for good, which is a huge relief, but its echo still haunts me a little, if I think about it too much. Whatever had been inside it had gotten too close — had used me. I hated that. It made me want fangs of my own.

My brother came to stay with us once our place was ready for guests.

We don’t have a guest bedroom, but we’d installed a Murphy bed in the office/workout room, so I have a place to sleep when I want to wake to sunshine.

He could’ve stayed in the main house, but it was nice having him close, just the three of us.

I finally got to take Benji to the T-Wall. I know every route inside and out by now, I’ve done them so many times, which means I kicked my big brother’s ass. Loudly. With glee.

We spent the better part of two days on it and didn’t even manage half the routes. He plans to come back so we can do it some more. It was great having him in my home, letting him see this life I’ve made, from the inside.

It took Julian and me about a week to figure out the new sex rules in our new house.

To put it simply, Julian can use me for sex anytime he wants, but I’m only formally submissive to him when he puts my wrist cuffs on.

Mostly, quickie sex is just a hand-spanking or maybe his belt, and then he fucks me.

Or sometimes he just fucks me. Full scenes, he puts my cuffs on, and then all the other toys may or may not come out, but at least a couple of them usually do.

It’s the best of both worlds — I’m my own person in all the important ways, but I get to be owned by someone sexually. Claimed, held, used. I love it. I love him .

I told Will the timeline for me to be turned into a vampire. I figured he’d want me to resign when the big day neared, so he could replace me, but he didn’t even blink. Just nodded and said, “We have time to plan. We’ll make it work.”

He’s always been solid. Once he chose us and we all meshed, that was it. We’re a family, and families figure shit out.

Most likely, we’ll do another huge tour right before I go, and then we’ll fill in with videos of me playing new material until I’m able to be in public around humans again.

Can we go ten years without a tour? Some vampires are safe around humans sooner, most take a whole lot longer, but based on what I’ve been told, that’s my goal.