Page 53 of Bottoms Up
Good.
I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him. Slow. Intentional.
I froze his head and neck muscles with mind tricks, along with the arm holding him up, and took my time inserting the first needle slowly into his ear canal until I felt resistance, then ruthlessly pushed another quarter inch.
Because the needle must stay in once inserted. Strong shifters can begin to heal damage even withoutchanging. It wasn’t likely this one could with the stasis bracelet, but I wanted to be certain.
The eyes are trickier. One has to go into the center of the eye, all the way to the optic nerve at the back, and then press far enough in to hold the needle in place.
With his eyes frozen, he couldn’t blink. Couldn’t look away. Had to watch my hand approaching slowly with the needle, building tension, nearing millimeter by millimeter toward the exact center of his vision until it penetrated his eyeball and kept going until it hit the optic nerve at the back.
And then pressed into it.
And still — he didn’t scream. His breathing was ragged, but he didn’t utter a single vocal sound.
His scent flared and flattened throughout, full-body fear without edging all the way into panic. He’d been trained to go beyond the fight-or-flight response, to reason throughanything.
I could hear Silver behind me, breathing as if she was climbing the boulder. Her scent told me all I needed to know — she was horrified andintenselyaroused.
My cock throbbed in response even before the needle broke the surface.
Because this wasn’tonlyabout pain.
Silver trusted me to control Atlas, to control her, to direct the scene, to make it work for everyone, even me.
And I trusted her — witheverything.
I focused on Atlas again, and pierced his other ear, just as slow and measured, until his world went silent.
And then his other eye, watching the terror as the needle neared, pierced, and kept going.
He let out a long, keening, bone-deep wail when his world went dark. The vibrations so low, I wasn’t sure Silver’s human ears caught them, but my vampire senses caught every fractured note, and a chill rose through me, slow and cold, like desolation crawling up my spine.
I shook it off and stood — and cranked the ball crusher three times, when a half-turn of this device would be devastating.
As expected, his screams filled the room, his whole body jerking, his hand and foot moving to add to the insult, more screams, more jerking — until I shut down the part of his brain that controlled his vocal cords, and there was only the release of air.
The next ten seconds were a silent scream, and when he finally stopped to take a longer breath, I telepathed,You can contact me this way if you want, but annoy me too much and I’ll close the path.
He blew the breath out rapidly, rather than trying to scream, and responded,Thank you, Sir.
I didn’t have to ask what he was thanking me for — it was an all-encompassing feeling. He was thanking me for the entire scene, for the pain, the cruelty, the deprivation. For the twisted position that made him have to choose between hurting nipples or balls, whether to exhaust his arm or hurt his ankle.
For the layers and layers of pain we’d saddled him with.
I turned to Silver, and she said, “Damn, Julian. I’m actually kind of glad I’m human right now.”
“You should always be happy for your humanity.” I turned toward Atlas, deciding where to drink from him. “I’m going to bite him and add a layer of painful arousal, and then I shall focuscompletelyon you, darling Silver.”
She didn’t answer with words. Just liquid, glorious heat, and a whisper of permission.
Before I stepped closer to him, I shut Atlas’s olfactory senses down — both so he wouldn’t scent me coming, but also because I’d be hurting my lovely Silver soon, and he didn’t need to scent her pain.
That was for me. Not him.
Chapter 19
Silver
