Page 68 of Bottoms Up
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, usefulthing. 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 Ifeltit — the interest, the quietyesburied 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.
Chapter 23
Julian
When I rose the following day, Benji had left Vegas, and Silver was playing blackjack in the casino. She’d chosen an area without windows so I could come to her when I rose.
I texted security ten minutes before I’d be ready to leave the room, and a guard at the end of the hall walked with me to the casino, keeping me away from sunlight, making sure I knew the way in case I needed to get back to the lower floors without a guide. Atlas was already there, watching Silver from a distance. Close enough to intervene if there was a problem, but enough distance we could pretend he wasn’t there.
I made my way to her and stood behind her, my hand on her shoulder. She played three more hands, until she won again, and scooped up her small pile of chips.
“It’s probably time for me to stop while I’m a little ahead,” Silver said with a smile once we were away from the table. “Technically, I ran out of chips and had to buy more twice, so I’m still behind, but I had fun playing.” She cashed her chips in and went toward the women’s bathroom, where I knew she’d put the cash into a band that went around her waist under her pants so pickpockets couldn’t get at it.
Atlas aimed her toward a family bathroom, and he checked it before he let her go in. Guards don’t let me go to the men’s restroom when there’s a family one available, either.
When she returned to me, she told me, “I bought eight grand worth of chips and cashed in five grand, so the afternoon cost me three thousand dollars.”
She gave a wry smile. “Maybe gambling isn’t my thing, but I had fun, so it all worked out. There’s definitely a dopamine response, and it’sreal, you know? Video games do a decent job of mimicking reality, but it’s kind of like manufactured dopamine, so it isn’t authentic. I mean, it is — your body doesn’t know the difference — but your mind knows you can just pause the game, or shut it off, and you’ll be fine.”
“That’s why you’ve been spending so much time at the T-Wall, right? The adrenaline is better than video games?”
She shrugged. “Mostly, I need to work out and stay in shape, and I like climbing. I work out inside when the weather’s bad, or I drive to an indoor climbing wall.” A sigh. “Okay. Yeah. That probably came off as not completely true, because I just realized I’ve been lying to myself.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hello, my name is Silver and I’m an adrenaline junkie, and the T-Wall feeds my addiction.”
