Chapter 23
Silas telepathed Boone to help him bring all the food up, because breakfast for three wolves and a hawk was a lot when you went completely overboard with it.
He balanced the heavy tray easily, but his mind wasn’t on the food. He’d built the breakfast big on purpose — comfort stacked on comfort, every bite tailored to Willow. He’d pushed her the hardest last night, and he knew it. He’d let his inner sadist run free and today was for aftercare.
And really, taking care of her, loving her, being attentive — it might seem soft, but it was part of his strategy.
Love her and hurt her. Lift her up and tear her down. Can’t have one without the other.
When he stepped into the bedroom, Willow looked small but stubborn, propped on the wedge. Bald head. Most of the bruises hidden under the sheet, but he knew they were there. He caught her scent and it was layered — love, happiness, ache, exhaustion, and a touch of arousal.
He let Kenny and Boone circle their questions, but Silas’s mind never stopped cataloguing her current state beyond what his nose told him: her tone of voice, every flicker in her eyes.
He wanted to push now, to corner her while she was raw, but he forced patience.
She needed space to own it herself, and then he’d pounce.
Still, he couldn’t resist a few needling questions. “What dehumanized you the most?” He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it. Needed to watch her face when she admitted the truth.
“I mean, it was like a puzzle, Sir, and it started sooner than I expected, taking away the use of my hands, transporting me like an animal. I figured I’d have to pee outside right off the bat because Kenny made me drink so much ahead of time, but then the enemas—”
“One thing,” he interrupted. “And don’t tell me you don’t have something in mind.”
When she just stared at him, he met her gaze and softened his voice. “La nostalgie de la boue.”
Her scent spiked, arousal and understanding, and she sighed.
“Being an actual toilet, Sir. Moving the second I heard that damned phrase, crawling…” She closed her eyes.
Opened them. “And then, partway through the night, realizing how fast it became the new normal. How fast it became part of the definition of…” A sigh.
“Not the me sitting here now, but what you were making me into at the time.”
Satisfaction coiled sharp and sweet inside him.
He didn’t smile, not with his mouth, but his eyes must’ve given him away, and she said, “Yes yes. I know. We’ll talk about how far to take it in our everyday life Sir.
Not all the time, not downstairs, but maybe upstairs, and probably…
” She blew out a breath. “Almost certainly in scenes.”
She didn’t realize yet how much of herself she’d revealed last night, but Silas had felt it every time she broke and then rebuilt a tiny bit under their hands.
He saw new doors cracked open, new corners of her shame that begged to be dragged into the light.
He’d exploit them all, eventually. But not today.
He leaned back, arms loose, voice lazy. “We’ll find the lines you don’t even know you have. Might take a year, maybe two, but I’ll get you there.”
The scent rolling off her was a mix of defiance, unease, and arousal — and it told him he was right.
But it was time to move away from that subject for now because she hadn’t fully processed what’d happened yet. Where they’d taken her.
“I had my doubts about the thing after dinner,” he told her. “But Kenny assured us it would work for you. He was right, but can you explain why? Him with the wand on your tits, me on your clit, Boone in your ass. Nothing in your pussy?”
She stared at him a few minutes. “It just hit me, what he did, Sir. Boone with the size stuff, Kenny with the ritual, the schedule, and you were chaos. In my head, it was like Kenny was on drums, Boone was the bass guitar, and you were the crazy guitarist jumping around on stage doing crazy shit, but it was all like, a composition. A symphony of pain.”
She looked at Kenny. “Thank you, Sir. Seriously. I mean, it was hell, but I sank into it.”
“Good. That was the idea.”
“I’m asking the questions right now,” Silas said before everyone went all sappy. “Serious question. Do you need me to back off the degradation a week or two?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, Sir, but maybe not. I need a couple of days to process what happened. Kenny paused the whole schedule until the day after Christmas. Maybe we talk before stuff starts back?”
“That was my plan,” Kenny said. “Morning schedule starts back the day after Christmas, evening schedule the following day, and you don’t go back on your full routine until we all go back to work.”
“On a scale of one to ten,” Silas asked, “with ten being your actual psychological breaking point that you might not come back from, where were we?”
“After twelve hours, maybe a three or four? Three days of that, the shock collar, toilet, constantly dehumanized, maybe a seven?” She blew out a breath. “Sir.”
So, they’d barely scratched the surface. Silas’s dick would’ve gone hard if it hadn’t fucked her a zillion times the day before.
He’d already known shame and arousal were all twisted up in her head, and he’d made use of it plenty before last night, but he saw so many new possibilities now.
New boundaries to push her past, new lines to cross.
But not right away. She clearly needed to process this before he took her deeper. Darker.
But Silas was the king of mindfucks, so he had to ask, “What did we not push hard enough? What do you wish we’d forced harder?”
It wasn’t idle curiosity, it was reconnaissance. Every answer was ammunition for next time. Or the next.
“Two things, Sir, and both had the time element, so you did the best you could, but… I’ve already told you I want days of the dehumanization thing, but…
” She sighed. “I had no idea the hell of the pony. Ya’ll made it worse to try to enhance it, so…
what, an hour worked like the long stretches usually do? ”
“You were on it twenty-five minutes,” Kenny said.
“Well, I’d be open to discussing a regular horse with four good legs, a flat top, no weights on my ankles, and no sandpaper, for long enough to give me the full treatment. Sir.”
Her honesty floored him more than he’d admit.
Wanting days-long scenes, the pony long enough to hurt, the cage, the dehumanization — things he’d expected to need years to normalize, she was asking for now.
His cock twitched in his jeans, but he stayed still, lazy smile pasted in place.
Wolves were good at playing the long game.
He couldn’t help but poke at her, though. “Eight to ten hours,” Silas said. “Rocking back and forth, deciding whether to hurt your clit, your cunt, or your asshole. Your core exhausted. No escape. Takes a long time to fully experience it.”
“Four or five hours,” Kenny said. “I’ll put it on the list to discuss in two weeks.”
He ignored Kenny and asked, “Did you learn something new about any of us?”
She nodded. “Yeah, actually. Kenny enjoyed some things that surprised me. Boone, too.” A huff. “More things for me to add to Kenny’s list. What did you learn about me?”
The hell with staying away with mindfucks.
She’d asked, so he’d tell her. “More of when to push and when to pull back and let you simmer. Other ways shame and arousal work for you. Ideas for a few more things to throw at you based on your reactions. I figure you have a few taboo kinks you’ve never shared with anyone.
The goal is to get you to trust me enough to tell them to me, eventually. ”
She shook her head. “I wrote the biggest stuff down for Kenny. I didn’t hide anything. Didn’t hold anything back, Sir.”
He gave her a sly smile. “Oh, these will be things you haven’t admitted to yourself. Might take a year or two, but we’ll find them.”
“Did we cross any lines you didn’t know you had?” Boone asked, his voice soft.
“I thought shaving my head was too much, but fuck if it didn’t shoot me out of myself and make me someone else in the mirror.
” She looked at Kenny, then back to Silas.
“I don’t want ya’ll to do it much because I want to keep it extreme and unique, you know?
But yeah, that’s going to be a shortcut to stripping my identity, Sir.
I can’t think of anything besides the nasty food that went too far, and even that did the job of fucking with my head, making me less human. ”
Silas leaned forward enough for her to feel the heat of his gaze. “That’s why I said it wasn’t just about the pain. It’s about stripping you clean.” He tilted his head. “And you loved it. Don’t bother denying it.”
Her cheeks flushed. Her scent betrayed her. He sat back, smug, and asked, “Do you remember everything? Are there gaps?”
“The thing on the table, tits-asshole-clit, it gets hazy toward the end, Sir. Not sure I took in everything said, or that happened. It isn’t that I don’t remember, just that I didn’t really take it in enough to remember it.
Same with the last hour or so of the night.
It’s just a long blur of being used nonstop. ”
Silas nodded, satisfied. “That was one of my goals at the end of the night, for you to lose the thread. For it to be so much you couldn’t hold onto it all.”
He could’ve pushed again. Could’ve asked about fantasies she hadn’t named, could’ve pressed until she gave up something she wasn’t ready to admit to herself. Instead, he let the silence stretch, let her eat, let the weight of the night linger.
But as he cut into his omelet, his thoughts were already racing ahead. New humiliations. Longer stretches. Different ways to bend her shame into arousal until she begged for things she swore she’d never take.
He’d get her there. Step by step, edge by edge, and she’d thank him for it.