Chapter 23 #2
Silas ate and listened while Kenny moved the talk toward routines, and Boone discussed adding exercises to help her hold up to suspension scenes better.
Willow leaned back on her wedge, chewing thoughtfully, clearly trying to absorb the scope of what had happened and what might come next.
He let her think she was getting a breather. Let her believe the hard questions were done. But his mind never stopped.
She’d admitted to craving days of being stripped down. Admitted the pony ordeal needed more time. Admitted the cage turned her on as much as it broke her down. That wasn’t just consent, it was a motherfucking invitation.
He leaned back in his chair, fork dangling loose in his fingers, and let his voice cut through the room. “You know what I’m hearing? You don’t just want to be made less than human for a night. You want us to keep you there until you forget what it feels like to be anything else.”
Her breath hitched. A tiny thing, but Silas caught it.
He grinned. “That means there’s ground we haven’t touched.
Layers to peel back. Shame you haven’t tasted yet.
” His tone softened, coaxing, dangerous in its calm.
“You think last night was the edge? It was the warm-up, little hawk. Next time, we’ll strip you of your humanity, grind you down to a thing, and keep you there until you forget there was ever anything else to be. ”
Kenny shot him a look, a silent warning not to spook her too far, too fast. Silas shrugged, let the moment cool, and speared a bite of steak like he hadn’t just mapped out her future.
But in his head, the outline was already taking shape: the cage as her default, meals stripped down to ritual, endurance pushed past her own expectations.
More object, less girl. Not long enough to break her for good, but day after day of pushing her deep enough that crawling back out would take some time.
That was what she’d asked for, whether she realized it yet or not.
And Silas intended to give it to her.
* * * *
Willow had sent all the healing energy to her clit, pussy, asshole, and nipples the night before while Kenny had held her in the bath, simply because they hurt the most.
After the trip to the bathroom that morning, she’d directed it at her feet and knees. By the time she finished breakfast, she was pretty sure she could bear her weight in her special cloud slippers.
“I’d like an Epsom salt bath. Can one of you bring my monster-feet slippers, please, kind Sirs?”
Boone wasn’t far from her shoe cabinet, and he retrieved them, his face stoic, like handling hot pink furry monster feet with black claws offended both his pride and his wolf, but he’d take one for the team.
These were the softest, most comfortable house shoes she’d ever owned, and they all knew that’s why she favored them. They still gave her a lot of shit over them, but that was okay. She wore them anyway, wiggling her toes in the silly fluff with something bordering defiance.
She heard the water come on and realized Kenny had gone to draw her bath.
She soaked for over an hour, then Silas fed her again.
She napped a few hours, and when she woke, Silas brought another huge tray of food.
She was back on the wedge, sitting up, and Silas set the same tray table over her lap he’d used that morning, a wicked gleam in his eyes when he told her to sit on her hands.
Boone and Kenny sat in armchairs nearby, bowls of venison stew in their laps, watching like men at a private show. That should’ve been her first clue something was up.
Silas held up a piece of meat on the end of a bone, the glazed meat glistening dark red.
He turned it slowly, letting the scent waft toward her.
“This,” he said, voice low and theatrical, “is your opening act. Grass-fed lamb, grilled just past rare, kissed with fire, brushed with pomegranate reduction and rosemary oil. It’s practically foreplay on a bone. ”
She lifted her brows. “Is it really foreplay if I’m not allowed to use my hands, Sir?”
“Oh, I didn’t say you weren’t involved. Open.”
She obeyed, and he placed the meat between her teeth. Her mouth closed around it, and he didn’t release it right away but made her pull the meat from the bone, eyes locked on hers as she pulled, and he let his fingers drag slow across her lips.
A low, involuntary sound escaped her throat, more whimper than moan.
The smoky meat hit her tongue with heat, juices slicking her lips, the pomegranate bright and sharp with a whisper of sweet beneath the char.
Her thighs clenched from a series of memories — the way raw pain had bled into punishing pleasure the night before until she hadn’t known where one ended and the other began.
Her core pulsed, a flicker of need sparking low and sudden, as if her body remembered the night more vividly than her mind dared to.
Boone gave a grunt. “You gonna feed her or make her blush to death?”
“Why not both?” Silas settled the bare bone to the side and held his fingers in front of her lips. “Clean me.”
Willow met his gaze, saw the steel in them, and leaned forward to suck his index and middle fingers clean, tongue sweeping along the rough calluses. A tremor passed through her, nerves still too raw to separate obedience from desire.
He grinned. “Such a helpful little fucktoy.”
Kenny snorted softly but didn’t comment.
Silas dipped into the mushrooms next, dragging one through the horseradish-Parmesan cream and lifting it to her mouth.
“You remember these, cremini, flash-fried. But this sauce? New recipe. Crème fra?che, fresh horseradish, lemon zest, truffle oil, and a snowfall of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Rich enough to earn a spanking.”
She chewed and whimpered. The sharp bite of horseradish softened by cream and cheese was decadent, almost obscene.
“That good?” Boone asked.
She nodded, mouth full.
Silas held another luscious piece of lamb on the end of a bone, but this time, smeared it lightly in sauce before feeding it to her. “Suck the bone like you’re trying to earn your dinner, little tongue-whore.”
She gave him a flat look despite the way her insides fluttered at the name, but if that’s what he saw, that’s what she’d give him.
She wrapped her mouth around the bone like it was his cock, dragging her lips slow, tongue swirling around joint, making it as obscene as she could manage without deepthroating it.
And fuck if her body didn’t respond. A throb low in her belly, a pulsing ache between her thighs.
“Damn,” Kenny muttered.
“So obedient,” Silas said smugly.
Between bites of lamb and mushroom, he fed her chunks of burrata-stuffed bread, the warm cheese stretching as he tore it open. He dragged one through a bit of the leftover lamb glaze and fed her that, too. “Savory, melty, herby,” he said. “You should be worshipping me for this.”
“I’ll write you a thank-you note later, Sir.”
Next came the rabbit, which he informed her was shredded leg meat, still warm, seasoned with thyme and a hint of browned shallot, served over a velvety corn purée.
He dipped his fingers into the meat, then the purée, and brought it to her mouth.
She sucked his fingertips clean, again and again, until her lips were glossed with butter and corn.
“This bunny,” he told her, his voice low, “is a special thank you. An acknowledgment of the rabbit you fed my wolf.”
She swallowed hard, and her chest warmed.
If she’d stayed with James, she’d be in Lapland under a glass-roofed chalet, taking reindeer sleigh rides and watching the Aurora Borealis above missionary sex — but that paled in comparison to twelve hours of having one of her darkest fantasies fulfilled, followed by Silas feeding her from his hands with last night’s obedience marathon still singing in her bones.
This wasn’t a curated, purchased fantasy.
It was the life she’d wished for, built on the fierce collision of love and complete surrender, where the weight of expectation was replaced with clarity, purpose, and care that ran so deep it remade her.
Her men demanded her obedience with one hand and soothed her with the other.
They fed her, fucked her, anchored her. And in return, she freely and fully gave them everything.
And who needed a professional chef when she had Silas lifting the dome off her dessert: delicate apple galettes with caramel drizzle and cinnamon-dusted cream, hand-held and flaky. He tore one apart with his fingers, fed her the inner pieces while sucking the sticky sauce off his own knuckles.
When he held a bite just out of her reach and she tried to stretch her neck to reach it, he laughed, warm and indulgent. “Oh, she’s getting needy. Might have to cut her off before she starts begging for more than food.”
“She looks happy,” Boone said. “Sated.”
“She is,” Kenny agreed. “And she earned every bite.”
Willow didn’t speak. She just leaned into Silas’s hand when he wiped a bit of caramel from her chin, let him trace her bottom lip with his thumb, and rested her head against his arm with a contented sigh.
It wasn’t use. Wasn’t pain. It was something sweeter. She was full and fed. Adored.
The deal after her fantasy scene, something Kenny implemented without her input, was a couple of days off from being used or hurt. The power exchange was still there, warm and comforting, and she loved Silas even more for pushing the issue. For reminding all of them who was in charge.
About thirty minutes after she ate, while they were all piled in bed streaming a show, Kenny walked into the playroom while she was lying between Boone and Silas, and quietly ordered, “On the bondage table, little hawk. I’ll be inspecting you every two hours the rest of the evening, until you go to sleep. ”
She climbed off the bed, stuck her feet in her slippers, and walked to the red medallion. She was allowed in and out of the bed today without having to wait for permission, but she wasn’t going to assume anything when it came to the playroom.
“Enter. On your front first. Bondage table.”
She took the monster shoes off before she climbed on, and then lay silently while he examined the bottoms of her feet first and then moved up her body, poking at spots on her thighs, her ass, her back, all the way up.
“Flip.”
She did, and once again remained passive while he looked over every inch of the front and sides of her body.
His touch was clinical, but the tension in his jaw, the flicker of muscle beneath his eyes, the way his gaze tracked every wince, all showed her he acted out of concern and caring. Love.
But also some kind of complex math in his head about how fast she healed, how much they could hurt her during days-long scenes and expect to be able to do it again the next day.
“Legs up and out.”
He parted her cleft, lifted her clit hood, pressed all around her clit before gently pressing directly down on it. He stuck a lubed finger into her ass, then her pussy.
“It’s like you’ve managed three or four days of human healing already. The worst of it didn’t happen until one in the morning, so it’s only been fifteen hours.”
“Means when we do this for days,” Silas noted, leaned against the doorframe, “we can hurt her more each day than we could even a wolf.”
She ignored him, focusing on Kenny instead. “I’ve always healed faster than other shifters, Sir, but it’s even more now. Maybe because of the bleedover from the magic I get from you? The Alpha thing?”
Kenny studied her face, then leaned down to get her slippers, and he put them on her feet, still stuck in the air. “Could be. Or it could just be you, pet. Stronger than you know. Permission to return to bed.”
She crawled back into the bed with Boone, leaving the slippers so they’d be handy for a bathroom trip, and let him fold her into his body.
She wasn’t allowed a television in her bedroom, but Kenny had brought one in for the day, and since she got to choose what they watched, she picked the very British police procedural with the tall, dark, and devastatingly gorgeous detective who kept chasing the beautiful, genius-level sociopath who might be his soulmate.
It was moody and violent and wrong in all the right ways.
The men had assumed they would hate whatever she chose, but they were all into it too.
Kenny paused it every two episodes to do her inspection, and Silas brought food up every other hour.
It was a completely luxurious, extravagant day, being waited on hand and foot, hanging out in bed, in the arms of her men, streaming shows.
And when she fell asleep between Kenny and Silas that night, her last thought was that it would be Christmas morning when she woke.