Chapter 18 #2
“They fed me buffalo wings and fried cheese between the massage and hair stuff. Was that your doing?”
He grinned. “Of course it was, little hawk.”
She shook her head. “You never call me little hawk.”
“Would you prefer cumbucket?”
The name didn’t work like it usually did, and she sighed. “Maybe later, but you were right to call me hawk, apparently. I thought I was ready to go into sex mode after your comment leaving the spa, but maybe I’m not yet.”
“A few more hours of pampering, and I think you’ll be up for it. No pressure, little fucktoy.”
Her body reacted that time, her clit waking up and pulsing at her. Not much, but a little.
Silas unpacked her bags while she sat and supervised, watching where he put things so she’d be able to find them again. Of course, her closet would have to be unlocked for her to have access, but that was fine.
Next, he had her sit at the kitchen island, and she sipped iced tea while he took out every knife they owned and methodically sharpened them, one by one.
The sound of metal against stone was soothing, meditative. She watched his practiced hands, the slide and rhythm of it, and found herself sinking deeper into that warm haze, not just rested, but safe. Cared for. No pressure. Just the sound of Silas sharpening their world back into order.
The silence wasn’t awkward. It never was with him. But thoughts had encroached while she was away, her mind trying to make sense of her new life, trying to fit it into who she was away from her men, and the silence gave her a place to dare to put her thoughts to words.
“I’ve always craved structure,” she said, not looking at him.
“Routine. Rules. Knowing what’s expected of me.
It’s what made nursing work. It’s why I thought what James wanted might be enough even in the context of vanilla.
It’s what makes me love my mornings with the three of you, the evening schedule in black and white, but… ”
He didn’t answer, didn’t stop the slow rhythm of the knife on the stone, but his eyes flicked to hers.
“But what you do to me,” she said softly.
“What you give me… it isn’t structure. Not the kind I thought I needed.
You strip everything away, and it’s all chaos, the opposite of structure, and yet, it’s like this key clicking something in me when I didn’t even know there was a damned keyhole in that part of my psyche. ”
Silas tested the edge of the blade on his thumb. Went back to sharpening.
“When I’m here,” she said, voice quieter, “it makes sense. I want to be what you make of me, even when you break me down into a blubbering mess, a whimpering thing. But when I go back to the normal world… it doesn’t make any sense at all.
At the hospital, the idea of being someone’s cocksleeve is fucking wrong, but here?
Watching you work? Even though I’m not even a tiny bit horny right now, it makes sense. ”
He glanced at her. Looked back to his work. Slowed a little.
“The French have a phrase for it,” he said. “‘La nostalgie de la boue.’ The literal translation is ‘nostalgia for the mud’.”
He stood straighter, rolled his shoulders, wiped the blade clean.
“They use it for people who claw their way out of the dirt and still ache to sink back into it. Women who marry rich and still sleep with the gardener. For men who build empires and beg to be degraded. For all the ones who got out and still crave the dirt.”
He tested the knife on his arm, shaved a few hairs. Put it with the sharpened knives to his left, reached to his right for another.
“For me, it’s older than French. It’s Genesis — man was formed from the dust of the ground, and then later we get the bit about dust you are, and to dust you shall return.
You can dress it up however you like, but we’re all made of mud.
Flesh. Rot. And it calls to us. Some spend their whole lives trying to forget. The rest of us remember.”
He glanced at her. Looked back to the knife and the stone. “We’re all made of mud. Maybe sometimes we want to crawl back into it. Strip away our humanity, be who and what we started as. Fuck society and it’s rules. Its expectations. Strip it all the fuck away and see what’s left.”
His voice told the story, words harsh, and yet his hands kept to the same steady rhythm.
“You were raised to think structure was safety, and polish was strength. But what you need — what you are — is buried under all that shine. The polish is just a disguise. Real strength lives in what’s feral.
You feel real when I strip you down because that’s when you are real.
No mask. No manners. Just instinct and breath.
Pain and need. Meat with a pulse. I reduce you to sensation without thought. Back to the beginning.”
Willow looked up at him, throat tight.
She wanted to argue, but how do you deny a truth so deep you feel it in your bones?
Meat with a pulse.
Stripped of titles, kindness, even purpose — and somehow, in that rawness, she’d never felt more seen. More understood. A breathless click, the final turning of the key she’d felt unlocking something earlier, exposing something terrible and true.
She’d thought surrender was about giving up control. About kneeling, obeying, pleasing. But this was something older. Wilder.
Not surrender.
Return.
“It isn’t just you,” he said, softer now.
“I need it too. I need to ruin you. To strip away every pretense and watch you fall apart, not because you’re weak, but because I want the you underneath all that scaffolding.
I want that version of my little painwhore, not the Willow wearing society’s mask.
I want the version of you that remembers what it means to be meat. To be mine.”
Silence again. He checked the edge of the blade with his thumb, went back to work, stone whispering over steel.
“You’re not crazy, little hawk,” he added, voice low and quiet. “You’re remembering where you came from. What you are. And lucky for you, my wolf never really let me leave.”
Willow had ten minutes to contemplate this, the silence stretching between them like a warm, steady pulse. Every thought led her deeper into the barbed truths he’d laid bare.
Hinduism says we’re created from dust, the Sumerians mixed clay with the blood of a slain god to create man, and she had no idea why it mattered that multiple ancient histories all said this, but it made it more true, somehow.
Silas wasn’t just stripping away society’s expectations, he was dismantling everything humanity had built since we’d been formed from clay. From mud. He was showing her who she is under it all.
She’s more than a cocksleeve, more than a painwhore. And yet, she was also those things, at times.
And she wouldn’t change a thing.
Boone came in first, kissed her forehead, and went upstairs to shower.
Kenny followed twenty minutes later and started pulling down plates, gathering silverware.
She stood to help, but he told her to have a seat. However, when he settled the pitcher of tea on the table, he gave her a pointed look and said, “Still your job, little hawk.”
She nodded. “Yes, Sir. No one’s drink runs out.”
He kissed her cheek, approving, and sat in his seat as Silas settled the platter of lamb shanks, carrots, parsnips, and potatoes on the table.
The crusty garlic bread, the creamy mashed potatoes.
It smelled heavenly — garlic, rosemary, hints of the red wine.
And the lamb scent over it all made her stomach growl.
Dinner was domestic. Silas had cooked, but the others helped serve, and no one rushed.
She filled glasses, passed dishes, and listened to the casual conversation.
This was family. Not by blood, but by bond.
The four of them, eating together, lingering after the plates were clean and the kitchen warm with smells and satisfaction.
They sat around the table another half hour, letting everything settle — and then Kenny stood, walked to her, and lifted her without a word, cradled her to his chest.
She melted against him, arms around his neck, and when he reached the top of the stairs, he set her gently on her feet beside the armoire.
The men disappeared into her bedroom while she stayed in the hallway, fingers slipping behind her neck to undo the dress, to bare herself for whatever they’d planned next.
Willow stepped into the bedroom and made her way to the red-and-black medallion inlaid near the playroom. She eased into resting inspection pose: hands clasping her elbows behind her back, legs slightly spread, chin lifted, gaze forward.
Her heart thudded with every breath.
The men moved around the space without speaking.
Kenny adjusted the fucking bench, raising the knee platforms so she wouldn’t have to support her weight on sore legs.
Boone checked the arm platforms. Silas placed canes and whips on the cart with the kind of regard some men give to knives, and he eventually wheeled it to the fucking bench, not to be confused with the fucking station. The bench is way more comfortable.
They hadn’t acknowledged her yet, and that made her stomach twist in the best and worst ways.
Anticipation buzzed beneath her skin, hot and electric. Her nipples pebbled in the cool air, her pulse a wild thrum in her throat. Her mouth was dry, her pussy clenched on nothing.
When Kenny finally turned to her, his voice was quiet but absolute. “Enter.”
Her knees nearly buckled, not from fear but the sudden drop of pressure, the click of the moment becoming. She stepped forward on shaky legs, each footfall heavy with meaning.
She wasn’t just walking into the playroom; she was stepping into a ritual space that demanded total surrender. She was returning to function. Property. A vessel for their pleasure. To use, service, and obedience.
Flesh made useful.