Chapter 9: The Experiment
The private elevator was a capsule of silent, swift ascent. Matthias stood beside her, his presence a solid, cool pillar in the confined space. He didn’t speak, but his thumb traced a slow, absent circle on the back of her hand where it rested on his arm. The numbers above the door blurred—70, 80, 90. Liana’s heart thumped a frantic rhythm against her ribs, a mix of champagne courage and pure, undiluted terror. This is a bad idea, her sensible nurse’s mind whispered. This is a fantastic idea, whispered something else, older and hungrier.
The doors slid open directly into the suite.
The air changed. It was warmer, scented with sandalwood and something faintly metallic, like ozone after a storm. The view was the same—the endless grid of Chicago at night—but here, it felt owned. Floor-to-ceiling windows were framed by heavy drapes the color of dried blood. The furniture was minimal, achingly modern, and looked like it had been carved from obsidian and shadow.
Matthias released her arm. The click of the elevator doors closing behind them was final.
“Welcome to the Aerie proper,” he said, his voice echoing softly in the vast space. He shrugged off his tailored jacket, draping it over a chair that was more sculpture than furniture.
Liana just stood there, feeling the red dress was suddenly too much, a costume she’d worn into a lion’s den. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Nervous?” He approached, not with the predatory stride she might have feared, but with a slow, measured ease. He stopped just before her, close enough that she had to tilt her head up.
“A little,” she admitted. Her voice was small. “I feel like I’m about to be dissected.”
A genuine smile touched his lips. “Not dissected. Appreciated.” His fingers came up, brushing a wave of hair from her shoulder. The touch was electrifying. “The shimmer on your skin, Liana. In the club. Did you feel it?”
“Yes.”
“Describe it.”
The clinical question grounded her. “Warm. Like… honey under the skin. But light. Golden.”
“Intention without direction,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. His red eyes held hers. “Raw potential. It responded to a kiss. What do you think it might do with more?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He bent his head and kissed her again.
This wasn’t the questioning brush from the dance floor. This was decisive. His mouth was cool and insistent, and he tasted like forever and power. One hand cupped the back of her head, fingers tangling in her hair, while the other slid around her waist, pulling her firmly against him. The shock of his cool body through the thin silk of her dress made her gasp, and he took advantage, deepening the kiss.
Her mind short-circuited. All the warnings, the fear, Sera’s stern face—they melted into a white noise drowned out by the feel of him. Her hands came up, gripping the front of his crisp white shirt, holding on as the world tilted. She kissed him back, a surge of boldness rising from a place she didn’t recognize. It was all sensation: the hard plane of his chest, the silk of his hair between her fingers, the expert way his mouth moved on hers.
He walked her backwards until her shoulders met the cool glass of the window. The entire city sprawled beneath her, a million tiny lights, and she was pinned between its vastness and his impossible solidity. His lips trailed from her mouth to her jaw, then down the column of her throat. A soft, involuntary sound escaped her.
“Here,” he whispered against her skin, his voice a vibration that went straight to her core. “The magic gathers here when your pulse quickens.” He kissed the frantic beat at the base of her throat. A faint, golden warmth bloomed under his lips again, a fleeting echo.
His hands found the zipper at the back of her dress. The sound of it parting was obscenely loud in the quiet room. He didn’t rush. He drew it down slowly, the metal teeth separating, exposing her back inch by inch to the cool air. Then he eased the sleeves from her shoulders.
The dress sighed into a pool of crimson silk at her feet.
She stood before him, bathed in the city’s glow, in nothing but her strapless black bra and a pair of lace panties. She’d bought them for a date that never happened, practical cotton usually her only concession. Now she was glad for the foolish, pretty lace. The air raised goosebumps on her skin.
Matthias took a step back. His gaze was not lustful, but fiercely appreciative, analytical. He was studying her the way a scholar studies a rare text.
“Beautiful,” he said, and the word held the weight of centuries of comparison. He reached out, his fingertips barely skimming the skin just above her bra, following the line of her collarbone. Where he touched, that same, responsive glow emanated from her skin, a soft light that pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
“You see?” he said, watching the light. “It’s not a weapon yet. It’s a reaction. A somatic response to stimuli.” His eyes lifted to hers. “Pleasure is as valid a stimulus as fear. More controllable. Let me show you.”
She was trembling. Not from cold. From the sheer, overwhelming reality of it—him, this room, the power humming under her skin, answering to his touch. She nodded, unable to speak.
He closed the distance again. His kiss was slower now, more deliberate. His hands slid around to her back, and with a deft flick, he released the clasp of her bra. It joined the dress on the floor. His cool palms smoothed over her bare shoulders, down her arms, then back up to cradle her face. The contrast of his temperature on her heated skin was dizzying.
He guided her away from the window, towards the vast platform of the bed. The silk covers were cool and slippery under her knees as he laid her back. He followed her down, bracing himself above her, a dark silhouette against the greater darkness of the room. His thumb traced her lower lip.
“Don’t think,” he instructed, his voice a low command. “Just feel. And watch.”
He kissed her again, and then his mouth began a slow, devastating journey downward. Over the swell of her breast, tracing the curve of her ribs, the plane of her stomach. Everywhere his lips and tongue touched, her skin answered. A map of golden, shimmering light began to bloom across her body in the dim room, following the path of his attention. It was inside her, too, a building pressure, a warmth that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with need.
She arched off the bed, a choked gasp escaping her. Her fingers clutched at the silk.
“Matthias…”
“Shhh,” he murmured against her skin, the sound vibrating through her. “Just feel it. Don’t direct it. Let go to it.”
His fingers hooked into the lace at her hips. The material was a scant, delicate thing, and it slid down her thighs with a whisper that seemed louder than the city below. The cool air of the suite touched new skin, and she trembled, not from the temperature.
He parted her legs with a slow, deliberate pressure of his hands, his touch firm but not forceful. She allowed it, her breath catching in her throat, every nerve ending alight with anticipation and a sharp, sweet anxiety. The expanse of the bed, the towering windows, the sheer exposure of it all narrowed to this single point of focus.
Then he leaned in.
His mouth was cool, an astonishing contrast that made her jolt. The first touch was a slow, deliberate exploration, a mapping of sensitive terrain. It was not hurried. It was a study. A soft, shuddering sigh escaped her, her hands fisting in the dark silk beneath her.
The golden shimmer, that reactive glow that had danced on her skin at his kiss, now ignited deep within her core. It pulsed in time with his languid, circling rhythm, a low light building under her skin like a captured sunrise. She could feel it gathering, a tangible heat separate from the pleasure coiling tight in her belly.
“Oh, god,” she breathed, the words fragmenting.
He didn’t stop. He deepened his attention, his hands holding her hips steady against the mattress. Her back arched, a silent plea. The world dissolved into sensation—the cool slip of silk, the scorching heat of his mouth, the impossible light radiating from her own body. It was too much. It was not enough.
The world was a narrow point of sensation, a tightening coil of light and need. His mouth was relentless, and the glowing heat under her skin condensed into a single, searing star about to go supernova. She was muttering fragments of words, pleas and curses lost against the back of her hand.
The tension in her was a live wire, humming, seconds from snapping. He paused, lifting his head just enough to break contact. The sudden absence was its own kind of agony.
His eyes glowed in the semi-dark, fixed on hers. “Do you want it?” His whisper was rough, stripping away all pretense of study. “The ultimate pleasure my kind can offer?”
She was beyond words, beyond thought. There was only the need and the light threatening to tear her apart. She managed a jerky nod, a raw sound of assent torn from her throat.
“Say it.”
“Yes. God, yes.”
He didn’t smile. His expression was one of fierce concentration. Then he lowered his head again.
This was not exploration. It was consumption. His mouth and tongue and the cool, impossible precision of his movement were relentless, a focused rhythm that demolished the last of her control. Her arms flew above her head, fingers scrabbling against the headboard as her back arched off the bed, every muscle pulled taut.
The moans that ripped from her were wanton, loud, unabashed. She was glowing, truly glowing now, not just in patches but from the inside out. A golden radiance poured from her skin, lighting the rumpled silk around her, a contained star burning in the center of his bed. The heat was immense, a pressure cooker about to blow.
She was right there, trembling on the precipice, the world a white-hot point.
He withdrew.
The denial was a physical shock, a sob catching in her chest. Before she could process it, before she could even cry out, he moved. His head dipped to the soft, sensitive skin of her inner thigh. His lips brushed there, a mockery of a kiss.
Then his fangs pierced her.
It was not violence. It was an invasion of exquisite, shocking intensity. The sharp, clean pain exploded, then immediately fused with the frantic, unmet need still throbbing in her core. The two sensations crashed together, overloaded every circuit.
Her body bucked violently, writhing not away from him but into the dual points of contact—the wound and the memory of his mouth. A scream, part agony, part revelation, tore through the room.
He drank.
And she shattered. The orgasm didn’t crest; it detonated. It ripped through her in continuous, punishing waves, each one tied to the steady, pulling rhythm of his swallow. The brilliant light that had been building within her flared outward, a supernova about to blast the windows to dust.
But it didn’t explode.
As he drank, the radiance changed direction. The flowing gold light streamed from her skin, not into the air, but into the points where his fangs met her flesh. It siphoned into him, a river of raw, emotional power following the path of her blood. Each deep, sensual pull of his throat drew another climax from her, each one shorter, sharper, more devastating than the last, until she was just a shaking, gasping thing, pinned by pleasure.
Finally, he released her.
He pulled back slowly, his lips stained dark. A single drop of blood, or perhaps of that golden light, traced a path from the corner of his mouth. He watched her, his chest moving in a mimicry of breath he didn’t need. The glow that had enveloped her was gone, sucked into him, leaving her skin pale and damp in the city’s ambient light.
Liana collapsed into the silk, utterly spent. Her body hummed with a profound euphoria. She was panting, every gasp a struggle not to climax again.
Matthias looked back at her, his red eyes holding a new, satisfied depth.
“There,” he said, his voice husky. “You see? Not a single broken window.”