Chapter 2: The Narcissist Awakens
The slam of the suite’s main door echoed through the empty rooms, finally leaving him in silence. Chloe’s perfume still hung in the air, a cloying mix of coconut and vanilla that now smelled like accusation. Farver stood in the center of Jordan’s lavish bedroom, staring at the rumpled, stained sheets. His skin—Jordan’s skin—crawled.
He fled to the bathroom, locking the door behind him.
The room was a monument to bro-culture excess. Vile. A giant, fog-smudged mirror dominated one wall. He avoided it at first, turning on the showerhead in the large, tiled stall. The water pounded down, steaming hot. He stepped under the spray, hoping to scald the feeling of her off him. The water sluiced over broad shoulders, down the carved ridges of a stomach he’d never worked for. He soaped himself mechanically, his hands moving over the alien topography. The sheer power in the limbs was intoxicating and repulsive in equal measure.
When he finally shut off the water and wiped a clearing in the fogged glass, he froze.
Jordan’s reflection stared back, water beading on tanned skin. Droplets traced the lines of defined pectorals, trickled down the grooved abs, disappeared into the coarse blond trail below the navel. The body was, objectively, a masterpiece. A sculpture of privilege and genetics and thousands of hours in the weight room.
A hysterical, breathless sound escaped him. It was almost a laugh.
“Well,” his low voice murmured to the empty, humid room. “At least the real estate is prime.”
He raised a hand, watching the reflection mimic him. He turned it, flexed. The bicep swelled, a hard apple of muscle popping up, a vein snaking along its curve. A shiver ran through him. It wasn’t all disgust. There was a flicker of awed, narcissistic pleasure. This was what everyone wanted. This was the idol.
He arched his back, rolling his shoulders. The lat muscles in the mirror flared wide, making his waist look even narrower. He dropped into a slight crouch, watching the quadriceps tense and knot. The power was there, humming under the surface, waiting to be used. It was terrifying. It was incredible.
His gaze drifted lower.
He was half-hard again, just from the scrutiny, from the tactile feedback of his own hands on the new body. The damn thing had a mind of its own, responding to the visual and physical stimuli with a humiliating, straightforward hunger.
“Look at you,” he whispered. But the tone shifted halfway through. The words dropped an octave, gained a viscous, arrogant texture. It wasn’t Farver’s voice in his head anymore. “Look at this fuckin’ weapon.”
His hand, moving almost of its own volition, wrapped around his cock. It was thick and heavy in his palm, already filling out rapidly under the touch. He gave a slow, experimental stroke. A jolt of pure, undiluted sensation shot straight to his base of his spine. A groan rumbled in the new, broad chest.
“Yeah,” the voice—Jordan’s voice—said aloud, confident and filthy. “That’s it. You know what this is for.” He pumped his fist, his eyes locked on the mirror, watching the play of muscle in his arm, watching his own hand work the rigid length. “For splitting pretty little things in half. For making them scream.”
Farver’s mind recoiled, but his body was alight, a puppet dancing to a tune it already knew by heart. The pleasure was a blunt-force trauma, overwhelming his neural pathways. Pre-cum beaded at the tip, and he smeared it down the shaft with his thumb, the slide becoming slick and obscene. The rhythm of his hand intensified, a tight, punishing grip. His other hand came up and palmed his own pec, squeezing the hard muscle, pinching the nipple roughly. The dual sensations—the dominant touch on his chest, the frantic friction on his cock—were wiring him directly to a climax.
His breathing turned ragged, fogging the mirror again. “Gonna fuckin’… ruin someone with this,” he panted, his hips beginning to jerk into his own fist. The fantasy wasn’t his. It was a crude, violent image of bending Chloe—or someone, anyone—over the sink right here, taking her without a second thought. The arrogance of it, the sheer physical entitlement, fueled the fire.
“Come on, you bastard,” he snarled at his reflection, at the blond god whose instincts were fucking him from the inside out. “Do it.”
The orgasm hit him like a truck. It wasn’t the shuddering release he’d known in his old body. It was a conquest. A thick, ropeshot surrender that streaked across the cleaned section of mirror and dripped down the glass. His body locked, every muscle rigid, a growl tearing from his throat that was pure, unadulterated Jordan.
Then, collapse.
He slumped against the sink, head bowed, sweat and water and semen cooling on his skin. The ghastly post-coital clarity was worse this time. Before, with Chloe, he could blame the takeover. This was just him. Alone. He had just gotten off on the image of his own stolen body, using Jordan’s own filthy voice.
The horror was a cold, metallic taste in his mouth. He wasn’t just trapped in Jordan. Jordan was trapped in him, a ghost in the musculature, a set of base instincts waiting to hijack his nervous system. He was being rewritten from the inside out, his desires overwritten by a cruder, simpler programming.
He rinsed off, avoiding the mess on the mirror. He wrapped a towel around his waist and stumbled back into the bedroom, a stranger in a stranger’s palace.