Chapter 18: First Hunt
The Pulse Room hadn’t changed. The same sticky floors, the same cheap neon bleeding into the sweat-hazed air. But Taichi saw it differently now. The bass wasn’t just sound; it was a sluggish, mortal heartbeat. The writhing silhouettes weren’t dancers; they were hungry shadows waiting for a light to consume.
He stood just inside the doorway, letting the scene absorb him. The leather harness creaked softly with his breath, a sound he doubted anyone else could hear over the music, yet it felt deafening to him. The panel over his cunt was a constant, warm pressure. The strap between his ass cheeks a persistent promise. He could feel the dried, cold slickness from Van’s use of him still on his inner thighs, a secret beneath the tight black jeans he’d pulled on over the harness.
He didn’t have to seek anyone out. He simply exhaled, letting the hollow, wanting place inside him breathe out into the room.
He saw the man within minutes. Late-forties, a good suit worn with the weary slump of a long day. A wedding band shone dully under the club lights. He was nursing something clear and expensive at the bar, his eyes glazed, not watching the dance floor but staring through it. A man who hadn’t come here to find anything, but to forget everything.
Then his gaze snagged on Taichi.
It was like watching a puppet string pull taut. The man’s eyes, previously dull, sharpened. He didn’t smile. He just stared, a slow flush creeping up his neck. He set his glass down with a precise click and began to move through the crowd, his path unswerving.
Taichi felt a curl of cold satisfaction in his gut. Like a moth to a flame, Van’s voice whispered in his memory. But Taichi wasn’t just the flame. He was the furnace.
The man stopped before him. The smell of him—starch, anxiety, a fading cologne—was weak. Mortal.
“You’re… standing alone,” the man said. His voice was deeper than Taichi expected, trying for confidence and landing on gruff.
“I am,” Taichi said, letting his own voice stay soft, a thread of sound in the thrumming bass.
“That’s a waste.” The man’s eyes drank him in, lingering on the harness visible beneath Taichi’s thin, open shirt, on the sharp line of the collar. “I’m Marcus.”
Taichi just tilted his head. He offered no name. The power shift was immediate, subtle. Marcus’s jaw tightened, but his eyes grew hotter, more desperate.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Marcus tried.
“I don’t want a drink.” Taichi let his gaze drop, then drag slowly back up to meet Marcus’s. He saw the man shiver.
“What do you want?”
Taichi took a half-step closer. He let the scent of ozone and his own strange, cooled sweat carry. “I want to feel less… empty,” he whispered, which was the truest thing he’d said all night.
Marcus’s breath hitched. He mistook the confession for vulnerability. He saw the prey, not the trap. “I can help with that,” he murmured, his hand rising to hover near Taichi’s elbow, not quite touching. “My car is just outside. It’s quiet.”
Taichi nodded, a slow, shallow dip of his chin.
The backseat of the luxury sedan was a tomb of leather and silence. The city lights streaked across the tinted windows. Marcus fumbled with the climate controls, then turned, his demeanor shifting from the hesitant hunter to the executive closing a deal. The hunger was winning.
“You’re a beautiful young man,” Marcus stated, his hand finally settling on Taichi’s knee, squeezing. “Such a lonely look about you.”
Taichi leaned into the touch, leaning back against the seat. He parted his legs just an inch. An invitation. “It’s cold in here,” he murmured.
Marcus needed no more. He was on him, his mouth clumsy and dry, all pretence gone. He kissed like he was conquering something, his tongue forcing its way past Taichi’s lips. His hands scrabbled at the harness, fingers unfamiliar with the straps. He moaned against Taichi’s mouth when he finally found the fastening of the jeans, yanking them down Taichi’s hips.
“Fuck, look at you,” Marcus breathed, staring at the leather straps cinching Taichi’s waist, framing his cock, the dark panel between his legs. “You’re a fucking dream.”
He didn’t bother with undressing. He wrestled his own slacks and briefs down to his thighs, his cock springing out, thick and already leaking. He was rough, his hands gripping Taichi’s thighs, spreading them.
“That ass… I need that ass,” Marcus grunted, spitting onto his fingers and then pushing them against Taichi’s hole. The leather strap had done its work; the muscle yielded with obscene ease to the blunt press of Marcus’s fingers.
“It’s ready,” Taichi whispered, looking past Marcus’s shoulder at the dark ceiling of the car.
With a guttural sound, Marcus lined himself up and pushed inside. There was no tenderness, no finesse. It was a claiming, a release of pent-up frustration. He buried himself to the hilt with one savage thrust, his body shuddering.
“Christ, you’re tight,” he groaned, beginning to piston into him, the car rocking slightly with the rhythm. “So fucking tight and hot. Take it. Yeah, fucking take it.”
Taichi closed his eyes. He felt the stretch, the burn, the mechanical friction. It was nothing like Van. This was raw biology, a man using a hole. But he leaned into it. He tilted his hips, drawing Marcus deeper, making the man cry out.
“Yes, god, yes,” Marcus panted, his pace becoming frantic, sloppy. His hands dug into Taichi’s hips, his thumbs pressing bruises into the bone. “You fucking love this, don’t you? You love getting used by a real man.”
Taichi opened his eyes then. He looked at Marcus’s face, red and straining, eyes squeezed shut in pleasure. He felt the man’s climax building, a coiling tension in the thrusts.
This was the moment.
Taichi let his own mind go quiet. He focused on the hollow place inside him, the furnace Van had stoked. He imagined it not as emptiness, but as a mouth. As Marcus fucked into him, Taichi opened that mouth.
He felt it the instant the connection snapped into place. It wasn’t physical. It was a siphon. As Marcus’s thrusts grew erratic, as he started to babble—“Fuck, I’m gonna come, gonna fill you up, you perfect slut—” Taichi began to drink.
It was a warmth, but not a good one. It was the sour heat of a cheap office microwave, of quiet desperation, of boring affairs and unspoken regrets. It was the brittle energy of a man who felt powerless everywhere but here, in this backseat, pounding into a beautiful stranger. Taichi drew it in. He felt Marcus’s pleasure peak, but beneath it, he felt something else being pulled, something essential and vital.
Marcus came with a choked, raw shout, surging deep inside Taichi, his body seizing up.
But he didn’t collapse. He froze.
His hips stuttered to a stop. He stayed buried, his eyes flying open. They were wide, confused, suddenly terrified. The pleasure was gone, replaced by a yawning, cold void.
“What… what was…” he slurred, trying to pull back.
Taichi clenched around him, milking him, holding him in place as the siphon finished its work. He saw the light in Marcus’s eyes dim, not into satisfaction, but into a hopeless, addicted hunger. The hunger for this feeling, the one that was already fading, leaving only ash behind.
Marcus pulled out, slumping back onto the seat, his cock already going soft. He stared at Taichi, his breath ragged. He looked ruined. “I… I need…” he started, but didn’t finish. He didn’t know what he needed. He only knew he needed something from this hollow-eyed boy, and he could never have it again.
“You should go home to your wife,” Taichi said softly, pulling his jeans up, the leather straps cold against his oversensitive skin.
Marcus fumbled with his clothing, his hands shaking. He couldn’t meet Taichi’s gaze. He was a shell, a man who had just tasted a drug that didn’t exist and now faced a lifetime of withdrawal.
When the car door closed and the sedan pulled away, Taichi was left standing on the curb. He felt… full. But not sated. It was a corrosive, greasy fullness. He could feel Marcus’s stolen desperation swirling inside him, a faint, sickly energy.
A deeper shadow detached itself from the alley wall beside him. Van’s form coalesced, solid and immense in the sodium light. He didn’t speak. He simply placed a clawed hand on Taichi’s stomach, over the harness.
A low hum vibrated from Van’s touch into Taichi’s core. The greasy feeling of Marcus’s life-force condensed, purified, and then vanished, sucked into Van like smoke into a vent.
Taichi felt clean. Empty again. Ready.
Van leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of Taichi’s ear. “One soul,” he whispered, the words a vibration in Taichi’s bones. “A petty, bitter little thing. But a start.” He drew back, his piercing eyes scanning Taichi’s face. “Did you enjoy ruining him?”
Taichi thought of the light dying in Marcus’s eyes. He thought of the cold, efficient pull of the siphon inside him. It wasn’t about enjoyment. It was about function. It was about power.
“Yes,” Taichi said, because it was what Van wanted to hear, and because, in a way he couldn’t fully name, it was also true.
Van’s smile was a sliver of night. “Good. Now,” he said, turning Taichi gently by the shoulders to face the pulsating entrance of The Pulse Room once more. The bass thumped like a sick heart. “Let’s see how many you can break before last call.”
He gave Taichi a slight push forward.
Taichi adjusted his collar, felt the dried sweat on his skin, and walked back into the thrumming dark. His ass ached pleasantly. His cunt was wet behind the leather. And his eyes held a new, settled coldness as they scanned the crowd for the next flicker of desperate, hungry life.
He didn’t have to wait long. A younger man, a gym-toned clarifier with sharp, anxious eyes, was already staring from across the bar, his drink forgotten. Taichi met his gaze and let a slow, meaningless smile touch his lips.
The clarifier stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor.
The furnace was open for business.