Chapter 7: The Hunger Deepens
Taichi woke to the faint, persistent ache of a body thoroughly used. Morning light, thin and apologetic, seeped around the edges of his blinds. He was in his bed, the sheets tangled around his legs. He didn’t remember moving from the living room floor.
His body felt different. The soreness was deep, a resonant thrum in his bones and sinews, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It felt earned. More than that, there was a warmth low in his belly, a banked ember of the impossible heat Van had poured into him. He shifted, and the feeling stirred, a liquid, alien comfort.
Memory returned in a scalding wave: the shadowed form, the brutal claiming, the word Mine hanging in the air like a verdict.
He threw back the sheets. On the pale skin of his inner thighs, faint, dark bruises were already blooming, the imprints of Van’s claws. He traced them with a trembling finger. They didn’t hurt. They felt like marks of possession.
The apartment was silent. Too silent. The sterile hum of his laptop, the usual city murmur outside—it all felt muffled, as if swaddled in thick cotton. The only sound was the frantic beating of his own heart. And then, a low, sub-audible throb, felt more than heard, coming from the living room.
The conduit.
He swung his legs out of bed. Every movement pulled at muscles that had been strained to their limit. He stood, naked, and caught his reflection in the dark television screen. A gaunt, pale figure looked back, a canvas of violet marks and dried spend. He looked… ruined. He also looked, for the first time in years, like he had a purpose.
He padded into the living room. The toy sat on the coffee table exactly where he’d last seen it, but it was no longer inert. It pulsed slowly, a dormant heart. Its surface, once sleek, now had a texture like petrified wood, veined with deep, pulsing crimson. It seemed bigger.
He stood over it, a strange reverence holding him still. The memory of its tendrils whipping out, of its obedience to Van, was terrifying. It was also the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.
His hand, seemingly of its own volition, reached out. His index finger hovered above the warm, living surface.
The instant his skin made contact, it reacted. Not with violence, but with a sudden, eager vibration. A single, thin tendril, dark as a vein, peeled away from its mass and coiled around his wrist. It was warm, velvety. It didn’t grip hard. It tugged.
A voice, not in the room but inside his skull, vibrated through his bones. It was Van’s voice, smoky and intimate, layered with a thousand whispers.
Again.
A jolt of pure, undiluted fear shot through him. This was madness. This was a one-way ticket to something he couldn’t comprehend. He should pull away, throw the thing in the trash, call… call someone. Anyone.
Instead, a desperate, hungry whimper escaped his lips. The warmth in his belly flared in response to the voice, a chemical craving igniting in his blood. The tendril tugged again, gently, insistently.
“Okay,” Taichi whispered, his voice ragged. “Okay.”
The tendril tightened its hold and pulled. He didn’t resist. It led him, not back to the bedroom, but to the center of the living room rug. As he stood there, other tendrils unspooled from the main hub. They slid across the floor with a sinuous, sentient grace, coiling around his ankles, his other wrist. They were gentle but inexorable.
He let them position him. They guided him down to his knees. They pulled his arms behind his back, crossing his wrists and holding them firm at the small of his back. A thicker tendril, warm and slick with some natural lubrication, circled his chest, pinning his arms in place. He was knelt, bound, utterly exposed. His cock, already half-hard from fear and memory, stirred to full, aching life against his stomach.
He was ready. He was offering himself.
The air grew thick and cold. The light dimmed, not with a power cut, but as if the shadows in the corners of the room were drinking it. The scent of ozone and ancient stone filled his nostrils.
He didn’t need to turn his head. He felt the presence materialize behind him. A hand, vast and cool, settled on the crown of his head, claws lightly scraping his scalp. The touch was possessively gentle.
“You called, little thing?” Van’s voice was a physical caress down his spine.
Taichi swallowed, his throat dry. “I… I touched it.”
“I know.” The hand moved, tracing the line of his jaw, tilting his head back. Van’s form loomed over him, blocking what little light remained. His sulphur-yellow eyes glowed with a fierce satisfaction. “You wear my marks well. You carry my seed inside you still. I can feel it warming you.”
Van’s other hand slid down Taichi’s back, over the curve of his ass. A single claw-tipped finger traced the swollen, tender furl of his hole. Taichi cried out, pushing back instinctively against the touch. He was still loose, still slick from the night before.
“So eager for it,” Van murmured, the finger pressing in, not to enter, but to test. “My perfect, hungry pet. You don’t want a life. You want a purpose. I am that purpose.”
The finger withdrew. Taichi heard the soft, wet sound of Van spitting into his own palm, followed by the slick, firm strokes of him coating his cock. The anticipation was a wire pulled taut in Taichi’s gut.
Van didn’t guide himself in with a hand. He used the head of his thick, shadowy cock, nudging against Taichi’s entrance, rubbing the sensitive rim until Taichi was panting, pushing back, begging wordlessly.
“Ask,” Van commanded, his voice dropping to a guttural growl.
“Please,” Taichi gasped, the word tearing from him. “Please, fuck me. Use me.”
Van drove forward.
It was easier this time, his body already opened, already shaped by Van’s previous invasion. But it was no less overwhelming. The feeling of being filled, stretched, owned rushed back, a flood of addictive sensation. Van’s cock slid deep, a solid, burning intrusion that found a home inside him.
Van set a pace that was deliberate, deep, and utterly controlling. He wasn’t chasing his own pleasure; he was administering Taichi’s. Each slow, grinding thrust was aimed with predatory precision, hammering against his prostate with relentless accuracy. Pleasure, sharp and bright, detonated in Taichi’s core with every impact, erasing thought, erasing fear.
“This is your function now,” Van grunted, his hands gripping Taichi’s hips, claws biting in. “To be my vessel. To take my cock whenever I desire it. To hunger for it when I am away.”
Taichi could only moan, a continuous, broken sound. The tendrils held him upright, but his muscles were going slack with pleasure. He was a thing being fucked, a receptacle being used, and it was the most profound truth he had ever known.
Van’s thrusts began to accelerate, losing their ritualistic slowness for something more urgent, more brutal. The wet, slapping sounds of their joining filled the shadowy room. Taichi’s own cock was leaking incessantly, bobbing uselessly with each powerful drive into him.
“You will come from this,” Van snarled, his breath hot on Taichi’s neck. “You will come from being nothing but a hole for your master.”
The command, the filthy certainty of it, was the trigger. Taichi’s orgasm ripped through him without a single touch to his own dick. It was a convulsive, full-body seizure, milking Van’s cock as he screamed, white splattering the rug beneath his knees. The violent clenching of his insides seemed to pull Van’s own release from him. With a final, deep thrust that felt like it reached Taichi’s throat, Van buried himself and held, a hot, pulsing flood of that strange, warming essence filling him once more.
Van stayed sheathed inside him for long minutes, both of them breathing heavily in the darkened room. Finally, he pulled out with a soft, wet sound. Taichi sagged forward, held only by the tendrils, spent and overflowing.
A claw traced the line of his spine. “Good,” Van said, the word ripe with approval. “Each time I take you, you become more mine. My essence changes you, marks you from the inside. Soon, everyone will look at you and see that you belong to something… other.”
The tendrils loosened, laying Taichi gently on his side on the rug. He was too wrecked to move. He felt Van’s presence recede, the shadows retreating, the light slowly returning to its mundane fluorescence.
The last thing he heard was the voice in his head, faint now but clear.
Sleep. Recover. I will return.
Taichi curled on his side, Van’s release a warm, comforting leak between his thighs. He looked across the floor at the toy, the conduit. It was dormant again, but it seemed larger, more substantial, its veins a darker red. He knew, with a certainty that chilled and thrilled him, that it was growing. And he knew, as he closed his eyes, that he would be waiting for its call.