Chapter 8: Testing
The walk back to his room was a journey through a newly textured world. Every sensation was amplified, layered. Reese felt the weave of the ancient Persian runner beneath his bare feet not just as texture, but as a story of wool and dye and time. The stone walls breathed a cool, mineral dampness that he could almost taste. And Thorne—Thorne was a supernova of restrained energy beside him, a silhouette of deep, glacial power against the frenetic, colorful aura of the few servants they passed. Their fear was a sweet, tinny scent in the air, a flavor on the back of his tongue. He wanted to lick it off the stones.
He stumbled again, not from weakness, but from sensory overload. His body was a tuned instrument, and the world was playing it too hard, too fast.
Thorne’s grip on his arm was the only constant, an unyielding pressure that grounded him. “Your senses will integrate,” Thorne said, his voice a low rumble that Reese felt in his teeth. “The first hour is the most volatile.”
“Everything’s so… loud,” Reese muttered, blinking as they passed a sconce. The flame wasn’t just light; it was a vibrating knot of heat and consumption, singing a silent, furious song.
“You are hearing the energy behind the matter. You will learn to filter it.”
They reached the door to Reese’s room. Thorne released him, and the absence of that touch felt like stepping into a vacuum. Reese swayed, bracing a hand against the cold oak. His new, sharp nails scraped the wood with a faint, satisfying sound.
“Rest,” Thorne commanded, turning to leave. “The hunger will come soon. We will address it.”
“Wait.”
The word left Reese’s mouth before he could think. Thorne paused, half-turned, a statue of implied impatience.
Reese pushed off the door. He felt uncoordinated, but the power thrumming under his skin was a headier drug than any he’d ever siphoned. He needed to know its shape. Its taste. And there was only one person here who wouldn’t break, who wouldn’t give him the cheap, fear-filled devotion he was used to.
“You said ‘test drive’,” Reese said, his voice still that strange, resonant hybrid. He took a step closer. The air between them changed, charged with a new kind of potential. “I don’t know how this works. What I can do.”
“You will learn through necessity.”
“Or,” Reese said, closing the distance until he was well inside Thorne’s personal space, “I could learn with guidance.” He raised his hand, the one with the glass-like nails. He didn’t touch Thorne’s face, not yet. He let it hover near the pulse point at his jaw. “You’re the only static point in this whole… sensory hurricane. The only thing that doesn’t bleed noise.”
Thorne’s eyes were glacial chips. “Your point?”
“Be my control subject.”
Reese let his fingertips brush the skin of Thorne’s neck. It was a whisper of contact. But with it, he focused. Not on siphoning, but on pushing. The energy inside him—the dense, dark well that had replaced his reservoir—shivered.
He directed a thread of it, not into violence or gravity, but into a simple, primal signal. A bolt of pure, undiluted pleasure.
It was a soft, warm pulse, like the first swallow of good whiskey, radiating from the point of contact.
Thorne didn’t jerk away. He went profoundly, utterly still. His breath hitched, the only sign the pulse had landed. His grey eyes locked onto Reese’s periwinkle ones, and for the first time, Reese saw something beyond calculation or cold approval. He saw a flash of raw, undefended surprise.
Then it was gone, shuttered behind a wall of icy control. But he hadn’t moved.
Encouraged, Reese let his touch trail up, tracing the sharp line of Thorne’s jaw. Another soft pulse, this one deeper, warmer, a flush of contentment that spread from the bones outward. Thorne’s eyelids lowered a fraction.
“See?” Reese whispered, his own heart pounding with a wild, hungry rhythm. “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s just… instinct.”
He moved his hand, flattening his palm against Thorne’s chest, over the immaculate fabric of his shirt. He could feel the powerful, slow beat of his heart. Reese pushed a stronger, more complex wave this time—not just pleasure, but a sense of profound safety, of anchored power, the deep satisfaction of a predator surveying its domain.
A low, rough sound escaped Thorne’s throat. His own hand came up, fingers wrapping around Reese’s wrist. But he didn’t pull it away. His grip was a steel band, containing, not refusing.
“This is a parlor trick,” Thorne said, but his voice had lost its edge. It was darker, thicker.
“Is it?” Reese breathed. He leaned in, his lips close to Thorne’s ear. “Feels like more than that.” He let his other hand come up, skimming the side of Thorne’s neck, his thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. This time, the energy he sent was sharper, a spike of want so acute it bordered on pain, layered with the teasing promise of satiation.
Thorne moved.
It was a blur of motion. Reese found himself spun, his back meeting the cold oak of his door with a soft thud. Thorne’s body pressed against his, pinning him, a wall of relentless strength. The hand that wasn’t gripping his wrist was braced beside his head. Thorne’s face was inches from his, his breath a cool contrast to the heat now radiating from Reese’s own skin.
The cold control in Thorne’s eyes was gone, replaced by a predatory heat that matched the new fire in Reese’s veins. He’d gotten his reaction. A fierce, triumphant thrill shot through him.
“You are playing with a fundamental force you do not understand,” Thorne growled, his voice vibrating through Reese’s chest. “This ‘pleasure’ is not a gift. It is a lubricant. A precursor. It softens the will, makes the target… receptive. For the feeding.”
Reese held his gaze, the periwinkle light in his own eyes unwavering. He was breathing fast, not from fear, but from a surging, devouring excitement. “I know,” he said, a reckless smile twisting his lips. “I can feel the hook behind it. The bite after the kiss.” He tilted his head, exposing the line of his throat in a blatant, challenging gesture. “So? Teach me how to use it. Or are you scared I’ll turn it on you?”
For a long, suspended moment, they remained locked in the dim hallway. The air crackled. Thorne’s gaze dropped to Reese’s mouth, then back to his eyes. The hunger in that look wasn’t for energy. It was something more complex, more possessive.
Finally, Thorne pushed back, just enough to create a sliver of space between them. His composure had returned, but it was a thinner veneer now, stretched over a simmering intensity.
“The test drive,” he said, his tone regaining its businesslike cadence, though it remained dangerously soft, “requires a proper course. And fuel.”
He released Reese’s wrist. “Dress. We’re going into the city.”
Reese pushed off the door, his body humming with victorious energy. “What’s the objective?”
Thorne was already straightening his cuffs, the perfect aristocrat reassembling himself. But his eyes, when they met Reese’s, held a dark promise. “Objective one: find a suitable target. Objective two: for you to learn the difference between offering a taste… and taking a full meal.” He turned to walk away, then glanced back over his shoulder. “And Reese? Wear something dark. You’re about to get messy.”
He disappeared down the shadowed corridor, leaving Reese alone by his door. The echoes of the pleasurable pulses still shimmered in his nerves, a phantom warmth where his hands had touched. But underneath it, a new, sharper hunger was waking up—a deep, pulling void where his reservoir used to be. It wasn’t asking anymore. It was demanding.
Reese looked at his hands, flexing his fingers. The glassy claws caught the dim light.
He smiled, a true, unfettered smile for the first time since the black pool. Then he went inside to get dressed.
Then he went inside to get dressed. The clothes felt alien against his new skin, a muffling layer over the hypersensitive network of nerves and hungry power beneath. He chose black: a silk shirt that felt like cool water, tailored trousers that moved with him. Checking his reflection in the dim glass of a window, he barely recognized the creature staring back. The periwinkle eyes glowed with an inner luminescence, his features sharper, pupils dilated wide in the low light. He looked like a specifically tailored poison.
Thorne was waiting by the car, a darker shadow against the night. He gave Reese a slow, assessing look that scraped over his skin. “Better,” was all he said before sliding into the back seat. Reese followed, the interior of the Rolls feeling like a velvet-lined trap. The city blurred past, a stream of neon and shadow. He felt every pothole, every shift in the car’s momentum, as a direct vibration in his bones.
“Where are we going?” Reese asked, his voice sounding too clear in the quiet.
“A place called The Grotto,” Thorne said, staring out the window. “It caters to specific appetites. Your new… aura will be meaningless there. Or a beacon. We shall see.”
They stopped in a district where the air tasted of spilled beer, perfume, and ozone. The entrance to The Grotto was an unmarked metal door tucked between a shuttered pharmacy and a smokestack tattoo parlor. A creature with thick horns filed to nubs and skin like polished slate looked them over, his gaze lingering on Reese with a flicker of avarice. Thorne murmured a word, a subtle pressure of old power, and the door swung inward on silent hinges.
Sound and scent and heat hit Reese like a physical wave. The bass was a pulse inside his ribs. The air was thick with sweat, pheromones, and the metallic tang of supernatural energy. Bodies moved in the strobe-lit dark, a seething mass of human and other. He could see the auras here, now. Flickering halos of desire, desperation, and raw need in hues of frantic yellow, hungry red, and sickly, possessive green. The noise wasn’t just sound; it was a buffet.
“Don’t siphon broadly,” Thorne’s voice was low in his ear, close enough to feel the cool breath. “It’s vulgar. Like gulping down the entire buffet table. Pick a single dish. Savor it.”
Reese nodded, his own hunger cinching tight in his gut. He stepped into the throng, Thorne melting into the shadows near a pillar to observe. The music absorbed him. He moved, not with his old human rhythm, but with the lean, predatory grace the transformation had etched into him. He became a part of the current.
Eyes tracked him. A woman with irises like fractured crystal licked her lips as he passed. A man whose skin shimmered with faint scales reached out, fingertips brushing Reese’s sleeve. Each touch, each hungry glance, was a pull on the void inside him. He allowed tiny sips, the barest taste. A shiver of want from here, a spike of fantasy from there. It was refreshing, like sips of cold water, but it wasn’t a meal. It wasn’t what he needed.
Then he saw him. A man leaning against the bar, human by the flatness of his aura, but rich with a particular flavor. His desire wasn’t simple lust; it was laced with a deep, frantic loneliness, a desperation to be consumed by something greater than himself. Perfect.
Reese approached, letting his new aura—that hollow, light-pulling quality—flare just slightly. The man’s eyes, already glassy with drink, snapped to him. He was handsome in a forgettable way, well-dressed, sweating through his shirt.
“You look like you’re waiting for someone,” Reese said, his voice cutting through the music without effort.
“I… I am?” the man stammered, captivated.
“You are now.” Reese smiled, letting a thread of warm, welcoming pleasure bleed into his words. The man visibly swayed. “It’s too loud here. Come with me.”
He led him by the hand, the man following like a sleepwalker, through a curtain of hanging chains into a narrower hall lined with closed doors. Reese chose one at random, pushing it open to reveal a small, dim room with just a low leather bench. He pulled the man in, pushed the door shut with his foot.
“What’s your name?” the man breathed, already reaching for him.
Reese ignored the question. He framed the man’s face with his hands, his glass-like nails scraping gently over his jaw. He let the pleasure pulse build, warmer, deeper than what he’d used on Thorne. The man moaned, his knees buckling. Reese held him up, leaned in, and pressed his lips to the man’s.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was an opening of a valve.
Reese inhaled. The man’s life force—his vitality, his emotional energy, the very spark of his frantic consciousness—rushed out of him in a torrent. It was a richer, darker, more complex vintage than the sips of fear and devotion from his old life. It flooded the void inside Reese, a roaring, euphoric tide. The man shuddered violently in his arms, a wet, guttural sound catching in his throat. His hands, which had been clutching at Reese’s back, went limp.
Reese drank until the well ran dry. Until the vibrant, desperate aura he’d seen at the bar guttered and went out, leaving only the dim flicker of autonomous biological function. He broke the kiss, letting the man slump, unconscious, to the floor. He wouldn’t die. He’d wake in a day or two, empty, listless, a shell of his former self. Reese stared down at him, licking his lips. Power sang in his veins, electric and absolute. He felt invincible.
He stepped back into the chaos of the club, and it was a different world. The noise was a symphony. Every gaze was an offering. He moved onto the dance floor, into the crush of bodies. He didn’t need to seek contact now; they came to him. Hands slid over his arms, his chest, his back. A woman with needle-sharp teeth bit playfully at his neck. A man with hot, rough hands gripped his hips.
Each touch was a conduit. Reese opened himself, just a little. And he fed. He took the sharp desire from the woman, the aggressive lust from the man, the envious want from a figure watching from the shadows. It was a diffuse feast, a hundred tiny currents filling an ocean inside him. He threw his head back, lost in the crescendo of sensation, his periwinkle eyes blazing in the strobing dark.
He was a god.
A sudden, clean, psychic thrum cut through the cacophony. It wasn't sound. It was a vibration of pure, orderly power that sliced through the messy buffet of emotions, a single, clear note.
Thorne.
Reese’s head snapped toward the pillar. Thorne stood there, untouched by the press of bodies, his expression ice-cold. The command in his gaze was absolute.
The feeding high was too potent to ignore, but that thrum was a tether. Reese disengaged, sliding through the crowd with new, preternatural ease. People reached for him as he passed, whining, clutching.
Then they were flying backward as if shoved by an invisible wall. Thorne didn’t even lift a hand. He just walked forward, a telekinetic ripple clearing a path, his eyes locked on Reese. He reached him, his fingers closing around Reese’s upper arm with a grip that promised bruises.
“We’re leaving.”
He didn’t ask. He turned and pulled. Reese, stumbling slightly on the tide of his own power, followed. The crowd surged forward again behind them, a wave of grasping hands and pouted lips, only to be repelled again by that silent, shoving force. Thorne didn't look back. He marched them out through the metal door and into the cool, stale air of the alley, never once releasing his vise-like hold.
The car waited, a silent beast. Throne shoved Reese into the back seat and followed, slamming the door. The sound was terrifyingly final.
“Drive. Now.” Thorne’s voice was a whiplash to the driver. The partition slid up, sealing them in silence and tinted glass.
Reese gasped, thrumming, almost vibrating with stolen energy. The club’s haze was still in him, a thick, intoxicating fog of desire and desperation. It leaked from his pores. It filled the sealed back of the Rolls, a heavy, aphrodisiac mist that smelled of musk, sweat, and ozone.
Thorne stared straight ahead, jaw rigid. “Reign it in.”
“I can’t,” Reese laughed, the sound unhinged and musical. “It’s everywhere. It’s me now.” He moved, fluid as the mist, to the small crystal decanter set in the console. His hands glowed faintly with that periwinkle light. He poured two fingers of Thorne’s obscenely expensive whisky, the golden liquid catching the city lights.
“Here,” he said, pressing the cool glass into Thorne’s hand. Thorne didn’t drink. He just held it, his knuckles white.
Reese knelt on the floor of the moving car. He placed his hands on Thorne’s thighs, feeling the dense muscle tense under the fine wool. “You’re so tight,” he murmured, looking up through his lashes. He pushed a wave of soothing pleasure, the same kind he’d used in the hallway, but stronger now, infused with the club’ raw grain.
Thorne’s breath hissed between his teeth. His free hand shot down, tangling in Reese’s hair, not to pull him away, but to hold him in place. A warning and an anchor.
Ignoring it, Reese let his hands slide up, over Thorne’s belt, seeking the knots of tension in his abdomen. He pressed his thumbs in, pushing another wave, this one hotter, focusing the diffuse mist in the car into a direct, targeted flow. He poured the sensation of release into the muscle, the promise of surrendered control.
“Stop,” Thorne growled, but it was ragged.
“You first,” Reese whispered. He leaned forward, placing an open-mouthed kiss against the fabric covering Thorne’s cock. He could feel the hardening length beneath. He pushed another, sharper bolt of pure, undiluted carnal need through the contact, laced with the memory of a hundred desperate touches from the club.
Thorne shuddered. A low, animal sound rumbled in his chest. The hand in Reese’s hair tightened almost to the point of pain.
Reese nuzzled him, breathing in the scent of his own aphrodisiac haze mixing with Thorne’s cold, clean power. He was high on it, on the danger, on the impossibility of what he was doing—trying to break a mountain with manufactured feeling. He sent another pulse, a cascading series of them, each one peaking higher than the last, an unrelenting, torturous edging of pure neural pleasure with no outlet.
“I want to see you come apart,” Reese breathed against him, his words filthy, daubed with the club’s darkness. “I want you to fuck my throat right here and lose that fucking iron control all over my face.”
Thorne moved. It was a convulsive, violent shift of power. The whisky glass shattered in his grip, golden liquid and crystal shards falling to the floor. In one brutal motion, he yanked Reese up by the hair and slammed him down across the wide leather seat, body looming over him, pinning him.
The cold in his eyes was gone, utterly incinerated. What remained was a ravenous, ancient fire.
“You think this is pleasure?” Thorne’s voice was a hideous, beautiful scrape of gravel. “This is noise. You feed on the desperation of cattle and think you can intoxicate me with it?”
He ground his hips down, letting Reese feel the full, hard weight of his erection through their clothes. “You want to break me with this borrowed, pathetic heat?” He captured Reese’s jaw, forcing his head back. “Then do it properly. Stop playing at seduction. Take what you want. Bite.”
His gaze dropped to Reese’s mouth, then back to his glowing eyes. The challenge was absolute, a line thrown over a cliff’s edge.
“Or is your new hunger only for the weak?”