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  “We can use phones, although some of us find them a nuisance,” the vampire answers. He sounds irritated, as well as looking it, though none of that emotion seems to be directed at Adrian personally.

  Maybe he had a rough day at the office. Or since he’s a vampire, Adrian guesses that ‘night at the mausoleum’ is closer. Not that he’s actually known any vampires who slept in coffins or graves or anything. He just thinks it’s a ripe source for good vampire jokes.

  His automatic response to the vampire’s bad mood is to want to try to make him happier, because if he’s in a better mood then Adrian will be safer, right? The most important thing for Adrian to do right now is to give the vampire incentive to keep him alive.

  Being chatty doesn’t seem to do anything, which Adrian is pretty used to — most people just tune him out sooner or later, because he tends to run off at the mouth whenever two seconds of silence happen in succession. So sue him, he hates the quiet. When things get too quiet, he winds up stuck alone with his thoughts, and that’s just a recipe for all kinds of bad things.

  Okay, not chatty, then. Time to try slutty instead. After all, what other reason would a vampire have to force a human to come home with him if not for a midnight snack, right?

  It’s kind of awkward, plucking the vampire’s phone out of his hands and tossing it on the table and then straddling his lap, but Adrian thinks he probably does a passably good job at being seductive about it.

  The vampire regards him with an unreadable expression. Their faces are very close to one another.

  “Look,” Adrian says, trying very hard not to let his conversational skills wander off on a tangent like usual. “You kept me shut up for hours without even a deck of cards to fuck around with, so I’m getting pretty sick of wasting time. If you want me warm and breathing, which is seems like you do, then we both know what the point of me being here is, right?”

  Adrian slides one hand up the vampire’s chest, hoping he won’t notice the nervous tremble in the palm. The fabric of his shirt is a fine, smooth knit, thick enough that Adrian’s not precisely certain where to rub in order to get a nipple.

  He tries to take stock of the various pockets in the vampire’s outfit, places where the elevator fob might be found. Maybe if he just—

  The vampire grabs his wrists, not painfully but implacably, holding him still. He stares at Adrian for a long beat. Adrian holds his breath.

  “If that’s what you say you want, fine.”

  He turns, pushing Adrian to the floor with absolute ease, as if Adrian weighed nothing. The polished wood underneath his back is smooth and warm, warm enough that Adrian wonders with a wild corner of his mind if it has one of those underfoot heating systems installed below it.

  The vampire holds Adrian’s wrists down on either side of him, up near his head, and the weight of his tall, well-muscled body atop Adrian’s smaller, thinner form would probably be enough to pin him down even without preternatural strength in the mix.

  The vampire buries his face against the place just below Adrian’s jaw, the soft spot at the top of his throat, but doesn’t bite right away — the scrape of sharp teeth is hard enough to sting, but Adrian can tell he hasn’t drawn blood yet.

  There’s no way to mistake the feeling of a vampire bite for something else, even something that might seem very similar to an outside observer.

  Adrian realizes with a flare of bright hot shame that he’s gone rock hard in his jeans already, his dick aching even though nothing’s happened yet. Then the vampire bites down, fangs breaching Adrian’s flesh with a bright burst of sensation that would make him scream if he could still make sound.

  Desire throbs through him, singing through every nerve and artery in a slow deep pull. Distantly, Adrian’s aware that he’s found his voice again, whimpers escaping as he writhes in the vampire’s hold. Every swallow makes him shudder again.

  Even the smallest, most subtle movements of the vampire’s lips against him fill Adrian’s senses, ever nerve ending burning hot. It’s as if all the blood he has left in him is straining forward, desperate to fill the gulping, hungry mouth that’s devouring him swallow by swallow.

  The feeling is terrible, and unnatural, and frightening. It’s absolute bliss.

  Adrian feels as if he’s finally waking up after a long, bad dream. All those other things he filled his life with, working at the bookstore and volunteering at the animal shelter and bingeing bad television, all of that’s just empty and meaningless.

  All that has ever mattered is this, the way his blood feels as it's pulled from his body, leaving him limp and empty and gasping with pleasure.

  Distantly, a thousand miles away from the hot dark delight of being bitten, a corner of Adrian’s thoughts is shocked at himself. It shouldn’t feel like this. He’s not enthralled.

  He always knew he was a fucked up mess. He just never guessed just how far gone he really was. Can this really be him? Can this really be who he is, underneath the ordinary person he pretends to be?

  7

  XAVIER

  Vampires don’t require warmth in order to be comfortable. He’s not some kind of undead reptile. But just because he doesn’t need it doesn’t mean there aren’t times when he’d be lying to himself if he said he doesn’t crave it.

  Feeding hasn’t felt like this for him for a long, long time. Usually when he takes blood from a human it’s a transactional affair, almost clinical — blood in exchange for money, or for a favor.

  There’s never a struggle, never the heaving movement of a body squirming beneath his as it fights dual urges to press closer and pull away.

  The young man goes taut, his back arching, heart thundering as he shudders through climax. Xavier can taste the heady rush of it.

  He continues to drink after the man’s orgasm subsides, suckling lazily until the human gives a quiet groan of discomfort. The overstimulation of the bite after climax, plus the newly-filthy state of the man’s clothes, likely doesn’t feel very pleasant.

  Xavier extricates himself from the young man’s neck and stands up smoothly, adjusting his own clothes, ignoring his body’s own low burn of arousal.

  “Wait here a moment, I’ll retrieve you some replacement clothing,” he tells the human.

  He goes to his own bedroom, retrieving a clean set of sleeping clothes from drawers in his walk-in closet. They’re black, like the majority of Xavier’s garments, and made of a fine cotton jersey with a drawstring waist.

  He returns to the kitchen, where the man has managed to stand up. “Here. Some new clothes.”

  The human takes the offered folds of fabric from him, movements a little woozy as he heads towards to the attached bathroom of the room where Xavier locked him, in order to change.

  As if he has any privacy remaining, any shame left to lose.

  When the young man emerges once more, Xavier is struck forcefully by the beauty of him. The clothes hang looser on him than on Xavier’s larger frame, the pants too long and pooling slightly over the tops of his feet. He looks absurdly small and pale and vulnerable now. Delicious. Xavier’s mouth waters.

  The relatively small taste of the man’s blood that he’d allowed himself has taken the worst of the edge off Xavier’s frustrations over Katerina’s continued machinations. The annoyance is still there, simmering, though. Katerina and Davis and their whole crew are like a splinter under his nail, a continuous vexation.

  The man’s eyes flicker over to glance at Xavier’s phone, still lying where he’d left it on top of the table. Xavier isn’t concerned about the possibility that the man will try to grab it, though. He keeps it locked with a four-digit code that nobody else, not even Emelie, knows.

  He can’t keep thinking of the human as ‘the human’ or ‘the young man,’ not if this situation is going to have even a modicum of civility about it.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Hm?” the man’s attention whips back to focus on Xavier, surprise evident in his face at the question. “Oh.
Adrian. Adrian Cutler.”

  “I’m Xavier.”

  Adrian’s mouth twitches up in one corner, pulling his plump lips into a lopsided smile. “I’d say I’m pleased to meet you, but honestly I’ve got pretty mixed emotions about the whole situation.”

  His smart-mouthed bravado, coupled with how lovely he looks and the lingering traces of sex-scent that hang around him, makes Xavier consider biting him again just for another taste.

  Passion means complication. That’s why Xavier avoids humans like this, ones who seem so affected by the bite. He prefers calmness, neutrality. Adrian doesn’t seem capable of calm, always fidgeting and jittery.

  While any dynamic between a predator and its prey will have conflicting elements which muddy the waters of consent, Xavier can tell that Adrian’s joke about ‘mixed emotions’ is even truer in his case than from most of the humans Xavier has fed from.

  If Adrian doesn’t want to be enthralled, it’s likely he also doesn’t appreciate the way that being fed from gives him such a strong physical response — it’s an extremely rare human who’ll climax from a bite alone, enthralled or not. It’s likely Adrian doesn’t like that he is one of these rarities.

  Xavier feels a little surprised at himself that he cares this much about what Adrian likes or wants. The fact that he tried to find the key fob with a clumsy display of seduction, rather than merely pleading for his freedom or weeping in fear, is intriguing and a little impressive. The young man has a pragmatism that reminds Xavier a little bit of Emelie.

  It’s a long, long time since Xavier met a human like this. Perhaps Lennon and Winter might be said to have that same spark, but both of them were more than willing to become Emelie’s petted darlings. They hadn’t wanted to get away in the first place, so there’s no telling how they might have strategized going about such a feat.

  Yes, all told it’s very evident that Adrian’s remarkable for a human, but that makes it all the more dangerous to keep him. The most sensible course of action would be for Xavier to just kill him and get on with things. With Katerina causing trouble for Emelie, the last thing Xavier needs is a complication like Adrian cluttering up his life.

  He’d stepped in outside the pizza place in order to deny Davis an easy kill, out of petty spite more than anything else. Not to gain an unexpected captive of his own.

  And yet… Xavier can’t deny that Adrian has captured his interest. He wants to know how the young man so easily recognized the tells when he and Davis reacted to the scent of his blood in the pizza restaurant.

  There are, of course, a sizeable number of humans who have a degree of knowledge about vampires. But all of them have some connection to the underworld, as brokers or pets or hunters or associates, and as such Xavier doesn’t consider them to be part of the daylight life in a way that Adrian clearly still is.

  Neither, as far as Xavier can tell, does the young man have any desire to be any kind of associate or other connected party. He’s just… a person. Who happens to know about vampires.

  It’s not that Xavier actually cares about Adrian one way or another, of course, it’s just an interesting curiosity to wonder about. Something to take his mind off the headache of Katerina and the other petty frustrations that clutter his life.

  One thing that does need to be made very clear to the young man is that escape is completely impossible. Adrian needs to understand exactly who wields control in this situation, so there are no further attempts to find the key fob on Xavier’s person when they’re in close proximity to one another.

  Xavier very much intends for them to be in close proximity to one another again in future, after all.

  “You must be tired, after that blood loss,” he says to Adrian.

  “Nope, not really. You didn’t take much. Also, I got so bored when you left me caged that I had a depression nap. An anxiety nap, I guess, more accurately. Are anxiety naps a thing? I guess they must be if I had one.”

  “You’ve relieved yourself? Do you need more water?”

  Adrian groans in dismay. “For real, dude? This isn’t enough of a power trip for you already, you gotta tie me up as well?”

  Xavier blinks in surprise, jarred by his plan’s apparent transparency. “Why do you assume that?”

  “Well, why else would you be asking that stuff? The bedroom’s got a bathroom. If you were just locking me up again it wouldn’t matter, so you must be planning to tie me up.”

  Xavier can’t stop the amused smile the tugs at his own mouth. “I was thinking handcuffs actually. Handcuff key, the key to your bedroom, elevator fob — maybe with three layers between you and freedom you’ll get it through your head that you can’t leave unless I decide to let you leave, and that I will make you very, very sorry if you make another attempt at it.”

  “Oh, well, when you put it that way,” Adrian retorts sarcastically with a roll of his eyes, trailing reluctantly after Xavier as Xavier collects a pair of cuffs from his armory cupboard.

  “Oh my god, you actually use these as handcuffs for restraining people, they’re not a sexy thing being repurposed,” Adrian says, as if this is somehow hilarious. “You’ve never owned a sex toy in your life, have you? I’ve been kidnapped by a vanilla vampire. This is the saddest indictment against how boring I am that the universe could possibly offer me. My captor doesn’t even have equipment on-hand for sexy kidnappings.”

  As he chatters on, Xavier maneuvers him down onto the bed and uses the cuffs to secure one of his wrists to the frame. Ignoring the inane banter, he tells Adrian “You might as well get some sleep. It’s almost daylight, and I won’t be back to check on you until the evening.”

  “Sure thing, I’ll just lie here and think about how sad the life of these handcuffs has been,” Adrian snipes.

  Xavier stares down at him, the sight burning itself into his memory and overwhelming him with thirst. Adrian’s shirt is rucked up from where he’s already begun to fidget and struggle against the hold, the new level of confinement beginning to put the fight back into him properly.

  It’s been a long time since Xavier fed from someone so beautiful, and longer still since anyone other than himself lay in any of the beds in his apartment.

  The realization that he wants to have sex with Adrian as much as he wants to devour him shouldn’t come as a surprise to Xavier, and yet somehow it does. He wants to break the cuffs apart, flip Adrian onto his stomach, pin him down and fuck into his hot tight heat as he bites him again.

  Instead, as always, Xavier’s self-control prevails. He allows himself one last look at Adrian restrained on the bed, then leaves the bedroom and locks its door behind him. He walks down the hallway to his office, ignoring the shouts the follow him as he goes.

  The building has excellent soundproofing between levels, so he knows nobody above or below will be disturbed as the hours pass and Adrian exhausts himself and, finally, voice hoarse, slips into quiet sleep.

  8

  ADRIAN

  Well, great. Just great.

  Now he’s even more trapped.

  Turns out he’s even more of a useless piece of crap than he’s always known he was. He can work hard at being helpful, at putting together a life that seems like it’s useful and good, but it was never gonna stick. Not with a worthless nothing like him at the center.

  If he’d just kept his head, instead of letting the way the bite felt overwhelm him like that, maybe he would have been able to grab some chance to get out of this whole stupid mess.

  This is even worse than when he was a kid. Which is pretty impressive, considering. At least when he was a kid, someone was getting something in return for all the blood Adrian gave up. There was some value being gained from him being restrained and helpless. Now the only one benefitting from the situation is Xavier.

  Man, what an asshole that guy turned out to be. Adrian’s mad at himself for even idly considering how attractive the hot stranger in the pizza place was. Joke’s on you, past Adrian. The hot stranger is a mean jerk and now you’
re stuck wearing a handcuff in his bed and wriggling around in his borrowed sleep clothes because he made you come in your jeans like a horny teenager.

  And if he’s mad at himself for having thought Xavier was cute when he first saw him in the pizza place, he’s a dozen times angrier at himself for not fighting back harder when Xavier pinned him to the warm kitchen floor and bit into his throat.

  Adrian should have gone down swinging, fighting every second of the bite, not moaned and given it up like that. His stomach roils with disgust at himself.

  He denied it when Xavier said he must be tired from blood loss, but that coupled with constant terror has left Adrian feeling so strung out and exhausted that he doesn’t know if he’d be able to move his limbs all that much even if he wasn’t chained to the bed.

  Adrian would never, ever let Xavier know it, but he’s glad it’s cuffs. When he was younger, it was always thin hemp rope around his wrists, and he never wants to feel that ever again.

  The rope had just been for aesthetic reasons, never been to restrain him for real like this. He’d been there of his own free will.

  Thirteen-year-olds can’t consent to shit, he reminds himself.

  God, he’s got to stop thinking about those days. He’s got enough to worry about here and now without dragging old nightmares into the mix as well.

  But now that the memories have started to bubble up to the murky surface of his past, Adrian can’t help the feelings they stir in him, the tears that sting at the corners of his eyes.

  He’s just as helpless as he was back then, no stronger now than the skinny little thirteen-year-old he’d been on the day Lee had come into his room after school and said “hey, Ade, there’s a friend of mine who’s really cool, and we can make a ton of money if you’ll just do some stuff for me. No more worrying about groceries, wouldn’t that be awesome? I’ll even get you a Playstation like you keep bugging me for. All you have to do is come with me.”