"Trap is such a harsh word."

Zero's face must have been a picture. Kaname rolled his eyes, even as he tangled a really nice leg, the light caressing that canvass of skin in one smooth glide, into the bloody sheets. Zero's eyes followed the motion against his will.

It wasn't his fault; he hadn't even got off once yet. The promise of more sex with Kaname had put him firmly in the mood – the last time had certainly left an impression - but pain really didn't do it for him and Kaname hadn't bothered with a reach around either. Of course he'd look after a night like his.

"No, I'm not reading your mind," Kaname told him, "just your expression."

"The whipping," Zero had to lean against a bedpost to keep standing as his legs began to shake. "Fuck I knew it was a weird fetish coming from you, followed by this," Zero waved a vague hand at the evidence of internal injury, "to push me into bloodlust – and telling me about your stalking to piss me off and – fuck. You want me to attack you."

It was a very good trap.

Even knowing about it – Zero wasn't sure he could resist.

Bloodlust was not something he could just shrug off. He needed blood very soon if he was going to keep his head, and he was in too much pain to walk, too much to even stand really. Kaname was the only blood source in the room – and Zero had no illusions about his chances of diving out a window.

He stifled a scream of pure frustration as his legs buckled. He was down to the wire. Either he kept his head, or he kept his feet, and he knew which one was the more important asset around Kaname.

Zero stumbled back to the bed, and crawled on – as far away from Kaname as he could get and still fit on the mattress.

Now that he no longer had to fight to stay upright, he had more reserves to hand, and he mustered every last one of them to stay sane as bloodlust began to burn again in his mind and throat, irresistibly taunted by the threatening promise of pure blood. If Kaname wanted Zero to attack him, then he'd have to let Zero take a few good swallows, surely, or at least one and that was delicious bait.

Oh bugger it all.

"You're self-control is amazing," Kaname praised shamelessly, "Sure you don't want to give it a go? I can tell you're positively starving."

"Shut up." Zero whimpered, burying his fangs into the mattress – too far gone to sheathe them properly. "Wait, was that permission?" He lifted his head up as eagerly as a meerkat. Permission changed everything and Kaname's blood would be really fucking good right about now.

"Nope," Kaname rolled closer, as dangerous as the fucking Death Star. "Just an observation from an innocent bystander."

"You've never been innocent in your life." Zero growled.

"You know it would be easy for you. I'm too fucked out to even defend myself," the pureblood wheedled, the blatant liar. "You can hear my pulse, of course, and scent the blood inside of me, under just seven layers of skin. I've been told I smell like an earthbound god. You must be positively dying of temptation."

Of course, now that Kaname had gone and said it, Zero could hear that pulse and smell Kuran's blood and the sheer need made him tremble. If his fangs could drool…

"Shut the fuck up," Zero groaned into the sheets, trying to muffle the scent of him. "I won't do it."

There was a pause whilst Zero could only hear his pulse pounding away in his ears.

"You will." Kaname sounded fucking delighted to have such a childish argument.

"Won't," Zero buried his face further into the duvet, futilely trying to drive out the smell of Kaname and sex and KanameKanameKaname with cotton and silk fibres. The aroma of his own blood now positively ingrained into the sheets did not help one bit.

Zero knew he'd break soon. It was inevitable. Kaname wasn't going to stop pushing until he had blackmail, and Zero physically couldn't escape. Even if he did, he knew he was too far gone to control himself. He'd attack the first human he saw, and kill them. He was too thirsty for control. Morally, it was better to give in to Kaname. Zero wasn't a murderer and he didn't want to become one either.

Maybe it was better this way. Kaname wouldn't hand him over to the Hunters to be executed at last. He'd even get a sip of that pure blood to seal his fate. Zero didn't even have the luxury of doubt – Kuran's blood tasted good enough to be worth whatever came next.

He groaned, and tried to drown himself with the sheets. It wasn't worth freedom, he told himself futilely, it wasn't.

A wrist wriggled between his face and the mattress. A smooth, flawless wrist that felt so fucking good under his aching lips. He could taste the pulse in Kaname's veins.

"You absolute fucker," Zero swore. Each word forced him to caress that skin, forced his fangs to brush against the sweet point – that nexus of vessels carrying the ambrosia he could scent all around him. Fucking hell, Kuran really did smell divine. The sheer potential he could scent there – the power – oh he was so fucked. He couldn't even move his head away. The animal inside of him was fucking hypnotised by the sight-scent-feel-now-please-now-bite-blood.

"Will," Kaname purred.

That smug arrogant fucker. Nothing else could have stirred Zero's defiance like Kuran's self-assured arseholery. He would would he?

Fuck. That.

"Why would I want to be your pet," Zero forced each word out past the pounding of his instincts to just take already. "You can't even get me off."

Kaname stroked his hair, which just pissed him off all the more.

"Am I to pleasure my whore now?"

Zero flinched, and immediately hated himself for it. He was humiliated enough without letting Kaname know it.

Kaname kissed the back of Zero's neck, soothingly.

"Shush," he hushed, "You know you're more than that to me. Emotion fuels our hunger."

Didn't Zero know it? That flash of humiliation added itself neatly to the boiling mess of his mind, frothing his instincts a notch higher. Blood, thick, and red, and heady, and powerful, and so soft, so slick, so fucking beautiful and -

"That was a really half-arsed apology," Zero muttered. "Why, Kaname? Why the fuck do you want to own me so badly?"

"Hmm," Kaname murmured, kissing his ear, "I've always liked beautiful things."

Thing.

Well didn't that bode well for his imminent future? Maybe if he was really really lucky, Kaname would grow bored of him in a month or two, and Zero could just sneak out, with no one the wiser, and a few trinkets in his pocket for his troubles. Mashiro would give him back his apartment, if Zero begged all prettily like – and if he were a valuable artefact, Kaname wouldn't break him.

And fuck, Kaname probably only said it to mess with him worse.

Despite it all, Zero just couldn't surrender. It wasn't in his nature, not after everything he'd endured already.

He reached for anything to prolong his existence as a free man.

"Who the fuck told you that you smelled like a god?" Zero asked forcing the words past the hedgehog of need that was stuck down his throat, "And what the fuck did you do to them after they said it?"

He didn't know much about vampire culture, but Zero was pretty damn sure telling Kaname fucking Kuran his blood smelled good wml, as a deadly faux pas. If he could just remind his awful thirst that they wouldn't survive a lick whole he might yet regain a speck of control.

"Aidou," Kaname admitted with a wicked snigger, making the wrist under Zero's parting lips vibrate cruelly. "He was drunk. I teased him mercilessly for it once he'd recovered. I've never seen Kain so mortified." He sounded positively gleeful over the memory, and Zero found himself grinning too, the scene painting itself clearly in his mind – and his lips caressed that skin once more and the hedgehog started to tap dance up and down his poor abused throat.

Fuck it. He had nothing left to lose.

"Please Kaname," Zero begged with his eyes closed so that he didn't have to look Kaname in the eye at the same time. "Please don't do this to me." It was the second night Kaname had paid for his company, and the second night Zero had been reduced to begging for basic decency.

He'd be furious – but he didn't have the energy to spare for it. Every man had a breaking point, even him.

He was going to crack. Kaname was going to win and there was nothing Zero could do about it but hope Kaname wouldn't be too much of a twat afterwards.

Helpless, frustrated tears slipped from his eyes.

"Don't move."

#

A/N: - :O