world rocked and he had to back up until they were sitting on his bed. His thoughts fragmented. He could only think that Elena was back with him, sitting on his lap, so excited, so vibrant, until there was a sort of silken explosion inside him and he didn’t need to be forced anymore.
He knew that she was enjoying the pleasure-pain of his aching jaw as much as he was.
There was no more time or reason to think. Elena was melting into his arms, her hair under his stroking fingers a liquid softness. Mentally, they had already melted together. The aching in his canines had finally produced the inevitable result, his teeth lengthening, sharpening; the touch of them against Elena’s lower lip causing a bright flicker of pleasure-pain that almost made him gasp.
And then Elena did something she never had done before. Delicately, carefully, she took one of Stefan’s fangs and captured it between her upper and lower lips. And then, delicately, deliberately, she just held on.
The whole world reeled around Stefan.
It was only by the grace of his love for her, and their connected minds, that he didn’t bite down and pierce her lip. Ancient vampire urges that could never be tamed out of his blood were screaming at him to do just that.
But he loved her, and they were one — and besides,he couldn’t move an inch. He was frozen in pleasure. His fangs had never extended so far or become quite as sharp, and without him doing a thing the razor edge of his tooth had cut into Elena’s full lower lip. Blood was trickling very slowly down his throat. Elena’s blood, which had changed since she had come back from the spirit world. It had once been wonderful, full of youthful vitality and the essence of Elena’s living self.
Now…it was simply in a class of its own. Indescribable. He’d never experienced anything like the blood of a returned spirit. It was charged with a Power that was as different from human blood as human was from animal blood.
To a vampire, blood flowing down the throat was a pleasure as sharp as anything imaginable to a human.
Stefan’s heart was pounding out of his chest.
Elena daintily worried the fang she had captured.
He could feel her satisfaction as the tiny sacrificial pain turned to pleasure, because she was linked to him, and because she was one of the rarest of all breeds of humans: one who actually enjoyed nurturing a vampire, loved the feeling of feeding him, of him needing her. She was one of the elite.
Hot shivers traveled down his spine, Elena’s blood still making the world spin.
Elena let go of his fang, sucking on her lower lip. She let her head drop back, exposing her neck.
The head -drop was really too much to resist, even for him. He knew the traceries of Elena’s veins as well as he knew her face. And yet…
All’s right. All’s well…Elena chimed telepathically.
He sank twin aching fangs into a small vein. His canines were so razor-sharp by then that there was nearly no pain for Elena, who was used to the snakebite sensation. And for him, for both of them, there was the feeding at last, as the indescribable sweetness of Elena’s new blood filled Stefan’s mouth, and an outpouring of giving swept Elena into incoherency.
There was always a danger of taking too much, or of not giving her enough of his own blood to keep her — well, frankly, to keep her from dying. Not that he needed more than a small amount, but there would always be that danger in trafficking with vampires. In the end, though, dark thoughts swam away in the sheer bliss that had overcome them both.
Matt fished for keys as he and Bonnie and Meredith all crowded into the wide front seat of his rattletrap car. Embarrassing to have to park that next to Stefan’s Porsche. The upholstery in back was in shreds that tended to stick to the derriere of whoever sat on it, and Bonnie easily fit on the jump seat, which had a jerry-rigged seat belt, between Matt and Meredith. Matt kept an eye on her, since when she was excited she tended not to use the belt. The road back through the Old Wood had too many difficult turns to be taken lightly, even if they were going to be the only travelers on it.
No more deaths, Matt thought as he pulled away from the boardinghouse. No more miraculous resurrections, even. Matt had seen enough of the supernatural to last him the rest of his life. He was just like Bonnie; he wanted things to settle down to normal so he could get on with living the plain old ordinary way.
Without Elena, something inside him whispered mockingly. Giving up without even a fight?
Hey, I couldn’t beat Stefan in any kind of fight if he had both arms tied behind his back and a bag over his head. Forget it. That’s finished, however she kissed me. She’s a friend, now.
But he could still feel Elena’s warm lips on his mouth from yesterday, the light touches that she didn’t know yet weren’t socially acceptable between just-friends. And he could feel the warmth and the swaying, dancing slenderness of her body.
Damn, she came back perfect — physically, at least, he thought.
Bonnie’s plaintive voice cut into his pleasant reminiscences.
“Just when I thought everything was going to be all right,” she was wailing, almost weeping. “Just when I thought it’s all going to work out after all. It’s going to be the way it was supposed to be.”
Meredith said, very gently, “It’s difficult, I know. We seem to keep on losing her. But we can’t be selfish.”
“I can,” Bonnie said flatly.
I can, too, Matt’s inner voice whispered. At least inside, where nobody can see my selfishness. Good old Matt; Matt won’t mind — what a good sport Matt is. Well, this is one time when good old Matt does mind. But she chose the other guy, and what can I do? Kidnap her? Keep her locked up? Try to take her by force?
The thought was like a dash of cold water, and Matt woke up and paid more attention to his driving. Somehow he’d already automatically navigated several curves of the pitted, one-lane road that ran through the Old Wood.
“We were supposed to go to college together,” Bonnie persisted. “And then we were supposed to come back here to Fell’s Church. Back home. We had it all planned out — since kindergarten, practically — and now Elena’s human again, and I thought that meant that everything was going to go back to the way it was supposed to be. And it’s never going to be the same again,ever, is it?” She finished more quietly and with a little gulping sigh, “Is it?” It wasn’t even really a question.
Matt and Meredith found themselves glancing at each other, surprised by the sharpness of their pity, and helpless to comfort Bonnie, who now had her arms folded around herself, shrugging off Meredith’s touch.
It’s Bonnie — just Bonnie being theatrical, Matt thought, but his own native honesty rose to mock him.
“I guess,” he said slowly, “that’s what we were all sort of thinking, really, when she first came back.” When we were dancing around in the woods like crazy people, he thought. “I guess we sort of thought that they could live quietly somewhere near Fell’s Church, and that things would go back to the way they were before. Before Stefan—” Meredith shook her head, looking off into the distance beyond the windshield. “Not Stefan.”
Matt realized what she meant. Stefan had come to Fell’s Church to rejoin humanity, not to take a human girl away from it into the unknown.
“You’re right,” Matt said. “I was just thinking about something like that. She and Stefan could have probably worked out some way to live here quietly. Or at least to stay close to us, you know. It was Damon. He came to take Elena against her will, and that changed everything.”
“And now Elena and Stefan are leaving. And once they leave, they’ll never come back,” Bonnie wailed. “Why? Why did Damon start all this?”
“He likes to change things out of sheer boredom, Stefan once told me. This time it probably started out of hatred for Stefan,” Meredith said. “But I wish that for once he could have just left us alone.”
“What difference does it make?” Bonnie was crying now. “So it was Damon’s fault. I don’t even care anymore. What I don’t understand is why things have to change!”
“‘You can never cross the same river twice.’ Or even once if you’re a strong enough vampire,” Meredith said wryly. Nobody laughed. And then, very gently: “Maybe you’re asking the wrong person. Maybe Elena’s the one who could tell you why things have to change, if she remembers what happened to her — in the Other Place.”
“I didn’t mean that they do have to change—”
“But they do,” Meredith said, even more gently and wistfully. “Don’t you see? It’s not supernatural; it’s — life.
