or the shape of it, at least. I should have mentioned that before this started, but I’m the only one she’s ‘met,’ and I didn’t realize—”
“You should have realized!” Caroline was pacing like a tiger.
“So you kissed a girl, so what?” Bonnie exploded. “What do you think, you’re going to grow a beard now?”
As if powered by the conflict around her, Elena suddenly took off. All at once she was zipping around the room as if she’d been shot from a cannon; her hair crackled with electricity when she made sudden stops or turns. She soared around the room twice, and as she was silhouetted against the dusty old window, Bonnie thought,Oh, my God! We’ve got to get her some clothes! She looked at Meredith and saw that Meredith had shared her realization. Yes, they had to get Elena clothes — and most especially underclothes.
As Bonnie moved toward Elena, as shyly as if she’d never been kissed before, Caroline exploded.
“You just keep doing it and doing it and doing it!” She was practically screeching by now, Bonnie thought. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any morals at all?”
This, unfortunately, caused another case of the don’t-laugh-don’t-laugh choked giggles in Bonnie and Meredith. Even Stefan turned away sharply, his gallantry toward a guest clearly fighting a losing battle.
Not just a guest, Bonnie thought, but a girl he’d gone pret-ty darn far with, as Caroline hadn’t been shy about letting people know when she’d gotten her hands on him. About as far as vampires could go, Bonnie remembered, which was not the whole way. Something about the blood-sharing substituting for — well, for Doing It. But he wasn’t the only one Caroline had bragged about. Caroline was infamous.
Bonnie glanced at Elena, saw that Elena was watching Caroline with a strange expression. Not as if Elena were afraid of her, but rather as if Elena were deeply worried about her.
“Are you all right?” Bonnie whispered. To her surprise, Elena nodded, then looked at Caroline and shook her head. She carefully looked Caroline up and down and her expression was that of a puzzled doctor examining a very sick patient.
Then she floated toward Caroline, one hand extended.
Caroline shied away, as if she were disgusted to have Elena touch her. No, not disgusted, Bonnie thought, but frightened.
“How do I know what she’ll do next?” Caroline snapped, but Bonnie knew that wasn’t the real reason for her fear. What do we have going on here? she wondered. Elena afraid for Caroline, and Caroline afraid of Elena. What does that equal?
Bonnie’s psychic senses were giving her goose flesh. There was something wrong with Caroline, she felt, something she’d never encountered before. And the air…it was thickening somehow, as if it were building up to a thunderstorm.
Caroline made a sharp turn to keep her face averted from Elena’s. She moved behind a chair.
“Just keep her freakin’ away from me, all right? I won’t let her touch me again—” she began, when Meredith changed the whole situation with two quiet words.
“What did you say to me?” Caroline said, staring.
Damon was driving aimlessly when he saw the girl.
She was alone, walking down the side of the street, her titian hair blowing in the wind, her arms weighted down by packages.
Damon immediately did the chivalrous thing. He let the car glide to a stop, waited for the girl to take a few striding paces to catch up with him — che gambe! — and then jumped out and hastened to open the passenger side door for her.
Her name, as it turned out, was Damaris.
In moments the Ferrari was back on the road, going so fast that Damaris’s titian hair was flowing behind her like a banner. She was a young woman who fully merited the kind of trance-inducing compliments he’d been handing out freely all day — which was a good thing, he thought laconically, because his imagination was very nearly drained dry.
But flattering this lovely creature, with her nimbus of red-gold hair and her pure, milky skin, wouldn’t take any imagination at all. He didn’t expect any trouble from her, and he planned to keep her overnight.
Veni, vidi, vici,Damon thought, and flashed a wicked smile into the middle distance. And then he amended — Well, perhaps I haven’t conquered yet, but I’d bet my Ferrari on it.
They stopped by a “scenic view roundabout” and when Damaris had dropped her purse and bent to pick it up, he’d seen the nape of her neck, where those fine titian hairs were startlingly delicate against the whiteness of her skin.
He’d kissed it immediately, impulsively, finding it as soft as a baby’s skin — and warm against his lips. He’d allowed her complete freedom of action, interested to see whether she would slap him, but instead she had just straightened up and taken a few shaky breaths before allowing him to take her in his arms to be kissed into a trembling, heated, uncertain creature, her dark blue eyes entreating and trying to resist at the same time.
“I — shouldn’t have let you do that. I won’t let you again. I want to go home now.”
Damon smiled. His Ferrari was safe.
Her ultimate yielding would be particularly pleasant, he thought as they continued their drive. If she shaped up as well as she seemed to be doing, he might even keep her a few days, might even Change her.
Now, though, he was bothered by an inexplicable disquiet inside. It was Elena, of course. Being so close to her at the boardinghouse and not daring to demand to go to her, because of what he might do. Oh, hell, what I should have done already, he thought with a sudden vehemence. Stefan was right — there was something wrong with him today.
He was frustrated to a degree that he wouldn’t have imagined possible. What he should have done was to have ground his little brother’s face in the dirt, wrung his neck like a fowl, and then gone up those narrow tacky stairs to take Elena, willing or no. He hadn’t done it before because of some syrupy nonsense, caring about her screaming and carrying on as he lifted that incomparable chin and buried his swollen, aching fangs in her lily-white throat.
There was a noise going on in the car. “—don’t you think?” Damaris was saying.
Annoyed and too busy with his fantasy to go over what his mind might have heard of her speech, he shut her off, and she was instantly quiet. Damaris was lovely but una stomata — a ditz. Now she sat with her titian hair whipping in the wind, but with blank eyes, the pupils contracted, absolutely still.
And all for nothing. Damon made a hissing sound of exasperation. He couldn’t get back into his daydream; even in silence, the imagined sounds of Elena’s sobbing prevented him.
But there would be no more sobbing once he’d made her into a vampire, a little voice in his mind suggested. Damon cocked his head and leaned back, three fingers on the steering wheel. He’d once sought to make her his princess of darkness — why not again? She would belong to him utterly, and if he had to give up her mortal blood…well, he wasn’t exactly getting any of that right now, was he? the insinuating voice said. Elena, pale and glowing with a vampire’s aura of Power, her hair almost white-blond, a black gown against her satiny skin. Now there was a picture to make any vampire’s heart beat faster.
He wanted her more than ever now that she had been a spirit. Even as a vampire she would retain most of her own nature, and he could just picture it: her light for his darkness, her soft whiteness in his hard, black-jacketed arms. He would stop that exquisite mouth with kisses, smother her with them. What was he thinking about? Vampires didn’t kiss like that for enjoyment — especially not other vampires. The blood, the hunt was all. Kissing beyond whatever was necessary to conquer their victim was pointless; it could lead nowhere. Only sentimental idiots like his brother bothered with such foolishness. A mated vampire pair might share the blood of a mortal victim, both striking at once, both controlling the victim’s mind — and joined together in mind-link, too. That was how they found their pleasure.
Still, Damon found himself excited by the idea of kissing Elena, of forcing kisses on her, of feeling her desperation to get away from him suddenly pause — with the little hesitation that came just before response, before yielding herself completely to him.
Maybe I’m going crazy, Damon thought, intrigued. He had never gone crazy before that he could recall, and
