Bonnie's psychic senses were giving her gooseflesh. There was somethingwrong 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.
"Whatdid you say to me?" Caroline said, staring.
Chapter 5
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 conqueredyet , 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 Ishould 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 heshould 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 totake 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 butuna 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 hethinking 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 there was some appeal in the idea. It had been centuries since he'd felt this kind of excitement.