Elena could feel something on her face. In truth, it had been so long since she had felt anything at all that the sensation was unfamiliar to her.
The something was dripping at a steady, repetitive rate, splashing warm moisture onto her cheeks, her lips, her eyes. The warmth was soaking into her skin, awakening her long-dormant mind and sending little bursts of energy through her. She became self-aware – she could feel her arms, crossed stiffly over her chest, her parched mouth and throat. She could feel the powerful muscles under her skin, at the moment too weak to move.
Drip, drip, drip.
With every drop Elena woke up more. Finally, she felt it. The searing, burning thirst of one who had been sleeping, desiccating for sixty years. All at once, she realised that the glorious warm liquid that was splashing onto her chalky skin was blood – warm, fresh, revitalising. Desperately, she tried to lick her lips to wet her parched tongue with the stuff, but still found herself unable to move. It was the worst kind of torture – her nose full of the fragrance of the blood she craved so desperately, its warm, seductive scent teasing her consciousness, while her throat burned with the insistence of her thirst. She was becoming more aware of her surroundings, the soft lining of the coffin surrounding her, the absence of the heavy silence that had been her companion for sixty years. Her hearing was muffled, but becoming sharper, clearer, with every second.
Straining her ears, she realised she could hear a voice. Someone was saying her name.
"Elena, come on, wake up, baby. Come back to me. Drink. Please."
I'm trying to! She wanted to shout in reply to the voice, but all she managed was a faint twitch of her fingers. The person must have seen it, though, because they gave a gasp, and she felt fingers prying her lips open and forcing something between her stiff teeth. All at once, a gush of the hot, salty-sweet blood poured into her mouth and rushed down her throat. Energy seared through her, and Elena was seized by a feral hunger she didn't know she possessed. She felt her fangs snap into place and she sunk her teeth desperately into the warm flesh in front of her, gulping greedily. The blood blazed a path of warmth and energy through her dead veins, bringing strength back to her muscles and returned her control to her body. She sat up, pulling her meal closer to her, sucking like she hadn't eaten in almost a century – and she hadn't.
Through the haze of blood and hunger, the voice from before pierced her consciousness.
"Elena, baby, that's enough. You'll kill him. Not that I particularly care, but I know you will."
She felt the hands that had been her deliverance start to pry the soft flesh away from her mouth. With a feral snarl, Elena snapped her eyes open to challenge her competitor. The meal was hers.
Her eyes, dark with bloodlust, opened for the first time in sixty years to meet a pair of vivid blue ones staring back at her, filled with emotion. The eyes were framed by thick black lashes and set below heavy brows the same jet black as his lashes and the mop of wild, untamed hair atop his head. A thousand memories rushed back to her – a thousand kisses, some epic and desperate and hungry, some sweet and loving, some filled with lust and love in the heat of lovemaking, with his bed beneath her and his body under her hands, a million embraces, an infinite number of memories of looking into the face before her and saying I love you – a million more ways of saying I love you – I will always choose you, I will never leave you again, I need you, I can't be selfish with you. Tears filled her eyes and blurred the perfect vision before her, and she heard him say her name, his voice choking with emotion. Even after more than half a century asleep, she would know his face anywhere – her partner, her best friend, her one, true, epic love.
"Damon."
She heard him choke out a sob – ever-proud Damon, who never cried – and felt him slip his arms around her and pull her fiercely toward him, causing her to fall out of her coffin and land atop him on the ground. Without hesitating, he put her face between his hands and kissed her with a ferocity unique to Damon. Elena responded with equal passion and felt her body come alive in places that only Damon could arouse. She felt his strong, sexy body under her hands, unchanged in sixty years, one of the benefits of vampirism, and desperately reached for his belt buckle, her strong, deft hands quickly undoing the leather and pulling it out of the way with the ease of the long practiced. She and Damon had made love a thousand times, but she knew this would be hotter, rawer, more desperate than she had ever experienced.
He flipped her over so that he was on top of her and began to kiss a hungry line down her neck, before suddenly pulling away and staring into her eyes. She stared up at him, looking at him, memorising the lines of his face, his hair, rumpled from her hands, his lips, swollen with the force of her kisses. He looked at her as if he was doing the same, which she utterly believed he was. She knew he loved her with all his heart, had absolute faith in his affection.
"Elena," he said, soft and low, his voice almost a prayer. He said her name again, and bent and kissed her, his lips still forming her name around hers. His kisses became slower, gentle. He pulled away again.
"I love you, Elena," he said, his vivid blue eyes staring into hers. "I love you more than the air I breathe. The past sixty years have been the worst of my life. I missed you so much it hurt. It hurt me, Elena. It felt like someone had staked me and the wound hadn't healed. The wound throbbed more every day. I love you. I can't say it enough. I love you. "
Elena felt her throat burn with tears. She thought she hadn't been aware of anything whist asleep, thought that she didn't think or feel or dream, or have the ability to love and miss someone. She didn't realise until now how wrong she'd been, didn't realise that his absence had hurt her just as much as it had hurt him, until she had him in her arms. Elena felt tears begin to make tracks down her face as she was overcome with emotion.
"I love you, too," She said. She didn't know what else to say – didn't have the presence of mind to say anything as profound as Damon's declaration – but from Damon's smile, she knew it was enough. He reached for her again and kissed her with even more fury than before. Elena desperately reached for Damon's signature leather jacket and pushed if off his shoulders, Damon eager to help her. When Elena reached for the button on his jeans, he put his hands over hers, restraining her. She looked up at him incredulously.
"What could possibly have happened to you in sixty years that could in any way make you not want to have sex with me?" She asked.
He laughed roughly. "Trust me, Elena, I've never wanted it more than I do now," he said, and from how strained his voice sounded, she believed him.
"So then why stop me?' she asked, her hands beginning to wander beneath his shirt. He closed his eyes at the sensation.
"Well, for starters," he said, as she began to slowly kiss down his neck "We – god, Elena, you're driving me mad – We still have company.
At that, Elena shot upright. "What do you mean?" She asked, mortified. She wasn't exactly into the whole sex-in—front-of-people thing.
Damon nodded his head toward an unfamiliar male figure lying face down on the floor, a stream of blood trickling from a bite mark in his wrist. With a surge of guilt, Elena realised she had completely forgotten about the poor human she had almost sucked dry in her blood frenzy.
"Oh my god, Damon! Is he – did I kill him?" she asked in a small voice.
Damon reached over and tenderly brushed her hair away from her face.
"I didn't let you," he said reassuringly." He's just lost a fair bit of blood. He'll heal quickly, though, - I fed him some of my blood beforehand." He said gently.
As if to illustrate his point, the man on the floor groaned and groggily began to sit up. Elena noticed he had stopped bleeding.
"Where am I?" he asked, looking at his surroundings – the concrete floor, the open coffin, the couple partially undressed on the floor.
Damon got up, smoothly walked over to the man and knelt in front of him, looking into his eyes.
"You were walking in the woods and you were bitten by a dog. You will go home and sleep this off. Forget you ever saw us."
Elena saw the man's face go slack, and she knew Damon's compulsion had worked. The man mechanically got to his feet and walked out the door. Damon turned to her and flashed that devil-may-care grin she had fallen in love with. Slowly, seductively, he walked back over to where she sat on the ground raked his eyes appreciatively over her body. He knelt in front of her and looked into her eyes, his hands brushing over her hair and traveling over her body.
"Now I am going to take you back to my house, lay you on my bed, and kiss every square inch of your body until I feel as though I have made up for the sixty years that I have missed," he said, slowly, deliberately. Elena felt heat rise under her skin.
"You'd better act fast, then, because if you don't touch me soon, I might explode," she said. In answer, Damon's eyes darkened, and he scooped her up in his arms and began to run with all his vampire speed back to the Salvatore house she knew so well. He slammed the front door shut behind him and threw her onto his bed which smelled like him. He crawled on top of her and looked into her eyes.
"Now, let's get you out of that outdated dress," he said.