Damon Salvatore never thought he'd love another person the way he loved Katherine Pierce.

But it had happened-and so suddenly, too. He had fallen in love with Elena Gilbert so rapidly and so intensely that it made him wonder if what he'd even felt for Katherine was love.

Clearly, he was insane.

The worst part of it all was knowing how much he wanted her and couldn't have her. Because he couldn't be who she thought he was. He couldn't be this person she believed she saw deep in his eyes, behind the thick layers of hatred that one hundred and forty five years had pent up. He couldn't be good…not even for her. And so he needed to distract himself.

But all he could think about was her hair and her smile and the way she said his name and God, how he wanted to just grab her and hold her until he broke all of her bones so he could mend them back again. Because there was no part of Damon Salvatore that didn't want every part of Elena Gilbert.

Something had changed in the air between them recently; a shift in the tension level. Elena knew. She had figured out everything, pieced it all together in that pretty little head. She could sense it in the way he would stare at her for a beat longer than necessary, or the way he was always there, unquestionably, to come to her rescue. The white knight of night; that was Damon Salvatore.

She still rolled her eyes when he made his usual flirtatious comments to her. She still tried to hide the ghost of a smile when he made his usual snide remarks to Stefan. And she still watched him, maybe not with the regularity that he did her, but often enough. Her looks were not those of protective instinct, though, as his were, but rather those of curiosity, inquisitiveness.

"Hello, Elena." She jumped, startled by his sudden presence in her bedroom.

"I have got to get used to this vampire thing."

Damon smirked. "Oh, you know, it's quite simple: we drink blood, we don't age, and we have these really sweet mind compulsion abilities that convince people to do whatever we want." He punctuated the statement with his usual impish grin. Elena rolled her eyes in mock disdain.

She shook her head. "It's late, Damon. Why, exactly, are you here?"

"Are you saying that you don't enjoy my company?"

"I'm saying that I'm tired. And if you're only here to antagonize me, then—"

"Oh, trust me, Elena. I want to do a lot more than just antagonize you…"

Uh oh. There it was. The shift in the tension. It was happening again. Damon could feel his dead heart beating a thousand beats per minute, feeling more apprehensive then he could ever remember being because he had done it, he had put himself out there and now she had all the cards. Damon waited, his eyes, as always, focused intently on hers.

Though Damon thought he could name every single emotion that ever crossed her features, Damon had trouble deciphering the one on her face right now. "Damon, I…you know I care about you…" She seemed lost, confused, scared.

He walked closer to her, and would have kept moving if not for her hands moving up in an effort to stop him and ending up splaying themselves on his chest. Damon stopped breathing.

Elena looked to her hands and then up at him, her mouth slightly open. She started to shake her head slowly. "Damon, we…we can't…" she whispered, imploring him with her eyes to put a stop to this.

The trouble was that they both knew how utterly weak he was when it came to her.

The next thing Elena knew, she was being pulled the rest of the distance to his lips. Both of Damon's hands were on her face, and both of the hands that were just being used to push him away were now clinging the fabric of his shirt, pulling him as close as humanly possible.

Damon was desperate. He was pouring every ounce of his heart and soul into the kiss in the fear that he may never be able to do it again; in the fear that this was his one and only opportunity to convince her that he was the one she should choose to spend her forever with. He was the Salvatore that completed her.

Elena's heart was pounding. Every nerve ending was on fire. She was loving the feel of his lips on hers, his hands on hers, pulling her ever closer, and knew nothing except that she never wanted it to end. She was terrified. What she was feeling scared the shit out of her. All she knew was that she wanted him in this primal way that she had never wanted anyone before and that she hated him. She hated him for doing this to her now, when her world was finally beginning to rotate in a stable revolution.

When their lips parted for the briefest of moments, their foreheads rested against each other. Elena had every intention of yelling, screaming at him for arousing feelings that were supposed to be buried forever, undiscovered and unexplored, in the pit of her stomach. They were supposed to stay hidden, a dark secret for only her and Damon to share, unspoken. Because Elena could deal with that. She could deal with the wanting, and the curiosity, and the butterflies, but she could not deal with this. Not now. She couldn't go back after she'd had a taste.

She was in the process of putting together irate, harsh sentences. She'd even opened her mouth to begin, but he beat her to the punch.

"God, I love you. I love you so fucking much, Elena."

And then everything fell to pieces.

Elena pulled his face back to hers in a flurry of emotion, all-consumed in the fire and passion and need she felt for him in this moment.

Shirts and pants hit the floor and, not soon after, Elena's back hit her rumpled sheets. Damon swiftly climbed on top of her, pressing his naked body flush against hers. Elena moaned at the contact. When she arched her back to meet his scorching hot skin in every possible way, any shred of reasoning she'd previously had crumbled to dust. She had left her mind somewhere ten minutes back, and she didn't care.

Elena. Elena. Elena.

He was repeating her name over and over again, like a mantra. Like a poem. Like a caress.

His fingers raked their way up her thighs and past her hips, up to her breasts, which he couldn't bear passing over without a gentle squeeze, and finally up to her face.

"Elena, are you…" Damon trailed off and closed his eyes briefly when she arched up to press her body flush against his once more. He looked down at her with mocking eyes. "I'm going to need you to stop doing…that…if I'm going to form a coherent sentence."

Elena looked up at him innocently. "Doing what? This?" To which she pressed herself against him even harder, slipping one leg around his waist so that his growing erection was perfectly in line with her warmth. She smiled devilishly.

Damon was in a current state of euphoria. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open, and his eyebrows were furrowed in a look of pure concentration. God, she was so beautiful and so amazing and sofuckingwarm. Damon slowly opened his eyes to look down at her, smile mischievous and eyes sparkling, and knew with every fiber of his being that here was no way any Biblical Heaven could be better than this, right here.

"God, you're beautiful. You have no idea what you do to me."

But judging by the smug, self-satisfied look in her eyes, she knew exactly just what she did to him.

"Elena," he tried again, most of his composure somewhat regained, "are you sure?"

"About what?"

Damon groaned. Now was so not the time to be playing stalling games with him. "About this. About us. About what this will mean if we do this."

And then Elena giggled. She giggled. And it was in the way that she had just managed in the past minute and a half to look both startlingly sexy and endearingly adorable that Damon knew that she was the most perfect woman in the world. It was irrefutable.

"Yes, Damon. I'm sure." Then she stopped smiling and looked at him with those eyes, the ones that he had always thought of as probing and curious, like she was trying to break through his walls. But this time, everything was different. This time, Damon got it. She understood. She had successfully broken down every single one of his impenetrable walls and could see everything about him. Elena reached up and softly brushed his hair away from his eyes.

I love you. She mouthed.

And that was when Damon came undone.

He swiftly and gracefully thrust into her.

Stars, explosions, and fireworks could not accurately describe the bliss that constituted sex with Damon Salvatore.

He kept on thrusting, harder and harder, and Elena was writhing in ecstasy beneath him. He was touching her in all the right places and she was succumbing quickly, way too quickly, to the fire that was building in the pit of her stomach and threatening to be her downfall.

When Damon finally gave in to his orgasm, he allowed his most primal senses to overtake him. He could feel the pointed ends of his fangs tearing through his gums and lengthening quickly with the now overwhelming need to drinkdrinkdrink. Damon tried his hardest to resist it. Not now. Not with her.

Almost as if sensing his restraint, Elena raised her chin and moved her head to the side, giving him full access to her neck. Damon shook his head from side to side, adamant. "N-no…"

"Damon, do it."

"Elena, I c-can't!" He was losing control, unraveling. But as much as he wanted to, needed to, in this moment, he wouldn't bite her. The truth was that he was already so in over his head that he didn't trust himself to bite her. He was always careful, always in control, but she was different. He hadn't ever fed on someone who was so integrally important to his existence, someone who mattered so much.

"Do it, Damon!" She was panting heavily, on the brink. She only needed one more thing to carry her over that blissful horizon. She was holding out for it, waiting for it. She reached her hand up and touched her fingers to his teeth, tracing the sharp canines. "I trust you." She said.

Damon groaned and shut his eyes. She was challenging every level of patience he possessed. Feeling on the edge of rapture himself, he knew it had to be now. He buried his face in her neck, searched out her vein with the softest caress of his lips, and kissed her skin before finally opening his mouth and letting the most primal, the most visceral part of him, take over completely.

Elena thought she was going to die from the pleasure. Surely, she couldn't be living because living had never, ever felt this way before. Every nerve in her body was tingling and on fire. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and gasped loudly. "OhmyGod, Damon."

Damon was having a similarly mind-blowing experience. As he steadily drank from Elena, he felt a sense of completeness that was foreign to him. It was like an integral part of his body had been missing for the past century and a half and was just now being restored to him. He knew there would be no going back from tonight. Not after the connection that this was creating. Damon could experience every emotion she'd ever felt in the past 17 years as if it were his own.

Drinking from Elena Gilbert made Damon realize that she was so much more then love. She was his essence. She was the missing body part he'd been searching for. She was his heart. She was his life. She was his everything.

Damon never thought he'd love another person the way he loved Katherine Pierce. Clearly, he didn't know how wrong he had been. He didn't even know what love was until he first saw Elena Gilbert.

"You must be Elena. I'm Damon, Stefan's brother."

And you, you're the dark haired girl who sees the good in everyone. The dark haired girl who looks like another from my past but, in truth, couldn't be more different. Essentially, you're the dark haired girl who changes me forever.