Disclaimer: I do not own The Vampire Diaries or any of the characters involved. Thank Kevin Williamson, Julie Plec, L.J Smith and Ian Somerhalder for giving me such a wonderfully complex character to play with. Please remember to review!

"So does she like me?"

I couldn't quite believe it had come to this, using high school methods to find out how someone really felt about you. I had done many horrible things in my life, and I was sure I was going to do many, many more. But at this moment I felt like I was stooping my lowest.

"Well, first I had to ask Eliza—she's in my English class—if Elena looked like she was over Stefan, and then Eliza told me Annie said she was writing someone's name in her notebook yesterday, but she couldn't see what it was. But Cams reckons it has to be an older guy because Elena hasn't been paying attention to anybody in school, and then Maddy…"

"This isn't an episode of Gossip Girl, Caroline."

She snorted. "Well you're sure acting like it is. Making me go around and ask high school girls because you're too insecure to—"

"You know what I feel like doing now?" I interrupted. I was leaning on the wall across from her, nonchalantly studying my fingernails. "I feel like ripping your heart out and throwing it across the room."

Caroline frowned at me, unaffected by my completely serious threat. "The only reason I even did this for you is because you said Stefan—"

"Caroline," I growled threateningly. "Does. She. Like. Me."

"Yes!" Caroline snapped. "I think she does! God, you are so pushy!" And with that last parting shot, she flounced off, presumably to find Stefan.

I stayed leaning against the wall, my eyes still on the Grandfather clock I had been studying when Caroline finished telling me her news. "Interesting…" I finally murmured, and I left the house.

—-

I found her at the Grill, with the little witch. Now that she had broken up with Stefan, Bonnie was much more tolerant of how Elena spent her time.

"Witch," I greeted her as I sat down across from them.

Bonnie glanced up, startled, but Elena, used to me appearing in unexpected places, didn't bat an eye. "Vampire," Bonnie greeted me back, injecting her voice with enough venom to kill a cow.

I leaned back in the chair, unfazed, and smirked at her. "Cradle robber."

Bonnie's face grew red and she abruptly stood up from the chair she was sitting in, grabbing her purse as she did so. "You're one to talk!" she managed to retaliate before rushing off into the crowd, hopefully with the intentions of never coming near me again.

God. There were people who annoyed me, and then there were people I wished would jump off a fucking cliff.

"You shouldn't have done that," Elena informed me. She hadn't looked up from her drink the entire conversation.

"I hear you like me," I told her, deciding to skip straight to the point. I had never mastered the art of subtlety.

"Really?" Elena asked, looking up for the first time and raising her eyebrows.

I grinned slowly. "Yes."

She shrugged and went back to staring at her drink. "Cool."

Cool? COOL? I stared at her, waiting for her to elaborate. But when she didn't, I snapped impatiently, "so do you?"

"Do I what?" She asked, looking surprised. I was ready to explode with exasperation when I caught a glint of laughter in her eyes.

God dammit, Elena was playing with me.

I lowered my voice to a soft seductive purr, leaning in closer. "Do you like me?"

She lifted her eyes to mine and replied archly, "what would you do if I said yes?"

Tired of playing games, I stood up from the chair I had been reclining in, grabbing her as I went so she was up with me. "I would do this," I replied, and, pulling her closer, I lowered my lips to hers.

She didn't push me away, but she didn't kiss me back either. Undeterred by this minor mishap, I moved my lips from hers and to her cheek, trailing kisses from the arch of her ear all the way to her jaw line. Continuing lower, I nuzzled my face into her soft, warm neck, pressing my lips into her beating pulse, where I could smell her, feel her the most. Pulling away, I gave it a slight lick, just a flick of the tongue, and she whimpered, causing me to grin and bring my lips back to hers. This time she kissed me back, with a fierceness I had always come to associate to Elena.

"Elena, I'm out," I heard Bonnie say in an exasperated voice, but it was as if she was speaking from the end of a tunnel. I'm not sure Elena heard her at all. Her hands were entwined in my hair, one running up through the back and the other tugging me even closer into her warmth.

She was breathing heavily now, her breath fanning my cheek, while I was barely breathing at all, so caught up was I in the…the everything.

My lips traced hers and I gently pried them open, moving my tongue to entangle with hers. She answered with enthusiasm, her tongue reaching to meet mine, and I felt a shock as she let me taste her to the fullest, the most beautiful thing I had ever tasted.

She was pressed so close to me I could feel her breasts pushing into my chest, and I began inching my hand up from her waist, while at the same time gently pulling my lips from hers back down to her neck, where I wanted to bite, so badly, to take the biggest step a vampire could take with a person he loved, the intimate sharing of blood…

"Uh, guys? Guys? GUYS?"

I broke away from Elena and snarled, the fierce snarl of an animal who has just been interrupted in the act of mating. Elena looked a bit dazed, but she laid a reassuring hand on me as Matt started and took a step back.

"Sorry about that," he said, looking a bit embarrassed. "But if you guys keep going the way you're going…I can't let you have sex on the bar."

Breaking my glare from Matt, I looked around in surprise, just now remembering my surroundings. That was…strange. I NEVER lost sense of where I was. It was one of the basic instincts of a vampire, to know your surroundings at all times. But with Elena, it had just melted away.

The bar was still packed, some people not paying attention to us, some blatantly staring, and a group of girls in a booth near the back who were giggling and whispering and shooting me all kinds of looks.

I gave the girls a charming smile, and then I turned back to Matt. "We'll leave," I promised him. He shrugged and picked up his dish towel, moving away quickly.

I would take Elena somewhere other than the boarding house, somewhere that could be ours and ours alone, never Stefan's, never Katherine's, our own little world where nothing else mattered.

"Who said I wanted to go with you?"

I glanced down at the girl next to me, who was currently moving her hand steadily up my stomach under my shirt, towards my chest. Her big brown eyes were snapping and excited and her dark hair was disheveled.

I grinned at her, a real grin, no ulterior motive behind it, and took her face in my hands, leaning my forehead against hers. "Elena," I said softly, seriously. "Do you like me?"

Her eyes, which had been lowered to the ground, slowly rose to meet mine. Her hand continued to travel up under my shirt, until it rested right over my heart. "Well," she smiled slightly, just a quirk of her mouth. "Maybe just a little bit."