For one who'd been around as long as he, certain memories were more prominent than others; like bright primary colours in a mass of pastel moments.
The day Henrik died all crimson stains and the grey pallor of death. Bright clawing guilt and black grief.
The day he became himself finally, hot orange triumph and white agony when he shifted for the first time his bones breaking, every one.
The jewel green tones of his new eyes, the sparkling wind full of all the things he smelled and heard; whole, for the first time in a thousand years.
He remembers seeing Caroline, bright yellow and cobalt blue, it hurt your eyes with the light she radiated always.
He wanted that, wanted to bathe in her warmth so badly it became almost all consuming. The rub was he wasn't light; not anymore if he ever had been. Tortured his whole existence by his guilt and his demons. Unloved, unwanted, alone and feeling only half alive without his connection to his wolf.
No one could really understand, Elijah looking mildly indulgent when he found him after his first change, three days past the full moon, skin decorated with splotches of blood and dirt. He could change at will and remember himself after. He remembered each moment, the hunt, the kill, feeding, being one with the night like he'd always wanted. Whole.
Alone still.
Moody, depressed and angry that Caroline rejected him over and over for his first hybrid.
The wretch.
So he destroyed any chance he had by running the ungrateful sod out on a rail.
He met /her/ there, at his home when he allowed the bastard to come back.
The bright hazel of her huge eyes while she watched him, long neck, beating heart.
Wolf.
But as unlike any wolf he'd ever encountered, power radiated from her, and the not quite contemptuous looks she kept shooting him tingled the base of his spine in ways that he'd buried long centuries before.
He is sure she feels the same attraction is confirmed of this when he spends the day drinking in remembrance of the hybrid the young hunter killed. No one knows of the side deal he and she made for the events leading up to him killing his hybrids.
Her ruthless pursuit of her own ends by any means thrilled him. He was sorry to see her go then, though he did promise her aid should she need it.
He hoped for her to need it. He needed the cure for his doppelganger; either of them truth be told. Revenge on Katerina for running and Elena, well, he just wanted her dead to break the Salvatores once and for all, ending their insufferable little love triangle.
Her call was met with an evil smirk and once he was on his way to rescue his damsel, he felt the weight slide off his shoulders. Perhaps leaving this rattrap of a town would be to his benefit, but he needed to take care of this cure problem first off as it wasn't couth to leave loose ends and the idea that his time here was growing short was tickling at his consciousness. Of course he brought her back to his castle, or lair if you prefer. Getting her to talk was not hard but not without his charms though he lacked the overall patience to see it done with the finesse it probably required. When he found that she'd come here to seduce him, he nearly clapped in maniacal glee for the sheer perfection of this.
It appeared she liked a little more animal in her man.
Though what she thought she could glean from him post-coitus was a mystery.
Part of him wants to walk away from this though, unable to reconcile the sudden spurt of desperate need that he feels for her. It's so far outside anything he's ever felt before, even trumping what he feels for Caroline, that he nearly reels back and away, wants almost to make her leave out of fear. But he fears /nothing/!
Not this girl and not his now painful need to let her in, if only for a time.
It had been a long time for him.
For her too, if any of the signals she was sending off were any indication and as the alcohol flowed, so too did his need, finding her eyes on him more and more boldly, as his were on her while they circled, circled in an orbit that threatened to crash them together.
A dance.
Two beings drawn by desperate destiny to move in the steps to a song heard in the future distant, the balance of it all.
But none of that matters now. Not when she says in her husky voice, challenge, need and want echoing.
"You're the one who likes to be in control, you tell me."
His hesitation is endless eternity.
His fingers come up and and a graze of knuckles over her luminous skin is all it takes for him to lose that last shred of sanity.
He seizes her hips and jerks her forward, punctuating this action with a low growl. She smiles and growls back.
That's when he kisses her, searing, hot, hard and with the edge of teeth while her hands move down to roll his shirt up and off, his get handfuls of her behind and he lifts her, letting her feel the hard length of him when he drops her onto the big table.
Her shirt is next and his mouth latches onto her pulse and she moans. He wastes no time and pushes her back onto the table with is hand to her sternum, sliding it down to join the other before rending her jeans into two halves, tossing the ripped denim carelessly aside. Her panties he slides off with his teeth, dropping them before he joins her atop the table, the length of his thick, quivering erection pressed against her slick folds already. Not waiting, he fills her while she watches him through lowered lashes, mouth falling open on a moan that lasts, his own gasp at being sheathed nearly to the hilt in her mingling with her panting breaths.
She's deliciously warm and he can't keep his mouth from her throat, from her pulse as he begins to move within her, making her cry out. He drags one of her hands up and presses it above her head onto the table while the other holds her right leg at the knee, hips twisting in a pace that is both rough and relentless.
She loves this.
Her body arches and shudders as she shamelessly takes her pleasure from him and he from her and her right hand grips the fine hairs on the back of his head to urge him to do what it is in his nature to do.
Fangs drop and he skirts the very edges of his control, waiting one heartbeat...
...Two...
...Three...
When her inner walls begin to grip his cock rhythmically, that's when he slides his fangs home; a new penetration.
She erupts, clawing him and tearing into his back with her nails, howling out her pleasure, milling her hips up in a staccato beat eke her pleasure for far longer.
He isn't done, not by a long shot. He pulls his mouth from her throbbing pulse to plunder her open mouth, both wrestling with tongues and lips for control while she arches and writhes for him and he shivers, losing himself in her exquisite crimson bouquet. Slowing his thrusts, he rears back, blood decorating one corner of his mouth and he smirks. Pulling himself from her heat, he stands, erection still jutting magnificently outward and he pulls her to her wobbly legs, blurring them both to his study where he seats himself in an antique chair, pulling her astride his lap. He waits and she doesn't disappoint when she lowers herself onto him, rocking her narrow hips like a dancer, breasts swaying in invitation for his mouth and hands.
Her head goes back and she utters a breath of a curse, feeling full of him, full of her desire and lust and the heat of this man under her. He bites her again, this time on the upper swell of her left breast, his eyes amber while he gazes at her and she feels it, his twitching member, the now erratic suction and she goes first, again, flying up, flying out, one long moan and she digs her nails into him again when her inner walls clench and her sex drips with her fluids. This makes him gasp and she feels him stiffen so she speeds her hips while she rides him hard.
She wants to watch him, perversely fascinated with his eyes when he releases inside her, hot spurts while he tears his mouth off her to moan out several curses, palming her behind until he shudders his last, wolf amber bleeding to stormy blue green.
She should leave, feels like she needs to go now as the lust begins to cool and the crickets trill in the deep dark. She doesn't go.
He lifts her as if she weighs nothing, surprise tears a gasp from her and a smile through stained lips from him and he walks her up the steps to his room and she notes the framed letters on the wall, from his prior victims; he whispers this to her like a seduction as he lowers her to the bedclothes, rumpling the spread, the expensive sheets.
He rocks slowly into her now, pale light painting his flanks in slivered light, surprisingly gentle as he fills her anew though her blood still seeps from her wounds, drawing his eyes.
He likes how she looks at him while he fucks her.
While he possesses her.
It's slower now, he has her slower here on the bed where no one has never been and he takes his time now, savouring what she's doing to him and he to her.
What is it about her that draws him?
His kind, like him she thinks, and as he rocks faster, she loses her control again, not expecting how good this actually turned out to be and her climax rips from her in a harsh cry of need.
"Bite me again."
He does, the other side of her slim throat, taking slower gulps of her while he builds, irrevocably, toward another release, toward some sort of revelation about himself.
Fast, faster, cresting up when she does, feeling the clench and the pull of her and they both tumble over the edge together.
Later, when she's dressing, lingering here on the edge of the bed, he tells her what he knows of the mark she bears, citing sacred familial bonds, inviting her to where he will be, though he doesn't say.
They share a look and he knows, as does she, that they will meet, and perhaps those moments will be moments one again.