A/N: This is my shortest chapter for this fic, but an important one. Only Chuck and Blair are featured but the whole situation between them needs to be...situated. So here we go. Hopefully this makes everyone feel better after no CB interaction tonight.

Summary: He knew she had ambition. He couldn't love her this much if she wasn't exactly like him. But he couldn't help it. He knew it was hypocritical. He knew he was a terrible person for wanting her to sacrifice her future for him when he couldn't do the same.

Disclaimer: None is mine, even the SL which is losely based on season 6 of Buffy (though obviously no vampires.) Beta-ed by the awesome comewhatmay.x.


He had fully intended to stay away. He didn't need this. He didn't need her.

But standing outside of the event that the Girls' Inc. Foundation was holding, he knew that couldn't be farther from the truth. Because the truth was, she had hurt him. In the way that no woman on the face of the earth could ever even attempt to do.

She had chosen some female empowerment group over him. He wanted to be enough for her. He knew she had ambition. He couldn't love her this much if she wasn't exactly like him. But he couldn't help it. He knew it was hypocritical. He knew he was a terrible person for wanting her to sacrifice her future for him when he couldn't do the same.

He was just weak. He just couldn't do this again. He wanted to have it all.

She wouldn't let him.

In that instant, he knew that she knew he would be here. She was a spiteful bitch, throwing everything in her arsenal against him.

But it wasn't like he wouldn't do the same.

He recognized that dress, of course. It was the dress that he had hiked around her hips, perched on top of a piano.

He recognized that necklace. It was the one he had used to barter for her affections, just so she would look at him again. The one she wore while breaking his heart on a dance floor at a Debutante Ball and while finally letting him wrap his arms around her in a midst of snowflakes before his life fell apart.

And that hair. That hair done up in an elegant twist, just like she had done in his stepsister's room, surrounded by candles and wearing a flimsy slip that came off so easily, where he almost could have had her.

She was cruel and vindictive and he couldn't stay away from her any longer.

"Now don't you look...decadent."

He watched her spine go rigid before she turned in the ballroom, only to grace him with a scathing glance.

"What are you doing here?"

"Are you really that surprised?" Chuck asked. "It is my hotel. As much as Anne denounces my way of life, she knows how successful my empire is."

"Or an attempt at one," Blair retorts. "You have one hotel."

"And one burlesque club," he reminded her. "Which I'm sure you recall taking your clothes off at."

"Ancient history, Bass."

"Is it?" Chuck asked doubtfully. "I seem to recall you sneaking into my humble abode some weeks ago-"

"After which you treated me like one of your whores and dismissed me," Blair seethed. Chuck stared after her as she took her leave of him, finally understanding his mistake. He hated that she thought that was what it was. She thought that she was just another conquest to him, when in fact he just hated being vulnerable around her.

It was a compliment on her part, rather than an insult. And he hated her for it. He hated this whole situation. He hated the power she had over him and how he still couldn't do anything right.

So he followed her.

It was the only solution.

"We need to talk."

But she wasn't hearing it.

"You seemed to have said all you needed to last time we spoke."

"To be fair," Chuck answered, "there wasn't a lot of talking going on then."

"Haven't you humiliated me enough?" Blair asked. "You got what you wanted."

"And so have you, apparently," Chuck said scornfully. "I see that the foundation took you back after you made it clear you would have nothing to do with me."

"Which, incidentally," Blair returned, "happened right after I was used like a prized horse. Rode hard and put away wet, if I recall correctly?"

That one stung more than he would have liked to admit, but he wasn't letting this go that way again. He wouldn't watch her walk out of a bar as his heart splintered on more than one occasion.

"And you were completely innocent, I presume?" Chuck asked. "You wanted to keep me a secret so you could further yourself in the world."

"You would have done the same," Blair said.

"That's not an excuse," he answered. "I won't be treated like someone's mistress."

"Now you know how it feels."

"I have never treated you like that," he responded.

"It doesn't matter," Blair said. "None of that matters. You made your feelings completely clear that night. This is what I have to do. I can't just be your mistress either."

"You don't have to be," he said. "We can both be in positions of power."

"I need this."

"This is really what you need? Serving society matrons who you have to hide your true self with?" Chuck asked. "You don't. You don't need them. You don't need anyone."

"I need you," Blair snapped and he knew it was just a crime of passion. She was frustrated with herself and he had never been more pleased with a slip of the tongue. "Don't you get it? You make me pine for you and there is nothing more humiliating."

"You think I don't do the same for you?" Chuck asked, letting himself be honest, if only for this one moment of hope with her. "I had to try and force myself to not even be on your proximity and look where it's got me."

"That doesn't change anything," Blair said. "This isn't the first time that I've felt this way and you know it. I may not need them, but they can get me to where I need to be."

"So can I," Chuck suggested. "I can do anything for you. You can start your own foundation. I would give anything for you."

"That's worse," Blair said. "I would be indebted to you."

"You wouldn't," Chuck promised.

"I would get to the top because of you and I can't do that," Blair said. "I have to do this on my own."

"In case you haven't noticed," Chuck said. "You're not. Instead you'll be indebted to some society prudes. Tell me that's better."

"It is," Blair answered. "Because then I'll only be indebted to them and not to you."

Blair's fingers pressed the button for the elevator and he knew there was only one way he could stop her.

"You wore that dress tonight for me, didn't you?"

True to his prediction, Blair spun around, fury making her even more desirable.

"What?"

"Admit it," Chuck smirked, walking towards her as she stood frozen in her rage. "You think about me every waking moment. You think about me when you get dressed, on your way to school, when you're alone..."

"You would like to think that," Blair sneered. "Wouldn't you?"

"I don't have to think it," Chuck said. "I know it. Just like I know you wore that necklace and that dress for me. Just like I know you're probably wearing the same La Perlas you were wearing the last time I saw you."

Her mouth was slightly agape in disbelief at his audacity, but just at that moment, the elevator had arrived and he walked even closer to her, causing her to walk backward into it.

"Alone at last," he slurred sleazily.

Her hands gripped the front of his shirt, attempting to berate his attempts at seduction, but he got a hold of her petite frame so easily that he was able to overpower her.

"Your attempts at seduction are weak," Blair said coldly. But he knew her game. He knew it was simply an attempt to hurt him, but then again, he never lost.

"It's not an attempt, sweetheart," he crooned. "It's working."

"You think I'm just going to let you-"

Too late.

Chuck had pulled the emergency stop and had her wrists pinned with his hands.

"You're not going to let me do anything," he said. "You're going to join me whole-heartedly."

"And what would give you that impression?" Blair asked snidely.

"By the simple fact that you haven't slapped me yet," Chuck said. "Which, incidentally, wouldn't convince me either."

"Wouldn't it?"

"No," Chuck shrugged. "I just bring that out in you."

"Not for all the right reasons."

"I know you missed me," Chuck rasped seductively in her ear. "And I am fully intent on finding out if those are the same La Perlas or not."

"You won't get that far."

"Is that a challenge?"

"You pulled the Emergency Stop, Chuck," Blair said. "Someone's coming."

"No one is coming," he laughed. "This is my hotel."

"You threatened to send Serena to the airport Marriott for less."

"Serena isn't you," he said softly.

"Don't even try to manipulate me," Blair warned.

"Why?" he smirked. "Is it working?"

"I'm not one of your sluts who will suck you off, simply for the taste of being elite for a night."

"That wasn't an answer," Chuck reminded her.

"You can't win," Blair pointed out.

"Neither can you when you're out there with them," he said. He had freed her hands and for a frightening moment, he thought he truly deserved the slap that should be coming.

Instead, she grabbed his face, biting his lip hard as hers entangled with his. Her exhale turned into a moan as he pushed her against the wall.

"You know that those girls are nothing," he said, brushing his lips against her ear. "They don't even compare to you. I would chain you to my bed for eternity if it was socially acceptable."

Blair leaned her head against the back wall to look into his eyes, analyzing his every word.

"Your security team better not be coming," she warned as she pulled him again. Finally, in satisfaction, he groaned, hoisting her up against the back wall, shoving her skirt up.

"I knew it," he said with satisfaction, ripping at every article clothing that obscured her from him.

"Shut up," she commanded, ripping his own belt from its constraints.

"As my lady requests," he said hoarsely, relieved that the weeks without her had finally come to an end. Her grip on him tightened again and he knew that he had become dangerously close to a proclamation that neither of them could handle.

Wrapped so tightly and sweetly around each other in an elevator was one thing. It was what they had to do because those words were too dangerous now. Physical expression was the only way to be together because those words could only hurt them now.

He knew he would have to wait. He would wait with her in his bed, but only because what they were truly waiting for was the deliverance of a sparkling diamond.