Dislcaimer: Don't own TVD.
D/E
S/C
A Sinner before the Gates of Heaven
Chapter Seven: Damned If I Do
Elena's pretty sure her cheeks are still red.
In fact, she's pretty sure that her cheeks aren't just red, she's sure they're putting fire trucks and tomatoes to shame as she struggles to ignore the presence of Damon in the far corner of the library, flipping casually through a book that she suspects is much older then she is.
She's not even struggling, though, she thinks sourly. Her eyes are involuntarily drawn to the back of Damon's head as it bends over the book all because he thinks she's beautiful.
Even though she's trying to be snide about it, even though she wants to be snide about his comment, Elena feels her cheeks heat up even more and the nervous flip of her stomach as she thinks back to how quiet and intense his voice had been when he'd told her she was beautiful. She can feel the way the words had coursed through her, heating her blood and making her yearn more intensely then she had when he'd done nothing but look at her.
It's very hard to be snide about something, she's discovering, when it had managed to make her feel beautiful.
It had also managed to make her feel like she was sixteen again and had caught the attention of the cutest boy in school only to embarrass herself by fumbling over her reply to his compliment except Damon Salvatore wasn't the cutest boy at Mystic Falls High and she hadn't just fumbled her response, she had completely butchered it.
It had taken her three seconds flat to turn a moment shaped by the soft shades of sleep and the intensity of a man who means what he's saying into something so utterly…wrong.
He'd shut down, Elena remembers, she'd stuttered over her response and – unlike everything she'd been taught to believe – he had not found it endearing at all. She was pretty sure Damon hadn't even enjoyed the fact that he'd managed to get one up on her. He'd just shut down. His gaze had shuttered, his mouth had hardened and he'd dropped his hand from her face.
Seeing it, watching the way he had shut down had, inexplicably, made her want to scramble to save herself and the moment and the reaction had been so instinctive and so forceful it had made her pause.
And she was still contemplating the reasons for her pausing now, what felt like forever and a day later and, in reality, had to be only about twenty minutes.
Maybe, Elena thinks, flipping another page of the book she was pretending to read, that's what she was so irritated and resentful about.
She couldn't seem to find the right list of reasons for pausing so dramatically and ruining the moment so completely he'd moved to the other side of the library after she'd fallen silent and he'd seemed to realize there was no reason saying anything else.
Mostly because there hadn't been any reason for him to say she was beautiful in the first place.
Scowling, Elena shakes her head slightly, irritated now that her thoughts have started circling around and trying to settle on the fact that there were no real reasons why she had paused in that moment other then she'd been terrified of that moment.
No, she thinks, that's not quite true. She hadn't been terrified of the moment. She had been terrified of the way he'd made her feel and the way she had wanted to touch him so badly and the way it had made her realize all over again how much she would give him should he ask her to give it.
It had terrified her because the heat of his gaze from earlier, the way it had twisted her stomach in knots and made her yearn for something she's never really wanted with anyone else had made her want to resist surrendering to readily to him.
The heat of his gaze had made her want, desperately; to fight against surrendering to everything his gaze had promised her in that one heated moment even knowing she'd probably lose.
But the sweetness of the moment she'd butchered, the way his calloused fingers had stroked her cheek softly, the way he'd genuinely meant his words, had made surrendering such a sweet, viable option she was terrified if he was sweet again, she wouldn't pause.
Elena bites her lip a little at her thoughts, at how sure she is that, one way or another, she's going to end up surrendering to the needs Damon Salvatore provokes within her.
And that is probably what's irritating her most of all.
She's beginning to dislike, intensely, this strange feeling of inevitability she gets whenever she finds herself caught in those looks she and Damon share.
Snapping her book shut, Elena scowls a little at the book case she's standing in front of and violently shoves the book she's holding back into the space it had left when she'd picked it up.
Maybe, she thinks, she can channel her frustration about this strange, overwhelming attraction between her and Damon into something a little more useful.
Like how she has no idea why she'd thought that trying to find out how Mystic Falls became the haunted town she'd grown up was going to be easy or interesting.
Because it wasn't and the journal she'd been trying to read before she fell asleep and well before, well, the perfectly butchered moment, had been filled with nothing more than grain reports and complaints about the Civil War.
There was nothing supernatural about them.
She's actually beginning to suspect the only supernatural thing or reference to one in this library at the current moment was Damon.
"Ugh."
The moment the sound leaves her mouth, Elena winces and regrets it immediately because she's sure that it'll draw Damon's attention back to her and it's not something she's sure she wants.
"You know, if you don't like what's in front of you, there's a whole shelf full of books next to you to glare at."
Too late, Elena thinks as she turns to face Damon, a sarcastic smile on her face as she barely registers the sharpness to his voice. He's still holding the book he'd been flipping through open and there's a coolness too his gaze she would be unsure about if she wasn't frustrated and irritated and still a little terrified.
"Thanks but I haven't finished glaring at this shelf." She says, sarcasm all but dripping out of her mouth. "By the way, you're historical section sucks."
He cocks his head to one side at her words. "Really? And here I thought it was rather extensive. Having been, you know, written around the time all those great historical events happened."
"1864 is not a historical event. It's a year. And more one thing happened in 1864. The world was quite busy in fact."
"Oh, really?"
Frustration boils a little at his patronizing tone and she sneers a little at him. "Obviously. The Civil War was happening. Prussia was at war with Denmark. The first Geneva Convention took place. Need I go on?"
"No. Apparently, I needed to be more specific when I asked you to do some research." Damon's voice is as cool as the look in his eyes and Elena shrugs.
"No. You think?"
Elena folds her arms defensively when she see's irritation flare in his eyes at her sarcastic words and, in the back of her mind, is somewhat aware that she's taking her frustration at herself, him and this strange situation she's found herself in, out on Damon.
It would be a stupid move, she knows, if she wasn't so sure he would never hurt her.
Still, she jumps a little when he snaps the book shut. "Careful, Elena, you don't want to irritate me."
There's a threat to his words, as if he's warning her off needling him anymore and Elena finds that, if possible, it only irritates her more. She's certain that she would rather deal with an irritated Damon then the sweet one and its cause enough for her to raise an eyebrow.
"Why not? It's not like you're going to hurt me otherwise you would have left me for dead earlier tonight."
Vampires are quick.
Before the last word leaves her mouth, Elena finds herself caught between the unyielding bookcase she'd been glaring at before and the hard body of Damon Salvatore, her arms pinned effectively above her head.
Heat erupts at the press of his body – from thigh to sternum – and brings everything into sharp focus.
She can feel the spines of the books digging into her spine and the calluses on his hand as it pins her wrists against the books above her head. Her head tilts back so she can meet his eyes and she can see coolness as well as irritation in his eyes and something else. Something more primal, something that makes her stomach liquefy and her muscles loosen and the blood – already heated to an unbearable level – to heat up her skin and shorten her breaths.
If this, Elena thinks, is what brutal arousal is like, then she's sure she has a right to be terrified of it.
"Don't provoke a vampire, Elena. You will lose." His voice is low and serious and, if possible, just as arousing as the primal look in his eye.
Forcing herself not squirm, Elena glares up at him. "Is that supposed to scare me, Damon? It doesn't."
"Well, aren't you just so brave? Unafraid of the big, bad vampire that's got you right where he wants you." He's irritated, Elena can see it in his eyes and she knows, somehow, that he isn't just irritated because she's tried to pick a fight and succeeded.
Somehow, she knows that he's irritated for the same reasons she's irritated and, for some inexplicable reason, it aggravates her even further.
Because he has no right to be irritated because he turns her into a fumbling fifteen year old when he says something to her that he has no right saying.
"You won't hurt me, Damon." His eyes darken and she tilts her head back slightly, so his breath is on her lips and he can see the utter belief in her eyes. Her breath catches in the back of her throat as something in his gaze sharpens and his hips press against hers more firmly.
Then the breath that's caught simply disappears when he lowers his mouth to her ear, nosing aside her hair gently and causing her to shiver when she feels his breath on the sensitive skin below her ear.
"You're right. I won't hurt you." His voice in her ear is soft velvet and irritated beyond belief. "Because I can't."
"Where is she, Grayson?"
Miranda Gilbert's voice is laced with worry and fatigue as she sits at her kitchen table, clutching a mug of lukewarm coffee and watching as her husband paces the length of their kitchen over and over.
"I don't know, Miranda. I just don't know." Grayson Gilbert answers, his tone laced with the more than the worry and fatigue of his wife.
He's panicking and he's berating himself, continually, for allowing Elena to come home only a few weeks before her twenty-first birthday. He had tried to convince her at the beginning of summer there was no need for her to return to Mystic Falls. He'd tried to convince her that they could come up to New York to see her and that it was silly for her to return to a town she had hated so much.
He had tried so hard to keep her safe in New York and had caved when she'd begged him to let her come home.
He knows that he probably could have tried harder and maybe even told her why he hadn't wanted her to come home for this one summer instead, he'd listened to her pleas of wanting to be home for her birthday and to see her family and spend time with her friends and had found himself waiting to pick her up instead of going to New York.
And now, he was regretting it all so much.
Because she was missing and Grayson is sure he knows why and who has her.
"Don't lie to me, Gray. Please don't. Where is she?"
His wife's reaching for his hand as she asks the question and he takes hers willingly, finding comfort in the familiar scent of Elizabeth Arden and her warm brown eyes.
Miranda doesn't know much about why he'd wanted so badly for his daughter to stay in New York for her twenty-first birthday nor is she aware of the reasons why he had spent so much time standing guard of Elena and panicking when she had disappeared that day in the woods nearly twelve years ago to the day. She had simply accepted him to be an overprotective father especially because of where they lived and his lineage.
His wife has no idea he has spent nearly twenty-one years acting like an overprotective parent only to all but shove his daughter on the next train to New York the minute she graduated because he knows that if his daughter was to ever cross the vampires who haunted their town, they were going to lose her to the one that had had Mystic Falls cursed in the first place.
His wife has no idea that their daughter was destined to meet Damon Salvatore since the Bennett witch cast her spell in 1864.
And the thing that scares him the most about Elena's predetermined destiny is the fact that the relationship between the vampire and the girl was never specified and Grayson finds himself terrified to know what type of relationship Elena will form with the vampire who started it all.
He glances down at his wife and sees that she's still waiting for his reply. Grayson heaves a sigh and lowers himself down to the kitchen chair beside her, contemplating sipping from her coffee before shaking his head.
"Honey, where is she?" Miranda's voice is soft and soothing and he closes his eyes, suddenly very tired.
"I think she's at the Salvatore Boarding House." He feels her hand tighten around his at his admission and opens his eyes to see her panic. "But she's absolutely safe."
Miranda's silent for a moment and he waits patiently for her burst of panicked anger before the women he loves who reasonably accepts everything he throws at her and still manages to love him, returns.
"She's in a house with those monsters and you want me to believe she's safe?"
He nods sharply, once. "Yes."
"She is not safe, Grayson. I have not spent over twenty-two years living in this nightmare of a town to believe my daughter is safe in the hands of a Salvatore."
Grayson wants to refute her words violently but knows, unless he tells her all he knows that it's not going to be possible. Miranda had given Elena her sense of innate curiosity and he's well aware that disagreeing with her will lead to him telling her everything.
It takes him only a split second to realize that he's going to be damned if he ever survives this night and he may as well let his wife know.
"She's safe, Miranda. I know she's safe because Damon Salvatore cannot physically hurt." Miranda's mouth falls open at his forceful words and he sighs. "You'd better wake Jeremy; he needs to know this too."
Grayson closes his eyes as his wife splutters and decides that he was damned long before he started this conversation.
"What do you mean you can't hurt me?"
Her voice is breathless in his ear and her body is soft, supple and fits dangerously close to perfectly against his and he's more irritated then he's ever been with a woman.
He'd known, hadn't he? Damon thinks sourly. He'd known she was going to pick a fight after he'd simply shut her out after the ridiculous moment when he'd called her beautiful.
He had been able to sense her frustration building to match his as the minutes had ticked past and he'd stood on the other side of the library, pretending to flip through a book and being hyper aware of the girl opposite to him.
He'd been hyper aware that she was causing him more stress in the few hours he'd known her then he'd ever had over a century on earth. He was aware too, that he'd wanted her then more then he'd had when he'd caught himself out in front of Elijah, the innocent fumble over a comment she must have heard a hundred times before just as arousing as the way she'd met his gaze head on.
He was also aware that she'd been breathing and, combined, all those reason were enough for frustration and irritation to start welling.
Then she'd made that sound and he'd taken the bait.
Now, he was frustrated, irritated and brutally aroused as he pressed her body against the bookcase and tried to fight the thoughts of how easy it would be take her against the bookcase, how easy it would be to slide her skirt and bury himself deep inside her to claim.
"I can't hurt you. Isn't that simple enough to understand?" He grinds out, shaking thoughts of taking her from his mind and watching her eyes darken with arousal even more as he shifts his hips and she feels him against her.
"No. It's not simple enough, why can't you hurt me? You're the big, bad vampire, in case you've forgotten."
He's not sure if he's impressed she still manages to sound snide even as her lower body shifts against his and the friction causes him to clench his teeth and wish he'd thought before pinning her against the bookcase.
He decides he's irritated.
Irritated is safer.
"I haven't forgotten but I still can't hurt you." He says and can see that she's not about to let it go. He decides because she's not, he can let her go.
So he does. Unceremoniously, he releases the wrists he'd pinned with one and yanks his body away from hers, watching as she hits the ground, slightly stunned.
"What do you mean, Damon?" Elena asks, raising her hand to push it through her thick dark locks.
For a moment, his attention is based solely on her hand and then he shrugs. "I can't hurt you. Consider it a freaky vampire thing."
She's silent for a moment and he knows she's thinking of a way to argue with him. Something she does surprisingly well and he's sure would entertain him had he not been so irritated to begin with.
"No. It's not a freaky vampire thing. Why can't you hurt me? I get the feeling, given all those 'animal attacks' on hikers when I was growing up, that you can hurt people." Her eyes narrow a little and he can see, actually see, options running through her mind to explain his apparent inability to hurt her. The light up a little when she hits what she must think is a wonderful idea. "Does it have something to do with 1864?"
Damon shrugs because, honestly? He's not sure how to explain it but he's sure that if he ever figures it out, it will explain the fact that he's saved her from two near death experiences in her life.
He's not sure if it has anything to do with 1864 for a whole other reason.
"I don't know."
Elena raises an eyebrow and the frustration he thought he'd seen starting to ebb, returned and he can't help himself. He sneers a little at the look.
"Seriously? You don't know? Weren't you alive then? Or not dead? Or whatever?"
"Or whatever." He snips and then shrugs. "Maybe. But hey, there were a lot of things happening in 1864 weren't there? You know the Civil War and the Geneva Convention and such." He turns her own words on her with a certain sense of satisfaction and finality Elena, apparently, doesn't feel or share.
"Don't change the subject. Is it your inability to not hurt me connected to 1864?" She asks and he wants to point out the absurdity of her mind jumping from him not being able to hurt her to 1864 then realizes that maybe, in her mind, it's not such a big jump.
"I don't know."
Elena snorts. "Please. You know."
Damon scowls at her again, wishing that he hadn't admitted anything and then decides maybe he should go ahead with it anyway. After all, he was already damned so there was no point wondering if he was going to be damned if he ever got out of this conversation.
"No. I don't know."
"How can you not know? Everyone knows you're at least a hundred and forty-five years old, therefore unless my maths is shot to hell, you should know if 1864 is connected to your apparent inability to hurt me." She asks, logically Damon can tell she thinks.
He kind of hates it is logical almost as much as he hates the answer he's about to give her.
"I don't know, Elena, because I don't remember anything about 1864."
She seems stunned for all over five seconds before everything but seriousness slides from her face. "Huh?"
"I don't remember 1864. Most of 1863 too, actually." He elaborates, wondering why he was telling her this and then, inexplicably, not caring.
He doesn't care because, strangely enough, there's something about Elena Gilbert he trusts. He also doesn't care because he's got a feeling the moment he tells her the little he knows, she'll want to figure it and he'd already figured out having a history student used to research was probably a good thing to have around.
"You don't remember?" She asks curiously. "You don't remember anything, at all?"
"Nope." He eyes her and then continues. "Well, except the fact that I'm the reason Mystic Falls is cursed and I kind of remember the spell that was cast."
He thinks if she had been holding a book, she would have dropped it by now as he, as casually as possible, mentions what he does know about his missing year and a half.
A year and a half that haunts him because he's not sure what he did to warrant Mystic Falls and, by extension, himself to be cursed. It picks at him sometimes, when he's thinking too hard about being stuck in this town and he can almost grasp the whisper of the spell.
The whispers which sound all too much like the lines Sheila Bennett and Elijah had fed him earlier.
"Spell? As in witches? There are witches?" Elena sounds so stunned, Damon rolls his eyes.
"Seriously? You're okay with being in a house full of vampires but the idea that witches exist is like telling you The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is based on a true story."
He really likes her glare.
It causes him to smirk as she turns it on him and then he sighs as her watches her push his sarcastic comment aside so she can concentrate.
"Whatever. Do you want help remembering?" She asks pointedly and he shrugs.
"How are you going to help me get my memory back?"
He doesn't mean to sound condescending or, well, condescending but he does and he know she notices because Damon can tell she thinks about glaring before shrugging a little and deciding to answer the question properly.
Elena casts her gaze around the room and then shrugs. "Your historical section may suck but I imagine there's something about supernatural activity in 1864 hidden in here somewhere, we just have to find it."
He's not too sure if he hopes she's right or if he hopes she's completely wrong because there's something about remembering that's making him feel incredibly uneasy.
A/N: I'm not entirely happy with this chapter. I started it a million - possibly only six - times and I'm still not happy with it. The storyline needed to be moved along and the Damon not remembering thing came to be quite strangely, but hey, if it's what the story wants then the story gets. I may come back and review it later and possibly replace it, but its out! I hope you enjoyed reading. Thanks again to all the reviews and alerts, I really appreciate it guys!
