Chapter 24: Fantasies Fulfilled
ELENA
Damon's chest beneath my cheek is the perfect kind of hard: firm, but forgiving. The rise and fall slides me sweetly toward sleep as my hand curls protectively over the scar just inside his hipbone. It started as a whim, resting my head on his shoulder while he reads before bed, but now it's grown into something more like an addiction.
Once I can feel that he's relaxed enough for his breathing to slow, mine follows. And even after my eyelids droop closed, I listen for the soft rustle and scrape of paper that means he's finished another page. It's the last sound I hear every night.
And somehow he knows. Through some alchemy of Damon-ness and probably a couple of super-vamp tricks I haven't learned yet, he always knows the moment when I tip over the final edge into sleep because that's when his lips brush against my hair in a simple whisper of a kiss. I've never quite decided if he's just saying goodnight or if he's waiting until he thinks I won't remember.
In the daytime, he's all wit and flirtation with casual displays of affection, and it's only when I've scared him or when we're in bed together that he lets me catch a glimpse of the true depth of how overwhelmingly much he loves me.
After Katherine used his affection for her to taunt and control him, it's not a surprise. But it's absurd that he thinks I don't know anyway.
I wriggle a little closer and tip my head back so I can press a kiss to the underside of his jaw, where it's starting to roughen with the stubble he gets at the end of a long day. And today has been a horribly long day.
It took me six hours to find a good nursing agency and compel every member of their staff until I could be sure I could trust them not to make mistakes with Cali's grandmother. After that, and everything that happened this morning, I need our ritual of turning pages and quiet and the kind of peace we only find together.
Damon's arm tightens around my waist and I pull in a long, contented breath.
His scent rides in on the air and I smell the richness of his blood pumping beneath clean skin. I can feel the flush of heat on the swell of my cheekbones and I wonder for a second if I should get up and have a blood bag before bed. But it doesn't sound that good right now.
Blood usually smells delicious to me since my transition, savory and enticing even when it's cold. But Damon's blood smells…complicated. Like the kind of mystery that just begs to be unraveled.
I can still remember the taste of him from the day in the Grill, the way it warmed my tongue and woke up my whole body in one lightning-fast rush. I could feel every ripple of his abs through his shirt, the muscles of his thigh when I leaned closer. The way his hand stroking over my hair left me quivering like a first kiss.
Tension coils low in my belly and suddenly I'm not sleepy anymore. I shift restlessly against Damon, kicking my knee up over his legs. My pajama shorts aren't long enough to get in the way and the wiry hairs on his legs tickle the inside of my thigh. I move slowly, carefully, so I won't disturb him as I arch my back the tiniest bit to soothe my sensitive nipples against his side.
His chin shifts as he looks down at me. And I'm so attuned to him that I can smell it when his pulse kicks up a notch. My fangs prickle my lower lip and I hold back a groan, trying to calm down before he notices my reaction. I take a deep, slow breath but that only makes it worse, the dark scent of him weaving through my head until I can hardly keep hold of what I was thinking about.
Damon trails his hand up the line of my spine, my tank top bunching up over his wrist as he traces the bare skin beneath. He makes a tiny sound in his chest, somewhere between a purr and a question.
I shift my leg a little higher, my fingers tightening against his stomach. I hear the muffled bounce of his book hitting the mattress and then he hitches himself up on his side, the hardening length of his arousal brushing across the flannel of my sleep shorts when he turns to face me, because Damon doesn't believe in pajamas.
I catch a satisfied gleam of blue eyes and then he leans in, touching his lips to mine for an unhurried moment before he enters my mouth, smooth and confident. He knows exactly how to get me worked up the fastest but this time he just enjoys the kiss, letting our textures slide over each other, our breath shared between our mouths. His fingers slip over mine on his stomach and he weaves them loosely together.
Something in my chest aches at the easy way he kisses me now, as if he'll always be able to. In the beginning it was desperate, urgent, every time feeling like it might be the last. But now his touches are languorous and playful, an inside joke our bodies only share with each other.
He growls teasingly and nips at my lower lip with blunted teeth, but even that tiniest of bites has my hips rising against his, a moan throttled deep in my throat.
I pull away, gasping, and duck my head under his chin, uncertain if he can see on my face what my body is so determined to have.
"Elena?"
I grip his shoulders tightly so he can't pull away to see me better, and his hand flattens on my back, fingers overlapping both shoulder blades beneath my flimsy sleep tank. But with my head tucked into the curve of his shoulder, the allure of his pulse is much too close for me to calm down. My own veins throb in response, my neck warm and tingling excitedly.
My skin feels like it did when I was newly transitioned, achy and oversensitive, as if every sensation is too much and never quite enough all at the same time. I swallow against my paper-dry throat.
"Damon? Can I ask you something?"
"Yes, Elena, you can be on top." He flops onto his back obediently. "The things we do for love," he sighs heavily.
I roll my eyes, but I don't miss how intently he's watching me, and his hands are tentative as he gathers me against his side, my head finding its place on his shoulder again. The crumpled sheet is slung low on his hips and doing absolutely nothing to hide how interested he is in continuing what we just started.
"What if I wanted to…try something?" I whisper against his skin.
"Like switching to Geico?" he asks, and I bite my lip, too embarrassed to even be irritated. "Or more like a threesome with a Finnish bodybuilder?"
"Damon!" I squeal, pulling back to glare at him.
"Bulgarian gymnast?" he tries again, his brows pulled down into his mock serious face. "No?" My eyes skitter away toward his closet and his brows bob up. "Maybe like some of the toys we talked about?"
I squeak out a flustered breath and dive back against his chest. His arms close around me as he absently smoothes my hair back from my face.
"I bought some things," he murmurs, "that I thought you might like." His hand slips down, cupping the back of my head in a grip that seems oddly protective, even as I feel his arousal twitch eagerly against my hip. "If you're in that kind of mood."
"Not toys," I whisper, mortified.
"No?" His clever fingers make tiny circles on the skin just above the low-slung waistband of my shorts. "Okay."
"Okay?" I query, suspicious of his easy capitulation.
"I've got all the time in the world," he tells me lazily. "When you're ready to have your kinky little way with me, you just let me know."
"What if…I wasn't the one who wasn't ready?" I ask him, squeezing my eyes shut as I wait for him to answer.
He lets out a soft chuckle. "Sweetheart, you feel free to do a hands-on examination of my readiness at any time. No appointment necessary."
I swallow hard. He hasn't offered his blood since the day of the council memorial, and for all the times we've bitten each other in the heat of the moment, he's always been careful to keep his teeth blunt. But that day, I saw the look on his face when I pulled away from him, the haze of pleasure softening his eyes.
If he liked it then, why hasn't he asked again, now that we're free to touch and play as much as we want? Given Stefan's response at the time, it seems like blood sharing is a big no no, but humans are into all kinds of crazy sex things, too. If we're both consenting adults, then what's the harm?
"This is a brooding-free zone," Damon teases, but I can hear the curiosity floating beneath the words. "Keep that up and I'm going to have to ask you to take it out in the hall."
But the problem is that it's Damon. He hates it when there's anything he can't provide for me. If I tell him what I want, he'll give it to me. Even if it's not what he wants.
He moves beneath me, sinking a hand deep into my hair and massaging the base of my neck as he tips my ear toward his mouth.
"You want to try something a little dirty?"
Goosebumps race down my spine at the pure, earthy sex in his voice.
"But you don't want to say it out loud, you just want me to do it to you, don't you?" he purrs, and my breath catches sharply.
He flips us and pins me beneath him as the sheet tangles around our legs, stealing a kiss, wet and deep, as his hips press heavily against mine. I curl my bottom toward him, my hands tightening on his biceps until my nails score his skin and he hisses in pure, dominant satisfaction, his eyes flickering dark and exotic for a bare second while I watch.
"I want you to bite me," I breathe, my head already falling back, my body rolling thoughtlessly beneath his.
The flannel of my shorts is clingy and irritating and I want to tear my clothes off so he can sink into me and bite at the same time, hard and fast and hot so I can feel it in every corner of my body.
His eyes flare fiercely, and then flicker as emotions chase across his face, too quickly to catch them all. I stop breathing, watching him. And when he doesn't answer, I roll away from him with a little gasp, burying my head in the pillow.
I was right then. If it's so kinky, so weird that even Damon looks shocked, then there's something really wrong with me. And what does it mean that he let me do it before?
"I'm sorry," I say into the pillow, tears already leaking out of my eyes. "Let's just forget about it and just go to sleep, alright?"
"Hey," Damon says, dropping down next to me. His voice is low and rough as he pulls me back against his chest, away from my shielding pillow. "You think you get to tell me your dirty vampire sex fantasies and then we just go to sleep? Nuh-uh, no way." He nips at my shoulder, his unabated erection pressing solidly against the curve of my bottom.
"Does that mean you…I mean I just don't–" I give up, hugging my arms across my stomach, feeling stupid and young and awkward. I don't know why I even brought this up. It's not like I need to remind Damon of how inexperienced I am next to him, of all the things I've never tried that he's probably done hundreds of times.
"It's not that I don't want to," he says quietly.
I recognize that tone and fear bolts through me, giving me the courage I need to turn back to him. His eyes are dark, the masculine planes of his face traced by shadows and I fight the urge to flick on another lamp.
"Is it the sire bond?" I whisper, not sure I want to know the answer. "Is that why I want to…taste you?"
His eyes dilate with arousal even as he shakes his head. "No. I haven't told you that bloodsharing is something I want, so it can't be the sire bond." The corner of his mouth turns up in a knowing smirk that coils tension in my belly and pulls a blush back to my cheeks. "Besides, it wouldn't be any different than the other things you know I want to do with you that you're not quite ready for."
I can't hold his gaze, watching the easy rise and fall of his chest instead. He tucks my hair back behind my ear, exposing my face to him.
"You don't feel that pull anymore because you know nothing is more important to me than what you want." He says it simply, but I can feel the absolute truth of it way down deep in me, where I used to feel the demand of the blood magic that binds me to him. It's a gift he gave to me, the kind of love that allows me freedom.
Because with sire bonds and vampire emotions, it's not the kind of thing you can take for granted.
I lay a kiss at the base of his throat, in the vulnerable hollow that only I'm allowed to touch. I don't know if I'll ever be able to admit to him how much I hate that he feeds from other women, that he puts his lips on them, that their blood runs through his beautiful body. At the thought, my fangs hiss down and my hands tighten with the instinct to protect, to shatter and hurt and shred anyone that would try to take him from me.
"I know what I want," I whisper against the throb of his pulse.
Damon may take blood from others, but he'd never allow anyone to take his but me. The rush of excitement I feel from that certainty blasts through my head, through my eager fingers and my thirsty tongue and I'm so focused on the deep scent of his blood that I almost don't feel it when his hands tighten on my arms to stop me.
"Elena, you should know this," he says reluctantly. "When you feed from another vampire, it doesn't just feel good. It's not like it is with humans."
The hesitancy in his voice makes it easier to blunt my fangs, to resist the hot chord in my chest that drives me to feed, marking this man, this vampire, as my own.
"You said it was personal," I say, raising my eyes to his and trying to hide my hurt. "But Damon, I love you. What's more personal than that?"
His hand finds mine, his fingers slipping into place and squeezing lightly, fervently. His blue eyes are unfathomable as I watch him, and I suddenly remember he's lived nine of my lifetimes.
"With a human, you can taste their lifestyle. What they eat, the drugs they've taken, if they're diseased." I catch the quick bob of his Adam's apple before he continues. "With a vampire, you can sense a lot more than that. It's like…" he pauses, searching his mind for words, and I'm completely still as I wait. "It's like what I feel when I enter the minds of animals. It's not words. It's more like an instinct, a knowing. It's a rush," he says, a trace of a smirk curving his mouth. "Better than human drugs."
"Is that why Mikael did it?" I ask. "Maybe it wasn't really that he hated vampires that much after all…"
Damon's lip curls hard, and his eyes flash something vicious that sends a chill rippling over my skin. "Oh, he hated vampires all right," he scoffs, and he lets go of my hand, his arm finding its way around my back, muscles rippling beneath the skin as he holds me to him as if to pull me further from the memory of Mikael.
"Damon, what aren't you telling me?" I demand. "Is this about Mikael?"
"When you give your blood," Damon says instead, "it feels amazing. When it is taken against your will, it feels like…like somebody ripping your mind inside out with a hook. What Mikael did, repeatedly stealing blood from other vampires..." He shakes his head, a jerky movement that vibrates with aggression. "It's one of the sickest, most perverted things I've seen in nearly two centuries."
I inch closer, laying my hand on his chest to try to soothe the disgust that vibrates through his voice.
"It wasn't like that for you, was it? When you let me feed from you at the Grill?" I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but the violence of his reaction has me shaken and I have to be sure.
His eyes come back to mine and an amused glint touches them at my words. "Trust me, Elena, what happened in the bathroom at the Grill could have fed my shower fantasies for a full decade, easy."
A blush tints my cheeks again, but this time it feels nice. I'd never admit it aloud, but I've had a shower fantasy or two about that day, too.
I trace the line of his pectoral muscle with one hesitant finger. "So if you liked it, why didn't we ever do it again?"
The muscle in his jaw jumps once, so quickly I almost miss it, and his thumb rubs slow sweeps against my back, though if it is meant to comfort himself or me I can't be sure.
"Even when it's something you want, with someone you trust, it's not the easiest thing," Damon says quietly, and I can see his eyes tighten. "Especially for me."
Something in his voice pierces right through me, and a lump rises in my throat though I couldn't have said why. I lay my cheek against his chest, warming the skin above his heart as I snuggle into the curve of his arm, ignoring the aching want that still sits heavy beneath my naval and dry in the back of my throat.
"It's okay," I whisper. "We don't have to. Not ever, if you don't want."
His chest vibrates with that silent laugh of his. "When it comes to you, I'm not sure there's anything I don't want to try."
He shifts next to me, and the slide of his body against mine wakes every nerve ending with a nearly audible hiss of anticipation. My throat is scratchy and taut with anxiety. I have to make this good for him, to erase whatever memory traced the darkness into his voice.
Damon's hands slip under my shirt. "Elena?"
I understand him and pull back so I can peel my tank top off. I want to feel him too, everywhere that I can. The bedroom door is already closed but I wish we were alone in the house right now, sealed away miles from everyone we know. Because this should belong just to us.
When his hands push underneath my shorts, I arch my back, pressing into his palms and listening to his breath hiss out. He drags my shorts down, tracing the outline of my hips and then the lower curves of my bottom until his thumbs nearly meet, stroking the soft skin of my inner thighs as I squirm and strain against his hold on me.
The tip of one finger dips briefly into the liquid center of me and my head falls forward against his collarbone, my head light and dizzy at the sudden onslaught of sensation. His fingers wrap around my thigh, tugging my knees apart even as he strips me naked with his other hand.
"I need you to relax, sweetheart," he murmurs into my hair, laying kisses over my temple. "I want us to do this together, and it'll feel better if you relax." I realize dimly that I'm clutching his shoulders too hard, that my hips are leaping helplessly against his touch.
I huff out a breath and concentrate on releasing the tension that's tugging throughout my whole body. He slowly strokes the tip of his nose up the curve of my neck and his next kiss tucks in just behind my ear.
His scent is like a gorgeous dream settling all around me and only one thought rises in my mind.
"You first," I whisper, tilting my chin back so I'm exposed, completely vulnerable to him.
He's given his blood to me so many times: to heal me, to protect me. To save me. And I've never offered mine in return. It only seems right that he take from me first, this time.
He pulls back a single inch and even from there, I can feel the heavy thump of his heartbeat accelerating. "Are you sure?" he asks hoarsely.
My body is thrumming, howling for more of him, and all I can say is, "Please…"
I hear the hint of a growl as his fangs punch down eagerly, but he doesn't rush. My skin is almost painfully sensitive and I roll my body against him, whimpering as I feel his breath stutter against the thin skin of my throat.
There's a sharp, exciting sting and then a sensation spreading like warm honey from my neck down into my chest, tingling through my breasts and spiraling light and beautiful through my arms until every inch of my body feels sacred, balanced in a way I've never felt before.
His lips are cradled softly around the wound, his tongue and my blood winding together in a rush of heat I can feel all the way to my toes. I never want to heal from this, from him.
Damon moans, his cock caught swollen and throbbing between our bodies. His fingers tighten almost roughly in my hair, guiding me until I'm tucked beneath his jaw, our heads lying on each other's shoulders, arms and legs and bodies all in a tangle as we push closer, holding on until the pressure almost hurts but it feels necessary, absolute.
My tongue finds the trail of heat that marks his thick vein and I feel his groan in my belly as his hips buck between my clinging thighs. I couldn't hold my fangs back now any more than I could dissolve my own bones, and they're in him before I can think to slow down. My eyelashes flutter against his skin and he shivers, and I feel him.
It's disorienting, the sense of him inside me and all around me, dominant and protective, warm and fierce, sharp and overwhelming and familiar all at once. Sensations start to coalesce into images, fleeing and twisting so fast I can't even try to hold onto them.
His hand settling onto my hair, the frustrated and fond flash of blue when he looks at his brother, the smooth ball of the Camaro's shifter, fitting perfectly into my palm or his, I can't be sure. The exhilaration of speed: empty and perfectly free.
His blood is rich on the back of my tongue, satisfying in way I've never tasted before. My inner muscles squeeze, empty and begging for the heavy press of him, and we move at the same time, seeking each other.
He slips inside, sending a shock of pleasure bursting through me when he slides home. We've been together so many times now: hard and urgent, slow and sweet, erotic and thrilling, and it's never felt wrong, not once. But it's never felt as right as it does right now.