Chapter 37: Best Case Scenario
ELENA
The boarding house is a settled kind of quiet tonight and it feels full and content, the way I wish I could be. Ric and Stefan went to bed early and Jeremy is hanging out with Matt, but I haven't seen Damon all night and I've been fighting the urge to text him to see where he is. He's used to his freedom and I keep telling myself I have no reason to worry.
Old slabs of hardwood lie solid and un-protesting beneath my bare feet as I climb the stairs, a comforting contrast to the uneasy flutter of my stomach. I've been reading in the living room for hours, waiting. Ric and I built a fire together that kept me company after he went to bed, but the warmth and crackle of the flames only served to remind me of Damon. How even though they are anchored in a single place, they flicker and twist any direction they please, always moving, always beautiful. Always dangerous.
After a while, I realized that the fire never really touches the wood, even as it consumes it. The fluid edges of vivid orange and sunset red flirt and tease just above the surface of the bark but in the end, they don't need to land to make their mark. I watched them long enough that dots of light wavered in front of my eyes when I looked away, my vision spoiled for anything less bright and colorful than what I'd already seen.
After that, I decided that a bubble bath might be a more soothing choice to try and hold the hours of the night at bay.
Maybe the hot water will do what the flames couldn't and wash away the bruised sense of hurt that sits just below my heart, caged by my ribs and heavy on my stomach. This isn't how I expected my relationship to go, that night I moved into the boarding house and I was free to touch Damon for the first time. That night, the connection between us was explosive, so real and honest that it left no room for anything to creep in between us.
And that was how I thought it would be with us. Ruthless truth, even when it hurt, because Damon's too brave for anything else and too stubborn to admit that it's not always the best approach.
I suddenly realize I'm standing motionless at the top of the stairs, Ric's door to my right and mine and Damon's ahead, Jeremy's beyond. The empty guest rooms are behind me, on the other side of the house. It feels like a choice, but it isn't.
I've already made my choice: I won't live like this, constantly wondering what Damon's not telling me, trying to guess what I've done wrong or what someone else might have done to hurt him. I won't live half a relationship, all of his touches distracted or the kind of intense whose demand I don't fully understand because his mind is with someone else.
But when you make an ultimatum, you're opening both doors, even if you don't want to go through one of them.
A tickle on my cheek is my first clue that I've started to cry. My lips twist and my vision blurs, a small sound escaping my mouth. There's a rustling from inside Ric's room and I realize I've disturbed him. I hurry forward into our room, because I don't know where else to go and I don't want to face Ric right now, to try to explain to him why I'm crying when nothing is technically different from this morning.
I close the door behind me and lean against its surface, squeezing my eyes shut. Even if he hasn't said anything, it feels like Damon has already left me, because emotionally he's been gone for days. Hurt throbs raw and red inside my chest and a sob is working its slow way up my throat when a breath of cool night air touches my skin.
My eyes pop open in surprise and I realize the French doors are unlatched, the paired wings of glass beckoning me toward the balcony. I frown, shoving the heel of my hand across my eyes to clear my vision, sniffing a little. Those shouldn't be open.
I check the room, alert now, but everything looks to be in place and there's no sign I'm anything but alone. I cross the floor slowly, the hardwood chilled by the night air and satin-smooth against the soles of my feet.
There's something resting on the floor of the balcony, framed like a clue between the twin brackets of the open doors. Darkness pools thickly in the room and the forest beyond and I take a step closer, squinting to identify the shape of what waits outside.
It's a rose.
A breath whooshes out of me and I move more easily, though with no less puzzlement.
"Damon?" I ask tentatively.
There's no answer, but I can't imagine who else would leave a flower here, though if it were a peace offering, it seems like he would have chosen a daffodil.
A rose is our flower from before I left Stefan, a symbol of a time when my emotions were a hopeless tangle but my body would react immediately when Damon entered a room, awareness tingling across my skin like a wash of cool water followed immediately by confusion and guilt.
Now my arms unwind, reaching for the flower even before I bend down. I pick it up carefully because if it's from my boyfriend, it will have thorns. He told me once that all the sharpest varietals were also the most beautiful.
I smell fresh green beneath the aroma of the petals, as if it is freshly cut, and the razor points of the thorns feel bright and real underneath the pads of my fingers. Tears sting my eyes again, because I know this man, even if it's not enough to understand why he's pushing me away right now.
I tip the flower toward my nose so I can breathe it in, and the savory velvet of one petal caresses my lower lip. As I inhale, something hard wraps around my upper arm and I'm yanked upward, every part of me airborne before I can even formulate a defense.
I pull away and roll to my feet when I land, poised on the balls of my feet with the rough shingles of the roof rasping against my toes. I can smell blood where my fingers tightened on the thorns of the rose, and I drop it so I'll be prepared to fight, though my heart gives a single, lonely thump at its loss.
A chuckle ripples out of the darkness and I blink, my eyes adjusting until I can see him, lounging in lines of black leather that seem like just another texture of the night, like he belongs out here in the bite of the air and the openness of possibility.
He rolls away from the edge and tucks a hand behind his head, kicking up a knee as he relaxes onto his back. "I'll take that response to mean you don't like my present?"
My breath gets tangled up inside my throat and my hand flies to my chest, pressing down over the pounding of my heart.
"Oh my God, Damon, you scared the life out of me."
"All part of the services here at Rent a Villain." He waggles his eyebrows. "Would you like a free preview of our premium package? It's…extensive."
I groan, trying to sort out all the feelings whirling through my chest, and shove irritably at him with my bare foot. He catches my ankle and tugs, knocking me off balance so I stumble but somehow when I start to fall I find myself already cushioned against his chest, both of us sprawled out on the tilted surface of the roof.
"You jerk!" I sigh, struggling grouchily, but the casual strength of his arms is impossible to fight.
"Mmm," he rumbles, dropping his head to nuzzle it into the fall of my hair. "I love it when you wiggle." He presses a playful kiss to my cheek and then pauses at the moisture there.
"Elena, were you crying?" He lets me go, suddenly more intent on seeing my face than holding me still. I roll away from him and sit up, yanking my bunched Henley back down into place.
"What happened?" he demands, all the ease gone from his posture as he sits up next to me. "What's wrong?"
"What do you think?" I snap, shoving my hair back out of my face with impatient hands.
He pauses for a long moment, then sags back just a little. "You're mad."
"You think?" I say tartly.
I see his lips purse slightly, as if he's chewing the inside of his cheek.
"You've been weird and distant all week," I remind him, my outrage making me bold. "And if you think leaving me a damn flower and then scaring me half to death by dragging me up onto a roof is going to make up for it, then I think all that whiskey you've been guzzling has finally gone to your head."
He recoils slightly and his lips tighten. "It wasn't about you," he says shortly.
"Great." I shoot to my feet. "Well, guess what, Damon? You don't get to stick me in a little box labeled 'Elena's business' and keep everything else away from it. When I chose you, I chose to become part of your life, not your dirty little secret."
His face darkens. "Who the hell said you were my–"
"And if that's how it's going to be with you," I cut him off, gathering steam, "then I don't want any part of it."
A part of me is clattering with alarm bells, aware that I've just gone way too far, but the rest of me is too mad to care. And why shouldn't I be mad? If he's going to treat me like this, he's not the man I thought he was anyway and I deserve better. I turn my back on him and take a step toward the edge of the roof.
"Elena." His voice is low and intense, and it stops me like a wall.
I stand, trembling, with a cold wind rushing around me and disappearing into the trees at the edge of the clearing.
"It's not my secret to share," he says, pain clear in the words.
I whirl, facing him once more. "I don't even know what you're talking about!" I say, frustration bleeding into my fists, clenched taut at my sides. "I have no freaking idea what you've been up to all week, much less whose secrets you're keeping."
"It's Ric," he says, and the words are so far from where my mind is that it takes a minute for them to sink in.
I shake my head, confused. "What? What about Ric? I just saw him tonight, and he's fine."
Damon's eyelashes flicker. "Yeah?" He glances away, toward the trees. "That's good."
I feel off-balance, and so I let myself sink down, my legs curling to the side as I find a seat on the roof. Close enough to Damon to touch, though we don't.
"Talk to me," I say simply, and even though it's far from the first time I've said it this week, I can tell this is the first time the words have really reached him.
"Ric's tried to kill me about six different times since he came back from the Other Side," Damon says.
I suck in a breath. "Wait, six?"
"Or maybe seven," he says distractedly. "This split personality thing is dangerous as fuck, so I've been trying to…fix it."
"You've just been living with him all this time while he's been trying to kill you?" I half-shout. "Damon, he's too strong, I told you–"
His eyes cut back toward me, a slice of shimmering silver in the shadow-light of the cloudy evening, and I pause.
"I can handle myself," he growls. "The average lifespan of a vampire is less than a year after their transition, Elena. Do the math."
I throw my hands up. "I know you're good in a fight, Damon! But you don't need to pick one with every creature on earth that's stronger than you in order to prove it to me."
His jaw tightens. "He's my friend. What am I going to do, kick him out?"
"Or at least keep him away from Jeremy!" I exclaim. "I had no idea his personality was flipping that often and Jeremy is a human who helps vampires. Ric's alter ego hates that even more than it hates vampires."
Damon slaps his hands down on his thighs and pushes explosively to his feet. "And of course you freak out. Which is exactly why I didn't tell you what I've been doing."
Chagrin wars with the indignation burning up through my throat and I reach up and grab his hand. "Damon, wait."
He stiffens and his head slowly turns toward me. "You keep telling me that you trust me, Elena, that you love me, but a lot of the time it doesn't seem like you mean either one."
My whole body jerks with the impact of his accusation and I drop his hand from numb fingers.
"Well, now you know how I feel," I say, the words falling from my lips, bare and charred like they are all that remains of the fire of my earlier anger. If he trusted me, I would have already known all this. If he loved me, he would have let me help him.
We don't move.
Is this how it's going to end? I can barely see him now, his silhouette getting lost in the twisting darkness of the branching trees beyond, even though he's still right next to me.
Will he leave now? Will I? Should I?
The abrupt crack of a twig echoes from the forest beyond and Damon's head snaps up, his shoulders angling subtly between me and the trees as his eyes scan for the threat.
His unthinking reaction breaks what's left of my heart.
"It's not that I don't trust you to protect us," I whisper achingly. His head tips slightly back toward me, though he still watches the woods. I swallow. "I shouldn't have said that about Jeremy. I know you would have moved us away from Ric if you thought we were in danger."
"I should have moved you," he says abruptly. "I should have kept Ric away until I was sure he had himself under control." He turns toward me and I peer through the shadows, struggling to see his face. "You're right."
"No." I shake my head. "I want to stay with him, even if we end up having to send Jeremy to live with Matt for a while. And if you think it is safe enough, then it is. Besides, when his alter ego came after me in the dorm, he was able to flip back before he hurt me. And the second time, he didn't try to hurt me at all, not even after I grabbed him."
I pull my knees up into my chest, listening to the crickets in the grass behind the house as my eyes cling to his silhouette.
"I do trust you, Damon, and you know that I love you." I have to struggle to push the words out around the lump in my throat. His outline seethes with tension and I can't see his reaction to my words, if he has any at all, but it doesn't matter because I'm not finished. "But I hate that even now, you don't tell me things. You don't ask for my help because you'd rather I be safe than by your side but that's not what I want, Damon, and you don't know that because you don't ask."
He takes a step toward me, then another one, and then he kneels, close enough that I can finally see him. His thumb brushes across my cheek, and that's when I realize that my eyes are leaking tears again. I push his hand away, swiping them impatiently off my cheeks.
I'm so freaking tired of crying, of emotions that leap around so fast that sometimes I'm three layers deep in my reaction before I even know what I'm reacting to. I want to be in control, dammit. I want him to see me for the adult that I am, not for the weepy teenage drama queen I probably look like right now.
"I'm not going to apologize," he says gruffly, "for wanting you alive. I'd rather have you safe and hating me than in danger because you're with me. But I didn't mean to upset you."
I swallow, a little caught off guard by his admission, and the fact that he's admitting the point instead of just storming away for once.
He touches me again, tucking a long strand of hair back behind my ear, his fingertips tracing the very edges of my face as if he wants to remember the shape of me, but he's not sure he's allowed to venture any closer.
My breath snags roughly as his hesitation and I throw my arms around his neck, my fingers grasping convulsively on the cold leather that protects his back.
He hisses out a desperate breath, his cheek pressed hard against my hair and his arms almost painfully tight when they lock around my ribs.
"Dammit, I love you," he whispers against my ear, and I squeeze him tighter with the terrible relief of it.
He shifts and I find myself curled into his lap as he opens his jacket and tries to spread it across my back.
"It's freezing out here," he mumbles. "Don't know what the fuck I was thinking, luring you up on the roof to make out when it's practically winter."
I can't help but smile. "Is that what you were doing?"
He pauses guiltily. "Maybe."
I laugh and turn away from him so he can fold me inside his jacket, his legs propped up to either side of my hips and his chest warming and supporting my back.
"I didn't realize you were going to be pissed at me," he admits.
"I'm still deciding," I say primly, though I don't think I'm fooling him as I snuggle a little bit closer. "So how did you try to fix Ric?"
He hesitates for a long moment and anger starts to prickle deep in my belly again. Is he seriously going to try to dodge again? After all that?
"We tried talking it out," Damon admits, sounding faintly embarrassed. "Didn't work, no surprises there. So Ric…" I can feel the heave of the deep breath he takes, the jacket parting where it's folded across my chest and letting in a draft of cold air. I wiggle my shoulders deeper inside the leather.
"He asked me to get inside his head," Damon finally says. "To try to figure out what was wrong."
I'm glad it's dark, to hide my surprise. I knew they were close, but Ric doesn't like to talk about his past very much. It's a little weird that he would ask Damon to look directly into his thoughts.
I frown. "Do you mean in his dreams? But if you gave him a dream, how would that tell you anything?"
"There are ways to manipulate dreams that allow a person's natural reactions to come through," he explains, a little stiffly as if he's waiting for me to yell at him. "If you do it right, you can learn a lot. I've always been good at it. After my time with the Augustines, I was even better."
"Did it work?" I ask softly.
"Not sure yet," Damon admits. "We'll just have to wait and see if he flips again. But we definitely found the problem," he says, bitterness touching the edges of his words.
I'm quiet, trying to decide how to word what I want to ask next. Surprise ripples through me when Damon speaks first.
"He learned pretty early on that the easiest way to hold on to his place in the world was with his fists. But he's Ric so he made sure to turn that in the right direction, toward people who needed a little straightening out. Problem is," Damon's voice turns sardonic, "something happened to him that made him decide he was one of the bad guys, but it didn't knock the vigilante tendencies out of him. Which is how we ended up with a semi-suicidal vampire hunter with one half of his personality on either side of the morality divide."
"I figured it was something like that," I murmur, my chest tightening with sympathy. I try to turn a little so I can see Damon's face, but he doesn't seem to want to loosen his hold on me so that I can.
"There are a lot of things in this world," Damon says roughly, "that I wish I could take my fists to."
That's all he says, but I hear him anyway. Whatever he found in Ric's dreams, it wasn't something he could change for his friend, and it's been eating him alive all week. I wriggle a hand out from under his jacket and smooth it over his thigh, squeezing comfortingly.
He tilts his head and presses a kiss to my hair. "I didn't mean for you to think I was hiding things from you. I guess I'm just not used to people caring about my moods."
I nudge him with my elbow. "Well, get used to it."
His nearly soundless chuckle stirs my hair and I relax a little bit more against him.
"You know, Ric will be okay," I venture after a while. "He's got all of us, and we know what he's going through. Villains for Rent, remember?" I say playfully.
He groans. "Don't tell me you're filing yourself into the 'bad person' column now. Come on, Elena, you helped us compel a girl to forget a crappy couple of days. That's all. It's not like you took away her birthday and slapped her pet hamster."
"Don't worry, I'm not going to go all martyr-y on you," I tease, wrinkling my nose. "It's just that these days, I'm starting to wonder…" I pause and take a breath, "if you can live in this world and be entirely good."
"Ding ding ding!" Damon exclaims. "Give the girl a washer dryer set and a week's all-expenses-paid vacation to Maui."
I scowl indignantly. "Shut up. I'm serious."
He snorts. "I've been saying that for years. Figures you need a mental patient for an example before you decide I'm right."
I flick his leg. "Smartass. You have to admit, though, Ric's kind of taking the easy way out. He actually thinks he's two different people. I feel like that all the time, but I'm stuck knowing that I'm not."
"Well, that's it," Damon says, twisting to slip his arm under my knees, standing with me in his arms. "Off to the basement cell we go," he says cheerfully. "Don't worry, it has a coffee table and a cot now. It's almost up to Motel 6 standards."
With that he steps off the roof and I squeak and grab at the front of his shirt before I can help myself. The boards shudder when we land on his balcony and he grins as my eyes pop open and I smack him in the chest.
"We are not going to the basement cell," I tell him sternly.
He raises his eyebrows. "Well, I thought it was a little kinky, but you know my policy about lady's choice."
"The lady wants to get ready for bed," I whisper.
It's strange, but more than anything what I want is to get back to our routine, to know we still have a normal. With Damon, the intense is easy: the arguments, the sex, the way even on our worst day he'd kill any enemy that got within a block of me. But it's when he relaxes with me, when we're just brushing our teeth side by side or bumping into each other trying to make coffee before either of us are really awake, that I really feel like this thing between us is real. That it is here to stay.
His eyes warm, tracing their way down to my lips. "Pushy," he growls. "I like that in a woman."
He carries me to the bathroom and sets me down on the counter next to the sink.
"How am I supposed to get ready for bed up here?" I complain, swinging my feet playfully.
"You're not," Damon informs me with a smirk. "You're just supposed to look pretty while I do."
He shrugs out of his jacket, then drags off his tee shirt in one casual motion that makes his abs flex distractingly. I narrow my eyes at him.
"That is cheating," I accuse, knowing exactly what he's going for here.
His long eyelashes droop in a way that makes me think of slow mornings in bed and bare skin sliding over cool sheets. "Never said I believed in playing fair," he purrs.
My thighs press together restlessly, but I push off the counter and hop to the floor to cover it, turning my back on him and keeping my eyes away from the traitorous mirror.
Sex is a comfort zone for Damon, but it's also a place where he can be in supreme control. After talking about Ric, and fighting with me, he'll want to be close to me, to please me the way only he can, but I know he also wants to distract me from asking questions he doesn't want to answer.
Damon takes a step closer and I remind myself to keep breathing, rummaging through a drawer as if I haven't already forgotten what I was looking for.
Damon can always make me forget. And he knows it.
He eases closer until his body is only a breath behind mine, the heat of him making my skin tingle in a sparkling rush that runs from my scalp to my heels. He ducks his head so his breath strokes the nape of my neck, tracing the crook of one knuckle along the line of my shoulder blade down to the band of my bra. It suddenly feels tight and confining, my nipples taut beneath two layers of concealing fabric. But I want to be close to him tonight in a way that doesn't have to do with the wordlessness of sex.
My fingers close around something inside the drawer and I pull it out, determined to distract myself before he gets his way. Again.
I steal a glance down to see what I've got, and it's a hairbrush.
I clear my throat and tilt my chin up, starting to brush my hair with curt strokes that force Damon to take a step back and also hide the fine trembling of my hand. But then the brush catches on a knot in my wind-tangled hair and my eyes water a little at the sting. Damon takes the brush from me, gently unwinding strands from the bristles.
"Easy on the hair," he says. "I happen to like it."
I frown at him in the mirror despite all my resolutions not to look, especially with the taut swells of his perfectly sculpted shoulders clearly visible above mine. "I know how to brush my own hair," I mutter.
"All evidence to the contrary," Damon counters, and lifts the strands back over my shoulders so he can begin. I expect him to flirt and tease, but instead he's quiet, his gaze following my hair in a way that makes my stomach do a slow, heady flip.
Something has changed with him, but as soon as the hairbrush makes its first slow sweep, I lose track of what it might be. In his hands, the brush moves smoothly, tugging faint ripples of sensation across my scalp. The bristles tickle the backs of my shoulder blades when he gets close to the ends, and it makes me want to wriggle and sigh with pleasure.
My eyes droop closed, and I list a little closer to the counter, leaning against it. There's no sound but the rhythmic stroke of strands and Damon's soft breathing behind me, slowing to a nearly meditative rhythm. I'm so relaxed that I'm almost dozing, and when a puff of cold air comes billowing through the room from the open doors, I flinch a little and shiver.
"Brr," I complain lightly, my eyes popping open. I hesitate when I see the way Damon's watching me in the mirror, the clear blue totally unguarded and almost painfully vulnerable in the way his gaze catches on my face. His eyelashes sweep down and he ducks his head to leave a kiss just inside the neckline of my Henley.
"Be right back," he murmurs, setting down the brush and striding into the bedroom.
My fingers rise of their own accord to touch the invisible mark of his lips on my skin. I swallow and take a step to the side so I can see him as he takes a long look outside before he closes the door and turns the bolt with a quick flip of his wrist, turning back around and raising his eyebrows when he sees me watching. I cross my arms and lean against the doorway of the bathroom, remembering something I was thinking about earlier.
"What's with the balcony this week?" I ask him. "I've never even seen you open those doors before."
Damon glances back toward the doors as if this is the first time he's seen them, then shoves a hand through his hair. "When I was with the Augustines, I was inside for five years straight," he admits and I struggle to conceal the pang that darts through me at the honesty of his words. He gives me a wry smile as he saunters back toward the bathroom. "Tends to give a man a craving for fresh air."
Which means that despite all his denials, this new run-in with the Augustines is definitely dredging up some uncomfortable memories for him. I bite back the impulse to ask why he didn't tell me it was bothering him. Instead, I just hold open my arms.
He catches my hands, tickling my fingers playfully as he drapes them around his neck and bends his head to kiss me.
Damon knows how to do things with his tongue that I don't even have names for, knows just how to move to get me to melt and moan, but right now he's not trying to seduce. When his lips press to mine, it's with an uncalculated kind of urgency, like he's trying to answer a question he doesn't know how to ask in words.
When he pulls away, tears prickle my eyes at the rawness of his response, but all he says is, "Pj's or your toothbrush first?"
I can't help the smile that creeps across my face, my fingers rising to cup the roughening stubble of his cheek. "I love you," I whisper.
His eyes flash intensely as he looks down at me, but his smirk is all teasing when he says, "If I'd known all it took to win you over was some pajamas and a toothbrush, my 2009 would have gone one hell of a lot better."
I laugh, the sound catching in the tightness of my throat because I almost don't know how to take in the sight of him when he's not hiding from me.
His hands slide down to cup my hips and his thumbs flick underneath the hem of my Henley, rubbing the bare skin there with a slow, comforting sweep. He quirks one eyebrow in a silent question and I smile quizzically.
"Since when do you ask permission to strip me? You've destroyed half of my wardrobe since we got together."
"Since the garage debacle with He-Who-Shall-Remain-Concrete-Stew. And since you started getting all darty-eyed whenever you get undressed," he says matter-of-factly.
"Noticed that, did you?" I mutter, flushing slightly.
"Mmm," is all he says, but his hands close a little more firmly over my hips, his shoulders bending toward me as if he's shielding me from sight.
"Maybe I'd feel better if you did the undressing," I tell him, taking his hands and moving them underneath my shirt.
"Great plan," he tells me, his voice teasing but his eyes gentle as he slowly tugs my shirt off over my head, testing my response.
My pulse kicks up as the air hits my skin and I know he hears it because he cocks his head in a silent question, hesitating.
I blush, fumbling as I try to think of how to explain to him that my reaction has nothing to do with trauma and everything to do with how he's watching me.
But he must read my expression loud and clear because his eyes flare with heat and he steps closer, hooking a finger inside the waistband of my jeans. My hips curl toward the single touch and a dark sound of approval rumbles up through his chest. He takes his times unzipping my jeans and stroking them down my legs, lifting out one foot at a time so that I'm all but panting by the time he rises back to his feet.
"Pajamas?" he asks hoarsely. Tenderness washes through me as I realize he's giving me an out if I still feel like just getting ready for bed, even though that's obviously not what he would prefer.
I pull him against me, my nails biting into the smooth muscles of his back, the flush of blood beneath my skin making it crazy sensitive to every texture of him. With Damon here with me, my nakedness feels sexy, wild. Nothing like vulnerable. Nothing like afraid.
"No," I say, and nip the bare curve of his neck with blunt teeth, listening to his pulse thunder and rise beneath my tongue.
He picks me up and boosts me onto the counter, his hips forcing my knees wide in a way that makes my muscles clench excitedly deep inside where I want to feel him. I lean back and pop my bra open, exposing the taut peaks of my nipples.
Damon cups my face in his hands, his thumbs brushing along my jaw as he waits for my gaze to steady on his before he lets his eyes drop any lower. I try to wait but I have to kiss him, my chest aching in awe at how careful he's being with me, with how safe my body feels next to his. I reach down and pull open the button of his jeans, careful with the zipper because I can feel the swell of his erection behind it.
"Elena," he gasps, and then I've got him, thick and crazy hard as he fills my whole hand. I reach around and slip my other hand inside his loosening jeans, scoring the tight curve of his ass with my nails to bring him closer.
He hisses a curse and his cock jumps eagerly in my hand. "Elena, wait, you're not ready," he attempts, but then his fingers are inside my panties and they slip slickly across me. His breath goes ragged as he feels exactly how ready I am and I smile, my eyes dropping closed because I know I'm about to get exactly what I want.
He pushes my panties aside and I guide his swollen head to me, gasping as I press the glistening tip of his penis to my clit, rubbing myself against him.
He's openly panting and I know he's watching me pleasure myself, his hips moving in tiny involuntary jerks that feel incredible. When I'm hovering on the edge of orgasm, I nudge him lower and he lets out a strangled moan and his muscles flex sharply beneath my palm as he enters me in one powerful thrust.
All my muscles clamp down around his cock and he bucks once, demanding. I whimper, trembling as I try to hold back, but he angles himself knowingly and I don't stand a chance. I let go, the waves of my release coaxing him deeper while his breath hisses out from between his teeth.
His arms come around me and one of his big hands buries itself in my hair. He hides his face in my neck, thrusting hard even as he locks me safely into his arms and I part my legs even more, giving him the freedom to take me any way he wants to.
This feels different now, like there are no secrets between us; we're as close as our bodies are in this moment and everything about it feels right.
The rough denim of his jeans excites my inner thighs as they slip off and start to slump down his legs, falling further with every roll of his hips. I can feel his lips move against my pulse, leaving my name inside a kiss, pressed to my skin with a fervency that feels like a vow, like a spell that will change things I can't even imagine.
His breathing is starting to stutter in a way that I adore and I tilt my hips up for him. I know he's already close and I know exactly what he needs to help him to finish.
And then there's a crash as all the windows in his bedroom shatter, glass ricocheting musically across hardwood in a chaotic wash of sound that's followed closely by footsteps.