Chapter 49: Between Love and Hate

DAMON

I'm poised for full vampire speed as I turn, because a dignified exit is no longer high on my must-have list, but I'm betrayed by my fucking door-less bathroom.

Elena could have easily broken the tie holding her to my bed, but she hasn't. She's waiting for me, her eyes full of the one thing I've never been able to resist.

"I want you," she tells me, giving it words. "Come here."

I hate her.

Her eyes stay locked with mine as I walk back toward the bed, unbuttoning my pants. She squirms with anticipation, unable to keep still, her breasts bouncing slightly with her movements, garter belt framing her sex like the picture of purely sinful temptation.

God, I love her.

I step out of my jeans and she catches her breath at the sight of my arousal. I kneel between her knees as I wrap my hand around my dick, stroking it for her while she watches. She bites her lip, whimpering and I take it as an invitation, bending to rub my cock against her instead.

Elena moans, digging her heels into the mattress and pushing her hips toward me. She's begging, her words splintering apart into a sea of syllables. Her eyelashes flutter open again and my chest throbs painfully. I want her to touch me like she loves me again.

I wonder if I untie her, if she would, or if I've already ruined it.

That desire isn't mine, I remind myself. The part of me that wants her more than any other girl isn't really me. The part that's me, that's free of doppelganger magic, has never really loved any girl. They're just pretty bodies filled with sex and blood.

That's all this girl is. I roll her onto her stomach and force her up on her knees. She's bucking back against me even as I manhandle her and I grit my teeth against my flood of anger at her willingness to let me use her body.

"Damon, please, I need more," she moans and I close my eyes. I've got to get away from her, but I can't go and it just fuels my anger.

I grab her by the nape of the neck, pinning her head against the bed and plunging into her, sinking all the way into the hilt. I freeze, knowing that must have hurt her and disgusted with myself for caring, but she moans instead of sobs and even with as hard as I'm holding her down, she's pushing me deeper, pleasuring herself on me before I can break my paralysis.

"Goddamn it, Elena," I curse, my voice uneven. I need to run.

I drive into her once, then again, brutally hard. She's just another girl, I've had hundreds. I know exactly how to do this.

But her body clasps me like it knows me.

I push myself faster, trying to let urgency overwhelm everything else. My eyes are stinging. My hand bruises her neck and I'm gasping for air I shouldn't need, trying to outrun all the parts of me I can't control.

And then she comes again, her body caressing me deeply, secretly. I can't help but stop, biting my lip against the sensation.

Blood wells around the edges of my teeth. She moans my name in the midst of her pleasure and I suddenly focus on my hand, biting into the soft skin at the nape of her neck. I snatch it away, shame closing my throat. A drop of blood escapes my lip and falls onto her back.

All the air rushes out of me. I wipe the blood off of her and pull out carefully. Reaching up, I snap the tie holding her to the bed and roll onto my back, cradling her against my chest.

"Elena, baby, talk to me," I plead. "Tell me you're okay. Please tell me you're okay."

She lifts her head, her eyes heavy-lidded and sleepy with sex.

"Hmm" She presses a lazy kiss to my jaw and wiggles against me then bites her lip, peeking mischievously up at me through her lashes. Relief floods through me, chased quickly by guilt. Elena wriggles again and I feel her moist heat against the swollen head of my cock.

I suck in a breath, holding very still, but she's still looking impish. This time when she moves, I slide right back into her and she closes her eyes, smiling. I can't resist that smile. I don't know why, or if it's real, but I curl my hips to see if I can get it to stay.

I can.

Elena takes her bound hands and hooks them behind my head so she can hold me. I reach down and bend one of her knees up high by my side and flatten a hand on the small of her back, guiding her until I know I can hit exactly the right angle. Then I stroke my other hand down her hair and rock into her. Softly now, slowly, my whole body easing against hers.

She sighs, her tongue dipping into my mouth and lazily tasting mine. Even the slow strokes are driving me too close to the edge and I work one hand between us until I can lay a finger to each side of her over-sensitized clit. Her breathing stutters and her arms tighten around me.

"One more time, sweetheart," I whisper in her ear.

I curl my hips deeper and she shifts her legs to take more of me. My breath comes out in short little pants as I try to hold off long enough and then she's there, her muscles clenching around me once more and I let go, driving deep inside her and groaning through my teeth.

I collapse, blood still pounding through my head as I lay there, totally wrung out. Beneath the satisfied hum of my body, my chest echoes with disgust.

I can't rest, even though I'm exhausted in every possible way. Instead, I scoop her up and carry her into the bathroom, cranking the faucets on the tub before sitting down on the floor, Elena curled into my lap.

She doesn't even seem to notice the change of venue, snuggling her head in under my chin. I unbuckle my belt from around her hands, throwing it as far as I can. I hear drywall crumbling under the impact of it against the far wall. I rub the red marks on her wrists, watching them heal.

I press a kiss to the abused flesh, unable to care that it's not really me that's horrified at my actions. I should be dancing a jig right now that I fought the Guardian spell long enough to punish her for stealing my heart and my free will. But the spell still feels firmly intact, because I'm the one who is chastened.

In the morning, I can feed myself to whatever dark storm of self-destruction my impulses can conjure, but for now I'm enslaved again and I won't leave until I've taken care of Elena.

I hide her in my arms and rock her, the cold tiles unforgiving beneath me.

"Mmm," she murmurs against my throat and I don't have the strength left to fight her hands stroking my chest.

The tub is nearly full, so I turn off the water and lift Elena onto the counter, avoiding her eyes as my expert fingers remove her garters and stockings, the ache in my chest moving up into my throat at the sight of her crookedly fastened garter.

"I'm tired, Damon," she says, leaning back against the blank wall where my mirror used to be before she threw a hunter into it. "Maybe we should just go to bed."

"You'll be less sore if we take a bath," I tell her gruffly.

She hooks a foot around my hip and tries to tug me closer, smiling a sleepy, playful smile. "I don't mind being sore from that. Besides, I don't think vampires stay sore." She giggles. "I didn't last time and God knows we tried."

How can she be laughing after what I just did to her? I pick her up, feeling like someone should stake me for daring to put my hands back on her.

Its real for her, douchebag, and you're ripping her heart out.

None of this is her fault. I lower her gently into the warm water and scoop her hair over the edge of the tub so it won't get wet. I fold up a clean hand towel and slide it under her head to pad the hard ceramic of the tub.

She catches my hand without opening her eyes and tugs. Instead of joining her, I detangle her fingers from mine and start looking for a sponge so I can wash her without touching her with my filthy hands.

"You coming, too?" she asks lazily, swirling the water with careless movements of her toes. When I don't answer, she tips her head back, her eyes coming open. "Damon?"

My jaw tightens at the sound of my name.

Elena sits up, the towel cushioning her head falling into the water. "You don't know, do you?" she asks, sounding alarmed. "Oh my God, I never actually told you."

Against my better judgment, I look at her, my mind too depleted to even supply scenarios for what kind of bad news she has to pass along.

"All this," she gestures at the pile of lingerie on the floor, a blush rising to her cheeks, "was because I didn't think you'd listen to me any other way, and I…" she trails off, studying my face, her eyes narrowing. "This isn't over, is it? You didn't forgive me. But how?"

I watch realization dawn in her face as I stand there, feeling like a disgusting old man. Now she gets it. That sex isn't necessarily about love.

Elena crosses her arms but she's still not giving up. God, when does she ever?

"The Guardian spell isn't real," she tells me urgently. "I went to talk to Katherine and she says she's met plenty of doppelgangers and they never had Guardians, brothers or otherwise. She says the curse is a legend, built around Tatia and Klaus and Elijah and then you and Stefan and Katherine. It's not real. It was never real."

I can't take this in. This is a magic wand, a little blue pill. She can't just wave a hand and take away the one thing that has burned my life off at the roots.

I want to lie down on the tiles and sleep until the next decade comes along, but I can't. Fuck it, I won't. I've been beaten to within kissing distance of death in six different ways, tortured, mind-fucked and burned but I've never laid my head willingly on anyone's chopping block.

I won't keep laying it on hers.

"And I'm just supposed to take Katherine's word for it?"

"If there was really a Guardian spell, you would love Katherine so much you would believe anything she said," she retorts. "And if she wanted to hurt you, all she would have to do is lie and say it was real."

"Super! That settles it then," I say in a cheery voice.

Her face falls. "Damon, we get new information about the supernatural world like twice a week. It's not always true," she says urgently. "You've said that plenty of times yourself."

I give her my best cynical smile because I want to believe her. I want to believe her way too fucking much to let myself, because that's what the spell wants from me and I can feel it closing my throat against the sight of her concern. I can feel it pushing me, begging me to sink into that warm, sweet water with her and let the slide of her skin against mine drug me back into submission.

"Yeah, I'm not buying it," I snap. "I know you don't want me to believe in that spell. You've made it perfectly fucking obvious that you're willing to do anything that's necessary to change my mind about it," I gesture to her nudity with a purposefully crude eye movement.

She surges to her feet, splashing water all over the floor as her shoulders hunch forward, her arms wrapped self-consciously over her breasts even as she glares murderously at me. Thank God. She's not used to fighting without the protection of her clothes and if I make her uncomfortable, she'll leave all the faster and take my temporary insanity with her.

"You've got plenty of information that you could use to bribe Katherine to lie to me for you," I point out. "And shit, it's Katherine. She'd ruin my life just for a mid-week thrill. So no, Elena, I don't fucking believe that it's all kittens and twinkling stars because dear old great-grandmother Katherine said that it was."

I jerk her towel off the rack behind me and hold it out to her before I think better of it.

She looks at the towel, something shifting and gentling behind her eyes. After a moment, she takes it from me and wraps it around herself.

"This wasn't ever about believing in a spell, was it?" she says, climbing out of the tub.

Somehow, instead of making a tearful escape, she's dry-eyed and dangerous, stalking across the bathroom. "It's us you can't believe in."

She doesn't stop until she's practically standing on my toes and I feel the bathroom counter pressing into my back. Stupid, to let her corner me like that.

"And yeah," she laughs bitterly and it sounds odd coming from her throat. "Maybe I haven't given you many reasons to trust me. But you…."

She reaches up and touches my cheek, her face softening. "You should have known that I couldn't help but love you, knowing you the way I do. No one could. That's why you don't let them see you. Because you can't risk them doing what Katherine did, what Stefan did."

Her fingers stroke my jaw and I've never felt anything less comforting. "You know it's too late, don't you?" she whispers sympathetically. "If you were going, you would have left days ago."

She drops her hand and slowly turns away.

I grip the counter behind me, my throat closed up so tight that it's a damn good thing I don't need air.

I've never met an Original half as dangerous as that tiny little ex-cheerleader currently taking off with my towel. She thinks I'm scared? No fucking shit I'm scared. Katherine gutted me for a century and a half without breaking a sweat and she didn't have a tenth of the hold over me that Elena does. No matter what she says, that has to be some kind of witch's brew because it sure as shit isn't normal.

Elena pauses in the doorway and looks back.

"You know the best part? Katherine did love you, not just Stefan. It was one of the many things she didn't mean to tell me today." She shakes her head. "But she was too much like you to be able to stay with either brother. The question is, do you want to spend the next few hundred years alone because you're too afraid to let anyone catch you?"

Her eyes are gentle and for a second I think she's going to come back, despite everything I've done. But instead she drops the towel, flashing me spectacularly and tosses it back to me.

Elena smiles sadly. "I think you need that more than I do."