So the beautiful mystical gooddame gave me a prompt. So I decided to write it especially for her because she's lovely and deserves all of the writing since she always bestows us with the best klaroline goodness. Her prompt was "THE COOLEST PERSON EVER JUST ASKED FOR A PROMPT. Klaus is assigned as a bodyguard for his last case before retirement to reluctant client erotica writer Caroline Forbes, who's fan has turned stalker Klaus is disgusted that her editor needs her last chapter done and that's more important than her life. Funny business ensues after a fight and he stalks out trying to hon in his baser instincts only to walk back to their shared room to an undressing Caroline."

He was three weeks from retirement.

Three more weeks and he would no longer be at the beck and call of his father and the never-ending defensive ministrations that were common place for Mikaelson Protective Services. For 13 years he'd done everything that was assigned to him without fail.

Whatever was required, whatever was asked.

They had all started out that way. Elijah, Finn, Kol, even Rebekah. Their father maintained assured certainty that the only way that they could learn the business properly was to be a proper agent at the very bottom. Logically it made sense, and if it had been anyone else's father Klaus would have thrown himself into his tasks confident that the would arise to an esteemed position through the organization. But he didn't have anyone else's father. His father was Mikael Mikaelson, and nothing was ever as it seemed.

Finn left first, promoted to be the lead liaison for his mother. It served a double purpose, they could effectively manage the accounting operations for the business while providing his mother with a protective eye as she traversed the globe. Out of all of his siblings, Finn had always been his mother's favorite, and the feeling was mutual in regards to how the other Mikaelson children regarding Esther's cool and manipulative attitude. It was no hardship to let the position go to Finn, it was what he was suited for.

Next was Rebekah. Again, the position was ideally matched, Rebekah, though she was a nagging bint at times was beautiful, and she could charm a man within a matter of moments if she set her mind to it. Who better to be the public relations face of their company than an attractive young woman who knew exactly what she was talking about. Rebekah excelled immediately, contracts increased tenfold. Mikaelson protective services began to receive global recognition. It was one of the smartest moves the company could make in regards to their continued future.

Kol's leaving the force wasn't so much of a step up as it was a step sideways. Kol was a loose cannon, and though he attacked his tasks with violent fervor, he was sloppy, even dangerous. He did however have an unmatched talent when it came to mechanics. He could build anything, could transform even the most mundane household appliance into a weapon. After a particularly nasty event in Amsterdam that nearly landed the company in a grueling legal battle it was everyone's agreed opinion that Kol's talents should be focused elsewhere. They had never had a mechanical department before, but the addition of Kol to help create technical equipment and maintain modifications on their vehicles became a valued asset to their business.

Elijah and Niklaus were left. And it was Elijah's promotion that hit the hardest. Niklaus had worked for his father for longer, had done whatever was required. He'd done things that he wished he hadn't at his father's request. Their father always said that Elijah didn't have the stomach for it. The stomach to do what was necessary in order to maintain the greater good. He was right. Elijah's morality was like the suit he wore every day. It clung to him, visible to anyone who looked upon him. Nikalus was different. Niklaus was a bastard.

When his father had gathered them together it seemed to be an average conference regarding the next contract they'd received. Another person in need of help, another paycheck in the bank. NIklaus had not expected what would come next. Elijah's promotion to their father's position stung in a way that he would never be able to explain. It was a figurehead position, his father told Niklaus later that evening. Mikael would still be running the business, but Elijah would be the face behind the name now. A position that his father had all but promised him every time he gave him that sadistic smile and ordered him to do another unspeakable act.

And Niklaus?

Klaus would be sitting there taking orders as always. He'd be getting in fights, putting himself in the way of bullets, the one holding the gun and squeezing the trigger.

He'd never ascend as his family members had.

And he knew exactly why. Because he was not his father's son.

It had taken him months to get the courage to tell his father that he was retiring, and in the end, he didn't even have the courage to do it to his face.

Elijah was acting CEO now. And it was Elijah who, to the outside world would make the decision.

His father had fumed, but Elijah had understood.

So they agreed to a two month remaining contract that would ease him out of the business. Then he would be free. To do what he was not sure. He had no other skills, there was a time in his youth that he had painted, but those were the scratching of a child, and not a career to replace his current one. He had enough money stashed form some of his seedier deeds that he would be able to sustain himself for a while but never in the fashion that he had been accustomed to for so long.

He had not spoken to his father since Elijah had handed him the Forbes contract.

And that's when everything changed.

It was supposed to be cut and dry. An easy empty headed muscle position he could walk through until Elijah cut him his severance check and he could stumble into the world outside of the family business. An erotica writer with a stalker. It wasn't the first position that he had to maintain a masculine presence to warn off someone who couldn't take a hint. He'd done it hundreds of times before. An honestly a woman who wrote smut could easily find herself a clinger if she were particularly talented with a pen.

And was Caroline Forbes talented.

Yes, he had read some of her work. He was a professional after all, it was his job to understand why some chap thought some haggard spinster was worthy of jail time. He had read half of one of her novels, other than agreeing that the woman had talent he was amused. The things birds did to get their jollies. But he didn't judge, to each their own.

The picture in his mind was vividly clear. A mousy haired bespectacled lass with a penchant to avoid eye contact whenever possible.

Was he wrong.

Caroline Forbes had stalked up to him in her agent's office with fire in her eyes and a body that could turn even a priest into a sinner. To this day he could picture her, eyes wild, her hair haloed by the sun filtering through the open window, her porcelain skin clad in a summer dress that could only be described as torturously adorable. She was a vision, a vision that didn't appreciate his presence in the least.

"Thank you, but we won't be needing your services."

"Caroline." Stefan said warningly as he rose from his desk and ambled around the table. "Mikaelson's is the best in the business. We're lucky to get them. And honestly I don't believe you are safe as you think you are."

She wheeled around, hands bracketing luscious hips that Klaus gave no indication that he noticed though he most certainly did. "I am fine."

"He was in your house last night Caroline." Something passed between the two, something that Klaus recognized instantly as a fondness, one that he probably mirrored when he was with his own sister. Salvatore was obviously concerned for Ms. Forbes safety, and he had to admit that the continued time in her company he couldn't say that he didn't feel the same.

Silence ensued before she finally agreed. In the most begrudgingly obstinate way possible.

Klaus moved into the second room of her penthouse that very night.

It was supposed to be a simple project Elijah had claimed, one that he could waltz through with minimal effort and little care. That wanker was a sodding liar.

Caroline Forbes was anything but easy. She was stubborn, and rude, and reckless to the point that she drove him absolutely barking mad. She would leave the house without him, she had a penchant to leave the kitchen drawers in her living room open so that he'd smack his knees into them, and most of all she refused to do a thing that she was told. From the moment that he had been appointed Caroline Forbes protector she had been a pain in his arse. But he could not claim that she was an unwelcome one. It didn't take him long before he began to unravel her. She was loyal, and loving, and had a laugh that snaked its way down his chest into his stomach. Her smile, one of the few true smiles he's been able to garner from her beamed like a beacon of light. The five weeks he had spent with her he had long since categorized each of her many smiles, but her face splitting, eye crinkling, smile would forever be his favorite.

She also had an unnatural obsession with cookies the crazy bint.

And it was so ridiculously endearing that Klaus wanted to smash his face into something at how it affected him. What the hell was he thinking?

Caroline was the opposite of him in every way. She'd grown up with a loving family. She was soft where he was hard. Open when he was closed. The very definition of a mess battling for perfection. She wasn't for him, that he was perfectly aware of. They were too different, but he still found himself growing increasingly infatuated by her as each day passed.

He admitted to himself that he had opened her book again after he had actually met her, and before where he found amusement, he only felt heat. Rather the characters in her book Damon and Elena kissing passionately it was Klaus backing her against the wall. His mouth finding that spot behind her ear that made her shiver, his hands skimming the naked skin of her side, her hip, and lower.

It was as this thought crossed his mind that a nervous looking Caroline shouldered her way into his line of sight. He brought his eyes to hers, brow furrowing at her wringing hands and guilty expression.

They had managed to reach an impasse in regards to their behavior to each other, and Klaus could almost think that they were civil enough with each other to be deemed friends at this point in their professional relationship.

"Is everything alright?" He asked, suspicion being overshadowed by worry at her obvious distress.

"Ummm….. Yeah. So I kind of just got off the phone with Stefan." She said, her eyes trailing away from his own. She looked like an angel, standing before his seated self on the couch, her jeans so tight he felt he needed to send the designers a thank you note for the way her backside looked in them.

"And what did Mr. Salvatore have to say?"

She looked down, her chin almost resting directly at her chest as she moved her hands to rub nervously against the tops sides of her hips. Caroline Forbes was an open book. "He said he couldn't cancel the book launch tonight."

It took a moment for her words to sink in.

The obvious staring directly into his face as the hundreds of possibilities began to filter through his mind. No. The thought repeated in his mind with differing locations of emphasis.

He rose, slowly, his jaw set so tight that he thought his teeth might break at the sheer force he was gritting them. "Absolutely not." He ground out.

Her doe eyes blinked up at him, fringed by long dark lashes she looked almost innocent until the rage ignited behind her irises and her brows slanted into her frustration.

"Excuse me?!" She scoffed.

He took a step forward, angling his head and raising his hand between them. "It's out of the question." And with the finality of his biting words he stepped around her to move towards the kitchen.

If he had thought, she was going to for once listen to anything he had said, he was sadly mistaken. "Who do you think you are? You can't tell me what I can and cannot do? The book launch has to be tonight, and there is no way that I'm not going."

He wrenched open the fridge grabbing a bottle of water from the top shelf. "We are not arguing about this Caroline. The answer is no."

"It's cute how you think you have any say about what I do."

"You're being stupid Caroline. You could be hurt." He twisted off the plastic cap with more force than was necessary before draining a portion of the contents. His eyes flicked to hers momentarily and she looked as beautifully furious as he had expected she would.

"Don't you dare call me stupid." She seethed.

"And what do you call it? Going to an understaffed book launch, outdoors with hundreds of strangers who could bloody well be the chap who's trying to kill you."

"He's never said he wanted to kill me." She said hotly, and if he didn't have so much bleeding respect for her he'd probably be throttling some sense into her right now.

"No, he's simply tried breaking into your apartment four times since I came here and left a bloody message on your window saying that 'Soon the two of you will be together'. Sounds sane to me."

"You know what. I am not having this argument with you. I'm going. End of story." And with that the woman had the audacity to turn on her heels and walk away from him. He stood, gobsmacked as she walked her tight little arse into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

Good, at least she'd be safe.

She could hate him all she wanted as long as she never ended up at the hands of the man that had become obsessed with her. It became increasingly clear as time elapsed and the stalkers visits became more and more frequent that the individual who was committing these act was deeply disturbed. He left notes for her everywhere, and Klaus's appearance in her life had only further enraged him. He'd made threats, recounted stories about their future like they were memories. Klaus had already made a conscious decision that when his final three weeks elapsed and the man was not caught, he'd stay on. Free of charge if he had too.

Klaus had met men like the stalker before. And situations like these always ended up with someone hurt, even dead.

A vision of Caroline flashed in his mind lying motionless on the ground, blood seeping from around her. Alone, in the dark, in the cold.

Rage swelled again and he was crossing the living for her bedroom door before he knew exactly what he was doing.

The door crashed open, slamming into the wall behind it and causing the pictures to thud lightly against the wall at his assault.

"KLAUS!" Caroline screeched, snatching the long red dress from her bed and holding it in front of her nearly naked body.

Later he would reminisce about the curve of her waist, about the miles of long lean flesh of her legs, of the mouthwatering swell of her breasts pushed forward in a black lace strapless bra. But now he had to make her understand.

"Under no circumstances am I letting you walk out that door. I'll carry you back if I have too."

"Seriously, I am so tired of your caveman attitude I could actually scream. You are not the boss of me Klaus, you are my bodyguard. My hired bodyguard for that matter. And if I want to go to a launch party, then I'm going to go to my own launch party."

He stepped closer. Rage causing his shoulders to shake. "I am your bodyguard, which means I'm hired to protect you, which is impossible to do when you are acting deliberately foolish. You might as well paint a target on your head for all it's worth sweetheart."

Within a second she was toe to toe to him. The dress forgotten on the floor.

"Shut. UP."

"No. You are going to listen to me instead of being a bleeding child hell bent on getting herself killed."

"I am not a child."

He sneered, letting a mocking laugh follow closely behind. "That's the funniest thing I've heard all day love."

"Your unbelievable. I've had enough." She spat.

"Enough of what? I'm just getting started." He didn't even let her words penetrate deep enough before spitting directly back.

"Get out of my house. Get out of my life."

"Didn't you know darling; I'm not employed by you. Stefan pays my salary, so it's Stefan that has the authority to dismiss me. Hop into bed sweetheart. You're going to be here for a while." Why he had to resort to winding her up he had no idea, he just wanted her to feel one iota of the fury he felt at the thought of her in pain. He wanted her to have some care for her own safety, and of what it would mean to him if it was gone.

"I hate you."

"Hate all you want. You'll find that I don't particularly care. I don't get paid if you die."

Her hand flew, and it was an unconscious reaction to reach up and catch her wrist before it reached his cheek. Her eyes widened and she stared in horror at her upraised hand, inches from striking him. Fury dissipated, and she let her hand go limp as tears began to well in her eyes. She was horrified by her actions, and it was he that intentionally prodded her until he received a reaction.

He lightly pressed her open palm against her cheek, his eyes scanning across her fallen face. The feeling of her skin caressing his was like the sweetest caress. His eyes never left hers as the tension between them visibly dissolved and was replaced by something else, something unspoken that had been lingering between them for weeks. His opposite hand slowly rose between them until the pads of his fingertips lightly traced across her cheek.

Surely a touch, a simple touch wasn't against the rules. He'd only touch her face this once, just to let her know that this wasn't her fault, and they could go back to the way things were before.

His mind was screaming that he was a liar. But at the moment he couldn't bring himself to care.

"I…." He started, opening his mouth once, then twice in order to find the words. "I could not live if I knew that you'd been hurt."

Her breath rushed out of her in shock, and Klaus immediately took a step back at the sight. He'd gone too far. He'd revealed too much. You should have kept your damn mouth shut, you twat.

It took him a moment to retreat. "I apologize, that was out of line…."

But if he knew what else he was going to say it was lost in the aftermath of her mouth pressing against his own.

He was lost.

He had dreamt of this moment for far longer than he liked to admit, and it by far exceeded every fantasy he could possibly conjure. In seconds they were clinging to each other, mouth searing, teeth nipping, tongues tangling as their arms tried to pull each other infinitely closer than they already were. Caroline's one hand was tangled in his hair as the other tugged on the necklaces buried in the open neck of his Henley. His arms were wrapped tightly around her, Pressing her near naked breasts against his chest. Trying desperately to get her closer, and knowing that he could never be close enough.

It lasted for hours and minutes. They stumbled backwards but still managed to stay upright as their hands explored and pulled and learned each other's wants and needs. She tasted like heaven, she felt like hell. He was sure she was the epitome of both angel and demon wrapped in one sinfully provocative package.

If he thought that he'd fancied her before, now he was completely bullocks.

When she pulled away his mouth instinctively followed her, until he met nothing but air and opened his eyes to a flushed Caroline.

Bollocks she was glorious.

Her long lashes flicked down then up in a way that would make the most schooled courtesan envious. He nearly groaned at the sight of her heavy eyes and her well kissed lips. He had every intention of showing her what being well kissed meant.

Her hands fingered the collar of her shirt as they both fought to catch their breaths.

"I was thinking…." Her voice was low, husky. Klaus was certain that he'd never heard anything so absolutely intoxicating. "…maybe you could come with me."

He recoiled, a little, but not enough to release her from the cradle of his arms.

"It still isn't safe, I'd be too far away to get to you in time." He barely recognized the sound of his own voice.

She smiled, and though Klaus didn't believe it was possible, he thought that this one might be his new favorite. "I meant WITH me."

It wasn't much, but it was a temptation that not even he could resist.

"You're going to be the death of me." He muttered as he gathered her tighter.

She brought her mouth back to his own. "I'll make it worth the trip."