A/N: It's amazing when an idea pops up into your head, you go with it thinking it'll be easy to write. Wrong. Wrong. Nevertheless, thank you guys for being patient. I hope you're still reading this. Enjoy!

He thundered down city streets in the belly of an iron horse, revving the 360 horsepower engine putting as many miles between him and a certain beguiling enchantress.

"No, no, no, NO!" Bonnie thundered down the stairs nearly crashing to the floor when she barely cleared the last one as she flew into the living room. She waved her arms back and forth as if she were banging cymbals or trying to redirect a plane.

"You cannot be here, Damon."

He stood next to the coffee table, eyebrows kissing his hairline wondering what crawled up her ass. He had just opened his mouth to fire out a quip, but the unspoken quip turned into a frown at the vise-like grip Bonnie placed on his arm as she tried, unsuccessfully, to hustle him to the door.

"Is this any way to treat a man after he took you to the movies and bought you enough junk food to last a week? I mean, really, Bon gotta work on that gratitude."

Sighing at his childishness, Bonnie squared herself as she looked at him dead in the eye. "Did you get my message?"

"No."

Bonnie pushed up the sleeves of her Nike workout jacket, "Dahlia has us under a spell, and if I don't figure out how to break it in, oh the next fifteen minutes, we're going," she paused. It was easier saying it to his voicemail system but his face? Bonnie plowed on knowing when dealing with Damon you had to deal in loopholes, absolutes, and bluntness. "We're going to want to have sex. With. Each. Other. Badly," her cheeks stung profusely.

Damon cocked his head, squinted, said nothing.

Then he grinned. Smiled. Chortled. Laughed. Cackled. Bent over at the waist, grabbed his knees and guffawed to the point he was wheezing.

Bonnie went rigid before tossing her hands in the air. Leave it up to him to find this entire messed up situation funny as hell. Part of her was offended that he found humor in the fact he'd been spelled to have sex with her of all people, but there was the more pressing part of Bonnie that just wanted Damon gone so she could concentrate on once again saving the damn day. There was an another piece of her, small though it was, that didn't even want to bother to lift a finger, content to let the spell ride out and see how Damon liked those apples. But she vetoed the idea knowing she'd suffer right along with him.

"Get out!" Bonnie jeered.

"Wait," Damon caught her wrist as she pivoted to leave him to his laughing. "Wait. Are you…serious?"

Her voice pitched to a shrill, "You think I'm making this up?! For what reason? You and I both know if I want…" Bonnie swallowed those words.

Intrigued, Damon stood a bit taller in his boots, chest expanded. "You and I both know you what?"

"It doesn't matter. You need to leave. NOW!"

"Nope, not until I hear all the details."

"I don't—we don't have time for details! You need to believe me when I say that Dahlia did a spell to fuck us," she ignored the pun. "And I need you far away so I can fix it. But I do need something from you, though. Your blood," Bonnie raced into the kitchen and came back with a glass. She thrust it toward Damon who merely stared at it like he'd never seen a cup a day in his life. "Come on. Fill it up."

Damon reluctantly took the cup. "Do you know the spell she did?" Bonnie shook her head. "Haven't come across a spell that might give insight into the spell she casted?" Again with the head shake. Damon's lips pulled down at the corners as he lifted his wrist to his mouth. "With no idea of where to even begin to break the spell, you think you can do it in the next ten minutes?"

"Clearly not. Stop lollygagging and hurry the hell up so I can find the spell Dahlia did and undo it."

"Why would she do this to us?" Damon had a clue, but he was a bit nervous if Dahlia told Bonnie what she said to him a few nights ago, about the two of them being in love.

Bonnie avoided his eyes. "It's a test." It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the full truth either.

"Helluva test don't you think?"

"Yeah," she grunted.

Damon filled the cup halfway and handed it to Bonnie who then ushered him to the door, pushing him out on the welcome mat.

"I don't know how bad things are going to get until I find a solution, but try to fight it as much as you can. Vervain yourself if you have to," Bonnie advised.

"You know I'm no stranger to feeling…"

"Damon," Bonnie silenced him with a cutting look. Her fingers curled into the edge of the door. "Wait for my call or text when it's done. Okay?"

"Do you think you're going to be okay in the meantime? That you'll be able to concentrate?"

That was the thing Bonnie was most worried about. How much of her would be coherent enough to find the counter spell. She shook her head. "I've been through worst, haven't I? I'll get through this, too."

Damon gnawed the inside of his cheek. Too often in the past he stepped out of the way to let Bonnie do her thing, save the day with one arm tied behind her back. He didn't want to abandon her; however, if he were to believe what Dahlia had done, and yes slowly the situation was becoming real to him, being around Bonnie could lead to nuclear disaster. Of the naked kind. He wanted to take the risk anyway, because it shouldn't be on her to right this wrong when it involved them both.

Bonnie could read his thoughts or the gist of them. "I know you want to help, but I'm afraid of what'll happen if we're around each other when it hits. Just…just go, Damon. Please."

The dark-haired vampire hesitated and when he spoke, his voice was raspy, "Call me if anything goes wrong."

"All right."

Damon took a step then another until he reached his car. His eyes never left Bonnie who offered a tremulous smile before slipping into the house and closing the door.

Which opened a second later.

Bonnie popped her head through the opening, "Matt, your mom's done something to him. Can you check to make sure he's all right?"

Damon ignored the flare of disappointment that Bonnie had changed her mind about him staying, and tried to staunch his irritation at being sent on an errand to check on the most irrelevant person he could think of. He nodded curtly and fell behind the wheel.

A quarter of a mile from Bonnie's, Damon made a phone call.

"Enzo, you useless bastard, I thought I told you to watch Lily…"

Running felt pointless.

You see, it all began with an itch, a tingle at the base of his spine that slowly inched to his cerebellum. From there, it took root fanning into the gray matter of his brain like a network of streams that eventually flowed into a river, reprogramming his amygdala, or rather flooding it with prurient nannites. As a result, Damon cranked up the death metal that he hated hoping the grittiness of the singer's snarling voice would discourage him from thinking about…burying himself in the softest of pouches.

Damon gripped the wheel tighter wishing his Camaro was manual and not automatic so he could throttle into a higher gear. He had to settle with pressing his foot harder on the gas.

Bonnie drove this car to Nova Scotia and back. She handled the wheel. This seat cushioned her squeezable ass. The wind blew her hair off her delicate little neck, he daydreamed, moistening his lips with a tongue that wanted to lick her salty skin.

His trousers grew tighter.

"Fuck, Salvatore," he almost slapped himself in the head.

He was about a mile away from the lake house. With the top down despite the temperate weather and the downcast sky, the cold air felt good. Too bad it did shit all to lessen the blood flow to his dick. Jaw clenched tightly, Damon veered off the main road to a dirt one and thirty seconds later slammed on the brakes and cut the engine.

Damon squinted at Alaric's truck parked outside of the lake house. He wondered what he was doing here. Nevertheless, he climbed out of the car, doing what he could to ignore that all-too familiar pulse of heat and pleasure/pain happening between the apex of his thighs. The swelling of his cock increasing ten-fold as he made the short trek to the cabin's front door.

Pausing, Damon took a breath and turned the doorknob.

He received another surprise once he made it inside. Damon bit back a groan.

Alaric wasn't alone. His fiancée was with him. Damon had seen neither of them since the masquerade ball, which led him to wonder what fuckery they were about to unleash. Elena, playing hostess, looked up once he stepped through the door. She had been in the process of giving Jo a chilled glass of water. Through facial cues, he asked where she stashed Stefan, and she nodded discreetly with her chin that he was upstairs in one of the bedrooms.

"Alaric…Jo what brings you two by?"

"We need to talk to you about something," the former replied.

"Made a decision on who's gonna be godfather?" Damon winked.

Alaric rolled his eyes. "It's a bit more important than that."

Moving stiffly, wishing he could bat his hardening cock aside, Damon tried to appear normal. But his jeans chafed him, made him obtusely aware of his predicament and that he could do nothing about it. Not for a while at least. He made it to the couch and with a sigh of relief sat down.

"What's up?"

"Kai," Jo answered after taking a sip of her water and placing it on the coffee table. "I've been having dreams about him. Nightmares I should say."

Another piercing sensation gutted Damon that luckily had nothing to do with arousal, and everything to do with his disgust with that asshole. He was tired of Kai, sick of Kai. If it hadn't been for him Bonnie wouldn't have taken it upon herself to seek out a witch who could finally mentor her, and what was currently happening to him wouldn't be occurring. Everything boiled down to Kai. He wasn't fucking here and he was still causing problems, Damon seethed.

"So now what?" he inadvertently snapped. "You expect me to help clean up a mess your coven should have taken care of 20 years ago."

"Hey," Alaric retorted.

"Damon," Elena reproached.

The vampire in question stared at each person in the room, unfazed by their anger.

"You should know you had a starring role in my nightmares," Jo enlightened. "I wasn't the only one lying in a pool of their own blood, gutted and presumably dead."

"So you're dreaming about Kai killing you and myself? I can't exactly say that's original. What are you proposing exactly?" Damon crossed his legs and winced.

"There might be away to either seal off the prison world or destroy it without anyone having to physically go there to do it. The downside, it would take a lot of power, but I've…I've contacted my dad. He and the rest of our coven are willing to try. I just need one thing…the ascendant."

"Naturally," Damon jibed. "Hate to bust your bubble but I don't have it."

"Well who does?" Alaric questioned.

"I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"For insurance purposes," Damon tapped his feet on the floor, cleared his throat. He was beginning to feel like a human with too much caffeine in their system.

Jo calculated the obvious, "Bonnie has it, doesn't she?" Her inquiry was met with silence. "It makes sense. She's one of three people able to use it. Of course she'd want to have the key holding her tormentor captive in her possession."

"If she does have it," Alaric added carefully, "it took a Bennett to create the 1903 and 1994 prison worlds. It very well may take a Bennett to destroy them."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Damon knew that had been coming. "So predictable," he muttered with a tired laugh. His dick throbbed and he grunted against the sensation. Tiny beads of sweat dotted his hairline. "After what I've seen I know magic can be overridden by someone not in the lineage of the witch who cast the original spell," he countered. "She's been through enough."

"We know that," Alaric said.

Damon abruptly sat on the edge of the couch, scowling so fiercely his drinking pal and baby mama gulped nervously. "You don't know shit about what that cunt put her through, and even if you did know, that wouldn't stop you from dragging her into something that could go south because it always does!"

Alaric's smile was far from friendly, "Aren't you the pot calling the kettle black."

"Fuck you."

Fuck…fucking…fucking Bonnie, Damon jabbed a fang into his tongue hoping the brief flare of pain would knock his screws back into place.

"I know what Kai's capable of," Jo interjected. "The last thing I want to do is face him or throw Bonnie into the line of fire. But getting rid of him for good, she'd be essential. If she's willing. No one is going to force her to do something she doesn't want to do."

And that was the thing about Bonnie. She was always willing to fight.

Damon's mind wandered. In live Technicolor he was seeing 1994 Bonnie in daisy duke shorts, braless, visible nipples that poked out her shirts. His dropped his hand to his crotch and lightly massaged. His chest rose and fell higher and faster.

A hand shook his shoulder snapping him out of it. Elena, brow puckered with disgust. "Are you seriously touching yourself right now?" she asked low enough for his vampire ears to hear.

Instead of answering, Damon sat forward on the couch and gripped his pounding head before jumping to his feet. The room swam, and the blood he consumed for breakfast threatened to come back up. He needed space to move. This house was too small, too confined, too isolated. It made his flesh itch like ants were crawling all over him. Damon saw the peculiar expressions on the soon-to-be Saltzman's faces and turned away from them. Although, he did peek at Jo wondering if she might know of a way to break Dahlia's spell. For five seconds he had forgotten about it, but now it was all he could think about. That and the fact Bonnie wasn't here. He needed to see her, touch her—fuck taste her!

Damon made a mad dash to the bathroom where he splashed cold water on his face. He should call her. See how she was doing. He should be there with her, he nodded absently to himself. Then hissed as his cock stiffened even more at the thought of sneaking off to be with Bonnie.

"Damon, what is going on with you?"

His head whipped to Elena looming in the doorway. He roamed her from head to toe. She had the right parts. He could take her upstairs, close his eyes and imagine…no. He couldn't do that. He wondered if he should tell Elena what Dahlia had done. No, he wouldn't utter a peep. She would just twist it around into something about her.

So what was he to do? Damon had no idea. He just knew that the longer he was away from Bonnie the more he thought about her, craved her, burned for her. He constantly reminded himself it was the spell, that those feelings weren't his, but it felt real, this yearning. It wouldn't go away. His body might be able and willing to 'perform' with anyone else, but honestly generic substitutes wouldn't do.

"I just…have a lot on my mind. It's nothing," Damon declared through gritted teeth and returned to the living room, determined to ignore the effects of the spell. "There's a hitch," Damon announced. "My mother's 'family' those witchpires…"

"Heretics," Jo corrected.

"They're still there. If we kill them or trap them with no possible way of ever getting out…mommy dearest is a ripper. We won't be getting rid of a potential problem but creating a whole new one. I've killed family before, but…" he wasn't sure he could kill his mother if it came down to it.

"Maybe it won't come down to that," Elena went for optimism. "Maybe if we explained the situation, she might understand."

"Let's not be naïve about this," Damon pulled at the collar of his shirt. His throat felt like it was closing. "S-she's been with those people far longer than she's been a mother to me or Stefan. She could really give a fuck about us. She's said as much."

"Maybe it's possible to transfer them to the 1994 prison world."

"What is this Star Trek? You essentially want to beam them from one location to another?" Damon laughed.

"It's not like we haven't done it before," Elena reminded. "Bringing people back from the other side; you, Bonnie, and your mom coming back from prison worlds. Putting Lily's family somewhere else wouldn't be that much different."

Damon conceded the point and, unaware of his actions had pulled out his phone and started thumbing through his photo gallery. He stopped on a picture of him and Bonnie at the masquerade ball. Just seeing her face was a minor antidote to the frenzy that was ratcheting up his anxiety. Separation anxiety.

"Damon?"

"What?" he paced back and forth muttering to himself. He sat down on the couch but half a second later shot to his feet to resume pacing. The engaged couple and Elena observed his strange and jittery movements, the latter unsure of what to make of it.

A crease formed between Jo's dark brows, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he snapped again, shut off his phone, and forced himself to get back into the game. "What were you saying?"

For two hours ideas were traded but the preoccupied vamp heard maybe a quarter of what had been said. He left Elena to show Jo and Alaric out once the pregnant one complained of hunger. There was nothing but water and blood in the refrigerator.

His shirt was soaked with sweat. He felt like he was going through withdrawals. In the shower, Damon hoped to find some relief. Warm water sluiced down his corded muscles, saturated the patch of hair his erection jutted from. He made a fist, unfurled it, made another desperately wanting to rub himself off, but that would do nothing.

Supple breasts pressed into his back without warning and he was turned around. Small, thin lips placed butterfly kisses along his throat, shoulder, the center of his chest, licked one nipple then the other. Descended south following that trail of hair that led to what he considered one of the greatest places on earth. Damon closed his eyes as a mouth swallowed his erection whole. His fingers laced themselves into long brown hair. The suction was perfect, rhythm—superb. A dark and rumbling groan came out when he felt the head of his cock tickle the back of a throat. He was almost there. Almost reaching his zenith, toes curling against the slick porcelain. The back of his skull thumped against the tile.

His member was deep throated again.

"Oh god…oh…Bonnie."

"Bonnie!" Elena cried indignantly.

His eyes popped open. Yep, he knew he fucked up.

The hour after her grace period ended wasn't so bad. It was more or less the equivalent of premenstrual horniness Bonnie typically staved off with a good piece of chocolate. With that idea in mind, she abandoned her search for a counter spell and bounded to the kitchen on the hunt for milk chocolate goodness.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," she whispered piously like a prayer, getting more and more frustrated and desperate with each bare cupboard. There wasn't a Hershey's Kiss, bar, Reece's Cup, or Junior Mint to be found leaving no choice but to upgrade the threat of combustion to a level three.

Ice cubes would have to serve as a poor substitute. Removing a handful of oblong cubes from the freezer, Bonnie popped one in her mouth and crushed it to pieces with her molars. The crunch was good, almost hypnotic in a sense, and the frostiness of the ice—well it didn't do shit for cooling her libido.

It did, however, distract her. One would think since vampires were dead they would feel like a corpse. Cold flesh that didn't give, emitted no kind of warmth. Bonnie discovered that wasn't necessarily true. Absently she rubbed an ice cube along her neck tumbling into a fantasy or perhaps a memory. Yes, how did she forget that day?

It had been forty days of consistently sunny weather apart from that special time of the day where the eclipse made itself known. She had been in the kitchen looking for snacks when the back door flew open and Damon waltzed inside drenched from head to toe. Bonnie had peeked out the window wondering if it had rained. A spark of happiness hit her that something finally changed. But no. She had been greeted with nothing but a clear blue sky and a fat sun.

She stared at him curiously, brow raised.

"Me and the water hose got into a fight…I lost," Damon explained.

"Oh, I thought it finally rained."

He snorted and moved to the refrigerator. "You know, I usually hate the rain, but I'm tired of the sun so I took the hose," he removed a can of beer from the fridge, popped the top, inhaled about half of it, licked foam from his lips, "and the rest, as they say, is history."

"Creative," Bonnie had deadpanned though she was partially sidetracked by the way Damon's soaked shirt molded to his chest and arms.

She had turned her back to him which she normally tried not to do. For the most part they got along, but there were plenty more days they were so sick and aggravated at the sight of one another things got…dicey. Damon, bolstered by the fact she had no powers and couldn't deliver her usual aneurysms or blow him to kingdom come used that to his advantage and often.

But that day in the kitchen he came up behind her, plucked her clear off her feet, wetting her in the process.

"What the hell are you doing?" she squirmed to free herself.

Damon didn't reply until he dropped Bonnie on her feet at the bottom of the stairs. "Go find a bathing suit or something. I want to head to the pool and as much as your company sucks, it's still company."

Bonnie had folded her arms, ignoring the way his nipples poked through his shirt, glared, "What if I don't feel like swimming?"

"Then we have a wet t-shirt contest. I'm in the lead if you couldn't tell and if you want to win the coveted title…" his grin was filthy.

Nevertheless, after trading ten minutes worth of insults, Bonnie had donned a swimsuit, but it was what happened at the community pool where she was reminded that vampires could be warm, soft even.

Sunscreen, Damon's hands massaged it into her shoulders, her back, legs, and feet. Her senses she hadn't realized had been closed, were opened.

But what if she had rolled over and let him take care of her front? He hadn't touched her butt thanks to the threat she issued that she'd take his head off if he touched her ass. But what if his big hands had caressed her there…between her legs, squeezed and kneaded her tits, flicked and thumbed her nipples?

What if she had gripped him by the back of the neck, brought him down, and his mouth latched on to her sensitive tip? What if his curious fingers inched their way down her belly, traced her navel before sinking under the band of her bikini bottoms, circled her clit with just the right amount of pressure. What if he replaced his fingers with his mouth, and she watched him as he sucked her slick cleft between his little vampire lips, tongued the hood before planting an open-mouth kiss on her pussy.

The grandfather clock chimed loudly.

Bonnie's eyes jolted open and she sprung upright. She blinked. How the hell did she get on the couch? Looking down at herself she squeaked as her brows nearly lifted off her forehead.

One breast was completely exposed, nipple erect, whereas her right hand was trapped in her panties.

Yanking her hand free and stuffing her boob back into her sports bra, Bonnie frowned at herself. Rising from the couch, the blood whooshed from her core up to her head so fast the room swam.

Uncoordinated, Bonnie tripped over a few of the grimoires she had sprawled across the floor. She looked down and shifted her head to a better angle and reached for the book her big toe had rammed into. Looking carefully, Bonnie realized two pages were stuck together. So using the tip of her thumbnail, she slid it between an air bubble between the seams of the pages and very carefully wiggled her nail until she was able to gently pull the sealed pages apart.

"Please, let this be something I can use."

It was.

A few phrases she couldn't make out, Bonnie quickly picked up her phone, opened an app that helped with 'witchy' translations and typed them in. She smiled broadly right before a sharp, breath-stealing throb sacked her between the legs strong enough to almost bring her to her knees. Bonnie cried out, figuring the slightest amount of friction on her overly sensitized clit would scramble her brains.

Bonnie's lips pulled back from her teeth. "I hate you so much, Dahlia."

The trembling witch found herself taking yet another shower. Forehead pressed against the cold tile, Bonnie wondered would it be such a bad thing if she and Damon just got whatever was in their system, out? Wasn't all roads gonna lead to that inevitable moment where the frenemy act got old, played out, ran its course? Were they ever going to realize they didn't fit the platonic mold anymore?

In between the self-interrogation, Bonnie went over the spell and went over it again.

Wasn't he going to kiss her at the movies? Hadn't he thought about it? Didn't she want him to? Didn't they deserve to know what the other tasted like? Hadn't they earned it after dying together and sparking something of a friendship? She sent him back.

HE. OWED. HER!

This is Dahlia's spell, Bonnie you don't mean that.

"Yes, I do," she whimpered.

Hadn't she caught him ogling her breasts and ass? Didn't he want her?

Bonnie screamed herself raw as she flicked herself to a poignant orgasm that failed to beat back a single flame of yearning or want.

Shaking, she exited the shower, moved like a zombie as she dressed. Repeated the spell. Her legs were barely functional. If she kept going like this her mind would be in ribbons in another hour or two.

"You can do this, Bon," she coached while donning a light jacket. Bonnie stuffed her feet into her 1994 Doc Martens, and grabbed her keys.

The door flew open.

Damon was back.

He fixed his dark gaze on the woman, the specimen, the sylph-like creation. He didn't care about rules or regulations, right from wrong ceased to have meaning. There was only pulse and truth. The pulse in his blood triggered each time he thought about her these last few hours. The truth of his arrival saying he wasn't strong enough to fight the spell. Damon ground his molars on top of one another.

His boots carried him across the cherry wood floor to Bonnie where he braced her against the wall.

Her tongue had grown thick with saliva, "W-what are you doing here?" Every square inch of her lit up like a Christmas tree. "You shouldn't be here." She meant to push him away but drew him closer.

"Why don't you put me where I'm supposed to be then," Damon flattened himself against her so there'd be no mistaking what he meant.

Both of their breaths hitched and it was taking every shred of willpower they possessed not to tear into each other.

Bonnie touched his arm and his skin puckered. Having her close, close enough to inhale the sweet scent of her perfume, and female arousal made Damon's senses go haywire. Her heat touched and singed, and her lips were in striking distance. Every part of him hardened into concrete.

"I'm giving you a five second head start," Damon was barely articulate.

"That's not enough time."

"That's all I can give you. Try, please, Bonnie, try to run from me because if I catch you," the intent, the warning, beamed from his gleaming stare, "that pussy is mine."

Her womb clenched. Why did he need to catch her when he already had her, and could do what he wanted with her? No, no, no. She shook those wanton thoughts aside.

Damon loosened his hold. "Go."

There was the literal running for your life and the figurative kind. More often than not she had done the figurative kind where her heart undoubtedly gave her ribs a beating as she stood in the center of a nebula of borrowed or amplified power, stripping away layers of her adversary to get to their creamy, defenseless middle. Doing magic did not equate to being mobile, of having to move, run, or jump or using her fist to pound someone into dirt. It meant staying still, being used as a conduit to unleash energies that could burn, choke, rupture, twist and main bones and organs.

Her lower jaw trembled from the vibration of running faster than she had in months. Her muscles pulled and burned and she couldn't absorb enough oxygen, because her breaths were too short. Sweat poured from her brow and stung her eyes. She was being chased or was she doing the chasing? Twigs snapped beneath her boots, foliage was slapped aside as she hustled deeper into the forest.

Bonnie hoisted herself over a fallen tree and landed in a shallow pool of muddy water. Mud. Maybe that might mask her scent yet she doubted it. Hunters were not so easily fooled by amateur tricks. She sprinted off, looking behind her every so often.

He wasn't behind her.

Damon was in front of her.

Bonnie gasped and slid to a graceless stop. Her feet went in opposite directions, and she went down. One minute shock registered on her face and the next her eyes were clouded with lust.

"Witchy," Damon chastised, attempting to stay where he was, but ultimately prowled forward with his gaze glued to her bent legs and splayed thighs. "Stay just like that."

"Damon," she warned though her reprimand was too husky.

"It hurts."

"It does."

His jaw worked like he wanted to say something. He couldn't tell Bonnie how hard his cock was. So rock solid Damon was a little afraid it might actually be a fossil.

Falling to his knees, Damon crawled, "Break the spell," he pled with no less than a whimper.

"I'm not strong enough," Bonnie awkwardly scuttled backwards wrestling with her latent self that desired to close the distance between them.

"Yes you are," Damon contested, "You survived me, Klaus, the end of the other side, Kai. You conquered us, baby. You can do this."

He called me baby, Bonnie melted and her heart swelled. Her clit hardened to the point she brutally gouged her lower lip with her teeth. Her panties were an ocean and that wild, aromatic fragrance smacked Damon head on nearly knocking him sideways. He was closer to her now. If he extended a hand he could touch her, and both wanted nothing more than to finally have full on skin-to-skin contact.

She was an old house slowly making its decline into the earth as Bonnie rested an elbow on the ground. Her legs spread a little further in invitation for Damon to make himself right at home. He moved inward like a tide, one knee sinking between Bonnie's, his masculine body shrouding her like the moon eclipsing the sun. Damon rubbed his cheek alongside hers. The zing of contact made their nipples pebble.

"Damon," her throat was raw, ragged with need so potent any minute Bonnie was positive she'd sprout tears. "Damon, we can't do this."

He was sniffing her now, dragging the tip of his nose along her hairline.

Bonnie could barely think straight. But she managed to say, "Dahlia is making us want to do this."

Dahlia was a certified genius as far as Damon was concerned. He pressed a deep kiss right beneath the corner of her jaw, opened his mouth and gave her throat a long, velvety lick.

Bonnie's eyes rolled in ecstasy. She burrowed her heels into the ground, breaking up chunks of earth to resist wrapping her legs around Damon and tossing him on his back to assume the position of control. Through the haze of anxiety and provocation, she dug deep in her reserves to find a thimble's worth of control.

"Think about your parents fucking."

And just like that the thrill had been cooled long enough that Damon threw himself off of Bonnie and into a tree. "Run," he said gruffly.

Bonnie clamored to her feet. Witch and vampire held each other suspended before running in opposite directions.

Birds from up high saw them careening toward each other less than a minute later. They were a tangle of limbs as they landed on the ground.

Her fingernails clawed at the dirt and then they were clawing at silky hair sprouting from the scalp of an attractive head. It was the spell that wrapped its arms around her waist hauling her closer, making her feel every knotted muscle. It was ancient Latin that fluttered along her rounded jawline and down the column of her neck tasting her saltiness. It was incendia responsible for ripping her shirt in half and phastmos that dragged her hips over a hard ridge cloaked behind a zipper and dark blue denim. It was motus that frantically worked to unbutton and unzip her jeans and Damon's. Legato was the reason she lifted her hips, and ostinato why she wormed her hands into Damon's pants pushing them down his ass looking for that almighty crescendo. He licked her ear. Bonnie arched against him, wanting more contacting, needing it like protein.

"I can't stop," she heard him say over and over again.

She knew how to make it stop. The spell she found was a golden ticket to leave the chocolate factory, and she loathed to use it, but this, this couldn't continue.

However…

It was perhaps at that moment Bonnie realized how much she loved Damon. Loved him that it hurt in good and bad ways that would have some swearing off love for a very long time, or being so careful with it, you forgot how to enjoy it.

She cupped his cheeks wishing she could kiss him and not have it be a betrayal of a friendship that was more of an empty amniotic sac than something tangible. Her fingers brushed his hair off his forehead just for it to fall right back into place. Resigned, she had to do this.

With one enchantment, she sent Damon flying a few feet away who landed roughly on the ground, skull cracking against a rock. "Shit," he whined.

Bonnie clumsily rose to her feet. She swallowed her dry saliva, swayed and resigned herself to duty. She began the spell that would open channels and energies undetectable by human sight, smell, touch, and taste. In essence, she would dematerialize the walls that kept the two worlds separate yet functioning together harmoniously: the ambient and the tangible and be able to see magic.

Since becoming a full-fledged witch she'd only felt magic on its superficial surface. She hadn't been able to suss out its complexities through her five physical senses without the aid of a spell. So she braced herself for the unknown.

The words she spoke were an evocation of consonants and syllables that twisted the tongue but pried apart barriers. Three times Bonnie recited it and each time she did, the incantation bit, a searing bite Bonnie worried would make her blind. In seconds the scorching heat of the spell cooled like the tip of hot iron being plunged in cold water. Her eyes closed on reflex to protect the delicate orbs that could withstand a myriad of irritants. Yet keeping her eyes closed defeated the purpose of the spell. She waited until the throbbing pain subsided to a pulse she could actually deal with. Opened her eyes once the pressure stopped feeling like someone was pushing their thumbs into her almost translucent feeling sockets. Opened her eyes and…gasped.

At first everything was distorted like a 3D Picasso original, but only until Bonnie figured out what she was actually seeing. Currents: electric, thermal, and organic crisscrossed in a grid formation. And those currents were connected to everything. The tiny insects to the ground, the ground to the trees, the trees to the air, every living lifeform was interconnected, adding something to the thread and also taking away. Some connections were brighter than others suggesting to Bonnie there was a more direct line like in a lineage. The beauty of it caused a here and gone smile.

Carefully, as if she were handling a thousand year old piece of parchment, Bonnie slid her gaze to study Damon. The currents around him were dimmer but were there nonetheless. She looked down at her body and saw the same geo-biological currents connected to the earth spiraling around her in a non-stop highway of energy. They were beautiful and flared color much like a heat sensor would. And something told Bonnie they weren't as fragile as they appeared and were probably stronger than the toughest metal. But there was something more. A current that ran counter to their biological ones. Narrowing her gaze the picture cleared. That mysterious current was microscopic flowers and wines and not any ordinary flower but dahlias.

"I see you," she mouthed and spoke another spell, one she hoped would unravel Dahlia's handiwork, like cutting a rope.

Nothing happened.

Damon hissed, "I felt that."

"Sorry," Bonnie shrugged sheepishly. She racked her brain for another outlet.

Her anchor.

The sun.

If the sun ever fragmented and those fragments went hurtling through space they would be monstrously hot daggers that could possibly split worlds in half, piercing a world's core like a yoke. Bonnie shifted ever so slightly understanding although really not knowing how or even how to explain it that she had opened herself to physics possibly not yet discovered. Instinctively she drove her energy far into the subcutaneous earth waiting for the recoil.

It was instantaneous the way she felt her connection to that burning ball of hydrogen that for a second Bonnie clammed up. Light hit from every conceivable direction, a blinding, surprisingly cool light—at first. Reactively, she and Damon threw an arm across their faces to block the brilliancy of it, but it simply was too much.

"What the hell is going on?" Damon roared but the volume to his voice was overshadowed by the white noise of the light. "Bonnie!" he couldn't see her. Panicked, Damon yelled again, "BONNIE! ANSWER ME!"

She was unfortunately paralyzed, horror-stricken expression frozen in place as her mind fought to retain its calm.

"Control."

Bonnie gasped.

"Focus."

Wave after wave of energy entered the area to the point it formed a torus, a ring formation seen after missile explosions. Bonnie and Damon stood in its nebula and it felt like their last night together as two ghosts facing the unknown, anchored together by their interlaced fingers, staring aimlessly at an intimidating blue-white light, the wind howling, subtly pushing them closer together, closer to whatever awaited or didn't await once the other side was consumed. Like that night, they stared at one another. If she messed this up they could die. If she got it right, they'd live. There was a problem.

Bonnie didn't know how to control this power that funneled through her and was beginning to shine through her pores, overtake her. She stretched out a hand that glowed. If she touched him…? Already curls of smoke rose from Damon's skin. He cursed. A trail of blood dripped from his nose. The vessels in his eyes burst.

"Arrgggh," he screamed.

"I don't know what to do," she thought but had actually said out loud.

"Only use what you need," Bonnie heard a voice say. That voice wasn't Damon's. "You've always used too much believing it took every last drop, but it never needed much. Let nature handle its part. It's bigger than you, Bonnie, and it always will be. You are a composer, not the orchestra. It has to follow your lead, but lead it carefully, guide it, and let it go."

She saw a ripple of movement, like heat waves that made the trees sway. Who was speaking to her? Grams? No, she'd recognize her voice anywhere. Dahlia? The spirits who turned their back on her a long damn time ago? Her own conscience? Something higher?

No matter who or what said it, Bonnie listened.

If she tapped into it, miscalculated by a single degree she could incinerate the entire earth. The enormity of it made swallowing difficult. So she needed to focus on a smaller scale on how to wield that much power without killing herself and everything around her.

Bonnie imagined herself as a surgeon taking up her scalpel. All she needed to do was make an incision. Don't go too deep. Don't make the cut too long. Careful. Imagine operating on a preemie. Delicate now, steady. Sweat broke out on Bonnie's forehead.

"Mundet."

Bonnie couldn't describe what happened. Maybe she became lightning or an atomic bomb, she didn't know. She just knew that she and Damon were flung away like opposing magnetic forces. They were objects falling through the stratosphere that crashed without parachutes.

If anyone had been around, they might say the area was hit with so much light and heat it would cause automatic blindness and five degree burns. Hot enough to create a geode. People living within five miles of the woods lost power. Traffic lights malfunctioned, setting off a domino effect of near misses and rear end collisions. Railroad crossing arms dropped unexpectedly.

Even Dahlia, tucked away in her hideout, felt the ripple of dominating power that caused her to lose her balance and fall to the floor. For the first time in centuries the smile she wore was genuine. "Atta girl."

When Damon came to he was…shit he didn't know. Groaning, he examined himself. He appeared to be all right for the most part. There were patches of pink skin from where he had started to burn. Apart from his clothes being in shambles, his limbs were intact. Frantically he searched for Bonnie and couldn't find her anywhere, but he had a trail of burned and/or smoky trees to follow that led him to the lake where teenagers hosted summer parties.

Damon barely registered the area where he and Bonnie had been originally as it now was charred earth and awkwardly bent trees. Trees that were oddly crystallized until Damon realized, belatedly, that the tree sap had bled through and hardened on the bark.

His vampire speed propelled him to the lake where he found a combat boot sticking out of the rocky sand. Picking it up, scouting the area, he shouted, "BONNIE!"

Damon heard a splash. A head and small shoulder broke through the surface and bopped some forty yards away from the shore. He took off running and stumbled to an unattractive stop when every ounce of water in the lake exploded up as if an enormous giant was rising from a deep slumber. The sight had Damon gaping like an idiot.

A silhouette emerged growing bigger as it strolled beneath the hovering body of water. Damon's eyes were so wide open they were beginning to hurt and sting. In the next second, even as he told himself to look away, he just couldn't.

Sixty-two inches of sopping wet and perfectly nude Bennett witch planted her feet on grainy sand.

"Bon?"

She glanced over her shoulder, and like a mother telling her unruly children to settle down, she made a motion with her hand.

Gallons of water plunged violently back to the earth, nearly overtaking the shore, rushing up to Bonnie's knees before receding into its basin. The cacophony of it was loud like standing in the center of a bustling industrial factory.

"Bon?"

Her throat was too sore to speak. Bonnie blinked a couple of times and looked at Damon.

Twin suns where Bonnie's eyes were supposed to be, stared intently at him.

"How…?"

His cock stirred and he thought they were still under the spell. Yet his arousal quickly changed to concern when Bonnie's knees wobbled and she dropped.

Damon was there in an instant wrapping Bonnie in his arms, partially cradling her on his lap. She was shivering and he thought she might be cold but touching her bare skin, she was too warm. Feverish almost.

Bonnie curled her fingers into his shirt, buried her nose in his chest, and after a moment met his curious and terrified gaze. "That was…awesome," she whispered softly and smiled.

A/N: I just celebrated a birthday so you know what would make awesome presents? That's right, you guessed it, reviews! Seriously, thank you for reading. It was an interesting day Bamon had and they're gonna have to talk about it. I wonder what's coming next. XOXO.