Black Hole Sun
She's not here.
He's been sitting here for over an hour, there's an empty and crumpled space on the bed where she had woken up, and she's not here.
He knows he shouldn't, knows that it's not the time to go crazy, just when he was doing so well in constraining himself, but he feels the panic creeping and spreading through him like wildfire.
She lied to him.
About everything.
That's the only explanation.
He had thought he was being smart, doing the right thing in giving her some space this morning, show her that he wasn't a controlling monster.
But the minute he had stepped back into the hotel room, expecting to see her maybe sitting on the bed or at the desk, maybe drinking a complimentary glass of water, only to see her not there, an unbearably cold and empty feeling had sucked all the air from his lungs.
The emptiness had whipped through him fast and hard, so that it hurt, almost as payback for being so foolishly trustworthy.
Because when it came down to it, he knew there was a possibility of this happening.
Somewhere deep, buried behind his hopeful imaginings of them starting over again, he ultimately knew that she'd leave him the moment he gave her the chance.
She's probably plotting his death with her little friends right now.
His refined disappointment, sadness, and emptiness, blindly molds itself into rage.
His jaw clenches, the molars of his teeth grind and the bones of his cheeks jut outwards. His fists ball so tightly that only the white of his knuckles can be seen.
He stumbles into the desk chair and reaches for a glass of water. The liquid that splashes down the inside of his throat is tasteless and unsatisfying. His fingers tremble as they smudge the cold fog on the glass.
He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, wills his magic to stop flickering and rushing wildly under his skin, wills himself to not destroy everything in his wake.
Except each time he tries to calm himself down, he feels more angry heat slash through him, and crawl up his esophagus, ready to burst forth into a scream.
Because he can't help but think that this was probably exactly what she wanted; for him to lose his mind over her.
For him to slave over where she could possibly be, wait for her like a love-sodden idiot, try in vain to keep his emotions in check, viciously avoid calling the phone number Damon had given him so long ago, and pridefully prevent himself from slashing through his palm to do a locator spell.
Because in her eyes, he deserved this. He's mutilated her will and mentally manipulated her for so long that it was only right to return the favor, right?
He chuckles ruefully to himself before sobering up, his lips immediately pressing together in contemplation.
Because despite all of this, he can't though, understand why all of this searing anger in him sort of feels like heartbreak.
The angry lashes of fire that flay at him cuts straight through his heart, without fail every single time he dares to take a breath.
He doesn't know why he feels the hurt so deeply, so viscerally and achingly.
Because he doesn't love her.
He doesn't.
It's got to be his vampiric emotions, exacerbating everything into a steep crescendo that won't relent until it builds to something utterly explosive.
He's probably overreacting.
Because there's still the softer part of him, the one that had grown a conscience, that feels bad.
It thinks that he's being unfair in giving her such unrealistic confines to begin with. It points out that he had never actually demanded that she stay in the hotel room the entire time. That he shouldn't have expected her to.
The other, unconstrained part of him wants to kill her.
In cold blood, and out of spite, like how he usually does.
For making a fool out of him.
For scurrying off the minute the opportunity presented itself.
For going back on all the promises she had given him; back when she had been desperate, back when her life had been dangling between his fingers.
And now he can't help thinking that he should have known. That she never meant any of it. She was just trying to save herself.
He should've known that she wouldn't have been able to help herself from being deceitful and cruel when it came to him. Because it was him.
He should've known that selfless Bonnie Bennett was just being selfish.
It takes shorter than usual for him to squash down his conscience and let his animosity swarm over the expanse of the soft naive emotions.
She better hope that he never gets the opportunity to find her.
Because when he stabs into the meaty flesh of her stomach for the second time, he'll make sure she stays dead.
Just then, the door creaks open.
.
.
Jo's body is nowhere to be found.
Neither was Liv's, as it turned out.
The news about Liv comes not three minutes after Bonnie is finally, finally able to wrap her head around the fact that Alaric's trunk is completely empty.
They've all gathered back in the boarding house after scavenging through Ric's trunk like a pack of wild animals—Bonnie doing her best to look for any tell-tale flickerings of cloaking spells.
She hadn't felt any traces of dark magic while looking through Alaric's car, but Stefan pointed out the faint smell of Jo's dried blood that still speckled the bottom of the trunk.
Which meant that Jo had been in said trunk at some point in time, and now, she just wasn't.
They're brainstorming possible scenarios in which Jo's body could've been moved. Simultaneously wondering if one of their many adversaries had stooped so low as to steal her deceased body as a last—
"—Oh my God," it's Tyler's voice that chokes out over the storm of voices talking over each other.
Several pairs of eyes skirt over to Tyler's bulky form hunched over his cellphone, his eyes large and bulging while they scan the phone screen over and over.
"Liv's alive," he chokes out again mere moments later, his glassy eyes rise to search the reactions from the rest of the room.
Elena speaks out first over the confounded silence that has suddenly blanketed the room, her perfectly arched eyebrows furrowing in contemplation.
"You don't think—"
"—Of course not."
Bonnie's voice cuts in this time, a little more harshly and more strangely defensive than she had intended.
It's because she knows what the others are thinking.
She can see it in their shifty glances at one another, in the way Stefan's forehead crinkles at her, in Elena's crossed arms and furrowed brows, in Caroline's nervous lip biting.
They think that this is his doing.
That he somehow found a soul before deciding to kill his entire coven and managed to salvage a failsafe for his favorite sisters.
But it isn't true.
It can't be.
Jo or Liv must've somehow known that something bad was going to happen, and then managed to save themselves, use a spell or something.
Because Bonnie of all people knows what it's like to be dead and then suddenly not.
Certain dark spells can funnel the life right back into your lungs, it may be filtered a bit differently, but it's life nonetheless. Which meant that this had to be the doings of some sort of Gemini magic, Liv must've—
"—She's turned."
Tyler's voice is strangely soft as he stutters over Bonnie's frantic thoughts of necromancy spells.
Everyone's eyes zero back in on Tyler's shell-shocked form. Bonnie carefully watches the lit up phone screen quiver slightly in Tyler's large clammy hands.
Someone lets out a curse under their breath, but the noise barely reaches her as a numbness glides down her spine and to her fingertips.
The chilling shock settles deep in the pit of her stomach and broils hotly before turning into dread as she takes in the news.
"And what about Jo?"
Alaric stumbles almost eagerly towards Tyler, knocking Damon out of his way with his mouth still set in a grim line. The sweat is less potent on his forehead than it had been when he'd first rushed into the boarding house, and his face is beginning to gain some coloring back.
"L-Liv thinks that maybe Jo's been turned too. Th-that their coffee tasted kind of weird the morning of the wedding, but they didn't think anything of it, but they—"
"—So somebody slipped them blood."
The somebody is an unspoken revelation.
Bonnie's honestly surprised that it had taken Damon this long to speak up.
But that doesn't matter.
None of it does.
Because yesterday, Jo and Liv and the entire Gemini coven were dead.
And now, Liv and Jo might be vampires.
Jo's unborn twins may still be alive.
There was no point in further discussing anything, they needed to take action.
"I-I can do a locator spell to find Jo, and Tyler, you and Matt can go get Liv, and the rest of you can stop by the wedding hall to look for the ascendant."
It wasn't until after Bonnie had slit her palm open and watched her blood form a perfect circle on the map just a few miles east of the boarding house, in which a more concrete plan was formed.
Caroline had decided to join Stefen and Elena in their search for the ascendant, and Tyler and Matt wasted no time in leaving to go find Liv via Matt's old pickup truck.
Both Tyler and Alaric had grabbed a few fresh blood bags from the basement for good measure.
Bonnie had just been about to follow Alaric out the door when she ran into a rather hard chest. She doesn't even need to look up before knowing who the chest belonged to.
"Yeah...you're not coming with us, Bon Bon."
She watches as Damon's bright azure eyes make eye contact with Stefan from behind her.
Of course he'd somehow find a way to prevent her from going.
She can't halt the anger that readily floods through her, or from hotly replying.
"And why is that, Damon?"
Her mouth twists into one of those saccharinely sweet smiles, her real emotions given away by her harsh wringing of the strap on her backpack.
"Because, if what we think happened to Jo is true, then you can't be with us."
Bonnie merely arches a single eyebrow at Damon. He'd have to do a whole lot better than a half-assed explanation if he wanted her to stay put.
Damon sighs at Bonnie's obviously unimpressed expression, rubbing his brow slightly before gently placing warm palms on her shoulders and looking her square in the eye.
"Listen, Bon Bon. Witch blood is a little more...potent than normal human blood. And Jo is a newly turned vampire. Your scent—i-it may all be too much for her and she might end up attacking you."
She watches Damon's nostrils flare as he works slowly to get the words out.
Damon makes somber eye contact beyond her shoulder again, and Bonnie turns to find Stefan grimly nodding before awkwardly shifting his gaze towards the floor away from Bonnie's prodding eyes.
Well, this was news to her.
Never once had Damon, or even Stefan for that matter, told her that witches' blood was more rich and overwhelming in comparison to that of a normal human.
Maybe that was why none of them had ever fed from her.
Not that she was complaining in the slightest.
Sometimes she could still feel the phantom sting of Damon's fangs ripping into her throat on that cold night in the woods. Or Alaric sucking the life from her skin as her muscles slackened and surrendered to the ongoing pain.
It was something she never wanted to experience ever again.
So she'd stay, if only to help Jo stem her new cravings. And to prevent herself from being bitten again.
It was then that Caroline, who had been besides Stefan, suddenly stepped closer to Bonnie, a frown maring her pretty features.
"Wait a minute. Shouldn't you be getting back to Kai? He did tell you when he'd be back didn't he?"
And just like that, all contemplation of witches blood and Jo's wellbeing screeches to a halt.
"Oh my God," Bonnie chokes out, her green eyes widen and her stomach just about drops through to an alternate plane.
Kai had said that he'd be back at the hotel in around an hour.
She wasn't quite sure exactly what time it was, but she knew for a fact that she had been gone for more than a few hours.
Which poses the likely possibility that he hadn't dessicated from lack of human blood consumption by that time.
She pinches the bridge of her nose in aggravation.
How could she have been so abstracted?
The success of their plan for the Heretics relied on Kai Parker staying out of the loop.
Which was something that she was solely responsible for.
"You're right. I-I have to get back before he realizes—I need some sort of alibi. He can't know that I was with you guys, he'd just get suspicious."
She curses to herself and hastily checks her phone, not knowing why or how she thought that she'd have some messages from him. She's pretty sure she'd never given him her phone number.
She clears her throat instead, ignoring the worried glances she's getting from everyone—especially from Damon, who has stayed uncharacteristically quiet—and tries to smooth the worry lines off her own face.
"I'll think of something, okay? Just—don't worry. And text me when you guys find Liv and Jo and the ascendant and everything."
Bonnie practically sprints out the door after making hurried goodbyes to everyone, refusing to focus on the fact that Damon had chosen to remain mute all the while; his lips resoutley frozen into a thin line.
It's only until after she gets into her ride in which her alibi broadens upon her. It hasn't even formulated into a full idea yet, she's still tasting the spell she'll need for it on her tongue, before she's asking her Uber driver to drop her off at the jewelry store in town.
When she gets back—into a different Uber this time—the sky is plunging into dusk and her phone screeches with a shrill ring.
She sees the caller ID flash pristinely on her white phone screen and doesn't hesitate to hit the green symbol to answer.
.
.
Bonnie uses one hand to push against the smooth wood of the hotel door, while the other hand re-adjusts its hold on the white paper jewelry bag.
She doesn't see him at first.
The room is distilled in pitch black darkness, save for a slender shadow of light peeking in through the blinds.
She sets down the jewelry carefully on the bed first, finally lets her backpack drop to the floor in a succinct thud, and rolls the cramps out of her shoulders.
A voice floats through the darkness; gentle and smooth, non-threatening.
"Back already?"
She nearly screams.
The lamp flickers on from the desk across from the bed, revealing a rigid silhouette.
The warm glow of the lamp barely illuminates a face, but it reveals a faint outline of two eyes, narrowed and glinting murderously.
She flounders a little bit, her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water.
She's so taken off guard by his sudden presence, and of the fact that he's drilling his stare into her like daggers, that all thoughts of her alibi have been forgotten.
She's suddenly not sure how to explain herself.
A tendril of fear spikes through her, causing her spine to stiffen. Her unease made worse as her vision adjusts and she can make out that his nostrils are flared in blatant displeasure.
He's angry.
She's not even sure how she could've possibly missed his presence when she'd first entered the room. Heavy tendrils of burning magic filter off of his body in furious waves.
Diffuse the situation, Bonnie, just let him know why you were gone for so long.
"I-I got something for you."
She's not so sure when her throat had gotten so dry.
She moves almost robotically to grab the small bag on the bed, the once smooth paper suddenly feeling brittle and jagged in her hands. She doesn't take the simple black band out from its confines, instead she clears her throat, causing cerulean eyes to flit from the bag and back to her face.
"I was making you a daylight ring."
She knows that he already has one—a fact that she will gladly remain 'oblivious' to—and had assumed that much right after coming to the dispirited conclusion that Kai had most likely finished his vampiric transition.
When she had first made Caroline's ring, it had taken her days, but this was when she had been an inexperienced wichling. In reality, it had only taken her a few minutes on the car ride back to the hotel to spell this ring.
But that wasn't relevant, what mattered was that Kai thought it had taken her all day to make this one.
Kai hasn't moved from his position sitting fastidiously on the desk chair, one of his fingers trailing absentmindedly on the rim of an empty glass sitting on top of the desk. His eyebrow is now quirked slightly at her explanation, but the hardened look still hasn't left his face.
"The thing is, Bon," he swipes a hand over his mouth and chuckles caustically to himself as he rises from his chair, "I just don't believe you."
Bonnie sucks in a breath then, suddenly feeling as if the walls are crumbling around her.
He's been relatively calm up until this point, and she's not sure why, but it annoys her.
He should've snapped long before she has.
Instead, he stalks towards her slowly and calmly, watching her expression carefully, as if waiting for her to explode.
"I'm telling the truth," she grits out angrily, already feeling herself begin to lose control of her emotions.
She lets him step into her space to prevent him from thinking she's about to derail. Except now he's suddenly close enough that she can make out the lines of stubble sprinkling his jaw through the glowing darkness. His shoulders hunch in an attempt to sink to her eye-level. He towers over her, and it makes her feel extraordinarily disadvantaged.
The power imbalance only causes more anger to flood her.
Be nice, she thinks.
Don't let him get to you.
She tries to curb the scowl threatening to ruin her features.
"Hmm. Hmm," he hums to himself, gives a little nod and crinkles his brows, as if pretending to ponder and agree with her "truthful" statement.
He speaks again, the words slip meticulously from his lips.
"And uh—you didn't happen to run into anyone while you were out making this ring, right?"
She thinks about lying, then.
But she can see the way he's probingly searching her face, and she knows that it'd be no use.
He knew I hadn't been alone.
"I went to Whitmore to get my things," She glances over to her forgotten backpack on the floor, his gaze follow hers before stonily steadying back on her, "I saw Elena. I left to get the ring. That's it."
A smirk spreads languidly across his face as she speaks. And she knows it's not because he thinks that anything of what she's saying is comical, but because he knows that she's full of shit.
So she decides not to focus on that, and instead tries to reel her attention on anything else besides his obvious ability to see right through her. She settles on objectively studying the features of his face to distract herself from the inevitable storm, her gaze trailing over the lines of his nose, his eyes, and lips.
She hadn't noticed it before, but he's almost...handsome in this moment.
Except that his handsomeness presents itself in a cruel way. He's all sharp features, pouty lips and piercing eyes, the mean smirk that splays across his face is second nature.
But the longer she reluctantly admires the shine of his eyes, the more her admiration sours; the constant glinting in them makes it seem as though he knows a horrible secret, and will refuse to divulge it without compensation.
She's reminded then, why back in '94, her fleeting attraction for him had vanished so quickly.
She knows better than anyone that those orphic gray eyes of his only promised horrible things and nothing else. Her primordial subconscious stubbornly refuses to acknowledge his new array of emotions. Not when he's so good at using his pretty face as a mask to obscure sinister intentions.
Which is why she can't help it; her eyes skitter to the door behind her, just to reassure herself.
He immediately catches it, and she stills.
The smirk slips off his face.
His mouth twists into a petulant glower, like he can just taste her desperation to leave him.
And that was her first mistake, assuming for even a second that he would let her go.
He grabs at her before the thought of escape can flit through her head a second time.
The bag with his daylight ring drops flimsily from her grip, immediately forgotten on the carpeted floor.
A large hand encloses around her throat, the other clamping onto her arm in a bruising grasp, pushing her against the very door she had been clandestinely eyeing, and she can't help but find this all so very familiar.
"Don't lie to me!"
This is not the deal we made.
She wants to scream it at him just as viciously as he did her.
She feels justified in her anger, because she had never promised him her unrelenting honesty, not when his hand is still curled around her throat and his chest is crushed against hers.
She heard the stripped, raw anger in his voice as he yelled at her, and it's still familiar, but there's something different, a certain hardness that hadn't been there before.
That's when she realizes just how close he is.
Because it's not just the solid muscles of his chest she can feel against hers, it's everything else.
She tries not to notice it, begs her brain to think of anything besides the harrowingly thin cotton material of his pajama bottoms.
But her cheeks burn hotly and her throat dries because she can feel his appendage pressed directly into the soft skin stomach. She wants to squirm, and she feels almost nauseated at the horrible heat that's flared in the pit of her stomach. She goes to move out of his orbit just barely, but sucks in a sharp breath when she feels the warm skin slide imperceptibly down the steep bone of her pelvis.
And it's his fault, she thinks, as the heat crawls tantalizingly slow down to her fingertips. For not pressing his large fingers into her trachea hard enough, because this time around, though the anger streaking his face is the same, he's not frighteningly constricting all of the airflow from her windpipe like he had before. His grip is firm, steady and imposing, not as painful as it should be, and his thumb lightly grazes her pulse point in a way that elicits a reedy shiver. The worst part is, she doesn't even think he knows what he's doing to her. He has her suspended in a mix between feverish and terrified that the growing heat in her will continue to flood until it reaches between her legs.
But maybe it's not his fault.
Maybe it's her own fault, for thinking about his body like this, or maybe it's her fault for neglecting herself of intimacy for so long, for being so desperate to latch onto the first warm body that encases hers after being stuck in solitude.
It all happens in a matter of seconds, but it feels as though his body has been cruelly glued to hers like a second skin for hours.
She manages to tear her gaze away from the cajoling darkness of his eyes, and she finally feels that horrible heat begin to ebb, her heart rate slows, and she thinks for a brief hopeful moment that she's overcome it, that she's overcome him.
But then he speaks again.
"Look at me."
Her eyes widen as she hears the coldness drenching his voice like poison.
Her fearful eyes dart straight back to his, and she can do nothing but submit to the biting discontempt piercing through her.
He slowly exhales, his jaw unhinges, his snake-like eyes stare at her, unblinking. The haughty breath causes his chest to bury into hers even more. He doesn't register the fierce turmoil she's experiencing, too lost in his own selfish need for revenge.
The air between them quivers with something blistering and impending.
Her heart continues to pound merclicely in her ears.
He looks like he's going to kill her.
And even that isn't enough to stop the fervid heat from rushing straight to her core.
Her heart drops as she feels moisture gather in her underwear, and every neural network in her entire body becomes inflamed and screeches at her to leave; to leave before he notices.
She acknowledges that his lips have begun to move, and she thinks that he may be murmuring something to her, but she can barely hear him over the blood furiously rushing in her ears.
She needs to leave.
"I want you to look at me while I—"
—But it's too late.
She can see the exact moment the scent of her arousal meets his nose.
She watches his once murderous expression transform in slow motion.
His face slackens, and his eyebrows raise in unbridled shock, leaving his face unguarded and undoubtedly incredulous.
Their eyes widen at the same time; hers in sheer panic, his in surprise.
Then, his face morphs.
His chin snaps upwards to close his mouth, his jaw clenches, his Adam's apple bobs heavily in his throat. His eyes slip shut, like he's savoring it, or like he's trying to control himself.
His hand unconsciously tightens around her esophagus, but his body wavers away from her, so that they're now a hair's width apart, and the dichotomy is almost worse.
When he opens his eyes to look at her again, they're molten black, and dangerous.
He looks at her like he's going to ruin her.
And like she's going to let him.
"Bonnie…"
His voice is strangled, but almost accusatory. Because he says it like he's already inside of her, as if he's already viciously pumping through her hot and slick core and hadn't expected her to be so wet.
It's all too much.
"Don't."
Her voice is a low growl, a clear warning.
It doesn't come out nearly as unwavering and powerful as she felt. But she burns her eyes threateningly into molten black holes. To let him know that if he makes another move, she will not hesitate to burn him alive.
She realizes then, despite the knowledge that she will kill him if he so much as blinks wrong, just how much he frightens her.
And it's because she can't draw a clear distinction between whether the biting darkness plaguing his expression is due to anger or arousal. He's looking at her like he wants nothing more than to end the incessancy of her existence, but also like he could swallow her whole.
Her chin wobbles briefly in a veiled attempt to swallow down an anxious whimper.
Be nice.
Be complicit.
But she can't.
Not when her blood is boiling and terror is swirling in her veins.
His face inches towards her, just barely. But his warm breath licks against her skin like flames.
And suddenly, the intent to rip and to bite and penetrate her body in the worst way blazes clear in his eyes.
Immediate alarm bells ring shrill in her head as she registers the defined features of his face slinking closer to hers.
The slap comes without warning.
They stare at each other, him now with an angry red mark smeared across his cheek, and her with an aching palm.
Both of their faces are twisted into ugly murderous scowls, daring the other to make another move.
Despite all the adrenaline pumping through her, she registers that his face is no longer suffocatingly close to hers. His hand had loosened in surprise by her sudden physical aggression.
And it's enough.
She slips from his grasp.
She doesn't know exactly how, but she does.
She makes it all the way to the bathroom, locking the door behind her, before sinking down to the ground.
She feels an ugly sort of sickness waver over her because she can still feel the torrid phantom of his fingers branded into her neck, she can feel the murderous flickering in his eyes from her slap, but there was something else too, under all of the cold-blooded anger percolating towards her foolish action.
She knew that he had liked it.
Her hitting him in the face did nothing to stem his hunger, it had only fanned the fire.
And worse of all, she couldn't help the thrill of satisfaction that flashed through her the minute her hand made harsh contact with his cheek.
The sickness travels higher when she shifts her knees to place them under her and feels the cold damp fabric of her underwear skim just slightly against her bare clit.
She quickly waves her hand in a silencing spell, because she can feel the harrowing sob that's building in her throat even before her eyes have become wet with moisture.
The tears that leave her are hot and thick, they stream down her face in vicious trails and drip into the crease of her chest.
She feels like she's drowning in her own self-disgust, and she chokes on it as Liv and Jo's faces flash through her mind.
She thinks she deserves it—the burning shame piling onto torrents of disgust—for allowing her body to react to his in that way, for finding some sort of sick pleasure in his large hands pressing against her neck. From the same hands he's used to murder children, and his own family. The same hands he used to saw through the flesh of unborn babies.
The sickness rises until it leaves her mouth. She retches violently into the toilet.
.
.
He can't hear anything from the bathroom.
It's probably for the best.
He knows that she'll be in there for a while, if the abrupt crumbling of her expression before skittering away from him was anything to go by.
His chest heaves recklessly, he tries cannily to calm himself down and finds that he simply can't.
He had been this close to snapping.
He wasn't sure if it meant he'd been close to bashing her skull into the wall behind them, or plunging his fingers into her cunt. But his body had flooded with dark pleasure at the impending prospect of hearing desperate screams being ripped from her throat regardless of how they were elicited.
He had been ready to put an end to all of this, to all her lies; had her dainty neck lying placid and compliant in his grasp, and had wanted her to watch as he drained the light out of her eyes.
But then, the sweet musky scent of her arousal reached him, his vampiric senses had aggravated it so that it practically smothered the room, and he'd almost lost all control.
He'd just barely prevented his eyes from bleeding red, but he could feel his fangs begin to slide through his gums. He practically ached to rip through any part of her sweet flesh he could find, wanting to start with sinking his teeth straight into her clit.
But he can't think like this, he can't afford to remember her intoxicating scent, because just that much nearly sent him teetering towards that sadistic void he knew he wouldn't be able to claw his way out of.
His jaw clenches in an attempt to reel in his dark thoughts, but when he thinks of the blush that colored her dusky cheeks, and the way her eyes had widened in shame while she just dripped for him, his control slips far too easily.
Luke's consciousness is nowhere to be found as he dips a hand into the waistband of his pants.
It's nowhere to be found as he envisions the rage streaked across her pretty face while her hand smacks meanly against his cheek.
He lets out a groan.
His cock swells with hot blood.
Bonnie Bennett wasn't a mean person.
He grips his fully hard member in his hand and slowly begins to pump.
Bonnie didn't get in physical fights with people.
His hips rock to thrust his cock into the welcomed warmth of hands harder.
He did this to her.
He grips the shaft harder, until it hurts.
His spine crawls with chills as he thinks of the potency of her dark magic swirling and blistering the closer he had gotten towards her. He wonders if she'd rather choke him, like he did to her, strangle him with that same ferocity that she had slapped him with.
She thought she had everyone fooled.
But Bonnie Bennett had secrets and shames.
He lets out another tortured groan.
His cheeks puff outwards, and his hand continues to move viciously and tightly against his own tender skin until his hips stutter and still.
He's left gasping for air, as if he'd just ran a marathon, his ab muscles twitching in tangent with each moan still stuttering from his lips.
When his undead heart finally doesn't feel like it's going to burst, he moves a shaky hand to run through the tendrils of his dampened hair.
He frowns to himself.
He doesn't quite like the feeling of his sticky semen coating the inside of his pajama pants, nor does he like the apparent guilt that's begun to fester in his stomach.
This is going to be a problem.
.
.
She comes out of the bathroom an hour later.
She reenters the room demurely; her head is down and her arms are crossed so she doesn't notice that Kai is wearing a different set of pajamas than when she'd left, or that his eyes are tracing the dried tear stains on her cheeks with his lips tilted downwards.
She certainly doesn't notice the fact that the paperbag with his daylight ring in it is missing.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed, and when she looks up, he's looking off into the distance, his eyes unfocused and his face blank. His lack of attention puts her at ease, allows her to get to what she'd wanted to talk to him about before things spiraled out of control.
She steps towards him, but makes sure to render a safe distance between them.
"Someone called me earlier," she pauses, remembering the phone call she had received on the ride over to the hotel, and tries to squash down a sharp breath when cobalt eyes suddenly snap to meet hers.
"He said they'd found a dead body with a severed head in Windbrook."
Her voice is quiet and reserved, but she regards him carefully, and she hates the fact that she can't read anything but the startling intensity of his eyes.
"Yeah? And who was this someone who called you?"
His expression remains relatively unchanging, but she can hear the jealousy trimming his words, and still decides to say the name she knows he's grown a distaste for.
"It was Damon."
There's a pregnant pause as Kai looks away from her, his eyes glued back to that damn spot on the wall across from them, and she wants to say something about it, bring it to his attention, but she has a feeling that it would just start another whirlwind altercation.
"Were you with him today?"
His voice is suddenly quiet and meek, and he avoids her pressing stare.
Her forehead crinkles at his sudden change in tone, and she almost wants to scoff at how easily he can go from being demanding and belligerent one second and then act like a child scared of rejection the next. His erratic change in tone makes her entirely aware of an uneasiness that's been steadily layering the room since she first exited the bathroom.
"I saw Elena today when I got my things, and then I went to get your ring. I told you that before."
She cautiously avoids answering directly, not trusting her heart rate to not skip and stumble over the blaring silence.
She's tried to be calm up until this point to not press on the already fragile nature of their conversation, but can't stifle the nervous annoyance that surfaced through the tale-end of her explanation.
Why can't he just believe her lies?
She doesn't tell him that Damon assumes that the dead body was courtesy of Jo or Liv potentially losing control of their new vampiric abilities and accidentally murdering a human in a haste to feed. Or that the others had assumed that this was Lily's doings, as she was a known Ripper.
Because she knew they were all wrong.
This was Kai's mess.
She didn't know exactly how she knew this, but she just had an incredibly strong feeling...
He's still looking at her like he only sort of believes that she was with Elena and no one else, so she decides to deflect the conversation away from her and infringe it onto him.
"I know it was you who killed that man."
Her voice is firm, and righteously accusatory.
She thinks in that moment that he's going to lie to her and tell her that he didn't do it, can see the charming grin begin curving up the corner of his lips. But he quells the smile as soon as it begins and tilts his head to look at her, his jaw clenching and his gaze turning serious instead.
"Sorry."
She's surprised at how easily the admittance slips out of his lips, and a bit more surprised over the fact that he apologized, but she wipes the shock off her face before he can catch it.
She speaks very slowly instead, her fingers rubbing lightly against the tender welt forming on her forearm from his earlier treatment.
"If...this is going to work, you can't feed on humans. Only animals from now on."
She's not sure exactly what this is, but she's fairly certain that at some point, they'll have to outline the exact nature of their relationship more succinctly for the sake of her own sanity, and to prevent what had happened earlier from ever happening again.
Her mind drifts to Stefan and his Ripper tendencies. And if Kai is anything like Stefan, then an animal diet is the safest way.
And up until this point, she's honestly not sure how he's done so well in preventing himself from gnawing into her, but she doesn't want to find out.
Kai merely scoffs in annoyance at her proposal, like she was the one who just left a decapitated body in the middle of the road in plain sight.
"That's a bit...unrealistic don't you think?
She wants to say that their whole situation is unrealistic, but bites her tongue.
Instead she compromises, wondering why apprehension seeps into her skin the more she watches him process her suggestion.
"Blood bags then. And blood bags only. You agree to this and...the next time I leave, I'll tell you when and where I'm going."
The smile that he had dampened earlier creeps back onto his face, his shoulders relax, as if a calmness has wavered through him. Meanwhile, the apprehension only moves more sluggishly through her own body.
She'd almost find his soft smile endearing, if she weren't in her right mind.
"Deal."
He holds out a large ringed hand and she stares at it for a moment.
He's asking her to show a sign of faith and shake the same hand that's been used to puncture a hunting knife into her own stomach. The same hand that had gently stroked the throbbing vein on the side of her neck just moments ago.
But this was an offering, a momentary armistice, and she'd be foolish not to take it.
She swallows briefly, warily eyeing his flat palm once more before allowing her smaller hand to be enveloped by his.
His hand is warm; soft yet worn with use. His many rings press cooly into her skin, and it's not an unwelcome feeling.
This is probably the first time she has ever willingly touched him, not out of malice or threat, or from a need to escape.
She's not sure what to think.
And just when she thinks he's been holding her palm hostage in his for a beat too long, their eyes meet and her chest swells in a sharp inhale.
He stares at her intently, there's a certain delicate emotion that flickers onto his face, but his eyes quickly settle back into their familiar darkness.
She watches cautiously as his pupils continue to bleed over the gray of his irses. It happens gradually until they're almost too similar to how he had looked at her before she had run off to the bathroom. Her heart rate spikes—both in recollection and in barely concealed panic—and she hastily pulls her hand away before she can watch him spiral into that darkness completely.
She clears her throat, looking anywhere but him, and misses the devilish grin that creeps up his face as his pupils resize.
When they go to bed this time, she makes sure that a single pillow separates their bodices.
.
.
He waits for her breathing to even out before rising and grabbing her daylight ring off the desk.
He crumples the paper bag and drops it into the trash can, twirling the simple black band on his thumb as he crosses over to the armoire in the closet.
He can feel the faint Bennett magic humming against the skin of his fingertips and smiles softly to himself as an unholy idea crowns.
He places the ring gently into the small wooden box sitting on top of the armoire. The box was a betrothal gift from the Gemini coven, back when his parents had first gotten married. He had found it while secretly snooping in the attic of his old home in Portland, looking for any valuable Gemini relics as their newly minted leader.
He'd never had any use for that box until tonight.
He turns back towards the sleeping form on the expensive hotel mattress and briefly pauses his descent.
He allows himself to watch her, just for a moment.
But then he can't stop his gaze from turning greedy as it races over her, burning the features of her tranquil face into his memory. He ultimately forces himself to look away, and focuses on the constant beat of her heart instead.
Her silent breathing calms him, in a way.
Because she's alive. She's still here.
He no longer cares as much about uncovering the conserved secrecy regarding her friends.
Because he's discovered something more valuable; a tantalizing something that she had never meant for him to discover.
His lips curl into another grin.
He turns back to the armoire and uses a single finger to delicately trace the golden embroidery on the Gemini box before absentmindedly tracing the silver band of his own daylight ring resting snugly on his thumb.
Bonnie doesn't know it yet, but she's already made his job that much easier for him.
.
.
"You don't understand just how hard it was for me to get this, do you, love?"
A gravely accented voice breaks through the bustling noise of the bar.
Lily Salvatore brushes auburn hair over her shoulder, places her glass down on the table top before zeroing in on Lorenzo's form sliding onto the bar stool next to her.
He grabs a slightly crumpled brown paper bag out from under the lapel of his peacoat, and places it onto the bar table directly in front of Lily.
She doesn't immediately grab at the bag, not like she wants to. And she doesn't need to look inside to know that he's been a good little accomplice and gotten what she's asked for.
Instead, she gives Enzo a sweet smile, reaches towards him to smooth the black collar of his jacket down onto broad shoulders before speaking to him in an even sweeter tone.
"It couldn't have been that hard. I mean, you've retrieved it haven't you?"
And maybe it's the way she says things with such politeness, or the way her voice sings so warmly, but Enzo can't bring himself to be offended by her rather rude rebuttal.
Lily gently places the crumpled bag into her purse, Enzo raises a single finger to alert the waiter that he wants to order a drink.
And since she's feeling rather...grateful towards Enzo at the moment, she decides that she may just indulge in him and stay until after he's finished his drink.
"So, what are you going to do with it?"
She misses the way his honeyed eyes soften as they travel from her purse up to her face.
Lily chooses not to answer him directly, though thoughts of her dear Julian flit through her brain.
"All will be clear soon."
The phoenix stone sits heavy at the bottom of her purse.