Chapter 3
"Caroline?" his voice is concerned for a second then he bites his lip and looks at her from under his lashes his tone turning knowing. "What are you doing here love?"
Yes she thinks, and wrings her hands together. What is she doing here in her short skater dress and strappy wedges, hair in beach curls and lips tinged pink? "I…"
He tips his head quizzically, wolfishly, and his full lips part just enough to draw her gaze.
"I wanted to make sure you aren't going to go back on our deal," she lies far less smoothly than she'd planned. "I figured you might use Rebekah's interruption as and excuse to call it off and keep hounding me"
"Is that right?" he turns and walks back into the house making her follow him. "Funny that this thought should cross your mind now, almost a fortnight later in fact, despite that I have made no attempt to approach you."
She'd known it was a pretty flimsy excuse when she'd spritzed on her best perfume and headed over here, but she'd rather hoped he'd just let it go. He obviously has no intention of doing so. Turning up at his door, dressed to kill and smelling of Coco Chanel and barely masked desire is the final capitulation in a dozen days of battling with herself and now she wishes fervently she'd had more fight in her.
"Well I've been busy"
He laughs. "Of course. Well fear not Caroline I wouldn't dream of backing out on an agreement. You can run along now sure in the knowledge that the bastard won't trouble you again"
He tips a hand towards the door, prompting her to go and she feels small and stupid and her face burns with humiliation as she turns to leave. Then in a flash of vampire speed he's in front of her. "Or" he drawls, predatory and wicked and sexy as all hell. "Stay and tell me why you're really here"
"I…" she stumbles but she never was one to stay mute and unsure for long. "I don't know alright?" she snaps instead. "I just am"
"Very well, perhaps I can offer a reason," he smiles with cold white teeth. "You are here because you believe that turn around is fair play. That if you have shared a fantasy with me then I am obliged to share one of mine with you"
No that's not what was in her mind when she came but Jesus the thought of hearing his fantasies about her sends thrills shooting almost painfully into her belly. Fear chases arousal around her body and out of her mouth.
"Hardly!" She spits. "I am so not interested in whatever sick kinky stuff you drean up in your perverted little mind ok"
"Sweetheart" he doesn't step closer but his voice is so heavy with suggestion that she feels crowded. "I assure you if you let me show you what is in my mind you'll leave today no less chased than you did the last time you allowed yourself a moment's honesty with me"
She glares at him.
He moves away and smiles innocently. "In fact while you accused me of thinking your fantasy boring. I am certain that mine will in fact leave you quite bored"
She frowns, its not much of a sell but that just makes her curious so she lifts an eyebrow and leans her weight on one hip. "Fine tell me your boring fantasy"
Now he does come close and his voice is like liquid seduction poured over her skin making her lick her lips in anticipation. "I'd rather show you love"
"This doesn't change our deal," she clings to some measure of control despite that she's the one that came to him.
He bows his head, ever the old world gentleman. "As you wish"
"Fine"
He circles her, eyes openly trailing over her body and she finds herself swallowing hard and staring straight ahead with rapidly beating heart. When he gets round to her side he holds up a hand in invitation and she places hers in it and lets him lead her up the stairs, his eyes never leaving hers as they walk. In a sunlit drawing room on the first floor he lets go of her hand and moves behind her his hands skating lightly over her arms and up to her shoulders.
"You look lovely today Caroline" he speaks softly in her ear. "Did you think about me while you dressed? Have you chosen your prettiest knickers for me?" his hand finds the zipper of his dress as he speaks and there's no use denying it because her dress falls away to reveal a matching La Perla set in peach lace. He hums appreciatively. "So you did," he murmurs.
She doesn't say anything, the part of her that wants to scold him for his forwardness is gagged by the thrill of his eyes all over her body and the fire of the close-mouthed kiss he lays on her shoulder.
He takes her hand again and leads her, wide eyed and trembling to the velvet chaise lounge. He reaches behind her and deftly unclips her bra, slips his fingers under the straps and eases them down her arms so her breast fall free and her breath hitches nervously.
He doesn't touch them, doesn't even look away from her eyes to look at them, how unlike the boys she's been with she thinks, how much more intense his neglect than their attention.
He drops the bra and indicates with a tip of his head to the chaise. "Sit down love"
She sits and he lays his hands on her shoulders, close to her throat, thumbs brushing her collarbones, and presses her back so she's reclining against the antique velvet. As he withdraws his hands brush her sides, missing her breasts, making her tingle.
He moves down so he's kneeling on the floor at her feet and she certain he's going to go down on her. She's thought about that so often, brought herself off imagining his tongue working her pussy so many times, that the reality of it makes her choke out and involuntary squeak of anticipation.
He smirks knowingly at her and gives a single slight shake of his head then he lowers his gaze and begins removing her shoes taking his time with the fiddly straps, stroking her ankles as he does, rough finger tips on smooth skin.
He lifts her foot and positions it on the chaise then he leans over her and pulls a long silk scarf from the behind her. She watches with quickening breaths wondering if he's going to tie her up with it, a possibility that at once frightens and excites her.
But he doesn't, he drapes the pale material across her hips and runs his hand up her arm positioning it so it lies under her head then he steps back and looks at her. "Perfect" he says softly, intimately, and she blushes under his praise. "Now hold still"
He steps away briskly and she lifts her head. "What?"
"Hold still," he repeats and she suddenly notices the easel as he places a canvas on it.
"Oh" she says dumbly. "You're going to paint me"
"Sketch you. Just to get the lines." He flashes her a dimpled easy smile as if he hasn't just built the sexual tension in her body to breaking point and left her hanging. "Shouldn't take too long"
"Oh", she knows she sounds like an idiot; she doesn't need his smirking face hammering it home. "Right, guess that's why I'll be bored then"
"Yes, hold still now love"
"Right ok, sorry. Can I talk?"
"Of course" his pencil moves over the canvas. "In fact to alleviate the boredom why don't you assist me with something?"
"Well that depends what it is" she finds with a bit of distance she can collect herself.
"I must confess," he says conversationally. "That since your last visit my thoughts have been rather occupied with you Caroline"
"Really?'
He gives her a chiding look. "That surprises you? Truth be told knowing what you fantasise about the two of us has made me rather curious. Tell me Caroline, where are you when you think of us together?"
She considers telling him to go to hell but she's come here after all and with him a few safe meters away she can fool herself that she's not playing with fire. "In the shower sometimes, usually in bed"
He hums softly. "What do you wear to bed Caroline?"
She frowns. "That is magnificently creepy question"
He laughs and she can't honestly say she doesn't love the sound, rich and throaty and genuine. "I suppose it is, but humour me sweetheart I'm trying to perfect a mental image"
"Fine, plaid cotton shorts and a cami" his forehead creases to display his lack of understanding so she clarifies. "Like a strappy vest"
"Hmm sounds charming," he says with laughing eyes. "Very small town girl"
"Ha ha. I suppose leather and lace are more your thing," she snips.
"Not sure it'd suit me love," he smirks at her disgusted expression. "But whatever floats your boat
"Wow now there's a mental image I can never unsee" she snarks back at him. "Thanks for that"
She likes this, she isn't sure why but this sudden lessening of the tension, this playfulness frolicking between them, she likes it a hell of a lot more than she should. Knows it's more difficult to justify even than her lust for him. Dirty thoughts are one thing, warm and fuzzy thoughts are quite another.
He sketches in silence for a few moments then without catching her eye picks up the conversation again. "When you lie in bed Caroline," he doesn't lace his words with seduction; they are casual to the point to indifference. "When you give in to those dirty little thoughts about us, about me," he pauses minutely to regard the line of her arm then his eyes meet hers. "Do you touch yourself?"
"What?" She squeaks, shocked at the directness. "I am so not answering that"
The indifference peels back like a snake sliding form its skin revealing the real serpent beneath, bright scaled and sharp fanged. "Does your hand travel down between those stunning breast of yours?" Finally he lavishes them with the caresses of his eyes and the skin heats and tingles in response. "Across your belly to the waist of your shorts?"
She doesn't answer but that doesn't seem to bother him. He turns his attention back to the canvas and she feels the absence of his gaze, the sudden cooling of his attention, like a chill wind on her skin. "Does it slip inside? Delve between your legs while you imagine my skin beneath your fingers, my breath on your neck as you touch me?"
"Klaus," his name, a warning, a rebuff, an invitation.
"Do you find yourself wet for me then Caroline?" his gaze comes slowly up to meet hers, spears her with nonchalance right through her belly and tugs insistently at her sex.
"Yes," its little more than a croak, just audible above her deafening breath, he doesn't smile, his lips purse, full and pretty, too pale to be feminine but soft enough to hint at it. She stares at them, anchors herself to them by the lifeline of her gaze while her body is buffeted like a rag doll in the storm of her desires.
"And when you make yourself come," he continues while studying her feet. Then he pauses to lean back and study his work from a slight distance leaving her hanging in anticipation of his next question. "When you picture all the things that I could do to you, that you could do to me, do you say my name?
She's trapped now in truth and desire and though her voice is soft and hoarse there's almost relief in it, relief at being able to allow herself another moment's honesty with him. "Yes."
"Hmm," he hums eventually, his stormy eyes the only hint that he's affected at all so cool is his demeanour. "That is a sound I think I would very much like to hear." His pencil moves again scratching against her ears and drowning out her broken breath.
"When you think about it," she eventually asks in a voice that in her own ears sounds uncertain and childlike in its hesitance. "Do you… do you touch yourself?"
He looks at her, tilts his head like a dog, eyes sharp as a wolf. "Yes" he says simply and goes back to his work.
She makes a small inarticulate noise and he smiles a regards her from under his lashes. "Do you like that Caroline?" he asks softly. "Does it make you feel powerful?"
"Yes" She's gone monosyllabic. She can't seem, in the face of his erotic questioning, to form more than these throaty affirmations.
"I am a thousand years old," he continues in the same casual tone, eyes moving with a professional detachment from her body to the page as he draws. "There is no facet of sensuality I have not explored. I have pleasured queens and courtesans, princes and demons and yet for you Caroline I am as a fumbling callow boy, my cock in my hand, your name on my lips as I come"
"Jesus," she swears and fights the flow of energy surging outward from her centre trying to propel her towards him.
"The line of your calf is exquisite Caroline," he says still eerily calm. "It is perhaps the most gratifying of your curves to sketch"
"Oh," his sudden deviation throws her, slaps her out of the daze of erotic fascination that had settled on her and makes her quaver. "Thanks, I guess"
"I have enough," he says, suddenly standing. "I can finish from memory"
He doesn't lace those words with innuendo but still an image, which has nothing to do with painting, leaps into her mind. The thought of him, just as he described, cock in hand, sends thrills shooting into her sex adding fresh scent to her already soaked panties.
She sits up awkwardly drawing the scarf over her breasts as if only now becoming aware of their nakedness. He picks up her bra and sits besides her reaching one arm around her back and sliding the straps back up her arms, she makes small silent adjustments to help him as he brings the bra back into place and as he does he openly cups her breast through the material for a second before running his hands backward over her ribs to redo the clasp.
Her shoes come next, this time when he kneels before her and takes her foot in his hand he lays a single hot wet kiss on the inside of her thigh just above her knee before he replaces her shoes one at a time, slowly slipping each one on to her feet and doing the buckles, eyes flashing up to hers occasionally as she watches him.
When he's finished he pulls on her hand indicating she should stand, he doesn't rise with her, he stays on his knees so his eyes are level with her belly button and runs his hands up the outside of her thighs to her waist.
Then he kisses her along the lace waistband of her knickers from one hip to the other, his lips are hot and its all she can do to keep from trying some desperate move to get his mouth where she wants it, like standing on her tiptoes or pressing down on his head like Jimmy Walters had done to her back in 10th grade at Home Coming.
Once he's travelled back again to her navel he drops his head and kisses her once at the apex of her thighs through the lace of her panties and she can't stop herself from bucking towards him with a hissed "Klaus" bursting unsanctioned from her mouth.
He stands and takes her hand, holds it up high as he leads her, with their bodies freezing miles apart, back to where her dress lies crumpled on the floor. She steps daintily into the circle of bare floor at its center imagining she looks elegantly serene despite the flush of arousal blooming over her body and her parted panting lips. He squats down, to gather it up running his hands lingeringly down over her breasts, across her sides and over her bottom as he goes.
He looks up at her and his eyes are a darker shade of blue than she's ever seen them, like the deepest parts of the ocean, in his gaze she fancies she can see the depth of his desire but he doesn't let it show on his face. Instead he lifts her dress back up her body the material grazing all the places his hands overlook, the yearning flesh unbearably sensitive beneath the soft cotton caress.
He moves behind her again and she looks at him over her shoulders as he runs his fingers down the bare strip of skin beyond the open zip. Then he steadies one hand against her waist and slowly draws the zip up while placing a handful of soft kisses on the back of her neck.
She breathes hard, how can him dressing her be so indescribably arousing, she has never wanted anything as much as she wants him right now. He pulls back and she spins desperately in his arms and clings to him. "God Klaus please" unbidden the plea is tumbling from her lips while her hands grasp his shoulders like she's terrified of slipping into the abyss if she loses her grip.
"Caroline," her desperation penetrates his self control, buffets around inside his shell of calm and breaks back out in the ferociousness with which he pulls her body against his own.
She feels him hot and lean all along the length of her body, his grip almost punishing on her arms, his arousal pressed against her belly, and grinds herself senselessly against him, dumb and animal in her wanting.
He pushes her from him with unyielding strength and looks at her with a wonder in his eyes she's never seen before. "You are beautiful Caroline," he tells her. "But you should go"
"What?" she shakes her head but it doesn't clear and she feels her face crease in confusion.
He nods and releases her, leaving her floundering about in a swamp of her insecurities some old, some new, all crippling in the face of this rejection. "Did I do something wrong?" she curses the pathetic intonation of her voice, thinks in this moment she must look very young and stupid in his ancient eyes.
"If you stay Caroline," he tells her firmly. "Then you will give me what I want and we both know you would regret it," he runs his palm over her hair flattening the curls against her ear. "Go quickly though love, I'm not a strong man"
He steps back out of range and, with a deep determined breath, turns away. She stares at his back for a few moments a myriad of emotions spinning so fast inside her that they blur into one another and she can't pick one out of the mess. In the end she turns and walks away, he heart thumping in slow reluctant beats as she manages, by sheer force of will, to instruct her legs to keep her moving away from him.
She doesn't look back until she's at the door but he hasn't moved, and the fantasy that he might chase after her shrivels and dies in her chest, along with something else that she can't name. She hurries then, short quick steps, silent on the stairs as she flees towards the heavy front door.
Her hand makes contact with the handle for a fraction of a second before she's pulled away, spun around violently into his arms. His mouth crashes down on hers and something inside her surges up in ecstasy, some wild liberated part that's wanted this since the first time he looked into her eyes and promised her the world.
Her body follows that fierce rising and she throws her arms around his neck and lifts herself on her toes to press her chest against his and push back against his bruising kisses with a matching force. She invades his mouth with her tongue, tastes his teeth and revels in the deep groan that rumbles form him in response. No two people, she thinks, have ever wanted something as much as they want each other right now.
He tears himself away from her mouth and tries to step back. "No" she growls and pulls him forcibly back into a kiss that makes him moan and grasp artlessly at her bottom in an attempt to pull her closer to him.
Eventually he uses his superior strength to pries her off him. "Caroline, sweetheart stop"
She shakes her head stubbornly, he wants this, she felt it in the urgent possessiveness of his hands as they travelled over her back to squeeze her arse and tug her close, felt it too in the fervor of their wet messy kisses not to mention the hardness pressed avariciously against her belly.
"You don't want this love," he tells her and he sounds resigned, almost defeated. "Not as I do."
"Seriously?" she can't believe he's sending her away, anger flares brightly in her heightened state of excitement and she gestures wildly between them. "I think it's pretty obvious that against all sanity I really want this"
"Precisely my point. Do this Caroline and you'll wake tomorrow with the shame of having fucked a monster, is that what you really want?" His eyes darken and he sneers, his handsome face made ugly by the bitter twist of his lips. "Or will you hate yourself for it?"
He's right, goddamn him of course he is. If she throws down with him right now for what she imagines will be the ride of her life then she'll have to live with it tomorrow. She'll have to face all her friends knowing she fucked the guy who killed Jenna and Carol and ruined Stefan and Elena and pretty much destroyed everyone's life. She knows enough about herself, he does too it seems, to know she'll despise herself for it.
He takes an aggressive step towards her. "Leave Caroline" he snarls and she remembers only now that he is actually a really scary guy.
As she leaves she turns back and catches him watching her with clenched jaw and burning eyes. For a few seconds they look straight at each other before she can tear herself away. She's running before she's down the steps of the mansion, full vampire speed across the gravel and back to the cold safety of the town.
A/N hop everyone's enjoying reading this as much as i'm enjoying writing it.