He's insatiable.
And Bonnie begins to discover quickly that she is too.
Something had snapped between the two of them.
The strings of coiled tension and overt eroticism that had been built and jumbled onto itself from the moment they had met, had finally been cut loose after their first night being intimate together.
And as a consequent result, the sex they have in the following weeks is both constant and downright filthy.
It's cathartic in a way.
They fuck like they fight; greedily and ruthlessly like wild animals; it may as well be a competition for who can be more depraved. They're constantly looking to take and gain the upperhand, to benefit themselves in any way, capitalizing on any form of vulnerability, oftentimes cruelly in the throes of intimacy.
Kai, as much as he likes being in control of Bonnie and her body, bending her and her reflexive reactions to his every will, also seems equally as vetted in giving up said control.
Like she had always somewhat suspected, Kai gets off on her being horrible to him.
And it's primarily because it is all a game to him in a way; he finds sick pleasure in watching her stoop down to his level, in any way. He likes the slapping and depraved clawing she often finds herself falling into when her feelings of his past actions and abuse get the better of her. As far as she can tell, there's no limit to her berations of him during sex that could possibly be a turnoff.
Especially beause, they get to fuck every last bit of their fustration and inherent hurt and outrage out on each other instead of leting it propagate into reckless thoughts and actions in the real world.
But sometimes even that isn't enough.
Because the more they fuck, the more they fall into this gratuitous pit of indispensable addiction.
Kai Parker is both a siphon and a fiend. She knows this by now.
Which is why it's not a surprise to her that he tries fucking her at any chance he gets.
Oftentimes in public.
He'll be functioning like a normal human being one second and then the next, that dark, violent look will cross his face; it's the expression that tells her he may want to rip her throat out and choke her with his cock simultaneously, and somehow she'll find herself cloaked and pressed into the hard plaster of the side of a building in a street alleyway, or in the women's restroom of the Grille with him steadily pumping his fingers into her and growling obscenities in her ear.
She knows she's lost herself along the way of it all, especially during one night where he had first tongued the scar he'd given her under her ribcage and told her that he'd branded her, and that he's glad for it if it meant that she wouldn't ever be able to look at her own body without thinking of him.
The worst part is that she had had some semblance of self control to begin with.
But even she can admit that something had broken quite finitely within her.
She thinks she has Damon to blame for that, actually. Pushing away her budding feelings for her best friend's now ex-boyfriend, had simultaneously pushed her further into Kai's clutches.
She had fallen prey so easily to Kai's vice because she had so readily allowed herself to in order to avoid confronting her relationship with Damon.
Despite the fact that the build to Elena and Damon's breakup had been surprisingly anticlimactic–it seems as though both of them were aware that their relationship had long since waned, for reasons still unbeknownst to Bonnie–she still felt a slight churning in her gut when Damon had first told her about the split, especially because it secretly may have had more to do with her than Damon let on.
And from spending more and more time with Kai and away from Damon, she's begun to notice other things too.
Like, the fact that there's this powertrip she's fallen into, this feeling of headiness that's overcome her at the notion that a creature as powerful as Kai is so devoted to her and only her. His obsession with her had quickly turned from a pressing nuisance to providing steady fuel to her ego.
As a highschooler, she used to not understand why Elena and Caroline kept allowing themselves to willingly go back to those types of dangerous and unhealthily addicting people, but now she thinks she gets it.
There's something vindicating in being able to tame a beast.
It clouds over the rational thought Bonnie had once believed she possessed.
The action of sex is even different when it's the two of them, and that is what makes it so addictive and alluring.
It's not hot because they're both attracted to each other. It's hot because of their history. Because she had despised him, denied him her body for so long, because the action of watching him dip and slide his cock into her feels so inherently wrong after all of the emotional and physical damage they've done to each other. The fact that he's even afforded the luxury of watching his hot flesh plunge into the most sacred and private part of her that had been so guarded and locked away from him specifically, is what makes the satisfaction of their intimacy that much more intoxicating.
And because they simply can't get enough of each other, and she'd gotten sick and tired of pretending like she's unaffected by him, they're dating now. She thinks.
There's a lot of things they do outside of sex as well. They actually go out. Oftentimes to the movies, or shops in town or the park. She'll take him to arcades, fun and modern places so he can update himself on the popular culture of today. He'll tell her about his childhood too, the good memories with Jo and the others, and she tells him about her Grams, though she thinks he knows mostly everything about her already.
She doesn't think she's in love with him.
At least not yet.
But she can feel it; can feel the way her heart clenches at the thought of her being without him. But despite that, there's still this glaring part of her. That rational part that knows she will ultimately be better off with him out of her life for good. For hers and everyone else's sake. And deep down in her heart, it won't be able to last. But she's simply willing to live in her fairytale for as long as possible before it comes to an inevitable end.
Before her friends eventually kill him and she looks away before she lets them do it.
But for now, she'll allow herself to bask in it, to go on stupid dates with him and do coupely things and show him the modern world. Just like how he shows her things too. Magic, mostly because he's well aware of how much it fascinates her.
She remembers watching him clearly.
They're sat on the carpeted floor of the living room in the hotel suite, a discarded monopoly board game lies between their criss-crossed legs.
She watches as Kai cloaks and uncloaks the various rings on his fingers. His magic is so refined and sharp that it invokes simultaneous amazement and bregruding jealousy in Bonnie all at once. It's so different from Bennett magic–she'd never had this type of up close and personal exposure to different types of magic other than her own for a long time. She hadn't paid enough attention when Liv or Luke had practiced in front of her, most likely because they were always in dire situations when they had.
"Wanna see something cool?" Kai asks.
Bonnie nods her head, still slightly in awe at the precision of his magic. Tendrils of him lightly curl and caress her own magic that buzzes excitedly around her.
He chuckles a bit at Bonnie's rapt expression and then swipes a hand across half of his face. Bonnie sharply inhales as she watches the right side of Kai's face completely morph in one single blink, as quickly as it took for him to swipe and remove his hand. The right side is still a human face, but it has completely different characteristics. The lips are thinner, the eyebrow thicker and darker, the hair on his right side is slicked.
The features seem almost familiar to her.
"Is that...Enzo?"
She recognizes now, as the honeyed brown eye on one half of Kai's face blinks back at her. She half expects Kai to answer with a rugged british accent.
"Yeah. I can change into basically anyone though, if I think about what they look like hard enough. I guess Enzo's the first who came to mind since Lily's been non-stop yapping about the fact that he's no longer at her beck and call anymore at our Heretic meetings."
Bonnie blinks again and suddenly the Enzo half of Kai's face vanishes just like that. As if it had never been there to begin with, and it's so sudden that she almost begins to think that that was the case before Kai's speaking again.
"Complex illusion spells like these never last very long, a few minutes tops. They're cool though, right?"
Kai grins boyishly and Bonnie finds herself almost rolling her eyes at him for how much he sounds like a teenager trying to impress his crush, but then pauses when she realizes that that's sort of exactly what she is at this point.
The other, non good natured part of her desperately wants to ask how he does it.
She wants to be able to accomplish something like that with the ease in which he does. She knows it's yet another Gemini speciality, but something about how real it had looked makes her want to sift through her own Grimoire to find something akin to it.
She supposes thinking like this is also somewhat of a force of habit. Always thinking about spells she can use to her own benefit for a potential future problem she'll no doubt have to face.
She wishes she could be like Kai in that sense. Practice magic because it's fun.
Not because she'll inevitably need to use it for some excursion her friends have no doubt drawn her into.
She thinks Kai is helpful in that way. She can't think of the last time she had done something truly fun and entertaining with her friends. It was just one life threatening situation after the other.
But with Kai it was different. Kai was free spirited in a way, he had a unique appreciation for the small things in life because he had spent so much of his time trapped in a stagnant environment. His recklessness oftentimes concerns her, but she's begun to realize that the reasoning for his behavior has something to do with his inherent want to explore a world he had been locked away from for so long.
She found herself liking that aspect about him. A bit more than she thought she would. His persistence in looking for venturous, carefree and non debilitating or calculating situations is not something she's accustomed to in her own life, and she hadn't realized how much she truly needed to be around someone like that until now.
Sometimes it pays not to be so serious all the time.
Being with Kai is somehow liberating in a way she never would've imagined possible.
.
.
Kai has never been so terrified in his life.
Being with Bonnie in the past few weeks has been everything he'd ever wanted. He's never been so happy in his entire life. And although he didn't even think it would be possible, he finds himself falling more and more in love with her each day.
He never took himself to be the mushy, sentimental type, but Bonnie Bennett has been proving the things he'd originally thought about himself wrong each and every day.
In all honesty, it should be emasculating, really, but in fact it does absolutely nothing.
Instead, it just makes him even more obsessed.
Apart from their insanely unbelievable sex life, he finds himself with this almost knawing need to be around her, like all the time.
And it's clouding his own judgment, at least in part.
That other, more subtle and calculating part of him is still steadily bubbling darkly just under the surface. It's obsessive and possessive over Bonnie in a different, more begrudgingly familiar way. Not in the love sick puppy way that makes his heart want to burst out of his chest, but in that sinister, entitled darkness that only a siphon knows best. It keeps eying the Gemini contraption he'd kept safe and cloaked in his peacoat pocket when Bonnie Isn't looking. It reminds him that he's already in too deep to turn back.
It's persistence frightens him enough into finally taking up Lily's offer to travel to NOLA with the rest of the Heretics sans Enzo.
He's entirely aware that the Heretics are looking for the 'missing' ascendant in NOLA, the same one that the Salvatore bozos undoubtedly have. Kai has no doubt that the so-called 'tip' that Lily has raved on about from Elijah Mikealson will lead them on a wild goose chase and straight into a deadend. But he decides to omit that tidbit of information. He'll need the Heretics distracted anyways while he roams around New Orleans for a slightly different reason.
He's long since decided in squashing that (slightly bordering on hysterical) darkened little voice in the back of his head in favor of reverting back to his original plan from the very beginning now that the opportunity practically presented itself on a silver platter for him.
There was a mansion in the French Quarter with a few dead witches that was just positively calling his name.
Plus he thinks it'll be good for him. Being away from Bonnie for a bit will allow for him to put things more into perspective.
And put things into perspective he does.
.
.
He supposes he should get used to this; his mind drifting to Bonnie, as it always does.
This is the first time he's been away from her since the whole blood-draining-cloaking-turned-blackmail fiasco, and so you really can't blame him for his mind traveling onto any memory of Bonnie he can latch onto in the silence of the plane ride over to NOLA.
It was either that, or try to download an audiobook, which sounded 500 times more complicated than the former, which is why it's so easy then, for his thoughts to slip straight into a memory involving the object of his sole affections.
They're in the aftermath of it; fucking, that is. It happens after he'd brutally shoved his fingers into her mouth and slapped her in the face to force her to keep looking at him while he plowed into her, until her nails dug bloody scratches along his back. His limbs are still slightly trembling from the sheer effort he's expended putting his entire body and soul into fucking her. Sweat slicks their bodies and clings slightly to the white sheet covering the two of them. It's somehow not an unpleasant feeling. He supposes he only thinks that way because it's Bonnie who's laying half sprawled against him, equally as spent as he is.
He won't admit it. He'd rather take this thought to the grave, but he thinks that he may like this after-sex portion of their relationship almost as much as the sex part. Being able to hold Bonnie in his arms and to no longer have to worry about her running off or yanking herself away from him is one of the most euphoric feelings in the world. Her wanting to be with him is a feeling he would chase forever.
So naturally, he has to ruin their preconceived peace by opening his mouth before thinking.
"You would never trap me, right?"
He can feel her freeze against him. The question coming from his own lips startles him in a way; he hadn't meant to voice the most potent fear that's been ruminating in the back of his mind during the entirety of their relationship. But he feels comfortable enough with her to divulge his whole self to her; or at least, almost all of it.
His breath is baited, sucked up into his lungs and as still as her body against his. He doesn't look at her. He can't.
At some point in the silence, they both seem to realize that she had taken a beat too long to answer.
"Of course not," her voice drawls with surety and it causes a flood of relief to fill him so thoroughly that he can feel it seep into his toes.
Except for one thing…
Her heart beat had sped up noticeably. He can feel it thump quickly and shallowly against his hollow chest, loud and definitive. Its consistent thumping had been a reassurance that the most important thing to him was alive and breathing.
And it had just skipped.
And he wants to ignore it, wants more than anything to pretend he didn't notice it, but he knows in his heart of hearts, he can't.
.
.
He's in and out of the Dowager Fauline mansion quicker than he expected to be in all honesty.
He thinks the protection spell he had muttered before stepping into the mansion actually may have had something to do with his luck. It takes him a bit longer to shake off the feeling of a thousand dead witches' dark presence scrutinizing his entire being, though.
Despite the Grimoires in there being old, faded, and dusty as hell, not to mention in Arabic, the text is much larger and simplistic in comparison to Gemini Grimoires, and the book covering is more or less similar in nature as well. He has a feeling that the freaky Harvest Witches may have taken inspiration from the Gemini in that regard.
It takes him a few minutes to find the specific spell that he's looking for, but as he surveys the details of the various talisman's and dark objects etched on the fragile parchment, he notices that the tailend of each unique spell has the same exact phrasing and syntaxical segmententation.
And it takes him next to no effort to cross reference with the stripped down base phrasing in one of the very first pages. He's not stupid enough to take what he's pretty sure was Astrid Malichance's Grimoire out of the mansion, and instead opts to take a photos of the spell with his cell phone. Yet another reason why he's glad technology has advanced so drastically since he'd been gone. If he'd used a jarring camera flash, he's sure the page would've probably disintegrated right in front of him. The smartphone flash was much…gentler.
He's so satisfied with his discovery when he gets back to Virginia that he doesn't even mind that he'd had to sit in between Mary-Louise and Nora on the flight back, honestly couldn't even be bothered over the fact that they'd been glaring over his head and at each other the whole ride.
.
.
Although Liv and Jo had long since found the ascendant at the Gemini compound, Bonnie's been informed via a flurry of phone calls and group text messages, that it had been cloaked due to a failsafe that Joshua Parker had created in the case that his ascendant wasn't activated on the night of the wedding. And since it wasn't, due to Kai killing him along with the rest of the Geminis, the ascendant had transferred itself straight back to the Gemini compound in Portland, where Liv, Jo, Tyler and Alaric found it and brought it back to Mystic Falls the night of Klaus' gala.
More pressingly, Liv has since warned Bonnie that that particular ascendant didn't have any traces of Bennett blood in it, which means it seems to be purely a Gemini concoction, which also means that Bonnie would have to head back to the boarding house to make sure she'd even be able to activate it herself.
And if not then well…she didn't want to think about that part.
She's kind of gotten into her head about it already. She's become more and more paranoid about the Heretic-trapping-killing-Kai-plan, that's she's even begun to second guess whether or not she will start getting blamed by the others for this potential ascendant hiccup.
Especially because she's not entirely sure whether the others know about the rather pressing and stark development between her and Kai since the gala. She supposes that there's been some speculation, but not enough for them to hesitate when asking if she'll be able to activate this new ascendant to trap the Heretics. She still hadn't technically told anyone about the details of their new relationship.
What was supposed to happen after the gala was that Bonnie and Kai would be majorly avoiding each other with Bonnie spending more time at her Gram's old house than not.
Bonnie has done no such thing.
And that thought is the reason why she stands at the boarding house door after parking her prius with her heart thumping hard in her throat.
And when she finally calms herself down enough to knock on the door to the boarding house, she's not so sure why she's shocked that it's Damon who answers it considering that he lives there, but she is.
Her heartbeat spikes right back to that nervous tremor from before, and her eyes widen as they lock with bright baby blues, and every thought she'd had in her head previously of ascendants and Kai are immediately derailed. Damon seems to be in the same situation, if the way his eyebrows lift almost obscenely is anything to go by.
"Hey," she finally manages to croak out after floundering for an embarrassing stretch of time.
But could you really blame her?
She hadn't seen or spoken to Damon since he'd kissed her while still dating her best friend, only to find out about their break up from said best friend a week later.
She was suddenly reminded of why she had avoided the boarding house, and him for so long. Even now, she's getting caught up in the intensity of his stare, feeling scrutinized and naked as his eyes search hers for answers she doesn't have.
"Bon Bon. It's been a while." Damon's voice is soft as his gaze glides over her. And it's almost too comforting. It hits her too deeply, to the point where she almost has to remind herself that throwing herself into his arms even for a familiarly reassuring hug would be highly inappropriate.
This, her relationship with Damon had become too complicated and messy to be denied anymore. But she was, however, determined to ignore it, and not let it branch out anymore than it already had. She had to do that for Elena's sake at least, like always.
Which was much easier said than done. Actually so much easier said than done, that their staring contest doesn't break until Liv physically disrupts them by appearing almost out of nowhere to push past Damon and usher Bonnie inside.
They waste no time assessing Kai's father's ascendant. Bonnie's fingers brush along the metal design on the dining room table. It's definitely more on the simplistic side than what she's seen of other ascendents, but as far as they can tell, it still works.
It seems that Liv was thinking along the same vein as Bonnie was; they're sure that the ascendant can be activated with a Gemini spell, but unsure if it will be activated the same with Bennett magic. If only her Grams were alive, she'd be able to determine an exact Bennett spell that paralleled or functioned the same as the Gemini spell to activate the ascendent.
She's aware by now that given their histories, their two covens are linked in some ways, or else her Grams wouldn't have been able to successfully trap Kai in the first place using a strictly Gemini contraption.
And so she lets Liv know that she'll be back soon, she'll just grab her Grimoire from her and Kai's place and sift through a few more incantations that may be of use to them to get the ascendant going.
And after that, they'll be able to move on with their original plan.
.
.
"What are you doing here?"
Kai's decided he doesn't quite like the accusatory frown that's taken up the majority of Damon Salvatore's face.
It makes him look volatile and freaky–even more so than usual.
Kai almost doesn't want to glorify Damon with an answer to that rather rudely stated question, but steps inside the boarding house anyway.
"I heard Bonnie was stopping by at the boarding house n' wanted to surprise her. Came back from my trip a little earlier than I thought." He gestures to the gift bag he had carefully placed on the throw table.
Kai's eyes survey the boarding house a bit skeptically.
It seems almost too pristine, but he can smell the people who have been in there. It looks like the Scooby-gang had had another one of their little meetings, and quite recently if he may add. And interestingly enough, he can tell from the stench of perfume that his baby sister Liv had also been in attendance.
Interesting.
"And what makes you think she'd want to see you?"
Kai pauses.
He could tell Damon, tell him that they've been living together all this time and fuck so often it's almost painful to not be inside of her at this point, but he laments.
The disgusted and half incredulous look on Damon's face makes him want to drag this out, slowly.
Painfully.
He wants to watch Damon's face crumble first before ripping off the bandaid.
Kai spins around and faces Damon head on with a gracious smile. His fingers absentmindedly trace the coarse, yet smooth wood of the table before him.
"She didn't tell you? We are definitely on the same page again."
Damon snorts and on the inside, the sound kind of makes Kai want to break something, but on the outside, he gives nothing away on his pleasant and eased expression.
"I don't think you know Bonnie that well. She's not really the forgive and forget type. Especially not after you went all dracula on her at the Original's gala…"
Kai's fingers go to trace along his rings. His eyes drift downwards slightly before settling on Damon once more, the easy going smile on his face shifts into something a bit more salacious.
"Really? That's funny because she's actually kinda already forgiven me."
Damon's lip twitches.
"She's lying."
"Hmmm…but I can tell when humans are lying to me. That pesky heartbeat of their's kind of gives it away," Kai's eyes break from Damon just enough so he can roll them slightly for that extra unbothered effect.
Damon's eyes harden next. Like clockwork.
"She wouldn't forgive you for something like that."
Damon's voice sounds strained now, like he's more so trying to convince himself of his own words than Kai. And it's clearly not working.
Kai steps closer, his tenor filling the room with a smoothness and surety that he hopes keeps Damon up at night.
"Oh but you see here, Damon, there were a few other things I could offer to Bonnie to get her to forgive me, as I'm sure you're well aware of by now."
Damon's freaky wiggly eyebrows furrow; a tell tale sign that his small brain is thinking hard about what's being said to him.
Kai can see the moment that the implication of what he's alluding to clicks for him. Kai can tell that up until this point, the thought that Bonnie Bennett could find Kai Parker appealing physically wasn't even something that had even remotely crossed the Salvatore's mind.
The realization sinks into Damon's expression so obviously that it's kind of humorous–like really; the older vampire's face actually pales, as if the sheer feeling of nausea has enveloped him entirely.
"You're lying," Damon says through gritted teeth.
Kai can nearly taste the anger furling off of Damon's obnoxiously tight sweater.
Kai's grin almost splits his face in half the more Damon's frown seeps into his face. He steps even closer–just to really get the point across, if it weren't already so obvious.
"Oh, I bet you wish I were. But the truth is, Damon. In the weeks before leaving for NOLA, I showed Bonnie just how sorry I was. Over, and over, and over again."
Kai can't help but cackle as Damon lunges for his throat.
What happens next is barely even a scuffle, really.
He lets Damon dig his back into the plaster wall behind him–mostly because Kai finds it funnier when his victims have a fleeting sense of control before he brutally rips it from them.
Unfortunately, he doesn't get to that part before the sound of a familiar prius being locked floods both of their senses.
Him and Damon turn towards the window simultaneously.
"Motus," Kai says calmly, his hand pushes out before him but he doesn't allow himself to revel in the way Damon's body lifts and then flies backwards into the other wall.
Kai vamp speeds down to Bonnie before Damon can even think of getting back up.
When he finally sees her standing on the gravel path leading up to the boarding house, his mind immediately immerses itself to zone in on her and only her.
There's something wrong with him, he thinks as he steps towards her.
Like truly.
But he just can't help himself anymore. His gaze greedily drinks up Bonnie's form standing beside her car.
It's like, you give a kid a taste of sweetness and they'll want the whole candy store any chance they get. And Bonnie Bennett is a freaking delicacy.
Her dark hair falls down her back in waves; it's the longest he's seen it since knowing her, and he immediately wants nothing more than to tangle his hands in the strands and tug until those supple lips of hers drop open. His eyes trail along her outfit, a tight sweater that hugs her curves in a way that shouldn't be so enticing, but it is, down to even more form fitting jeans that round the large curve of her ass.
He can't stand that she's so perfect. It's like torture to him at this point.
And it's exactly the reason why his cock hardens immediately upon approaching her.
The Luke part of him, the part of him that has shame and disgust for his barbaric thoughts is dampened by the arousal that screams inside of him at the sight of her. The Kai part of him, the old Kai, the part that he'd once tried so hard to hide from her, wants nothing more than to rip her pretty skin apart while she begs him for it.
He doesn't even remember walking towards her, but it's as though he's drifted into her space by sheer willpower, and he's suddenly standing before her, so close that he can see the small specks of gold shimmering in her emerald eyes.
His fingers close around her jaw on instinct, stroking the bone under chin, sensually. He can feel the goosebumps prickle her skin at his touch and he has to prevent his eyes from rolling into the back of his skull over the fact that he can affect her like this now. Unabashedly.
"Did you miss me?" He says, except when he says it, something deep in his chest rumbles, his voice teeters on something that sounds like a demand that he knows will settle heat straight into her core.
He pins that violently dark look on her as he peers deep into her eyes, trying to scrape his way to her insides, which he supposes, he is.
He feels that familiar flare of possessiveness start up in his chest, threatening to bubble over in a barking demand for her to answer him when she does nothing besides look at him with that infuritately unreadable and slightly concerned expression on her face.
But he just barely bites his tongue. Instead, his ears prickle with the exertion of trying to sift out distant sounds. He can tell from the shifting noises near the window of the boarding house that they're being watched. By who? He doesn't care.
Which is exactly why he proceeds to knock her knees back with his, so she's pressed up against her car.
His hands come immediately to grab a handful of her ass, pulling upwards so aggressively that she's forced onto the balls of her feet, her entire front plasters itself to his.
The old Bonnie would've slapped him for this behavior, out in public no less. Scratch that, she would've slapped him then light him on fire for even thinking of doing something so crude to her.
But look how far they've come.
.
.
She can feel his stiffness hot and heavy resting against the inside of her jean-clad thigh so clearly that she's left idly to wonder if the barrier of their clothing was even necessary. They're not even naked but the way he's gazing at her with his clothed hardness pressed hotly against her feels so dirty and reminiscent of everything he can do to her with that same body part, that a vicious shiver travels down her spine and rests as an ache deep in her center.
She hadn't planned on this, truly. She had been stealing herself to avoid contact at all costs in case one of the many members of the boarding house followed Kai out. But then he had asked if she'd missed him in that darkly possessive tone of his, and her heartbeat had skipped over itself before she could even think about reeling in her racing thoughts.
She feels dizzy and almost burdened with lust when she's around him now. Her body reacts so viscerally to him that the only thing her mind can latch onto is a deep sense of foreboding and anxiety that gets mixed up with arousal, until all she's left feeling is this thick, foggy want. It's overwhelming, and not at all rational.
She wasn't normally like this, she knows. She used to be able to control her bodily responses like a normal, thoughtful human being. But now, being around Kai has turned her into something she almost doesn't even care to be ashamed of. Her body alights when it's near him, when it can so clearly feel his burning and damn near mind-numbing delirious desperation for her approval, that she's stopped trying to prevent herself from feeling it.
It's almost akin to using Expression, the darkness that envelops her when she's around Kai is overbearing and all consuming. Her mind immediately slinks into thoughts of depravity and recklessness while he stokes the flames.
She knows he wants all of her. And it's the mind, body, and soul kind of want.
It's why she lets his hands knead her ass against her car. It's why she lets him dip his head towards her and connect their lips.
It's why she lets him kiss her in public like an absolute animal.
She doesn't care to stop his hot tongue sweeping deeply into the crevice of her mouth, licking along her tonsils, plunging the muscle over and over again into her mouth just so maybe it can taste a part of her it hasn't yet.
She's so into it, so into Kai holding squeezing her ass with one hand, and using the other to hold her jaw captive to pry it open with his ringed fingers, hunching over her to better tongue-fuck her mouth, that she almost doesn't hear her best friend interrupt them the first time.
"What happened to, "never in a million years?""
.
.
Elena's voice sounds far away.
Unimportant, feeble, whiny, are the first adjectives that come to his mind to describe the doppelganger's voice.
But apparently not feeble enough for Bonnie not to shove Kai off of her.
The only thing stopping him from ramming Elena's nosy self into the nearest brick wall is the fact that her face is just as flushed with embarrassment and shock as Bonnie's was.
Kai realizes then and there that Elena had probably never witnessed her best friend be taken so thoroughly in public before. He wonders idly if Elena may still believe that Bonnie's a virgin, and doesn't mark off that very real possibility.
He then takes this opportunity to go through a mental list of Bonnie's past love interests and takes it that she most likely hasn't even kissed Jeremy in front of Elena for obvious reasons.
Elena being shocked and uncomfortable by their display of PDA was, to be quite frank, hilarious.
"Yeah well, things changed," Kai just barely registers Bonnie's voice. She sounds less far away, but slightly breathless which makes a smirk curve around Kai's face. Kai (for the sake of his own mental health) chooses not to acknowledge the steady thread of guilt that had bled into her words.
He glances once more at Bonnie and registers minutely that her green eyes don't quite meet Elena's gaze, and instead decides to focus his attention back on Elena.
A wolfish grin spreads meticulously across his face the longer he stares at the doppelganger. He watches her expression transition from embarrassed and flustered, to a mixture of shock, concern and vague outrage.
This was all just too funny.
You could just tell that the scooby band of misfits had never in a million years thought that their self-righteous wonder-witch would be capable of falling for the enemy, especially not to fulfill physical desires. He can see the thought floating above Elena's head now.
B-but Bonnie was supposed to use her body for me! Not for her own selfish pleasure!
Damon and Caroline appear shortly after Bonnie and Elena have begun a stilted and awkward bit of small talk, and Kai mentally curses himself for not prolonging the tongue-bath he had been giving Bonnie for them to see.
His lips quirk regardless when he notices Damon's hands clenched tightly in white fists by his sides as his gaze lingers on the way Kai's side had subconsciously pressed against Bonnie's, and Bonnie's notable lack of disgust by the contact.
Even still, Kai begins to get rather bored of the minced and double-meaning chatter between Elena and Bonnie; they were very obviously talking about something they didn't want Kai to know about.
Not to mention he's also beginning to get annoyed at the fact that all Blondie and Damon have done so far is glare at him with crossed arms, that he decides to leave shortly after.
Kai tells Bonnie that he left a gift for her on the table and that he's planning on surprising her later tonight, and that she should come to their hotel later to get dressed 'all fancy' before the real kicker.
He decides on a whim to press a quick kiss to Bonnie's cheek as a parting gift. It's something very insignificant if you'd consider the amount of contact they typically have, but also something that would certainly…speak for itself.
"Kai!" Bonnie cries out indignantly and weakly tries to slap him away from her, but it's too late. Elena had been too much of a prude and a pushover to actually voice her indignation towards him, but he was well aware that his final display of PDA was just enough to ruffle Barbie and Johnny Bravo's feather's.
The key here is that he knows both would absolutely jump at the opportunity to rip him limb from limb, but they can't because their precious witch actually values him.
He turns around right in time to hear Caroline's gasp of outrage and Damon's growl at the contact, and decides to let them hear him cackle to himself as he walks away completely unscathed.
.
.
She can quite literally feel Damon and Caroline's eyes burning holes into the back of her head as she leads the rest of them back to the Boarding House.
She knows they have a million questions about Kai's behavior towards her, none of which she wants to answer. She's not even sure she can look Elena in the eye anymore when she was the one who had witnessed the brunt of it, she just mentally pleads that Elena has enough sense not to mention it to anyone else.
When she finally gets to the front door, to her surprise, it's Enzo who opens it, in all of his slickened-hair, bright-eyed glory.
Her brows immediately furrow.
"Enzo?"
"Fancy meeting you here," he titters in a deep accent.
Damon steps past her and into the house.
"I'll explain why he's here later. For right now, we need you and Liv to figure out whether a Bennett witch can use Joshua's ascendant."
And then she's right back to work.
There's a part of Bonnie that's glad she doesn't have to deal with any prodding questions from Damon or Caroline as she works with Liv on the boarding room couch.
It only takes a few minutes of sifting through Grimoires for the two of them to curate a plethora of Gemini/Bennett workaround spells for Bonnie to try out on the ascendent. She tries to ignore the fact that Enzo of all people had been lurking in the corner of the room watching them the entire time, and actually manages to do so until they find their solution.
They eventually settle on one spell to activate the ascendant, and another to trap an object: not as clear cut and concise as it usually is, but it still works the same.
If Bonnie were being quite honest, she's just relieved that the ascendant responded to Bennett magic at all, she's not sure what she would've done if it hadn't. For all intensive purposes, their plan for trapping the Heretics would've been completely obsolete.
She's not sure why then, that the feeling of relief that's sunk into her chest feels so much more hollow and bare than usual.
Damon immediately explains to her that Enzo is no longer loyal to the rest of the Heretics. It seems as though Lily has figuratively 'freed' him from his sire bond during one of their many arguments over Julian. And from what Bonnie can gather, Enzo seemed almost indebted to Damon purely out of spite for Lily Salvatore.
So indebted actually, that he reveals a very crucial piece of information that Kai had so conveniently left out when Stefan and Damon had interrogated him at the boarding house.
Kai, the person Bonnie has been entwined with for the past few weeks, neglected to mention that the Heretics were planning on killing everyone she loved in order to get revenge for Malcom's murder.
She doesn't even care when Enzo directs a tactless, "But don't worry love, he would've made sure you got out of the massacre alive," when a stony silence had befallen the room at the reveal.
None of it matters.
Especially because Bonnie doesn't think she's ever felt this angry in her life, which says a lot, considering her abysmal track record with life in general.
The anger and outrage of Kai's betrayal has seeped into her veins so hotly and aggressively, that the lights in the boarding house flicker in warning. Once. Twice, before she springs to her feet and stomps upstairs. She thinks she may have heard Damon call after her, but she can't be sure, she's so angry the sheer potency of the feeling has clogged her eardrums.
She can't stand the way everyone had been looking at her. Something akin to a mix of pity and expectancy, like they knew Bonnie was the only one among them who had truly been blindsided by the Heretics' and Kai's actions.
She slams the door shut to Damon's room and sits on his bed. She doesn't let the tears fall, not yet. She focuses on steading her breathing, on making sure her magic doesn't burst from her veins and rein unmitigated terror on the entire boarding house.
.
.
It could've been a couple hours, or a few minutes, she's not sure, before she hears a gentle knock on the door.
Caroline opens the door even though Bonnie hadn't indicated for her to. But Bonnie doesn't mind, she's just relieved she's not being faced with Damon. She's not sure what she would've said or done to him.
She'd most likely end up frying his face off for even attempting to say 'I told you so'.
They sit in silence for a few moments across from each other on Damon's bed.
"I'm sorry, Bonnie. About Kai." Bonnie can feel Caroline looking at her with those imploring, worried eyes, and she can so clearly hear the pity seeping through her voice. Bonnie doesn't look at her.
She can't.
"No you're not," Bonnie's voice sounds hoarse, like she'd been screaming or crying her eyes out.
She supposes, it feels like she had. She sure feels the emotional exhaustion creeping on her like a second skin.
Caroline sighs, and this time Bonnie does look at her.
"No but I-I understand what you're going through. I was in love with Klaus, and even though I knew deep down he'd always disappoint me, I couldn't help it–the way I felt. I just–I just get it."
Bonnie doesn't say anything for a long while. There's a million things she wants to say.
"I'm not in love with him," she settles on. Not necessarily because it's the truth, but because it's the thing that sounds the most right.
Caroline's eyes look thoughtful as she trains them on the ceiling.
"Did you ever forgive him?"
"No." That, she knows for sure. She'd never be able to forgive Kai for everything he'd done to her. Not now.
But she supposes though, it was a two way street; there were things she'd done to him that he'd never gotten over either. Clearly.
"Could you have loved him?" Caroline asks next. And Bonnie's barely beating heart wrenches even further into her chest.
She doesn't answer. Mostly because she doesn't know.
Instead, she says, "I-I won't be able to do it."
She doesn't need to say what she won't be able to do.
They both know what she's talking about. It was one thing to trap the Heretics in Joshua Parker's prison world. She could do that. She had no loyalty or attachment to them.
It was a whole other beast for her to be able to do the same to Kai. She had once thought she could, even earlier this week she had assumed she'd be able to turn a blind eye as her friends did so, but she couldn't.
She couldn't trap him. She couldn't even kill him.
It's funny how, she had once dreamed of doing so with such reverence it made her almost heady with anticipation, but now the notion makes her come up empty; she feels nothing but hollowness and stiff anxiety and nausea at the thought.
Somewhere along the way, she'd been stupid enough to allow herself to get attached to Kai Parker. Even if it wasn't love. Or it was.
All she knew is that if it came down to it, she wouldn't be able to be the one to pull the rug out from under him.
Despite everything he'd done to her. She just couldn't do it.
And she thinks Caroline should be surprised by that fact, but she isn't. She had apparently registered the change in Bonnie quicker than anyone else had.
"I know," Caroline says softly. The worried look in her eyes never wains.
.
.
She tells Damon and Caroline that she's going to talk to Kai alone before anything else happens. She doesn't bother to wonder where Elena or even Stefan is.
Damon and Caroline both insist on coming with her, but she makes Caroline promise her that she won't follow. She doesn't bother with Damon because she knows that whether he promised her or not, he'd be lurking somewhere in the shadows for her own protection whether she wants it or not.
None of that distracts her from the fact that she feels like an idiot.
She's angry with Kai, she wants to twist a hunting knife in his side and even feels vindicated by her friends doing so. But moreover, she's coming to realize that she's more angry with herself more than anything.
She'd been so naive to think she had tamed the beast when in reality he'd been one step ahead of her.
He knew all along that the Heretics were going to kill all of her friends, Enzo had said that in regards to the Heretics' plan, Kai had insisted that she be the only exception. He didn't have some grand scheme up his sleeve to save her and the people she loved. Only her.
And it's because Kai Parker is selfish.
He's not exempting her from a Heretic bloodbath for the sake of her own life, but rather for the sake of his.
Because if he truly knew and cared about her, he'd have made the attempt to save the people she loved. She doesn't even feel vindicated enough to be disgusted. It's her own fault this time, she knows. She's so used to blaming others for all of the hardships she's gone through, and yet this time, she only has herself to blame.
The first step is to never let your guard down around the Kai Parker types. She should've known that no amount of rehabilitation can truly change a bad person, even if she wanted to believe it. Sleuthing was in their blood. And it was stupid of her to believe that Kai Parker was an exception, even if just for a while.
She'd thought she had been satiating his blood thirsty cravings for power and revenge through sex, but even she knew that wouldn't be enough for someone as inherently vile as him.
.
.
They meet at the corner of town.
She'd put on the dress he'd left for her at the boarding house as a present from NOLA. It was a simple sundress that whipped around her knees in the evening summer wind.
Kai looks at her, bright-eyed and grinning as he walks closer. She knows immediately that he wants to hug her, hold her, touch her. But she just…can't.
She holds a hand up, stunting his movements before he gets any closer. She's not so positive she wouldn't crumble if they had made contact.
"You didn't tell us," she says quietly, instead.
A part of her had anticipated worming her way through the conversation first, buttering him up with a false sense of security before striking him in the face with his own lies and betrayal. But she didn't. Because she didn't need to. She could be open with him now that everything was on the line.
Kai's smile drops, his handsome face now a mask of confusion.
She continues, and she wants so badly to stop looking at the beautiful crystal gray of his eyes, but she keeps looking anyway. So he can see the hurt slashed across her face in its entirety.
"You said they wanted to make Mystic Falls into a Heretic town. You never mentioned the fact that Lily wanted to kill us."
Kai pauses for a bit. His face sinking into something more morose, though she can't tell what it means. His eyes flash with many emotions at once, though this time, she's not afraid that he's going to laugh. Even he's aware of the gravity of their situation. He can't pretend to not care what she thinks anymore.
"Does it even matter? You would still be safe—"
"—Yes it matters, Kai!"
She cant' help but yell, the anger from before swelling up hot and heavy in her chest.
"And why is that?"
"They're important to me!"
"All of them?" Kai's looking at her with eyebrows raised, his gaze pinning her intently, like he's the one trying to accuse her of something.
It makes the anger in her chest flare up even more.
"Yes!"
"Even Damon?"
"Especially him!" She blurts out before she can stop herself.
There's a long painful stretch of silence next.
Kai stares hard at her. His mouth turned into a frown, and a sea of betrayal and anguish flood through his irises more clearly then she's ever seen them before.
And then he blinks, and it's like she's not even looking at the same person.
His eyes have gone blank, his face expressionless.
It causes a shiver to run down her spine.
"I knew it," Kai mutters to himself, like it's all suddenly clicked in his head.
And Bonnie wants nothing more than to yell and throttle him. Because he doesn't know.
She doesn't even know how herself she feels about Damon.
"Because let's be honest, despite what you may think, you're not that good of a liar, Bon."
"What are you talking about–"
"–Let's talk about the elephant in the room then shall we?"
Kai steps closer to her, his eyes alight with something she hasn't seen in a long time.
But she can't exactly name what it is, her mind is racing too frantically, so she doesn't take a step back. Not yet.
"Since you've brought it up, yes I lied to you. But you lied to me too, Bonster."
She feels speechless right about now. She hadn't expected to be smacked so harshly with the reminder that she had in fact been lying and using him up until recently.
""I'd never trap you"? Really? That was bullshit and you knew it. And to think, I was going to give you a gift tonight," He laughs ruefully, as if he'd made a joke.
She, just like the others, had thought he'd been too invested and infatuated with her to notice her blatant lies. And now she was paying the price of underestimating him.
Bonnie can do nothing but suck in a harsh breath as he speaks again.
"Not to mention, you never loved me as much as I loved you, I mean that much was obvious. Not when Damon was still in the picture, anyways."
She almost wants to deny it, but he had used the word "love" in his sentence. And she's never loved him, and she never will, but something in her stops her frantic train of thoughts.
He's never admitted that he loved her before now, but somehow knowing that he loved her now, despite secretly knowing that he has since the very beginning, leaves an ugly taste in her mouth.
Especially because although she doesn't love him, him acknowledging that she has felt something deeply for him rings true to her, no matter how much the notion twists ugily in her stomach.
It's why she still doesn't speak and allows him to continue.
That was her first mistake.
Allowing Kai Parker to gain the upper hand when he was just too good at maintaining it would always and forever be her downfall.
"But I guess that doesn't really matter anymore. I mean, you know me..." Kai's mouth quirks bashfully as he gazes through his eyelashes at her, like he's shy. He reminds her of the 1903 version of himself; the overly bashful and boyish kind.
And it's unnerving.
She remains rooted to the spot.
"I've been backstabbed just a tad too many times in my life to be unprepared."
He reaches into his pocket next. He pulls out a small metal contraption. Palms it casually.
She almost has to squint to see what it is.
But then the realization hits her.
The anger drains out of her completely.
Her blood runs cold.
Her stomach drops all the way to her toes.
She loses all feeling in her limbs next.
She's never felt more numb and frigid with fear in her entire life. Not any of the times she'd almost died, been dangeled over death's awaiting grip, has she ever felt so terrified.
She wants to vomit, rip her own eyes out, scream and wail into the air until someone puts her out of her misery. But she doesn't. She stands frozen and still in her shock as a horrible and succinct feeling of devastation crawls its way up her sarcophagus.
A part of her hopes it even suffocates her, once and for all.
Because he's holding an ascendant.
And it's not one that she's seen before. Which means that he'd made one for this specific occasion. Which also meant he'd been waiting for her to screw up all along.
Expecting her to.
If Kai registers the absolute terror and fear that has wrecked her entire being, he doesn't give it away in his casual expression as he thumbs the device.
His ramblings suddenly come back into focus. She hadn't been paying attention as every nerve ending in her body had chilled itself, but she can hear him now. His voice floods through her ears, broken and stilted, but clear.
"…Except I wouldn't leave you to rot alone, I'd visit every few weeks. It'd be just like old times right?"
And she sees it now, what his eyes had been alighted with earlier.
Hysteria.
He looks beyond crazed.
Wide blown irises sparkle, frenzied in the humid summer heat. She can almost see his mind whipping through possible scenarios of his plan, as if he's convincing himself on the fly that it's full proof.
"Think about it. Those visits would be the only thing you'd look forward to. You'd finally want me as much as I want you," his eyes turn black as he stares at the deepest part of her, "You'd be desperate for me."
She thinks she tries to say something then, but all that comes out is a choked and pained sob.
It wracks itself from the deepest part of her, from the innermost hollow groove of her chest.
"Shhh. No need to cry, Bon," He rushes towards her then, cradles her face with his free hand, and brushes a stray tear from her with a gentleness in his hands and a concern on his face that she knows is fabricated beyond belief.
"You don't need to do that," he whispers, crouching towards her. She wants to bite his fingers off and simultaneously dissolve into a puddle of nothingness.
He straightens and blinks, the faux concern hasn't left his face as he deals the final blow to break their relationship completely and fully.
"Actually, I think all I'd need is some Bennett blood."
The next few seconds happen in a flash. Or it happens in a millennium. She can't tell.
One minute she's standing in front of Kai, and then next, she watches as his head rolls completely off his shoulders.
Kai's body drops to the ground like a ton of bricks, revealing Damon clutching a bloodied arm with his other hand.
His eyes drop to Kai's dead body before flitting up to Bonnie. They're almost apologetic.
"Sorry I took so long, Bon Bon."