CHAPTER 12

Contentment.

There are so many ways to define that one noun- happiness with one's situation, the state of satisfaction, a state of well-being.. I could go on forever but that's not the point anyways.

Contentment is a concept I haven't been familiar with for a while now.

I guess you could say I lived in a state of discontentment. I was continually longing for something, anything better than the situation in which I was thrown into so abruptly.

But not now, not tonight.

Remember the definitions from the beginning? Well, not single one of them fully describes the way I currently feel.

I'm lying in my bed wrapped into Damon's embrace and I swear that the bliss I feel right now intensifies each time I steal a glance in his direction and look at the small smile etched on his sleeping face.

If I had someone to bet with, I'd bet that I'm not the only one content right now.

„Stop staring." He grunts and buries his head into my hair.

I giggle and try to wedge myself out of his arms but he just tightens his embrace which makes me giggle even more because I can feel his fingers tickling my ribs.

"Don't do that!" I manage to breathe out through my laughter. "I'll pee all over us."

He stops his attack and looks at me with his sleepy eyes filled with amusement and that bliss I've been feeling ever since he came inside with me last night amplifies even further.

"Tell me.." I say.

Confusion clouds his features for a second before he realises what I'm talking about and then I see hesitation.

"Tell you what?" He pretends not to know.

"You know what I want to know.." I tell him instead of answering his question.

He huffs but decides to speak anyway. "That was the night I realised I'm not getting the girl. Not now, not ever. That's why I was alone in the woods." Damon says and turns his body away from me.

"Elena loves Stefan, anyone can see that. She's not the one for you, just like Edward is not the one for me.."

"I was rejected by the girl I loved, again. How many times do you think I can find someone like her?" He says and looks me in the eyes to emphasise his point.

And he's right, we both know it. You don't just stumble upon love.

"Oh, don't worry Damon. You'll find plenty of girls to reject you." I try to joke and realise he doesn't find it funny by the way he's just lying there gaping at me.

I open my mouth to apologize for overstepping my boundaries just as Damon bursts out laughing.

"You're really something else, you know that?" He says through his laughter and just like that everything is back to normal. Well, as normal as it can be between people like us.

"So, what now?" I ask him.

"Now we start working on a strategy. First the simple stuff, protecting your house, training you, give you some weapons.. Nothing special." Damon says and shrugs like it's no big deal even though it is.

"Wait up! Train me? For what? And weapons? I don't want to carry useless weapons around with me." I tell him.

"Train you to keep yourself alive for as long as possible and the weapons aren't useless." He tells me instead.

"Well, I don't really think they'll work on their bodies which essentially makes them useless.."

"Your weapons may not work, but mine sure will." Damon says and untangles himself from the sheets. "Get ready, we leave in twenty."

"Fine. What should I wear?" I ask since I'm not sure if he intends to take me training right now.

"Anything tight and stretchy." He says and blurs out of my room.

I quickly pick out a pair of black tights, a sporty tank top and my faithful chucks since I don't own a pair of training shoes. Next I take off the clothes Damon bought for me, throw them into the washing machine and hop under the shower.

When I step out I pull my hair into a high ponytail and throw on my clothes.

I hear Damon re-entering my house so I go downstairs to meet him.

"The lovebirds are busy so we're on our own until Alaric brings the weapons." Damon says and opens the door for me.

Then he throws me over his shoulder and carries me through the woods to a small round clearing.

"A heads up would have been nice!" I huff when he puts me back on my feet.

"Whatevs, drama queen." He answers with a smile, pulls his cell out of his pocket and dials a number. "We're here. How long till you come?"

I realise he's talking to Alaric so I decide to walk around a little.

I notice the trees that surround the clearing have multiple cuts and holes over them. They must have come here from the 'training' that Damon talked about.

After a few minutes I hear rumbling of an engine approaching and soon a car parks next to the spot where Damon is standing.

Alaric comes out and he and Damon start taking out three antique wooden chests from the trunk.

"Come closer, Bella." Alaric calls me.

When I approach, he pops open one of the chests so I can see the content.

I gasp when I realise the amount of weapons that they possess. Rows and rows of guns, spikes, crossbows and arrows among chains, ropes and bottles of clear liquid which I assume is vervain.

"Pick a gun." Damon tells me and opens the remaining two chests. "Now we'll train you to shoot and the fighting we'll do when Elena is free, she'll show you the basic moves we taught her and then we'll train more intensively."

I look at all the guns and pick out a silver Smith & Wesson while Alaric gets back into his car and drives away. Damon takes the gun from my hands and since it is a semi-automatic, he replaces the empty magazine with a new one, filled with wooden bullets and loads the chamber by pulling back the slide and then releasing it. Next he puts it back into my hand and tosses the empty magazine into one of the containers.

"What am I shooting at?" I ask and toss the gun between my hands even though my dad always told me to point it towards the ground.

"Me." Damon says and smirks, thinking I don't have a chance at it.

"Then what do you think if we make a small bet out of it?" I say slyly and watch his eyes twinkle; vampires have a thing for challenges, no matter how small they are. "If I manage to shoot you, I get to either ask you or make you do anything I want, no questions asked. And if I don't, you can pick anything from me." I say and wait for his response.

"Deal. I'll be generous and give you three chances." He smirks again and steps away from me.

Damon stands a few yards away from me as I lift the gun and aim at him. I feel a little bad for doing this but he did annoy the hell out of me when we were at the airport so I push that feeling down and fire the gun.

The bullet hits a tree way off to the left of where Damon is standing and his smirk turns into a toothy grin while my face turns into a fake scowl.

"Okay, I still have two more chances so don't get excited too soon." I say and stick out my tongue at him.

The next shot is closer but still terrible and I can tell by his mischievous smirk that Damon is already planning something bad for me if I lose.

"I feel so safe I'll even turn my back on you." He teases and turns around, facing away from me.

"No!" I yell. "I want to see your face when I shoot you." I say and laugh a little so he'd think I'm teasing.

"Fine." He says and turns back towards me but closes his eyes, still smiling.

I pull the slide and load the chamber for the last time. Next I close my eyes and hear Charlie's voice in my head, telling the twelve-year-old me how to stand in a proper firing stance:

"Close your eyes and take what you feel to be the ideal, comfortable stance."

I forget the target and focus on getting comfortable.

Then I open my eyes to see Damon still standing far away, eyes closed and notice my aim is way off but don't move my hands from this position but my feet- another trick my dad thought me.

"Don't move your hands and shoulders. You have gotten into a stance for your natural point of aim- the most comfortable for your body. Move only your feet until you're aiming at your target once again."

"Ready?" I ask him.

"Whenever you are." Damon chuckles and shifts his feet a little.

I fire in time with my breathing, just like Charlie thought me. I take a breath, exhale half of it and start gently squeezing the trigger. Once I begin pulling it, I keep doing it at a constant rate until the gun goes off.

BAM!

I quickly unload the gun and toss it to the ground next to me then run towards Damon who is on his knees, bent down and groaning in pain.

"You liar!" He yells at me when I get closer and try to look at his bloody abdomen.

"I'm not a liar!" I tell him and push him down so he's lying on his back.

Suddenly I'm pulled back and see Stefan plunging his fingers into Damon's stomach and taking out the wooden bullet.

"That was priceless!" Elena laughs as she runs towards us from behind a tree.

"How long have you been here?" I ask once she sits down on the grass beside me.

"Long enough not to miss this!" She says with a wide grin. "Gosh, I want to learn that! Who taught you that?"

"I'm the chief's daughter. You really think he'd let me walk around unprotected?" I snort. "He taught me this when I was twelve and made me carry at least a keychain pepperspray everywhere I go." I laugh with Elena for a few seconds until I notice Damon glaring at me.

"Why didn't you say something before I let you shoot me?" He grits through his teeth.

"You didn't ask. You just assumed I couldn't do it." I say with a victorious smile. "I never lied."

"I'll be forever grateful to you for this." Stefan says and puts his arm around my shoulder.

I look at him quizzically. "For what? Shooting your brother?"

"No, for teaching him a lesson. Maybe now he'll stop being a presumptuous bastard." He says and winks at me.

"I doubt it." I joke and we all laugh while Damon scowls at me and runs to the other side of the clearing to pick up the magazine and the gun I threw on the ground. Then he puts them back into the chest.

I now notice that Elena is wearing sporty clothes as well so I assume the training session with her starts today after all.

"You ready to get your ass kicked, too?" I tease and fake punch her shoulder.

"You wish." She says and tries to punch my head with her right fist but I'm faster and bend down right before her hand connects with my face. "Fast." She observes. "I like a good fight once in a while. Stefan lets me win most of the time."

"Here you go." Damon says and hands both of us a pair of boxing gloves. We take them and I let Damon tie mine while Stefan does the same to Elena's pair.

"Kick her ass." Damon winks at me and puts some distance between us.

I see Elena stretching and I must say she is very flexible which may or may not scare me a little bit. I jump a little in place to get my cardio started and already feel the adrenaline surging through my veins.

I'm excited because this means I'll finally burn off some of the energy provided by Damon's blood.

"Touch gloves." Stefan instructs and we do as he says. "Have you ever tried boxing?" He asks me and I shake my head no.

"I only know some self-defence moves." I tell him.

"Okay, then we'll start with teaching you the proper stance." Elena says and puts her hand in front of her head. "Notice how I'm standing- feet diagonal and a little wider than shoulder length."

I mimic her stance and wait for further instructions.

"Now raise your fists and put your dominant hand in the back. Make sure your chin is slightly down- you don't want to leave it open for an impact, trust me. And you should always be able to see over your gloves." She says and nods appreciatively when I do everything she told me to.

Damon comes back closer to me and stands behind me. "Relax. Bend your knees a little; it'll give you more flexibility." He tells me and aligns his hands with mine. "I thought the punching will be a little trickier but after what I've seen you do with a gun, it shouldn't be. It's simple- you exhale as you throw the punch, just like with pulling the trigger. Make sure you tighten your fist and body muscles at impact and just release your hand back to you."

He covers my glove with his palm and we throw a few punches together until I get the hang of it.

Then Elena starts teaching me a bunch of different ways to attack. I easily dodge most of her punches but everyone gets frustrated when I have problems with actually hitting her.

I'm holding back and I know it. But I just can't hit her, I was never good at attacking someone who doesn't deserve it and I tell them that.

Damon tells me to stop being a wuss and grow a pair.

That does the trick.

For the next few hours we fight and fight. When Elena says she's too tired, Stefan takes her role. He's much faster and more secure in his movements and challenges me much more than Elena does.

I find myself enjoying the burn in my muscles.

When the sun sets Alaric comes to pick up two of the wooden chests, leaving one behind. Stefan and Elena say that they'll leave it on my porch and Damon will bring it inside.

When they leave I lie on the grass next to Damon and look at the moon.

"Hey Stranger." I whisper to him. He's been quiet ever since we started training.

I see him smiling in the corner of my eye so I turn my head to look at him instead.

"Hey.." He whispers back. "You tired?"

"A little." I answer. "Wanna do something together? We can just hang out at my place if you're game."

"No." Damon says and stands up. "My place has liquor."

"Are you trying to turn me into a drunkard?" I tease even though I like the idea; he's always a little less guarded when he has a glass in front of him.

"You make a surprisingly pleasant drinking buddy." He shrugs and takes a step towards me. "A heads up!" Damon yells and picks me up again.

I grunt a: "Thanks!" even though he didn't even give me a second to prepare before he threw me over his shoulder.

I realise I quite like this position; it gives me a nice view of his fine ass. I chuckle at my thought and Damon asks why I'm laughing but I just shake my head as an answer- there's no way I'm telling him the reason, he's already cocky enough as it is.

It takes us a couple minutes of running through the woods to get to the Salvatore boarding house and once we're there I remember the first time I was here.

That didn't go so well and I decide right then and there I will never throw a tantrum like that again. It was beyond childish of me to act like that.

When we enter the house, Damon throws me on the couch and gets a bottle of bourbon from the liquor cabinet. He pours us both a glass of the brown liquid and we start drinking.

He also takes off his bloody shirt and start wiping off the dried blood on his abdomen.

Yeah, I admit it- I shamelessly ogle the way his muscles flex as he tries to remove the blood stains of his skin.

When he huffs in frustration and plops himself on the couch next to me I propose a toast.

"To a great training session and hot targets." I say while Damon smirks and shakes his head, we clink our glasses together and down the liquid from our glasses.

A/N

Hi guys!

Do you like this CH? I quite enjoyed writing the shooting scene, Damon deserved it after the way he treated B on the airport two CHs ago, right? What do you think she'll ask for?

Anyways, do you like the way D&B's realtionship is progressing? They are getting more and more comfortable with eachother.

I'm not answering the questions from the reviews for the last CH because you'll just have to stick around and see what happens in the future!;)

I send you all a bunch of hugs&kisses from a beach here in Croatia and I also want to thank you for the continuous support!

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xoxo