His best friend had just licked his lips. What was the world coming to when 'Bonnie Bennett the prude' had sensually lapped at 'self-admitted reformed man-whore' Damon Salvatore's unholy mouth?

They have been doing the dance so long that she had dipped him unexpectedly. The dance had started even before his all-consuming love for Elena firmly took hold. The day long ago at her high school when he had pressed her up against her car and ran his hand down her cute frightened face was him making the opening bow, her practically yelling that he couldn't have the necklace was her way of accepting. They had been circling each other ever since. The dance stated as a blood thirsty death sentence for one of them but emerged as something greater. Sometimes the dance had been a joust - one trying to unseat the other, sometimes a fencing clash and parry of words but sometimes the dance was a tango and Damon couldn't judge which he liked best or which version of his witch was his favorite.

He had seen her morph, more chameleon than human. She could nearly kill him or be his staunch supporter and ear to gripe into. What would his life be like without Bonnie Bennett?

He didn't want to know.

Now came one hell of a decision; chase her down and reciprocate the tongue tease she had so unexpectedly given or back himself into a hole and let memories of his future life with Elena take hold, dissuade him from the here and right now. Damnit, he might as well have been buried with Elena, she was his life, his everything.

Yet, life went on and the sting he felt at shutting her away lessoned a tiny bit every day. It was thanks to his brother Stefan but mostly thanks to Bon Bon.

He would never be able to explain 'Hey while you were sleeping I shacked up with your best friend, our best friend actually, then I lost her as a friend.' Nope, better to maintain the status quo.

How did she let Damon spur her into doing something so outrageous? Oh she knew. But it had all been just a game to him. So she played. By the looks of it with him avoiding the 'thing' that happened, she won. It's a lot to knock Damon down a peg.

She would be lying if she didn't think him attractive. Heck one of her first thoughts back then was 'How can a psycho be so gorgeous' and when she got to experience some of his layers, he became an anomaly against the old Damon that she thought she knew. What she did know was nothing would ever really happen between them.

Two weeks later the only thing that changed was the amount of times that Damon gave her the 'What ARE you?' look, it increased to the point that she would catch him doing it. His starring was something she never noticed happening before.

At three weeks his flirt behavior amplified. It was almost like his days pre-Elena's snare, when he wandered close to her trap but remain un-caged.

Meanwhile Bonnie moved forward with dating Scott and pretended to be oblivious to all the glares Damon cast at the poor sweet college kid.

Things came to a head one stormy night. The evening started innocuous enough, Bonnie in her spot, Damon with his customary glass in hand staring off into the fireplace, one would say he had taken up Stefan's frequent sport of brooding. Neither commented on the fact that every time they set thus to share an evening he was a little more and little more close to her, the spider closing in on the fly.

"Why are you with him?"

Green eye pulled up from scanning the grimoire in her lap. "Why wouldn't I be," she stated a too calmly. She didn't bother to evade knowing exactly who he was talking about.

"You know why. If you really cared you would let him walk away, you would let him walk away now. Humans are too fragile for our lives."

"I like him, he's sweet and I can't let my crazy life interfere with the progression of it."

His mouth pulled into a tight line, Damon let out a little huff. "You keep calling him sweet. That's how you describe him. Sweet is puppies and kittens, American wine, creeps in France. A man should not be sweet. Sweet won't protect him from the things that go bump in the night Bon Bon."

"Things like what Damon? He's a normal guy." Her head cocked to the side, baffled with where this conversation came from. He had yet to look at her and it was rather infuriating.

The quiet blanketed the room like a snow fall covering the ground, soft, with only the interruption of the popping fire to break the still. Finally he looked at her. Bonnie never knew a vampire could look wolfish, but right at this moment Damon did. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

"Things like ME." His eyes widened like she hadn't seen them do in years. The action was sexy and demented at the same time. Air became lodge in her throat as he looked her over. His cerulean orbs stripping her in his head down to her supple brown skin. "You would spend your life protecting him and even if you would succeed... The important question is how will he protect you?'

Damon moved so fast Bonnie would have missed it had she been able to pull her wits together enough to blink. He was pinning her to the couch, one hand on the back, the other on the arm rest. The firm planes of his chest pressed into her more plush one.

Damon permitted his cheek to rest against hers as he whispered "How will he protect you from me?" She smelled so good. Since she licked him her sent had been driving him up the damn wall. It was like someone had stuck her in front of a fan and it was blowing directly at his libido. For a sheer moment he placed the tips of his fangs right above the collar bone of her neck. Damon had been in near perpetual agony for the last three weeks. She only had to be in the room with him for the ache to set in, the crazy desire to bury his hardness inside her. And he WAS hard, seemingly all the time now. If he didn't get some relief soon he was going to have to wear some looser pants. The thought of altering his wardrobe was repulsive, far better to find a more pleasurable way to ease the pain.

Bonnie squirmed under him and he scraped his teeth over her skin just enough to leave a momentary prickle. Her breathy whimper was music to his ears.

Bonnie felt hot, her skin was burning. Damon had set her blood on fire. He must have finally drove her off the deep end for her to find the tingle of his canines grazing her erotic, more sensual that anything any other man had done to her. Using his thumb he gently lifted her head up and to the side for him to nuzzle in closer. At her rushed compliance to swivel her head and the throaty moan that soon escaped her usually pursed lips Damon gave a gruff chuckle. She had turned putty in his hands and it was so heady that it went to his head. That was a mistake. Hearing his triumphant laugh Bonnie immediately stiffened under him.

"You can get up now. I'm done playing your game." Her voice was so cold the fire in the room had to battle it for temperature dominance.

So lost in her smell and the promise of her lush compact body it took Damon a moment to realize she was no longer as wrapped up in him as he was in her. "What?"

"I said get up!" She felt the channel of energy travel through her body at the same time a boom of thunder struck outside. Damon was moved twenty feet across the room.

"What the hell Bonnie?!"

She unwound herself from the couch and swiped her keys from the coffee table in jerky motions. She tried to make a getaway by fleeing outside into the pouring droplets of water. Icy fingers grabbed her by the upper arm in a non-painful but demanding grip. Spinning toward him she did what she did best, carved him up with her words. "I'm done being your diversion, your toy to play with when you're bored." The lightning raced from dark cloud to cloud above them. Little pulses of light piercing the black backdrop as her voice vented her anger. "I guess I'll never really learn. I thought at this point I meant more to you than that."

With both of his pale hands clenched around her shoulders, Damon stared down intently at her. "Of course I wouldn't do that to you Bon Bon. I would never see you as a play thing." Surprisingly her feeling that way wounded him, made him feel raw, all his protective scales stripped away. She was looking up at him, obstinate as always but hurt shining through her eyes. Soaked hair plastered from her jaw to the top of the collar bone he had been a wisp away from sampling. The disbelief he saw behind in her gaze shook him. In all his life no woman had ever been lovelier in a single moment as the pintsized witch standing drench and shivering in front of him.

"Hell with it." He grunted before gingerly cupping her face and slanting his hard cool lips over her scorching luxurious smart-mouth.

The kiss was gentle first, a subtle press of lips but when Damon slid his tongue along the seam seeking entrance Bonnie eagerly accepted. She opened to him then met his slow perusal with one of her own. For what seemed like a life time they lived in each other's mouth. At some point she had edge in closer, twining her arms around his chest, palms pressing his back to pull him closer.

She tasted the way cinnamon liquor does when it's going down, smooth, warming, addictive. Her little body pressing to him felt amazingly delightful and he couldn't help wondering how it would feel to have her wrapped completely around him in her oh so wonderfully naked glory. Pulling away from her mouth was a struggle, warring with himself over backing away or toss her over his shoulder and only letting her down when he could place her shapely bottom on his gargantuan bed was the real fight. Dragging on all his brain power he looked down at her and uttered with a sexy grin, "You're wet."

Bonnie's skin instantly flushed. Her head felt stuffed with cotton and that any moment she could float away. His kiss had knocked all sense out of her head so for that sliver of time she thought maybe he could smell her body's condition. She stared boldly up at him. "I am." She stated baldly.

Having been thinking of her saturated from the rain, her statement threw him when her meaning sank in. She had robbed him of speech and while Damon stood there dumb and unblinking Bonnie slid from his arms and into her car. When he recognized her tail lights in the distance he called himself every kind of fool for letting her get away.