She arched her head back and bared her throat.
Damon was glad that his beacon was perfectly visible to him. Elena had nearly triggered her own accidental introduction to vampires and their autonomic reflexes. He found himself trembling like a thoroughbred ready for the signal to leap out of the gates, hovering over the slim column of neck and seeing the blue lines beneath the taut, translucent skin. Sizzling sparks were running down his spine and his fangs had sprung free without consulting his brain. All he wanted was one delicate bite at the external jugular vein, just the tiniest of punctures, through which he could draw just the smallest of sips of Elena’s young and vital blood, which his senses told him was redolent of musk, sweet vanilla and exotic resins mixed with rich Oriental spices . . .
And which had picked up Elena’s own fragrances from running through her body, because more than half her current volume of blood was from other people!
The shock of this realization did him good. He was able to straighten up and then bury his face in the tumbled glory of her hair, breathing in the delicious scents of her without wanting to deprive her of what she needed most to live.
I’m afraid you missed something, little brother, he was able to think almost sanely as he forced his fangs to retract. Elena defines kissing as “what you do before someone sinks their teeth into you.”
I do understand why you almost killed her, though,. She’s learned how vampires work and she knows every button to push, even if she doesn’t know she knows.
He lifted his head only to find that Elena was still arched, offering herself, innocent as a kitten in a lingerie drawer. He planted a few gentle kisses on the skin of her throat and then said, “Come back down here, angel,” while carefully tipping her chin so that she could look at him.
Her eyes were closed. She was in some dream that their minds had blended: and that answered his fevered question. That was the deepest part of her that he could touch: her soul. And he wanted it as much as she did. He remembered how easy it had been while they were looking for Stefan in the Dark Dimension, and he knew that he could initiate telepathy with her right now, without even an exchange of blood . . .
But he was supposed to be human. It was enough to drive anyone mad, and it had done just that. He’d been thinking mad thoughts a minute ago. He’d considered taking blood out of Elena. It didn’t matter if he’d wanted a single drop. She was in the thrice-damned hospital because Stefan had given in to her spell.
He wanted her as his princess of darkness, yes, but not right now. He needed to prepare her for the transition. He had to wait.
Damon hated waiting the way cats hate water.
Elena finally opened her eyes. She glanced at him and then glanced at the empty space on the hospital bed beside her.
“Don’t even think about it,” Damon warned grimly, hoping that she would override him, that she would seduce him again.
“You don’t want to get in trouble with the nurses again,” he added glumly.
Elena sighed. “Maybe I’ll go ahead and try to really sleep, then.” Damon knew that she hated waiting the way cats hate static electricity.
“But first I need . . . I need to . . .” Elena was in the thrall of her own special motor memory. Her tethered left hand held something invisible, while her right hand hovered over the invisibility with thumb tucked between first and middle fingers.
As if she were holding a phantom pen.
“My . . . my . . . book. No!” Elena was getting frustrated, but Stefan had clearly done a thorough job on this subject. He’d ablated even the word diary from her memory completely.
“Maybe do your homework?” Damon suggested quickly, and just when Elena was starting to shake her head, he produced the notes for Nonfiction and Memoir Writing.
“Oh,” Elena said. She frowned at the words at the top. “I guess I need to buy a . . .”
“A journal,”—smoothly.
“Yes, a journal. But this week’s assignment is just to write a short memoir about something that happened over the summer.” Her frown deepened. “It’s so strange. I can’t even remember very distinctly. I know we did all sorts of things, but every time I try to focus on one, it slips out of my mind.”
Damon wasn’t surprised. After all, what was she going to write? I was a ghost, and then a human returned from the afterlife, and then a goddess, and then a slave, and finally an angel of destruction, and then an ordinary girl again, and then, just to end the summer on a high note, I helped bring my boyfriend’s brother—who’s now my boyfriend—out of a death-coma.
He found himself chuckling. “Didn’t you—we—go to Warm Springs just a few weeks ago?”
Elena laughed and kept laughing. She ignored the question. “I like it when you smile,” she confided. “Especially when you’re happy.”
“One usually smiles because one is happy, doesn’t one?”
“I don’t know about one, but I know about you. And you smile for all sorts of reasons. You smile when you’re challenged or when you get—oh, moderately angry. You smile when something hurts you. You smile when you’re about to do something outrageous or when you’re doing your daft act. But I like it best when you’re happy—and I’ve hardly ever seen you so happy before.”
Damon blinked. She might think I’m human, but she certainly doesn’t think I’m Stefan, was all that he could come up with at first. She knows me—a little bit too well.
“How can you say I haven’t been happy?” he said, his lips still curved. “With you at my side for a whole year long?”
Elena reached for him with her right hand. “Oh, yes. And you smile when you’re flirting or just piling up the B.S.”