Blood Will Tell (The Vampire Diaries 4.5)

But now, with the door shut and locked behind him, he was watching her, with distinctly worried eyes. As she walked around the room and ended up on the worn, creaky old couch, his aura was burning a puzzled yellow. She wondered whether to feign nervousness, and then decided she didn’t have to feign it. She looked up at him, with her stillwet, stillcornflowerblue eyes at their widest.

Plan B was what the girls called a blitzkrieg plan.

“I tangled the tie of my windbreaker before, and now I can’t see to untie it,” she said.

And that’s the absolute truth! she thought. Yes, if you don’t ask exactly when ‘before’ was.

He untangled it, necessarily standing close to her. All boys were tall compared to Bonnie, but Stefan was just the right height for leaning her head against his shoulder, and so straight and slim and somehow pliant—like a ninja or a panther or something that had to be ready to move in any direction at once. And he smelled wonderfully good. That was one of the most important things to the deepest Bonnie: smell. And another, which he also had, was voice. Stefan was a virtuous knight, faithful to the memory of his Elena—but he also had a voice that could melt butter right out of the refrigerator.

Yes, we have no problems here. I’m attracted to him. But—could he ever be attracted to me?

Bonnie slid off her windbreaker, and then, watching Stefan under her eyelashes, undid the one big button of her jade green sweater, and began to pull it over her head.

Stefan—as expected—made an incoherent noise of protest. That was one advantage she had. She was a gabbler. She could talk the hind leg off an elephant given the chance, and Stefan was a polite listener who didn’t like to interrupt.

“It’s okay, silly, I’ve got another top on underneath it,” she said and finished shrugging the sweater off.

This was technically true. She had a camisole on underneath it; a very pretty cream colored one, with knots of ribbon and lace decorating the bodice. She usually wore it with a sweater when the weather could change suddenly and she could whip on a lighter top over it.

She just hoped that Stefan didn’t know enough about modern women’s underwear to recognize it as notexactlyoutdoorwear.

Especially when the only thing under the camisole was Bonnie.

It seemed that Elena had neglected this area of his education. Bonnie mentally wiped sweat off her forehead.

“It’s a pretty top,” Stefan said. “But the evenings are chilly up here—”

“It shouldn’t take long. And we’ll keep each other warm,” Bonnie said. Oh, Lord, had she just said that? From Stefan’s expression she had.

“Bonnie—it isn’t—”

He didn’t even stand a chance against lips that had kissed the Blarney Stone.

“I know it isn’t,” she said. “But before we—before you take my blood”—it was good to get that in here at the beginning, to remind him of the debt he owed her—“I was wondering if we could—just sit together for a minute or two. So I could get used to you.

That’s the problem with Damon. He just looms and then grabs, and there’s no question about what he wants and when he wants it.”

That’s it! she cheered herself mentally. You’ve got him on the ropes; keep socking him!

The last thing Stefan wanted to be was to be like Damon.

“Of course,” he said, switching off the toobright lamp, and sitting down beside her.

The memory of Damon’s Don Juan maneuvers at the pensione, bringing in a new girl every night, sitting close to her on a soft, deeplyupholstered couch, and looking deeply into her eyes, while talking in a catvelvety voice about this and that, all slid right out of his mind. He was with Bonnie, little Bonnie, and he was making her comfortable before she did him the greatest favor a human could do a vampire.

Bonnie was looking up at him with eyes—while not Elena’s blueviolet—were a marvelous color all of their own. Pure, innocent eyes. She edged a little closer to him, still looking up. She seemed to find something fascinating about his face.

“Stefan?” she said softly. “While we’re—while you’re—you know—then we’ll be able to talk with our minds, won’t we?”

“We should. But I understand perfectly if you don’t want me to read your mind at all.”

“But I do—for a special reason.”

She was wearing some scent—or maybe it was just the scent of her skin. And that skin! Even more transparent than Elena’s; even less tanned. Stefan could spend all night tracing the blue, pale and darker of the veins that wandered beneath her skin. He was especially mesmerized by the veins in her throat; but he also found somehow that it struck him to the heart to see the blue lines at her temples, throbbing in rhythm with her heart. He knew he would never forget this moment, watching the utter vulnerability and utter trust he was being shown.

“Having been a telepath for—well, probably all my eighteen years,” Bonnie was saying (and chalking up another point to herself for having gotten her age in so neatly and unforgettably), “I’ve learned one or two things. And one is that I’m very good at visualizing. I was thinking that while we were joined by sharing blood, I might think of some pictures of Elena, some things we did, things that happened before you came along.” He hadn’t responded. Bonnie felt an awful plunge from her heart literally to the soles of her feet. Her pulse was suddenly hammering. What if he already had all he needed of Elena? What if old memories would only bring him pain?

But then she looked at his face. He was gazing down at her as if he were about to kneel on the ground before her. He lifted fingers to his lips, and she realized, tears rushing to her eyes, that it was to keep his upper lip from trembling.