There was a pause. The gold flecks swam in Elena’s eyes. Damon had the feeling that she might put down the weapon of her wit, as it were, and quit the field of battle on his say-so alone.
But Elena was Elena. Proud as Lucifer and twice as beautiful as he was reputed to be in the beginning. Her name meant light as his meant light-bearer. She was the pure element, and no one had ever wielded her yet.
She took the last step toward him. He could feel the heat of her body on his skin. She was wearing jeans so distressed they were almost white and a wine-colored camisole. Cabernet-colored. He had no idea where her sweater was, but he knew she needed it. He needed it. His canines were sharpening.
“I love you the way a thorn loves the rumor of a rose,” she said. “You think I’m so young, so pristine, so moonlit. But I love you the way a pyromaniac loves napalm. I could kill you in a heartbeat if love was truly war, and you’d laugh and kiss your hand to me as you died. I lost my heart to whatever you really are behind the nice guy act, but we’ve always been on opposite sides. I wouldn’t be surprised if my blood went missing because you drank it . . . Demon.”
Damon tried to keep his eyes off the camisole and the milk-pale skin directly above it. She thought he was two and a half years older than she was, when it was closer to twice two and a half centuries. She wanted to fight on his own territory, to play in the big league, and she had not the slightest idea of what he’d seen and done in his time. She needed to know what she was dealing with.
Before he lost his senses and perforated one of her arteries he remembered the hipflask of Black Magic. He’d refilled it from a bottle in the Ferrari. Now he drew it out of his pocket and drained half of the contents in one long swallow. Then he blinked a few times and sneezed as the sensation of starvation receded.
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night . . .” she mocked him. The cabernet camisole was rippling with her quick breathing. “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
Damon made a supreme effort. Black Magic was spreading through his body, soothing him.
“Okay. We’re both smart; we’re both thieves like jackdaws; and we’re both fairly worked up. However—”
“You started it,” she cut him off. “But I’ll finish it. I don’t care if you’re the Devil himself. You still can’t sleep in my damn bed.”
“Stop it, now, Elena. You know exactly who I am. We’ve been together for almost a year—and you’re still a virgin, which ought to tell you something.”
“A year? Then why can’t I remember it? Why can’t I remember even one full day?” she demanded suddenly, half fiercely and half wailing.
Stefan, I am going to kill you. Damon didn’t dare send the message even on a tight beam in case Elena picked up on it. She was in a Mood, and he wouldn’t put random telepathy past her. Right now, she was a latent everything.
This is what happens when you take all the memories away from someone and don’t substitute some fantasy, he thought bitterly. Stefan, of course, would think of that as cheating. But—congratulations!—he was now close to driving a second young girl to insanity.
Elena was panting. The cabernet camisole was developing troughs and crests from wavelength interference. Damon recognized an imminent explosion when he saw one.
She was still harping on the Tyger, tyger theme, making her way toward some quite terrifying conclusion.
“When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did He smile his work to see?
Did He who made the Lamb make thee?”
Oh, dear. She was serious, staring into his eyes as if his soul was perfectly accessible and she only needed to watch the sparkle of synapses to trace his thoughts. This wouldn’t have worried him so much if she hadn’t once been to Completely and Utterly Dead—a realm he had never visited. Almost completely and utterly dead he understood fairly well, and even that had given him the ability to see into other worlds.
When she’d come back from death she’d extemporaneously developed the ability to explode planets. The Guardians of the Celestial Court were certain that they’d taken that gift away from her by clipping her wings.
Damon wished he had more respect for the Guardians.
“All right,” he told her. “The answers to your questions are: first, I prefer to think so; and second, most probably not. I am trying not to bullshit you here.”
Elena closed her eyes, which was unfair on two counts. For one thing she could no longer see the wild and winsome smile he was holding steady in order to bullshit her. And for another, her eyelashes were as dark as her hair was bright and long enough to cast shadows on her cheek. Gross injustice, that was.
“Okay,” she breathed. “Now you tell me what you’ve done to me during the last year.”
No freaking way. He couldn’t even get out of it by saying “almost everything.” Elena was Elena; she’d want a list. She’d want a numbered list.
During the last calendar year he’d terrorized her and worshipped her; he’d owned her as a slave and acknowledged her as more of an equal than anyone he’d known before in his life. When she had been most vulnerable he had, for novelty’s sake, even tried being fair to her.
When she had saved his misspent life from almost utter and complete death he’d snapped at her like a wounded coyote in a trap. Before that, when she’d courted death by hypothermia, he’d burned every erg of his Power to warm her. Once, he’d given her his jacket for keeps, but she’d thrown it back at him from a third-story window for thrashing Stefan.
She had continually challenged him, and every time she did he’d kissed her, or tried to. He’d kissed her when he’d healed her wounds. He’d kissed her when he was hungry, and when he was lonely, and when they’d evaluated tactics together. All in all, there had been quite a lot of kissing.