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zalrb · 6 months

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Kill {elena/stefan/katherine fic pt. 6}

The gif limit is so irritating LOL. Hope you enjoy it.

Link to part 1: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/707929608286240768/toxic-elenastefankatherine-fic

Link to part 2: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/709460774203064320/valentines-day-elenastefankatherine-fic-pt-2

Link to part 3: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/709838031967879168/choices-elenastefankatherine-fic-pt-3

Link to part 4: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/710274615200628736/blood-elenastefankatherine-fic-pt-4

Link to part 5: https://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/710584105290579968/boundaries-elenastefankatherine-fic-pt-5

Katherine was cackling. “Damon, did I ever tell you, you’re my hero?”

“Shut up,” he snapped.

“No, I mean it. You tried to kill me to get your girlfriend back and ended up shooting your girlfriend instead? You’re phenomenal.”

“Shut up!” This time it was Stefan who spoke but he hadn’t turned away from Elena.

He held her gaze and Elena found herself sinking into him as he drew into her, everything else, everything around them irrelevant or nonexistent. Like always. She barely felt it when he took the arrow out of her leg.

“Are you in pain?” he asked gently.

She shook her head.

“Oh give it a rest, she’s a fucking vampire,” snapped Katherine.

Stefan didn’t bother responding. He touched the side of Elena’s face. A natural response when he wanted to comfort her. She held onto his wrist.

Damon watched the two of them, unsure of what hurt more, the fact that they never stopped sharing this kind of intimacy or the fact that they couldn’t help but display it whenever they were around each other. That that had always been the fact of them. He was glad that the two bottles of whisky he drank had somewhat numbed him.

Katherine watched Damon’s observation and pushed further.

“Of course, even if you had managed to kill me,” she said. “It wouldn’t change that the love of your life is in love with the love of mine.”

“SHUT UP!”

All three of them shouted. And still, Katherine observed, Elena and Stefan hadn’t looked away from each other. She felt something in her rise.

“But, Damon, you can be honest with me,” she said, walking closer to him.

“Get closer at your own risk,” he said.

“Elena isn’t the only reason you came here tonight, is she?” she said, ignoring his warning. “Part of you can’t stand it. Me and Stefan together.”

Damon made a noise of disgust. “Don’t make me sick.”

Katherine smiled and started tracing her finger across his chest. He slapped her hand away.

“Have you ever thought about why you’re so angry with me? Why you try so hard to kill me?”

“Because the world would be a better place with one less evil slut in it?”

“Witty,” she said.

“Just telling it like it is.”

“Humour as a defense mechanism gets a little old, Damon. Food for thought,” she said, already getting bored of the subject of her seduction. But he wasn’t the target.

“But you won’t let yourself think about it, won’t you?” She started brushing his hair. He clenched his jaw but didn’t move. “Why do you kill people, Damon? Lexi. Zach. Reminders of your humanity? There’s a part of you deep down that still wants me. That will always want me. And it kills you that Stefan gets to have me.”

With each word she spoke, Katherine could see something in Damon unravel. She glanced over to see if Stefan had looked away from Elena, to see if saw her and Damon together. He hadn’t turned away from her.

Stefan parted his lips to ask Elena another question and then suddenly ---

Searing pain. He cried out and then looked down to the source of his pain. The arrow was now speared through his leg.

“Now you can both have matching injuries,” said Katherine as she dug the arrow into Stefan’s flesh so that he grunted in pain. “Wouldn’t that be cute?”

“STOP.” Elena got up to charge at her but Damon blocked her. She pounded against him and he held her, carrying her over to the side.

“DAMON, LET ME GO.”

“She’ll tear you apart.”

Katherine bent down to whisper in Stefan’s ear. “Remember what I said about being ignored?”

He glared at her. She withdrew the arrow from his leg and tossed it to the side. Katherine sauntered down the hall but Stefan, furious, called out after her.

“KATHERINE.”

She stopped.

“I don’t know what mood you’re in,” he said. “I don’t know what point you’re going to go out and make but leave Matt out of it.”

Katherine smirked at the gravity of his tone. “Matt,” she said. “Now, there’s an idea.”

And then she sped off.

Damon was brushing Elena’s hair to the side and trying to see if she was OK.

“I’m fine, really,” she said patiently.

“Well I’m not,” said Stefan, getting up and pushing Damon against a wall. “What the hell were you thinking?” He shook him slightly. “You could’ve killed her!”

“I didn’t know she was going to be here!” He glared at Elena. “I didn’t know that a day after we broke up, she would go and stalk my brother at his fuck buddy’s apartment.”

“You could’ve had it worse,” said Stefan harshly. “Speaking from experience.”

Elena looked at him. “Stefan…”

He shook his head. “I should make sure Matt’s OK.”

Damon scoffed. “She’s not going to Matt Donovan. He’s… Matt Donovan. She made her point with him, she’s not --- no way.”

Stefan looked at him wearily. “Damon, don’t try to kill Matt just because he’s the latest pawn in whatever sick game Katherine’s playing.”

“I’m telling you, she’s moved on.”

“Right.”

Elena was running her hand through her hair. “Stefan, I want to continue our conversation.”

“Your conversation?” Damon asked her incredulously. “What about our conversation?”

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this, Damon,” said Elena. “Like, how much did you drink?”

“I am perfectly capable of having a conversation about---”

“About what? The conversation where we broke up and you almost break Matt’s wrist? The conversation where I saw ‘we need to break up’ and you don’t say anything, you just leave, and I have to warn everyone I’ve ever known to watch out for you because I don’t know what kind of rampage you’re going to go on?”

“But I didn’t go on a rampage!” said Damon “I came here! I came here to end all of your problems.”

“And you got so drunk to do it that you shot me!”

“I thought you said you forgave me for that!”

Elena closed her eyes. “My point is, this is not the right time for us to talk!”

Damon laughed harshly. “But it’s the right time for you and Stefan?”

“No,” said Stefan. “I have to make sure Katherine doesn’t ---”

Elena put her hand on either side of Stefan’s face and brought his gaze to hers. “Follow her. Or come with me,” she said.

Damon watched them and snorted. “You can’t even fucking help it, can you?”

They turned to look at him and Damon shook his head. “It’s always the fucking same.”

They decided to speak outside. When they made it out of the building, Stefan stopped walking. Elena continued for a few steps then realizing he wasn’t keeping pace, she turned around and saw him looking at her, pissed off and distressed.

“You said you didn’t know why you came here, you were just here, but what am I supposed to do with that, Elena? What are you doing?”

She continued toward him. “Fighting for you.”

Stefan closed his eyes. “Well, don’t.” It’s only getting you hurt. I can’t stand it.

She shook her head. “Old habits, I guess.”

Stefan scoffed. “Yeah,” he said in disbelief. Elena glared at him.

“Don’t rewrite history just because it makes you feel better.”

He looked at her then. “I have nothing to feel guilty about.”

It was true, he didn’t. And yet that was all he felt now. All he felt whenever he saw Elena after he saw Katherine.

Elena was inches from him now. “But you’re not happy with her.”

“Maybe that’s not what I’m looking for right now.”

Elena cocked her head, bewildered. “I can’t even fathom that.”

“I never remember asking you to try,” said Stefan calmly.

“You know this is bad for you,” she said.

“Elena, I’m not looking for your approval.”

She wasn’t listening. She pointed toward the apartment building. “You know she is bad for you.”

Of course he knew that. “Can’t you just stop?”

“No,” she said.

It was Stefan’s turn to be surprised, his expression a mixture of exasperation and desperation. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“I don’t care.”

Stefan looked at her sharply and felt a pang, an ache, at seeing the sincerity in Elena’s eyes.

“Giving up is not what we do, Stefan. We don’t stop,” said Elena, holding his gaze so he could understand how serious she was. “I didn’t stop when you went off the deep end with Klaus. You didn’t stop when Jeremy died.”

“I haven’t lost my humanity.”

Elena snorted. “No, just your mind.”

“Sleeping with Katherine doesn’t constitute an emergency.”

“Doesn’t it? After all the shit she’s pulled over the years---”

“She did what she had---”

“Don’t defend her!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he yelled back, words rushing out before he could stop himself. “After all the energy we spend defending Damon, holding up the lie that being with you has reigned him in, the fantasy we’ve constructed for ourselves just so we could all feel better about your choice?

“Wow,” she said, her eyes getting teary. “How long have you been holding that one in?”

Stefan closed his eyes and sighed. “I just want to know when you decided you were the only one who got to have a pass on who you sleep with.”

Elena shook her head. She wasn’t going to let him rationalize. “You know why I couldn’t stop at the time.”

“Yeah, because you didn’t want to,” he said harshly.

“I explained what was happening with me. I explained why I felt like I had to continue. I explained myself, Stefan. I explained why I couldn’t stop. Why can’t you? Do you love her?”

Stefan threw his head back in anguished frustration. “Stop asking me that, you know it isn’t that.”

“And you know what it is,” she said, her voice getting louder. “So tell me!”

“What do you want to hear, Elena?” He was shouting. “You want to hear that it makes me sick? Well it does! But the rush I get? I can’t ---” He took a deep breath. “I can’t stop! Is this what you mean? This is what you want to hear?”

His words shattered her but Elena wouldn’t back down. “It’s only fair isn’t it? You had to hear what I felt about Damon even though it was against my will. It’s your turn.”

He shook his head. “I’m not doing tit for tat.”

“It’s only fair.”

“I’m not hurting you because you hurt me.”

“I am demanding that we talk about it!”

“Fine!” He roared.

“Fine, let’s talk about it! Let’s talk about how good the sex is, that I’ve had her every which way for hours on end and it’s still, somehow, not enough! Let’s talk about how it feels like I’m addicted to her, like I’m hooked on the high I get when I’m around her! Let’s talk about how right now, I can’t see an end in sight! You really want to talk about that? You really want to hear that? Really? Do you want me to go on?”

Stefan burrowed his face in his hands, unable to bear the expression on her face.

“It’s toxic,” she said finally. “She’s toxic.”

“I know,” he said, looking up at her. He shrugged dejectedly. “I don’t seem to care.”

Elena couldn’t hide the tears brimming her eyes and Stefan shook his head. “I can’t -- I’m done. I’m done talking.”

Elena nodded. “Fine, Stefan,” she said. “Whatever.”

She walked away and Stefan took a shaky breath.

Elena was halfway to her dorm before she turned around and headed back to Katherine’s building. She didn’t know what she expected to find when she broke into her apartment. Katherine? Katherine and Stefan together? But it was empty. She looked around the living room, unsure of what she was searching for, what evidence she wanted to torture herself with, until she found it. The mirror Stefan broke hours before, when she heard him groan and sigh because of another woman. She put a hand to her stomach like she was going to be physically ill.

“You know you’ve broken his heart a thousand times, I guess he gets to do it to you just once.”

Elena turned to see Katherine standing by the window, watching her inspect the apartment.

“I came back looking for you,” said Elena. “But you weren’t here. Where were you? With Matt?”

Katherine shrugged. “Maybe I was with Stefan.”

Elena narrowed her eyes.

“I could give you the tour,” Katherine continued. “There isn’t an inch of this place where I haven’t taken him.”

Elena felt herself teetering on some kind of emotional edge.

“I could even show you the balcony door he smashed just to get to me.” Katherine’s tone was light, as if she were making casual conversation. “I wonder if you’ve ever seen him that wild with arousal, that … determined.”

Elena knew what his determination felt like and remembered, with painful clarity, the weekend she and Stefan had gone to her parents’ cabin. The night the wolves had attacked, and the fight they’d gotten into after.

“A hundred and sixty-two years I have lived, and you've barely begun, and now you want to let yourself get killed? That's not heroic. It's tragic.”

He’d walked away from her, angry and anguished, but he hadn’t left the cabin. He wasn’t going far, not after the attack. He’d stayed around, making sure they were safe inside, making sure she felt OK, making her tea, getting her blankets, but he was quiet and contemplative, silently agonizing over their conversation, a desperation, a wordless indignation at what she’d revealed to him about her deal with Elijah. And when they’d gotten into bed, Stefan lying on his side, facing away from her, Elena staring up at the ceiling, she lay next to him for exactly five minutes before shaking her head and sighing.

“I can’t go to sleep like this,” she said. “With you angry at me. I--” She turned so she could face him, though all she saw was his back. “Stefan, please try to under---”

He’d rolled over and kissed her with an earnestness that moved her to immediately put her arms around his neck.

His hand slid up her back and he pressed her forward, closing the small gap between them, pulling her into him, bringing her firmly against his body so that her leg curled around his hip. He was taking great care with his strength -- she could feel his urge to tighten his hold and crush her to him, to make absolutely sure there was no space between their bodies, and him having to restrain his needs ignited her. She massaged his tongue with hers and his hand went from her back to her face, taking a hold of her chin and guiding her mouth to his for a deepened kiss that was both desperate and possessive and that made Elena shiver and crave more.

He tugged her bottom lip with his teeth. She wrapped her leg around him tighter and when she felt his ever-moving, ever-present hold beneath her, pressing her into him so she could feel his hardness, she moaned in his mouth and turned so that he was on his back and she was on top.

She kissed him again, her hips moving so that she rubbed against him, eliciting strangled sounds from him and she moved to his neck, gently biting, feeling his lips on her shoulder, his hands gripping her tank top, threatening to rip it apart. She skated her lips along his face, placing gentle kisses on his forehead. He sucked and kissed her throat, making her sigh and smile and sway with more vigor.

It killed her to pull away but she did it to see his face, drink in his expression, and as she did, Stefan took her hand and slipped it under his shirt. She lightly grazed her fingernails along his stomach, luxuriating in the tautness of his torso, living for the way her touch made his skin jump and turned his breathing shallow. Staring up at her, he guided her hand upward to his chest, and kept it there, kept his hand atop hers. She felt his heart racing beneath her palm, and her lips parted. His eyes, serious and wild, peered into hers, and she knew they were continuing their conversation, he was making his case, making her feel his plea.

It was excruciatingly intimate, the boldness of his vulnerability and Elena was so overcome with emotion, she started to tremble. But she didn’t look away from him, didn’t move her hand because she wanted him to know her choice wasn’t despite him, wasn’t excluding him, it was because of him, because of this. How could she feel this, how could he make her feel this, and expect her not to do everything in her power to keep him safe? How could he ask her to do that? She swallowed hard, opening and closing her mouth a few times before speaking.

“Stefan---”

He raised his head and kissed her again, groaning as he claimed her mouth, and turned so that she found herself lying on the mattress beneath him.

He was quick, sliding off her tank top and kissing his way downward to her waistband slipping off her shorts. He was between her thighs, his tongue making her bow off the bed, her face pushed into a pillow that she bit and whimpered into. She raised his head and moved forward, sitting up to help him take off his shirt, to kiss his stomach, to run her tongue along his skin, to make him pant and sigh.

He kissed her again, burrowing back into the bed, gripping and massaging the contours of her body, nibbling and clutching so that she was gasping and shaking and lightheaded and feeling, just feeling how her body responded to him, the claim he had over her. They were entwined yet not joined and him against but not inside her maddened her. She could feel the intensity of his arousal, and whether to give him some relief or to torture him as much as he was torturing her, she reached down and felt him. He made a noise somewhere between a moan and a sob, like this would be the last time they would ever be together like this.

His voice was strangled, his words incoherent. “Please…I have to … I have to…”

Elena was gasping. “If you don’t I’ll kill you.”

The way he moved, as if he were physically trying to make them one, made her warble and cry out.

His determination to make her feel him, feel what it was to be alive, had her grabbing at him, pulling at the sheets, whimpering and begging, answering his pleas with pleas of her own. He’d awakened every atom in her body to him, and feeling his heart beat wildly against her chest had in turn made her wild and overwhelmed --- a mess of sensations. She was overcome with the singular feeling that she could never, ever give this up, she never wanted to live without this. He rocked into her deeper and deeper as if to say, So then stay with me, stay with me, stay with me …

“It must kill you to want him back and know he wants nothing to do with you,” said Katherine now.

Elena walked over to Katherine’s bar and poured herself a drink. That memory was a shard in her chest and she had to take the edge off. “Yeah.” She took a sip. “Do you want to know what makes it worse?”

Katherine raised her eyebrows. “Elena Gilbert tells all.”

“He loved me. He loved me so much.” Elena did her best to keep her tone steady. “That kind of love, it…changed everything for me. It saved my life.”

Katherine felt slightly nauseous, her words echoed what Stefan had told her once, back when he thought she was Elena: “When we were together, every atom in my body told me that we were the right fit, it was the perfect match, and that kind of love, it can change your whole life.”

“And now he’s gone,” said Elena simply. “I didn’t think about that, not really, because I’ve never thought of him being gone, never thought about how much that would …” She took another sip so the vodka would burn away the anguish she felt. She paused, as if she were trying to gather her words. “I think the only thing that would be worse is being with him and never being loved by him.” She looked at Katherine, her eyes hardened. A harshness twisted her face.

“So you should tell me, how does that feel? Do you think it’s worse?”

Katherine’s eyes flashed. She hadn’t anticipated such precise cruelty. Rather than acting on her impulse to slam Elena’s head in the wall, she tried to play it off with a scoff. “How predictably boring that you think everything is as black and white as love. What we have transcends."

Elena laughed. Cackled. With a hint of craze. Whatever edge there’d been, she’d teetered off it. Katherine furrowed her eyebrows in partial annoyance and confusion.

“You sound like a donkey,” she said. “Are you having an aneurysm?”

“Sorry, it’s just, it’s just,” Elena continued to laugh.

“You think that you and him actually have something. You think it’s, oh my God,” she put her drink back down, walked across the room and reached out to touch Katherine’s shoulder, “you think it’s special.”

Katherine removed Elena’s hand from her shoulder and clenched her wrist, her fingers grinding into her bones. “I think I reach a part of him, a base, animalistic part of him--” Elena was determined not to wince at the words “-- you’ve never, could never touch.”

“Right,” said Elena, nodding frantically, ignoring the pain both physical and emotional. “Even if that was true, you wouldn’t be the only one. You wouldn’t even be the first.”

Katherine flung Elena’s hand away. “Oh please.”

“You stalked him for years, Katherine, he told me what you said to him the night of the masquerade ball. You’re telling me you don’t remember Chicago? You don’t remember Rebekah?”

Katherine’s eyes narrowed and Elena felt a terrible glee.

“I had him before Rebekah,” said Katherine. “I had him before anyone.”

“I don’t know where you’ve been --- oh that’s right, hell --- but you’re wrong. Valerie did.”

An anger started to simmer within Katherine, Elena could see it. She relished it. She was past jealousy, past heartbreak, and had plummeted to a venomous, exhilarating spite that pushed her to spew words she knew would cut, would wound.

“But you don’t care about that,” said Elena. “You care about the part of him only you can reach but I’ve read his journals.”

Elena did her best to ignore that the imagery she was conjuring, that the thought of Stefan with Rebekah, with anyone else, the thought of him giving another woman even a sliver of what he’d given her at the cabin, hurt her just as much.

“He’s a descriptive writer. Especially about the, um -- how did he describe it? -- oh yeah, ‘crazy sex’ they’d have, the limits she would push him to, but you, you probably saw it.”

She wanted to inflict damage. Katherine had pushed her to this. Katherine and Stefan together had pushed her to this.

“Did you see when Rebekah jerked him off at a full booth in Gloria’s? Or after, when he bent her over the hood of his car?” This was the last thing she wanted to think about and yet she couldn’t stop. “Or were you there for the knife play?“ It occurred to her that she could maybe understand some of Stefan’s sentiment. She could barely recognize herself in this moment and picturing the things she was speaking of made her want to break something, but seeing Katherine struggle to keep her face impassive was an addictive exercise. She could see how she could become an addiction.

“He did none of that with you,” she said finally. “If you are special to him, Katherine, it’s for all the wrong reasons. You’re the bitch who ruined his life.”

“No,” said Katherine, inching closer to Elena, staring her dead in the eye. “I’m the only one he’s sleeping with right now. I’m that bitch.” Katherine didn’t know if it was rage or heartbreak that flickered in Elena’s eyes but it was enough to satisfy her. “You can let yourself out,” she said as she slipped out of the living room.

Elena overturned the coffee table and smashed a lamp.

Katherine had taken a few steps into Stefan’s room when she was suddenly pushed to the floor and a glowering Stefan was hovering over her, pinning her down by her wrists.

“You touch her again, I’ll put you in the ground.”

“And I thought you would’ve cooled off by now. It’s been a day.”

“Do you understand?”

“This is nothing you haven’t said before,” said Katherine casually.

Stefan lowered his head so she couldn’t escape his gaze even if she wanted to. His face was etched with a protective rage that she’d only ever seen when it came to Elena. “I will kill you. I am not joking.”

He wasn’t. Katherine could tell. He wasn’t threatening her, he was explaining the realities of the situation. When he felt like they understood each other, he released her. Katherine stood up and started straightening out her clothes. Stefan walked to the other side of the room and started to pace. Interesting, she thought. He would kill her for Elena but he wasn’t kicking her out of his room now. Katherine regarded him and contemplated the conundrum of a situation they were in.

She could have anyone. She’d had. It was a particular gift of hers --- getting men to die for her, to kill for her, to worship her, revere her, to do anything and everything for her, and dozens of them had over the years just for the promise of being with her.

And none of it mattered.

All she’d wanted, all she’d ever wanted, was Stefan. He had her completely. He always had. She had no pride when it came to him, to her desire for him, the fact that she was still here after that threat was proof of this, but she had to pretend that she had pride now. It was a game. To make him blink. Make him flinch. To get him to worship her, get him to need her. To get him on his knees before her, to make him hers, even for a moment, even for a second, to obliterate the unrelenting, nagging tie to that bland, self-righteous, lesser version of herself. She had to make him scared of losing the feeling he got when he was with her, the pleasure, the power. She had to make him scared of losing her.

“So then maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore,” said Katherine, examining her nails.

Stefan looked at her from across the room and then laughed.

Katherine quirked her eyebrow. “I don’t believe I said anything funny.”

“On the contrary, I find false threats quite amusing.”

“We all have our limits, Stefan.”

“Not you. Not with me.”

His dark tone aroused her but instead of letting him see that, she narrowed her eyes. “You really think that I can’t cut myself off from you? I have other avenues for fun, for pleasure.”

Stefan paused briefly before speaking. “That where you’ve been?”

Katherine tried not to grin but Stefan’s not-so-hidden jealousy energized her in a way that nothing else did.

“Are you asking if I fucked Matt?”

His face was impassive. “Did you?”

Katherine giggled. “As you’ve made so painfully clear to me, you and I are not together. So I don’t think what I do on my own time is any of your business.”

“Mm,” said Stefan, scratching his chin. “Well, he’s too good for you and he knows better.”

Katherine smiled. “So do you, remember?”

Stefan glared at her.

“Me, on the other hand, I think I’m finally smartening up.”

“Meaning you’re ending this.”

Katherine shrugged. “Why not?”

Stefan sped over to her, a breath of a gap between them.

“Katherine,” his voice was low, soft. It made her quiver. “You and I both know that if I told you to get on your knees right now you’d do it.”

She would. God, she would. “Rules have changed.”

He pressed his lips against her ear. “I thought there were no rules.” He nipped the bottom of her earlobe.

Katherine’s breath hitched and without thinking, she grasped the back of his head. She felt him grin against her. She wouldn’t stop him from kissing her, nuzzling her neck. She couldn’t. But she could stop herself. From going further. Unless ---

“I want the part of you she never got.”

He stopped. “I gave her everything,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Stefan---”

He looked at her now. “I. Gave her. Everything.” His eyes were blazing. Her suggestion angered him. Katherine was beyond irritated. It was one thing to keep protecting her but even now, even after everything, he was still protective of his bond with her. She wanted to stab him again, rip him to shreds, tear him apart for being so predictably foolish. It was also what made her want him more.

She closed her eyes in an effort to tamper her jealousy, her anger, her incredulity. She had to remind herself that she’d expected this. In fact, she’d counted on it. She’d needed it for what she was going to propose next. She couldn’t get swept up in the immediacy of her indignation.

“Fine,” she said, opening her eyes to look at him. “So then fight for me. Keep me from walking out that door. Make me stay here.”

Katherine’s eyes glinted with a primal kind of malice.

This was the part of him, the piece of him neither Elena nor Rebekah got. Because they’d never been in a position like this, a position where Stefan had to admit to wanting something he would do anything not to want. Elena may have gotten his love and Rebekah may have gotten his chaos, but he would give her his defeat and begrudgingly, he would delight in it. Relish in it. And only she would feel that in his body, in his movements, in how he decided to take her.

“Tell me that you want this,” she continued. “Tell me you’ll go crazy without it.” She traced his lips with her finger. “Tell me you crave me.” She held his gaze, her eyes turning steely with a dark desire as she gritted her teeth. “Beg me.”

He glared at her. He hated this game. He loved this game.

“Beg me and I’m yours.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Who told you that I wanted you to be mine?”

She touched him through his jeans and he couldn’t help it. He closed his eyes. She grinned.

“You did,” she said, rubbing him. “Your body can’t lie.”

He sighed.

She moved her hand in earnest. “If you could have me in a cage, you would.”

He made a soft, desperate sound.

Faster still. Katherine raised her eyebrows. “Liking that imagery?”

“I fucking hate you,” he whispered.

“But you love fucking me.”

His jaw clenched.

“Say it.”

He stayed tight-lipped. His defiance was as hot as it was frustrating.

Katherine shrugged. “Fine.”

She walked out of his room but then found herself backing into it again. Stefan had intercepted her in the hallway, blocking her path, and started walking, guiding her back to where they were a moment ago. His expression was dangerous. Katherine’s skin tingled. He was doing what she told him to. Keeping her from leaving. But she needed the words. She needed his surrender.

“You want me to stay here,” she said. “Say it.”

He took a hold of her, his grasp tight enough to break the bones of a human, and kissed her violently, bruising her lips, thrusting his tongue in her mouth, making her knees buckle and head swim.

There was no affection, just an angry passion. She pulled her mouth away and slapped him hard across the face, splitting his lip, her fingernails clawing his skin with one sharp rake that left scratches on his cheek. His eyes reddened and veins darkened his face, his upper lip curled as fangs descended. Katherine grabbed him by the back of his head and forced him to her, kissing him again, pushing him to a wall. She bit his tongue, making him wrench away. Reacting instinctively, he grasped her throat and lowered her to her knees. She looked up at him with excitement, her eyes daring him.

He blinked rapidly and his irises were back to their normal green, the veins disappeared from his face, his fangs were gone. Now that his senses had returned, he let go of Katherine but his hand, trembling, still hovered around her neck, as if itching to continue. This, Katherine thought triumphantly, he’d never do, never have to do, never feel with his precious Elena. Or that wench Rebekah. This battle within himself, that belonged to her.

Katherine started unbuckling his belt, undoing his fly, but then stopped and looked up at him. “If I refused you right now, it would kill you,” she said. “Say it.”

He glowered down at her, breathing heavily.

“Say it, Stefan.”

He gritted his teeth.

“Say it.”

She kissed just below his navel, teasing to go lower. He furrowed his eyebrows and threw his head back. Katherine felt the tension in his body, felt his legs straining with anticipation. But he remained silent.

Fine again. She stood up and pushed him away, making him stagger backwards from the force of her strength. She started toward the door again. He grabbed her by the wrist and whirled her back to him, sinking his teeth into her neck. Her body jerked with pleasure. He grunted. His hands explored her body, gripping and grabbing, holding her to him in a way that made it feel like he wanted to break her to possess her. He hated her. He wanted her. He’d have her then. He’d have her and nothing else until he succumbed.

Katherine pushed him onto the bed and climbed atop him, her knees rested on the mattress on either side of his face. She held onto the headboard as he gripped her thighs and pleased her so that she clenched and trembled and panted, grinding against the movement of his tongue. Everything in her heated with a carnal delight that had her murmuring and begging and racing to the climax, and it wasn’t until she half out of her mind and until sweat misted her skin, until she was gripping his hair, pushing his face deeper into her, until she couldn’t take it anymore, until her body was wound so tight and was begging for the kind of release only he could ever give her in all of the centuries she’d been alive that she realized that Stefan was punishing her.

Because he knew. He knew that more than wanting him to please her, she wanted to hear her name on his lips, hear the noises she could elicit from him. She wanted his body at her mercy, wanted him concentrating on no one, nothing else but her, she wanted him in her web and he was testing to see who could outlast who.

It was too late for her to turn back now, she couldn’t bring herself to stop, to make him stop, they had to keep going, the pleasure was too agonizingly exquisite, too powerful for her not to feel it in its full force. If she didn’t get the release, she would die. She was sure of it.

When she finally came apart above him, Stefan unseated her so that she collapsed onto the bed, spent and aroused and irritated. He got up and started to leave the room. She scrambled off the bed too.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

In a second, he was in front of her. He held her by the chin, forcing her head up so she could look her directly in the eye.

“You have to decide, Katherine, what’s more important, having your pride or having me.”

Katherine glared, yet her skin, her blood, her body was still humming from the climax he’d just given her. It was odd feeling completely satisfied and entirely annoyed at the same time. This wasn’t how the game was supposed to go. He looked down at her smugly. She’d been playing him. But he’d been playing her.

It was Stefan’s turn to shrug. “OK.”

He left. He almost made it to the stairs and then was slammed down onto his back, a vice grip on his throat, a finger in his mouth that he instinctively started to suck. Katherine had a chip on her shoulder now and ravished him accordingly. At least, at the very least, she would make him call out for her like she was some kind of higher power. Fuck him for ruining her game, fuck him for thinking he won. She would make him submit, she would enslave him with pleasure. She took him and he bucked and writhed and swore, squirming from the feel of her mouth on him, he was thrusting his hips and begging her not to stop and cursing her name, frantic and wild and helpless because he couldn’t lie, couldn’t pretend that she didn’t do this to him.

His voice came out in clipped hisses.“God, I hate you… I … Katherine …”

An anguished intake of breath. A realization. “Am I hearing what I think I am?”

Damon stood in the foyer of the Salvatore Mansion, his phone out, on speaker, Elena on the other end.

“No mistaking that, babe.”

Damon hadn’t wanted Katherine to be right. He’d convinced himself since meeting Elena that she was nothing to him, a lapse in judgment, a terrible mistake. But when he came home to hear her with Stefan, he felt a misery settle in on him that he was all too familiar with, that he’d spent over a century living with, that had altered and deepened and intensified in more contemporary times when he’d hear the laughing and moaning and poorly made attempts at quiet pleasure in this house, with his most current ex girlfriend. Hearing Katherine and Stefan together had triggered in him a tumultuous urge to source out his pain, raze everything around him and who better to start with than the other woman who could trigger this feeling, who had triggered this feeling before, who had broken up with him because of his brother who was too busy making these sounds that were causing him misery to want anything to do with her. The irony of that was too sweet to keep to himself.

“From the sounds of it, they’re in the hallway.”

The line remained silent. All that could be heard were the moans and the grunts and the cries of pleasure from the two vampires entwined upstairs.

Damon continued. “Like they know other people live here but they just don’t give a shit. At least you two kept it to the bedroom. I guess I could forgive them, I’ve been shacking up with you the last few days, maybe they didn’t think I’d be home.”

Still silent.

“I wonder how often they do this.”

Silent.

“I’m pretty sure he’s bending her over the banister right now.”

“Bye, Damon.”

Elena hung up the phone. For a second, she thought that being at The Grill would be enough incentive to calm her nerves, keep her from reacting strongly, but then Stefan’s voice hungry with need came back to her, the way he said ‘Katherine’ ringing through her head, the way she heard his moans when she’d showed up to the apartment, and she threw her phone against the wall, then the glass she was sipping from, watching it break into pieces. A few patrons looked nervously at her.

“Whoa, what did I miss?” said Caroline, sitting next to her.

“Just Katherine and Stefan fucking each other senseless.”

Suddenly, there was a crash and Elena and Caroline turned to see that Matt had dropped a few bottles. His face was contorted with pain. Elena shook her head, contrite.

“Oh, Matt, I’m sorry--”

He didn’t say anything and just walked through the swinging doors to the kitchen. Elena threw up her hands.

“Is that really the effect that she has? What does she have, a magical vagina? Matt swears nothing happened between them and she still has him so twisted up, what is the deal?”

“Mm. Some could say the same about you,” Caroline muttered.

Elena turned to her. “What?”

“Nothing,” said Caroline. “It was a joke. Sort of.”

Elena was too miserable to continue. “Where’s Bonnie? I thought she was the one who wanted to meet.”

“Yeah, I think she found something in her Grams’ books that she wants to share.”

“The timing couldn’t be better because with Stefan…”

Caroline looked at her, vaguely sympathetic. “You two are in a weird place, huh?”

“I keep fighting with him,” she said. “I’ve never fought with him this much. She’s ruining everything.”

Caroline looked at her tentatively. “Then maybe you should give him space until we figure out how to get rid of her.”

“I know I should,” said Elena. “I just can’t.”

“He probably gets that,” said Caroline.

“I don’t know. The things he said about her, about them… He knows she has her claws in him and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care anymore.”

“It’s a phase.”

Elena snorted and took another sip of her drink. “Some phase.”

“Elena, he loved you …” Caroline paused as if she were remembering “so completely and you left him for his brother. And not just any brother. Damon.”

“Are you trying to make me feel like shit?”

“I’m just saying that’s going to have some kind of effect. Maybe he’s lost right now.”

“And Katherine’s the answer?”

“He’ll figure out the answer,” said Caroline. “On his own. At least for now.” Caroline looked at Elena to see if she would show some sign of understanding. “I’m going to check on Matt.”

Elena nodded in acknowledgement as Caroline headed into the kitchen. She mulled over her words and decided they were irrelevant.