"A whole hour?"Stefan's conspiratorial whisper made an hour sound like eternity.
"We do deserve it,"Elena said, enthral ed. She began to tow him again.
"No."Stefan pul ed her back, lifted her - bridal-style - and suddenly they were going straight up, fast. They shot up three stories and a little more and landed on the platform of the widow's walk above his room.
"But it's locked from inside - "
Stefan stomped on the trapdoor - hard. The door disappeared.
Elena was impressed.
They floated down into Stefan's room amid a shaft of light and motes of dust that looked like fireflies or stars.
"I'm a little nervous,"Elena said.
She heeled her sandals off and slid out of her jeans and top and into bed...only to find Stefan already there.
They're faster, she thought. As fast as you think you are, they're always faster.
She turned toward Stefan in the bed. She was wearing a camisole and underwear. She was scared.
"Don't,"he said. "I don't even have to bite you."
"You do so. It's al that weird stuff about my blood."
"Oh, yeah,"he said, as if he'd forgotten. Elena would bet that he hadn't forgotten a word about her blood...al owing vampires to do things they couldn't otherwise. Her life energy gave them back al their human abilities, and he wouldn't forget that.
They're smarter, she thought.
"Stefan, it's not supposed to be like this! I'm supposed to parade in front of you in a golden negligee designed by Lady Ulma, with jewels by Lucen and golden stilts - which I don't own. And there are supposed to be scattered flower petals on the bed and roses in little round bubble bowls and white vanil a candles."
"Elena,"Stefan said, "come here."
She went into his arms, and let herself breathe in the fresh smel of him, warm and spicy, with a trace of rusty nails.
You're my life, Stefan told her silently. We're not going to do anything today. There's not much time, and you deserve your golden negligee and your roses and candles. If not from Lady Ulma, from the finest Earth designers that money can provide. But...kiss me?
Elena kissed him wil ingly, so glad that he was wil ing to wait.
The kiss was warm and comforting and she didn't mind the slight taste of rust. And it was wonderful to be with someone who would provide exactly what she needed, whether that was a slight mind probe, just to make her feel safer, or...
And then sheet lightning hit them. It seemed to come from both of them at once, and then Elena involuntarily clamped her teeth on Stefan's lip, drawing blood.
Stefan locked his arms around her, and barely waited for her to back off a little, before deliberately taking her lower lip in his own teeth and...after a moment of tension that seemed to last forever...biting down hard.
Elena almost cried out. She almost then and there unleashed the Still-undefined Wings of Destruction on him. But two things stopped her. One, Stefan had never, ever hurt her before. And, two, she was being drawn into something so ancient and mystical that she couldn't stop now.
A minute of finessing and Stefan had the two little wounds aligned. Blood surged from Elena's bleeding lip and, in direct connection with Stefan's less serious wound, caused a backflow. Her blood into his lip.
And the same thing happened with Stefan's blood; some of it, rich with Power, rushed into Elena.
It wasn't perfect. A bead of blood swell ed and stood gleaming on Elena's lip. But Elena couldn't have cared less.
A moment later the bead dropped down into Stefan's mouth and she felt the sheer staggering power of how much he loved her.
She herself was concentrating on one single tiny feeling, somewhere in the center of this storm they'd cal ed up. This kind of exchange of blood - she was sure as she could be -
this was the old way, the way that two vampires could share blood and love and their souls. She was being drawn into Stefan's mind. She felt his soul, pure and unconstrained, swirling around her with a thousand different emotions, tears from his past, joy from the present, al open without a trace of a shield from her.
She felt her own soul lift to meet his, herself unshielded and unafraid. Stefan had long ago seen any selfishness, vanity, over-ambition in her - and forgiven it. He'd seen al of her and loved al of her, even the bad parts.
And so she saw him, as darkness as tender as rest, as