“We’re not doing this right,” he said, and her thoughts flashed at
once to her disobedience as a slave, and Bonnie and Meredith’s less
serious infractions. But his voice was like dark velvet, and her body
responded to it more accurately than her mind. It shivered.
“How…do we do it right?” she asked, and then she made the
mistake of opening her eyes. She found that he was stooping over her as
she sat on the chair, stroking—no, just touching—her hair so softly that
she hadn’t even felt it.
“Vampires know how to take care of wounds,” he said confidently,
and his great eyes that seemed to hold their own universe of stars caught
and held her. “We can clean them. We can start them bleeding again—or
stop them.”
I’ve felt like this before, Elena thought. He’s talked to me like this
before, too, even if he doesn’t remember. And I—I was too frightened.
But that was before…
Before the motel. The night when he’d told her to run, and she
hadn’t. The night that Shinichi had taken, just as he’d taken the first time
they’d shared Black Magic together.
“Show me,” whispered Elena. And she knew that something else in
her mind was whispering too, whispering different words. Words that
she would never have said if she had for a moment thought of herself as