you know how much that love has been building up, Elena….”
Delicious shivers were going down Elena’s spine.
“Then you’d better show me,” she whispered. “Or I might not
believe that you mean it—”
“I’ll show you what I mean,” Stefan whispered back. But when he
bent down it was to kiss her softly. The feelings inside Elena—that this
starving creature wanted to kiss her instead of going at once for her
throat, reached a peak that she could not explain in thoughts or words,
but only by drawing Stefan’s head so that his mouth rested on her neck.
“Please,” she said. “Oh, Stefan, please.”
Then she felt the quick sacrificial pains, and then Stefan was
drinking her blood, and her mind, which had been fluttering around like
a bird in a lighted room, now saw its nest and its mate and swooped up
and up and up to at last reach unity with its best-beloved.
After that there was no need for clumsy things like words. They
communicated in thoughts as pure and clear as shimmering gems, and
Elena rejoiced because all of Stefan’s mind was open to her, and none of
it was walled off or dark and there were no boulders of secrets or
chained and weeping children…
What! she heard Stefan exclaim voicelessly. A child in chains? A