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. . .was not Meredith.
And Meredith had not called for him.
Later, thinking about it, Stefan would count it as one of the few times in his life when he had showed good sense, when he had resisted although every nerve and muscle and sinew inside him was begging him to ignore the gadfly of a thought that told him that something was wrong. That he was failing Meredith.
Meredith was supremely disciplined and compassionate. Perhaps no one else could have remained in the inhuman clutches of a fairytale monster for so long and given so much, without panicking and attacking the monster. Elena had, of course. But Meredith was not madly in love with him, in love with the idea that she could give herself to him with every drop of her blood. And Elena—had thought of him as human. Cursed, but human.
She’d been wrong, of course. Damon’s desire to make her his consort, half of a mated pair of inhuman hunterassassins, had been much more logical. But when had Elena ever been logical?
And now he was torturing Elena’s best friend.
The thought came to him quite simply and, if not quite in words of one syllable, it was very simple to understand.
Meredith was too smart and too disciplined and too logical to struggle, and so he wasn’t causing her agony, but it certainly was nothing like the kiss. Meredith was experiencing, in all its raw ugliness, the truth behind the mindillusions that vampires usually used to seduce their victims.
He broke his promise about not reading her mind. He allowed himself to sense just a little of what she was experiencing.
She didn’t like it.
Panting, stunned, Stefan pulled his head up.
Oh, God. I’m so sorry. Meredith—oh, my friend, my dear, dear friend . . .
The tie of blood was strong enough to allow him to speak without words. But, of course, that was because he was a monster.
He stared down at her, and then, in one motion, he rolled away and was on his feet, frantically licking the evidence of what he’d been doing from his lips and teeth. His canines would not retract immediately, but he put all his energy into blunting those razorsharp tips and drawing some of their length back into his jaws.
He couldn’t remember feeling so ashamed, so caught, since Elena had innocently stumbled upon him feeding.
He was pacing without thinking, the way that a distraught panther paces its cage. He could feel the sting of tears inside his nose and behind his eyes, but what good would it do to cry? He paced, shuddering, until Meredith had finished buttoning up her blouse. And as he did, involuntarily, from the sweetdry aftertaste of Meredith’s blood dissolving into his body, he unwillingly saw more of her thoughts.
He really couldn’t help it. As the molecules from her donation fitted into place in his own oxygen receptors, random phrases bubbled up in his mind. Hom
o sapiens raptor. Top of the feeding chain. Why hadn’t they taken over the world already?
She could never entirely trust; could never entirely relax with; and she could certainly
never fall in love with a being like Stefan Salvatore.
He stopped his pacing; Meredith had finished with her blouse. He was conveniently near the door. He looked at her. His thoughts were tangled in such loops and knots that the only words he could force out were, “God,” and “So sorry.”
Meredith’s cool, incisive intelligence had stripped him bare. She had put him in his place, along with the fox, the cobra, the tiger, and the shark. He knew now that she would never look at him without seeing a deadly snake in the grass and feeling, along with Emily Dickinson, “zero at the bone.”
He fumbled with the lock as he heard Meredith’s footsteps on the wooden floor. He had lost Elena, and now he had lost his only links to Elena; because of course he couldn’t face Bonnie or Matt ever again. He opened the door for Meredith with a feeling that as he saw her back retreating from him he would see all three . . .
“Wait.” It was just one word, spoken hoarsely, but it froze Stefan like a troll caught by sunlight. It took him a moment before he could compose himself enough to look back into the room.
Meredith was standing up, but she was farther from the door than before. She was standing by the window, looking out as if she were seeking answers in Mrs. Flowers’ kitchen garden.
“Wait,” she said again, as if to herself. “Stefan, do you think—that he can get into our thoughts as well as our dreams?”
Stefan felt a bound of hope in his chest, followed by the inevitable fall. “I don’t know. He would have to be very powerful. And we would have to be very vulnerable—“
“—such as when I’m concentrating all my energies on relaxing and letting myself be controlled by something from the outside?”
Stefan studied Meredith for longer this time. He noticed that her eyes did not skitter away from his gaze. She wasn’t afraid to look at him.
“Is it all right if I come back in?” he asked, as if it wasn’t his own room and she nodded without hesitation. She wasn’t afraid to be alone with him.
