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He was tempted now. The memory of Meredith’s blood, pulsing in the thin, soft skin of her lips; the warmth of it pulsing against his mouth—even now pulsing in the graceful olive column of her throat . . . Dear God, did she even know how she tempted him?
Her dark eyes said she did and that she was sorry . . . and frightened.
Almost against his will, Stefan put up a hand to touch her cheek again. It was wet, and that was his fault. He shut his eyes in pain, then spoke between set teeth.
“Meredith, I’ve been doing this for a long time. And as you said, I was able to control myself before. I think I can promise you safety, or we wouldn’t even be here having this discussion. I—I never took enough to truly endanger Elena under normal conditions, and—” He winced and stopped.
“And I’m not Elena, however tempting.”
“No—”
“I understand, Stefan. I wasn’t being catty. You’ve comforted me. And I think we’d better start now, while I’m comforted.”
“Meredith . . .”
“I remember what you wanted. To think of Elena, just in daytoday situations from the years you never saw her. And there’s something I want, if I’m allowed to ask.”
“Of course.”
“Let me hold you, Stefan. Let me think about—lovingkindness—and banish any thoughts about Grandfather from my head. I know, I can see what you’re going to say—”
“It would be so easy if you would let me nudge your mind first. I could lock out any thoughts like that.”
Meredith shook her head slowly but decisively. “No fiddling with my mind. You can read whatever I’m thinking about Elena—“
“Then you’ll have to call to me. It should be easy enough once I’ve taken a little of your blood. Our minds will be separate, but close, and if you call ‘Stefan!” I should hear you. Other than that, I swear, I won’t even sense your thoughts. I’ll put all my energy into it.”
“Thank you. Truly. I’ll trust to your . . . talents and to our love for Elena. This mind’s the only one I’ve got and I don’t want to mess with it.” Stefan groaned inwardly, made himself smile wanly for Meredith’s sake. And then he took her into his arms.
He held her tightly. Elena had liked this, sometimes, feeling the ghost of his true strength, knowing that it could be increased a hundredfold to crush her, and that it never would.
Meredith had said she would trust to his talents. Well, given the earlier conversation, that couldn’t have been plainer.
Elena, help me, Stefan prayed. This young woman was your closest living confidante.
Help me not to hurt her, help me to give her what she deserves: a few minutes of safety and happiness in the middle of a nightmare.
Then he trusted to instinct. With sudden boldness, he kissed Meredith, but so lightly and so briefly that it left her with her neck stretched, her lips parted to make a sound of disappointment. . .
Which never came. Since that first kiss his canines had been aching fiercely in his jaw, and he’d been ashamed and afraid that they were distorting his speech. Now he simply let a tiny part of his instinctive desire slip the leash, and he struck once, teeth biting deeply into the arch of Meredith’s tanned throat. Meredith gasped once in pain—and then gasped once more.
Meredith
Meredith had feared, after that kiss, that the next part would be altogether too much for her. But it was a different kind of experience entirely, and Meredith understood that she had been wrong in trying to force a romantic aspect onto the bloodfeast. For these few moments—few hours or days, as far as she could tell—she was not Stefan’s sweetheart, she was not even Stefan’s friend joined in lovingkindness.
S he was prey.
Stefan was the predator and she was his victim.
Of course, Stefan was a thinking predator, and as gentle a soul as had ever had to develop a hard shell in selfdefense, but he was a predator just the same.
He had successfully fought his genes so that he was not simply a graceful, expert killing machine every time hunger drove him to appease it. But just the same—the romance that had made him and Elena a sort of legendary modernday Romeo and Juliet had come from another part of their selves entirely, Meredith thought. Elena had fallen in love with the beast despite the fact that he was, and would forever remain, a beast: a hunter, sniffing the wind, evaluating the odds, looking for the weak members of the herd. He was a different sort of being altogether than a human, and Meredith knew then that she could never do what Elena had done. She could never entirely trust; could never entirely relax with; and she could certainly never fall in love with a being like Stefan Salvatore.
And now it was Meredith’s job to submit to this creature: to an intelligent being, a person, but not a human.
To try and distract herself, she wondered what name the scientists might give this variation on humanity, on homo sapiens sapiens. Homo sapiens vampiris? Oh, come on, Meredith, what was the Latin for vampire? Homo sapiens lamius? Maybe they wouldn’t bother with tradition and would go for a word that simply denoted what the new beings were: homo sapiens raptor—or homo sapiens superioris. They would undoubtedly take over the world if they could find a way to reproduce fast enough, and to cooperate with each other. For that matter, Meredith wondered that they hadn’t already taken over.
There was no question that the creatures were more intelligent than humans, quicker, stronger, higher on the food chain—oh, that was funny if you thought about it.
