It is, isn’t it? The splicing is perfect. I can’t believe that it’s not a scene.
She stepped away at once, not bearing to have him that close, close enough to whisper a hex into her ear, or…
She didn’t want him close.
She crossed the entire length of the foyer before she turned to face him.
He stood where she left him, leaning against the wall with his hands deep in his pocket and a frown on his face.
“I have to get them back,” she said desperately. She hated this. Hated coming to him for anything. But she didn’t have a choice.
Enzo and Damon didn’t have a choice.
“You already knew the answer before you came here,” he said, his frown still in place, his voice grim. This was Malachai Parker, the coven leader speaking now. Not the pscyhopathic Peter Pan of 1994, not even the desperate-for-another-chance reformed sociopath of five years ago.
“I thought you said you owed me,” she threw out.
Something flashed across his eyes and he started walking to her, a look like menace on his face. “Owe you?” he asked softly.
She didn’t back down, her back straight as he advanced on her, a thrill that she hated coursing down her spine.
“I think I paid that debt when you asked me for your last favour to spring your buddies out of the Phoenix Prison. Or the one before that, when you needed help routing the heretics out of Mystic Falls.”
“The heretics were as much your problem as ours-” she bit back.
“Or,” and now he was close enough that she had to tilt her head up painfully to look at him, “earlier than all that, when you locked me up in 1903 with said heretics. I think we settled our scores as far back as then.”
His eyes were really flashing, she thought with a thrill, anger and something like hurt deep in them.
“We didn’t,” she said hoarsely. “You and I… we’re never going to be even. You’re never going to make up what you did to me.”
He stepped back like if she had slapped him. Looked away, turned back, then nodded quietly to himself. “Good to know. Won’t have wanted to waste my time trying to redeem myself or anything.”
He turned around her, started walking out of the foyer. “You can show yourself out.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t forgive you,” she called out to his back. “We can’t let bygones be bygones.”
He stopped, but he didn’t turn. She heard him scoff softly. “When have I heard that before?”
“Kai…” The next word that should have followed was ‘please’ but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Not that she hated him. She didn’t hate him. She hadn’t for a long time.
She hadn’t been lying when she said he was never going to be able to make up to her for what he did. Nor that she couldn’t forgive him. The truth was… the truth was that she had, a long time ago. Now, the memory of 1994 was like the scar on her stomach - a reminder, but not a wound.
But the guilt of a powerful coven leader had proved to be valuable currency these past few years. Bonnie wasn’t quite ready to relinquish that boon.
“What?” he said, turning to look at her. She hadn’t realized she had been silent for so long.
She licked her lips, thinking of what she could say, the precise combination of words she needed to use to bring him to heel. That was when she saw his eyes follow her tongue, the way his eyes darkened, his face going taut with desperation.
It happened in a blink-and-you’d-miss-it moment.
She took a step forward when her brain screamed at her to take a step back, when her ‘sensible’ voice was whispering furiously at her at the inanity she was about to propose.
“I can pay you,” she said softly.
This time it wasn’t a flash of expression, but a long, blazing glare. She almost turned around then and walked - no, ran - out of his house.
But she thought of Enzo and Damon, felt her heart twist, and knew she couldn’t back down.
“You can’t afford me,” he said, just as softly.
“Can’t I?” she said boldly, taking another step forward. Then another.
He backed down, moving with his eyes widening as she came nearer, until his back hit the wall.
Her smile widened as she stepped into space, stepped even nearer, close enough for her hands to reach out and touch the front of his soft cotton shirt.
He drew in a deep shuddering breath, as she slid her hands down, pressing hard against muscles that rubbed against her palms, watching with fascination as his chest rose and fell with increasing intensity…
Until his own hands grasped her hands, inches from his belt, and her eyes flew up to his.
The glare had turned into an inferno. His face was twisted with longing and suspicion and she knew - she knew she had him.
She told herself that the reason why her heart was pounding, her own lungs shallowing, was because of nerves, fear, desperation.
She didn’t want this. This was for Enzo, and Damon.
“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” Kai asked, his voice tortured.
She flexed her hands, trying to pull out of his grasp but he held firm.
“What do you think?” she said quietly, silkily. Since he refused to let her hands go, she used her body instead - moving so close that her hips banged against his own.
He was ready, all right. His eyes rolled into the back of his head before he blinked back at her, a look of incredulity on his face.
“I’m giving you what you want,” she murmured, freeing her hands from his loose grasp to hook her fingers on the side of his belt. She tilted her face into his, and he remembered his hands - one going round the back of her neck to hold her in place, painfully, keeping her from coming nearer. But the other had gone to her back, his grip keeping her from leaving, as well.
“This is some kind of trick,” he said, his eyes scanning her face.
“This isn’t what you want?” she asked, her mouth curling.
He swallowed hard, once, twice. Then he growled softly, yanked her forward, his fingers creeping into her hair and twining through the strands, and kissed her.