Archive of Our Own

His eyes are on her.

She can track the movements as they trickle down her straight-backed form.

It doesn't feel like a touch (she'd know if that were the case, he'd unknowingly seared a mark in her flesh with the press of his hands against her skin, his sharp teeth and tongue), or like the brittle contact of wind swiping against her, all over her (possessively, efficiently as he left no space between them. He'd wanted her bare, and she was more than happy to comply with his delicious demands), no, this—it reaches everywhere, anywhere, her skin is exposed and covered, it dips inconspicuously beneath flimsy skin tissue and into blood vessels.

(In a darkened corner of her mind, she knows what this is, has heard stories though she never witnessed it herself, but she can't, she can't—it's highly unlikely anyway, little cases have been recorded over the years, more legends than fact, perpetuated by people who liked to think they had found their other halves.)

She breathes in the sweltering humid air, pheromones too high and voices too loud, too taunting. Too many werewolves squeezed in the overcrowded bar, nudging each other carelessly as they move, their gestures turning to violent jerks, fueled by too many shots of alcohol and too little self-control. It's always like that, before the full moon.

It isn't the first time that night that she thinks about cutting off her packmates before they can get another refill, but it'd be humiliating for them to publicly submit to their substitute alpha as the other pack goes on unchallenged, and an open conflict is the last thing Caroline wants to deal with tonight.

She gulps down the last mint limeade mojito from the tray she's brought back to her table; she decided that she would need it tonight but wasn't reckless enough to order something stronger, not with the imminent risk of a confrontation. Of course, that's when the tightrope she's been balanced on finally flips over.

She can feel the air shift, the instincts of a predator hidden under her pretty exterior — always present at the back of her mind, at the tip of her canines, bristling and snarling impatiently under her too human bones, eager to be unleashed by the sliver-dripping lights of moon. She fights her natural inclination to do something rash, blames the atmosphere for her lack of composure and sits straighter.

She waits.

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Caroline gives Klaus one of those fake sunny, Miss Mystic Falls fake smiles as he sits down at the opposite of her blessedly empty booth. He sets his tumbler of scotch on the tarnished thorny wooden table before he can even make eye contact with her, preparing to deflect the discussion she knew they'd have at some point.

"So, how are you?" she asks, like he's just another of her exes whom she still sometimes see and is friendly with, like she doesn't resents him with the kind of cold bitterness aching beneath ribs that lasts longer than snaring, violent anger.

"I'm fine. More than that actually, now that I'm in the company of a ravishing woman."

Her unimpressed scoff scrapes past her lips and her sigh of relief stays locked firmly in the nook of her teeth. This approach she knows how to handle, this approach doesn't touch old wounds, and if anyone eavesdrops all they will hear is Klaus Mikaelson trying to chat up a pretty girl in a bar, all charm and pick up lines.

"That's unfortunate," she says, saccharine-sweet. "I can't say the same."

It's an open invitation for the witty retort she knows he's spontaneously thinking up but instead something lights up in his eyes, dusts them with warmth, fondness turning his eyes from the lethal gray he directs to everyone into a softer color. And suddenly he doesn't look like he's enjoying himself anymore, doesn't possess the arrogant relaxed posture of a man who's satisfied in his long-awaited victory. He's not viciously triumphant over his enemies' death, over acquiring the pack his father thought he could keep away from him, over forging from bones alliances that same father who told him time and time again he was a waste of space never quite managed to shape, he looks—he looks genuinely happy and she can't look away from his eyes, noticing the green scattered like freckles across blue and a cluster of white dots reflected in his orbs by the overpowered ceiling lighting.

This won't do.

It's been too long and yet it's too soon. Their relationship left behind an open wound that should have healed but only worsened. She learned to live with it, with its effects and complications, so efficiently that she only realized she was still hurting when he blasted back into her life.

She wonders if he is, too. She wonders if years of absence and silence are hammering in his chest as they speak alone for the first time since she's come to New Orleans. If that's the case he's hiding it well. But then again, so is she.

(Aren't they a pair?)

Something wells up in her. Not quite anger, but the tired resolve makes her snap out of the tricky knot of memories that his presence tangles her in.

Her lips are parting, a meaner repartee in the making when she indistinctly hears Jesse hollering for the bartender to bring him a whiskey, words slurred and half-drained glass raised high. She sees through the swaying opaque mist of tobacco smoke that the tequila sloshes over the rim of his glass, splashes another wolf that Caroline's pretty sure is called Brady, and that's the spark they'd all seemingly been waiting for to ignite.

The wolf pulls Jesse's shirt into a fist, and Jesse stumbles back as he pushes the wolf's chest. Chairs and stools are knocked over, soon people are regrouping of either side of them, screeching insults at each other with equal venom and spite.

She's about to step in, temper searing from the sheer stupidity of the confrontation but Klaus beats her to it. One look pointed at Brady is enough to make the wolf backpedal, head bowed slightly at his alpha. He murmurs a quick ‘sorry' before ducking into a corner of the bar, nursing the almost-empty glass he doesn't seem eager to refill anymore and wiping at the spill with a paper napkin.

The little crowd disperses quickly, going back to drinking themselves silly before she can scold one of her hotheaded packmates for acting before consulting her. The aggravated look she throws their way makes Klaus' lips peels back from his canines.

"Discipline is sometimes the only way to be to get betas to listen."

"No, it isn't," Caroline huffs, but refrains from commenting further. Otherwise, she'd have to criticize her own father's methods and her loyalty is iron binding her lips tightly.

Werewolves aren't tame or controlled by any stretch of imagination and it falls to the alpha to moderate their turbulent excess of incautious rage, yet she wishes sometimes her father's way was less painful and more empathetic. What she certainly doesn't wish to know as of now is what kind of ordeal Klaus put each member of his pack through for them to act like obedient dogs at his unspoken orders.

As someone who's been crushed under his father's cruel treatment for most of his life, Caroline would have thought that Klaus would be more compassionate, maybe, once he formed his own pack. He won over his father's pack and the other wolves who've sworn allegiance to him over the years, after all.

Quite a large following, she considers shrewdly, watching them plod around and noticing, not for the first time, that they outnumber her own pack. Her pack could maybe win if they managed to kill each of Klaus' wolves when they were isolated from the rest of the pack, though, and they'd have the element of surprise to their advantage. If they managed to eliminate enough of them before the rest of the group inevitably suspected something was up, they'd have an equitable chance of success.

That's not a path Caroline plans on following anytime soon, but it's hard not to consider all possibilities when her pack is struck deep into enemy territory—per Klaus' instructions, who demanded the meeting to take place in his city, his territory. She surmises Klaus' pack is suspicious despite clearly having the upper hand, and she knows for a fact that hers refuse to trust the uneasy alliance. Some even claimed in vehement, quiet whispers that it's a trap Klaus has set to use Bill Forbes' pack as fodder and reduce the competition for more territory.

"It's been a long time," Klaus says, his voice carefully neutral but his attention anchored on her as she whips her head around from where she'd been gazing without seeing, lost in her thoughts.

"Yes," she confirms, almost resentfully because now she can't make the quick exit she was readying, not without looking like she's bolting, like it's all because of the faint reminder of their past relationship.

"I'm sure you counted the days," he teases, eyes glinting with mischievous amusement as hers narrow threateningly.

"You wish," she gibes, but her voice edges on amusement rather than the tension of before.

"I do."

She leans back against her side of the booth, lips turning up into a smirk, and insults him in that polite, Southern way she perfected in high school. The corners of his eyes crinkle as he trades barbs with her, makes comments that gradually bring them closer to flirting than innuendos, and she instinctively matches him word for word, coy and disdainful.

It's familiar, the way they fall back into comfortable banter. Easy and distracting.

She can pretends they're nothing more than a thin thread shared by two virtual strangers who happen to know each other, that there's an attraction and nothing else, that seeing him again these past few days didn't pop open the stitches of wounds that shouldn't be so raw after too long and when so little happened.

His hand squeezing her own diverts her and she muses over how contradictory it is for her to manage to evade the ghost of their relationship precisely now and because of the unbidden intimacy between them.

His palm is clammy against her hand, the dingy bar overheated and the fans haphazardly laid around not helping one bit. She wonders how his slick, roughened skin would feel inching up her waist, reaching to cup her breast—

The gray-haired bartender shouts that the bar is about to close. Caroline jumps to her feet, picks up her bag and throws a few crumpled bills on the table, not bothering to make change as she shoves the wallet back into the tiny bag.

She doesn't look at Klaus until she has one foot out of the door, one hand on the greasy doorknob and her packmates at her back, unsteady on their legs and so unfocused they don't ask for an explanation when she stops while they stagger and wobble.

Caroline inwardly curses and reproaches her curiosity for that sudden stop, for caving and looking back. So she steps out of the bar, the night air thankfully cool and crisp when she breathes deeply for the first time that night. Her nostrils pick up nothing but the scent of nature and motor oil from the garage down the street.

But his wishful, almost dejected, expression as she left is splattered behind her eyelids when she falls asleep that night.

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He died the first time a few years after he left—the logical conclusion for his prolonged absence and lack of contact, despite his siblings' efforts—and then he came back and died again for Caroline.

The realization she silently mourned something she'd hadn't been able to define, an indistinct possibility she never allowed herself to fully consider, still felt like a persistent ache from an invisible injury, a stab of anger in her stomach, quelled only when she turned, her mind empty of thoughts with only hunger for blood, for the chase and the adrenaline that lead to the preys.

He came back as an ally for her father, as a nightmare for Elena, as an unfinished story with burned pages for Caroline.

Klaus came back and she hadn't known before learning what he did, what he and her father did. It was a surprise attack in the dead of the night, a slaughter that half her pack had partaken in; three packs were dismantled, killed or chased away, and those remaining forced to submit to the butchers.

"Did you know?" Elena had pled, shaking in Bonnie's arms. Pestilential air blew Caroline's way as she raised her head, the odor of dried blood encrusted on Elena skin and the stench of decomposed bodies stuck to her clothes. "Did you know they planned to do that?" she asked again, looking like the prospect of losing someone else might break her.

"No," Caroline had replied honestly and said she was sorry, that she would talk to her father and learn exactly what had happened.

But it was quite simple. For too long, Bill Forbes was underestimated and ridiculed by his peers. Bigger packs who viewed him as insignificant, alphas who thought they could reduce his territory and borrow his pack members for their meaningless whims and, worse, enemies assumed that he would suffer the blatant disrespect obediently.

They didn't know whom they were up against.

"It was a pre-emptive strike," her father replied when she asked. An explanation, not an apology. "If I hadn't—"

"You don't know that," Caroline protested, tears in her eyes and ice humming under her skin.

"No. And now I won't ever have to."

Listening to his punishingly even voice and seeing the complete lack of remorse on his face, the savage glint of victory in his eyes, Caroline knew he wouldn't be reasoned with. She tried to take it in stride, to be more pragmatic like her mother taught her to be and asked, "Who helped you? Elena said you made an alliance with another alpha. Where does he come from, anyway? He must have had a pretty large pack to manage—"

Chest tightening, she couldn't finish her sentence—hadn't had the nerve, she saw her father think of her hesitation, his lips turning down disapprovingly—and ask outright how he managed to kill the werewolves she'd known like family, who left orphans like Elena and Jeremy when they died.

"Do you remember that Mikaelson boy? He left some years ago. No? It's true you haven't been around him all that often. Well…"

And Klaus died all over again.

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Caroline shuttered herself from her father after that, going so far as to move away to another state and join another pack, pretending all the while that she didn't know whether or not she'd come back. She shredded days in a blur of roads and mountains as she hit the road and fought every hesitation she felt at leaving her claustrophobic little town and the murderers wearing her packmates' faces.

She almost asked about Tyler before leaving, the torn-down feelings she had for him prompting her to, but she held her tongue. Asking would mean involving herself in his fate, whatever it'd be, and Caroline couldn't lift the weight of it with Elena's already pressing on her shoulders.

Luckily, she had an aunt who lived in California and said she'd be glad to see her favorite niece again when Caroline called. Her youngest son had just left for college, leaving his bedroom clear for her.

She stayed there for a while, wasting away in a homey floral-scented house she'd have been at ease in when she was younger and hadn't yet learned to question everyone's motives. Full moons passed by shifting with a pack she didn't know or care about enough to be comforted by when everything was too painful and too terrifying before life reversed to a gulf of darkness and an animal took over her body. For a short while, it was like living. A simple happy life she might have entertained the thought of having once, before she knew better.

In the end, the short interlude she indulged in came to an end faster than she guessed it would.

(Matt had left her a frantic voicemail with fragments of information rippling too fast from the speaker, tripping over his words as he told her that her father had been fatally injured during a fight. Mikael was dead and Klaus had taken charge of his pack, that hers was vulnerable without a leader. As Bill's second-in-command she had to give them instructions, and her mother refused to come even when Matt begged. Security had to be enhanced because he feared retributions from those still loyal to Mikael, that—the list went on and on.)

In the end, Caroline returned home, driving all day and night and breaking the speed limit to get there. It propelled her back into a life where Klaus wasn't a simple echo of the past.

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Klaus kept a respectful distance when she arrived, entering his living room with her pack in tow to discuss the terms and conditions of his treaty with her father. She spoke plainly, knowing he'd ask and pretend not to know why her father would be unable to attend their monthly meeting.

He nodded and politely told her to take a seat, extending the invitation to her packmates as he made small talk.

Caroline hadn't realized, as a young child resentful over her father's absence, what the duties of an alpha entailed, had only gotten a glimpse of it as she grew into more responsibilities but as she looks down at the maps and plans haphazardly spread over Klaus' large desk, she can't help but feel a little overwhelmed.

They have to discuss relocation for the packs that have been recently formed, combined from the survivors Klaus and her father nearly wiped out altogether. The wolves don't know each other and don't trust each other, but that's not Caroline's main concern.

They must ensure that the areas selected are hunter-free before deciding how many pack members they're willing to send in case they were wrong. Deals need to be made with the witches and cordially maintained. Then comes the matter of allotments; food and clothes are easy enough to distribute depending on the size of the pack but money is trickier. Too much cash raises the risk of omega mercenaries invading their territories on orders of a grudge-bearing pack—too little, and the pack would be in danger of revolt for lack of resources to provide for their families.

There are simply too many variables, too many problems that could be fatal if they don't tread carefully.

Caroline grinds her teeth for control, a crescendo of frustration building until she feels her jawbone ache. The more she learns about the ramifications of this alliance, the more it feels singularly disadvantageous.

Heaving a deep sigh, she takes in the scent she can almost taste on her tongue—woodsy lemon, mint, dust, and the fragments of blood that can never completely be scrubbed off—and rubs her throbbing temples as she tosses aside the map she's been looking at for way too long. Her fingertips drum against the little surface not covered in any documents, nails trailing, unintentionally scratching out the polished cherrywood. Finally, she can't help herself anymore.

"It was a mistake," she says. "That whole—" She stops, tasting something foul in her mouth. Butchery. Slaughter. Massacre. "It was a mistake," she finishes, decisive. "It creates problems and solves none. We can't supervise all the changes, and we can't keep in check every wolf who wants us dead. This," she holds up her map and taps at the areas already marker-circled in bright green, "should have been avoided."

"I was wondering when you would finally say something," Klaus drawls, flinging away his own map to study her instead.

She sniffs before she looks back unflinchingly, not wanting to lose whatever game they're playing right now, refuses to be a pawn and not an opponent. She expects sharp wit, or biting sarcasm, maybe even an allusion to something potentially hurtful; she doesn't expect honesty, and she's reminded how much of a mistake it is to underestimate your enemy.

"It is your father who decided to attack, Caroline. I had already foreseen this." His arm gestures in a broad half-circle, casting a quick bristling shadow over the expanse of his desk. She hadn't spotted him turning on the lamplight, hadn't noticed the orange-ish light dispersed in the study until now. So absorbed in the task at hand that the evening has crept up on her unnoticed, pitiless afternoon sun petering out to a dark sky splotched by thin stars.

"I wanted to avoid unneeded complications," he goes on, "I had no interest in making enemies unless necessary, but it was a very small price to pay for Bill's support. He isn't very respected in our community, your father. Our peers tend to overlook the big picture. No patience for subtlety. And your pack is mainly made up of elderly or children. They can't fight or defend their alpha, can't provide anything substantial yet, in exchange for what Bill offers them in addition to his protection. The children will grow up, however, and will be an efficient line of defense. They will remember your father refused to expel them from the pack even when encouraged. They will fight for him and die for him. Loyalty is really the most precious currency we have, isn't it? And your father," Klaus leans forward, eyes sharpening and shoulders coiling like a predator about to pounce—instinctively, her posture mirrors his, and he smiles wickedly when he notices, "has plenty of it. Despite his most recent actions, he can also be trusted not to betray me. He respects determination and endurance over brute force and connections to ancient, dead packs."

"You're thinking ahead," she realizes, on edge as the enormity of what he said finally settles like a noticeably solid presence that pommels down on any illusions—hopes—that he might leave. This isn't a stop to him, another pack to subdue, another region to conquer. He is back for good, and she doesn't know how to feel about it; all she's sure of is that there will be no avoiding him now that their packs have been thrust into closer proximity. And for a long time.

Caroline sighs, rubbing her burning eyes that have been fixed too long on tiny dots and scrawly handwritten notes. Rolling her shoulders, she resolves to focus on the matter at hand.

They both resume their work as the wind whistles outside, the feeble breeze welcome in the sunbaked room that imbued heat in its walls. Their fingers are fast-flying stabing at keyboards and coordinating appointments for the following week, the sounds turning to white noise until they finally reach the last file to be addressed.

Caroline glares critically at the final adjustments they made. The apportionment is decent, but it's not perfect and it bugs her to know she could do better if only she figured out how. Her fixation on details is unswerving, the need to dive deeper into numbers and reports until she'd found what she's looking for growing stronger as minutes tick by like a constant reminder of time slipping through her fingers without a solution to the problem she is observing.

She barely registers the rustle of movements, the chair softly scrapping against the carpeted floor. Blinking up in his direction, she arches a questioning eyebrow as he pulls on his jacket, doesn't have the time to ask where he's heading before he says he's hungry. He proposes they eat at the little restaurant nearby he knows she's frequently visited during the two weeks she'd been in New Orleans.

Her refusal is trapped in her throat as she feels her stomach grumble at the thought, insides knotted into a hard knot, a tangible reminder that she hasn't eaten all day, holed up in Klaus's office. She could really use some fresh air. Looking at her watch, she knows that they're likely to be alone with the restaurant closing in two hours. She nearly says no, if only to keep from getting too close to Klaus. But the idea of ordering in and eating alone until he comes back is acrid, at best, and her packmates aren't around to make things less awkward. She bites crimson into her lips, moistens them, debating, then nods in agreement.

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Their dinner is discarded and forgotten on the stainless-steel achromatic table, steak and red beans long cold on their plate. The strawberry shortcake they ordered for dessert remained untouched, whipped cream dribbling around it.

Their conversation had trudged along at first, with him making small talk and her replying to his inexhaustible monologue only when she had to, darting away from revealing anything about herself, lest she feel even more exposed in the dimly-lit restaurant.

It must have looked comically sad, like two incompatible strangers set up on a blind date by a mutual friend or like two lovers who had a spat one of them obviously wasn't over yet. After a while, her attitude began to seem childish even to her, though, considering she had accepted his offer. With one last caustic non-answer, she instigated a new subject instead, surprised when she happened to really be interested in his travels, the different packs and cultures and rituals he encountered.

One moment, her curiosity was only stirred, and then it swelled in her ferociously and she was asking questions he was more than happy to answer.

He admits to recruiting immediately upon returning to London and she ignores the punch of bitterness that particular event brings. An unforgiving reverberation of worry and anger and sadness falls into the pit of her stomach like stones, made worse when he looks at her with guardedly assessing eyes as she tries not to betray her emotions.

Still, she urges him to go on and he starts by telling her that's where he was born before his family moved to America, how it was familiarity that made him go back there, how he got beaten to a pulp when he provoked wolves stronger than him and tried to claim a few pack members whose loyalty he had underestimated and how he ultimately ended up kicked out of the city, limping his way to another place. He adds, voice dropping, that he came back later though, before coming back to Virginia, to pay those wolves a visit and Caroline refuses to ask anything else about that, Elena's sobs still ringing in her ears like the hollow echoes of a mausoleum.

Through his experiences, she learns that the power dynamics in a pack rarely vary but can diverge based on the surrounding culture. She didn't expect that, rather felt like a werewolf's place in the hierarchy was dictated by instinct and strength more than by any exterior factors.

Her astonishment only expands when Klaus shares stories of humans well aware of werewolves among them. Sometimes it was only the police department, which can prove be a surprisingly useful ally for protecting packs from hunters, even driving away enemy covens of witches who'd heard at an early age of the Salem witch trials and the fire that scalded their ancestors to rotting corpses when their secret was revealed. The more rural the town was, the more likely it was that the truth was known to many; an open secret, more or less, one that could reach even small governments.

He says he stayed the longest in Beijing where he stumbled upon nothing less than an ongoing war between different factions of supernaturals and Caroline learns, thunderstruck, that the vast population of werewolves there had to make an unprecedented alliance with hunters when some ancient rolls were discovered by warlocks that threatened to disturb the balance of nature all species cared so much about when it endangered them.

He admits that he considered the local folklore as nothing but a children's tales until he meets a group of demons who might have killed him if his flesh had been appealing to them, but Klaus supposed they were feeding exclusively from humans and the noticeable variation in his organism had saved him. But from that moment he always made sure to wear an amulet a ‘witch friend' of his had gotten for him and never parted from it.

He tells her that traveling to uninhabitable deserts with no expectations of finding anything but sand and dirt, he encountered the largest packs he'd ever seen. He describes them as nearly inhuman from isolation, wild and feral, says he tried to approach them alone to not appear threatening but that they understood neither language nor the subtlety of human interactions, and they perceived his approach as a direct attack. Had he not been carrying weapons in anticipation of a hostile welcome, Klaus very well might have died.

They must have been living as recluses for generations, those groups of interweaving races and sexes and ages living only by their rules and no other restrictions, and that was maybe why their feuds were interminable and unbending, why it could only prelude a fight that him and a few other wolves—males and females who'd traveled with him with a thirst for blood and recognition like a blade behind their teeth and the ambition of capitalizing on unclaimed territories and lone, accommodating betas that would join their ranks—had the chance to witness.

There's something comparable to admiration in Klaus' eyes as he describes the death of an entire population of werewolves that ended in a few nights of strife, how they lived more truthful to their nature than many of those self-proclaimed pioneers in their communities who have seen nothing of life and delude themselves into thinking they are contributing to the survival of their species. But Caroline stops listening. She imagines it, a maze of lives dissolving with a predictable progression with the swiftness of a setting sun, leaving nothing but memories to those who assisted to it and apathetic ignorance to those who didn't. She think that out of all deaths she has witnessed and heard of this could very well be the worst she can imagine.

It was in Vienna that werewolves started joining the ranks of his pack, after he won more fights than he lost and his steadily growing reputation was spread. Caroline doesn't interrupt him as his voice takes her elsewhere, words leaving vivid images like watercolor paints splashed on white canvas: lush landscapes and a multitude of bright towering cities and secretive small towns, the sparkles of magic made out of nothing but space and the gravel littered yards of devastated castles under roaming shoes, worlds hidden behind meager mirages, prospering and breaking apart unbeknownst to most.

And then he stops.

Her turn.

Nerves flutter in her belly and she considers leaving altogether, if only on principle. She efficiently dodged all his prying questions every time he verged too closely on the personal life she kept locked from him ever since she accepted the fact that they'd have to see each other on a daily basis. Caroline prods at her dinner with her fork, concealing her hesitation with a few mouthfuls of her dinner and organizing her thoughts.

She skips everything about Tyler, even though she knows he must be curious with no wedding ring nor runes marking her wrists. More damning was the distinct lack of a mate's scent lingering on her skin. He must have been questioning why ever since coming back, if only out of simple curiosity, but he doesn't ask and she won't offer that kind of information.

He'd told her a lot about himself, but also not much, choosing to bypass any shreds of emotional revelations. He didn't divulge how he felt the first times he'd lost everything and had to start again from scratch, what those people he met were to him, if parting from someone ever twisted at his heart, if he ever had his heart broken by someone who meant the world for him, if he questioned his goals on nights sleep couldn't come and incertitude wouldn't leave him alone, if he felt on the edge of a rocky mountain and about to give up on the future he planned to turn around in another direction, his path forking and closing on itself. It's unlikely; his will is iron and he does his best to keep people at a safe distance from becoming too important, usually.

She won't give more than he did.

So Caroline blathers on about inconsequential events with drawn-out precision, almost hoping his smooth voice will stop her after a while of circling conversation. His smile carves his dimples out, muted mirth melting into his eyes, and she glared even as a grin tugs at her own lips. He isn't mocking her—she doesn't have doubts about that, wouldn't stand for it if he was—if anything, he seems to treasure everything she says and does. She stops at that. It's a dangerous idea to think about, exactly what made her consider for a moment, barely a blink, a future with him all those years ago.

She busies herself with what felt almost like a report on her life in her eagerness to make the minutes soar faster, filling them with dozens of words.

She's speaking about going to med school, the harrowing reminder of the argument she had with her father about that leaving a rancid taste on her gums. She goes on, explaining that she has struggled to find a balance between her studies and her duties as a second-in-command, omits the fact that it wouldn't have been so difficult had her father not picked that specific moment to pile up time-sensitive obligations that suddenly required her presence, and she tells Klaus about how hard it was there, how stressful and attention-demanding her classes were.

It was challenging, but also gratifying. The unfolding stress of juggling responsibilities, the added strain of hiding her secret like a dirty, shameful thing stored in an old dusty jagged box under a bed. She suffered full moons alone without the consoling, howling presence of her pack, always sparing a thought for Elena going through the same pain. Her crippling fear of failure like a rope around her neck; the Saturdays nights she'd sacrificed, ordering take-outs she absently chewed through, poring over large and heavy books while confined in her tiny bedroom... Four interminable years later, and her degree had been more than worth it.

Being a nurse was a time-consuming job that'd been harder than she initially thought. But that, Caroline refuses to admit to him. Doesn't inform him about the harsh toll her job and the pack had taken on her, the severity of her exhaustion that crawled along her bones, in every muscle of her body after long days and longer nights. Collapsing against her bed sometimes fully clothed and waking up as tired as when she fell asleep, barely takeing the time for a shower before grabbing something to eat.

In the end, she hadn't been able to keep the two halves of her life up, despite her alacrity to make the expectations she'd always had coexist with the unrelenting responsibilities she hadn't expected. She had to choose; she will always choose the pack, much to her mother's dismay whose faith in such comradeship had been strangled with the few uttered words of her packmates who decided to stay with Bill when Liz announced her intention to leave, so long ago that Caroline's memory has a hard time taking her to that moment she remembers only through a fog of snapping images and voices, and that the better part of her pack had decided to not follow, proving where their loyalties were lying.

But this isn't the story she wants to tell.

She tells him the truth, but she lays a thick blanket of conciseness on things she wasted hours pondering over and she says with bland, practiced efficiency she'd decided to devote herself to her pack. An admission that can't be one to him considering that she's spent weeks in New Orleans already, something she couldn't have done with a full-time job and the most lenient boss in the world, and that he must have gleaned little stories about her during that time spent with Bill, preying on the careless way her father carries them, but he listens attentively anyway.

She adds that she retrained as a baker. "I opened a bakery, actually," she says, sipping her wine, and observes as none of the usual the condescension that follow that sentence lit up his face. It's usually a flash of understanding and then a tight-lipped smile. Oh really? I wouldn't have guessed. But if that's what makes you happy, one of her old friends said, stressing on the last word in an unsaid jeer. Even though her past classmates would be wrong to suppose their disdain got to her, the tedious attitude is always something that makes her grit her teeth and roll her eyes.

"Are you happy?" He asks. But there's no scorn in the question, instead, his face softens and a smile breaks on his face.

"Yes," she says, even means it. It'd taken time for her to come to terms with everything her life couldn't be but her future shouldn't be something already defined, even by herself; it should be something she could reinvent and change and twist, unlike the past. "Are you?"

"Almost."

She hadn't noticed moving so close to him until his knee nudges her thigh in a flicker of a brush. It makes her still and tense, then finally relax in quick succession.

Caroline jerks her leg back so fast it knocks against the table and she pretends everything is normal, pretends he does, too. It's a learned gesture, an afterthought, something she does with the blurry likeness of remembering a mundane act. It's getting harder as days funnel hastily, as she eases back into his presence. Slowly. Like having her body pulled underwater and her nerves acclimating to the jarring temperature difference.

"I need to go."

.

.

.

Their story had been interesting, at least. It'd have been comforting, once, to another version of her, the shallow Caroline who found nothing more detestable than boring, nothing cheaper than being typical. We hate most what we see every day, don't we, and Caroline always spent hours looking in mirrors.

It started like this.

Flirting and bantering and squabbling and kissing, not necessarily in that order, the rush of adrenaline like liquid fire as she left the Grill and sensed him follow. The biting cold at fingertips and frosty eyes lashes, a pair of arms around her—bold, sure; like him—and cobblestones digging into her back. Lips crushing hers, eagerly parting to let her tongues slid past his lips. Her fingers enwalled in his hair as she tugged roughly at golden curls. Making out in her car with hands blindly grabbing, urgently pulling at clothes.

My place or yours? He'd asked later, licking her pleasure off his fingers and staring down at the red flush of her skin where his stubble rubbed against the softness of her tights. He found she was sensitive when he brushed one finger against her wet thigh and she writhed, still sprawled across the backseat, with a sharp moan.

Yours.

It started because they'd both been nursing a too fresh rejection, a cutting dismissal from their fathers who didn't care to include them on pack business or to impart any information.

Bill had been raging about his territory and Mikael refused to the hear the complaint, stating that he would not risk his pack because Bill couldn't fight for his, despite their alliance. Bill almost called for a duel, a last resort, the fleeting breath of a dying man who had nothing to lose and the eldest Mikaelson stepped in to calm the alphas' boiling blood with calming, measured words, until they agreed to sit down and talk through their options.

The first things they agreed to was that Klaus and Caroline were too callow to take part in the meeting.

The combination of liquor and dejection was like throwing a lit match at a gaping petrol can and waiting to see what would happen. And one acceptation to have a drink turned into a few more, turned into her leaning too close to him and being too reckless and eventually say I could show you a good time to his bold flirtations with a palm to his thigh and two fingers trapping the lapel of his jacket, so close pale strawberry-pink lipstick was smeared against the line of jaw when her lips grazed it.

She left the bar smiling, and he was helpless but to follow.

"Are you sure you have to go, love?" he asked her the morning after as she picked up her clothes from the floor, wild curls bouncing up in a possibly messier bird nest when she raised her head to take note of his grin, the way he stretched lazily on the bed with his arms folded behind his head, causing the sheet pooled at his waist to drop down lower.

"Yeah, I do," Caroline replied decisively, buttoning up her jeans and rolling her eyes at his look of quiet entertainment while she hurried to leave.

She felt a light kiss over her bare shoulder, almost causing her jump forward at the tenderness of it a stark contrast to the rough, urgent kisses they exchanged last night and making him chuckle softly, an entirely separate kind of intimacy even in the room that still smelled like sex and the obscenities he'd rasped against her ear.

"Maybe I can convince you?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I've dated my fair share of jerks. Not interested."

The lukewarm laugh that tickled her nape seemed genuine for the first time and he propped his chin on her shoulder, the plane of his chest flat against her spine. The move lined their bodies up in a way that reminded her how it felt to have him sliding into her from behind, tempting her to just turn and push him back onto the bed straddle him.

A flustered sigh escaped her lips, the sound both content and ravenous, but she smacked his hands off and he took a step back, giving her the space she demanded.

"We don't have to date."

"I'm not interested in a friend with benefits, either."

"We wouldn't have to be friends, then," Klaus said, "just reap the benefits."

The silence broke when she broke out into a burst of giggles, not bothering to explain how faulty his reasoning was as she shook her head incredulously and pulled her sweater down.

"I'm sure I could convince you."

She was surprised to hear herself answer a coy, "Maybe."

It started like a one-time thing, simple and uncomplicated. Two stones thrown together onto a riverbed. Until one time turned to two, turned to three, turned to multiple occurrences, and stopped being a simple mistake as it was repeated.

.

.

.

The beginning is a spark that feels more like a splitting lightning.

She hasn't felt it ever since she was fifteen, curled up in her bed with knees drawn back to her chin and her head buried in foam pillows, and a red-faced Steven had given her a bottle of suppressants, stuttering awkwardly about heat and how every werewolf experienced it, half-apologizing for not having given her The Talk sooner and half-blaming Bill for not letting him know that he should have. He added, firmly this time, when Caroline cringed and a brand new fierce blush spread on her face, that she had no reason to be embarrassed and that it was perfectly natural for a werewolf her age, that it would last until she couldn't have children anymore and she just had to take the suppressants for it to stop.

Caroline hadn't hesitated before reaching for the white, spotless bottle her step-father was holding out and taking two pills before sagging back against her comforter.

When she does feel it again and realizes with rising alarm that the bottle she's gotten at Bonnie's occult shop quite a long time ago is now empty, she decides more than thinks that it won't matter, that she will stay in control anyway.

She likes sex. She isn't shy about her needs, and past the point where she abstained from one night stands, would definitely have no problem picking up an attractive man who could scratch an itch. This isn't why she's refraining right now when she wouldn't have a few days ago if the desire had come naturally instead of wrecking through her body like the biological abnormality it is.

Her legs are already parted, her hand so close to where she needs it to be granted that temporary release that won't take the edge off the heat but will at least help, her other hand drifting to the breast she needs to squeeze, fingers twitching to stroke the erect nipple, back curving off the mattress as her skin tingles and aches and burns in a way that is both painful and maddeningly satisfying, her inner muscles clenching.

But she doesn't want it like this.

Caroline takes a cold shower, the water streaming over her from the top of her hair down to her toes doing nothing to assuage the scalding heat she feels all over her like tiny needles she can't take off, swearing under her breath when it's clear she is just wasting time and willfully straying from what is sure to be the hard part of her days.

She turns the water off, dries her hair with a mustard-colored cotton towel and slips in her bathrobe, wincing at the onslaught of heat that spreads spreads spreads. It's exactly like turning; there's no escaping it, no bribing and no easy solution, and maybe if she was at least a little less obstinate she'd surrender to it, but she won't, not when she has already set her mind to resist.

"Care," Matt's voice calls out and Caroline has to press a hand to her mouth to muffle her moan, caught completely by surprise.

"Y—Yeah," she eventually says, almost sputtering.

He thankfully doesn't need more prompting from her and isn't paying enough attention to catch the scent of her arousal when she sniffles his scent and can't help but rub her thighs together, cursing her emptied bottle one more time and herself for uncharacteristically forgetting to get another.

"Why are you not at the meeting? Everyone's waiting for you," his agitated voice filters into the room.

She winces at having forgotten, all of her color-coded schedules and automatic reminders apparently failed her. Thinking fast, she yells, "I can't. I think I'm coming down with something."

It's a good thing he attention is entirely centered on getting to leave her bedroom in a way that won't necessitate him breaking her door and getting his ass kicked to question her sudden illness and more accurately the fact that werewolves are rarely sick.

"You can't miss this," he insists. "That psychopath has killed for less, Care."

"I'm sure the stories are exaggerated," Caroline says, placating. Another lie, but she is sure Klaus won't lay a hand on her, regardless of his alliance with her father.

That little mention of Klaus snags a string of memory that brings too many others, but for once they are pristine in her head, no sadness or disappointment marring the visceral reminders of his hard body rubbing mercilessly against hers, covering her whole in all oppositions he took her, driving himself into her with grunts, never stopping his teasing touches, never staying quiet for very long.

She let him bend to his leisure when she was in the mood for a little submission, yielding equally gratifying as the battle for dominance. He'd position her legs around his waist and then flip her on her belly and twist her until she was poised to be taken exactly the way he wanted, ankles locked together and legs arched at the knees, his trusts only letting her teeter over the edge of release until she begged, waiting to see how long she'd last with taut muscles coiled like springs half the fun, the line between agony and pleasure little fragments when he was in control, leaving her skin wet with sweat and arousal, collarbones nipped raw.

"Care, are you alright?"

Matt's voice pulls her attention back to him. "Yeah, sure. Perfectly fine," she replies with a calming voice that allows an edge of hysteria to stand out painfully to anyone listening closely.

"I think maybe—"

"Look, I just need to rest."

"But Klaus might punish you."

I wish. She twists her legs uncomfortably, mattress dipping, tight chest brimming with the need to touch him, one that she suppressed for far too long, since she first ran her eyes over him, vision blackened by rage that had successfully dwindled everything except her prim professionalism.

"He won't," she remembers to answer. "He has a deal with my father, won't risk losing his support for so little."

"I'm in touch with his sister and she says—"

"It doesn't matter."

"But—"

"I've heard what you said. You can go now," she snaps in the voice she rarely uses but that indicates plainly that she won't stand any display of defiance.

She can hear the frustration blending in the long sigh he huffs out, can perfectly imagine Matt throwing his arms up and letting them fall back in defeat, but he leaves anyway, footsteps heavy on protestingly cracking floorboard.

Once he's out of earshot, Caroline snatches the phone to order breakfast, food seeming like a good a distraction from the newest rush of arousal she feels throbbing between her legs. Biting on a gasp, she opens her door at the first light knock she hears against it, wheeling the cart where her breakfast is sitting as fast as possible, impolitely forgoing greetings or thanks while she closes the door to the poor lady who brought it.

Her gnawing need intensifies as she reminisces about how pretty the woman was, wonders if she has ever been with a woman, how she would have felt under Caroline's hands, her tight breasts pressed against hers—

She curses audibly, wonders how she's going to last the week in this state and crunches down on a slice of syrup-covered waffle, looking at the dull beige walls of her hotel room in dismay.

.

.

.

She is a slave to every moonlit strand that falls from the sky, bones breaking and rearranging whenever the lunar phases beckoned it, the call to run under the starry night nurturing the more she tries to fight it. Which is why she never tries to anymore. She's beginning to understand the heat is no different. The fervent desire remains unaltered, pumping in her body at a rhythm she can't dictate or stop.

She can't escape it any more than she can halt her skin from growing a coat of silken hair once a month, no more than she can fill the void her head becomes when the animal controls it, or teach herself not to enjoy the chase when she hunts and catches her prey, human or animal.

Still, she runs, no longer able to stay in the bedroom she found smaller, narrowing on herself as the day was canopied by night, the stuffy air in the bedroom, becoming muggy, invisible vapor stony as she inhaled it. She'd though—hoped—that something was wrong with the bedroom, unfortunately the weather was likewise dry outside. Worse, actually. Perhaps because of the absence of air conditioning, perhaps because she ran for so long that her hair and clothes were as stuck to her skin as if she was doused in water.

Doubling over, she stumbles over the protruding roots of a tree and grips onto the trunk, tree bark scratching her hands red. The world turns and zigzags as her parched throat searches for air she can't recover, spins and rolls until she finally finds it again.

She swallows around the lump in her throat and thanks her werewolf abilities even as she hates the unrelenting heat spilling through her, the same that made her run out into a forest she doesn't recognize on a scorching night without her purse or car keys or a freaking water bottle.

There's a beat of silence when everything is static, calm and cool, when a breeze passes and dances on her skin and Caroline closes her eyes to savor it and feels suspended in the air. And then everything starts again. She feels sore, feverish now, her heat firmly roils her cooked flesh.

It's naturally when she thinks things can't get worse that they do.

She doesn't hear him, at first. It's the additional twinge in her stomach that alerts her, the burning bolt of near-blinding orange-white, the fire racing through her veins that seizes her attention. "Caroline," Klaus says. Repeats, she dizzily realizes. He says something else, but she can't make it out with heat curling in her abdomen and blood dashing to her eardrums and drowning out his voice along with the thunderclap that the rest of the world has become.

He moves across the small distance that separates them, making her scramble away from the intoxicating scent that grips her and makes her nipple throb harder with her core, and squints his eyes at her pale arms that branches scored long lines into while she sprinted and darted across the woods. When his gaze drops to her legs—not lascivious for once—almost entirely exposed by her short soiled white sundress and down to her ankles, to her sandal-clad feet, it's easy to guess her skin is similarly hurt there. She's indifferent, though, bearing in mind that her bruises will fade and her skin will be knitted back together all in less time it'd take a doctor to stitch the cuts.

"What happened?" he asks, intent slanted along his pupils like it would across a deadly ax, the timbre of his voice sending a shudder along her spine—not from fear.

"I'm okay," she finally manages to choke out, trying not to inch closer to him as her nerve endings command her to.

"Clearly," Klaus comments.

Her mouth twists, his sarcasm turning her voice to ice, cold and sharp. It's almost liberating when everything around her is raging and smoldering. "What do you want?"

"Matt said you were ill—"

"So you, what, stalked me to make sure I'm okay?"

"You are trespassing, love," he says, looking too smug to her liking.

She raises her eyebrows. She hasn't seen one single sign announcing a private property, but it hadn't crossed her mind to check so she lets it drop. She presumes he's telling the truth, wouldn't make a claim that could be turned on him later. Yet, Caroline can't believe she did come here on her own when she attempted to avoid him all day.

He marches over to her, smiling devilishly, and she has no name for the shock wave that makes her jumps back when his scent hits her. It clogs her airway, washes over her unceasingly, her eyes clouded with want. She balls her fists, doesn't bother suppressing her whimpers as her need spikes, her tender body striving for the touch it has been deprived of. She purrs when Klaus finally settles his hands on her, frowning, can see the exact moment he connects the dots and the unanswered question his eyes enquire about. If he hadn't been so preoccupied with his unnecessary worry for her he'd have figured it out sooner, but she doesn't want to turn that evidence over in her mind and deal with what it means because it, well, it means something and she's not ready for what it is.

The contact of his skin is initially relieving—a pack of ice to tranquilize a burn, the clear and moist air of a beach on a rainless November afternoon, the lulling motion of an old rocking chair—until it's not and her flesh is capped with fiery coals all over again.

His hands are soft, nearly chaste, when they skim over Caroline's bare arms and dance up to the straps of her dress but it chars, the ache between her thighs growing increasingly insistent. He sucks in a deep breath and she knows he can smell her arousal, the awareness that she should feel embarrassed receding as a moan slips past her lips when she sees him closes his eyes, a low purr attesting to his own gratification at smelling hers.

Their heavy breathing becomes a dull white noise while his hands go back and forth a few more times, the silence interspersed only with their spontaneous sounds of appreciation, until a thin layer of sweat covers her arms and collarbones and she hisses as one of his hand stills too close to her breast—yet not close enough.

She squirms and tenses, toes curling, wanting more and not understanding why he's refusing to give her what she covets when he has always been eager to.

"You're in heat," he states, drawing back a little, the words seeming superfluous when they both are well aware.

She's surprised to see restraint pinching his features, needlelike astonishment cutting deeper into her lust-induced misty haze when he backs away a few feet away.

Then she figures out what he's doing, swallows thickly as she processes it.

He's giving her an out, drawing an escape path in the sand for her, should she want it. That's what makes her decision, what makes her fling herself at him instead of turning away, what makes dried-leaves brittle hesitations shift to a firm intention, what makes her grip his stupid face and loop her arms around his neck as their teeth clatter together in an earnest kiss.

It has been so long. And yet it's a different kind of heat that licks at her insides as their lips keep meeting in a frenzy, both of them seemingly unable to stay away for too long, breathless. She rises up on her tiptoes to deepen the kiss, starvation unhampered now that she gave up on fighting both the pull of her attraction for him that has been tucked in the nooks and crannies of her bones and the tremor inside her womb, the tightening of muscles between her legs pleasant now that she has Klaus' touch alleviate the tension of her muscles.

He pulls her backward to a tree and hoists her up against it, kiss turning sloppy momentarily with her attention divided as she encases his waist tightly between her two legs. Neither of them allows enough place to adjust their position and there's too much teeth and too much tongue and too little self-control in the way they bite more than they kiss but she basks in the excess, the frenetic grind of their hips, when his lips abandon her long enough for his teeth to sink into hers, tongue tracing the blood that wells, looking like he wants to devour her in more ways than one and she yearns for it, whispering for more.

"This is a compromise," she says against his lips, claw-like nails leaving bloody scratches on his nape when she tugs his head down until his smiling lips brand her neck, lifting her higher as his mouth descends, twigs snagging in the mess of her curls and the thorny bark gashing the back of her dress.

She relishes in his grunt as his skin breaks while Klaus teases his teeth around her nipple with an audible sound that is nothing less than crude, but she's quite the opposite of bothered by it now. A hum of satisfaction slips from her lips, her sensitive skin chafing against the soft material of the dress she's unthinkingly slipped into earlier in the night, for once not wasting time staring at her reflection before heading out.

"Compromise about what, sweetheart?" his laughing voice taunts and this time she doesn't bother to soothe the bite of her fingers when they reach his cheeks digging deeper as a little, well deserved, punishment.

She forgot that he enjoyed it. Watching her confrontational instincts latch at him unbidden. A kink, she remembers thinking as he seemed to relish having her roughly grab his chin as she positioned herself above his face, her hands gripping his headboard while he pleasured her with his whole mouth until she came to his tongue lapping her, how typical of a powerful man to enjoy having a woman in charge in the bedroom now and then.

He nips at her fingertips, tongue darting to taste at his own blood and she can't explain why it feels so good to have him do it, to watch him do it. It's a repugnant act, should be at least, but she's enthralled, eyes glued to the red drops that shines under her nails.

"So, Caroline?"

She ignores his quizzical look, discerning from his surveying eyes that the unvarnished truth would give too much away. Telling him that she's complying to what her body demands only because she wanted to fuck him already, even before her heat gripped her in an unabated hold, because she can distinguish even in the middle of what feels like a little death that he truly cares about her... He'd read too much into it. She can't handle that right now: sorting out her feelings for him, virtually confessing them to him without being sure if he'd reciprocate and deciding what it means for them if he does while being in freaking heat. She can't. She can just barely think.

She distracts him and herself with a hand glided over the rigid muscles of his abdomen, legs compressing as she seeks more friction, rubbing her drenched panties against the jeans-covered bulge, the skirt of her dress bunches up around her waist as her mouth collides with his once more. Her soft hiss—half pleasure, half-pain—is engulfed up in the kiss, hips bucking as she searches for an unimpeded contact.

He unsurprisingly takes charge, explores the root of her mouth and the back of her teeth, alternating between languid and wild strokes of his velvety tongue, Caroline's inner muscles contracting. His hands are everywhere, map the curves and hard angles of her body like he wants to leave an imprint on her, an artist painting a blank canvas and beseeching the colors to prevail over the logic that dictates its impossibility.

There's no indication before he slams her back against the tree and pins her there, sending her hands instinctively grabbing his shoulder blades while his set firmly on her waist. He nips the column of her throat and licks the traces that won't last after dawn, his craving to mark her familiar and consuming.

He gauges her reaction when one of his palms squeezes her thigh, smoothes his way higher to the seams of her lace panties, the other still firmly holding her against the tree trunk as his eyes fixed on hers. The throaty sound of pleasure that's ripped from her hangs in the space between them when he pushes her panties aside and slides two fingers in her, eyes darkening as he finds her walls slick and warm and hot squashing his fingers snugly.

Caroline's head lolls and she rolls her hips, savoring the quick drags of his fingers, the pressure of his hand against her clit. The furnace of heat she's been stuck in opens briefly and closes with a blaring thud.

"What?"

Her mouth slackens as she finds herself back on her feet with legs unsteady even as they're deposited with care to the soil and still absolutely no orgasm.

She doesn't have to wonder what she looks like, doesn't even need Klaus' expression as confirmation; she had caught a glimpse of her unkempt face earlier in the day in the pale greenish light of her bathroom, pupils blown until only a scanty circle of blue remained and the roundness of her cheeks scarlet, a mane of compact gold that hasn't been combed through framing the visage.

"Patience is a virtue."

Leveling him with a disbelieving open-eyed glare, she can tell that if he has his way he will tease her until she's a panting, begging mess before he allows her to come. So she takes things into her own hands, quite literally. Her agile fingers go to his belt buckle, unfastening it with urgent gestures, pressing closer and moaning when his hand reaches the small of her back, its course inclining between her shoulders and stopping at her scalp. Klaus jerks her head forward, so close they share their mingled breaths, their chests swelling up and flattening rhythmically, almost touching but not quite.

He rocks his hips into her hands, slowly, like he's striving to the arrows of pleasure that seems to make him propel himself forward, every blow of his breath nudging a few tendrils of her hair and stroking the hunger inside her.

The beast inside her simmers and breaks free from its cage and Klaus' back hits the tree he made her thrash against. His shirt ripped is a quick move, the useless fabric falling down with a shrug of Klaus' shoulders. At the first flick of her tongue on his torso she feels the blood pumping faster in his veins, a hundred cords crisscrossing and bustling under her lips, faster and faster as her lips follow the trail of soft light hair, lowering herself to her knees as she skates bites and kisses over the expanse of flexing muscles. Her touches involuntarily soften when they meet scars littered over his chest, both of them tensing at the affection she's too far gone to disguise as something else, too reeling to convince herself her wolf is to blame for the surge of protectiveness twining around her heartstrings.

Caroline dances her tongue over the moisture coating the faint ridges of his abs and clamps her teeth down, his satisfied snarl is feral and her heat skewers her, the sting going straight to her quivering core. The first button of his pants pops open with a snap of her fingers, the zipper parting just after. She has his pants and boxers resting at his ankles when she peers up at him, watching him watches her as she slides her hand up and down his length.

"Fuck me," she breathes, her voice ringing clear despite her irregular breathing.

She easily pinpoints the moment when his control splinters apart like a mere piece of wood. Klaus wrenches her chin up, eyes glittering with something inhuman she recognizes, that calls to her own beastly instincts. He's equivalently taken control with the casualness of someone who's used to have it and has let her borrow it. Now he's no longer bowing to her wish, happy to satisfy her silent demand. It's exactly what she wants. She wants—

"Take me in your mouth," he commands, expecting nothing but compliance for an answer.

She wants this. She wants his own beast unbridled as they fuck, as they mate, and to be left with the soreness of having pleased her lover once it is finished.

Wetting her lips with a deliberate slowness, her eyes burning into him as he weaves a hand in her hair, tugging a little at her scalp. She encloses the engorged tip of his cock within her lips, luxuriating in his sudden intake of breath as she twirls her the tip of her tongue over the head of his cock.

She murmurs contentedly around him, head bobbing as her hand hand pumps him faster, the other braced itself on his ass before languidly caressing the line of his thigh. She reaches up for his balls, scoops them and concentrates on rubbing and stroking as she licks and nibbles his cock, pausing to regard the sheen of her saliva covering his heated flesh. Holding his length with one hand as her head dips to flatten her moist tongue against his ball, her breath hitches when his hips jerk and she takes as much of it as she can before returning to his cock, sporadically alternating the speed.

"More."

She lifts her eyes to find his locked with hers, uncontrollable lust swimming in his those dark pools and she feels her wetness running down her parted thighs. She no longer wants to quell the heat, not when it kindles a torment that is so sweet when nourished.

Caroline traces her tongue along the throbbing length and swallows him as far as she can, relaxing the back of her throat to allows a deeper penetration. He spurs her on with his filthy mouth, his imaginative silver tongue dripping profanities.

"I wanted this, you know. Ever since you came here to submit, no matter how your father prettied it up, with your chin high and your steely resilience. I wanted to see you on your knees, wanted to see just how accommodating you could be for me," he recalls, the guttural lilt of his voice strained. She whimpers around him, because of his words and because he's starting to lead the motions of her head with rough yanks at her hair. Her whole body clenches, folds yearning for something substantial, though she can't say anything with her mouth filled. Am I being good for you? she'd say she could in faux-innocence. Do I please my alpha? But she can't, and she discovers that her own helplessness is abruptly exciting. "You are always like that in my fantasy," he continues, voice even, like he doesn't smell her juices, like it's not what makes semen leak from his cock and onto her throat, "dirty and reckless and mine."

The last word is a hiss, perhaps because he's starting to slide his hardness down her throat, or because she gags when he does, nails pushed into his ass as he fucks her mouth the way she wants him to thrusts where she needs him more.

"I think you enjoy this too, Caroline. Submitting and letting me take you however I wish because you know no one will ever make you feel like I do." The stark jealousy in his voice is bright and hot like fireflies in the sky and a complete surprise, although it should not be, but greed and jealousy are completely different and difficult to distinguish. "You look so beautiful on your knees and with your lips stretched around my cock, love," he compliments, one of his hand letting go of the bunch of hair it was holding caress her cheek.

He curses at the vibrations all around his length, that he can probably feel rattling to the root of his cock. When he shudders, she hollows her cheeks and sucks, feels that he's close and craves to properly taste him.

"Enough," he says, softly but firmly.

The words doesn't immediately permeate her brain but when they do she reluctantly moves her lips off him, the mere start of his release dribbling past her lips. She cleans most of it with a sweep of her tongue, eyelashes fluttering closed when his thumb brushes the rest off her chin.

"You didn't finish," she notes, breath ragged and lips puffed, a displeased pout spreading across her face. Before she can say anything she's hauled up and he kisses her, the tatters that her dress has becomes cast off over her head and her panties torn. He looks mesmerized at the display of her body, even after what she's just done.

He strips down until he's completely naked to her eyes hungry eyes, maneuvering his body until he's behind her with his chest pressed to her back. Returning his attention to her breasts, he cups and fondles them, gently at first, then rougher, pinching the hard peaked nipples, the kiss he places on her neck delicate notwithstanding. Her shrill cry bounces off in the calmness of the night, the shared heat and sensation thrilling her.

He nestles his nose in the crook of her neck, the scruff of his chin delicious over her sensitive skin.

"Get on your hands and knees, Caroline," he growls, sucking on her pulse point.

She looks over her shoulder briefly, mouth dry, intentionally exposing the wetness at the juncture between her thighs when she sets her feet apart; she slinks down, twigs and leaves creaking under her knees, toes poking into the earth and hands sinking into green, soggy moss.

It doesn't take long before she feels firm legs between hers, spreading them and parting her folds wider open. The crown of his cock runs along her slit and lingers against her clit before returning to her soaked entrance with a murmured word she doesn't quite understand and frankly doesn't care to. When he slams into her and she is finally filled, a quaking shriek escapes through her lips, wallowing in every inch of his hardness pushed into her, her heat both calmed and blazing red-hot at the pleasant intrusion.

Her arms falter, eyes closed shut, and she attaches her hands more securely at the soil, whimpering as he says her name with grunted out and muttered obscenities about how easy it is to penetrate her, how soaking wet she is for him. She finally finds the breath that eluded her when she feels his balls settle against her ass, his hardness wedged like something unmovable inside her and his fingers clawing at her hips.

She rotates her hips in slow circles around his cock and then grinds her hips back against him, trying to set a faster pace. He chuckles, splays a hand over the ridges of her back, getting to a patch of sensitive skin and keeps his rhythm maddeningly slow. "Don't hold back," she sobs, tastes copper as she bites too hard on the inside of her cheek. "Please, I need it hard. Please, Klaus—"

There's no warning before he starts pounding in her and she cries out, pushes back, wild and wanton and delirious with the jolts of pleasure that assuage the near-pain she felt all day and night. She feels him everywhere, banging against her backside and throbbing within her walls and pushing so far—There's no pattern of movement when he jerks into her now and she relishes in his lack of control, craning her neck to look at his face as he watches himself disappear into her flexing inner walls with a snarl, eyeing the slippery mess of their intermingled arousal gushing between their bodies.

She wonders if he's edging the line of pleasure and pain too when each time he pulls out only to be snugly embedded in her once more, when he takes turns canting her hips backward and forward to meet the furiousness of his thrusts, his breathing as short as hers.

His callused hands move to clutch her swollen breasts and Caroline nearly loses her balance with nothing to hold her up. His skin scrapes around the breasts, cupping them and kneading the soft flesh. Her center contacts, a strangled noise bolts from the depths of her throat when he tugs hard at her nipples.

"Klaus," she moans, definitely at the limit of pain now but also on the brink of climax

"You are divine, Caroline. Do you know how hard it is not to lose myself in your pussy when you're poised to be taken, practically begging me to? You're so tight around me, so slick," he rasps, a shot of ecstasy erupting inside her.

His right hand abandons her reddening mound and a hand creeps down her ribcage and navel, teasing fingers swiveling around her belly button on the way to her clit. He pinches in a way that makes Caroline throw her head back, and he tilts her face so he can steal a kiss.

Her release rates like a firestorm and she screams and trashes when she senses her heat wilting away, riding out the heady orgasm and flying over that edge she only hovered all day and night. Her legs buckle as she weightlessly falls forward, Klaus' arm draped across her abdomen the only thing keeping her up.

.

.

.

There were rules between them, unspoken and intangible but valuable—crucial even.

And… she broke most of them.

She promised herself that that thing wouldn't become anything more than a mutually beneficial arrangement: a good, convenient fuck for him and a rebound for her. That'd somehow seemed to be a good idea to her the morning after the fourth time she's gone to bed with him, looking at the pale navy-blue light of the morning blanketing Klaus' motel room and the narrow shadows the windowpanes cast all over the room like prison bars, when she understood it'd happen again but wanted to find a way to manage it, whatever it was, if she wouldn't escape it.

They wouldn't call or text or show up together in public. There would be no cute dates because they weren't dating, no romantic dinners and family dinners or even platonic dinners. They would stay out of each other's hair and each other's lives, and above all else the arrangement would stay strictly emotionless.

Caroline wasn't looking for a relationship, not after her bad break up with her first serious boyfriend or while deciding her post-graduation plans, and definitely not before accepting any pack responsibilities. Big stuff. Important stuff. And she knew for a fact that Klaus wasn't interested in a relationship either, preferring meaningless hook-ups, which was enough to make her balk on principle. So, there was really no possibility that it would morph into something else neither of them was ready for.

He'd visit—more and more frequently, she remarked but didn't comment, because it was none of her business, what kept bringing him to Mystic Falls—and they'd steal hours from the day or night like children stealing candy, making themselves sick with the abundance of sugar and they'd go their own ways. (Like killers, beasts with chunks of flesh jammed in the empty space of their jaws like cotton-candy.)

Afterward, they rinsed their hands of sin and forgot it was committed. Instant gratification always overpowered guilt. Opting to forget their families were close to an open war while they were fucking each other brainless, without the star-crossed-lovers-slash-epic-love-at-first-sight excuse if they got caught.

Their arrangement was easy, really, simple and uncomplicated—pleasurable.

She didn't think much of the calls she answered the tiniest bit of breathlessness when his name appeared on her phonescreen, after he convinced her to unblock his number. After all, it wasn't like they'd signed a contract with a non-speaking clause or a non-cuddling clause, and he happened to know how to cook quite well for a man, hence why she found herself in his apartment in New Orleans on a few weekends she was supposed to be clubbing with Bonnie and Elena but had no patience for her latest Salvatore drama.

The impromptu visits wouldn't become a habit but the calls did. They were never particularly important, which was what eased her into the routine when the natural familiarity should have alerted her. She should have known she was in too deep once he offered to tour New Orleans with her when she was visiting college campuses; he insisted he'd help, even though he'd gone to an art school, kind of the antithesis of med school, and she agreed in spite of knowing she was wasting a perfectly good sunny afternoon.

le that they could agree on, like maybe going out on a date, like maybe being exclusive.

From that day, she didn't protest much when he stayed over after sex and didn't immediately scurry to her feet as soon as the afterglow subsided. And sometimes she'd watch an art documentary and couldn't help the little smile tugging at her lips. And she happened to think of their unspoken rules and think up others, very audible that they could agree on, like maybe going out on a date, like maybe being exclusive.

More than once she could have kicked herself when seven months in, he stopped answering the countless voicemails she'd left him. Then, the last time she'd seen him, he'd been with a pretty redhead—his ex—at a party thrown by a mutual friend. She'd felt like a very, very stupid girl with a horrible taste in men that she needed to scrub.

She was thrumming with shame every time she thought of him with anything other than disinterest, her clandestine humiliation a bulldozer in motion trampling on her pride, especially so soon after her break up with Tyler.

Tyler, who came back and apologized for ending things like that and affirmed being sorry and just needing some space on his own that he should have gotten with her because he just wasn't as happy without Caroline. Tyler, who knelt on one knee and presented her with a ring that belonged to his mother and resized to fit her finger. Tyler, who said he loved her, and she could remember loving him.

She said yes.

Because there was no reason for her not to. Because there were no strange girls in his bed and no angry waxen scars every night of the weeks from too many fist fights, no questions about committing to a relationship and defining that relationship, and no risk to have him realize that he didn't want it after all. Because being with Tyler was like slipping back under a comfortable warm blanket from her childhood and being with Klaus was like driving a mile a minute to an accident until they crashed and burned. Because she wasn't stupid and she wasn't suicidal and any sane person would know that you need to stay away from a pyromaniac.

That was a lesson she intended to take to heart.

But the lesson was useless if she were already in in the wreckage of car she'd known too well, with a lover submerging them both in gasoline because he was a selfish man who didn't want to burn alone. He would always drag down everyone he loved down into his tragedy, the little boy who was helpless and beaten raw had decided he would never happen to him again.

Caroline tasted carnage in the kisses that were pressed to her mouth, that she gave back with angry bites and splinted lips. She'd been surprised to see him, that was what she attributed the mess she was in the middle of to. She's been too dumbfounded to find her voice and tell him to go, that she was back with her boyfriend—fiancé—and lock the door to their past altogether.

Klaus was peeling her lavender tank top, controlled motions veiling some kind of aggressiveness that she soon recognized as possessiveness. One last time, she thought as she climbed on him and attacked his mouth. A goodbye and nothing more.

She was wrong.

"Don't marry him," Klaus said in the semi-darkness of the bed they hadn't shared in months, not since he left without bothering to return even her texts.

He said it at the moment the day and night coalesced in the sky and the stars were barely visible, like they never existed, even as the diamond Caroline was wearing snared them. He said it and suddenly her casual nakedness twisted into something it wasn't meant to be and she was uncomfortable, though he'd just finished her with his lips around her clit. The sheen of sweat was cool on her skin now and she gripped the blanket to cover herself.

She was reminded of having shared that bed with Tyler the night before, and the bony hand of guilt welcomed her in its embrace.

"No," she said, refusing to add anything else.

Indifference was the worst sort of punishment for someone like him, hate and disgust and violence and everything in between the only proof of love in his deviant mind; Klaus wouldn't be Klaus if he didn't take and push and pull until he got something, anything. All prey is delicious to a starved wolf.

"He can give me what you can't, okay? That's why I'm marrying him. God, I mean—what kind of future would I have with you?" Caroline ended up screaming after the last passive-aggressive comments they traded, mindful of neither the neighbors nor the risk of Tyler walking in.

Do we have a future? Do you want us to have one? Can you love me? The questions lurked in her words and she waited with an unwanted heaviness in her chest to see what he would say, not even sure she knew exactly what she wanted to hear.

He left without a word, without stealing one last glance at her.

Indifference was definitely a cruel punishment.

.

.

.

Caroline wakes up to the morning sun, feeling it warm on her bare back. Her blinking eyes protesting when she forces her heavy eyelids to lift, recoiling as her pupils connect with a few stray rays of sunlight filtering through gauzy curtains to caress the wall across her.

She stretches an arm out, head nestling in the fluffy pillows, feels an absence to her left where the mattress and pillow are still curved with the imprint of a body, thought this side of the bed is cold to the touch when she turns up, so Klaus must be long gone.

She falls backward, in the middle of the bed this time, rising the silk sheet to cover her torso and observes the stainless ceiling, trying to find a diversion in the artfully decorated but otherwise bland bedroom.

No matter how hard she tries to postpone it, the memories of the last night come downpouring back and Caroline feels mortification heating her cheeks. She remembers the heat, remembers the monumental inconvenience it was, and the way she threw herself at Klaus in painstaking clarity. A pity fuck, she'd have been tempted to call it had he been anyone else; her embarrassment dims when she remembers feeling how much he had wanted it, too. How he lavished her body with attention all night long even after her heat was quenched. He was never one to flinch at his own desires, anyway, considered nothing weaker than denying his own nature because of expectations and conventions.

But now that they have acted out on their attraction, where do they go from here?

She wishes she could shrug the whole thing off as a meaningless sexual encounter, a simple fluke. It happens sometimes. Good chemistry doesn't always translate into a romantic relationship and more rarely into feelings. Sometimes the spark isn't even there the second time around. Compatibility is fickle, she had her lot of failed relationships and flings to be certain about that, but she also knows that isn't the case for her and Klaus.

Their first relationship had lasted seven months, and he'd been gone for as many years. The only change she'd felt was the newfound delectable desperation the time apart had stoked.

She could hide behind excuses and claim familiarity was what made her choose to spend the night of her heat with him, that she didn't want the awkward jumbling of ordering around a one-night stand, fumbling hands and the pain of working out an angle and rhythm but the only thing she can recall about her split-second made decision was the worried, considerate glint in his eyes as he watched her before she was lost to instinct.

Forgetting how things ended the last time they fooled around wouldn't do, and she sees no reason to delude herself anymore into thinking that she hadn't been hurt when he vanished in the night without so much as a goodbye. She won't pretend that she hasn't held back bitter tears that left her shaken after she heard a group of wolves casually mentioning the Mikaelson siblings confirming their brother was dead after scouring several countries in hope of bringing him home.

Caroline isn't about to go there again.

But she can't help but consider it, which of course doesn't mean much, and see they'd have a real chance now that'd they both grown and evolved separately. Logically, she knows things have become so much more complicated with her loyalty to her father warring with that for her friends who have found themselves hurt in the crossfires, with Klaus having come back with more enemies than any wolf needs to have and problems that will undoubtedly affect her own pack later down the road.

He'd come back as a cunning beast with the mind of a killer, more an animal than the man who'd once shared his hopes and dreams with her. The only exception to his ruthlessness had been her, and Caroline had been raised to be wary of biggest monsters whose attentions were struck on you. They only look at you because they want to feed on you, her father had told her the first time he took her on a hunt in the mountains and she'd meekly sobbed upon killing a bear. The time you waste is a greater occasion for them to kill you. You need to strike first.

She tosses the sheet aside, now completely awake and stands. She showers quickly, watching dirt and blood swirling down the drain, and step out of the reposeful stream of rippling water. She hesitates briefly as she hunts for a shirt in his dresser, the prospect of having his scent clinging to her both tempting and troubling, but she also needs a change of clothes and has limited options.

Picking a shirt that's too baggy for her and smells too strongly like the fantasies that haunt her dreams, but Caroline soldiers on and steps down their stairs, occasionally rolling her eyes at Klaus' ostentatious exhibition of opulence.

The smell of bacon and scrambled eggs assaults her nostrils when she's close to the kitchen, memories returning of how Klaus fucked her there last night, up on the counter.

She finds the breakfast sitting over a kitchen table for two with two chairs on either side of it, and it's all too domestic and too foreign and she wants to extricate herself from that house and she scampers off to her pack. But she also wants to get it over with. Whatever is going to happen, whatever they're going to tell each other, they've been putting it off for a too long time now. And, full disclosure, she wants to stay.

Klaus is on the phone when he spots her, but the conversation he was having ends without him saying anything to whoever was on the other end of the line and he puts it away.

"Hi," she says, already seated and chewing tentatively around a piece of beacon.

"Hi," he says back, eyes drinking her in.

Caroline muses at the unfairness of seeing him like that first thing in the morning, looking dreadfully normal and in his sweatpants and cotton shirt, his smile spearing into her from where he's standing.

"I was thinking—"

He only gets the chance to start before she interrupts him. His voice is too meaningful as he slowly makes his way to her and she feels like whatever follow has to be stopped before it comes out, before it's another ghost she will have to exorcize, another secret she will have to bury like bones.

"You left," she says emphatically, so that he doesn't mistake what she's referring to exactly. "You left and it hurt." She tries to makes it sound more like a declaration and not an admission and manages it quite successfully. "We weren't together, I get it, but—We can't just pretend nothing happened."

He looks at her for what could be a second or an eternity, the warren of time losing its importance as they stand still with a reasonable distance between them that seem enormous, and she has to make a conscious effort not to avert her eyes under the scrutiny of his gaze.

"I know," he says, elaborates at her insistent look, "I want a chance, Caroline." It's so unexpected she can only blinks a few times at first, incredulous at the confession he's so easily giving, at the implications it has. "I want a real chance, no more lying and sneaking around. I want you and only you. I know I have some explaining to do, and I will answer your questions, but trust me when I say that I want this. That I want you. Only you."

The admission leaves her staggering. Here he is, dropping from his throne and falling to his knees like a beggar with a hunger only her can sate. She'd terrified by what that means—Klaus isn't known to easily let go of people he claims, the family he imprisoned in cages would agree—if she wasn't intoxicated by the power this grants her.

Because it's not just attraction, not just chemistry that there's between them, and she thinks that maybe, once they sort out what happened in the past, they might build something together, something real and long-lasting, as equals.

She blurts out a yes, later, when Klaus asks her if she'd like to have dinner sometime that week and hides her smile in her mug, stealing a glance at his genuine expression of happiness.

Time isn't something that should be wasted.