Sometimes, when Elena is alone in the dark and her hand slips underneath the covers, she thinks about things she shouldn't.
When at first, months and months ago, her thoughts drifted to Damon instead of Stefan, she blushed furiously and snatched her hand away guiltily, shocked at the audacity of her subconscious that dared to go to places her conscious mind wouldn't. For two nights after, she refused to touch herself, for fear that those treacherous fantasies might return.
That was a long time ago, though. She's a different person now. She's watched people she loved die and learned just how fragile human life is, and even though she still thinks in categories of right and wrong, she knows it's silly to deny herself pleasure when it won't harm anyone. Her morals aren't any more flexible than they used to be, and the list of things she wouldn't do hasn't grown much shorter, but there's a world of difference between doing and thinking.
So sometimes, in the dark, when she's all by herself, she lets her mind run freely as her fingers slide down her body.
Sometimes, she thinks about Damon and what it would feel like to give in to him, give herself over completely without guilt or regret or thought of propriety. Sometimes, Katherine's words that night when she returned with Klaus's blood and found Elena kissing Damon come back to haunt Elena: she could love them both - have them both, and Elena's mind takes an extra turn and supplies an array of images of herself between the Salvatore brothers, their naked bodies framing hers, and her breath quickens. Sometimes, she thinks about the cruel, pitiless creature Stefan has become and, instead of feeling regret and despair at the change, she allows herself to be curious and intrigued, wondering what kind of a lover her sweet, cautious boyfriend would be without the burdens of guilt and responsibility: what it would feel like to have the ripper hold her down and just take what he wanted without asking.
Sometimes, she thinks about Klaus.
Every time she does, she feels like she's betraying everything she stands for, because this is Klaus, who killed Jenna and turned Stefan into this empty shell of himself. She should hate him - does hate him - and she fears him more than she ever feared anyone before.
But despite her fear, despite what he's done, despite everything, it's the sense-memory of the bite that her body seems to be unable to shake off. The night of the ritual is all a blur: the werewolf girl's screams, Stefan's eyes helplessly locking with hers, and Jenna - oh God,Jenna! But that's what her mind remembers. Her body, though... her body remembers what it felt like when Klaus pulled her against him and sank his teeth into her neck. It remembers the firmness of Klaus's body against her back and his arm tightly around her stomach, holding her up. It remembers the bite.
It should have been painful and horrible and frightening, but the bittersweet irony is that it was just about the only thing that night that wasn't painful and horrible and frightening. When Klaus's fangs pierced her skin, it didn't hurt at all, and his mouth on her skin felt like a lover's kiss instead of the deadly assault it was.
And her body, ever so treacherous and selfish in the pleasure it demands, remembers.
So she closes her eyes and lets her fingers slip between her panties and her skin, down to where her nerve ends are tingling with pleasure. She's wet already, and when she softly brushes her fingertips over the sweet spot, the sheer want hits her so hard that she can barely stifle a gasp.
Her finger slips inside easily and her eyes fall shut as she blocks out reality: the familiar sight of her childhood room, the flower print on the bedding, her teddy bear next to her, and the photo of her and Stefan on the nightstand.
Before her inner eye, the scene changes and she's back in the clearing in the woods. Only this time, there's no Stefan, no witch, and no one dies. It's just her and Klaus, and she shivers when she imagines the feeling of his teeth brushing over the tender skin of her neck, teasing her without breaking the skin. When she crooks a finger inside of her and pushes in with a second one, she imagines that it's his hand. Imagines his mocking voice when he finds her wet and ready for him, the smooth drawl of his accent that drives the smug words home.
She tells him she hates him. Even in her fantasy, where the words don't matter at all to anyone but herself, she tells him.
Much like in real life, he doesn't seem to care. He pushes his fingers inside ruthlessly and, when she clenches tightly around them, pulls them out almost completely. And then, when he drives them back home, he times it perfectly with his bite, sinking his teeth into her artery the very moment he buries his fingers to the hilt in her body, and the dual intensity of the sensation makes her eyes flutter and her toes curl. His thumb brushes her clit almost as an afterthought, and she falls apart in his arms.
She comes quietly, biting her lip hard to keep from making any noises or, worse yet, call out a name. In the silence that surrounds her, her heavy breathing, evening out tortuously, painfully slowly, echoes loudly in her ears.
Her heart races like a storm in her chest. She closes her eyes and wills her body to calm down, tries not to let the guilt settle in.
In the room next to hers, Jeremy is quietly sleeping. Alaric is down the corridor, in Jenna's old room. When Elena falls into an exhausted sleep, she's safe in the knowledge that neither of them will ever know.
No one will ever know.
