Thank you so much for your response to the first chapter! I hope you continue to enjoy this fic. Thank you to Melissa for looking over this for me. NSFW scenes ahead.

She couldn't help the heat that spread across her cheeks when she walked into the kitchen bright and early the last Sunday before the school year started and came face-to-deliciously-tattooed-back with Klaus Mikaelson.

Damn.

He stiffened when he heard her come in, and he had a resigned expression when he turned to face her, though his chin was up as though he was expecting a fight. His face softened as soon as he saw her, followed by a relieved dip of his shoulders before he abruptly straightened up again, his face melting back into a familiar smirk.

"Morning, love."

"Hi," she said, her mouth suddenly very dry.

She'd made an effort to not interact with him since the first night, leaving early in the morning for a jog and then driving the hour to meet with Bonnie to choreograph a new routine. Cheerleading tryouts wouldn't kick their own ass, after all, and her dad funded gas if where she was going was 'productive'. By the time she got home Klaus was usually out of the house, and the less time she spent being the subject of his heated looks and resisting the urge to respond in kind, the better.

Unfortunately, she never seemed to be asleep before he went to bed, and though she tried her best to avoid listening, the temptation of hearing him moan her name was almost undeniable. After the first week of her eavesdropping that left her slick and aching, she gave herself a firm talking-to, put on noise cancelling headphones, and tried to sleep, utilizing some awful white noise app that played calming beach sounds interspersed with ads offering print-at-home stamps every thirty minutes that jolted her out of her drowsiness.

She probably could have found a better one, but she knew that deep down she kind of wanted an excuse to listen. After all, it wasn't really eavesdropping if he was loud and the walls were thin, right?

"Sleep well?"

There was a knowing glint in his eye that made her flush (did he know?) and he raised his eyebrows when she didn't answer. "All right, love? You look a bit flushed."

That woke her up a bit and she wrinkled her nose. Klaus was an asshole. A pervy asshole. He had no business being so...so smirky. Right? Totally.

His gaze was raking down her body now, lingering on the hem of her sleep shorts before drinking in her legs, his lips twitching when his eyes settled on the fluffy yellow and pink polka-dotted socks on her feet. She summoned as much confidence as she could and brushed past him without answering to look through the cabinets for the coffee mugs, more for something to do than because she was thirsty (she was trying to ditch caffeine), flinching in surprise when Klaus offered her one when she closed the third cabinet. Their fingers brushed as she took it and she felt her skin burn from his touch. "Coffeemaker's in the corner. Tea's in the top drawer over there."

"Thanks," she muttered reluctantly, walking to the coffee maker to refill it and throw out the old filter.

She could feel his eyes on her as she moved and was just about to ask him what the hell his problem was when she heard the clink of something being put in a sink and his footsteps leaving without so much as a goodbye.

How rude (not that she cared, or anything).

XXX

"I'm sorry I'm late," Caroline said quietly to the teacher at the front of the class when she rushed in. "I'm new and—"

"Nice to meet you, new. I'm Mr. Saltzman."

She blinked. History teacher who made awful dad jokes. Cool.

"I'm actually Caroline," she said, shaking his hand.

It was just her luck that she was late on the day the new history teacher came in (the old one had apparently gotten eaten by a bear over the summer or something).

"Any reason you were late?"

She winced. Her dad had called to tell her that he was taking her out of school for the day the following Wednesday and he wanted to make sure she wasn't busy. It wasn't exactly a good excuse, and she sucked at lying.

When she stayed quiet, he smiled slightly and shook his head. "I'll let it slide this once. Take a seat," he said, handing her a piece of paper. "This is just an intro quiz to see what you already know. Not graded, so no pressure."

"Um...thanks."

She sank down in the only seat that was open, nearly groaning out loud when she realized that Klaus was too her left, twirling his pencil between his fingers and not even looking at his clearly blank quiz. He smirked when she sat down, raising his eyebrows at her.

They only shared two classes so far, chemistry and now history. It was good, since she'd spent all of chem the day before trying not to blush from his heated looks. She hated that she was so curious about whether he knew she was listening to him. It was distracting, both because of the potential embarrassment and...well, she kind of liked it.

XXX

Klaus walked silently down the hallway to his room, wary of waking anyone up. He'd stayed out late after swim practice with Marcel and Enzo drinking by the river and avoiding going home, and Mikael had rules that were strictly enforced, especially for him.

He set his backpack down on the floor as soon as he slipped in, taking out the notes for Caroline that he'd bribed-slash-threatened Marcel into handing over since she'd been gone that day.

She'd asked nicely the day before, and he figured it would be good for her to owe him a favor.

He stripped quickly, checking the clock and wincing at the time before laying down and closing his eyes, conjuring up his latest Caroline fantasy and reaching down...

And then he heard it.

A soft feminine sigh of his name on the other side of the wall.

He was almost positive he'd misheard, but if he hadn't it was a good sign. He wondered if she thought he wasn't home. It was possible, especially since hadn't come for dinner...

And, he supposed, she hadn't had the opportunity to eavesdrop that night, and though the idea of her knowing whether he was home by whether she heard him masturbate was slightly disturbing, it was also admittedly more than a little hot.

He didn't want to push her, but the opportunity to find out whether he'd misheard was too tempting to ignore. He wouldn't even be waking her up.

Mind made up, he slid on sweatpants and grabbed the notes she'd asked for. He knocked on the wooden door with an elaborately decorated and completely unnecessary sign reading 'Caroline' in loopy glittery cursive, a copy of the notes held tightly in his hand. He heard some rustling in the room before the door was opened, and he found himself face-to-face with Caroline, who was beautifully flushed and sleep-rumpled. He let his eyes wander down her torso shamelessly, drinking in the camisole twisted around her torso to reveal several inches of her taut stomach, and he couldn't help but be drawn to the tiny cotton shorts emphasizing her long legs, filing the image away for later consideration before really thinking about it. She gave his chest an appreciative glance before clearing her throat pointedly, and he met her eyes briefly before letting curiosity get the better of him and peering over her shoulder at her bedroom.

He'd previously imagined that Caroline might live in a room resembling what Cheerleader Barbie might have chosen: a spotless and most likely entirely pink bedroom straight out of a pottery barn catalog, possibly with a decorative set of mason jars full of DIY essential oils or a basket of pungently sweet bath bombs. He was surprised to see that it wasn't at all the way he imagined. In the low light of the turquoise polka-dotted lamp beside her bed he could make out a posterboard full of glossy photos of her friends beside a calendar that looked suspiciously like it might be one of those shirtless firemen calendars one bought to save the whales. Her sheets were crumpled at the foot of the mattress as though she'd kicked them off before he'd even knocked, and he found himself wondering how she looked wrapped between them, how her lashes fell against her cheek as she slept.

His fingers twitched as he longed to see. To sketch.

A few paperback books were haphazardly stacked in a corner beside what looked like a laundry basket with already folded clothes inside that she hadn't put away yet, the white fluffy rug beneath it stained near the edge with some sort of blue sparkly paint, most likely from making the homecoming posters that had just gone up around the school the day before.

It looked almost...normal. It took a moment for him to realize that she'd said his name at least once.

"Hello? Klaus? Can you stop looking at my room like a creep and tell me why you're here?"

"You told me to come by with the notes for Saltzman's class."

"It's like, one in the morning!"

"I also could have sworn I heard my name called..."

He tried not to smile as she went bright red. There was a beat of silence before she managed to speak. "Okay. Next time can you just...just text me or something?"

"I don't have your number, Caroline."

She froze, her eyes widening, and she seemed to be having some sort of inner debate before she turned around and walked to her desk, bending over it and grabbing a pen from the bright orange coffee mug on the desk, which was emblazoned with the words 'MALE TEARS' in large block letters. He tried not to stare at her legs (and failed), only managing to avert his eyes when she turned around with a sticky note, handing it to him. "There you go. Just text me with yours, okay?"

"Will do, love," he said, pocketing it and holding out the notes for her. She took it, giving them a cursory glance before setting it on what must have been a surface out of sight of the door.

"Okay," she said. "Out."

"Worried that I'll poke about your private space and uncover scandalous information?"

She snorted. "No. It's just one in the morning on a weeknight."

"You're rather cranky before breakfast, you know."

"Klaus, you may have your siblings as allies, but I'm not afraid to fight dirty. Give me a reason and I'll start enough rumours that no girl will come within ten feet of you at Homecoming."

"You're more than welcome to fight as dirty as you want with me, love," he said, letting his voice drop. He grinned at the way her eye twitched before she huffed, shutting the door in his face. It was almost too easy to annoy her, and he did love the fire in her eyes when she knew that he was completely fucking with her, not wanting to hand him the win by letting herself be baited but too stubborn to let go of the topic.

She was beautiful.

He returned to his room, admittedly slightly off-kilter. Somehow seeing her like that had humanized her in a way that he didn't expect, and he found that he wanted to know more, wanted to know about her history and her habits and what made her smile. He was suddenly curious about who she was beneath the bossy exterior, what was hidden underneath the cheerful armor that she kept in place so carefully. He'd always known that the smiles were a bit too fake, the giggles and cheer occasionally a bit too forced, but somehow he hadn't put it together, had made a caricature of Caroline Forbes in his mind that the reality couldn't quite mesh with.

Now he'd caught her at a private moment and hadn't expected her to be so warm. She'd let down her guard for him, had shown vulnerability, whether she'd meant to or not, and he wanted to see it again, see her again.

He tended to be fascinated by clever girls with sharp tongues and beautiful smiles, though he often got bored once he'd cracked their code, the unpredictability a rush that he wasn't willing to sacrifice for something as stupid as affection. He longed to crack Caroline's code, to explore every crevice of her mind before he moved on.

He ignored the gut feeling that he might not be able to shed her from his life as easily as the others. He simply didn't do feelings.

XXX

She spent at least an hour staring at the wall in total humiliation. God, he'd heard her. She'd thought she was safe when she hadn't heard him. How was she supposed to explain it? Should she explain it?

No, definitely not.

She laid back in her bed, determined to sleep and thankful that Klaus had already given her the notes and she would never have to talk to him again for the rest of her days if she didn't want to when she heard him.

God, he was totally doing it on purpose.

He groaned through the wall again, and she heard the shift of his body as he moved on his mattress, hissing out her name, and she couldn't resist falling back against her pillows, letting her palm wander down her abdomen to the waistband of her panties, toying with the tiny decorative bow at the front as she considered her options. She'd never had the courage to let her hands wander while she actually listened, had felt filthy enough just eavesdropping and revisiting later, but her core was aching, her nipples hard and sensitive, and she gave into temptation.

He clearly already knew after all, and it was late and she was impulsive and there really wasn't a good excuse, but he clearly wanted her as much as she did him.

She was unsurprised to find herself slick already considering she had been close to coming before he knocked on her door and ruined it. Her breath caught as her finger slid over her clit, making her hips jerk. She bit her lip harshly to hold back the sounds, straining her ears to listen as Klaus kept going. She wondered what he looked like. Was he unashamedly naked in bed, his cock hard and exposed as he stroked himself thinking of her face, or was the sheet pulled up around his waist for a sad excuse for concealment, a thin layer of plausible deniability for anyone who walked in unannounced?

She imagined him with parted lips and heavy lids, eyes glazed with lust as he fantasized about her, the image making her pussy throb with need, and she momentarily forgot her determination to stay silent, a soft moan falling from her lips.

There was a beat of silence that seemed like it lasted forever before he groaned again, this time louder. She moaned softly as she pressed two fingers inside of herself, and froze when she heard Klaus speak, his low growl making her nipples tighten and her pussy clench.

"That's right, sweetheart. Moan for me."

She went bright red, her heart pounding. Him knowing was one thing, but communicating while doing it? She was about to pull the covers over her head and determinedly ignore the ache in her lower belly begging to be sated, but before she could, he ground out her name again, low in his throat.

"Caroline…"

Fuck.

She suddenly had a searing need to hear his voice in her ear instead of through the wall, to feel his cock fill her again and again. She was so wet, every inch of her on edge, just waiting to have that tiny push to tip her over, and she moaned his name softly as she approached, rubbing herself in just the right way…

"Come for me, Caroline. I want to hear you," he said, and she only half-successfully swallowed her moan of his name as she came around her fingers, her breathing ragged. She heard him groan hers before he went silent, the only sound a rustling of sheets.

She fell back in her bed, the reality of what had happened hitting her all at once. She'd just had some sort of mutual masturbation session with her step-brother.

And worse, she would have exactly zero problems with doing it again.

Her phone buzzed, and she tucked her hair behind her ear as she reached for the side table, unlocking it with a swipe to see a text from 'Unknown', though from the content, she knew exactly who it was. Her face heated as she read it a few times, the words not quite sinking in.

[Unknown]: I've wanted to hear that for ages. Perhaps next time you'll let me see it first hand?

[Caroline]: We could get in a lot of trouble.

She quickly saved his contact information on her phone to prevent herself from staring at the screen waiting for a reply.

[Klaus]: We could.

[Klaus]: But don't deny that the idea of doing something wrong, of seeking out danger, doesn't make you wet, Caroline. I've imagined what you'd look like spread across my sheets often, and I am looking forward to seeing the real thing someday.

[Klaus]: I have no doubt that it'll be more enjoyable than any fantasy of you I could cook up on my own, and I have many.

Caroline bit her lip, considering her options, her lower belly already tightening at the thought, and she let out a soft moan as she shifted, the oversensitive, slick skin of her pussy making jolts of pleasure sizzle under her skin.

Let it never be said that Caroline Forbes did anything by halves.

[Caroline]: Tell me about them.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Was the pacing okay? Did it feel like it built too fast? Were they both in character? Smut okay? Please give me your feedback! It's how I become a better writer and stay inspired. Hugs!