Disclaimer: I don't own the Vampire Diaries or any of its characters, dialogue or plot. Warnings for explicit sex, violence and adult language, for this chapter and the whole story to come.These characters are not mine, nor is the universe.

Hey guys, sorry this popped up so late: I used to have this chapter only posted on my website, and I wanted to move it over to live with the main story here on fanfic dot net! Enjoy!

ELENA POV

"Air marshal," Damon says in an authoritative voice. "I need this room."

The woman at the sink hurries out and I glance at the stalls, which are empty. We're alone, or as alone as you can get in a crowded airport.

Damon drops the carry-on bag again and drags me to him with one hand on the nape of my neck, forcing me onto my toes to kiss him.

His tongue is never polite: it demands entrance, rubbing over the rough texture of mine, plundering the soft skin just inside my lips, touching the ridged roof of my mouth. He doesn't have any boundaries when it comes to sexual stuff. He just does whatever feels good, which is sometimes bizarre, frequently embarrassing, and always really hot.

He pulls back enough to whisper, "Are you wearing panties?"

I nod breathlessly.

"Give them to me."

"Here?" I squeak. "I was joking about the Mile High Club thing, Damon, you know I was."

He nips at my lower lip, his eyes molten now that we're alone.

"There's something you should know about me, Elena."

He's only touching me in two places: his hand on the back of my neck and his mouth tormenting my lower lip. I can barely concentrate on what he's saying.

"If you're going to wear a short skirt and tall boots, it's incredibly unlikely we'll get anywhere without having a quickie. Now take off your panties."

I know that that stolen "Bathroom Closed for Cleaning" sign doesn't provide perfect privacy, and I know this is illegal and possibly immoral. But I also know we have an hour and a half before we board the plane and I feel damp and achy and empty beneath my skirt.

His hand sneaks under the back of my skirt, his fingertips tracing the dark blue lace at the leg opening of my panties, brushing against the soft skin where my bottom curves into my thigh. My conscience doesn't stand a chance.

I bend down and strip my panties off without removing my boots.

"I love the boots," he growls and boosts me up onto the counter, giving me a scorching look as he lifts my skirt and bends his mouth to me.

I whimper and jerk in anticipation and Damon looks up at me and puts a finger across his exquisite lips. "Shh, Elena, we're in public." He opens the folds of my sex, exposing me without touching me yet. The vulnerability of this when we're alone is striking, but to do it here is excruciating.

I grab his shoulders, digging my nails in.

"You're okay," he soothes. "I'm not going to let anyone come in here. But you have to be quiet. If you make a single noise," he threatens softly. "I'll stop."

I almost groan just at the thought, but then his tongue is touching me and I need every ounce of control I have to keep my mouth shut. It should be hard to relax and enjoy myself, considering where we are, but once he touches me, I could be in the cereal aisle of the Shop 'n Save and I doubt I'd notice.

He's very gentle, laying his tongue against the sensitive top of my sex and just rocking it against me in a movement that would be comforting if it wasn't turning all my nerve endings into bottle rockets and sparklers and roman candles.

He knows my body so well (after only two weeks!) that he has me to the edge in less than a minute. When he senses that I'm close, his tongue stills and his hands run up my legs to come around behind me, stroking my lower back in circles.

I'm arched toward him, straining for release. His touch eases the tension but not the pleasure, and I relax against his mouth. I release his shoulders and cradle his head, my hands tender on his neck as his hair tickles my inner thighs.

His tongue caresses me slowly, making jolts of pleasure shoot from my toes all the way to the top of my head. I struggle to keep from digging my nails into his flesh. I'm panting with the effort of remaining silent. His lips surround my clit and sip at it with little tugs until I convulse in a silent, almost painfully strong orgasm.

He stands up and kisses me harshly, excited by my response.

Damon reaches down and I know he is going to use his fingers to prepare me for him but I grab his wrist.

"No," I tell him, feeling that kick of recklessness that only he ignites in me. "I like it when it hurts a little, when I feel you stretching me."

His eyes dilate and he picks me up off the counter, his hands supporting me by my naked bottom. My legs lock around his hips and I gasp at the sensation of being so open to him. I kiss him fiercely, pulling open the buttons of his shirt.

He pushes me up against the wall and I'm pinned between the hard tiles and Damon. Maybe it's where we are or maybe it's what I said to him, but all his patient, teasing control is gone and his hands are wild and demanding and all over me. My shirt is open and my bra pushed out of the way so I can arch my back and rub my nipples against his bare chest.

He has to get a little acrobatic to get his pants out of the way while still holding me up, but he's a vampire. He can handle it.

Then the head of his penis is pressing against me and his eyes find mine. I never thought about eye contact during sex before, but Damon likes it. The intimacy it brings to each of our private moments is a little overwhelming, but when he's looking at me I can never forget, no matter how crazy and hot the sex gets, that he loves me even more than he wants me.

And he wants me a lot, I'm reminded as he slides the first swollen inch of himself inside of me. My eyes flutter and my head falls back against the wall, my muscles tight and straining against him. I wasn't lying. I love the first moments when my body struggles to accommodate his, when pain and pleasure and familiarity and foreignness all blend together.

He gives in to me one inch at a time and it isn't until he's fully inside of me and I see his jaw muscles twitching that I realize how hard he's working to start slow for me.

I bite his earlobe. "I don't want it slow, Damon." I curl my hips against him. "I don't want you to be gentle." I use the heel of my boot to draw his ass toward me, listening to his breath break with pleasure. "I want you to fuck me, right now, against this wall."

He growls into my ear and his first thrust is off-center. That thrills me even more and I drop one boot and hook it around his thigh, tossing my hair so it falls on his naked shoulder. It's rare that I can get him to lose control so quickly but when he starts thrusting hard, I know I've got him.

He's barely holding a rhythm, his hips bucking me against the wall with powerful thrusts and it is unworldly difficult to take this much pleasure without crying out. I can't think, can't plan when he's pushing me so hard and everything feels so good…

Damon's hand cups my head, pushing it down to his shoulder, the muscles bunching and straining. "Bite," he orders. "You can't scream, so bite me."

I sink my teeth into the tendon between his throat and his shoulder muscle and I feel his cock grow impossibly larger inside of me in response.

"Harder," he grunts. "You won't hurt me."

I whimper and bite him and his hips are nailing me into the wall fast and furious. I think it would hurt if I weren't exploding, howling inside with pleasure and furious energy and the total freedom of giving into whatever I want with him. I'm stretched so tightly around him that I can feel every squeeze of my orgasm against his erection.

"Elena!" It's just a hiss of sound.

He plunges raggedly into me once, twice more and then I feel the head of his cock swell and let go and his release is filling me with heat.

He rests his forehead against mine, panting. "God, you're incredible. You're going to kill me."

I kiss him softly. "I'd rather not. I'm kind of fond of you."

He chuckles unevenly. "Yeah."

Damon circles my waist with his arms and pulls out of me, setting me back on my feet. I hold onto him and stretch my legs, not letting go until I'm sure everything is going to work properly.

We get paper towels and clean up, trying to put our clothes back in order. Damon finishes first and pulls my panties out of his jeans pocket, dangling them from two fingers.

I snatch them back with a mischievous smile that makes him grin.

"It's a good thing I didn't know how amazing you'd be in bed," he says. "Or I never would have been able to hold out as long as I did."

"You didn't think I'd be any good?" I tease, stepping back into my underwear.

"Elena, you can strike sparks off my skin when you're around. I didn't think it'd be a problem," he says dryly.

"But there's good in bed, there's great," he pulls me in for a long, slow kiss, his thumb stroking my cheekbone. "And then there's us."

I flush with pleasure, and busy myself getting my hairbrush out. "That's what you're supposed to say."

I try really hard not to think about how much more experience Damon has with sex, and how many comparisons he could draw between me and all the beautiful women he's been with. The operative word being "try."

He scoffs at that. "Yeah, because I'm so great at saying the right thing because I'm supposed to."

I glance at him through the curtain of my hair. He rarely says anything he doesn't mean. Of course, that usually means he says a lot of stuff I don't want to hear, but a liar he's not. Still, trying to believe that he'd never had better sex than with me…that is pretty impossible to wrap my mind around.

I sling my purse over my shoulder. "We should probably get to our gate."

He bends to pick up our carry-on and I'm again struck by how surreal it is that we're really here, that we're travelling together like a normal couple and no one is trying to kill us. That a 170-year-old vampire wants to fly to Denver with me to pick up my kid brother.

I put my arms around him from behind and hug him, laying my head against the hard muscles of his back, the material of his shirt silky under my cheek.

"I love you," I tell him.

He turns around and hugs me back. "I know."

I try to tell him a few times a day, but he hasn't really gotten used to exchanging the words. They're still too sacred to him. When he actually says it to me, it still punches me in the gut like it was the first time.

He tugs a strand of my hair lightly and smiles. "You okay?"

I smile back, knowing that my eyes are alight with happiness. "I'm fantastic."

Damon sets the "Bathroom Closed" sign to the side of the door as we leave. I glance around guiltily to see if anybody noticed us coming out, but Damon strolls along like this is his airport and he's just letting all these other people borrow it for the day.

"Thanks for doing this," I tell him. "I really appreciate you buying the plane tickets."

He shrugs. "I figured you'd want to go and pick up Jeremy yourself, and it just so happens that I like flying with you."

I wrinkle my nose. "Flying specifically? Why?"

He's studying the departures board. "I like knowing that the prettiest girl in the place is traveling with me." He winks at me.

I consider mentioning that he has been drawing far more looks than I have, but decide not to swell his head any more than strictly necessary. Instead, I think about all the road trips we've taken together, which in turn makes me think about the trip Damon took last week without me.

"I wish you would have let me come along to take care of the Originals."

"Body disposal isn't on the high school senior curriculum, Elena," Damon says in a low voice. "Besides you're not really that big of a fan of compulsion and it was pretty necessary on this one."

"What did you do with them?" I ask.

He frowns. "I took care of it. Don't worry. Our flight goes out of Gate A-11."

He starts heading that direction but I trail behind, feeling a pang when I think about how much Elijah wanted to be re-united with his family. If he was still alive, he probably would have un-daggered them all and they'd be together right now.

Damon turns and stops walking, watching me.

"What?" I ask.

He presses his lips together in annoyance and I can practically feel his hand itching to reach for a decanter. Instead of answering, he checks the clock on the wall. There's still an hour left before first boarding call.

Damon blows out a long breath and grabs my hand, switching direction and pulling me along in my wake. "We might as well do this now. It'll just be harder to get a moment alone once Jeremy is back, and I'm not going to want to do this any more when we get back to Mystic Falls."

"What? Do what, Damon? What don't you want to do?"

My mind is racing. If there was bad news or we were in danger he would have told me already. Is this about us being together? If it isn't about us, what can he possibly have to tell me that he would wait to bring up?

"Is Klaus really dead?" I burst out. That would be the worst thing, the worst news. And it isn't like he'd be the first one in our lives to come back from the dead. In Mystic Falls, it is always Easter.

"Oh, he's really dead," Damon confirms. "I wasn't going to go halfway on killing that fuck. I owed him about three deaths, but I'm trying to be satisfied with just the one."

He pulls me into a waiting area that is set apart from the main flow of traffic. It is totally deserted at the moment.

"Damon, what's going on?" I ask, really concerned. It seems like there's never good news for us. Ever.

"Sit down," he says. I obey, but I'm still searching his face for clues.

"I got rid of the Originals the way we all agreed on. Bonnie was worried that the increasing pressure when we dropped them in the ocean would knock the daggers loose. So I picked a woman who looked like she had some dough, and I compelled her to take the three coffins and two urns and the sealed mystery coffin and bury them all next to each other, like you wanted."

"So how can we be sure that no one will ever find them?" I ask suspiciously.

"She was supposed to make up names to bury them under, and she didn't tell me what they were. She's going to forget she did it, and I don't know her name or where she lives. Dead ends all around."

I look down. Irrationally, I wished I knew where Elijah's ashes were buried, but I knew he'd want to be with his family and it was safer if I didn't know where they were in case anybody tried to find them and bring them back.

"I told her to put a rose on Elijah's grave," Damon says with great discomfort. His leg is jiggling up and down like it does when he's forced to have a serious conversation before his pre-requisite two bottles of scotch.

I tilt my head. "You did what?"

If he said he bought us a pet elephant, I would have been less surprised.

"I thought you would have liked that, so I added it to the list." He shifts in his seat and looks out the window.

"Thank you," I tell him softly, laying a hand on his arm. "That was perfect. That's exactly what I would have wanted to do if I were there."

"Right. Anyway, before I left to take care of the coffins, there was a letter waiting for me."

"A letter from who?"

"From Elijah." Damon's face looks like he just took a sip of sour milk.

"How did he deliver it?" I wonder.

"Doesn't matter. Lawyer, or compulsion to ensure that if he died, it would go out. What I can't totally figure out is why he sent it to me, not to you."

"What did it say?" I ask, pretty baffled. Elijah and Damon had a truce at the moment, but they weren't exactly friends. And Elijah hadn't left me anything.

Damon reaches into a side pocket of the carryon bag and pulls out a small pouch that looks like it should hold an electric razor. Inside is a jewelry box.

"It said to give you this."

"Elijah left me jewelry, but he sent it to you? That's weird."

"Oh, it gets weirder," Damon promises. He snaps open the box and inside is a necklace.

It's gold, a three-dimensional rendering of a calla lily. It is kind of large, maybe an inch long, but the curves of it are so graceful that it seems smaller and more delicate than it actually is. It is far classier than any necklace I've ever worn.

Of course it is. Elijah had impeccable taste. I touch the gold with one finger, weighed down anew by sadness. I can't believe he's actually gone. People are always coming back to life. Why not Elijah? I think of his empty house, with its abandoned meditation cushion and red espresso maker and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.

I feel a wave of bitterness toward Damon despite myself.

"Your plan worked. He fell in love with me and gave his life for me, just like you wanted," I say, blinking back tears. "You must be so happy."

"Elena, I told you a long time ago that I'd always choose you," Damon says flatly. "You can ask me every day of your life, and I'm never going to apologize for that."

His fingers clench on the jewelry box and then relax. "Elijah was alright, for an Original. If he wasn't, I'd have tossed his damn flower necklace back into his grave with him instead of giving it to my girl."

"Why didn't you?"

"I owe him one. Also," Damon's voice lightens, "it comes with accessories."

He turns the pendant over so that I can see there is a small hinged door on the back. I take it from him and open the catch with my fingernail. Inside, there are two tiny glass vials.

"One of them is Elijah's ashes," Damon says and my eyes fly to his face. "I filled it myself. It's definitely Elijah, not Klaus, so no worries."

I don't get this at all. Why would Damon go along with this, going so far as to fill the vial with Elijah's ashes, which must have been the wish expressed in the letter? Just so I could have a piece of jewelry that would remind me of another man? The Salvatores were both kind of terminally jealous. It would have been easy for Damon to toss out the necklace and the letter. I never would have found out.

"The other vial," Damon continues, "is vervain extract. The good, pharmaceutical grade stuff, so a little goes a long way."

I can see why this would appeal to Damon, since I gave Rebekah the vervain necklace Stefan originally gifted me with. Still, I'd think he would rather me wear something from him than Elijah.

His mouth twitches and he clears his throat. "Do you want to put it on?"

"Are you okay with this?" I ask him. I want the necklace, but I don't want it to upset him.

"I brought it to you," he reminded me. "My choice."

He takes it out of the box and I turn so he can clasp it around my neck. As he does it, I'm reminded of all the times that he brought Stefan's necklace back to me. Whatever else you can say about Damon, he has a strong sense of fair play when it comes to earning my affection honestly.

"Here's the best part, though," Damon says, and he actually sounds excited.

I raise an eyebrow.

"Watch this." He stops to concentrate for a second, and then he hits me, a light punch in the arm. I don't even have a chance to be surprised because as soon as he connects with my skin he yanks his hand back with a yelp.

"What?" I reach for him. "Are you ok?" I take his hand and examine it while he laughs at me.

"Elena, I just hit you. You're supposed to be kicking my ass right now. I'm calling Ric and firing his ass."

"Yeah, you really hit me hard. Where's that abuse hotline number? I'm calling it in." I roll my eyes. "So what was that?"

"The necklace has a spell on it," Damon explains. "Watch."

He strokes my arm lightly. It feels nice, but nothing happens to me, and he looks fine. Then he taps my arm a couple times with the flat of his hand, then a fist. Finally he punches me a little, harder than the first time but not hard enough to hurt.

"I'm so confused right now."

"It responds to intent," Damon says. "So if someone touches you with the intent to hurt you, it gives them an electric shock. Aaaand," he draws the word out, looking pleased. "It's calibrated for force. So the more they intend to hurt you, the more it shocks the shit out of them."

"So that's why you gave it to me," I chuckle. "I was really baffled."

"Hey, I was a gentleman once, remember? A couple scraps of honor may have survived the repeated spring cleanings of my morality."

"Yeah, a scrap," I agree sarcastically.

He does love to play the bad boy but he's not fooling many people these days. He even won over Bonnie and Caroline after they worked together to kill Klaus.

"Besides," Damon says, "when it came to you, Elijah and I saw eye to eye just fine."

I touch the necklace, my eyes dropping to my lap. It's absolutely perfect. I hated that I had nothing tangible to remember Elijah by, and it is so like him to pick something elegant, yet effective. Protecting me even from the grave.

He was a good man. If Damon's plan had ultimately killed him, it had also given me the chance to get to know him before he died. I couldn't be sorry about that part.

I was never going to forget that sunrise, with the music that was joy and sadness, poignant life in all its contradictions and Elijah's delight in all of it.

Elijah was going to kill Klaus anyway, I reminded myself. Even without our plan, even before Klaus kidnapped me, he was going to try.

I look back to Damon, who is studiously checking the departures board to give me a moment of privacy.

"I know why he sent it to you instead of me," I say quietly.

"Because he didn't want you to dirty your pretty little hands grubbing around in his ashes?"

I squeeze his hand. "He was a gentleman, like you. He wouldn't have thought it proper to give a lady jewelry without the permission of her man."

Damon looked faintly surprised. "Did you tell him we were together before he died? It was only two days before the whole Klaus-barbeque."

"No, actually I didn't."

I meet Damon's gorgeous blue eyes and something sparks in the air between us, as it does every single time we're together.

"Elijah must have just known the truth."

"What truth?"

"That it was inevitable that we'd end up together."

Damon's eyes warm and his hand cups my cheek, drawing me in for a gentle kiss. With his lips and his hands sheltering me, there's no place on earth I'd rather be.

Author's Note: Thank you SO much to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited and followed this story. This was my first experience with public writing (except for a tiny fanfic I wrote in 09) and it has totally changed my attitude about writing. I LOVE knowing that other people are enjoying my writing and I got pretty addicted to checking my reviews and view counts every day. So thank you for all the joy you've brought me.

If you'd like to see more of my writing, check out my website michellehazenbooks dot com

Also on my website is a deleted scene for Inevitable called "Angels, Devils and Brothers," where Damon and Stefan talk about God. Inspired by 3x19. There's a line in the Florence and Machine song that played during the Denver kiss scene: "the crashes are heaven, to a sinner like me." Something about that line in conjunction with the almost sacred intensity of that kiss made me think that it would change a lot of things in Damon.

If you are sad to see "Inevitable" end, fear not! I wrote a 4 chapter sequel that takes place one year after the end of "Inevitable." I wrote the first 40 page rough draft in a single, obsessive day. It is satisfyingly heart-wrenching Delena (Don't worry, you know my policy: happy endings only for Damon Salvatore). It's called "The Better Angels of Our Nature". I also have full-length rewrites of Season 4 and 5 (the way we all wish they WOULD have gone, for sale on Amazon for pretty darn cheap. My Season 4 rewrite is called The Desperate Love Trilogy and Season 5 rewrite is called In Time We Trust trilogy, so check those out if you're hungry for more TVD fanfic. And I'm hugely flattered to announce Desperate Love was chosen by Alloy Entertainment, the makers of the Vampire Diaries show, as the number ONE in their top 5 list of the best Vampire Diaries fanfiction.

For even more Delena, Season 4 style, try my other TVD fic "Sanguine Veritas." It is based off the blood sharing scene in 04x02 Memorial, but with a better ending.

Thanks for all your support- you guys are the best!