Elena sat in the kitchen, her eyes closed in thought. That last kiss. The way he had looked at her as she got in the car. Her fingers trembled as she thought about it. It had been a week; a horrible, slow, aching week.

She got up suddenly and reached for her phone. He had told her to stay away, and technically she was not breaking that rule. Not physically, anyway.

The phone rang and rang. She couldn't make him pick up. Maybe he wouldn't.

"Elena?"

Elena jumped. Then she closed her eyes and breathed a sigh pungent with relief.

"Damon."

"Elena… is everything all right? Why are you calling me?"

"Everything's fine. I just… needed to hear your voice."

Silence.

"You shouldn't have called me." He took a deep breath.

"I know, but I miss you. I miss you so much." Damon was very quiet.

"How is Jeremy?"

"He's doing well. He's a regular Jackie Chan, I don't really need to teach him much. I guess super kung-fu instincts are part of the hunter package deal. But the practice is good for him. He may have the instincts but the actual experience is another thing."

"Good. Good, that makes me a little less terrified for his life. How has growing the mark been?"

"Well Stefan has been doing his whole track, vamp, retrieve murderers schpeal, so we're getting there. It's about halfway up his arm at this point."

Halfway there. Elena let herself stroke the phone, imagining that it could somehow connect her to Damon physically as well as verbally. 'Halfway' meant that maybe in another week he wouldn't have an excuse to hide from her anymore.

"So what will you do when it's fully grown?"

Damon paused. "I guess we'll use it to find the cure."

"You know what I'm asking. I want to see you, Damon."

"You know I want the same thing, but not until the sire bond is broken."

"The sire bond doesn't affect how I feel, Damon. Just the way I act. I told you that."

"How do you know for sure? How do you know that hybrid bonds and vampire bonds aren't completely different?"

"Why would they be? Hybrids are just vampire wolfs."

"You're forgetting that EVERY hybrid has a sire bond, whereas very, very few vampires bond to their sires. That's one indication that they might work differently. Who's to say they don't work differently in this way as well?"

Elena had not thought of that before. She gripped the phone tightly and began to pace her room. This was not going the way she wanted. She had meant to convince him, but instead he was planting his own seeds of doubt in her. They weren't as unreasonable as she had thought.

"Damon, it's just hard. I feel so strongly about you, and the idea that this feeling could be fake just doesn't seem possible to me. It's too strong, too deep. I felt something like it before as a human, but like everything else since I became a vampire, it's more intense and I really can't control it. I don't feel like its been magically planted there, though. I feel like its been there all along. So as rational as your doubt is, I don't believe you."

"Well as much as I'd like to, I can't go by how you feel right now." She could feel his pained smile in his words. "Though, it is nice to hear you say it. But we aren't going to act on anything until I'm sure, one hundred and fifty percent, that you are sire bond free and in charge of your own decisions."

"Fine, we won't act on anything. I just want to see you. Is that too much to ask for?"

Damon took a moment to consider it.

"The only way to break the sire bond is for me to never see you again," Elena was poised to argue when he continued hurriedly, anticipating her argument, "Obviously, I'm too selfish to let that happen, but I'm not going to hang around you all the time. It's not fair to you or Stefan, and it might affect your decisions. " Elena was again going to argue when he cut her off, "I'll come see you. Tonight. I missed you too, and it would be nice to talk face to face. I really never thought I'd say this, but you have to behave yourself, Elena."

Elena grinned.

"I'll try."

Damon appeared as he always did- when she was not in her room. She went downstairs to make some tea to calm her nerves at the idea of finally being near him again. When she walked into her room, he was sitting on her windowsill. She couldn't contain the smile that lit up her face. He returned her smile, but she could see how tense he was.

"I promised to behave myself. Will you please relax?"

He eyed her warily. Then he tilted his head from side to side and flexed his shoulders as he stood, putting on a show of relaxing. She laughed as she walked closer, nervously hugging her tea to herself. Maybe she should take her own advice.

"Sire bond be damned, you never listen to me when it comes to this." He hesitated at her bedpost. His eyes seemed to linger on the bed before he forced them to look around the rest of the room. He walked over and picked up her bear from among her pillows. "So you're back home now."

"With Jeremy's at the lake house, there's no need for me to stay at your house. That way Stefan could move back in and Caroline could get her guest room back." Elena wasn't sure where to sit without making him tense up again, so she decided on his usual place on the windowsill. That was fairly safe. She sipped her tea.

"I'm glad. I always liked coming to your room. It smells like you." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Elena's cheeks grew warm, wondering what she smelled like. She could only stare at him, not quite believing he was there. He was really beautiful, the pinacle of which was the arctic eyes that clashed amazingly with his dark, messy hair. Ironic that all she had to do was pick up the phone to get him to come visit. She really hadn't thought it would be that easy after the way he forced her away from the lake house.

His eyes fluttered open and locked on hers. There it was again, that magnetism between them that she had fought for too long. Damon's eyes trailed to her chest as she took a shaky breath, then hurriedly looked away. He wandered around the room, restless, probably putting distance between them. His movements reminded her of a caged jungle cat. He tossed her bear in the air and caught it as he spoke.

"How is Stefan? I haven't seen him. He just leaves the murderer vamps locked up in the shed every now and then with a note at the door to let us know they're there." His eyes watched the bear's descent and the tension flooded his body again.

"Yeah, he knows." She confirmed the unasked question. He stopped tossing the bear and looked at her again, his eyes questioning and intense. "Caroline told him." She said quietly.

"Oh." Damon waited, more irritable now.

"April freed Rebekah, who woke Kol, who locked us together in a room at the school. She was trying to get answers from us and you know how much she likes me, so she made it as uncomfortable as possible. Anyways, we ended up fighting about it. Rebekah and Kol heard the whole thing too, which is just great."

Damon eyed her with concern. He walked up and kneeled down in front of her, putting a hand on hers.

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah, it was awful, but it's done now. We got away from them when they were distracted fighting with each other. Now Stefan knows. He's not happy about it, but at least he knows, which was kind of a relief." Her heart was pounding again. Damon's presence soothed the aching guilt that she had been trying to repress since that conversation. She looked deep into his eyes and felt a familiar warm, fuzzy glow in her core. She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb.

"Well I'm sorry you had to talk to him on your own. I guess he's too angry with me to even see me right now."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll try to talk to him and apologize for lying to him when we were at the lake house together. "

"I don't know if I'd talk to him right now. He won't listen. I tried to tell him how you wouldn't let anything more happen between us after that, wouldn't even kiss me, but he felt pretty betrayed by our lying."

"Well, I have to try anyway." Damon let out a snort of frustration, but she knew it wasn't directed at her. She let her fingers stroke his hair the way she had wanted to when they spoke over the phone, trying to comfort him. It was soft and messy. Her touch made Damon pause, that same look of desire and pain pooling in him.

"…Don't"

She pulled her hand away reluctantly. Her cheeks felt hot again as she remembered the last time she had run her hands through his hair. His eyes searched her face, and she knew he could read her thoughts there.

"I'd better go."

Elena sat up straight.

"What? No, you just got here!"

"Yeah, well, I haven't seen you in a week, and I don't have the best self control, something you reminded me about countless times before we were together. You should try to remember that now."

"Well I've reconsidered my opinions since then, and you seem to have more control than I do as a vampire. These heightened emotions are really hard to deal with. I had no idea." Elena stood up and grabbed his arms as he turned to leave. He hung his head, and she knew her proximity weakened his resolve.

"Stay. Just a little while longer. Please?"

Damon deliberated silently. Elena wanted so badly to kiss him and wrap her arms around him, but she knew that he would leave if she did. She bit her lip and tightened her grip on his arms in an effort not to.

"Just figured that out, huh?" He smirked weakly, the decision made.

"Yeah. Caroline is really good at it. Controlling her emotions, I mean. She's not much different as a vampire than she was as a human. But me… I don't know, I never thought I'd have such trouble. I feel like a different person."

"It gets easier. Kind of. I've always had trouble with it myself." Damon grinned, whispering the last part like it was some kind of secret. She laughed at his obvious understatement, enjoying the return of playful Damon. She remembered what his image had said to her when she was hallucinating under the influence of werewolf venom. Part of you knows that you're a lot more like me than you are like him.

"Seeing you… it makes me happy. Happier than you know. This last week has been really hard. I kind of… rely on you a lot more than I thought I did."

Damon said nothing, but his intense blue eyes were trained on hers again. At the sparkling look of fascination in his eyes, she thought he might have a harder time resisting if she tried to kiss him then. She went up on tiptoes, drawn by her attraction to his lips. His body leaned away, but he couldn't break from her stare to turn his head.

She moved her lips over his and pressed herself closer to him. Her arms went around his neck and her fingers were in his hair again, tugging and caressing. She could feel him try to resist but not wanting to. Her breathing grew harsh as she deepened the kiss and fell back on her bed, taking advantage of his surprise and pulling him down on top of her. She groaned at the feeling of him, finally a reality rather than a memory. She was beginning to coil her legs around him when he broke their kiss. Angrily he drew back, breathing hard, and rested his head against her shoulder. His hands balled into fists on either side of her head.

"Sorry." She whispered, but she did not remove her hands from his hair, kissing it and stroking it while she waited for him to lift his head and look at her. She could not tell whether his faint quivers from fury or the force of will required to regain self-control. "I said I'd behave."

"Yes you did." His voice shook as well.

"Sorry." She sighed again.

He couldn't seem to pull himself up and instead remained frozen there on top of her, trembling and stiff. Gradually, her gentle kisses and caresses relaxed him and he lay on top of her. She had no idea what he was thinking in the long silence. She merely closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling that she knew she would not have again soon.