Anna - Like the Burning End of a Midnight Cigarette
Title: Like the Burning End of a Midnight Cigarette
Character/Pairing: Anna, Katherine, Anna/Jeremy, one-sided Anna/Ben
Summary: “Control is more important, Anna. Love is secondary. Always remember that.” Goes Slightly AU during "Fool Me Once". Written for this prompt at tvd_kink
Rating: R
Warning: underage sex
Word Count: 3,300
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Title comes from Whiskey Lullaby by Brad Paisley and Allison Kraus.
Her first few years as a vampire, Anna never drinks blood directly from a human. It isn’t her own decision to make, not really, her mother makes it for her. She receives temperate blood from a dull metal glass that is always slightly cool when placed to her lips. Anna doesn’t mind. The blood still tastes sweet on her tongue, she can still revel in the way the viscous fluid coats her throat. It still cuts her hunger.
And besides, she hasn’t known any different.
One night, while she sips some particularly sweet blood, dark red, boarding on black, Katherine saunters in and raises an eyebrow at her. Anna smiles back hesitantly. There is something about Katherine that screams to be admired and cringed at simultaneously.
“Still drinking from a cup, I see?” Katherine sits across from her, tucking one ankle behind the other like a true society lady. Her satin and lace dress is full and puffs up around her, shining faintly in the lantern's soft glow. Sometimes Anna wishes she could wear something like it, elegant and beautiful and effortless.
“Yes. That’s how Mother gives it to me.”
Katherine quirks one eyebrow and folds her hands. “You always do everything Pearl’s way, don’t you, Anna?” The question has a rhetorical taste, so Anna runs her finger around the glass’s rim, very aware of how hard and cold it is, how unlike the soft warmth of human flesh. “But you’re a big girl. Don’t you ever want to use those teeth of yours?”
Anna’s eyes drift down to her plain, white frock. Sometimes, before she eats, her gums alight and an ache penetrates her mouth so fully she feels as though she could saw through marble. Sometimes, after she does drink the blood, the ache persists. Running her tongue over her fangs, Anna looks back at Katherine’s dark, probing eyes. “I, I guess so.”
“Dear,” Katherine begins, her voice smooth and confident, an arousal flickering behind her eyes. “There’s nothing like sinking your teeth into a man.”
“A man?” Anna swears if her heart was still beating, it would have stopped now. She knows all about Katherine’s games with both the Salvatore brothers, has seen the longing reflected in their eyes, hears the lovesick tint in their words. At first, Anna romanticized Katherine’s tryst, but she can’t any longer.
What scares her most is the pulling in her gut, the burn in her teeth inviting her to do the same thing. To toy with humans, to play with their emotions and their shortcomings. To feed on something more than their blood.
Anna feels sick.
“Oh, yes.” Katherine waves her hand flippantly. “Women are fine, too, but I think you’ll find something...powerful about a man’s blood, his terror and desire.”
Anna locks eyes with Katherine, questions piling up in the back of her throat, answers she’s unwilling to listen to even if she’s dying to know. One question escapes: “Do you love him?”
The laughter that escapes Katherine’s throat is sharp and full and quiet. “Control is more important, Anna. Love is secondary. Always remember that.” She doesn’t bother to address which him Anna is asking about; it doesn’t matter either way. A beat. “Your mother’s back.”
Katherine stands up gracefully, her dress wrinkling around her legs, a soft swooshing noise reverberates through the cottage. Anna doesn’t listen to the conversation they’re having, even though she’s done so time and time again--knowing her mother would hate her if she ever found out.
Tonight Anna’s fangs have a deeper swell of fluid, a more poignant sharpness. She wonders if she’ll ever know the thrill of the hunt, the success of the capture. It’s not just Katherine, she notices the glory in her mother’s features after drinking. She wonders how skin feels under lips, how it’s saltiness contrasts the sweetness of blood.
She can’t ask her mother, she knows. She won’t. But still, the idea is manifesting itself in the back of her mind, growing like poison inside her.
***
When her mother is locked into the tomb, Anna doesn’t know what to do. She follows Katherine at first, unsure and timid and afraid--for the first time--of death. She has to survive, live long enough to save her mother, to fix what Katherine broke while thinking she was unstoppable, in control.
She has to wait. And she has to feed. Katherine makes it abundantly clear that she isn’t going to help with either. “Unless Pearl destroyed every instinct you have, you know how to hunt. Just find someone.”
Katherine spends her days traveling, going to North Caroline and Virgina and Connecticut. Anna isn’t sure if she's (they’re) trying to find a new place to settle, or someone for Katherine to play with, or something else entirely. But she knows Katherine hasn’t cried at all, and Anna cries every night. When darkness descends over whichever town they happen to be in, Katherine visits pubs, not caring that it’s unladylike. She propositions men, kisses them hard for a few seconds, pulls them into the dark and sucks.
Cold.
After a few days of hunger gnawing at her insides, Anna relents and attempts to find someone to eat, allowing Katherine to free her hair from her cap and bun. It’s the only advice Katherine offers, besides the whispered, “you’re a pretty girl. Use it.”
The dirt road running through the tiny town cakes her shoes and stains the bottom of her dress. She can hear the gentle thudding of sleeping bodies in houses, the cheers and shouts of men in the local bar, Katherine’s giggle melting through them. Anna fights the protruding of her fangs, the desire to barge into a house and drain the inhabitants dry. She’s never gone this long without feeding before, but she’s going to do this right.
She’s going to make her mother proud.
A few minutes later she comes across a young man, maybe twenty, sitting on his front porch, head in his hands. His sandy blond hair covers his dull green eyes. There’s something about his posture--huddled over, slumped shouldered, feet firmly planted on the gravel--that Anna finds comforting. “Hello,” she whispers, walking over, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
He looks up slowly, surprise coloring his eyes. “Oh, hello ma’am.”
“You look...distraught,” she comments, sitting down beside him. When he glances at her outfit, Anna finally decides it’s time to dress like Katherine. He nods minutely and looks over to the woods, his eyes unfocused.
“Is there anything I can do?” It’s suppose to sound seductive, but she hasn’t had much practice and Anna can practically hear her words clunk to the ground.
“No. Thank you.” He looks at her one more time before standing up. “I think I’m going to go in now.”
“Alright,” Anna says. But then her teeth throb and she reaches out, grabbing his wrist, turning him to her softly, sharply.
She uses compulsion. She feeds, erases his memory. Anna feels too full, disgusted.
She can’t find Katherine. She’s alone.
***
She learns her own way to hunt. It’s different than Katherine’s and she imagines it’s different than her mother’s. Unique. When she has to, she drains the dying, putting them out of their misery. Their blood always has a sour tinge to it, and it’s always too thin, too bright, too cold. She prefers to have someone fall in love with her. The real way.
It’s an unbelievably slow process, and it’s harder than Katherine makes it look--probably because Katherine never liked hard. She made things simple. Anna, though, she appreciates the pay-off. The look of shock when they find out who--what--she is. The debate that rages in their heads, the uptake in heartbeat. Ultimately deciding they want her to turn them. They just can’t live without her. They want forever.
Anna doesn’t, she wants the right now.
She learns to enjoy the slight tug of her fangs on skin as they break through. The contrast of salty and sweet is always slightly different, always good. The body presses against hers, deciding if it wants to pull her close or push her away. Anna doesn’t force and she doesn’t lie.
Eventually, though, after years of the same blood, after not turning him, he rebels and yells and threatens to leave. He won’t, she knows. So she erases his memory, running one long nail over his cheek and walking out herself.
There’s no one she wants to spend forever with.
***
As time passes, the more she just wants to get her mother out of the tomb. But she gets used to her freedom. Anna hopes it never ends, and thinks that it doesn’t have to. Her mother and freedom aren’t mutually exclusive ideas.
Somehow, Anna isn't sure her mother would see it that way.
***
The first time she turns a boy for a reason other than she needs him to do her dirty work, it’s 1927 and she’s wearing a brilliant, silvery flapper dress. Her hair is still long, curling past her chin and resting between her shoulder blades. Her heels click over the floor and her face is painted. She’s been with him for three years.
He loves her.
She loves him.
It’s oddly exhilarating and terrifying. But she wants him, forever. So when he finally asks, white shirt untucked from his pants, his tie between his fingers as he watches her carefully, eyes never leaving her as she paces in front of the bed. She nods, smiles, straddles him and cuts her wrist, offering him the blood. He drinks, his face turning into jubilation. Anna cracks his neck and brings him a dying woman.
She never thought she’d have this; she never thought she’d want this.
It’s good for a few years, but he seems to get bored. The girls he picks getting prettier and prettier. At first Anna can see her resemblance in them, and then she sees how they’re nothing like her at all. Blond, blue eyes, tall.
Katherine finds her, eyes sparkling. “Forever. How romantic.”
“What do you want?” Anna asks, annoyed. She’s not the same person she was in 1864. She doesn’t need Katherine’s approval--her wisdom--anymore. Anna's had to earn her own wisdom the complicated, messy way.
Katherine studies Anna, taps her finger against her glass and swirls some gin around her mouth before swallowing, leaving a faint lipstick print. “You’ve given him control. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I trust him,” Anna says simply, keeping her voice void of emotion. Katherine doesn’t deserve the satisfaction of knowing she’s hit a nerve. Anna’s still not used to the idea of forever, of how much power the concept and the man have over her emotions. “I love him.”
Katherine frowns. “I’m sorry.”
Less than two months later Anna finds him in bed with Katherine. He, at least, has the decency to look guilty. Katherine just smirks. “Love is a tricky thing.”
She’s never known hatred like this. The rage that pounds inside her, making her want to destroy everyone, everything, the world. Her hands clench into fists and she kicks the bed until it cracks; she crumbles the wood between her fingers. Anna slaps Katherine. Katherine smiles deprecatingly, winningly, and smooths Anna hair, whispering to her like she's a child, “it’s a lesson we all have to learn.”
Anna gets pleasure in staking him, watching the veins in his flesh hardened and contract. The pain and disbelief in his face makes her want to laugh. She doesn’t. There’s something poetic about giving him eternal life and taking it away. Being the one to create him and destroy him.
She recaptures her power.
***
Ben is too attached, Anna is aware of it. He tries to pretend he isn’t, that he doesn’t care what she does, that he’s only being loyal as a favor, as a condition. Acting tough won’t earn her respect or her affection. She doesn’t bother to tell him that though, he’ll be dead soon enough.
Jeremy worries him. Jeremy worries Anna, too. There’s something about Jeremy, the perpetually sad look coating his eyes, the way his smile always seem reluctant, the way his hair falls in front of his eyes when he looks down at her feet. Whenever she’s with him, her purpose becomes cloudy and gray. She has to struggle to focus.
She’s too attached.
She’s painfully aware of it when the sky is beginning to turn gray and she stands outside his house trying to sense if he’s there. He’s the only one home. Anna rings the bell, shifting her weight on her heels. For the first time in the last few weeks, she doesn’t have a plan.
“Anna, hey.” His face brightens and he pulls the door back further. “I thought we were meeting at the party?”
“I was just in the neighborhood.” It’s a lie, and they both know it. Anna smiles and walks in as he moves aside. “Surprised?”
“Yes.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks at her for a long time, like he can’t quite believe she’s even real. “You, uh, do you want to go upstairs?”
Anna hesitates, looking around the hallway, suddenly wishing his aunt were around somewhere. The thing is, she’s always known her limitations, when she’s about to lose control (Katherine was really onto something there, she’s learned). But when she looks back at his face, embarrassed and awkward and still hoping, she relents. “Lead the way.”
The room smells so much like him she tries to stop breathing in the air. She can hear his heart thudding deep in his chest, feel his eyes focusing on her as she plops down on his bed, crossing her legs. The air is warm and thick swirling around her. Jeremy leans against his door, shaking some hair out of his face.
“So,” Anna begins, positive she’ll end up regretting this, “how much of a teenage boy are you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His eyebrows scrunch together a little.
“It means,” Anna pauses, using her hands to gently push herself off the bed, “when are you going to kiss me?”
Jeremy’s face stretches into a smile, and Anna steps forward slowly, feeling the upturn on her own lips. She’s standing a few inches from him, can smell his breath when it escapes his lips. Leaning forward, standing on her toes, she kisses him. His lips are dry and his warmth and scent seem to be radiating through her entire body.
She presses against him, wanting to be closer, to feel her skin burning and her lungs full of air they can’t expel. She focuses on keeping herself in check, making sure veins won't pop through her skin, her teeth won't slice through his lips.
She feels Ben’s presence at the window, he’s pissed. Anna doesn’t care though, because Jeremy’s hands are threading through her hair and his nails are trailing against her scalp. The second kiss is different, like he’s not telling her everything, like there’s something he’s trying to forget.
Annie knows she should stop. But there’s something she’s not telling him, something she’s trying to forget. She runs her hands over his chest, bunches the fabric in her hands and pulls him to the bed, falling backwards, letting her knees bend effortlessly. His smell is intoxicating and she has to try too hard not to change--she’s glad she had the foresight to eat earlier.
As she arches her hips into him, he moves his head, placing sloppy, hard kisses down her jawline, her chin, her neck. He nibbles at the flesh there, soft bites followed by soft tongue. There’s a knot in her lower abdomen and she scrapes her nails over his back, needing something to grasp onto, needing more friction. She’s never been bitten before, but it’s making her entire body ache.
She feels Jeremy through his jeans and smiles, pulling his face back to hers, scrapping her own teeth over his lip, slipping her tongue inside his mouth, exploring and wanting and needing. Anna pulls his shirt over his head and flips him over, pulling her own tee-shirt off. His eyes are murky and dilated, his hair mused. She trails her hands over his chest, careful as she hovers over his neck, biting, keeping her fangs from taking control.
There’s so much friction as he moves against her, but not nearly enough. His hands trail over her bra before he unclasps it, letting the fabric fall somewhere to the left of the bed. His takes her nipple, bites it gently, swipes with his tongue. Anna groans.
She can feel Ben projecting anger and jealousy out the window. Anna realizes he’s watching her, watching them. She can feel his arousal piercing through the air, knows he’s going to give into it, his hand slipping under his boxers. He’ll regret this later, but right now Anna can’t really think about how she'll kick his ass. She can't think about anything but the way Jeremy’s hands have unbuttoned her jeans, the way the pads of his fingertips trail over the sensitive skin just below her bellybutton.
Shimmying out of her jeans, Jeremy rolls them over to do the same to his own. His breathing is ragged and everywhere it hits Anna’s skin she feels goosebumps forming. She flips them back over quickly, needing to be in control, to make sure nothing goes wrong. Her hand slips under his boxers and around him, her name pours from his lips in a low moan and she smirks to herself.
Her underwear is discarded quickly and he strokes her for a second, slipping one finger inside, rubbing her clit. Anna feels the knot inside her tightening. She slips off his boxers and places him inside her. There’s a push and a pull. Jeremy's bucking his hips at all the right times and all the wrong times, she can sense Ben pumping outside, how he wants to be Jeremy, how he’s so fucking jealous and so fucking turned on.
Anna blocks it out, blocks everything out. Jeremy, that’s all she can think. When he bites her shoulder a little too hard, a drop of blood dripping from her flesh, her entire body shudders and she’s pushed over the edge into a deep abyss.
It’s impossible to hold on anymore. She loses control.
***
When she gets outside, Anna wraps her hand around Ben’s neck and squeezes. “I swear to god, if you do anything like that again I will stake you myself.”
“You’re too good for him,” Ben breathes after her, yards behind as he tries to regain his strength.
“I’m too good for you,” Anna responds, not bothering to turn around. “I have to change and get ready, my mother’s waiting.”
She reminds herself of her purpose, of the one thing she sound be concentrating on. It's the only way she can stop thinking about Jeremy, about how she's never felt this way before--like she's flying but the wind's about to give out. She's going to fall. She wants to forget how she's scared out of her mind--scared of leaving him, of how her mother will react if she ever finds out, about how much she wishes she were human.
(She's wished a lot of things in the past, but she's never wished that until now.)
***
She dies for Jeremy. He’s the only thing she has left, the only thing she could die for.
She’s helpless, writhing in pain on the ground. Her head is buzzing loudly, piercing through any thoughts she tries to formulate, keeping her from trying to escape. And there's flames somewhere, threatening to envelop her, to destroy her. She begs, but it does no good.
She’s lost all control.
As the stake penetrates her heart, she closes her eyes, sees Katherine smirking at her. “Love. What a pity.”
***
Character/Pairing: Anna, Katherine, Anna/Jeremy, one-sided Anna/Ben
Summary: “Control is more important, Anna. Love is secondary. Always remember that.” Goes Slightly AU during "Fool Me Once". Written for this prompt at tvd_kink
Rating: R
Warning: underage sex
Word Count: 3,300
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Title comes from Whiskey Lullaby by Brad Paisley and Allison Kraus.
Her first few years as a vampire, Anna never drinks blood directly from a human. It isn’t her own decision to make, not really, her mother makes it for her. She receives temperate blood from a dull metal glass that is always slightly cool when placed to her lips. Anna doesn’t mind. The blood still tastes sweet on her tongue, she can still revel in the way the viscous fluid coats her throat. It still cuts her hunger.
And besides, she hasn’t known any different.
One night, while she sips some particularly sweet blood, dark red, boarding on black, Katherine saunters in and raises an eyebrow at her. Anna smiles back hesitantly. There is something about Katherine that screams to be admired and cringed at simultaneously.
“Still drinking from a cup, I see?” Katherine sits across from her, tucking one ankle behind the other like a true society lady. Her satin and lace dress is full and puffs up around her, shining faintly in the lantern's soft glow. Sometimes Anna wishes she could wear something like it, elegant and beautiful and effortless.
“Yes. That’s how Mother gives it to me.”
Katherine quirks one eyebrow and folds her hands. “You always do everything Pearl’s way, don’t you, Anna?” The question has a rhetorical taste, so Anna runs her finger around the glass’s rim, very aware of how hard and cold it is, how unlike the soft warmth of human flesh. “But you’re a big girl. Don’t you ever want to use those teeth of yours?”
Anna’s eyes drift down to her plain, white frock. Sometimes, before she eats, her gums alight and an ache penetrates her mouth so fully she feels as though she could saw through marble. Sometimes, after she does drink the blood, the ache persists. Running her tongue over her fangs, Anna looks back at Katherine’s dark, probing eyes. “I, I guess so.”
“Dear,” Katherine begins, her voice smooth and confident, an arousal flickering behind her eyes. “There’s nothing like sinking your teeth into a man.”
“A man?” Anna swears if her heart was still beating, it would have stopped now. She knows all about Katherine’s games with both the Salvatore brothers, has seen the longing reflected in their eyes, hears the lovesick tint in their words. At first, Anna romanticized Katherine’s tryst, but she can’t any longer.
What scares her most is the pulling in her gut, the burn in her teeth inviting her to do the same thing. To toy with humans, to play with their emotions and their shortcomings. To feed on something more than their blood.
Anna feels sick.
“Oh, yes.” Katherine waves her hand flippantly. “Women are fine, too, but I think you’ll find something...powerful about a man’s blood, his terror and desire.”
Anna locks eyes with Katherine, questions piling up in the back of her throat, answers she’s unwilling to listen to even if she’s dying to know. One question escapes: “Do you love him?”
The laughter that escapes Katherine’s throat is sharp and full and quiet. “Control is more important, Anna. Love is secondary. Always remember that.” She doesn’t bother to address which him Anna is asking about; it doesn’t matter either way. A beat. “Your mother’s back.”
Katherine stands up gracefully, her dress wrinkling around her legs, a soft swooshing noise reverberates through the cottage. Anna doesn’t listen to the conversation they’re having, even though she’s done so time and time again--knowing her mother would hate her if she ever found out.
Tonight Anna’s fangs have a deeper swell of fluid, a more poignant sharpness. She wonders if she’ll ever know the thrill of the hunt, the success of the capture. It’s not just Katherine, she notices the glory in her mother’s features after drinking. She wonders how skin feels under lips, how it’s saltiness contrasts the sweetness of blood.
She can’t ask her mother, she knows. She won’t. But still, the idea is manifesting itself in the back of her mind, growing like poison inside her.
***
When her mother is locked into the tomb, Anna doesn’t know what to do. She follows Katherine at first, unsure and timid and afraid--for the first time--of death. She has to survive, live long enough to save her mother, to fix what Katherine broke while thinking she was unstoppable, in control.
She has to wait. And she has to feed. Katherine makes it abundantly clear that she isn’t going to help with either. “Unless Pearl destroyed every instinct you have, you know how to hunt. Just find someone.”
Katherine spends her days traveling, going to North Caroline and Virgina and Connecticut. Anna isn’t sure if she's (they’re) trying to find a new place to settle, or someone for Katherine to play with, or something else entirely. But she knows Katherine hasn’t cried at all, and Anna cries every night. When darkness descends over whichever town they happen to be in, Katherine visits pubs, not caring that it’s unladylike. She propositions men, kisses them hard for a few seconds, pulls them into the dark and sucks.
Cold.
After a few days of hunger gnawing at her insides, Anna relents and attempts to find someone to eat, allowing Katherine to free her hair from her cap and bun. It’s the only advice Katherine offers, besides the whispered, “you’re a pretty girl. Use it.”
The dirt road running through the tiny town cakes her shoes and stains the bottom of her dress. She can hear the gentle thudding of sleeping bodies in houses, the cheers and shouts of men in the local bar, Katherine’s giggle melting through them. Anna fights the protruding of her fangs, the desire to barge into a house and drain the inhabitants dry. She’s never gone this long without feeding before, but she’s going to do this right.
She’s going to make her mother proud.
A few minutes later she comes across a young man, maybe twenty, sitting on his front porch, head in his hands. His sandy blond hair covers his dull green eyes. There’s something about his posture--huddled over, slumped shouldered, feet firmly planted on the gravel--that Anna finds comforting. “Hello,” she whispers, walking over, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
He looks up slowly, surprise coloring his eyes. “Oh, hello ma’am.”
“You look...distraught,” she comments, sitting down beside him. When he glances at her outfit, Anna finally decides it’s time to dress like Katherine. He nods minutely and looks over to the woods, his eyes unfocused.
“Is there anything I can do?” It’s suppose to sound seductive, but she hasn’t had much practice and Anna can practically hear her words clunk to the ground.
“No. Thank you.” He looks at her one more time before standing up. “I think I’m going to go in now.”
“Alright,” Anna says. But then her teeth throb and she reaches out, grabbing his wrist, turning him to her softly, sharply.
She uses compulsion. She feeds, erases his memory. Anna feels too full, disgusted.
She can’t find Katherine. She’s alone.
***
She learns her own way to hunt. It’s different than Katherine’s and she imagines it’s different than her mother’s. Unique. When she has to, she drains the dying, putting them out of their misery. Their blood always has a sour tinge to it, and it’s always too thin, too bright, too cold. She prefers to have someone fall in love with her. The real way.
It’s an unbelievably slow process, and it’s harder than Katherine makes it look--probably because Katherine never liked hard. She made things simple. Anna, though, she appreciates the pay-off. The look of shock when they find out who--what--she is. The debate that rages in their heads, the uptake in heartbeat. Ultimately deciding they want her to turn them. They just can’t live without her. They want forever.
Anna doesn’t, she wants the right now.
She learns to enjoy the slight tug of her fangs on skin as they break through. The contrast of salty and sweet is always slightly different, always good. The body presses against hers, deciding if it wants to pull her close or push her away. Anna doesn’t force and she doesn’t lie.
Eventually, though, after years of the same blood, after not turning him, he rebels and yells and threatens to leave. He won’t, she knows. So she erases his memory, running one long nail over his cheek and walking out herself.
There’s no one she wants to spend forever with.
***
As time passes, the more she just wants to get her mother out of the tomb. But she gets used to her freedom. Anna hopes it never ends, and thinks that it doesn’t have to. Her mother and freedom aren’t mutually exclusive ideas.
Somehow, Anna isn't sure her mother would see it that way.
***
The first time she turns a boy for a reason other than she needs him to do her dirty work, it’s 1927 and she’s wearing a brilliant, silvery flapper dress. Her hair is still long, curling past her chin and resting between her shoulder blades. Her heels click over the floor and her face is painted. She’s been with him for three years.
He loves her.
She loves him.
It’s oddly exhilarating and terrifying. But she wants him, forever. So when he finally asks, white shirt untucked from his pants, his tie between his fingers as he watches her carefully, eyes never leaving her as she paces in front of the bed. She nods, smiles, straddles him and cuts her wrist, offering him the blood. He drinks, his face turning into jubilation. Anna cracks his neck and brings him a dying woman.
She never thought she’d have this; she never thought she’d want this.
It’s good for a few years, but he seems to get bored. The girls he picks getting prettier and prettier. At first Anna can see her resemblance in them, and then she sees how they’re nothing like her at all. Blond, blue eyes, tall.
Katherine finds her, eyes sparkling. “Forever. How romantic.”
“What do you want?” Anna asks, annoyed. She’s not the same person she was in 1864. She doesn’t need Katherine’s approval--her wisdom--anymore. Anna's had to earn her own wisdom the complicated, messy way.
Katherine studies Anna, taps her finger against her glass and swirls some gin around her mouth before swallowing, leaving a faint lipstick print. “You’ve given him control. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I trust him,” Anna says simply, keeping her voice void of emotion. Katherine doesn’t deserve the satisfaction of knowing she’s hit a nerve. Anna’s still not used to the idea of forever, of how much power the concept and the man have over her emotions. “I love him.”
Katherine frowns. “I’m sorry.”
Less than two months later Anna finds him in bed with Katherine. He, at least, has the decency to look guilty. Katherine just smirks. “Love is a tricky thing.”
She’s never known hatred like this. The rage that pounds inside her, making her want to destroy everyone, everything, the world. Her hands clench into fists and she kicks the bed until it cracks; she crumbles the wood between her fingers. Anna slaps Katherine. Katherine smiles deprecatingly, winningly, and smooths Anna hair, whispering to her like she's a child, “it’s a lesson we all have to learn.”
Anna gets pleasure in staking him, watching the veins in his flesh hardened and contract. The pain and disbelief in his face makes her want to laugh. She doesn’t. There’s something poetic about giving him eternal life and taking it away. Being the one to create him and destroy him.
She recaptures her power.
***
Ben is too attached, Anna is aware of it. He tries to pretend he isn’t, that he doesn’t care what she does, that he’s only being loyal as a favor, as a condition. Acting tough won’t earn her respect or her affection. She doesn’t bother to tell him that though, he’ll be dead soon enough.
Jeremy worries him. Jeremy worries Anna, too. There’s something about Jeremy, the perpetually sad look coating his eyes, the way his smile always seem reluctant, the way his hair falls in front of his eyes when he looks down at her feet. Whenever she’s with him, her purpose becomes cloudy and gray. She has to struggle to focus.
She’s too attached.
She’s painfully aware of it when the sky is beginning to turn gray and she stands outside his house trying to sense if he’s there. He’s the only one home. Anna rings the bell, shifting her weight on her heels. For the first time in the last few weeks, she doesn’t have a plan.
“Anna, hey.” His face brightens and he pulls the door back further. “I thought we were meeting at the party?”
“I was just in the neighborhood.” It’s a lie, and they both know it. Anna smiles and walks in as he moves aside. “Surprised?”
“Yes.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks at her for a long time, like he can’t quite believe she’s even real. “You, uh, do you want to go upstairs?”
Anna hesitates, looking around the hallway, suddenly wishing his aunt were around somewhere. The thing is, she’s always known her limitations, when she’s about to lose control (Katherine was really onto something there, she’s learned). But when she looks back at his face, embarrassed and awkward and still hoping, she relents. “Lead the way.”
The room smells so much like him she tries to stop breathing in the air. She can hear his heart thudding deep in his chest, feel his eyes focusing on her as she plops down on his bed, crossing her legs. The air is warm and thick swirling around her. Jeremy leans against his door, shaking some hair out of his face.
“So,” Anna begins, positive she’ll end up regretting this, “how much of a teenage boy are you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His eyebrows scrunch together a little.
“It means,” Anna pauses, using her hands to gently push herself off the bed, “when are you going to kiss me?”
Jeremy’s face stretches into a smile, and Anna steps forward slowly, feeling the upturn on her own lips. She’s standing a few inches from him, can smell his breath when it escapes his lips. Leaning forward, standing on her toes, she kisses him. His lips are dry and his warmth and scent seem to be radiating through her entire body.
She presses against him, wanting to be closer, to feel her skin burning and her lungs full of air they can’t expel. She focuses on keeping herself in check, making sure veins won't pop through her skin, her teeth won't slice through his lips.
She feels Ben’s presence at the window, he’s pissed. Anna doesn’t care though, because Jeremy’s hands are threading through her hair and his nails are trailing against her scalp. The second kiss is different, like he’s not telling her everything, like there’s something he’s trying to forget.
Annie knows she should stop. But there’s something she’s not telling him, something she’s trying to forget. She runs her hands over his chest, bunches the fabric in her hands and pulls him to the bed, falling backwards, letting her knees bend effortlessly. His smell is intoxicating and she has to try too hard not to change--she’s glad she had the foresight to eat earlier.
As she arches her hips into him, he moves his head, placing sloppy, hard kisses down her jawline, her chin, her neck. He nibbles at the flesh there, soft bites followed by soft tongue. There’s a knot in her lower abdomen and she scrapes her nails over his back, needing something to grasp onto, needing more friction. She’s never been bitten before, but it’s making her entire body ache.
She feels Jeremy through his jeans and smiles, pulling his face back to hers, scrapping her own teeth over his lip, slipping her tongue inside his mouth, exploring and wanting and needing. Anna pulls his shirt over his head and flips him over, pulling her own tee-shirt off. His eyes are murky and dilated, his hair mused. She trails her hands over his chest, careful as she hovers over his neck, biting, keeping her fangs from taking control.
There’s so much friction as he moves against her, but not nearly enough. His hands trail over her bra before he unclasps it, letting the fabric fall somewhere to the left of the bed. His takes her nipple, bites it gently, swipes with his tongue. Anna groans.
She can feel Ben projecting anger and jealousy out the window. Anna realizes he’s watching her, watching them. She can feel his arousal piercing through the air, knows he’s going to give into it, his hand slipping under his boxers. He’ll regret this later, but right now Anna can’t really think about how she'll kick his ass. She can't think about anything but the way Jeremy’s hands have unbuttoned her jeans, the way the pads of his fingertips trail over the sensitive skin just below her bellybutton.
Shimmying out of her jeans, Jeremy rolls them over to do the same to his own. His breathing is ragged and everywhere it hits Anna’s skin she feels goosebumps forming. She flips them back over quickly, needing to be in control, to make sure nothing goes wrong. Her hand slips under his boxers and around him, her name pours from his lips in a low moan and she smirks to herself.
Her underwear is discarded quickly and he strokes her for a second, slipping one finger inside, rubbing her clit. Anna feels the knot inside her tightening. She slips off his boxers and places him inside her. There’s a push and a pull. Jeremy's bucking his hips at all the right times and all the wrong times, she can sense Ben pumping outside, how he wants to be Jeremy, how he’s so fucking jealous and so fucking turned on.
Anna blocks it out, blocks everything out. Jeremy, that’s all she can think. When he bites her shoulder a little too hard, a drop of blood dripping from her flesh, her entire body shudders and she’s pushed over the edge into a deep abyss.
It’s impossible to hold on anymore. She loses control.
***
When she gets outside, Anna wraps her hand around Ben’s neck and squeezes. “I swear to god, if you do anything like that again I will stake you myself.”
“You’re too good for him,” Ben breathes after her, yards behind as he tries to regain his strength.
“I’m too good for you,” Anna responds, not bothering to turn around. “I have to change and get ready, my mother’s waiting.”
She reminds herself of her purpose, of the one thing she sound be concentrating on. It's the only way she can stop thinking about Jeremy, about how she's never felt this way before--like she's flying but the wind's about to give out. She's going to fall. She wants to forget how she's scared out of her mind--scared of leaving him, of how her mother will react if she ever finds out, about how much she wishes she were human.
(She's wished a lot of things in the past, but she's never wished that until now.)
***
She dies for Jeremy. He’s the only thing she has left, the only thing she could die for.
She’s helpless, writhing in pain on the ground. Her head is buzzing loudly, piercing through any thoughts she tries to formulate, keeping her from trying to escape. And there's flames somewhere, threatening to envelop her, to destroy her. She begs, but it does no good.
She’s lost all control.
As the stake penetrates her heart, she closes her eyes, sees Katherine smirking at her. “Love. What a pity.”
***