L.J. Smith

Stefan Salvatore looked exactly like a normal high school student.

He wasn’t.

He’d never be accepted completely, of course. A bitter smile curved his lips at the idea. He knew better than to hope for that. There would never be a place where he could belong completely, where he could truly be himself.

Evil will never find peace. It may triumph, but it will never find peace.

He was good-looking. There was no doubt about that. Not in the stunning, almost disturbing way that—that some people were, but in a healthy American way. Matt Honeycutt was all-American. His blond hair was cropped short for the football season, and his skin was sunburnt from working outdoors on his grandparents’ farm. His blue eyes were honest and straightforward.

He had heard every soft breath she took, felt her warmth radiating against his back, sensed each throb of her sweet pulse. And eventually, to his horror, he had found himself giving in to it. His tongue had brushed back and forth over his canine teeth, enjoying the pleasure-pain that was building there, encouraging it. He’d breathed her smell into his nostrils deliberately, and let the visions come to him, imagining it all. How soft her neck would be, and how his lips would meet it with equal softness at first, planting tiny kisses here, and here, until he reached the yielding hollow of her throat.

Even Bonnie and Meredith don’t realize how important he is to me. I’m afraid to tell them; I’m afraid they’ll think I’m crazy. At school I wear a mask of calm and control, but on the inside—well, every day it just gets worse.

“You only want everybody and everything revolving around Elena Gilbert,” he said bitterly.

She was beautiful in herself: slender, imperial, a thing made of silk and inner fire.

“Now, Elena, don’t be like that,” Meredith put in. “She isn’t trying to hurt you, she just thinks—”

“And I suppose you think so, too? Well, that’s fine. I’ll just go out and find myself some other things to move on to. Like some other best friends.” She left them both staring after her.

She was not the reincarnation of Katherine.