Clarrisa's POV

I bit my lip, and he surprised me when he pulled my bottom lip from under my teeth with his fingers, “don’t do that in front of me.”

Couldn’t I bite my lip in front of him anymore? It didn’t bother him in the past. Why did it bother him now?

He’s confusing me with his words and actions. I have no idea what it means anymore.

“So maybe I did get a small tattoo,” I mumble. “I don’t see why it’s such a big deal to you.”

I didn’t want to lie to him anymore. But at the same time, I was unwilling to tell him I’d got a tattoo of his name.

He swallows, “I thought we told each other everything"

“Why are you so upset about this?” I ask him. “Why does it bother you?”

I was not going to let this go. I wanted an answer to my question. I watch the frustration on his face as he tries to come to terms with what I’ve done.

“Because of all of the things that you do, no matter how small they are, it always affects me.” He finally answers me.

My lips part at his confession. I couldn’t believe he’d just admitted that to me. Was it true? Did everything I do really affect him so badly?

“How does it affect you?” I whisper as I search his eyes.

How does a tattoo affect him? It’s on my body, not his. Unless he already knew that the tattoo had his name on it. I quickly dispose of that thought. He doesn’t know. I’ll know when he does.

He takes a deep breath, “I love your skin just the way it is. You didn’t need to get a tattoo. It was already beautiful.”

I sighed; I had to explain to him that I didn’t get it just for the sake of getting one.

“That tattoo holds sentimental value to me,” I explain. “I didn’t get it because I wanted to see what it would look like. I got it because it actually means something to me. I got it because it helped me be closer to someone I know I’ll never get the chance to be that close with.”

His eyes narrow, “you got it because of someone?”

I pause and immediately realize my mistake.

I bite my lip; I’d said too much. I kept making the same mistakes over and over again.

What would he think of me if he assumed that I’d gotten the tattoo for some random guy that he’d never heard about before?

“Forget I said anything,” I tell him.

There was no way I would show him whose name

was on my ass. I knew I would cause more damage than good if I let him believe it was for a guy, but I had to do it.

I knew that one day soon when I thought it was the right time, I wouldn’t hesitate to show him. For now, I’ll let him believe what he wants to.

He suddenly laughs, and it surprises me. What was so funny? It didn’t seem like a genuine laugh, more like a sarcastic one.

I watch as he runs a hand through his hair and steps back from me.

“Clearly, I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.” He whispers more to himself than me.

“Damon!” I try to stop him.

I’d somehow hurt him with my words.

“It’s okay, Clarissa.” He stops me. “I’m not upset with you. Never with you. I wasn’t upset with you earlier either; I lied.”

I watch as he walks out of the room and closes my door behind him. He doesn’t even wait for me to respond. He may not be upset with me, but he did seem to be hurt. I stood completely still for at least ten minutes, thinking of how to make this better.

My relationship with Damon has never been this strained before. My desperation to get him

to see me how I saw him was beginning to create problems between us.

I had to make things right.

After showering and finally changing from the bikini into jeans and a top, I decided it was time to leave my room for at least an hour. If I kept locking myself inside here, my family would know that something was wrong.

I didn’t want them to start showing interest in my life and the crazy things I’ve been up to lately.

Besides, I wanted to speak with Damon again. I didn’t like where our last conversation had ended.

Everyone was having dinner when I got downstairs.

“Finally, Clarissa,” Atticus says as he spots me. “I’ve heard you had a very exciting day today. It’s good you came down for dinner after locking yourself in the room for so long.”

Did he hear everything? Did he find out that I kissed Damon while playing a game?

I don’t think he did; his reaction would have been worse than this.

“I’ll rather not talk about today,” Griffin says; he was still traumatized from seeing me kiss Damon.

“That’s a good idea,” Autumn says with a fucking  smile. “Let’s not talk about today.”

Atticus quirks a brow at her, and I can tell he wasn’t finished speaking to her about today. He may be quiet now, but they would have more to talk about later.

Damon walks into the room and sees me. His eyes lingered on me for a second before he took the seat furthest away from me. It hurt. Damon always sits next to me at the dining table.

“Did you two get into some kind of a fight?” Atticus asks. He was the first to notice what Damon had just done.

“No.” Damon answers him before I can say anything.

I force a smile on my face, “of course not.”

Griffin quirks a brow as he looks between the two of us. I know he’s wondering if the kiss had pushed us further apart.

“What exactly happened today?” Dante asks as he looks at the four of us.

“Nothing for us to speak about,” Autumn says. “Let’s just have a nice dinner.”

Grandfather walks in just then. It was good to see him after he’d left us for a while.

“Why do you kids look so unhappy?” He asks. “Especially you, my Clarissa.”

He, as well as my adoptive grandmother, were always very loving toward me. They took care of me like I was their biological grandchild.

I take a bite of the fried chicken in front of me and chew quickly. I couldn’t hide my nervousness. I was scared that everyone would find out what I did today.

“Damon and she seems to be fighting. And from the looks of it, this fight might be a serious one.” He informs him.

Grandfather sighs and takes Damon’s spot next to me.

“Fights are normal between siblings. They will get over this.” He says.

I almost choked on my food after hearing him call us siblings. Every time someone referred to us as that, I felt sick to my stomach.

Did Damon ever feel the same way I did, or was he more upset that I had crossed a line today?

The rest of the dinner passes very quietly. No one says a word after that. Everyone except grandfather. He kept talking about the past and how different things were when our grandmother was around. He loved talking about her, and we loved listening to his stories.

Damon doesn’t even finish his dinner when he gets up and leaves without saying a word to anyone. I bite my lip and slowly let go of it as I remember what he said earlier.

I wanted to follow him, but not when everyone stared at me, waiting for my reaction. I force a smile one more time and wait at least five minutes before I excuse myself.

I went to his room, but to my disappointment, he wasn’t there. I ran back down the stairs and walked outside. His jeep was still in the garage. Where was he?

“Do you know where Damon went?” I ask one of the guards.

He nods, “he went for a run, miss.”

I thanked him and ran out of the gates, searching the roadside for him. He wasn’t there either. He must have gone into the forest.

I needed to speak to him. I had to see Damon.

I knew they didn’t like me going into the forest without someone with me, but I wasn’t technically alone if Damon was ahead of me.

I didn’t waste a second thought as I followed his scent.

He couldn’t have gotten far. I kept running for a few minutes before finally stopping when I saw three vampires in front of me.

“What is a pretty girl like you doing in the woods alone?” One of them asks.

“I’m looking for someone,” I answer them.

“I assume we’re the ones you’re looking for.” Another one comments.

I press my lips tightly together and glare at him. “I don’t want any trouble. It was nice talking to you, but I have somewhere that I need to be right now.”

I make an attempt to go around them, but one of them grabs my shoulder.

I sigh, “are you going to make this difficult? My family is not far from here. Maybe you’ve heard of them. The Fawns. If you’re smart, you’ll step away from me, and no one will get hurt.”

“The Fawns?” They laugh. “If you were one of them, you wouldn’t be out in these dangerous woods by yourself.”

“I’m Clarissa Fawn.” I introduce myself.

One of the vampires takes a few steps closer to me,

“you mean the adopted girl? No wonder you’re out here by yourself. They don’t actually care about you. You’re not their real child.”

I don’t even flinch at his words because I know it’s not true.

“Can you let me go?” I demand from the vampire, that still has his hand on my shoulder.

“I will.” He answers me. “Right after, we have a little fun together.”

I felt my nails grow sharper, and before he has time to prepare, I scratch his face, making sure to get a good piece of his eye.

He screams from the pain, and I use that opportunity to grab him by his neck and squeeze hard.

The other vampires move swiftly around me. One grabs my hair, and the other bites down on my shoulder. I scream as I felt his teeth pierce my skin.

A piercing howl covered my scream, and before I knew it, Damon’s wolf was on top of us. It takes him seconds, few seconds to kill the vampires in front of me.

I’m left with a lot of blood on my body and a bite wound on my shoulder.

I’m suddenly hit with a feeling of dizziness. Damon catches me; I hadn’t even realized he’d shifted back to his human form.

“He poisoned you,” Damon growls as he examines my shoulder.

“Clarissa?” He calls my name, and I can hear the panic in his voice.

I try my best not to cry in front of him. I didn’t want him to know how much it hurt. But it did. It was the first time I’d been bitten by a vampire, and it was just as horrible as everyone had described to me.

“I’m going to have to suck the venom out of your body Clarissa.” He tells me gently as he cradles me in his arms.

I gasped when his lips touched my skin without warning. I tried to grab his hair with one hand as he continued to suck the venom out of my body. He stops and spits it onto the ground. I try to stay awake. It wasn’t good to fall unconscious after a vampire venoms you.

Besides, I know this was the wrong time to have my inappropriate thoughts, but I loved the feeling of Damon’s mouth on my body. I wanted to be awake to remember this.

“I’m happy I got bitten by the vampire,” I whisper through the pain.

Damon paused for a second on my shoulder but soon continued removing as much of the venom as he could.

I turned my face slightly to the side of me so I could look at him while he was saving me yet again.

He’s saved me so many ways, and he doesn’t even realize it yet.

He stops, and I can’t hide the disappointment that I feel.

“We need to get you home. A doctor needs to see you and ensure the poison is out.” He informs me.

“No.” I stop him. “I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here with you.”

He gazes down at me in his arms, and it’s only then that I realize he’s completely naked beneath me. If I weren’t still so dizzy from the vampire’s bite, I would have been losing my mind all now.

“Clarissa.” He says in the calmest way possible. “I can’t stay here with you and not have a doctor take a look at you. You can barely open your eyes.”

I fought against the pain in my body and forcing myself to shift slightly to wrap my arms around his neck. My face is pressed against his chest as I listen to the pounding of his heart.

“I’m fine. You saved me. You got the poison out of my body.” I promise him. “I don’t need to see a doctor.”

“You are not fine.” He growls.

I cry out suddenly from a sharp pain in my arm.

“What’s wrong?” Damon asks as he tries to help me.

The last time I felt something like this was the same day the evil witch had tried to kill me in front of my family.

“I don’t know,” I confess. “My arm is hurting.”

He runs his hands over it, and just like that, the pain disappears. It’s almost like my body responded to his touch.

“How did you do that?” I ask in shock.

“Do what?” He asks.

“Stop the pain,” I explain.

Suddenly the bodies of the vampires next to us go up into flames. My eyes widen at the sight in front of me.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “Did you set them on fire?”

“No.” He answers me in amazement. “Something crazy is happening right now.”

He picked me up into his arms, and I held onto him as he walked with me through the forest.

“I told you I didn’t want to leave yet,” I complain.

“And I told you that we need to get you home. Quickly. Besides, I don’t know what the hell just happened. We need to get out of this forest.” He tells me.

“Damon,” I whisper. “I want to stay here. With you.”

He closes his eyes for a second as he stops walking.

“Why? Why do you want to stay here with me instead of letting a doctor take a look at your shoulder, Clarissa?”

“Because I need to make things better between us,” I whisper. “You’re upset with me. Or you’re upset about our situation. I don’t know what’s bothering you, but I want to fix it. I can’t stand us being so distant from each other. I’m not used to it.”

He takes a deep breath and starts to walk again.

“Damon!” I snap and wince as my head immediately starts to hurt from shouting.

He stops walking again. “We can talk about this after when you’re better. I want to make sure that you’re out of any danger Clarissa. You know how dangerous a vampire’s bite can be. You’re lucky he didn’t try to turn you into one of them. We must ensure that the poison has left your body and can’t hurt you anymore.”

I was tired of this. He wasn’t listening to me. I was trying to improve things between us but apparently, Damon was okay with how bad things had gotten between us recently.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. The dizziness was slowly fading away and I knew I could walk on my own now. I didn’t need him to carry me anymore.

If he didn’t want to listen to me, I wouldn’t listen to him either. I would make things very difficult for

him.

“Put me down.” I snap.

“No.”

“Put me down, Damon.”

His hands tighten around me. “I’m not letting you go, not until I get you home.”

“If you don’t let me go, I will scream,” I warn him.

“Clarissa.” He warns. “Why are you being so difficult? I’m trying to protect you.”

“If don’t let me go, I will do even worse than scream since that doesn’t seem to scare you at all,” I warn him.

He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, and maybe I have lost my mind.

“What do you think will be worse than screaming?” He asks, suddenly amused. “Are you planning on hitting me?”

I narrow my eyes. “No. I’m planning on kissing you if you don’t let me go. You know, as I did in the game.”

He freezes, and I can see the panic immediately begin to sink into his eyes.

He doesn’t let go of me like I expected him to do, but he does look more alert now.

“You wouldn’t do something that crazy.”

“As you can see, I have my strength again. I will do it if you continue to go against my wishes.” I warn him for the last time.

Damon sighs and resumes walking with me still in his arms. I couldn’t believe him. He didn’t think I had it in me to follow through with my threat.

I’ll show him!

I grab his hair and pull him down to meet my mouth halfway. His mouth opens in shock at my kiss, and I use that opportunity to thrust my tongue between his lips.

Damon stayed completely still against my lips like he’d done earlier at the game until he realized he had no choice but to kiss me back.

“Clarissa.” He growls against my lips. “Stop this.”

I broke the kiss long enough to whisper, “I’ll stop it when you let me go.”

When he didn’t let me go, I wrapped my arms around his neck and deepened the kiss.

He lets me kiss him, and I’m surprised he’s letting me go this far. I wrapped my legs around his waist and buried my hands in his hair. I could feel the hunger inside of me intensify. The more I kissed him, the more I wanted even more of him.

“Clarissa.” He growls.

I bite down on his bottom lip hard and run my tongue over it. Damon shivers under my touch, and I’m unsure if I’m finally getting a reaction out of him.

Maybe I imagined it.

He grabs my hair and pulls my face away from his. His breathing is loud enough to hear as he glares at me with dark eyes.

“Do you know how fucking wrong this is, Clarissa? This isn’t some fucking game. You’re playing with our lives.”

“I warned you.” I remind him. “You’re the one that wasn’t listening to me.”

“That’s because I didn’t think you would do something like that!” He exclaimed.

“If you don’t let me go, it will only worsen.” I threaten him.

He glared at me, and his hands slowly let go of me, but my arms were still wrapped around his neck. I attempted to climb down from him when I felt something hard pressed against my ass.

My eyes widen as I peer up at him.

He doesn’t even look surprised. His glare tells me that I am the culprit.

I couldn’t believe it. Damon was aroused, very aroused. And this time, I knew it was because of me. I was sure of it.

I’m tempted to look down at it. I mean, he was still naked, and I could feel it more now that he didn’t have any clothes on. It was warm, very warm.

“Are you not climbing down from me?” He asks. “I’m no longer holding onto you.”

I clear my throat, “Damon. . .I can feel—”

He growls and pulls me off his body. I fell flat on the ground. I lift my head, and I can finally see it. He’s long, hard, and pulsing for me. I don’t think I’ve ever stared at something the way I was staring now. I know I’m making a fool of myself, but I don’t

know how to look away.

“Ah fuck.” Damon growls as he turns away from me.

He pushes his head back and stares at the sky. I’m not sure what he’s trying to do, but maybe he’s trying to get it back to its normal size.

“There’s a bag with clothes on one of the trees nearby.” He tells me. “I’m going to get dressed. Don’t go anywhere.”

I knew what tree he was speaking about. This part of the forest often had clothes in bags for us. Plenty of clothes were provided by our family for situations just like this one.

My cheeks are burning as I watch him leave. Even his ass was a sight to see. When the hell had my mind turned to this inappropriate monster? All I could think about was what his body could do to mine, especially after what I’d just seen. I’ve always imagined what it would look like, but I didn’t have to imagine anymore.

I didn’t move from my spot, not after what had just happened. I’m not sure what this means for Damon and me. Things kept getting crazier by the second, and I wasn’t sure how to keep track of everything.

I can’t look at Damon when he walks over to me, fully clothed. But somehow, I could do it when he was naked in front of me. I didn’t understand myself at times.

Damon sighs, “I think you understand that this, just like this kiss isn’t something I’ll like to speak about again.”

I finally look at him, but it’s to glare at him with anger.

He runs a hand down his face. “And now you’re angry again. I don’t know what the hell you want from me, Clarissa, but this is so unlike you.”

I ignored the hand that he was offering as I finally picked myself off the ground. I didn’t bother listening to anything else he had to say to me as I walked out of the forest.

Why was he so clueless? Couldn’t he tell by my actions that I wanted him? Why was he

constantly pushing me away?

Anya's POV

Being a good girl was not working in my favor. I was trying to play nice to fool the others, but somehow Clarissa still seemed to be getting closer to Damon.

If I didn’t act fast, I would lose Damon the same way that I’d lost Atticus.

I didn’t want to bring up marriage until I thought it was a perfect time, but I realize now that I don’t have much time left.

This meant that I had no choice but to let go of Dante. They wouldn’t allow me to marry Damon unless I were sure that he was the one I wanted.

If I had done this since the In the beginning, I would have never lost Atticus. I took too long to choose him because of my mother.

This time, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes. My mother was no longer here, and I was the one left to make the hard decisions. I can only hope that this time my plans will work.

“You’re finally home.” Willow, my younger sister, says as I walk into the living room.

She looks lonely as she wrinkles her nose and closes the book she is reading.

“I am,” I say.

“Where did you go?” She asks me. “It gets lonely here now that mother is no longer

around.”

I close my eyes as I felt instant heartache at her words. I still hadn’t gotten over my mother’s death. The wounds in my heart were still fresh.

“I was out with a friend,” I answer her.

It wasn’t exactly a lie. I couldn’t tell her that I was

planning on getting married or even that I was in a relationship with two brothers. She wouldn’t be able to understand anything.

“When are you going to introduce me to your friends?” She asks me.

It wasn’t the first time she’d asked me this question.

“Very soon.” I lie.

I’ve kept the truth about my family from the Fawns for obvious reasons. I couldn’t introduce her to them now. Willow wasn’t aware of what mother and I had done.

And if it were up to me, she would never find out. It was my duty to protect my sister from the things we’d done. She didn’t have to get tied up in all of this, it’s what my mother would have wanted; for me to keep her out of this.

“I can’t wait.” She tells me with a bright smile.

Willow was only sixteen; she was turning

seventeen in a few months. I didn’t want to get her involved in my mess. I wanted to protect her as our mother protected her in the past before she died and left us both.

I took a seat on the couch next to her, and she placed her head on my legs. I gently squeezed her head as I thought about ways to convince Damon to marry me. Once I convinced him, everything would work in my favor. Everything.