51Caroline was sitting in the back of a limo – like, an actual limo, long and black and fancy and with a driver – sitting in a still-sort-of-shocked silence. Her phone buzzed again – another call from Tyler – and she hit the ignore button before turning it off and slipping it in her coat pocket.
Klaus was next to her, furiously tapping out an email on his phone, seeming to be studiously ignoring her.
The sulking blonde that was sitting next to Klaus at the basketball game was settled on the seat across from Caroline, arms crossed, a murderous sneer on her otherwise lovely features. She held a glass of champagne in one hand; somehow making her look even fiercer and even more angry. Caroline peeked back at Klaus, then to the blonde.
The awkwardness was palpable.
"I'm sorry," Caroline started, sitting forward and breaking the silence, causing Klaus to startle slightly (adorably was the word that briefly flitted through her mind, but she quickly shook that off). "Are you two married?" She turned to look at Klaus, who gazed back with a playful smirk dancing on his lips, and then to Rebekah, who somehow managed to look even more irritated. "Because I'm not into kinky crap like that."
Klaus laughed. An outright, belly-shaking howl that had Caroline crossing her arms and arching an eyebrow. She looked to Rebekah, who was staring at her with a horrified expression, for an answer while Klaus' laughter was dissolving into giggles.
"We most certainly are not married," Rebekah replied indignantly. "Though we might as well be for the way Brother Dearest here refuses to let me see other men," she added as she leaned back into her seat and pouted. "I still don't understand why I couldn't just stay with Galen," she shot at Klaus.
"Because, Sister, that would be inappropriate. A young woman of your status, alone at a basketball game. What would the good people at People Magazine think?" Klaus replied, teasingly lifting a hand to his cheek in a mocking gesture of concern.
"Brother?" Caroline asked hesitantly, feeling a small blush rise to her cheeks.
"Half-brother," Rebekah sniffed, re-crossing her arms, "I'm not taking full responsibility for him. Also," she tossed back bitingly, "I'm not sure how it would be inappropriate to leave with my boyfriend, who was on the court." She leaned forward to grab the champagne bottle and refill her glass.
Klaus rolled his eyes and turned to Caroline. "Yes, love. Rebekah is my sister." He smirked at her, "You have no reason to be jealous ." He reached across to swipe the champagne bottle and two glasses, ignoring Caroline's half-hearted indignation at being called jealous, and deftly filled each before handing one to her. "We were at the game to see Rebekah's most recent companion play." He settled back, crossing one leg and reaching an arm across the back of Caroline's seat. "Although, I must say I enjoyed it more than I thought I would have." He gave Caroline an appreciative onceover.
She lifted the champagne to her lips and downed it, avoiding leaning into Klaus' body. She sat with her legs and arms crossed, deeply regretting her decision to get in the car. She chanced a quick glance at Klaus to see him looking back at her, that infuriating smirk (which only grew when he caught her peeking at him) still in place. Caroline turned her head sharply and stared resolutely out the window.
Rebekah faked a gagging noise and lifted her hand to rap her knuckles on the partition of the limo. It lowered, and she called out an address for the driver to drop her off at. "This is disgusting," she muttered under her breath, "Just fuck her and get it over with."
"Rebekah," Klaus said sternly, looking down to see Caroline's face blanch as her head whipped around to look at the other blonde. He reached out to comfortingly squeeze Caroline's hand, but she quickly withdrew from him. "That was unnecessary."
Rebekah looked up at him through her lashes and pouted more. She opened her mouth to fire back, but mercifully, the car stopped and the door opened.
"Here you go, Miss Rebekah."
"We're not finished with this discussion," Klaus warned as Rebekah slid out of the car, flipping him off before taking the hand of the footman as she stood up. Caroline craned her neck to see out of the window; they were in front of one of the White Oak clubs.
"She seems… pleasant." Caroline muttered as the door closed with a soft snick. Klaus threw her a helpless look before shrugging and rolling his eyes.
"She's a spoiled socialite. We come from old English money and she's not used to having to compete for attention. Especially not mine," He offered as an explanation.
She glanced out the window again, watching a few drunk college students stumble by, then back at Klaus before grabbing her bag and motioning to the door.
"You know, thanks for getting me away from Tyler, but I think I should probably get going." She smiled apologetically and started to edge away from him.
"Wait," Klaus said, reaching for her hand. "What do you mean?" He motioned for the driver to roll up the partition.
Caroline shrank away nervously, almost regretting it when she saw the flash of hurt in Klaus' eyes, but her body was screaming for her to get out of the car. "I mean that I don't know you from Adam and that I really, really impulsively jumped in a car with a guy that I've never met before, but accidentally made out with in front of thousands of people." Caroline put her bag in her lap protectively, glancing up at him and biting her lip. "I'm not that kind of girl. I don't know what kind of man you are, and I don't like the statistical probability of where this is going to end up." She reached up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, noticing that Klaus' gaze was softening and a small smile was pulling at the corners of his lips. "I don't want to like, end up on the newest episode of 48 Hours or be the plotline for an episode of Criminal Minds. My parents would kill me."
"Wouldn't you already be dead, if that were true?"
"And that settles it." Caroline tried to tug her hand back, but he wouldn't let go. "It was nice to meet you," she said, trying to drop a hint.
Klaus snorted and looked down at their hands. He entwined their fingers together and gently pulled her back to him. "Look," he started, and Caroline sighed, but he interrupted what she was about to say. "Wait, let me get this out, and then make your decision, alright?" His eyes held hers, and she must have seen something worthwhile, because she slowly nodded.
"I promise I'm not a serial killer, okay? Or a serial rapist, or anything like that." He looked down at their hands and gently – oh, so gently – squeezed hers. "I'm not the nicest guy you'll ever meet, I will tell you that, but I'm not a bad guy. I won't ever lie to you." His eyes were earnest as he watched her process.
"You're beautiful. You caught my attention when you stepped on my foot as you shimmied past me to get to your seat, and you intrigued me." He stated simply, "I don't know why, but I want to find out. No one has ever caught my interest like that before." He paused again, searching for the right words because he needed her to listen.
"Please," another pause as he tried to show her how desperate he was. "Take a chance. Get to know me," he pleaded. "Ask me anything you want to know."
Caroline studied him, affected the tint of raw honesty in his words. She was no expert in psychology, she wasn't a criminal profiler (no matter how many of those television shows she liked to watch and no matter how many times she liked to imagine that she was). She still had a touch of that small-town naiveté, that gullibility that came from an innate belief that other people were good. It had put her in some sticky situations, that much was true, but if there was one thing, one singular thing that Caroline could do, it was connect.
She had a way of connecting with someone right off the bat. She could tell when they were lying, when they wanted something – she could get into their heart and mind and soul and read them like a book. She had an accurate, reliable gut instinct about people that almost never failed her, and right now, it was telling her to trust Klaus. It told her that yes, he probably was a little bit dangerous, but that there was something there to believe in. She looked back down at her hand, swallowed up in his bigger, warmer one, and tightened her fingers around his.
She looked up and he was drowning in the oceans of her blue eyes. He was captive in the depths as she whispered, "Please don't make me regret this."
"I won't," he answered, unwilling to look away. He pulled her against him, tucking her into his side as he pressed the intercom button and gave instructions to the driver.
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…
"You have not," Klaus laughed, putting his hands up in disbelief, "There is no way you've broken fifteen bones."
Caroline giggled and nodded emphatically, "Yes, I have. I never stopped moving when I was little, so my mom put me in like twenty bajillion clubs to use up all of my energy."
"But how does that equate?" Klaus laughed as he took another sip of his drink. It had been a long time
"Gymnastics, cheerleading, horseback riding, ice skating, Girl Scouts," Caroline started listing everything she was involved in, ticking each individual activity off on her fingers as she went through each. "In gymnastics, I landed wrong and broke a bone in my foot, then I fell off of the beam and broke my wrist." She was still giggling as she lifted her piña colada to her lips. She spoke around the straw as she continued. "I fell off of a horse and broke my arm, then a horse stepped on me and rebroke my foot,"
"Okay, okay, I believe you," Klaus lifted his hands in surrender. He signaled for the waiter to bring another round of drinks for them.
After dropping Rebekah off, he had directed Dean to take them to another of his clubs, one much more upscale and classy than most of his others. He had taken Caroline to his VIP room, sequestered behind soundproof walls and a one-way mirror that allowed them to see out into the club, but prevented others from seeing in. Waiters had swarmed them upon their arrival, taking their jackets and Caroline's bag while Klaus placed orders for a few of the club's appetizers and drinks.
Caroline tilted her head back and downed the rest of her drink, plucking the pineapple slice with her dainty fingers and biting down on it. A drop of juice slipped down over her chin, and Klaus followed it with his eyes, fighting the urge to trace it with his tongue. Caroline noticed his gaze and mischievously swiped the drop with the tip of her finger to lick it clean.
Klaus swallowed hard.
"Alright, so let me ask you this," he shook himself and leaned forward, reaching for a seafood-stuffed mushroom cap and popping it between his lips in an effort to distract himself, "You didn't participate in all of these clubs in inner-city New York, so where are you from?"
Caroline's eyes lit up as she launched into a story about her hometown, a small place in central Virginia called Mystic Falls. Klaus couldn't help but find himself enthralled in her story, surprising himself. In any other circumstance, he would have dismissed a woman that was talking this much.
"And how did you get here?" He followed up, desperately wanting to keep hearing her voice.
"Well, Tyler, really," she paused and scratched her head. "We dated all through high school, so it just sort of made sense for us to go to college together, I guess. I don't know, when you're seventeen, it makes sense." The waiter appeared and handed them their drinks, but Klaus still hadn't taken his eyes off of her. She thanked the waiter and continued. "He was pretty good at football, so when he got an offer from Columbia, he took it and told me to apply. I didn't get in though, but I applied to NYU's journalism major and got that. I had wanted to be an anchor on Good Morning America, but money ran out," she looked down, embarrassed to admit that to someone like Klaus, whose bank account was probably bigger than all of Mystic Falls' combined. "So I ended up leaving school and moving in with Tyler and getting a job as a PA for a fashion designer." She looked up, plastering on a perky smile as she continued. "When he graduated, Tyler got a job an assistant investment executive at Accola International."
"That sounds very important," Klaus replied, a mocking edge in his voice.
Caroline looked down at the drink in her hands. "I just left him there," she said in a small voice. "I left my boyfriend of nine years, who I've been dating since I was fifteen, in the lobby at a basketball game." She looked up with a distressed frown on her face.
Klaus started to panic. He didn't want to let go of Caroline. He wanted her to stay with him and talk to him, to go home with him and to make breakfast with him in the morning.
He stood and swung himself around to sit next to her. "Caroline," he hated the pleading note in his voice, but he couldn't stop it. "When was the last time that he told you he loved you?"
She paused, looked at the ground, and cocked her head as she thought. "I don't remember. Maybe on his graduation day. Two years ago."
Klaus pursed his lips, but didn't say what was on his mind. "When's the last time he took you out to a place that you wanted to go and made you feel special?"
Caroline shook her head.
"Mhmm." Klaus murmured. "When's the last time he made love to you like he meant it?"
Caroline's head whipped around and she shot him with a sharp look. "That's none of your business."
Klaus lifted his free hand in a placating gesture. "Tyler is a lot like me. We're both assholes. The kind that loves and leaves. Now," he added, raising one finger to quiet her argument as she pulled out from under his arm. "There are two main difference between Tyler and me." He pulled his arm free and turned to face her.
"The number one difference is that Tyler was always taught not to do that; it's not 'gentlemanly' or it's not 'proper,' whereas, my upbringing encouraged that." He looked at her with amusement. "If you think I'm bad, you should meet my brother, Kol." He paused to lick his lips before continuing, "But back to Tyler. He suppresses those urges to please everyone else, leaving him half-assing your relationship and not treating you like the queen that you are.
"The second difference is, Sweetheart, that I don't want to be that person anymore." He took her face in his hand and drew her eyes to his. "I've known you for four hours and I want to be a better man for you. But Tyler is just beginning to realize that he can be that person, so he's going to start reveling in it. It's that simple." He leaned back and took a swig of his drink, watching Caroline out of the corner of his eye. She looked upset.
"You can be angry all you want, Caroline," he added, his accented voice drawing out each syllable of her name in a way that sent those delicious shivers down her back again. "But I've seen it a hundred times. It never ends well for the other party." He faced her again and caught her gaze, searching her eyes and pleading for her to understand and see the truth. "You know, deep down, that I'm right, Caroline."
He watched with a trace of regret as a tear slipped out of the corner of her eye, but he wasn't sorry he'd told her the truth. Caroline was the kind of girl used to being told what she wanted to hear, but Klaus was the kind of man that was honest, even if it was brutal.
He reached out and caught the tear with his thumb, leaving his hand there for a moment before he dropped his drink on the table and brought the other hand up to cradle her face. He leaned in, smoothly, slowly pulling her in so that he could drop a tender kiss on her lips. His eyes were open; he watched her reaction, waiting with an anticipation that had his heart racing.
She pulled back and touched her lips with one finger, eyes flicking back and forth between his as she weighed his words.
"Please don't make me regret this," she whispered again, echoing her words from earlier in the limo.
"I won't," he replied, intending on keeping this promise.
She leaned in and pressed her lips to his.
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Part two is done! Let me know what you think. How far do you think I should continue this?