Chapter Text
Bonnie feels her mouth pull into a faint frown, her fingers twitching in her lap as she tries to breathe around the restlessness humming beneath her skin.
Expression is different.
It’s wild in a way the rest of her magic never was, quick to rise, quicker to spread, with none of the familiar resistance.
It's nothing like her old spirit magic, and nothing like her psychic magic, either.
Those had rules, and even when they frightened her, there was still a sense of structure to them, a feeling that she was borrowing from something older with laws of its own.
But expression answers to no one but her, and that's what makes it so dangerous.
It doesn’t push back; it's just an opening that keeps opening, until a witch is foolish enough to mistake access for safety.
“Perfect, darling. Now—angle your hands a bit. No, not so rigid. You’re not bracing for a crash.”
Kol’s voice cuts through her thoughts like a warm jolt, sharp enough to pull her back without breaking the thread of magic winding through her.
Bonnie’s eyes flutter open, landing on him where he sits across from her on the bed in one of the rooms at the Salvatore house.
His attention is fixed wholly on her, and there’s amusement in his face, naturally, and beneath that, a steadier patience worn in his own crooked way.
He shifts closer, one knee sinking into the mattress, and reaches for her hands.
“Relax,” he murmurs, lower now. “Expression has no use for timidity and it despises being strangled.”
His fingers slide beneath her wrists first, lifting them just slightly and turning them until her palms face higher. Then he presses lightly along the heel of one hand, spreading her fingers with slow precision.
Thumb here. Ring finger there. A small adjustment to the angle of her left wrist. Another to her right.
His knuckles glide against her skin as he arranges her like he’s tuning an instrument.
“There,” he eventually says, his gaze dropping to her hands. “You keep trying to hold it in one place. Stop that. Let it move. Guide it, if you must, but don’t clutch at it like a miser counting coins.”
Bonnie almost rolls her eyes at that, but then his fingertip traces the center of her palm, and every thought in her head breaks apart.
A startled gasp slips from her as the magic surges where they touch, racing up her arm in a flood of sensation.
It feels like blood rushing back into a limb gone numb, painful for half a second as every nerve wakes at once in a bright riot.
It's like pins and needles.
Like something ravenous stretching awake beneath her skin.
“Whoa.”
Kol’s mouth curves.
He keeps one finger on her right hand, tracing a lazy path down the center of her palm to her wrist.
He lingers there for a moment, two fingers resting over her pulse as though he's measuring it.
Though with Kol, it could just as easily be theatre. Maybe even both.
“See?” he chirps, leaning back on his hands as the mattress dips beneath his weight. “Much better. You were fighting it before.”
Bonnie closes her hand into a fist, flexes once, then lets it fall back to her lap. “It feels so different,” she mutters, brows knitting.
Every time she uses expression, it still feels like the first time all over again.
It yields so easily that it almost feels thoughtless.
It's freedom.
The dizzying certainty that if she wants something badly enough, the magic will meet her there and then urges her to go even further.
It's a manifestation of her will...it's ALL the magics...
A little more, a little harder. Why stop now?
Power becomes easiest to worship when it arrives without resistance.
When there are no immediate consequences, no hand slapping her wrist, or any voices telling her it's enough.
It makes the limitlessness feel natural.
It makes the voice of greed sound wise.
Yet even with that knowledge curling cold and sensible at the back of her mind, Bonnie can’t deny how much she loves using it.
And maybe that’s what unsettles her most.
Very little scares her anymore. Not after all the hours she and Kol have spent pushing at the edges of what she can do.
She learns every new trick with dangerous ease, and with every success, she comes a little closer to understanding how someone could lose themselves inside this kind of power.
“How so?”
Kol draws her gaze back to him, and she catches him watching her with that clear, unreadable interest of his.
Bonnie wets her lips, trying to find words for something that she's never really had to express.
She doesn’t usually talk about her issues with magic like this.
Not with Caroline, not with Elena, not with anyone.
But Kol is different.
Maybe because he understands magic with the ease of someone who has spent centuries around it, studying it, provoking it, surviving it.
Maybe because he’s never been one to flinch from the uglier parts of power.
So Bonnie shrugs, leaning back on her arms as the mattress dips under her weight.
“I dunno,” she says at last, making a face at how weak it sounds the moment it leaves her mouth. “It feels...darker. More swallowing.”
Kol lets out a soft snort. “That’s because it’s meant to feel that way, darling.”
He rolls his neck once, lazy and loose, then flicks a dismissive hand through the air as though her discomfort is hardly worth wringing his hands over.
“Spirit magic is all negotiation—nature, balance, consequence, permission. Expression is none of those dreary little things.” He tips his head, eyes gleaming.
“It simply is, you understand? A manifestation of your will. A void, an appetite, an open mouth. You pull from it what you require, and you leave what you don't.”
His voice stays easy, but there’s nothing careless in the way he watches her.
“And that,” he adds, leaning forward and planting his palms face-down on the bed between them, “Is precisely what I’m teaching you to do.”
Bonnie’s brow pinches at his words. “Leave behind the magic I don’t need?” There’s confusion in her words, yes, but curiosity too.
Either way...Kol seems pleased.
He reaches for her hands again and laces their fingers together before tugging her gently toward him.
The move is smooth and intimate without quite being brazen, but with Kol, that line is always blurred on purpose.
“There's only way your magic will ever override you again,” he lectures, voice dropping into something more intent.
"And that's if you become too greedy.”
Bonnie’s gaze lifts to his.
“And not because it gives a damn about morality,” he continues, thumb brushing once against her knuckles.
“Magic has no interest in sermons. But greed...”—his mouth curves—“Greed is useful. It widens the door. And expression will keep feeding that hunger until you’re drawing more than you can contain.”
He locks eyes with hers, his gaze wicked and knowing. “Then, sweetheart, you'll just simply explode.”
Explode?
The word lodges somewhere deep beneath Bonnie’s ribs.
She turns inward again, toward the magic already moving through her, and the moment she does, it answers almost immediately
It threads through their joined hands first, dark and liquid-slick, then climbs her arms in long, slow currents.
But passively channeling her expression is never passive for long.
It starts as a hum beneath her skin, a low vibration in her bones, then spreads until her body feels less like flesh and more like a vessel holding too much power.
It's seduction.
It's cruelty.
It's freedom.
It feels like standing at the edge of something bottomless and feeling no fear at the idea of potentially plummeting inside.
Her eyes drift shut, and the bedroom shifts with her.
The lamp on the nightstand flickers as the curtains at the window stir despite the still air, and a framed photograph on the dresser gives a sharp little rattle.
“Call it back.”
Kol’s voice slices through the swell of her descent, direct and impossible to mistake for anything but a command.
Bonnie’s eyes fly open, and she reins everything in at once.
The pressure breaks and the lamp steadies, the curtains falling still as the picture frame quiets against the wood with one final, tiny knock.
“Sorry,” she murmurs after a beat, disentangling their fingers and attempting to put some space between them.
It isn’t much.
But that's because there isn’t much room to work with in the first place, not on a bed this size, but she shifts anyway, putting distance where she can.
Kol’s eyes narrow for the briefest moment, but then the look is gone as quickly as it came, smoothed over by that familiar, lazy charm of his.
“No bother,” he drawls. “It’s rather thrilling teaching you all of this. Then again...” His grin tilts, pleased and bright. “Teaching anyone magic after a century of being deprived of it does wonders for my mood.”
He says it lightly, almost airily, but Bonnie hears what he isn't saying.
She always does.
And that's because they’ve spoken about it before. About what it cost him to lose magic when his mother turned him and his siblings.
About the particular cruelty of having something so essential to his being ripped away from him and leaving a wound that's never truly closed.
Kol makes a joke of most things, but never quite well enough to hide how deeply that loss is still carved into him.
His connection to witches has always run hand in hand with that grief.
Maybe that’s part of why they fit together so strangely well.
He’s drawn to power that can still be shaped, and she’s drawn to someone who isn't afraid to push the limits of what can be considered possible.
Bonnie offers him a small smile, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Yeah...you’ve helped a lot.”
For a second, his grin loses some of its bite as it softens, not enough to make him seem gentle exactly, but enough to make him look kinder.
A quiet sigh leaves him as he studies her.
“You’re welcome, darling,” he eventually answers. “It’s the very least I could do after you helped prevent the world from becoming an absolute hellscape. Gratitude suits me beautifully, don’t you think?”
Bonnie huffs a laugh before the room goes quiet, not an awkward, strained quiet, but something easier than that.
Comfortable.
She lets the silence settle as she makes certain her magic has truly gone still, her gaze dropping once more to her hands while her thoughts turn inward.
She feels like something's wrong with her.
The thought startles her the moment it rises cleanly to the surface, no longer half-buried beneath distraction or denial.
It makes her stomach tighten.
Still, she can’t quite argue with it.
Something does feel wrong with her.
Her magic is what’s wrong with her.
Bonnie doesn’t remember feeling this way when spirit magic was the thing she knew best.
Back then, everything had felt cleaner, even when it was difficult.
Harder, yes, painful, always, but clean. Understandable.
Expression...expression croons to her with a voice so lovely and seductive...making it impossible not to just give in.
It's like a siren calling across black water to something already half-willing to drown, and there’s a darker sort of wanting tangled up in it, not only in what the magic can do, but in what it seems to wake inside her.
And not merely in the moral sense.
No.
Bonnie’s gaze slips, almost against her will, to where Kol’s hands still rest on the bed.
It’s ridiculous, maybe, to fixate on his hands, but she does.
And there’s something unfairly distracting about his...with his long, elegant fingers, the faint blue of veins still visible beneath his pale skin.
Whether he’s gesturing, touching, mocking, or teaching, his hands always seem to know exactly what they’re doing.
Her eyes trace the shape of them, and the thoughts inside her head begin to match the direction.
What would those hands feel like wrapped around her wrists?
Her breath catches.
What would those hands feel like digging into her hips?
What would they feel like wrapped around her throat?
What would they—
Kol’s fingers flex lightly against the mattress, and Bonnie blinks hard, jerking back as if he’s somehow caught her in the act of thinking it.
Her lips part, heat rushing into her face so quickly it almost stings.
Jesus.
That’s been happening far too often lately.
Catching herself on thoughts she shouldn’t be having, about people she never used to look at twice.
It's way too raw and far removed from who she thinks she is.
And yet every impulse feels turned up, every passing thought suddenly capable of digging its claws into her self-control and pulling taut.
Expression.
It’s a flimsy excuse, and she knows it’s a flimsy excuse, but she clings to the explanation anyway, desperate for something to pin this on besides herself.
“What are you thinking about?”
Kol’s voice slides through her spiraling thoughts, and Bonnie startles again, her gaze snapping to his.
She’s certain whatever shows on her face gives her away at once—guilt, embarrassment, the whole humiliating mess of it—no matter how quickly she tries to school it into something neutral.
“I...” She clears her throat. “Lots of things.”
Brilliant.
Good one, Bennett.
She folds her arms over her middle and looks away, warmth crawling up her neck and prickling down her arms, as the tip of her nose twitches with mortification.
“Name one.”
His tone is challenging in that now-familiar way of his, playful and needling,
Bonnie glances back at him, trying to decide what’s safe to say and what would be absolute social suicide.
How does she even begin to explain this?
'Oh, nothing major. Just that I’m worried my magic might be rewiring my brain, and also I keep having deranged sex thoughts like some sort of perverted lunatic!'
“Does expression...” she starts, then falters, trying to force the thought into something that sounds less insane than it feels.
“Does it make you have certain...thoughts?”
Kol squints at her as if offended by the inefficiency of her wording.
“Thoughts?” he repeats. “What a marvelously useless way to describe that to me. What sort of thoughts?”
Bonnie drops her gaze again, dragging her fingertip over the comforter in some mindless little pattern.
“Ones that aren’t exactly...normal.”
Kol snorts. “How wonderfully vague.”
“It’s hard to explain, all right!"
“Yes, I gathered.” He shifts, one brow arching. “Still, I should hope a Bennett witch can manage better than 'not exactly normal.'"
Despite herself, Bonnie lets out a breath that nearly turns into a laugh, but the embarrassment wins out before her amusement can fully blossom.
So instead she groans and flops backward onto the bed, covering her face with both hands as though darkness might spare her from this conversation entirely.
“They’re bad thoughts.”
She hears the mattress shift as Kol moves somewhere near her feet.
“Mm-hm.”
There’s just enough skepticism in the sound to make her want to throw a pillow at him.
But instead she swallows and adds quieter, “They're dark ones.”
The bed dips again, this time, closer.
Weight settles on either side of her head, and a shadow falls across her body before she even lowers her hands.
Now the suggestion of him is suddenly everywhere, the awareness of his body hovering above hers without quite touching.
Bonnie peeks through her fingers in time to catch his smirk.
“Dark ones?” he murmurs. “How scandalous. Should I fetch a priest? Or are we beyond salvation?”
She rolls her eyes and drops her hands from her face. “Kol.”
“What?” He sounds far too pleased with himself.
“You present me with cryptic declarations and expect me to not make fun of them? I’m many things, sweetheart, but a saint has never been one of them.”
His eyes search hers, bright with glee, but there’s something else beneath it now...suspicion maybe.
“I can’t help you if you insist on dressing up your feelings in riddles,” he continues, his voice playful but not unkind.
As he adjusts his weight, his knee presses into the space between her legs just enough to make her acutely aware of the fact that he’s there.
“Speak plainly, love. Give it to me straight.”
For a moment, Bonnie’s mind goes completely, terrifyingly blank.
She just stares up at him, and when her gaze betrays her by dropping to his waist for the briefest second, she hauls it back to his face through sheer force of will and a desperate need not to humiliate herself any further.
“It’s just...” Her throat works. “It’s an energy. Sometimes when I use it, I feel...”
She trails off, one knee bending slowly, almost unconsciously, drawing her leg in and narrowing the space between them without quite meaning to.
“I feel like there’s this part of me that sort of...splits away from everything else. And then there’s this other...” She grimaces. “Person.”
Because Bonnie with expression doesn’t feel like the same Bonnie who existed before it.
That Bonnie had certainty to her.
She had fear, and anger, and grief enough to choke on, but there was still a center she could point to when she needed to remind herself where she stood.
What she believed in.
Even when she made ugly choices, they still felt like her choices.
But now she somehow feels like a stranger to that old part of herself.
As if something in her loosens every time she reaches for her new magic, something that lets desire slip its leash and wander where it likes.
It's a version of herself with fewer brakes, fewer hesitations, and fewer sacred lines.
And it unsettles her just how seductive this new part of her can be.
“This other person,” she continues more quietly, "Wants things I wouldn’t normally want.”
Kol's gaze drifts to the side of her throat, then lower to the thin fabric of her shirt, and Bonnie becomes absurdly aware of how little that shirt is doing for her at the moment.
“How so?”
He asks it without immediately looking at her face, and the air between them feels warmer than it was before.
She parts her lips to answer, already hating the explanation she was about to give, so she switches direction halfway through before she can make herself look stupid.
“I don’t know. When I was using spirit magic, I felt like I had a stronger sense of myself. Ethically, I mean. As a witch.”
She tips her head back, her eyes finding the ceiling as though it might preserve what remains of her dignity.
“I knew where my lines were. I knew which ones I could approach and which ones I couldn’t. And if I pushed too far, there was always...” She exhales. “Something. Consequence, pushback, punishment. Something...”
She lifts one hand between them, turning it idly in the air beside Kol’s head.
He follows the movement with ease, shifting with her until his face turns toward her palm, his mouth only a breath away from touching it.
The closeness makes her pulse stumble.
Something is unnerving in the way they seem to move around each other lately, a rhythm she never asked for and can’t quite break.
A pull.
A give.
The faint but persistent sense that every inch she drifts toward him is met, matched, and answered.
“But I don’t have that with expression,” she says, her voice quieter now, "With it, there aren’t any rules. There’s no line in the dirt. No warning bell. Nothing telling me to stop before I’ve already gone too far.”
Her fingers twitch once above him, and she thinks, for one fleeting reckless moment, about lowering her hand.
About touching his mouth, or maybe his cheek. About running her fingers through his hair just to see if he’d let her.
Her magic stirs hotly through her veins, alert to the thought as if it’s been waiting for her to catch up.
“It’s a void,” she continues, glancing at him again. “Like you said. And sometimes I really do feel like it wants to swallow me whole.”
Because the frightening part isn’t only the power.
It isn’t only that expression feels bottomless, or that it offers too much too quickly, or that every time she touches it, she comes away a little less afraid of what she can do.
It’s that wanting has started to feel easier in its grip.
Things she would once have shut down immediately now seem to rise in her without shame until after the fact.
Desire included.
Especially desire, if she’s being honest.
Because expression doesn’t merely make her feel powerful, it also makes power alluring in other people, too.
It makes her notice those who carry darker energies around them, people edged with danger that can match her ferocity.
People like Kol.
And maybe that’s part of what rattles her so badly.
Not simply that she wants him, because wanting Kol Mikaelson is hardly a shocking psychological event.
He’s beautiful, vain enough to know it, and entirely too amused by his own ability to make panties drop with a simple smile.
No, what unsettles her is how she wants him.
How quickly her thoughts slip toward things that feel less like harmless attraction and more like the desire to wanna have him to tear her apart if only so she can respond in kind.
It's an appetite.
And Bonnie Bennett is beginning to suspect it doesn’t always care which hunger it feeds, so long as it remains fed.
“Would that be so bad?”
Kol’s question cuts straight through her thoughts, and Bonnie’s hand drops back to the bed at once.
“What?”
“Being consumed,” he clarifies, straightening until he’s sitting back on his knees, still lodged neatly between her legs as though he has every right to be there.
“Would it truly be so dreadful?”
Bonnie’s brows draw together, her nose scrunching in a look of distaste she doesn’t entirely feel. “I—yes. Obviously.”
“Why?”
“Because it wouldn’t be me.” She says it like that should settle the matter. Like that ought to be the whole of the argument. “I’m not that person. I don’t—”
Kol slips away from above her before she can finish, dropping onto the bed beside her instead and mirroring her earlier posture.
“Sometimes,” he says with a sigh too theatrical to be sincere, “I forget how very young and adorably naïve you are.”
Bonnie reaches over at once to flick his ear. “I am not—”
He dodges with insulting ease, catching her wandering hand in his before she can make contact.
Her protest dies halfway when he lifts her pointer finger to his lips, turning toward her with that mischievous glint back in his eye.
“Shh, shh,” he murmurs, smiling against the pad of her finger in a way that feels far too intimate for someone being so annoying.
“You’ve misunderstood me, darling.”
His gaze moves over her face slowly, as though he’s reading her in quiet increments.
“I don’t mean naïve in the sense that you’re witless,” he drawls, letting her go. “You’re many things, Bonnie Bennett, but dull is not among them. What I mean is that you remain charmingly ignorant of one rather inconvenient truth.”
She already doesn’t like where this is going.
“That perhaps,” he continues, “You're not nearly so golden as you prefer to imagine.”
Bonnie’s mouth tightens.
He sees it, of course, and keeps going anyway, because he enjoys poking bruises for fun.
“Or better yet,” he says, one brow lifting, “You're ignorant of the fact that your morals have never been quite as pure as you’ve wrapped them up to be.”
Okay. She really hates that explanation.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” she argues, turning onto her side, propped up on one arm as she faces him. “You're not making sense. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He reaches out and boops her nose. “Oh, but you do.”
Bonnie scowls instantly, but he continues before she can respond, completely unbothered.
“Tell me,” he begins, “What is the purpose of our lessons, Bonnie?”
She rolls her eyes so hard it almost hurts, and flops back onto the bed again.
“To teach me how to master expression.”
Kol makes a noise of exaggerated disappointment.
“Wrong!” He waves a finger at her. “You mastered Expression the moment you hauled Jeremy Gilbert back from the dead and lived to preen about it after. Most witches would have been ash, pulp, or some ghastly combination of the two. Try again.”
Bonnie frowns, more confused than offended now. “Then you’re teaching me how to use it.”
“Wrong again.” He shifts, leaning over her just enough for his presence to press into her space again.
"You already know how to use it. You use it every day.”
His gaze pins her there. “Come now, darling. Think harder. Stop lying to yourself.”
Stop lying to yourself.
The words snag somewhere tender.
But she isn’t lying to herself.
Is she?
No.
She can’t be. She’s just been stating the truth as she understands it.
Expression changed something in her. That’s the problem. That’s the whole miserable center of this mess.
The magic is different, and so is she when she uses it.
That is a fact...not a denial.
“You’re helping me learn how to enhance my skills.”
“Warmer.” Kol’s head tilts, pleased enough to encourage her. “And what, pray tell, do you think enhancing one’s skills actually entails?”
Bonnie raises a brow. “Getting better at what I already know.”
“And how does one improve at something one already knows?”
“By figuring out what they still lack.”
His smile widens, all teeth, sharp and delighted, like a shark scenting blood in water.
“Closer.”
“By...” Bonnie trails off.
She can’t stop looking at him.
Something is unnerving about the intensity of his attention, the way it narrows the world until it feels like the room has fallen away and there is only him and her.
Her heart gives a rough, uneven thud against her ribs, and her magic answers with a hot, skittering pulse that shoots up her spine.
“By studying themselves,” she answers at last, the words leaving her softer than intended.
Kol makes a pleased little sound and snaps his fingers.
“Correct! What we do here...this isn’t merely practice. It’s a study, Bennett.”
Then he touches her.
His hands fasten around her waist in a brief flare of heat, sudden enough to steal the breath from her lungs before they begin to move, crawling upward along her side in a slow path.
“A study,” he purrs, “Of both your magic...and your sense of self.”
Bonnie barely has time to register the contact before it’s gone again, and her lips part on a thin, strangled gasp that never fully makes it out.
Heat sweeps under her skin in a dark, dizzying rush, every place he touched left branded in its wake.
It races along her nerves, bright and wrong and thrilling.
Like her magic has mapped his hands and is now refusing to let her forget them.
In fact...Bonnie feels the magic surge toward him...curious and hungry, rising to meet the echo of his touch with an eagerness that makes shame burn hot behind her ribs.
This is the part that frightens her.
Not only that her body seems more than willing to betray her over a single glide of his hands. But that something in her recognizes the darkness in him and finds it to be something adjacent to itself.
It's as if her expression is telling her that it likes him.
Kol closes his eyes the instant her magic reaches for him.
His brows pull together, a brief tension catching in his face before it melts into something looser and almost blissful.
It's a dark, private look of euphoria that makes Bonnie’s pulse skip for reasons she's all too familair with nowadays.
“The goal,” he continues with a drawl, “Is to get you so intimate with expression and your body, that there is no longer any clean distinction between where one ends and the other begins.”
His words settle over her in a way that is too close to what she already feels.
To what she's already been fighting herself against.
Bonnie swallows, her mouth suddenly dry.
“We want expression to become a part of you, Bonnie,” Kol's gaze is fixed on her as if he can see every ugly, conflicted thought turning over behind her eyes.
"Not some spare appendage you drag out whenever the others fail you.”
That part also lands harder than she wants it to.
“But...” Kol’s eyes open again, and the world narrows at once. His gaze catches hers and holds it there, brown against green.
“It’s rather difficult to find intimacy in anything when you insist on holding yourself back behind lies.”
There it is again.
That word.
That accusation.
Bonnie’s lips purse, every muscle tightening as her heartbeat begins to climb in a way she knows he can hear.
“I haven’t been lying.”
Kol scoffs.
“You’ve mastered expression, and yet you claim it still consumes you?” His mouth twists faintly. “That's rather contradictory, don’t you think?”
Bonnie shrugs, clinging to her stubbornness now because it’s the only thing in reach. “Well, that’s what it feels like.”
“You want to know what I think?”
She gives him a flat look. “I’m sure you’ll tell me either way.”
His smile is quick and mean. “I think,” he begins, sitting up straighter as he looks down at her with an expression that's almost pitying.
Though it only makes her want to bite him.
“I think that you feel expression consumes you because you've yet to accept the part of yourself that's just as dark as it is.”
Bonnie blinks, then pushes herself upright so fast the mattress shifts beneath them.
“What?”
Kol rolls his eyes as though she’s being exhausting on purpose.
“Expression is a void. Yes, yes, deep, suffocating, all the very dramatic things you've just explained. But you already know how to keep it from overtaking you, Bonnie.”
His tone turns faintly snarky then, clipped with impatience. “If it still feels as though it’s devouring you, then it’s because you do not yet understand the half of you that's begging it to.”
She doesn't want to believe him.
Yet still his words still lodge somewhere deep that she cannot quickly dig out.
To the newly awakened parts of herself that have forced her to hold a mirror to her dormant impulses.
“That’s not...” Her voice catches and she tries again. “I don’t want that.”
“You do,” Kol corrects flatly.
The certainty of it makes her flinch more than if he’d shouted.
“The part of you that feels as though it’s splitting off and filling your head with all these dreadful, wicked little thoughts?”
He gives her a look that borders on amused. “It's no less yours simply because you dislike its tone.”
As he speaks, he shifts around her again with that sleek, prowling kind of grace he seems incapable of turning off.
He moves from sitting across from her to angling at her side, one leg folding onto the bed, then the other, until he’s close enough that she can feel his heat without him fully touching her.
Then, of course, he does.
His fingers brush lightly over her forearm first, almost absentmindedly before his hand slides to her elbow, guiding her to turn toward him a little more.
“It's the second half of your whole,” he explains, quieter now, thumb grazing once over the inside of her arm before letting go.
“And you deny it because you’re far too sanctimonious to admit it exists.”
Bonnie’s breathing has gone uneven, and she hates the idea that he can probably hear it.
A fine tremor runs through her body, there and gone so quickly she almost convinces herself she imagined it.
But then the room suddenly feels too warm, too close, too full of him and the things he keeps dragging into the light with those awful, precise little observations of his.
Before she can think better of it, she shoves at his shoulder and pulls away.
“I think we’re done for today.”
The words come out thin and abrupt, more brittle than decisive, but Bonnie is already moving before they’ve fully left her mouth.
She swings herself off the bed in a rush, putting distance between them as quickly as she can manage.
She refuses to look back, even though she can feel his stare between her shoulder blades as he tracks her every step.
“Expression is your freedom, Bonnie.”
Kol calls it after her as he slides off the bed with unhurried grace, all prowling ease and feline patience.
Like he knows there's nowhere in this room she can go that will take her fully out of his reach.
“It’s every witch’s freedom, dangerous though it may be. Why else do you think so many are willing to flirt with death in the pursuit of mastering it, hmm?”
Because the possibility of freedom from punishment is worth more than the threat of consequences from using unknown powers.
The answer forms immediately in Bonnie’s mind, but she keeps it behind her teeth.
She doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing it aloud.
Doesn’t want to hear how easily he’d twist it into proof of whatever he's trying to prove.
“You had a stronger sense of self with spirit magic because spirit magic demands it,” Kol remarks, his voice carrying that crisp, cutting certainty he gets when he knows he's right.
“It keeps witches disciplined by threat alone. Step out of line, incur its wrath. Very pious. Very tedious.”
He keeps walking as he talks, and Bonnie finds herself doing nothing at all to stop him from closing the distance between them step by step.
“And with expression?” His mouth curves faintly. “You’re free to use it however you like. Whenever you like. For whatever you like.”
He takes another step forward, and Bonnie wants to move; she knows she should. Yet all she manages is stillness, rooted where she stands beneath the force of his gaze.
“And now,” he goes on, stopping in front of her with barely an inch between them, “You’re forced to contend with the side of yourself that has always yearned for precisely that kind of power.”
He tilts his head, studying her with an expression she has come to know too well. “The side of you strong enough to make you feel as though you’re still being consumed.”
His hand lifts, and his knuckles skim lightly down the length of her arm, a thought of contact more than a full one, before his fingers catch beneath her chin and tip her face up just a fraction.
“You would never have mastered expression if you were as pure-hearted as you keep trying to pretend you are,” he murmurs. “You blend with it because it calls to you, and every single time, darling...you answer.”
Now that's something she can't wave away as easily as the rest of it. Something she can't dismiss with embarrassment or blunt-force denial.
Because he’s right in one respect....
At the end of the day, expression would not come to her this naturally if there were nothing in her reaching back.
Synergy.
Magic has always been a matter of relationship, of exchange, and of resonance, and expression is no different.
She can hold and shape it easily because of how naturally it settles within her.
She and it wind through one another like roots beneath old earth...inseparable to the point of tearing something vital in the attempt.
Her magic perks at the thought as if it hears it for itself, warm tendrils of approval unfurling up her arms and slipping beneath her skin with a slow, pleased hum.
The sensation sends a rush straight to her head, dizzying and intimate in a way she resents on principle.
Bonnie shivers, but not from the cold. "Then what do I do?”
The question leaves her quieter than she means it to, and it sounds so plain, so troubled.
Her eyes dip briefly to the floor before she lifts them back to his, and she's startled to find he hasn't looked away from her once.
“You find an outlet,” he answers at once, as though he’s been waiting for her to ask exactly that. “That’s what I’ve been for you, haven’t I?”
His other hand comes up to cradle her face before she can decide whether or not she wants to recoil.
His thumbs sweep beneath her eyes and linger there, stroking the delicate skin with a tenderness that feels almost mocking in the hands of someone like Kol Mikaelson.
“A nice, safe little place,” he continues softly. "To act out your darkest desires.”
Bonnie scoffs, though the sound catches a bit in her throat. Her hand rises to close around his wrist, but not to yank him away, not quite.
"I’d hardly say anything we do even brushes the edge of my so-called 'darkest desires.'”
A pleased sound slips from his lips, low and amused, before he leans forward with infuriating ease and presses a kiss to her forehead.
It’s such a small gesture, almost absurdly gentle compared to everything else crackling between them, and yet it catches her so off guard she doesn’t even have time to process it before he’s pulling back and speaking again.
“Ah,” he purrs. “So you admit you have them then?”
Bonnie freezes, her eyes widening a fraction at how easily she's just slipped up.
“No bother,” he adds lightly. “I assumed this entire conversation had rather more to do with something illicit than your supposed 'fear' of your own powers.”
She feels heat rush into her face, a strangled sound slipping from her throat as she finally jerks Kol’s hands away from her face.
“Stop it,” she snaps. “You make it sound like it’s all some weird sex thing.”
Kol lifts a brow, his expression maddeningly composed. “You mean to tell me that it isn’t?”
She turns at once, trying to walk away before her expression can betray her any more than it already has.
“Kol.”
She barely makes it a step before his hand catches her wrist again, quick and sure, and in one smooth motion, he twirls her back toward him until she’s pulled against his chest.
Bonnie exhales sharply, irritation tangling with something far less manageable as his other hand settles at her waist.
“Come now,” he murmurs near her ear, his voice dipped in flirty amusement. “Why so shy? You know I’d be the very last person to judge you for such thoughts.”
Bonnie lets her forehead fall briefly against his shoulder, giving up, for the moment at least, on pretending escape is still her main objective.
“Yeah, well,” she mutters, “It’s not just that, okay? I really am worried about my powers.”
Kol hums, beginning to sway them gently. “The way I see it, the issue is one and the same.”
His hand shifts at her waist, thumb moving once in a slow, absent sweep that feels anything but decent.
“And the solution rather conveniently serves both.”
She tips her head back enough to try to catch his expression. “And what solution would that be?”
Kol stills, briefly meeting her gaze.
Then he turns her around so they’re facing each other once more, the movement smooth enough to make the room feel like it's tilted with her.
“The task,” he answers quietly, “Of rediscovering yourself.”
His gaze drops to her mouth for a fraction too long to be accidental, and he doesn’t bother hiding it.
Why would he?
Kol Mikaelson has never been burdened by shame where sexual desire is concerned.
When his eyes lift to meet hers again, Bonnie feels arrested. Locked in.
“Bonnie Bennett,” he begins, almost softly now, “You’re not the same girl you were in high school, and it’s long past time you stopped trying to squeeze yourself back into that skin.”
She opens her mouth to answer, but his finger presses lightly to her lips before she can.
The touch is warm, infuriatingly warm, and he leaves it there for a beat before tracing it, deliberate and slow across the curve of her lower lip.
“I’ll make it easy for you.”
Her brows furrow in confusion. “What?”
Kol's mouth tilts.
“Tell me one thing,” he coaxes, “About this moment...here, right now...that makes you want to fuck me."
Bonnie’s eyes widen, and his words are more than enough to jolt her out of her stupor.
She jerks back a step and slaps his hand away, her breath catching as she stares at him. “Are you—what?”
Kol doesn’t answer.
He only watches her.
And that is somehow worse.
There’s no banter to duck behind, no teasing remark she can throw back at him, no argument to distract herself with.
He doesn’t rescue her from the question, nor does he move to fill the silence he’s created.
He just stands there, looking at her with that terrible, patient focus, as if he already knows her answer.
And it's in that quiet focus that Bonnie realizes that she's run out of places to run.
So why not just give in?
“Your hands,” she blurts at last, the words little more than a whisper.
She refuses to look directly at him as she says it, fixing her attention somewhere just beyond his shoulder instead.
Kol tilts his head, something in his expression shifting. He takes one step closer and lifts his hands between them, palms up, as if presenting them as evidence.
“My hands?”
Bonnie shrugs, aiming for nonchalance and missing it by a mile. “You wanted one thing? There. That’s your one thing.”
A beat passes.
Then another.
Kol glances down at his hands as though considering them from an entirely new perspective, flexing his fingers once before turning them over.
When he looks back up at her, his mouth curves. “Alright then.”
Bonnie barely has time to wonder what, exactly, that means before he moves.
One second, he’s standing in front of her, and the next he’s using vampire speed to send them both tumbling back onto the mattress, a soft gasp torn from her throat as she lands beneath him.
She stares up in startled silence, wide-eyed, while Kol braces himself above her with a look on his face that is edged with something dangerous.
“Kol!”
Bonnie tries to shove him off, hips bucking hard, but the movement only seems to drag him closer.
His weight pins her down with that lazy, unbreakable vampire strength, chest flush to hers. And the worst part, the part that makes her pulse stutter, is how little she actually wants him gone.
Her heart slams against her ribs like it’s trying to claw its way out.
Their eyes lock, and the air between them thickens with the low thrum of her magic, wild and restless, coiling around them both like invisible silk.
It narrows her whole goddamn world down to the heat of his body, the cool press of his skin, and the wicked promise in his stare.
“There are so many delightful things I can do with these hands,” Kol drawls, voice low and rough, his accent curling around them like smoke.
He lifts the offending hand between them and wiggles his fingers with theatrical flair. “Tell me, little witch. Where would you like them first?”
Bonnie’s throat closes, and the words jam up behind her teeth, embarrassing and honest all at once. “I...I don’t—”
“You do.” He cuts her off smoothly, eyes darkening to something ancient and starving.
His palm settles over her chest, then slides down with deliberate slowness, fingertips hooking into the deep V of her t-shirt and tugging just enough to expose the frantic beat at the base of her throat.
Then he lifts that same hand again, brushing two fingers across her lips. “Speak. Or I’ll start guessing...and I do so love being...creative.”
A shuddering breath rips out of her, and her lashes flutter shut as she fights for some scrap of control—only to feel it slip further away.
She should stop this.
She should push him off, remind him she’s not some conquest from his thousand-year parade of pretty things.
But the thought fractures the second his fingers graze her neck instead, guided there by her own trembling hand.
There...she thinks to herself, to afriad to say the words aloud. I want you there...
Kol’s eyes ignite with pure, manic delight, and a soft, breathless laugh escapes him.
The kind that once probably preceded someone losing a limb in a back alley in 18th-century New Orleans.
His head dips down, mouth brushing the corner of hers in an almost tender kiss.
But then his fingers settle against the sides of her throat, pressing with the faintest, perfect pressure.
“F-Fuck,” Bonnie breathes, the word fracturing into a soft, helpless sound.
His mouth travels lower, cool lips pressing one open-mouthed kiss to the left side of her collarbone, then another to the right, like he’s mapping territory he feels he already owns.
But Kol Mikaelson has never been one to idle, and two hands are always better than one.
Especially when one of them is already slipping down her stomach, his thumb flicking open the button of her jeans with the same effortless arrogance he uses to snap necks.
“Use it,” he murmurs against her skin, voice dropping into that dangerous register again as his hand slides beneath denim, his palm cupping the damp heat of her through her soaked lace.
“Feel me, darling."
His grip on her throat tightens, just enough to make stars spark behind her eyes, and she keens, low and broken, her fingers wrapping around his wrist not to pull him away but to anchor herself.
“Kol—”
The rest of whatever she meant to say dissolves as her head empties out in the most exquisite way, every nerve singing under the dual assault.
The steady pressure at her throat...the slow, teasing circles of his fingers over her clit through the fabric of her underwear...
And then there's the way her magic keeps spilling outward, feeding every sensation back into him like a live wire.
She can feel him feeling her...like a doubled connection.
The loss of control should terrify her, but it feels like freedom instead.
Because she still has the reins.
She knows it in her bones.
One word from her and he’d flip them, pin her harder, bite down where her pulse flutters wildly beneath his thumb.
She could demand he choke her properly, could order those clever fingers inside her right now, could tell him to fuck her until she forgets every reason this is a terrible idea.
She’s never been this turned on in her entire life.
Except maybe that one time with Jeremy—
No.
Absolutely not.
Bonnie squeezes her eyes shut, chasing the thought away like smoke, and instead grinds down harder against Kol’s hand.
The pressure, the slick friction through her ruined panties, it’s everything.
Her hips roll on instinct now, shameless and greedy, chasing the heat that’s already coiling tight at the base of her spine.
Kol stays strangely quiet above her, but she hears the shift in him still. The way his breathing has gone rough and uneven, like he’s savoring every little sound she makes.
She rocks against him again, and he answers instantly, pressing two fingers firmer between her folds, dragging the soaked fabric along with them until the barrier feels like torture.
A low, guttural groan rumbles out of his chest, hot and filthy, and then his fingers hook the edge of her panties to slowly pull them to the side.
It's skin on skin now.
Bare, wet, and perfect.
They both moan at the same instant, and Bonnie drags in two shaky breaths, lips parting to tell him 'yes,' 'more,' 'harder'—when a voice slices through the room.
“Well...this is certainly an interesting surprise.”
The words land like a bucket of freezing water poured right over her head, and the heat inside her dies in an instant.
Instead, it's replaced by a cold, crawling dread that spreads through her veins and snuffs out every spark she and Kol have been feeding.
Her eyes fly open, and her magic recoils with a violent snap, like a garage door slamming shut.
And there he is...
Damon Salvatore leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest with one eyebrow perfectly arched.
Something burns in the blue of his gaze...he’s probably been standing there long enough to memorize every roll of her hips.
And now his stare is fixed on them with a heat that feels almost intrusive, his jaw tight enough to suggest that whatever he’s seeing, he doesn’t much enjoy being left out of it.
"Oh, my god." Bonnie scrambles backward so fast she nearly falls off the bed, yanking her shirt down and fumbling with the button of her jeans like she can erase the last five minutes if she just moves quickly enough.
Her skin is still flushed, still damp with sweat, and she refuses—absolutely refuses—to meet anyone’s eyes while she yanks her clothes back into some semblance of order.
Kol, meanwhile, looks like he couldn’t be more bored by the interruption.
He blinks lazily at the empty space where she’d just been, then flops onto his back with an exaggerated groan, slinging one arm over his eyes.
“You could not have picked a more dreadful moment to interrupt us, mate,” he quips.
Bonnie feels her embarrassment curdle fast into irritation.
With Kol’s vampire hearing, there’s no way he hadn’t caught Damon coming up the stairs or turning the doorknob.
The bastard had let all of this play out on purpose.
She shoots him a glare hot enough to blister skin, and Kol peeks out from under his arm and answers with a slow, wicked wink that only makes her want to hex him more.
Damon scoffs, finally pushing himself off the doorframe. "On the contrary...I think my timing couldn't have been more perfect."
His eyes narrow at Kol first before sliding to her.
It pins her in place the second their eyes lock...his gaze layered with that trademark Salvatore mischief that promises trouble and pleasure in equal measure.
“But don’t stop on my account,” he drawls, stepping fully into the room and effectively blocking the only exit.
“I’ve had a spectacularly shitty day. A front-row seat to whatever the hell this was shaping up to be sounds like the perfect palate cleanser.”
Bonnie’s lips part, but nothing comes out, even though she can think of at least a thousand different responses to his sheer, unbelievable audacity of these two men.
Then she glances back at Kol.
He’s sprawled across the bed like a cat who’s had his fill of the cream and knows he’ll be fed again, one arm tucked beneath his head with an utterly shameless grin.
His eyes drift—very obviously—down the length of her before climbing back to hers. His gaze is slow and completely unapologetic.
And then there’s Damon…
Still standing there.
Still watching her.
His eyes have not left hers once, and the blue of them looks darker somehow with an intent Bonnie finds herself far too aware of.
His tongue flicks out to wet his own lips, and she nearly curses aloud.
It feels like being caught between the devil and his favorite accomplice.
And the worst part...the truly horrifying, deeply inconvenient part...is that she wants it.
Not this, exactly.
Not whatever insane, catastrophic version of this situation is threatening to take shape in front of her.
But the dark pull of it.
The chaos of it.
The danger.
Kol’s hand at her throat still lingers like a phantom lover's touch, a memory her body hasn’t yet decided to release, and Damon’s mere presence feels like enough to make her magic stir in all the wrong ways.
Expression unfurls inside her like a pleased thing, urging recklessness, whispering temptation in a language that sounds far too much like her own thoughts.
Absolutely not.
She ducks behind Damon before he can stop her or say anything else. “Yeah, okay,” she mutters quickly. “I’m leaving.”
Because no.
No way.
There is absolutely no version of reality in which something like this is ever happening as long as she has a functioning brain and even a shred of dignity left.
“What? No. Come on, Bonnie, don’t be selfish—”
Damon calls after her as she takes the stairs so fast she nearly misses one, then another, practically flying down them three at a time.
Behind him, she hears Kol, too. “Come now, darling, don't be so—”
She ignores them both.
Her heart is hammering so hard against her ribs she’s halfway convinced she might actually go into cardiac arrest.
“Nope! I’m going.”
She throws open the front door of the Salvatore boarding house and turns just long enough to catch one last glimpse of them both standing there on the steps now, watching her retreat.
“Goodbye!”
Then she’s out the door, racing toward her car, yanking it open, and throwing herself inside with all the grace of someone fleeing a crime scene she may or may not have willingly participated in.
Only once the door slams shut does she let herself breathe, and even then, that's barely.
Because deep down…where instinct lives, Bonnie knows this isn’t over. Not even close.
She’s opened the Pandora’s box now, and fate has never once in her life shown any interest in letting her walk away from something like this without problems.