"He happens to be one of my closest friends," Petra snapped at him as he looked up at her in shock through bright blue eyes.

"Oh," Emerson bit his lip and folded his arms across his chest and then asked rather timidly, "am I one of your closest friends?"

"No," she said simply, causing Damien to redirect his attention back to their conversation, "only those who aren't affected by my power and who don't hate me for it are my closest friends. Those who can't meet those standards can't gain my trust."

"But surely you and I have-" He protested almost angrily.

She caught Damien's eye and gave him smug look, but he returned it with a blank stare, despite knowing what she would do. Then turning back to Emerson she reached one finger up to his bare neck and trailed it down following the tensed muscle to the first button of his shirt. She scooted closer to him so that her hot breath was fluttering over the skin of his neck. Gently she pressed her lips to his jaw, forcing him to scramble out of his chair and take three steps back from her. His face was flushing red and his entire body was tense and trembling as he held it back from reaching out for her. He eventually looked away from her all together, covering his mouth with his hand, the nails were digging into the flesh of his face.

"See," she mocked him, rolling her eyes back onto Damien with a haughty smile. Was she an absolute idiot?

"If this is the way that you behave don't expect me to come running to your side the second things get out of control again," he snapped at her, his temper was rising, but he didn't care. He should have been furious. Had she completely forgotten about that morning?

Slowly she closed her mouth as she realized just how angry he was even though he was barely showing her the full extent. "It's my life," she growled as Damien had expected she didn't get it. After all of this time. She didn't understand that she could be the cause of her own troubles because every time that she had found herself in predicaments they were caused without her doing. "You couldn't control Lyra or Malik and you most certainly cannot control me! I'll do whatever I want."

"Oh really?" Damien smiled as he lunged out for her across the table, grabbing her by the neck violently and forcing a kiss onto her parted lips. All of a sudden every muscle in his body was screaming at him to pull back as his blood began to boil as if venom were running through his veins, burning profoundly, but he ignored it grabbing a fistful of her thick orange hair threading it though his fingers. The sweetness of her mouth was clearly noticeable, but it was equalled with the his brain's deep rooted need to pull away. He practically dragged her on to the table top as he stood up.

He didn't even realize that he had closed his eyes or that his tongue was down her throat or that his hand was beneath the top of her dress until Emerson had shoved him back into his seat hard, ripping him from Petra whose face was stained with tear streaks. Her face was a bright red and shaking her head she stared at Damien as if he were a ghost, no worse, a stranger. He looked away angrily as he panted hard, ignoring the desire pulsating through his blood, knowing that he had almost lost himself to her. Never in all of the years that he had known her had he laid a hand on her like that. How had that happened? He had only wanted to teach her a lesson and had lost complete control. He felt guilty and even worse ashamed.

She stood up shaking her head, her entire body shaking, "I-I hope you never see Jade or Lyra again and I hope that you suffer forever in this eternal prison of time!"

Then she began to walk towards the exit, ignoring the stares, but as she passed Damien he grabbed her arm jerking her towards him coldly. He hissed into her ear with a shaky voice, just the touch of her skin was blurring his vision, "Y-you know that I-I am right. You and I, w-we can't risk playing these g-games anymore, all right."

"There is no you and I," Petra jerked her hand out of his grip furiously, "we are nothing alike!" She allowed her eyes to fall onto him, but soon made a disgusted face and turned away, "I can't even-"

"What?" He growled, turning his head to try and recapture her eyes. "Petra-"

"I-" she began calmly as she thought through her words carefully, "I can't tell when it's a game to you Damien," she shook her head, "and I can't bear it anymore. If you and I were the friends you make me think we are then you wouldn't do these things over and over! You-" she paused abruptly to look into his eyes once more with her own watering ones, "you don't even get it do you?"

Damien frowned. Get what? She was the one who wasn't understanding things not him! "You'll have to be more clear," he shook his head. His heart was still racing and his mind still blurry. He couldn't think straight. Visions of her hot breath and thick hair smothering him were clouding his thoughts. He tried to shake them though.

"Ha!" She exclaimed with a laugh, throwing her arms in the arm. Finally freeing him from his mind. "Oh my God, Damien! You come to check on me in the hospital, you rescue me, you pretend like you'll be at my side forever, and you even go as far as to say that you consider us friends, but the moment I look away, the moment your anger sparks you strike out literally."

With a small nod, he affirmed that what she was saying was in fact true. However, he couldn't find a reason to care until she finished with, "This was why Lyra even hated you and you know it somewhere deep down where you a repressed it for so long!"

"Petra, that simply isn't true," Emerson interrupted the two, seeming to have recovered from the previous incident.

"Lyra was something like a friend to me," Petra snapped at him, making Damien suppress a laugh that was a flat out lie, "and you cannot tell me that the bruises were not from him. Hell, I could hear him myself screaming at her half of the time, constantly punishing her with his commands and yet . . . you claim that you loved her? It's so ridiculous!"

"Petra, Malik . . ." Emerson began slowly. So it was still painful for him too. "He wanted Lyra dead, am I right? And why? To punish Damien. So if Damien-"

"Didn't care about her neither would he," Petra finished his sentence as her jaw dropped open. She was quick as usual."But then why did he kill her?"

"I would believe" Emerson frowned, "out of spite."

Petra glanced at Damien. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to the conversation and was merely gazing out into the distance. Petra had never understood that Damien had tried to make Lyra hate him for her own protection and then in the success of her hatred, Malik had killed her. However, that didn't change the way that he had treated her, but then again he had been right, as usual. She was asking for it by the way she had been behaving. He was simply trying to scare it into her, but at the same time she was fully aware that he had almost lost it and that terrified her because she had always thought that he was the one and only person she could trust to never fall prey to her.

"Damien," she whispered, laying her head on his shoulder, letting her hair drape over his chest. She felt him turn his head to glance at her, "Can we leave now. I'm tired."

He nodded and, reaching into his pocket grabbed some money and threw it onto the table as tip, standing up slowly so as to not knock her head of his shoulder violently. "I don't think we are welcome at Erik's any longer," he muttered coldly.

"If it isn't too awkward," Emerson began, "you two could stay at my place."

"Alastair's mansion?" Damien tilted his head to the left slightly as his eyes rested on Emerson's familiar face structure. He could see that same curved nose, long dark eyelashes and bright blue eyes that he shared with her. He frowned.

Emerson gave a quick nod.

 He was silent for a long time and Petra was beginning to worry for him when, "Why not? I have no where else to stay, unless I want to freeze to death in my own empty house. It would take hours to get a decent fire started."