Superstition

banner by "icewouldsuffice"

SUMMARY: 

A Vampward two-shot. Pick your poison. This one shot has two POVs. His and Hers. Neither believe the other exists but when Bella visits the dull town Edward happens to be staying in for a while, maybe they'll each have a change of "heart". BxE, AU

Superstition: any blindly accepted belief or notion.

Originally posted to fanfiction.net on October 28, 2011


*******************************

PART 1 – her side

Bella Swan POV

SUMMARY:

Bella is staying in Forks to collect stories for a piece she's writing about things that go bump in the night when she's confronted with what she thought was just a silly superstition that she stopped believing in a long time ago.

Blech.

Halloween.  Not exactly my favorite holiday with all the crazies committing murders because they think it’s gnarly to copy their favorite serial killers on the most evil night of the year.

At least I got out of town this year, I thought to myself.  It was a plus, on one hand.  On the other, it was more like a punishment of sorts, seeing how my editor back home in San Francisco at The Chronicle didn’t like me too much to begin with. She was even more so my nemesis after her live in boyfriend tried to pick me up at the Fourth of July picnic over the summer.

She’d been harboring resentment ever since, and even though I apologized profusely and explained I had absolutely no part in the whole thing; she’d still been waiting for the perfect opportunity to make my life a little less fun.  Hence this trip to Forks, Washington, where rumors made it back to even my neck of the woods about eerie experiences and unexplained deaths.

It was my official job to gather spooky stories from the locals to take back for a “Real Halloween Horrors” piece I would be writing.

I really hated her sometimes.  My boss.

I was a news reporter for Christ’s sake.  Not a fluff piece amateur.

Waiting patiently at the cash register of the local Gas N Go for my change, I was boring a hole straight through some decorations that hung from the ceiling, when Mike Newton interrupted my thoughts.

“You really shouldn’t be out this late in the day, Ms Swan.  I highly suggest you hurry up and get home.”


I couldn’t help it.  Sometimes my face just morphed of its own free will into insane expressions when people said some of the things they’d been saying to me since I arrived at my temporary home in town.


It was a blessing and a curse, that morphing.  Most of the time, a curse.  I hated that I couldn’t hide my emotions more.  Perhaps it would have helped in not giving my ex the satisfaction of knowing that my catching him in our bed with some tramp had affected me the way it did.


Besides the point.


Mike Newton, the gas attendant that had given me the well meant warning, was a really nice guy deep down, but also extremely superstitious and inappropriately overprotective for someone who wasn’t even remotely on my radar as far as dating went.


He just wasn’t my type.


In fact, no one in town was really my type.  They were all just so… young, it seemed.  With their crazy beliefs and over the top paranoia about things that go bump in the night.

Huge turn off.


I knew what I’d be running into when I’d gone there, I just had no idea how real it all was to them.  How ingrained into their lives it all was.


Crazy.  Right?


I mean sure, I’d had my moments of swearing I was being followed since arriving.  Felt like someone was lurking just outside my window at night.  I even had my own share of feeling as though I was hearing voices on my way home from an interview once or twice.   Catching a glimpse of a dark stranger in my dreams but not quite being able to remember him the next day.


And yeah, it was a little bit on the creepy side to the point that I had succumb to sleeping with the lights on the few nights prior but I knew it was all just in my mind.


It’s always just the imagination creating these… encounters people were describing.  These… Boogey Man stories they were feeding me.


Everyone knows the Boogey Man doesn’t exist.


“Bella, please,” I told him.  “And thanks, Mike, really, but I’m sure I’ll be okay,” I told him as he rang up my gas for me, hands shaking just a little bit.  Mumbling, even.


“Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”


He was practically shoving me out the door so he could lock up, when I remembered I’d decided to start cooking that night instead of hitting up one of the two local fast food joints in town for the fifth night in a row.


“Where is that grocery store you were telling me about again?” I asked him and he stopped short.

“You’re not going home?”


“Well I’m going home, I’m just making a pit stop on the way, Mike,” I giggled a little.  He was so very Barney Fife from the old Andy Griffith Show.


He pursed his lips and scowled a little.  It was like he was debating whether or not to share the location of the store with me, and I got a little annoyed at how rude I thought that was.


It wasn’t like I couldn’t Google it or Yahoo map it, I suppose, but I was just trying to blend in by asking, ya know?  Small town friendliness and all?


I rolled my eyes and was about to tell him to just forget it when he told me, pointing down a road I vaguely remembered driving along when I’d first arrived the week before.


“About a mile that way. If I were you, I’d make it a really quick pit stop, Bella.”


I snorted. “Oh… kay, Mike, thanks.” I smiled and waved and hopped into my little Prius rental car and headed on down the road.


I did have to admit, dusk in Forks, although not much different from the daytime due to its consistently overcast weather, did seem… strange.  I didn’t know if it was just all the stories getting to me finally or if it was some sort of foreboding feeling that I was having, but for the love of God… I was Bella freaking Swan, for crying out loud.  I wasn’t afraid of the dark, I didn’t shake salt over my shoulder when it spilled, I didn’t carry garlic around to ward off “evil spirits”, and I certainly wasn’t going to let some fidgety guy behind the cash register at the local Gas N Go freak me out of getting groceries for the week.


“Don’t go out after dark, Bella,” I mock repeated Mike Newton’s words as I eyed the forest on either side of the street.  “You really should get right home, Bella.”  I was laughing at how silly it all was, when I was jolted back into the real world as a horrific scream escaped me. I slammed my brakes down in order to avoid hitting the man who’d suddenly appeared in the middle of the road, once I’d seen him.


I also closed my eyes.  Just in case I hit him.  I can’t stand the sight of blood.


But as I slowly opened my eyes to see how much damage I had caused, I realized he wasn’t there anymore.


I scowled, looking behind me, to the sides of the road… even up in the sky.


Had I hit him and thrown him into the woods?


I hadn’t felt an impact but I was traumatized, I could have missed the whole thing.  Things like that happened all the time.


Oh god, what if he’s under the car?


The radio was still playing the current song for Saturday Night Seventies and since I didn’t see a single other car coming or going in either direction, I went ahead and got out of the tiny Prius to check.


“Just in case,” I told myself.  Just in case.


I took a gulp full of air, then kneeled down to peek underneath the rental vehical...  and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I found no dead body under the poor thing.


When I stood up again, all I could do for a few minutes was just stare ahead at the road I was travelling.  “Weird.”

I was sure I’d seen him.


Tall, dark… crazy for standing the middle of the road… Of course you saw him, Bella.  That’s why he’s not here anymore.


I giggled at myself as I got back into the car and then shut the door, finishing off my mile long drive to the local grocers.


When I arrived at the small “Mom and Pop” type store, they were just beginning to close up, but after only a few minutes of begging and pleading and playful bantering, the manager agreed to let me get my shopping done.  As long as I hurried.


A few people were in line still getting their things rung up, so I figured I had a little bit of time to find the few items I needed.  Considering I had no idea where anything was, I decided that was a godsend.


I noticed him when I was getting ready to pull the first item I needed off of a shelf.


My eyes narrowed a little.  Familiar, but… not.


He was standing just outside the grocery store, watching me through the glass window, almost as though he wanted the shadows that surrounded him to swallow him up.


His clothes were covered up by a long leather jacket, but I could see hints of a button down peeking out from under it.


Tall.


Dark.


And most definitely sexy.


So my type.  Wonder why I haven’t seen him before today.


I should have been startled, bothered, unnerved maybe even by the way he was glaring at me, but for some reason I wasn’t.


We seemed to fixate on each other for a moment.   One that stretched out into eternity.  His eyes were dark… black it seemed from where I stood.  Maybe it was the shadows, I thought, making them look that way.


I watched him walk slowly toward the entrance and as he crossed under the lighted overhang, I could see the expression on his face a little more clearly.  It was disturbing to me, the anger he seemed to be keeping bottled up inside of him.  And it contradicted the smooth subtleties of his skin, the youth in his appearance.


Angelic… with a side order of bad boy.


I felt intrigued by the sheer force of his stare, intimidated by the intensity of his expression, but more importantly, completely flattered that he seemed so drawn to me.  Much like I was feeling drawn into him.


Everything about him interested me.  From his clenched fists that remained rigidly by his sides, to his tightened jaw that seemed to want to say something and yet nothing all at once, to his overall body language, that made him look extremely frustrated with something.


His eyes moved ever so slightly away from mine and I jumped at the realization that someone was standing next to me.


“Need help finding something?” the manager of the small store asked.  I looked back to the entrance of the store, searching for the mysterious stranger that had been standing there only a few seconds before, but he was gone.

What the…?


“Everything okay, Miss?”


I pointed.  “Did you see that man?”


“Who?”

“That man, he was standing… right…”


“Hello.”


I thought I’d pulled something from how fast my head spun around to find him standing right behind me at that point, but you wouldn’t have known that he’d just scared the bejeesus out of me due to my reaction to his body being so close to mine.


It felt so… inviting somehow.  “Hello,” I somehow managed to say back to him.


Tall, Dark and Sexy did his little eye move thing again, motioning from mine to the store owner, who excused himself nervously and then they were back on mine.


His eyes.


God.  Were they really black?


“You are?” he asked, in an almost demanding sort of way and his voice was just as ominous.

“Bella.”  I held a hand out but he didn’t take it.  Instead, he nodded, repeating my name in such a way I almost didn’t hear it.


Focus, Bella, food… we need food and we don’t have a lot of time.   I pulled a box of angel hair pasta off of the shelf and began to walk, trying to pull myself out of the haze he’d thrown me into.

He followed.  Not quite beside me.  Not quite behind.  Just… followed.


I noticed the boots he wore even though they were mostly hidden by his jeans, but I could barely hear his foot falls as they fell in step with mine.


The floor is concrete.  He should be making more noise than that.


How odd, I thought and was about to ask him something when we stopped again. But before I could get the words out, he tilted his head a bit and breathed in. “Your perfume manipulates me.”

I let out a slightly amused huff at his compliment.  At least I think it was a compliment.  “I don’t wear perfume.”  Sauce… where’s the damn sauce and why is this guy making me so…


He smiled and I thought he’d let out a small chuckle of amusement of some sort, but no sound escaped him.  “You’re new.”


“I am,” I told him, unable to pull myself away from his icy gaze.


“You’re different,” he pondered.  I assumed he meant I was not the run of the mill stranger in town.  That he’d heard about me somehow.


“I’m just here for…” I had to clear my throat, I was feeling weighted somehow.  “I’m writing a story.”


“On?”


“Monsters,” I told him honestly.  And as I said it, his fingers were suddenly tracing a button on my blouse.   How long had they been there?


His eyes were following his fingers, and my breathing, which I had previously been working very hard at controlling, hitched.


The word I’d used seemed to bother him.  “There are plenty of those here then,” he told me as his finger lowered to the next button.


Still watching as though he was entranced by my casual wear.


Such… long… fingers.   Was I drooling?   I really hoped I wasn’t drooling.


“If you believe they exist, I suppose,” I mused and his finger stopped. 

His eyes found mine again.  “You don’t?”


“You do?”


Tell me he doesn’t believe in all this monster mumbo jumbo.


He thought about how to answer me for only an instant, and then said, “I believe that I exist.”


Profound.


He’s very… profound.


I hummed.


And then his fingers started tracing my buttons again.  Holy… he’s just barely not touching my…


”Ohmygod it’s been too long.”


Shit.  I didn’t mean to say that out loud. Talk about obvious.


“Indeed,” he murmured, retracting his long fingers, letting out a small sigh. I missed them already, those fingers.


I found the pasta sauce.  Thank you pasta gods. And kept on walking, deciding I really needed to reign in the goofy teenager act and be the woman I was.


Bella Swan.  Hot, sexy, single writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.


“So,” I was just throwing it out there to bide my time.  Sue me.  “What’s a tall, dark and handsome young man like you doing out at the grocery store on a Saturday night?  Shouldn’t you be… clubbing?”  He was young, after all.  Younger than me, anyway.


He smiled what seemed like a genuine smile at me although he didn’t show any teeth.  It was slightly crooked, that smile, and I wanted to bite his bottom lip, I decided.  It was so… red.


“Now, Bella, if I was clubbing, I wouldn’t have found you… here… would I have?”  His face appeared emotionless, but his words were just dripping with sex.  And they were calculated, the way he said them… chilling.


He was waiting for me to answer him, but instead I simply raised an eyebrow and swallowed down the urge to jump his bones right then and there, in the bread aisle.  “Lucky me,” I told him with a slight smirk of my own, but he just leaned down, putting his sweet, red lips right next to my ear and I almost couldn’t even hear him. 

“No Bella, lucky me.”


Oh.


Lord.


What was that last thing I needed again?


Right.


I moved past my flirtatious friend and headed for the small bakery section.


The manager watched warily from his office.  When my tall, dark, and sexy friend looked his way this time, he closed his blinds and shut the door.


“The people in this town are so odd.”


I was saying it mostly to myself, but my sexy stranger replied anyway.  “They have very strong self preservation instincts.”


It was such a bizarre thing to say. I couldn’t control my expression and then he tilted his head at me again like he had earlier.  “Something you seem to be lacking.”


“What color is that?” I asked him.  He didn’t seem to understand.  “Your eyes, I mean.”


“Do they bother you?”


“No.”


“Then why should the color matter?”


Maybe....


I blindly chose some bread for the meal I planned on making and strolled to the cash register but no one was there.


“Hello?”


That crazy little manager man was in his office, I knew it.  Tall, Dark, and Sexy knew it, too, he’d practically banished him there… but he wasn’t coming out.


“I only have a few things, I just…”


Edward stopped me and a wallet appeared in his hand almost as though he’d thought it and therefore it appeared.  He laid a few bills down onto the counter, far too many for what I was purchasing, and motioned for us to leave.


I felt as though I was being herded.


As though he was the farmer, taking his poor innocent lamb to the slaughter house, and I was the lamb, unwilling or unwanting to know where he was taking me.


It was highly possible he was.


Leading me to slaughter, that is.  I mean yeah, he was definitely sexy. Definitely had my attention and was completely my type, but it was also possible he was a serial killer.


The store owner didn’t seem to like him.


I looked back and he’d already locked up and put his “closed” sign in the doorway.


But that could just be that he’s an outcast of some sort, right?


Maybe he stood up for some small town folks that some big industry was trying to steal land from.


Maybe he didn’t want any mining in the town because it would cause radiation exposure.

And oh my god, I sounded like Norma Ray.


For the love of God, Bella, go with the flow, will ya?  You haven’t been laid in who knows how long.


I shivered.


“Are you afraid?” he asked me.  And that’s when I noticed, the streets were completely bare.


No people, no cars, no lights from stores that were still open.


But, still… I looked up at him and stated with no reservations, “No.”


“Hmmm.”


I’d decided to just go for it.  Forward as it may seem, I was an independent woman for cripe’s sake.

“Do you need a ride home?  I don’t see a car…” My words were fading as I glanced around to make sure I hadn’t seen one for him. When I turned back to see what his answer was, he’d disappeared.


Just like…


I thought back to the man I’d seen in the road earlier that night.  The one that wasn’t really there.  The one that… looked an awful lot like my sexy stranger.


Who’d just ditched me for something more entertaining, apparently.


Hmph.


And to think, I didn’t even get his name.  How depressing.


Just as well, I thought as I climbed into the Prius. it couldn’t be a smart idea to just… take some random stranger home and try to seduce him into a night of meaningless sex just to make myself feel better about not experiencing anything even remotely seductive toward anyone in over a year.

“I mean…”  I laughed.  “That’s my problem right?  Not his,” I mumbled as I drove to the house I’d rented.


“He was probably just being nice,” I told my small bag of groceries as I pulled them out of the back seat and slammed the door shut.


“He was probably gonna be the best lay I’d had since senior skip day back in High School.”

Feeling a tad defeated, I walked up the steps to my temporary home… and tripped.


And although all of my groceries should have splattered all over the front porch, they didn’t.


Why aren’t my groceries splattered?


I started to look around to see where they’d landed after spilling out from their bag and then… “Hello again.”


There he was. My Tall, Dark, and Sexy.  He’d caught them all before they fell and he was cradling them easily in his hands. The ones with the long… slender… very appealing fingers.


“How did you…?”


“Something about you made me want to ensure your safety home.”


He dropped the things I’d bought back into the bag and handed it to me.


My brow knitted together.  I could just feel it.  “What did you do? Follow me while I was driving thirty five miles an hour down the road?”


He simply smiled in reply.


Still not a full smile, but I was working on it.


“Why did you ditch me?”


“It was best for me to leave.”


Hmmm.


“Then why did you follow me home?”


“I’m not sure.”


He nearly looked angry.  No, he was angry.  But with who?  With me?  For asking too many questions?  I wasn’t sure.  And I was equally unsure as to why I asked him the next one.


Call it compulsive.


Call it lonely.


Call it wanting to climb up onto Tall, Dark and Sexy’s lap and have the make out session of the year.


“Would you like to come in?”

I swallowed nervously, waiting for him to answer.


His jaw clenched and his eyes closed.   His fists were closed tightly at his sides, just like back at the grocery store when he was watching me from the entrance.   Then he let out a slow, purposeful breath of air. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”


Part of me wanted to laugh, the other wanted to run.


I let the laugh win and teased him a little. “Why?  Are you a vampire?”  I asked with a raise of my eyebrow and a smirk on my lips.   Almost challenging him to tell me yes.


And his eyes, when they looked up at me, I don’t know… I backed down… decided not to push that line of questioning.   Thinking that perhaps it was a sore subject.


I held my grocery bag out, offering him an actual reason to stay a while.  “I have food.”


I smiled encouragingly and he never did answer me.  Instead, he made his way past where I stood, heading into the house.


I’ll take that as a positive response.


I followed him, feeling urges I hadn’t felt in a long time, hearing silent promises of passion and need.


He was so dark and twisted, this guy, but damn if he wasn’t exactly what I felt I needed.  For so many reasons and on so many levels.


“Make yourself at home,” I told him, setting the groceries down.  Then I began to turn some lights on.


Before I got to the first one, he was back in front of me.  And he was so close that I instinctively moved backward until my shoulders found the wall and I had nowhere else to go.  “I wasn’t exactly in the mood for dinner,” he murmured, letting the back of his hand barely graze the side of my cheek.

He removed his coat and laid it carefully across the back of a chair sitting next to us.

“You’re weren’t?” I squeaked.

He shook his head slowly, back and forth as he watched his fingers move along my jaw line as though he was entranced. When he reached my chin, he stopped and pulled my eyes to his, staring down into them with an intensity that made my entire body shake with anticipation.


I was a little embarrassed by it.


Fuck me, I hope he didn’t notice that.


“What were you… um…” I licked my lips for some moisture.  “In the mood for, then?”


His fingers advanced again.  This time, his hand turned and his palm rested against my throat as his fingers surrounded my neck.

His eyes still watching his own movements.


I felt pressure but he didn’t squeeze, he just held my stare.  “You, Bella.  I’m quite in the mood for you.”


Oh dear God, if you exist, help me to not look like a complete idiot.


All I could do was nod in response. His head titled once again while his eyes took in the slope of my neck that he was holding, literally, in the palm of his hand. Then he dipped his head down while his fingers dropped their grasp and slid slightly, the heel of his hand just barely meeting the nipple of my left breast over the blouse I was wishing was gone.


I might have moaned.  I tried not to make it loud, but I’m quite certain he heard me. 


As his mouth swept past my cheek, I thought I felt a slight smile against my skin and I couldn’t control my breathing.  My chest heaved with the intake of air each time.  Then his mouth was next to my ear.  “Would you like me to take you here?  Bella?  In your living room?  In front of the picture window, perhaps?  For all your neighbors to see?”

“I…”


Damn.


His voice was so devious.


His hand finally… finally found my breast and his fingers… those long, beautiful fingers of his, played around the edges of my nipple through that damned shirt.


Why was the shirt still on?


I knew he had to know where he was venturing.  I was hard.  I was so… fucking hard.  My nipples, that is.  And he knew it… but it was like he was afraid to touch me, fully.


“Please.”


“Be specific in your requests, Bella. If I was to take your pleading the wrong way, this could end very badly.”


My eyes shuttered closed at his words.  He made me want to just jump him and get this over with, and yet I wanted it to last forever.


It was killing me.


In an, oh so very treacherously good, way.


“Please touch me.”


“That’s better,” he whispered and then took my nipple, still covered in clothing, in between his fingers and pinched slightly, clutching the whole of it within his hand, even.


“Oh… god.”


“There’s no such thing, Bella,” he said with a voice of warning and bitterness.  But also he said it in such a way that you’d think he just knew it to be truth.


“Okay,” I told him with unquestionable belief.


His other hand found my leg and slid down to my thigh, immediately hitching it up and over his hip, and that movement, I noted, felt a tad more compelling and desperate than his others.


A hiss escaped him, as he sucked in some air through his teeth, when I inadvertently ground my midsection against his, searching out the friction I needed so badly.


Then he brought his face back level with mine as his fingers left my now lonely nipple and searched for an alternative home.  And found it.

My lips.


At first, he simply rubbed lightly along the bottom one but then, as his eyes shifted to inspect the color of them, he used his thumb to force an opening and I let it slide easily into my mouth, sucking gingerly, testing his reaction.


I thought I heard a deep growl forming from within him somewhere.


“Shall I take you now?”


It was almost as though he was debating the question with himself, not me.  But when he removed his thumb from my mouths grasp, I answered him anyway.

“Shouldn’t I…”  I was reaching for straws.  Trying to convince myself I had at least a little bit of dignity and I tried to swallow but my throat was so dry.  It came out as more of a strangled attempt to speak, I’m sorry to report.  “… at least get your name or something first?”

The edges of his lips turned up scarcely.


God he was beautiful.


He seemed amused with my question though he debated giving me the information I requested but then, determined about something, he looked deep into my soul and said with a voice laced with velvet, “My name is Edward Cullen.”

He followed up his statement by finding the buttons of my shirt with talent beyond his age, it seemed.  Then as an afterthought, he added, “Not that it matters.”


And the way he’d said it, I just made me think, goodness, such a low self esteem he must have.

He went slow as he worked his way down my shirt.  Almost too slow.  As though he was making a great effort not to move too quickly, and I took a little bit of pride in the fact that at least I seemed to have been having some sort of an effect on him, too.


I let my body enjoy his touch as I whimpered.

“What the hell are we doing?”


It was more a rhetorical question, really.  I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t care, and certainly wasn’t looking for answers but Edward responded anyway, dipping his head into the crook of my neck.


“Consider it an experiment.”  His nose grazed my collar bone and I could have sworn he was… smelling me.


Oh my.  “On?”


I could feel his breath against my skin.  I knew his lips were close.  So close.  But he refused to put them against me still.  “Self control.”


And with that, I let out a tiny laugh.  It was all I could manage.  “Seems like an experiment in just the opposite.”


He nearly groaned. “Trust me; it’s exactly what I claim it to be.”


He was hard.  So hard.  Everything.  From his biceps to his groin to his hips.  It was as though he was fighting them from pushing up against me.  Like he was afraid of offending me with forwardness.


“It’s okay,” I whispered to him, hoping to entice him a little more but he snapped back at my words. “Don’t.”


“I want you.”


“You don’t know what you want,” he retorted.  Hands still moving, lips still teasingly close to… everything.


“I know I want this,” I said in an attempt to sound confident, but he just barked out a laugh at my words.


My shirt was gone by then.  Funny, I hadn’t even noticed.  And he released my breast from the lacy bra that had been confining it, watched his own movements again as he fingered the soft sensitive skin there with utter curiosity.

“Much softer than I anticipated,” he muttered as though he’d been pleasantly surprised.


I saw him lick his lips.  It was as though he was getting ready to devour me and I tried to regulate my breathing but it was shaky.


And then, ever so casually… so, deliberately, he lowered his mouth.  Just before his lips surrounded the mound of flesh, I watched his tongue flick out to meet the hardened center.

I was completely covered in goose flesh at the feeling and the crease between my brows deepened while I chanced letting my own hand find the dark, lush locks of Edward’s hair and I grabbed a hold of it, urging him to take more.


I hummed when he did and his teeth… oh my god his teeth were like razors and he was a master at applying just the right amount of pressure with them.


“Edward.”


I could only breathe his name and he knew without my telling him what I wanted.


What I needed.


His free hand roamed my body, literally breaking me free of any inhibitions I might have been having about our tryst.  And then, much like with my shirt, the jeans I wore seemed to just… disappear.


He broke away from my breast as his hands found the band of the matching lacy underwear to my bra. “Is this where you would like me, then?”


I nodded, still holding on to his hair like it was all I had tethering me to him.  “Yes.”


“I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself, Bella.”


He was almost pleading with me, somehow, to stop him, but I couldn’t.


“It’s okay,” I told him again and then I pulled him into a kiss.


He seemed apprehensive about it to begin with, but as his lips met mine, he softened.

More so than he had the entire evening.

His whole body seemed to, as a matter of fact, and his tongue.  Oh dear god of sex symbols, his soft, warm, anxious tongue.  He seemed adept and yet inexperienced and he was so eager while his hand moved and my hips adjusted to give him the access that he needed.


When Edward’s hand approached the wetness he’d created, he hesitated and then broke the kiss between us.  “I don’t….” he scowled and went into thought that made him looked pained about something.


So I took his hand with mine and helped him find the contact I needed desperately.  “Here, Edward, touch me here.”


Still, he reserved himself, so I added a small, “Please.”


“I haven’t allowed myself…” he indeed… touched me there before he continued.  “This sort of gratification… Bella. It’s too much, I think…” he began with hardened eyes and somewhat of a worried expression, but I stopped him, placing my other hand against his cheek. 

He nearly pulled away from my touch… but didn’t.

“I’m sure you can keep up.”


And then, after only a moment’s hesitation, his expression changed and his eyes became impossibly darker than they had even before while his fingers delved into me with a rush that sent me into a plane I’d never experienced.


My lips parted, I tried to breathe, and he held me securely there against that wall as his fingers found places within me that I didn’t even know existed.  “I’m sure I can,” he advised me and then his lips found my neck this time.


Desperate sounds of pain and pleasure came from inside of him as his teeth grazed along my neckline, stopping only momentarily to let his lips replace them.  His tongue slid along after, as though he was tasting me, and it made me squirm for more.


My breasts craved his mouth.


My body craved his experience.


I just needed more.


“Would you like me to taste you here, Bella?”  His fingers deepened and then he pulled them out only to rub painstakingly slow, soft circles around the most sensitive area there.  “Would you like me to swallow you whole?”


I gasped a little. “Yes.”


And then, quick as a flash, he had me lying back onto the leather sofa nearby.  He pinned me there, hovering above me with hooded eyes and what seemed to me to be an inner turmoil of some sort.  Then he leaned back onto his heels and lifted my hips as he trailed hot kisses along my thigh, down so slowly until he met that same aching spot that his fingers had visited not long before. 


“Jesus,” I mumbled and luckily he ignored my reference to anything holy that time.

Instead, he licked.


He sucked.


He muddied my senses.


His tongue ruined me for all others as it made its home inside of me.


He drank like he was enjoying a fine wine.


He hummed and groaned and his hands grasped at my waist; when his tongue found my clit, I had no chance of lasting long at all.  I was sensitive and ready and oh so willing to let him make me come undone.


I arched and let sounds release that I should have been embarrassed by, but wasn’t, and I came so hard I saw bright lights dance in front of my eyes.


“Fuck me.”


It was just a phrase.  One I’d said many times in the past for many different reasons, but Edward didn’t dismiss it.


“I plan to,” he said and then as fast as he’d rid me of my clothes, he’d done the same for himself and stood over me, showing me all that was Edward.   All that I’d craved since I saw him outside that damned grocery store earlier in the night.  Maybe even before.


“Touch me,” he said, and my eyes moved down his perfection to the hardness awaiting me.  I reached out and did as he told me. 

He growled in response, telling me through clenched teeth, “Make me forget who I am, Bella.”

I sat up and stroked him.


His eyes closed and he hissed.  “Yessssss.”


I ran my thumb over his tip and his hips moved ever so slightly forward, pushing him further into my hand.


I licked him once, twice, then engulfed him fully with my mouth, ignoring the size and intimidation he represented.


His breathing became rapid and his hand moved to my head, holding me there as he moved himself in and out of my mouth.


“It’s…”


He stopped… he couldn’t find the words he wanted or he was too much into the moment to finish his thought as I massaged him and stroked him and licked him and sucked him.


“Fuck.”  It came as a strangled cry from him.  Again, like he was angry with something. And then, just like that, I was on my back and he was once again over me like a predator of some sort.

“It’s not enough.”

I knew what he meant.  I just couldn’t answer him.


His eyes wouldn’t allow me to speak.


He swallowed hard and seemed to be fighting something inside of his own mind.  “I have to have all of you.”


I nodded, breathlessly.  Too anxious for him.  Too needy to respond otherwise.


His hands were at either side of my face, holding me firmly yet gently as he searched for something in my eyes.  Something he needed an answer to, I was guessing.


He eyed my lips, then placed a small, chaste kiss against them and then a hand moved down, between us.  I thought I would scream, as long as it took, but he finally aligned himself with me and pushed.


It was all consuming, when he entered me.


I reached around him and tried to pull him into me even more, but he was in control.  He was the one calling the shots.


He paused only momentarily to let me know, “There’s no turning back now, Bella.  I won’t be able to stop myself, not that I’d want to at this point.”


“I don’t want you to, either,” I told him.


It was all he needed.


He drew himself out and then pushed back into me, trying to keep himself from losing his discipline, but I could not only see him losing the fight in his expression, but his body.  I felt him giving up the battle he’d been fighting internally for whatever reason, ever since I’d met him.


Perhaps longer.


I reached toward him with my lips to kiss his chest; I caressed his arms, his shoulders, everything, to console him somehow.


“Why do I want this so badly?” he asked himself, then looked down at me.  “Why do I want you so badly?”


My head moved back and forth while he began moving more urgently.  It felt as though he was pounding against me to ease his worry.  To make an attempt to take it away but all it did was make him more determined.


About what, I didn’t know.


Then he lifted my leg and drove into me even more authoritatively than before, reaching that spot.  The one that makes a woman cry out for mercy.  Or so I’d heard and apparently now was learning it actually existed.


I couldn’t take it anymore.  I came, yelling out his name and begging for him to never stop and then he reached his own climactic point of no return.


As he came inside of me, he grasped hold of my hips and held them just how he needed them as he drove himself deep. His eyes shut tight for a moment but then, as though he’d suddenly remembered something long forgotten, his eyes flew open and they narrowed in on me with passion and longing and anger and frustration all rolled into one inexplicable emotion.


That’s when I saw them.


His teeth.


It was only an instant and without thinking, I turned my head and stretched my neck to allow him what my body seemed to know he needed.


As I waited for him to descend I thought perhaps I heard him quietly utter the words, “I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t tell and honestly didn’t care if he was saying them to me, to himself or someone else entirely.


He was forgiven.


I’d only just heard the words when he collapsed into me and his head buried itself into my neck and I felt them.  I felt his teeth cutting into my skin just above my collar bone and it hurt.

Jesus Christ, it hurt so good.

 I should have been afraid.  I should have been fighting to stay alive, attempting to scream or… push him away or something but I let it happen.  I let him take what he needed from me.


And somehow... I knew all of a sudden what he was.

Who he was.


And I didn’t care.


Because all of the blood that was rushing from my body into his… there was something about it that made me want him to keep going.  To continue on until he’d acquired satisfaction.

It was his.


The last thing I remember thinking was that after everything I thought I knew about this town. After all the stories I’d laughed at and the people I silently mocked.  I’d finally learned what I came to find out.


What was happening, what had been happening since I’d arrived?  It was all bringing me to him.


He was real.


And he was no superstition.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

PART 2 – the other side

Edward Cullen POV

SUMMARY:

Edward Cullen has lived his existence feeding only when he absolutely had to, avoiding humans for the most part and accepting the fact that he’d never have what the rest of his coven seemed to have.  Happiness.  Until a stranger arrives in town that not only isn’t afraid of him, but doesn’t believe in him either.

Selfish.

I was such a selfish creature.  I had been for a very long time.  Always thinking of myself.  It stemmed mostly from boredom after the first hundred or so years of my existence.

One can only learn so many languages, arts, cultures… until he is rendered completely exhausted.  The boredom was inevitable.

Maddening even, to a certain extent.

Other vampires I knew claimed to enjoy the thought of living forever but they were young.

Once they were around for a few hundred years, they would understand.

And this town we were in.

Burn it down, I would say, it was about as interesting as a blade of grass.  I’d been telling Carlisle as much for at least a year but he’d insisted we stay.  Said it was best to lie low after our confrontations in New York the prior Winter.

I really don’t know why I stayed with him… or any of them for that matter.  My coven.

I believed they cared for me.  As much as a vampire can care, that is, but I was itching to feed and when that itch made its home under my skin, it was hard to ignore.

The rest of the group seemed to deal with it much better but, I found myself, more often than not, falling victim to the urges I was meant to give into.  Perhaps it was also because of the boredom.

Those urges were what caused the confrontation in New York.

I became restless and it had nearly been the end of us.  Reminded me of the witch hunts in the early nineteen hundreds, as a matter of fact.

I wished secretly that it had been.  It was monotonous going through this life with no purpose, no… passion… nothing to give me a reason for being.  No one to share any of it with on any level other than companionship.

I had long since given up on gaining a mate like Carlisle, Emmett and Jasper had.  They seemed… content with theirs and being around them only reminded me of what I didn’t have.  What I probably never would have.  I just wondered if they were only telling me of myths and legends to get a rise out of me.

After all, I’d never found it.  How could it exist if after all the hundreds of years I’d roamed the Earth, I’d never experienced it. Not once.

Any and all females I had come across in my existence seemed self righteous and idiotic, and any humans… well, that would never happen. After all, I was a monster.  They usually cowered and ran from the mere sight of me, instinctively knowing what I was and the threat I imposed.

The very day I saw her for the first time, I had been on my way to leave a note for Carlisle and the others, as a matter of fact, letting them know I was venturing out on my own for a while, that I would catch up with them when I felt I could handle the mundaneness again.

It wasn’t that there was very much to say about her.  Brown hair, brown shirt, brown shoes… jeans.  Nothing spectacular that I could see in comparison to any other woman I’d ever come across and yet… there was something.

Was it the color in her cheeks?

The softness in her eyes?

Perhaps the way she held herself when she walked?

The way her hips swayed or how her neck turned, the bat of her eyelashes...

I wasn’t sure.  I sensed her almost immediately as I passed the diner where every child in this town and their siblings ate their food, gossiped to friends, and cried into their coffee.

I typically paid them no mind, as they did to me, but something about that passing had pulled me toward where she sat.

She was new. And she was different.

She was something I shouldn’t have been staring at for over an hour as she ate her meal.

Why would something so insignificant cause me to stand idle for so long, interested in something so lack luster as eating?

To want nothing but to see how she lifted her eyes to speak to the waitress.

To crave hearing her laugh at something another patron had said.

To listen to her heart beating from even a hundred feet away.

I followed her home.

I watched her from afar. Never close enough to hear her actual conversations. Never close enough to allow myself to be overwhelmed by her scent.  Near enough to observe her go about her daily rituals of phone calls, cleaning out of sheer boredom, typing on her laptop, talking with townsfolk.  She seemed to want to appear interested in what they said and yet, I could tell she desired to be somewhere else.

I wanted to know why she was there.

What she was doing in this small, dingy town when there was a whole magnificent world for someone like her to explore that was much more entertaining than this place.

I could show her.

I shook my head at my own thoughts.

That was preposterous. She was human. I was not.  Surely I’d kill her as much as be near her.

Killing a human was something I at least tried to avoid… as much as I could.  

It was something Carlisle and I disagreed on from time to time.  I personally did not see the harm in ridding the world of a few psychopaths every now and again.  He insisted that was not our call to make.

Carlisle believed in a higher power.

He was also naive.

If there was a higher power, what would be his point in allowing things like us to have existed?

Why put us through the torture of not really living and yet never dying?

It angered me to think there was  someone or something who was actually in control of things and that they would say they loved all creatures while seeming to despise us.  His own creations.  Something he himself had made, or at least.. had allowed to have been made with no love in our hearts, no passion or feeling for anything but the lust for blood.

The same thing that made us evil to all others in existence.

We were cursed to be alone, desperate for something that would only make us more of the monsters we were.

It wasn’t until that fateful night that I’d felt the crack in my own defenses, that I would understand it all.

She was leaving that gas station again.  Talking to who I’d come to assume was the daftest person in the town.  Michael Newton.

I’d let him see the full extent of my terror one evening long ago when he had been teasing a woman in his feeble attempt to impress her about not being afraid of the legendary Cullen Clan.

Most people had theories about us.  They knew we were dangerous by sheer instinct somehow, but there was always one who thought they were smarter.  Wittier, more brave, even.

I still tended to think fondly of that night I’d frightened poor Michael into a frenzy, though it paled in comparison to most.

He was giving the interest of my curiosity directions with a shaky hand and worried eyes.

She seemed… amused with him.

Although I could tell she found no truth in any of the stories he might have told her, she was not cocky about her choice to ignore him.  She simply remained indifferent.

I followed her via the wooded surroundings of the road and had gotten a little too close for comfort when I heard her.

“Don’t go out after dark, Bella,”… “You really should get right home, Bella.”

She laughed and something inside of me wanted to make her believe.

To make her see.

To see me, specifically.

So I jumped from my hiding place, into the middle of the road, and waited for her eyes to meet mine.

When they did, her tiny car screeched from the brakes being used too harshly and she screamed.

My skin nearly warmed at the sound of her cries.

I wanted more of it.

That was when I realized what I was doing and made for the forest again.  I chose to perch myself up high in a tree to watch her more.

She peeked out of the vehicle, looked both ways in the road and I smiled, knowing I had at least gotten her attention.

She checked under the car and then stood back up with a scowl on her face that made me all the more smug that my little stunt had intrigued her a bit.  I’ve got your attention now, haven’t I?

Then she simply shrugged her experience off and got back in to the car to complete her journey.

I narrowed my eyes in annoyance at her but continued to follow her along the road, nonetheless.

Ah, food, I thought to myself once we arrived at her destination.

The insignificant grocer’s place of business.

He seemed to be trying to turn her away, and the mere thought of it made me want to rip his heart out, but she won him over and then stepped inside.

I chanced moving closer to get a better look.  To see if there would be any more interactions, but there weren’t.  For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I stayed.  I lingered just outside the grocers store window, watching her with awe.

I didn’t know why I found her so fascinating and I wasn’t afforded the opportunity to understand it because suddenly, her eyes were on mine.

I was caught off guard by the action. Humans hardly ever noticed me.  Unless I wanted them to, and for this one to see me there, tucked behind the glass and shadows, it was… unnerving.

And even if one had happened to notice me as I lurked in the dark corners of their world, they surely wouldn’t still be staring back at me.

She looked as though she was trying to place me.

Like she’d recognized me.

But that wasn’t possible.  Was it?  I hadn’t even been in the middle of that road but for a few seconds and she hadn’t had time to really see me then.  Had she?

My fists clenched in annoyance with her for not looking away.  For not feeling the trepidation she should have been feeling, and yet something inside of me was grateful.

A small something, but nonetheless… something.

My feet seemed to move without my knowledge and, instead of breaking her stare, she continued to watch my every move.  Until I noticed the insignificant store manager standing next to her, that is.

When she turned her attention to him, I took advantage of the time she’d afforded me to move in even closer.  To attempt to give her the fright she needed in order to properly assess the danger I represented.

She was asking him something.  I didn’t really care what.

“That man, he was…”

“Hello.”

Her head spun and I had to fight every urge not to smirk at the shock on her face when she saw me standing so close to her, but she didn’t run like most would have.  She just swallowed.  And I was well aware of the slighted vein in the side of her temple that was carrying her rushing blood throughout to other areas of her body.

“Hello,” she finally answered quietly.

Her voice sounded much different than the strangled scream from the road just prior to our meeting and I decided that I liked it.  The sound of her vocal chords moving against each other to make words sounded so… musical.


The store manager had not taken a hint yet so I eyed him, encouraging his absence and he obeyed.  They always obeyed.

“You are?” I inquired, not only because I wanted to know the name of the female who had been provoking me since her arrival, but also I wanted to hear the sounds she would make again.  They were rather pleasing.

“Bella,” she told me, holding a hand out in typical human like nature, wanting me to shake it.  But I didn’t dare touch her.  It would be too risky for the time being.

Instead, I nodded, and couldn’t help but repeat the name she’d given me.  “Bella.”  It suited her.

She reached for something of no consequence off of the shelving next to her and began walking.  So I followed.  I wasn’t sure why.  It really was the worst of ideas.

Her scent was absolutely intoxicating, though.  Accompanied by that voice of hers, I was sure there was complete ecstasy to be reached if I were to just… feel… her…

She stopped and looked up at me as though she was about to say something, but I spoke first, needing her to know my frustrations for some reason.  “Your perfume manipulates me,” I said plainly.  Almost accusingly.

She seemed as though this was somewhat funny to her.  Maybe she was a hunter.  Maybe it was part of her skill set, entrapping vampires with her sounds and smells and then the next thing they knew, they were no longer walking among the living.

It was obviously my duty to my coven to find out if she was.  I would have to warn them if someone was after us again.

“I don’t wear perfume,” she told me, and I just could not stop glaring down at her.  I waited for her to say more but she didn’t.

So I coached her on, smiling a bit, trying to appear as friendly as any other town folk around the area. “You’re new.”

“I am,” she admitted.  A short answer, in my opinion.

That was it?  That was all she was offering me?

Stubborn.

“You’re different,” I told her outright, half expecting her to defend herself, half expecting an admittance of some sort.

“I’m just here for…” she cleared her throat and I practically willed her to continue.  I needed more information about her to make an educated decision on what I was to do with her.  At least, that’s what I told myself.  “I’m writing a story,” she finished finally and I prodded.

“On?”

“Monsters.”  And there it was.  She wasn’t even afraid to admit it! And yet, she didn’t seem aware that I was one of them.

That I could easily snap her neck in an instant and be gone before anyone was the wiser.

Why would she tell me that?

Perhaps she was fearless.  Perhaps she was as old if not older than even me.

No.

She wasn’t a hunter, I decided, as my fingers somehow found their way to toy with the plastic buttons holding her shirt together.  I wanted to destroy every one of them and see just exactly what it was that made this creature tick.  To see the breasts that lingered underneath, heaving with every breath she took.  To feel the hardened center that pressed up against the fabric she was wearing.  To find out why it did such things.

But why was I thinking such things?  That would be ridiculous.

I licked my lips.

Then thought to myself that maybe it was time to admit I wasn’t simply attempting to find out if she was a hunter.

I was choking on my own thoughts of lust and want for a human I knew I could never have.

I would only kill her.

I should have stopped right then.  Left.  But I wanted her to know, to be afraid, to understand what danger she was putting herself in by being there with me, even in the most public of places.

Perhaps even tell her what I was.   Maybe that would awaken her instincts.

“There are plenty of those here then,” I said, noticing I hadn’t gone to the trouble of removing my fingers from her clothing.

I couldn’t seem to help it.  I wanted them gone so terribly.

“If you believe they exist, I suppose,” she said and it made me stop. Everything.  Had she honestly just told me what I thought she had?

I looked into her eyes, noticing the color for the first time.  Brown, such an ordinary color for someone who is everything but ordinary.  “You don’t?”

“You do?”

Did I honestly want her to know what I was?  Or, even more so, did I want to pretend I wasn’t?

Just once, I found myself wishing, just once I would like to live as they do, to feel what they do… to experience…

And if she didn’t even believe in what I was, perhaps I had a chance at that happening.  If I could manage to control myself, that was.

“I believe that I exist.”

I traced another button.  Dying to touch the skin underneath.  I was lost in these thoughts when she murmured something.  ”Ohmygod it’s been too long.”

“Indeed,” I replied, pulling my hand away abruptly.  I had let myself get carried away.

It wasn’t as though I was inexperienced in the area of making women feel pleasure.  But never with a human.  Never had I touched the soft, warm skin of a living female except to drink the blood from her veins.

It was so tempting to just take her to one of the dark corners of the town and…

“So,” she interrupted my planning.  “What’s a tall, dark and handsome young man like you doing out at the grocery store on a Saturday night?  Shouldn’t you be… clubbing?”

I couldn’t help but smile at the question.

Me. At a club. Dancing with humans.

They’d all die without a doubt... but her… here... I wanted her.  I wanted to rip the clothing from her body and taste every inch of her.  I wanted to bury myself inside of her and sink my teeth into her.  And I wanted her to know these things.  To fear these things.

“Now, Bella, if I was clubbing, I wouldn’t have found you… here… would I have?”

“Lucky me,” she said with a slight tilt of her lips, making me want to growl from the ache she was creating inside of me.

I didn’t tell her, however.  Instead, I played her game, placing my lips terrifyingly close to her ear and told her, “No, Bella, lucky me.”

Her body responded in exactly the way I’d hoped it would, but instead of verbalizing her needs, she steadied herself and moved past me again.

When the store manager eyed the two of us through his feeble fortress of an office, I sneered at him with a look of warning and he obeyed once again, closing himself inside where he thought it was safe.

Good boy.

“The people in this town are so odd.”

She was right, of course.  But at least I understood why they acted the way they did.  “They have very strong self preservation instincts.”

Bella looked up at me with an odd expression of her own, and I felt the strongest urge to make the danger I represented known to her again.  I was so curious as to why she didn’t see it. “Something you seem to be lacking.”

“What color is that?” she asked, and my thoughts became blurred.  What had she meant by that exactly?  “Your eyes, I mean.”

Ah.  The black.  Reflecting my lack of food as well as my desire for her.  I became annoyed with her for making me feel that desire, again with only a simple question. “Do they bother you?”

“No.”

“Then why should the color matter?”

She finished with her shopping, or so it seemed, and found an aisle to pay for her food but no onecame to help her.

They will never come to help you, Bella.

“Hello?”

They are only human, after all.

“I only have a few things, I just…”

I myself became flustered, even with the amoebas who lacked the courage to stand up for their own and finally, I restrained her from begging anymore.

I set money down onto the counter.  More than was deserved for their lack of service and I ushered Bella out of the place.

As we left, I noticed her in deep thought and then she shivered, as though something had finally crossed her mind.

I felt smug once more.

At last, she understands.

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”  And the way she said it.  She believed it.

Damn her.  So frustrating, this woman.

“Hmmm.”

I realized at my own thoughts that I needed to get away from her. The town was locked up and bare of any living creature, and if she continued to tempt me the way she was, I would surely take advantage.  I couldn’t do that to Carlisle again, despite my issues with him.  He’d done nothing to deserve the wrath of my mistakes.

I also wasn’t sure I wanted to do it to this woman who called herself Bella.  She was… indeed different.  Everything about her was different, from her lack of fear, to her scent, to the way her body seemed to be calling out to me, begging to be taken in a flurry of passion we seemed to both be feeling.

I left before I could act on that passion.

Went back to watching from a distance, following at a safe pace.

Until she arrived at the house she had borrowed for her stay.

She was mumbling to herself again and laughter bubbled inside of my chest.

“He was probably just being nice,” she’d said and I wondered, was she referring to me?  She seemed angry at her groceries.  It amused me enough to move closer.

“He was probably gonna be the best lay I’d had since senior skip day back in High School.”

At her words, I froze for a moment.

She felt the same desires I had.  She wanted me buried inside of her, she wanted …

She tripped and I moved instinctively.

At first I’d thought she would fall, but she was more worried about her bag of food, so I grabbed it all up and held it until she could get her bearings.

“Hello again,” I said to her when she noticed me.

“How did you…?”

I cut her off.  “Something about you made me want to ensure your safety home.”

I plopped her things back into the bag they’d fallen from and handed it to her.  Then she scowled at me. “What did you do? Follow me while I was driving thirty five miles an hour down the road?”

I grinned.  She drove slower than the speed limit and she was asking me how I kept up?

Silly humans.

“Why did you ditch me?”  Her question caught me off guard.  Something that rarely happened, so I answered her earnestly.

“It was best for me to leave.”

“Then why did you follow me home?”

“I’m not sure.”

Her questions were incessant and it was infuriating that she wouldn’t just drop it, but then she did, upon registering my expression at her inquiries.

“Would you like to come in?”

What was wrong with her?  Did she not understand yet?  I was dangerous!

I wanted to yell at her.  Tell her how incredibly stupid she was being.  But she had no idea what she was doing and I didn’t want to end my time with her just yet, so I controlled myself and simply told her, “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

Then she let out the tiniest of giggles.  The sound of it made me go mad with want.

“Why?  Are you a vampire?”  she asked me.  I had to narrow my eyes.  Was she challenging me to admit my demons?  Is this what she wanted?  A vampire in her home?

In the middle of my silent rant, she interrupted me by holding her groceries out as some sort of offering. “I have food.”  She smiled and I became entranced.

If she wanted a vampire in her home, her being… exploring her body.  I would give it to her.

I had no choice with this woman.

It was like she was controlling my every action with mere thoughts and actions.

“Make yourself at home,” she said and, before she could turn a light on and perhaps let her inhibitions fade, I was by her side, stopping her from doing so.

I stalked toward her, urges strengthening, want growing…

“I wasn’t exactly in the mood for dinner,” I advised her as the backs of my fingers dared to touch her face.

Then I removed my coat and placed it on a chair.

“You’re weren’t?” she asked, and I simply shook my head at a torturously slow speed, deciding upon the best way to enjoy her.

I took her in, studying every inch of her as my fingers once again found her skin. I traced her jaw line, amazed at how warm it felt against mine.  I stopped at her chin, tilting her head so I could look down into her eyes and her body spoke to me with shivers.

I want to make you do more than shiver, Bella.

“What were you… um…In the mood for, then?”

I should have just killed her, it would have made things much easier, I thought, watching as my hand encircled her tiny throat.   It would be simple, just a quick snap of her neck and my troubled yearnings would be over.

But it wasn’t what  I wanted.  Wasn’t what I needed.

I needed her.

All of her.

My eyes told her first, my words followed. “You, Bella,” I said menacingly.  “I’m quite in the mood for you.”

I noticed her head nod in agreement and I tilted mine, rather enjoying the shape of her body.

The smell of her.

The very essence of her.

A gasp escaped her and I chanced letting my mouth brush along her cheek as I searched out her earlobe.  “Would you like me to take you here?  Bella?  In your living room?  In front of the picture window, perhaps?  For all your neighbors to see?” I inquired, wanting to take her so that everyone would know the town vampire had had their latest visitor, but more than that... so they would know she was mine.

“I…”

She began to answer but stopped.  I was unsure if she was debating with herself or just speechless.

So to further explore her reactions and my control, I dipped my fingers along the shirt she wore and teased around the area I so longingly wanted to visit further.

Her breasts.

I fingered the nipple, which was showing its form through the fabric, and nearly tore the shirt from her right then when she murmured, “Please.”

That word.

What did she mean?

Please take me?

Please bite me?

Please turn me?

So many possibilities in one simple word.

“Be specific in your requests, Bella. If I was to take your pleading the wrong way, this could end very badly,” I warned her for the fifth time that evening.

She corrected herself after a moment.  “Please touch me.”

“That’s better,” I told her, trapping the small nub between my fingers to see how it would affect her.

“Oh… god.”

“There’s no such thing, Bella,” I advised her.  I’d looked long enough, I knew what I was saying.

“Okay,” she replied as I continued to explore how her body worked from the outside by instinctively taking her long, slender, devious leg and setting it around my hip.  I may have given my desperation to feel her against me away, and when she pressed herself against my hard on, I failed to keep myself in control as a hiss escaped me.

I touched her lips.  They were soft, supple, but I wanted more.  I wanted to see what was in store for me, waiting inside her mouth, so I pushed a finger in and although she could have just let it be, let me find my own way… she didn’t, she sucked.

And I growled.

“Shall I take you now?”

It may have sounded like a question, but really, I was just debating with myself over the if’s, whens and wheres of how I would take her.

“Shouldn’t I…”  she paused.  “At least get your name or something first?”

And I had to smile again because really, what difference would our names make in the end?

“My name is Edward Cullen,” I said and came upon the realization that I hadn’t ever introduced myself to another human since before I’d been changed.  There hadn’t been a cause to.  “Not that it matters.”

I kept my movements slow as I travelled down her top.  Had I not continuously made great effort to keep my movements in check, things would move too swiftly for her to enjoy our time together and she would be dead within moments.

In addition to those unfortunate circumstances, I would lose the pleasure of her company and that would be unacceptable.  I was finding her company extremely entertaining.

“What the hell are we doing?”  she breathed and I couldn’t resist being completely honest with her.

“Consider it an experiment,” I replied, letting my nose graze along her chest to her collar bone, and I inhaled deeply, enjoying her scent.  Testing my boundaries.

“On?”

Her voice shook and I reveled in it.

“Self control.”

She laughed a small laugh and I could feel the vibrations of her vocal chords against my lips.  I could hardly contain my urges to rip into her right then and there.

“Seems like an experiment in just the opposite.”

Again, she questioned me.  And again, I felt the need to warn her.  “Trust me; it’s exactly what I claim it to be.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered in response to my resisting her temptations, and I begged her not to make this any easier on me.

“Don’t.”

“I want you.”

“You don’t know what you want,” I insisted, but even as my mind attempted to convince me it was wrong, my hands were exploring every inch of her existence.

“I know I want this.”

And I had to laugh at her ignorance.

She had no idea.

Even so, at the sound of her invitation, I ripped her shirt from her, exposing her breasts to me fully.  Then I rid her of the undergarment that came between her skin and my mouth.

“Much softer than I anticipated,” I noted.

I uttered the words mindlessly as my fingers felt along the supple area, and my instincts drove me to lick my lips in anticipation of what I knew was only a matter of moments away now.

I placed my lips around the mound of flesh and instantly felt gratification in the warmth of her inside my mouth.

I licked and sucked and even grazed my teeth along the sensitive area, but was careful not to bite down.

It would have been too soon, and too disastrous.

She moaned my name and I let a free hand roam her curves and valleys, enjoying the sensations it created both in me and her.

My name floated from her lips and its only accomplishment was to urge me on further, more urgently, more greedily.

I regarded the lace surrounding her waist and dipped a hand into where I knew I probably should not have, but didn’t care by then. “Is this where you would like me, then?”

She grasped at the hairs behind my head and nodded. “Yes.”

I advised her, desperate for a reason to stop, ready and willing to move forward, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself, Bella.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered and then unexpectedly pulled my lips to hers.

It was a mistake, the more physical contact I was letting myself have with her, the harder it would be to find control. With our mouths connected the way they were, it was going to be even more difficult to restrain myself.

But then, as I wrestled with myself over pulling away, I realized I didn’t want to.  I wanted her lips on mine, I needed them, I adored them.

Their soft, wet, movements against mine were unbelievably passionate and my tongue moved with hers as though it couldn’t get enough of her.

I couldn’t get enough of her.

This was beyond my understanding.  Beyond anything I had experienced before and I relished in it.   Yearned for it.

I wanted more.

So I pulled her toward me by her hips and separated her legs for my hand to find what I craved forever and a day, still feebly attempting to convince myself I could stop.  “I don’t…” I started to withdraw and her hand found mine, closing the distance between the warm wetness down between her soft legs and my hand.

“Here, Edward, touch me here.”

I froze with the closeness of it.  The sheer pull this woman had on me was infuriatingly strong. But I could still stop this if I wanted to, I thought… I could still….

“Please,” she added.

I tried to warn her, once again, “I haven’t allowed myself…”. I let my hand…my fingers… complete the journey to feel what they’d been searching for. “This sort of gratification… Bella. It’s too much, I think…”

And she interrupted me by placing her small, warm hand against my smooth, cold face.  She looked into my blackened eyes from want and hunger and told me,  “I’m sure you can keep up.”

Her voice, combined with the intimacy of our position, my fingers, slipping into ecstasy… my lust for her overcame me, and I pushed my fingers into her hard and deep, nearly wanting to frighten her but mostly just wanting her.

“I’m sure I can,” I told her, diving into her neck with my lips, trying to muffle the animalistic sounds of desire and weakness I was feeling for her. My fingers were inside of her, searching every area of pleasure out within her body that would make her scream my name, not whisper it.

I so wanted to bite her then. Right then, to feel her blood gushing into me like a river of life that would fill me with content, but it wasn’t just her blood that I needed anymore.  It was her everything.

I pushed deeper than ever inside of her as the need grew stronger than I  thought I could handle… the animal taking over more and more as my control dwindled and my will subsided.  “Would you like me to taste you here, Bella?”

I found her lips to be so very sensitive as I swirled my fingers around where I suddenly wanted to taste her. “Would you like me to swallow you whole?”

“Yes.”

I wondered momentarily how she could want such a creature as myself in her home, much less inside of her the way I was, but it was only momentary.  I waved the thought off, uncaring whether she knew what I was anymore or not.

I flew the two of us to her couch, where she would be more comfortable for what was about to happen. I hovered over her for just a few seconds, ignoring the now small voice of my conscious as it warned me of the dangers I was diving into.

Then I gained new position, pulled her groin to me, and kissed along her femoral arteries, wanting to bite down, needing to wait a bit longer.  It was excruciating to pass them by.  They smelled…. Divine.

My tongue enjoyed her.

I wanted to drink up every last bit of the erotic juices she produced for me as I licked and sucked, added fingers and found her hot spots.

She cursed and writhed against me as I explored her with the enthusiasm of a man, not a vampire.  Not something that wanted to devour her, but someone who wanted to ruin her for every other being in the world.

I grabbed her waist, giving a better angle to my discoveries, and when she hit orgasm, I believed that she wanted me to have pity on her, to give her refuge from the pleasure  but I couldn’t. I wanted her to remember what  I could do to her; I wanted her to want no one else but me ever again.

“Fuck me,” she finally groaned when she could speak again.

I growled in response to her vulgarity.   “I plan to.”

I ripped my clothes from my body without the ability to slow my movements any longer and then stood over her, desperately wanting to feel her soft lips around my cock.

But first… “Touch me.”

She looked up at me, and then did as I asked.  As I required.  Her hands wrapped around the long hardened root of my lust and a snarl began to grow within my chest.

“Make me forget who I am, Bella,”  I begged her, and without hesitation, she made herself upright, then stroked me, causing a hiss to escape my lips.

It  felt supreme… it felt… perfectly supreme. 

I closed my eyes, lost in the feeling.  “Yessssss.”

Then she ran her thumb up along the shaft and over the tip of me, causing my hips to inadvertently thrust forward into her capable hand.

That’s when I felt her tongue for the first time and I had to look down to watch her work.  She was beautiful as her mouth, finally, her wet, hot, talented mouth converged around me fully, taking every bit of me as though she wanted nothing else.

Without thinking, I laid a hand on her head and held her still while I moved in and out of her.  It was simply unfathomable that this felt as good as it did.  That I could barely move, and yet wanted to abuse her in ways that I had never remembered wanting to conduct myself.  Ever.

“It’s…”

I couldn’t find words to describe how it felt to be inside of her mouth, and that thought made me want to be inside other places even more so than I already had.  She was compelling me to come undone with her movements around me.

She was evil.

“Fuck,” I choked.  “It’s not enough.”  And it wasn’t.  How could it ever be enough?  Ever again?

I looked down at her, wanting to destroy her for making me feel these… things and yet, I wanted to save her from every hurt, every pain, every harshness the world would give her at the same time.

I wanted her for me.

To be mine.

For no one else to have or touch or feel these things with.

“I have to have all of you.”  The words just fell from my lips as though they were truth, and they were, I realized as my previous thoughts invaded my soul.

As she invaded my soul.

I moved my hand from her head to her face and its brother mirrored it at the other side, holding her gaze in my own. I bent down, searching out the answers to my questions without speaking a word to her.

Was the answer in her kiss?

I asserted myself and placed my mouth against hers briefly, then pushed her back, moving a hand down along her torso, attempting to slow myself again.  And when I couldn’t take another second of waiting, I found her center with my own and pushed into her without another moments hesitation.

It was… not like anything I’d ever expected.  It was…

“There’s no turning back now, Bella.  I won’t be able to stop myself, not that I’d want to at this point.”  Was it my last attempt to warn her what I was?  Or was it a simple declaration of the fact that I wouldn’t hold back any longer?

“I don’t want you to, either.”

It didn’t matter.

I pulled out of her and immediately felt a sense of loss just before pushing back into her with a force that even I did not recognize. 

I was not myself.

I was not controlled.

I was not interested in hiding.

I was consumed by her.  And I needed her.  Wanted her.  And I would have her, all of her.

Her skin against my skin, her lips finding every inch of my body… it was all just so much for my senses to comprehend but I would not stop, I couldn’t even if I had wanted to at that point, that battle had been lost upon meeting her, I realized.  I had just been too much of an idiot to see it.

“Why do I want this so badly?” I muttered incoherently to myself, and then I searched her eyes out again.  Her deep, dark, human eyes.  “Why do I want you so badly?”

She shook her head in response, only angering me with myself even more, and I showed her that anger as I pushed into her harder, more eagerly… I wanted her to know she had ruined me. And I hated her for it.

I couldn’t get deep enough inside of her.  It felt like I couldn’t feel enough of her, so I lifted a leg to gain access to the places I wanted to go and thrust harder as she moaned and arched and grasped at me desperately.

And then it happened.  The sound I had been yearning to hear came from her lips.

My name, in Bella’s orgasmic state, made me a broken man.

A broken thing.

The simple sound of her voice yelling out with fear and pain and agony and pleasure and want and need that matched only my own – it made my own orgasm hit with the surprise of sunshine over a mountain before it was meant to happen.

I came hard and long and held onto Bella’s hips with fear and anticipation and I drove into her one last time, holding on to the feeling of it all.

It was overwhelming.

Euphoric.

I remember telling myself somewhere deep within my darkening thoughts that I should never have gotten close to her at that store, I should have never spoken to her, much less followed her home, and when she invited me in, I should have flown back to my coven and stayed hidden until she’d left.

But that thought of regret, was but one, tiny, minuscule thought in the midst of many other darker ones that over took it and consumed it. My eyes flew open in one fleeting moment as my instincts took over completely, as my lips drew back and I bared my teeth just as I noticed the look on her face when she saw  them.

And instead of screaming, instead of kicking and flailing and swatting at a dark creature that would destroy her, like so many others had once they realized what I was just before their death, she turned her head and exposed her neck.  And I could see her vein pumping with the  hot blood I desired in that moment more than anything else I could imagine.

“I’m sorry.”

I let myself say it.

To Bella, for being weak and unholy and evil and dishonorable in the most devious of ways, but also to Carlisle, for what I was about to do to us.

Then I fell into her.

I bit into her.

I felt the warmth of her blood fill my mouth and overtake my senses as we lay tangled naked around each other with lingering passion and growing understanding of each other.

Everything was spinning within me, bringing a heightened awareness of everything around me.  Around us and, even though I sensed them encircling from afar, I ignored them… my coven.

How did they know?

I was hard for more of her, but even more so, I was hard for her blood and I drank her up like I had never drank of another human being before.

Her taste was different, it was… sweeter and warmer and felt more invigorating than even the strongest of men.

“Get him out of there.”

“I told you he was gonna get himself into a bunch of trouble.”

“I can’t, Carlisle.  She’s not dead.”

No, she’s not dead.  Not yet. I could feel her slipping away and, even though I wanted to, I couldn’t pull myself from her artery.  I couldn’t stop myself from taking everything she had to offer me.

That was when I felt it.

“Pull hard, he’ll be strong.”

A heavy chain flew around my ankle and I was yanked away from my feed.  My eyes flew to the door and I could see them through my blood induced high, just outside the entryway. Emmett, Jasper… Carlilse.

They had somehow found me and were trying to save me from myself, but all I could think about in my abrupt awakening from the frenzy I’d been in was Bella.

“What have I done?”

What have I done!

I pulled back on the chain that was tugging at my foot and held Bella’s head in my hands, pushing the hair out of her face as I inspected the wound I’d just given her.

Carlisle’s voice was calm and was reasoning from outside.  “We’ve already called the hospital, Edward, they’ll be here any moment, we have to go.”

“Bella.”

“Edward.  There’s nothing you can do at this point.”

I grazed her lips with gentle fingers, I kissed her forehead with fearful lips, and I prayed that if there was a God that she thought of, that he truly did exist, and that he would save her from the nightmare I’d bestowed upon her.

Sirens were coming, indeed, and I felt for a pulse to see if there would be hope for her survival.

There was one.  It was quite faint, but it was there.

“Edward!”

This time it was Emmett, he didn’t have the patience that Carlisle did.  And he was beyond his fill of the moment of despair I was having.

I lay a blanket over her body as I gathered my own things and then, before I left her there, I tilted her head just so, so that her heavy eyes met mine.  I should have glamoured her.  Taken our night away so that she didn’t remember it.  Made it as though I hadn’t existed.

But like I have mentioned, I’m a selfish creature.  I wanted her to remember, so instead, I told her help was on its way, and then instilled upon her mind, “You are too important to leave this world, Bella.”

I left her there after those words, and my three companions and I were unseen as we sped to the woods while the ambulance pulled up in front of her home.  The others went on but I waited and watched.

They would call it an animal wound. They usually did.

After all, I was an animal.  And nothing more.

But I am hers, I thought, wondering as the medics pulled her out of the house and loaded her into the back of the vehicle, if she would die from the blood loss, heal eventually, or maybe I hadn’t taken too much after all, perhaps she would change.

But then she would need my blood to complete the transformation.

The sheer fact that they were taking her to a hospital meant that there was hope.  That I hadn’t killed her and I breathed a small sigh of relief.

“It’s no longer a decision for you to make, Edward.”

Carlisle.  He’d come back for me, once again.  He had a sense of what was running through my mind most days and was attempting to comfort me in some way.

I didn’t deserve his loyalty.

“She’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met,” I told him as I watched the blue and red lights fade. “Her soul called to me.”

He thought for a moment.

“Perhaps fate has finally given you the purpose you’ve been searching for, then.”

Perhaps.

There was nothing left for either of us to stay for at that point, but I knew I would seek her out again.  To find out what path I would be taking, if nothing else.  Because if by some strange change she did die, there was really nothing left for me to exist for.

Since having her in all the ways I had, since giving her all of myself... since she’d willing offered her blood to me, without reservations about doing so, I knew that with her, I was whole.

With her, I could feel again.  Have passion again.

She was the happiness I thought I would never find.

My weakness.

And she was mine.