AN: Hello! Ok, so this is my first story. I am currently working on two, this one is a publish as I go, so sorry if there are gaps between the chapters. I have finished the 2nd chapter, but am not going to post it till I finish the 3rd and so forth so that I will be able to change details if I need to for the story to flow. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review! I want to know if you like the straight forwardness of this story or if you want more fluff, etc. As of right now, I plan on having this entire stroy from Edward's POV, and there might be citris down the road! Happy reading! :D

The Girl in the mask

Chapter 1

EPOV

I was at the bar with Jazz; Emmett had left earlier with Rose, his girlfriend. Man does she have him wrapped around her little finger; but they are good together.

The club we were at, Club Denali, has a type of theme night once a week. Tonight's was 'bright, tight, & shoot tequila right'. They always came up with crazy sayings for them, and you attempt to dress accordingly. The themes would sometimes repeat if they had a good turnout. I have a feeling tonight's may be one of those.

In the time that I was zoning out at the bar, Jazz got up and was dancing with some chicks. We had been here for a few hours and I had only done tequila, just to get a buzz, and let it die down before taking another, so I could still drive if need be. I tuned back to the bar to down my next shot, what is this my third? Fourth? As the saying goes 1 tequila, 2 tequila, 3 tequila more, after that who gives a fuck after 4? Right as I was taking my whatever number shot, someone falls onto me making me drop my shot. WTF! Before I could get angry though, I turn around and there is this beautiful brunette that has fallen into my lap. She had this Gold mask on with this hot teal-blue outfit. I looked down and she was wearing these sexy shoes, which mixed with alcohol is probably what caused her to trip. Then she finally looked up at me and I could see her deep brown eyes through her mask. If anyone looked into them for any length of time, there is no doubt in my mind you could see clear to her soul.

"Hi, you ok?"

She didn't answer me, and had this confusing look on her face and her eyes were flashing back and forth between my own, as if looking for something. All the sudden this strawberry-blonde stumbles over,

"Oh my God Bella, are you ok? You always are tripping over thin air." She seemed to be demeaning this girl in my arms instead of just joking with her, and I didn't like it. Then the strawberry-blonde notices me, " oh Bella, who's this fine sexy god you found?" She addressed me with I'm guessing she thought was a sexy smile and voice, but really sounded just nasally, and not very attractive.

Bella blushed and started to get up and I repeated my question to her.

"Yeah, I'm fine; I'm so sorry. One of my friends bought me these ridiculously high death traps, that she called shoes, and Tanya convinced me to wear them. I don't know why I listened to her though because me and high heels generally don't mix due to my klutziness." She bit her lip to cease from continuing to ramble, but it didn't matter; I could listen to her voice all day and never tire of it.

"It's fine don't worry about it. Bella is a beautiful name to have." She looked down and blushed, making her even more beautiful if possible.

All of the sudden the girl Tanya buts between us leaning over the bar to grab a bottle of tequila and 2 shot glasses, then calls to the bartender to get us some limes. She smirked when she noticed my quizzical look on my face, "Oh, I'm Tanya Denali as in the daughter of the owner of here, Club Denali." She said with an attitude of being superior to everyone else here and as if this was supposed to thoroughly impress me.

"Ah." Was my genius response.

"So you want a shot?" Tanya asked.

"Sure, but only one, I want to go dance after." I replied while looking directly at the brunette goddess behind her.

Tanya looked between the two of us, "Well, I love to dance, Bella here never dances though." She said as if trying to get Bella out of the equation, as if that would happen.

"Bella would you like to dance with me?" I felt so high school, but I truly did want her to dance with me.

She looked at only me when she replied, "I would love to." In a very small voice. I quickly downed my shot and sucked a lime. She watched me suck mine down before quickly doing the same.

I then grabbed her hand and took her to the dance floor while Tanya was huffing in anger behind us, still at the bar.

"I really am not very good at dancing" she said with a worried, yet apologetic smile, as if being a bad dancer was the worst fault a person could have.

All the sudden there was this moment of us just standing there looking into each other's eyes, and this feeling of familiarity and longing was thick between us, something of which I did not understand.

"Do you want to get out of here?" I asked, I felt like I should take her somewhere, not to go have sex, but to just go somewhere.

She hesitated a moment before slowly nodding her head. I grabbed her hand and went towards Jasper, whispering in his ear that I was leaving, he looked between the two of us shocked, then acknowledged that he was going to stay before we made our way out of the club.

I finally got her to my car with this electricity moving between our hands still. I opened her door, when she finally let go of my hand and stopped.

"Um.." was all she said, and then looked down.

I walked up to her, and lifted her chin so I could look into her eyes, "do you trust me?" I asked searching her eyes as she answered,

"I don't understand why, but… yes…yes I do." She nodded her head as if she was confirming this fact to herself, while taking off her mask and putting it in her bag.

"Then I want to show you something."

"Ok" was all she said before finally sitting in the passenger seat, with me closing the door. I walked around and started the car.

I know myself and that I would never hurt a girl, and know that a girl should not get into a car with a stranger who she knows nothing about but his name, but this thing that we have going on between us is not normal. It's like instant connection of trust, and desire. A desire to know her.

It was a very quiet car ride with me driving and occasionally glancing at her, and she would occasionally glance back at me. Luckily the place where I wanted to take her was only about 15 minutes away, but it was up in the mountains a ways. I pulled up into the view point which overlooked Seattle and turned off the car. She looked at me quizzically as I got out of the car and opened her door.

"What are we doing?" She started to sound a little worried and I don't blame her, I mean she is all alone with me in the mountains with no one around. Not to mention that where I really want to take her necessitates a walk through the dark woods… maybe this was a bad idea…

"Well…" I paused there debating whether or not to actually show her the meadow that was up the path or not.

"Yes?" she asked again, with not so much worry this time.

"I'm sorry, I was just running through my head how scary this scenario would be if you were with someone else…" she giggled so of course I asked the obvious question, "What?"

"Well you looked like you were debating something, and my guesses were it was either about whether or not you really are going to kill me, or if you want to actually continue to show what you wanted me to see. I've noticed that you haven't pulled a gun on me yet to shoot me, so I'm guessing, rather hoping, it's the second." This got me chuckling too, at how she made the slightly awkward moment relaxed again.

"Just out of curiosity, what exactly is it that you want to show me? I mean this view here is beautiful in itself."

"Well, it's a meadow that overlooks this view, but it's off over there," I said while pointing in the direction in the woods. "So I wasn't sure if you would go with me into the woods."

"Oh" she said while looking down at her shoes. Damn, I forgot about her shoes, there is no way she can go through the woods in those.

"Oh, well I guess my spontaneity was not a good idea." Now it was my turn to blush a little. Why the hell am I acting so impulsive!? I mean I already noticed her shoes, and yet my first idea was to take her to the meadow?! Come on brain WORK!

"Wait.." she opened her bag and pulled out a very worn pair of chucks. Good thing her purse was so big. "I was planning originally on heading back to Tanya's, so I packed some shoes and stuff."

Wow what are the odds that she had those in her bag!? Thank God luck is on my side, beings my brain wasn't working.

She put the Chucks on before returning the 'death traps' as she calls them back into her bag.

"Ready." She stated with a little grin.

Luckily I knew this trail to the meadow like the back of my hand, so even in the dark, I could easily navigate it; Bella however was a different story, she was not as graceful, and managed to trip knocking me on my back, and her on top of me facing me. She looked up at me with an extremely embarrassed and concerned face. "Are you ok?"

I laughed once before seriously replying, "Never been better." She looked into my eyes, then her eyes turned to my lips and back up to my eyes. I could simply move my head a little to kiss her beautiful lips, but I didn't want to scare her. Yet I decided if she kept looking at my lips like that, I would soon devour her lips with mine, so I helped her up.

"It's not that much farther from here, just through those trees over there."

She shook her head to clear it before we continued on. When we finally made it to the opening, she stopped dead in her tracks.

She had the most beautiful look on her face; a look of awe. "W-W-Wow… this is… this is just amazing!"

I couldn't help but laugh at the look on her face. What she didn't know was that my mother had bought me this land when she found out I visited it so often. I had built a bench swing overlooking the city. I lead her over to it and sat down. She looked over at me and I could see that she had a million questions to ask me.

"How did you find this place?"

Well that was an easy one to answer, "My parent's house is just up the road from here, and one day when I got angry about something, I don't remember what, I started running through the woods. I grew up here, so I knew my way around pretty well, but I started going off of trails, and found this place. I started coming here every time that I would get mad, or sad, or just needed to relax. Eventually my mom asked me where I went and when I showed this to her, she bought this land here for a birthday present. I built this bench. There's this little run down house that my mother and I renovated here too."

"Wow, so you grew up here?"

"Yep. What about you where did you grow up?"

"Hmm… not with this view. I grew up in Forks with my dad; it's about two hours away from here. But now I'm going to College here in Seattle."

"Oh, I know where that is, one of my best friends grew up there. I just graduated early from University of Washington, and am working with my father at the hospital here in Seattle."

"You're a doctor?" she asked shocked.

"Yeah."

"Wow." She had on a light jacket, but was starting to rub her arms up and down to warm up. I took off my jacket and handed it to her. "Wait right here." I said and ran over to where the little house was to grab some blankets that I had stashed there. When me and Jasper were young, we would sometimes stay down here.

I went back over to the bench and laid a blanket over our laps. She looked at me then snuggled into my chest. I put my arm around her, to keep Bella close. I couldn't understand what was happening. After just a few hours of knowing this beautiful girl, she was curled next me, looking at the view before us as if we had known each other forever. We had barely spoken to each other, yet there was this contentment and trust between us that was unexplainable. After a while, I felt her breathing slow, and knew that she was asleep. I wasn't sure what to do now, I didn't want to wake this sleeping beauty, but I also didn't want her to leave.

The little house here had a bed and a couch, so I picked her up and carried her over to the house to place her on the bed. I turned off the lights and took off her shoes, as well as mine before I went to put her on the bed, when she grabbed my shirt. "Edward… please don't go," she mumbled. I was pretty sure she was still asleep, but had placed a death grip on my shirt, so I laid down next to her and through the covers over us. She still kept that death grip on my shirt though. I softly chuckled and not knowing what else to do, fell asleep with Bella curled next to me.