A/N: I'm still having a hard time getting into the right frame of mind for Crave [the holidays didn't help at all lol], but I've been itching to write something so I popped out this cock-tease of a one-shot in response to Warden Char's just-for-fun challenge on roguefanfic[dot]com. I've adjusted it to be more apro-pro for this place, but it's still got the same kick as the original, so no worries there.

I don't usually do smexy time with The B/E, but they're generally the crowd fave so I figured 'what they hey' and then threw in some snark to make myself feel better. Hope you enjoy ;)

Oh yeah, and not to dampen the mood or anything, but, like always, these are SMeyer's characters, I just made them dirty-physically, mentally, figuratively... you know the drill.

The bitter wind jerked the door out of my hands, banging it against the wall and blowing snow flurries into the hallway beyond, completely shattering my hopes of a discreet entrance. I didn't want to have to face everyone after such a meager haul, even though it wasn't my fault; the economy was in a piss-poor state and the government was doing fuck-all to fix it. Despite it being two days before Christmas, people couldn't really afford to be charitable anymore, even if they wanted to.

I closed the door as quickly as I could, avoiding the hopeful and starving gazes of my fellow outcasts/runaways/orphans/squatters/rejects of society. Call us what you will, everyone else does, right before they spit on us and yell at us to get a real job. The kicker is that when we show up on the doorsteps of their businesses to ask for an application, we're just laughed at, or pitied, or spit on again before getting the door slammed in our face, and we're no fucking closer to getting that job everyone demands we have. So we make the best of what we've got; we work together, we support each other, we share everything we can; and the majority of the time it's better than what anyone of "respectable standing" in society has because we aren't chained down to any material possessions, we don't allow ourselves to be defined by stuff. We've got our lives, we've got our health—for the most part—and we've got our freedom. And you can't really argue with that.

Tonight was not one of those better nights, though, and it was sadly evident as I made my way into the front room where everyone was huddling around the fireplace; crackles and snaps from the fire filled in the gaps between quiet conversations that were accented by random coughs and groans.

In my peripheral vision I saw Edward standing in the corner, on the edge of the fire's light, his dark eyes staring off blankly in disinterest, his shoulders hunched under the weight of failure and self-loathing, his auburn hair an absolutely fabulous fucking wreck. My stomach growled as I handed over my knapsack so that the contents could be divvied out amongst the group, but I wasn't hungry for the stale pastries and half-eaten rigatoni the busboy from Toni's so graciously snuck out to me through the back door. I was so focused on pretending like I hadn't noticed Edward that I almost missed the fact that Emmett, our unofficial group leader, was asking me a question.

"Nah, it's okay, Em, I'm not that hungry."

Emmett eyed my abdomen in his signature overly-protective-brother way as my stomach gave a slight gurgle again. "You sure, Bells?"

"Yeah, it's cool. The little ones need food more than I do; it's going to be a wicked one tonight."

I risked a full glance to the corner before leaving the room. There was only one thing I was hungry for: that Edward would come keep me warm again tonight.

A lot of people say that it's morally wrong and just plain gross, a girl of my young age sleeping with a man of his …not-so-young age. But I say they can kiss my boney white ass. Fifteen years my senior is not a big deal, just look at Hef and all his little fuck-bunnies. People just loved to get their panties all in a bunch because I was still underage—and no way in hell was I going to appease them by sleeping with some zit-riddled, hormone-driven, two-pump-chump that was closer to my age. They could never make me feel the way Edward does. He made me feel like a full-grown woman, like there was no glaring age gap between us. He made me feel important, majestic, like he and I were the only two people alive on this great big rock floating in circles through space and that the survival of the universe depended on us coming together in the most beautiful of ways.

Of course, he also made me feel completely invisible, utterly insignificant and like I wasn't even worth the dried up dog shit stuck between the cracks in the soles of his ridiculous fucking shoes. Fuck, let's face it: that was the way he made me feel ninety-nine-point-nine-percent of the time. But, man oh man, that other point-one-percent of the time? When those magical-mystery eyes locked me in their emerald gaze? Down became the new up and I didn't give a damn if he was Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Satan all reincarnated into one man. I didn't care if he was going to skin me alive and run around Chicago wearing my ass as a hat and my left tit as a cod-piece—and let me tell you, I'd bet my ass, cooch and both my tits that he had that much crazy in him—I didn't care! As long as he rocked the fuck out of my world like I knew he could for at least an hour, he could do whatever he wanted to me afterward.

The wind howled through the rafters, rattling the windows in their frames; the storm was getting worse. It didn't happen often, but once in a while the Windy City got plowed with a nice, fat snow storm courtesy of some north-easterly winds blowing across Lake Michigan. Everyone else in the house was going to stay bundled up and huddled together around the fireplace in the main room tonight if they valued their fingers and toes at all, but I ducked around the corner into my room. The best room in the drafty old shack of a house we called home, it was located under the stairs almost exactly in the center of it all and shared the rear brick wall of the fireplace so it stayed warm in the winter but also cool in the summer. Okay, so technically it was a storage pantry off the kitchen, but it was perfect: it was tall enough to stand in at its highest point and had enough floor space to stretch out comfortably, plus, the steep angle of the 1912 stairs helped create a little pocket of heat to keep my toes nice and toasty at night so I didn't have to sleep with my boots on.

Reveling in the warmth that had built up all day behind the closed door, I pressed myself against the brick wall, moaning as the heat thawed my frozen right cheek. I had nothing against the group pow-wow-of-life-or-death-by-popsicle happening on the other side of the wall—a lot of the time I even joined them (it helped solidify the sense of community with the little ones)—but Edward generally did, and since he was the newest to join our rag-tag gang of misfits, he didn't have his own room to retreat to—it was the one area Emmett allowed the rule of "first come, first served". Nobody really knew anything about him, either, aside from his name and the fact that he lost ev-er-y-thing when the stock market crashed, which meant he was stuck in the common room until he started taking on a much friendlier attitude because no one was comfortable sharing their room with him yet. Nobody but me of course, and luckily for him I was in a sharing kind of mood tonight.

I turned my face to thaw the other side and point it in Edward's general direction. I pictured him standing off in the corner in the uncomfortably creepy way he did and envisioned my brainwaves rolling through the wall, passing over everyone else in the main room and seeping into his head and influencing his thoughts.

Please, Edward… I'm so cold inside when you're gone … come warm me up tonight.

I stayed pressed against the wall for a few more minutes before prying myself away and kicking off my boots. Lying on my stomach I reached into the far back corner of my nook and retrieved my wool socks from their hidey-hole, quickly pulling them over the two pairs of cotton socks already on my feet and up my calves over my long johns to my knees. A hole in the plaster above a crossbeam next to the door made a convenient shelf and from there I grabbed a small plastic comb and a toothbrush—I may be a crazy bag lady in training, but that doesn't mean I don't like to take care of myself.

Back out in the kitchen I used the reflection in the little window above the sink as a mirror while I did my best to comb the tangles out of my dark hair and scrub the days funk off my teeth. The conversations in the front room were dying out as one-by-one everyone hunkered down against the encroaching cold and reserved their energy. Grabbing a cup of water from the 'Clean' bucket, I dashed back into my little room and snuggled down into my sleeping bag. Pulling the top up tight over my head I breathed deep the musty scent that most people gagged at and spent too much money at the dry-cleaners to wash out, but I loved it because to me it was the smell of safety, security, warmth and home.

Cozy and comfortable in my little cocoon, I was on the verge of sleep when I heard him walking by my door. I knew it was him because while everyone else preferred the cross trainers or work boots the shelters usually gave out, Edward still wore his dress shoes—like the reminder of how valuable and important he used to be made his situation in the here and now any better—and no matter how softly he tried to walk, he couldn't escape the tap-tap they made against the hard, cracked, fifty year-old linoleum. I held my breath as I heard the kitchen floor creaking: He was pacing again. He did that a lot at night after everyone else fell asleep, while he had his internal battles over whether to come into my room or not—or so I liked to imagine anyway, because every once in a rare while he actually would. He would yank open my door, tear away my bedding and take me like I was the one and only cure for everything that was ailing him, like I was the living embodiment of the Fountain of Youth and I could turn back time and make his world whole and right again.

I trembled at the too-few memories of those amazing nights. Scrunching tight my already closed eyelids I bit back the whimpers and moans that were building in my throat.

It felt like his pacing was never going to end tonight. The tap-tap-squeak-tap-tap-scratch as he marched across the loose floorboards to the kitchen sink then turned on his heel in the gritty dust to march back again echoed incessantly in my head. I almost entertained the thought that maybe tonight he was just pacing to keep warm… but nah; he's not simple like that, he used to be a brutal, heartless businessman, everything he does is calculated and deliberate… son of a bitch, he saw me! He saw me looking at him. He knows that I want him again … Oh, he is a mean one, Mr. Grinch! He's pacing just to tease me, because he knows that I know by now what his pacing sounds like, what his pacing could just maybe mean for me… for us…

I couldn't stand it any longer. I was sweating inside my sleeping bag and it wasn't because Emmett had just woken up and stoked the fire in the main room. I shoved the sleeping bag away from my face and gasped in the cold night air as quietly as I could, trying to quell the growing embers in my groin, trying to deny the fact that the sound of his pacing alone made me need him like an evening sleepwalker needing to chase the dragon before night time set in.

Tap-tap-squeak-tap-tap-scratch. 'So stop fighting it,' the sounds of his pacing seemed to say to my lust-filled body, 'come show me just how much you need me.'

And I wanted to—oh Dear, Sweet Jesus, deep-fried and dipped in dark chocolate, did I want to! I wanted to jump out of my warm little cocoon, strip away my burdensome clothing, throw open my door and show Edward the beautifully dangerous butterfly I had become. All thanks to him: He who had plucked me, the defenseless caterpillar from my harmless surroundings and nurtured me with his toxic milkweed, enabling me, encouraging me, showing me my full potential. And now it was my turn to show him.

Tap-tap-squeak-pause. He was halfway through pacing away from me towards the sink when the sound of my door softly falling open against the wall reached his ears and registered in his brain. The sub-zero temperature of the air outside my sleeping bag and my room attacked my skin causing it to tingle all over. The tender, pink flesh of my breasts hardened and the sudden tautness shot lightning bolts down between my legs, though whether it was from the cold air or the cold look on Edward's face as he slowly turned to face me, I don't think I'll ever know.

As toughened as I was from living half my life on the streets, the caterpillar-me that I used to be would have never stood stark-naked in the kitchen in the middle of the winter to seduce a man like I was trying to seduce Edward right then—or at the very least she would have cowered under the glare that he was directing my way. But the beautiful and poisonous monarch-butterfly-me that I was now stood her ground and countered his icy glare with a gaze so sultry it would have melted the polar icecaps.

I locked my dark brown eyes onto his vivid green ones like chocolate on mint and watched smugly as his mysterious-tough-guy exterior crumbled. It started in his eyes; his lower lids twitching as he tried to keep his line of sight on my face and not let it wander down my curves. Then it moved to his lips as they fought to keep in his tongue, which I could tell so desperately wanted to break free and at the very least wet his delightfully talented lips. His arms began trembling as his shoulders and biceps flexed and his fingers curled like their only purpose in life was to hold me tight and stroke my soft flesh with the tenderness it deserved.

A spasm in his pants caught my eye and it was all I could do to keep myself rooted in the doorway. Immune to the cold, my body burned now with the need to be touched and I knew that he could sense it too, as the last of his resolve broke away and he crossed the gap between us in one long stride. My skin turned into superglue as our bodies met and as one we backed into my room, barely remembering to shut the door behind us before dropping to the floor. Pulling away, I stripped off all three of his shirts at once causing him to hiss through a sharp intake of breath as my chilled hands grabbed at his chest and shoved him down onto my bedding.

Reaching up, I felt around for my little battery-powered nightlight; I was tired of fucking in the dark, I wanted to see what the best feeling in the world looked like. Little blue moons and gold stars erupted from the nightlight as I lightly danced my icicle-like fingers down his abdomen. Gooseflesh broke out violently across his upper body as I gripped the waistbands of his heavy sweats and long johns and, as one, yanked them down to his knees. Then the gooseflesh tore across his thighs and he stifled another gasp as his member bobbed in excitement, growing harder despite the freezing cold air. A knee on each side of his hips, I towered over him as best I could under the steepness of the stairs and paused a moment to enjoy my view. His hands moved to grab at my breasts but I caught them before they reached their targets and fell forward to pin his wrists to the ground, our lips meeting in the end in a deep, primal kiss.

Still trying to be in some form of control, his hips bucked underneath mine and I smiled against his mouth as I tauntingly swayed my ass in the air. A shudder passed through his body as my movement caused our erect nipples to brush against each other. Growling, he caught my lower lip between his teeth and I could feel them quaking from the cold. Pulling back, I released his wrists and placed my hands deliberately against his chest as I locked eyes with him once again. I wanted to be absolutely sure that he understood before I even let him in just how warm it was inside. I wanted him to worship that warmth and appreciate that it'll always be warm, just for him.

Because when he does, I know from now on instead of pacing, he'll just come running…