We were going too far, too fast, and I knew it.
Edward kissed harder than he had ever done before; his lips were cold on mine, then my jaw, and down the skin of my neck. Lost in this frenzy of hormones – for me, at least – we didn't care.
It happened very quickly. His teeth nicked the area near my jugular vein. There was a sharp little stinging pain for a split second, and then a sudden, full-on fire crashed down onto the wound. Horrified, Edward laid me on the couch and shouted, hysterical, over and over, for Carlisle. His fingers were cold against the wound as he tried to staunch the flow.
Carlisle was silent when he entered the room. I could not see his face for screwing my eyes against the burn, and heard only Edward's muffled stammering.
"I'm sorry, Carlisle – I –"
"Don't waste time," Carlisle said, in a harsher tone than I had ever heard him use. "You can still suck the venom out, Edward, and I can close the wound."
"I can't. It's too much. Too much – I hardly stopped on her arm – this is her neck."
The blonde vampire fell silent and through a haze of pain I saw them stare at each other, Edward with helpless desperation. And then, responding to Carlisle's thoughts, he said, "Yes, yes – please, yes."
Carlisle's hand was cool when he placed it on my shoulder to roll me onto my back.
"Okay," Edward said, reading his mind again, and left the room.
"Edward will get the things I need to stitch you up," he told me, softly. "I'm going to take the venom out, now."
I felt his cool breath against the blood before his lips touched the skin around the cut. The icy cold numbed the fire only slightly, but it was enough for me to nod.
Carlisle began to drink.
For he had to; but it was the worst feeling in the world. Edward sucking the venom from my arm had been bad enough; now, a vampire knelt beside me, drawing the blood out from my neck, my most important vein.
But I began to feel better; somehow, at the same time, something seemed to be going back into me. Could Carlisle possibly take only the venom?
The truth was that he could have, in normal circumstances, but since this wound was on my neck he was forced to draw out the blood before it, forced to drink this human blood he had made taboo for himself for so many decades.
"Thank you," I whispered, weakly, when I felt the last flames die, and pulling away he began to close my wound.
Carlisle Cullen's eyes were red. A bright, searing blood red that looked wrong with his features. And because this colour change the hospital would notice, he stayed at home and did not go back to work.
"I'm sorry," I told him, quietly with shame and guilt.
He looked at me. His eyes snapped at the sight of the source of this blood-red satiation, and he glanced away at once. "Don't be, Bella."
"But you – your beliefs –"
"Yes, well, it's a little too late for that now," he said. Then, seeing my expression, he added, "Oh come, Bella, I'm not blaming you."
His hand was tight on the edge of his desk, and the tension was in his shoulders, too. He was constantly in restraint with me in the house.
If he hunted often enough for the next few days, the colour would fade. And it did; after a week, his eyes were a muted shade of burgundy, barely distinguishable from the blackness of his pupils. He could stand to be around me more now, not as much as before, but at least on the same tolerance level as Jasper.
On the day his eyes turned caramel, I hugged him.
A/N: Carlisle has bitten people before, but I assumed that he just bit them to get his venom in and didn't really need to drink more of their blood.