"Delayed gratification is overrated."

I was speaking directly into the left pectoral muscle of my cold, beautiful, eternally youthful husband, across whose naked body I was sprawled. The warm, dreamy, drifting sensation sometimes called afterglow tended to make me blurt out whatever was on my mind. Edward liked that aspect of it. He said it was the closest he ever came to hearing my thoughts.

He lightly stroked his fingers up and down my spine, his cool touch a contrast to the warm island breeze coming through the bedroom window. "Why do you say that?"

"The first time we made love, I had waited all my life. Or for eighteen months, depending on how you look at it. It was absolutely wonderful."

"For me as well," he whispered into my neck. "In retrospect, at least." Now that he was over the shock of accidentally raising bruises on me in the process, in other words. I was glad he now saw things my way, and wasn't going to let a few bruises ruin the rest of our honeymoon. Once he had learned to channel his excess zeal into tearing up the headboard or other solid structure, things had gone swimmingly.

"And the second time, I had to wait over a week." I glared at him, and he laughed. "And that time was just as wonderful."

"Mm hm."

"Even if I did have to resort to drastic measures."

He chuckled at that. "And..?"

"And just now, we made love after waiting only..." I tried to see the wall clock without moving any more than I had to.

"Three hours and fourteen minutes," he supplied.

"Thank you. Only three hours and fourteen minutes. And that was absolutely wonderful, too."

"I'm beginning to detect a pattern." He paused to kiss me behind the ear. "But sometimes delay serves other purposes, besides enhancing the actual gratification."

"Such as?"

"Waiting for the right time or place."

"You're talking about waiting until we were married, I assume."

"I was thinking about that, as it happens. I know you consider it a foolish notion on my part, but I'm very glad we waited."

"Not foolish, really. Just old-fashioned. And you convinced me it was worth it to do everything...the right way." I nestled closer to him. "Of course, it's much easier to feel that way now that the waiting is over." The electricity between us, always strong, had intensified as our relationship matured, becoming almost unmanageable the last weeks before our wedding. This honeymoon was a eagerly awaited goal for both of us.

He gave me a smirk. "You found it difficult?"

"Of course." I frowned at him. "Are you telling me you didn't?"

"Not at all. It was a constant struggle. You seemed to become more irresistible by the hour." He sighed. "I suppose the last month or two would have been easier, had I not been spending every night in your bed. But I could not face being away from you that long."

"You're right, it did make things more difficult. And I got to sleep through much of it. I sometimes felt badly that you had to lie there all night, wide awake; but I didn't want you to leave, either."

I saw his mouth curve into a smile at that. "It was sometimes frustrating, I'll admit. At least a human boyfriend would have been able to fall asleep eventually."

I grinned back at him. "Well, a human boy would have..." I stopped, regretting my tendency to blurt things out at times like this.

"Would have what?"

"Never mind."

"No, I'm intrigued. What would this theoretical human boy have done?" I shook my head, starting to blush, which naturally piqued his curiosity still more. "You mean, he would have gone ahead and, er, acted in advance of the wedding?"

"Well...not exactly."

"What, then?" He watched my face turn a vivid scarlet. "This must be good."

"He would have taken steps to...reduce the tension a little." He shook his head, still not following. "Oh, good grief, Edward! You know what I mean. When he was by himself!"

He blinked. "Ah. That."

"Yes."

"I should have realized, especially after spending so much time overhearing the thoughts of high school students. You're right, of course. A frustrated human bridegroom would have had that option to carry him through the engagement."

I was inclined to let the subject drop, but now I was curious. "So you've never...I mean..." I could not find a way to finish that sentence.

He looked amused. "No, actually."

"You don't mind my asking?"

"You're my wife, Bella. You can ask me anything. I should say, you're allowed to ask me anything. Whether you actually can is another matter."

"You were once a high school student yourself," I reminded him. "I mean, a real one, not a 'cover story' one."

"So I was. A long time ago." He looked at me. "No," he said, answering the original question. "Not that I remember."

"That's...unusual."

"So I understand. But, believe it or not, I don't think it ever occurred to me." He caught my skeptical look. "When people say it was a more innocent time, they are at least partly accurate. There was probably as much vice in existence when I was a boy as there is now. However, it was still possible for someone like me, who was carefully brought up and led a fairly sheltered life, to remain quite unaware of these matters."

"I would have thought, even then, that boys would kind of discover these things for themselves."

He chuckled. "Probably so. But I was always like you: love and lust did not, for me, act independently of each other. And I may have been a little backward in that area; I'm not sure. I've certainly been told I'm a bit of a prude. If I had been human longer, who knows? But as it was, I never did make that discovery."

I nodded, and braced myself for the next question, curiosity overcoming embarrassment. "What about after?"

"After Carlisle changed me, you mean?"

"Yes. Is it even possible?" I had received some practical information about day to day vampire life from the Cullens, ranging from hair care to ways of faking ingestion of food, but obviously there were a few gaps in my education.

"Technically, yes." He stopped, looking at the ceiling.

"You don't have to talk about it if you'd rather not."

"No, it's fine. I told you you can ask me anything, love. I'm just considering how to explain." I raised myself on one elbow in order to see him better, and he turned toward me as well. "You know that vampires tend to form a sort of permanent, natural bond with their...spouses."

"Yes. Alice told me a little about it." In fact, Alice had probably said more on the subject than Edward ever would have. She'd described the strong, instinctive attachment vampire mates had for each other, the protectiveness, the insatiable desire, the need for regular contact that was like a hunger. Infidelity and waning interest were non-issues: getting tired of one's mate would be like a human getting bored with breathing. The depth of the bond seemed at once romantic, erotic, and a little bestial, but it also seemed a lot like the way I felt about Edward already.

She'd also described, to my great fascination, Tanya's distinctive lifestyle: choosing to remain unattached and entertaining herself with mainly human conquests. Thousands of them. To be honest, it made me feel more kindly toward Tanya to discover the beautiful cousin was a raging slut. "It's very uncommon," Alice had told me, "not to mention difficult. 'Safe sex' has a whole different meaning for vampires. If she ever seriously falls for a guy, it's game over. She has to be so careful to stay emotionally detached, when our instinct is to bond. Tanya thinks it gives her more freedom, but she doesn't know what she's missing."

"You know, then, it's not really possible for us to love our mates, yet be seriously attracted to another person," Edward went on.

"So I gather." He laughed at my pleased expression.

"Some vampires, a very few, actually indulge in extramarital affairs, by mutual consent. The Volturi and a few members of their guard do so occasionally, Carlisle once told me. It is not particularly enjoyable for them. Intimacy with their own wives is what they really crave."

"Then why would they do it?"

"Affectation. A way of showing off. Like human royalty wearing ostentatious clothing and eating ridiculously elaborate meals - not because it was enjoyable, but to show they could."

I shrugged. The Volturi impressed me less all the time. "So how does that relate...?"

"It is one of the ways humans and vampires differ. Humans have the potential to become strongly aroused even with no one else present: by their thoughts or memories, by something they read, or even by the random fluctuations of their hormones. With us, it is a little different. The actual presence of the loved one is always the main, er, stimulus."

"Okay." Vampire pornography would be a doomed enterprise, apparently.

"In times of great frustration, it would be possible to...do what you were asking about, but it would not be a satisfactory replacement for the real thing." I must have looked confused; he went on, "Do you remember when I told you that feeding as we did, being 'vegetarians,' was a little like a human living on nothing but tofu and soymilk?" I nodded. "Well, doing...that would be more like eating styrofoam and plastic."

"Interesting. Um, sorry, but how do you actually know that?"

He looked away evasively. "I was told it by a member of my family."

"Oh. Okay, I won't ask who," I said, all the while speculating like mad.

"So, in answer to your question: no, I never felt inclined to. It was you I wanted, and nothing else would have been a remotely adequate substitute."

I nodded, satisfied.

"But now you have me curious. Have you ever...?"

Even though I was the one who had brought it up, I blushed. "No." He tilted his head, looking at me thoughtfully. "Surprised?"

"Not exactly. I was just recalling that I used to rather hope you did."

My eyes popped open. "What!"

"Inappropriate of me, I know. But I used to feel badly, especially once we were engaged, at having to leave you disappointed, night after night. I was sorry you had to be so...unfulfilled."

"You were, too," I pointed out.

"Yes, but I had very little choice, and more than human resources to deal with the problem. It went against my sense of decorum," he smiled sheepishly, "but I half hoped you were using other means to, er, keep yourself comfortable."

I wondered if we would run out of euphemisms before we could finish the conversation. "I'm afraid not."

"Excuse me for asking, but why not?" I blinked in surprise, and he hurriedly went on, "It's just that, as you say, it's unusual. You have, no disrespect intended, a wonderfully amorous nature. And you certainly could not have been as unaware as I was in my youth."

He's my husband, I reminded myself. He can ask me anything. "I guess there are several reasons why I never..." No euphemism came to mind. "First of all..."

"Wait. Are these in order of importance?"

I laughed. "No. In no particular order."

'All right. Continue, please."

I cleared my throat nervously. "Well - you're right, of course I was aware of the possibility. Before I met you, though, it was sort of irrelevant. Love and lust keep the same company for me, like they do for you." Our eyes met, and I felt more at ease. "I actually thought about it once or twice, but it just seemed - I don't know, silly and pointless, and a little embarrassing. Then I met you, and things changed." That was putting it mildly. "But then, other reasons seemed to come up."

He nodded. "Reason number one?"

"By the time we had gotten...closer, and especially after we were engaged and it was really a challenge to behave ourselves, you were abstaining completely, or so I assumed. It might seem silly, but I didn't want to take an easy way out that wasn't available to you. If we couldn't help each other, then I wanted to soldier along at your side." I rolled my eyes at my mock-noble sentiments.

"I don't find that silly at all. It was a very sweet gesture, in fact."

"I'm glad you think so." I was blushing again.

"Reason number two?"

"Morality."

"Truly?"

"In a way. You know I had a hard time taking your attitude about chastity very seriously."

"I do, indeed."

"It's just that, in this day and age..."

"You don't have to explain, Bella. It's a different time."

"Yes. And since that's the time I was raised in, the idea that...touching yourself could be seriously wrong, well, that seems almost insane to me. More like a superstition than a real moral stance, if you see what I mean. But even so, I had gone along with your old school notions about waiting for the wedding night, just in case they happened to be correct." He gave me a lopsided smile. "I thought, why not apply the same approach here? Besides, I'd gotten this far; I could manage a little longer, right?"

"I'm impressed."

"At my self control?"

"I was thinking of your open-mindedness about unfamiliar viewpoints."

"Thanks."

"Reason number three?"

"This may sound ridiculous."

"I'm sure it won't," he said, smirking with anticipation.

"Keep in mind that things got fairly intense between us, especially since the spring."

"Despite my best efforts." He tried to put on a long-suffering expression. "But go on. Things were, indeed, fairly intense."

"Right. Well, not having any personal experience with this sort of thing, I was actually worried that if I tried it, especially under those intense conditions, it might become...a problem."

"A problem?"

"You know. Addictive."

He tried not to laugh, but not very hard. "The fourth reason?"

"Fourth and last. And not a very impressive one."

"You lost the instruction manual?"

"No!" I laughed.

"What, then?"

"Well, I was constantly being surprised by how much you could perceive or figure out with your special vampire senses. You could follow me across town by scent, hear words whispered in a closed room in a building across the street, read a newspaper headline from a block away. I knew I probably didn't know half of what you could manage."

"I see. And?"

I blushed yet again. "I thought, if I started...doing that, you might somehow be able to tell."

He didn't even try to keep from laughing. "Poor Bella. Under constant surveillance. No, I don't think I would have suspected anything."

"Now you tell me."

He looked at me, still smiling. "Since we're in confessional mode, are you ever going to tell me what Alice said?"

"Alice?" I looked innocent, or tried to.

"I picked up some of her thoughts. She gave you a little informative talk on the intimate lives of vampires, but she blocked most of the details."

"Oh, that. Maybe I'll tell you someday."

"Was it interesting?"

"Very."

He kissed the hollow of my throat, which I'd never realized until now was a major erogenous zone. "You know what else might be interesting?"

He didn't even have to give me three guesses.