A/N: Hello children, it is me again! I was supposed to be in driver's ed. classes for most of today, but since my genius instructor never bothered to show up (I love him/her already,) I ended up sitting at home and writing B&E's second time. I had so much time I even wrote Bella's dream (no applause please.) The italicized portion in the middle, for those of you that might not have realized, is SM's writing and thereby not actually mine. At all. Just clarifying :P In true SM spirit, however, I have decided to write a music playlist to go along with this particular story. Hey, I told you I was bored.
The sun beat down upon me, swelteringly beautiful, and the white, glowing sand stuck in grains to my wet body. The sky was an iridescent, pale blue; there wasn't a cloud in sight. My hair flowed out around me in all directions; my skirt, crusty with the saltwater and sand, did the same. I sighed contentedly, stretching my arms out above my head, as the warm breeze caused the palm fronds above me to sway lightly in the breeze.
A shadow fell abruptly over me.
"Bella." I started at the sound of his voice; I hadn't heard him approach, the sand muffling any sound his superhumanly quiet footsteps might have made. I opened my eyes lazily to gaze up into Edward's glorious topaz ones.
He wasn't wearing anything; after his eyes, that was the second thing I noticed. His perfect body shimmered like a million multi-faceted diamonds were imbedded in his skin. A rush of desire surged through me. I reached out one hand, smiling, beckoning him down to me.
He came willingly, entwining my fingers in his own; the cold of them was a welcome relief from the surrounding heat. Dropping to his knees, he put his arms around me, pulling me into his lap. One of his hands ran through my hair, securing itself in it; the other stroked along the length of my face, cupping my cheek in his palm. His lips brushed lightly against mine, once, twice, three times, before coming to land more firmly. His tongue wandered into my mouth with absolutely no trepidation; I entwined mine gladly with his. The hand cupping my cheek moved down, down my throat – down my shoulder blade, down my arm – up my ribcage – before coming to land against my chest. I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist, that unstoppable desire only growing stronger.
We were a flurry of hands and lips and tongues; both unstoppable, both uninhibited, we kissed on and on. I traced the muscles of his torso with steady, certain fingers; his own hands were equally busy against me.
He pulled back. "I love you," he murmured, brushing a lock of wet hair out of my face.
"I love you, too," I whispered back.
One of his busy hands was creeping its way down from where it was currently positioned – at the back of my neck. Down and down it went, past my ribs, past my waist, fingers skirting lightly along my inner thigh – my eyes widened in anticipation – and then, abruptly, it shot under my dress.
My eyes rolled; my head arched back.
"Edward!" I gasped.
There was so much. Too much, perhaps, but that was just exactly the right amount for me. His cold fingers; the steadily mounting pressure; the heavy rays of the sun, beaming directly into my wide eyes as I stared up into the sky, mouth open in shock – they were going to blind me, those rays, render me completely useless, if Edward didn't get there first –
And then my real eyes had shot open, and the sun was gone, and Edward's lips were nowhere near mine, and his hands weren't under my dress at all but rather wrapped around my shoulders in an almost platonic way.
"Oh," I gasped.
It had been a dream. Only a dream.
But the dream had been so very real…so vivid, so sensory…I gasped aloud, now, disoriented by the dark room. Only a second ago, it seemed, I had been under the brilliant sun.
"Bella?" Edward whispered, his arms tight around me, shaking me gently. "Are you all right, sweetheart?"
"Oh," I gasped again. Just a dream. Not real. To my utter astonishment, tears overflowed from my eyes without warning, gushing down my face.
"Bella!" he said – louder, alarmed now. "What's wrong?" He wiped the tears from my hot cheeks with cold, frantic fingers, but others followed.
"It was only a dream." I couldn't contain the low sob that broke in my voice. The senseless tears were disturbing, but I couldn't get control of the staggering grief that gripped me. I wanted so badly for the dream to be real.
"It's okay, love, you're fine. I'm here." He rocked me back and forth, a little too fast to soothe. "Did you have another nightmare? It wasn't real, it wasn't real."
"Not a nightmare." I shook my head, scrubbing the back of my hand against me eyes. "It was a good dream." My voice broke again.
"Then why are you crying?" he asked, bewildered.
"Because I woke up," I wailed, wrapping my arms around his neck in a chokehold and sobbing into his throat.
He laughed once at my logic, but the sound was tense with concern.
"Everything's all right, Bella. Take deep breaths."
"It was so real," I cried. "I wanted it to be real."
"Tell me about it," he urged. "Maybe that will help."
"We were on the beach…" I trailed off, pulling back to look with tear-filled eyes at his anxious angel's face, dim in the darkness. I stared at him broodingly as the unreasonable grief began to ebb.
"And?" he finally prompted.
I blinked the tears out of my eyes, torn. "Oh, Edward…"
"Tell me, Bella," he pleaded, eyes wild with worry at the pain in my voice.
But I couldn't. Instead I clutched my arms around his neck again and locked my mouth with his feverishly. It wasn't desire at all – it was need, acute to the point of pain. His response was instant but quickly followed by his rebuff.
He struggled with me as gently as he could in his surprise, holding me away, grasping my shoulders.
"No, Bella," he insisted, looking at me as if he was worried that I'd lost my mind.
My arms dropped, defeated, the bizarre tears spilling in a fresh torrent down my face, a new sob rising in my throat. He was right – I must be crazy.
He stared at me with confused, anguished eyes.
"I'm s-s-s-orry," I mumbled.
But he pulled me to him then, hugging me tightly to his marble chest.
"I can't, Bella, I can't!" His moan was agonized.
"Please," I said, my plea muffled against his skin. "Please, Edward?"
I couldn't tell if he was moved by the tears trembling in my voice, or if he was unprepared to deal with the suddenness of my attack, or if his need was simply as unbearable in that moment as my own. But whatever the reason, he pulled my lips back to his, surrendering with a groan.
And we began where my dream had left off.
As we kissed, Edward wiped at the tears that had coated my cheeks.
"I'm not having any of that," he said roughly. "I feel awful when you cry."
"So don't let me cry," I whispered into his mouth, tugging at the zipper on his pants. "Make me feel better."
He gave an odd sort of half-chuckle, half moan, and the khakis were suddenly off and flung across the room. His hands were back on me a half-second later, brushing across my face, down past my shoulders, lingering at my chest…feeling a certain deja-vu, I gasped with accidental excitement, wrapping my arms and legs around him and letting my tongue glide along his flawless bottom lip.
A feral snarl ripped from deep in Edward's throat, and his hands froze on me. I tensed, careful not to make any other sudden movements.
And suddenly I was flat on my back, Edward on top of me, hands pinned at my sides. There were a series of ripping noises. Lifting my head off the pillows, I looked confusedly down the length of my body; Alice's revealing lingerie was nowhere to be seen.
"Where?..." I asked confusedly; but Edward's lips were already back on mine, and his bare body was pressed up against my own – chest against chest, hips against hips – and the strange sensation that I'd just dropped fifty stories and left my stomach where I'd fallen from overcame me, and I completely forgot what I'd been about to say.
It was different, this second time. More driven than the first – we both knew what it was like, what we could have, what we'd – he'd – been avoiding this past week, and so we were eager to the point of near insanity. This second time, our every movement was one of an almost pressing urgency. The importance of joining into one with him was so overwhelming, so utterly right, that I wondered how we'd managed to put it off for so long.
It was, if possible, even better than the first time.
When he'd moved off of me, and the only physical remnants of the encounter was a dull, frighteningly perfect throbbing in my lower torso and his arms wrapped around me, Edward spoke quietly.
"I shouldn't have done that," he murmured. It would have sounded a lot more sincere if his voice wasn't still slightly rougher, slightly deeper, than usual. "It was a mistake. The last thing I want in the world is to hurt you again. This was a mistake – but it was a once-off. The next time I make love to you, you'll be a vampire, Bella. …Bella?"
But I didn't reply. Having decided that the best course of action in this situation was to feign sleep, I closed my eyes and gave a small, soft sigh.
Faking unconsciousness didn't turn out to be particularly hard, anyways. Seconds later, lulled by Edward trailing his fingers absently across my stomach, I'd fallen asleep.
