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Hold me forever / Until the morning dove sings.
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He strokes her hair, as if she were a wild creature. Not a pet. He touches her face: cold fingertips so sensitive to the warmth of her skin; dead heart so afraid of what that warmth, and the rosy color of her blood, will call him to do. Even now, after all these enchanted nights and days together.
She lies very still, as he has asked, and watches him, memorizing every contour of his face - brows, eyelashes, lips. Lips like pomegranate against the snow of his skin. Lips that she had vowed she would give her life to kiss.
This touching is frightening him, and so he plucks a meadow flower from beside her face. Safer this way, although God knows, here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of tender new grass and the shy wild blooms, neither of them are in any wise safe.
"Close your eyes," he whispers, and she does. Trusts him like that. Loves him like that. Only her heart betrays her, racing from andante to allegro. She is honest enough to be afraid, even as she trusts, and holds her breath in anticipation.
"Bella."
"I'm here."
He holds the flower close to her nose, brushes her gently with it.
"Does it smell good to you?"
She smiles. "Yes." Her smile widens. He has learned enough about her to understand that she is happy. He feels as though there is a song bursting into being inside of him. He wants to play.
Softly, softly, he brushes her face with the petals of the flower. Across the tops of her eyebrows. Each cheek, gently. One brush for each eyelid. Faithfully she keeps her eyes closed, but her mouth, her mouth is smiling. He kisses her lips with the flower.
"My Bella. My one." The song has turned to an ache. Too much happiness. He trails the flower across her chin, to her jaw and down her throat. Through its delicate stem he can feel the pulse of her artery, and cannot help the sharp intake of one breath. With it comes her scent, her taste.
The image flashes across his inner eye: his teeth replacing the flower petals against her throat, the sweet gush into his mouth, unlike anything he has ever known, nor will ever know again.
Almost he dashes to the ends of the earth, but steels himself instead.
The flower has halted in the hollow between her collarbones, where there is also a pulse.
The soft human skin beneath the flower petals trembles. Her lip is trembling, too. A single tear finds a path from the corner of her eye to the hair at her temple.
"Stay with me, Edward. Don't go." She raises one hand toward him, eyes still closed. "Hold my hand."
He will not refuse her. He can't any more.
Hand in hand they stay. He, sitting cross-legged at her side. She, lying like a river of life before him. That is what she is. The endless circuit from red to blue to red again.
The flower moves of its own accord along the edge of the collar of her shirt, barely whispering into the space between cloth and skin. With her free hand, she unbuttons the first button.
"You'll be cold!" he protests.
"I will be like you."
No. Not today. Not yet. Not ever, he prays. It is a thing he cannot fathom. Bella dead. Bella cold. Bella bloodless.
Bella thirsty.
For eternity.
She has undone the second button, and he cannot help himself. He trails the flower in her fingers' wake, tracing the warm skin that has been exposed. The fingers of her other hand twine in his, clinging, holding, and the third button slips its mooring.
The flower cannot move the cloth away, and so she helps, until the tender swells lie just exposed, clasped in the lace-edged white of her undergarment. He wants nothing more than to bury his face in that fragrant land, but he knows that if he does, it will be all over in an instant. The flower is safer, and he clings to it.
"Bella."
"Here I am."
The beautiful valley is blushing, like a misty sunrise, all the way upward to the roots of her hair. What he feels in his throat is not fire, but an ache, paired to the one in his chest. Her fingers twined with his are trembling. So is her belly, there where her blouse remains buttoned. Even her thighs are quivering, beneath the soft fan of her skirt.
He should not have looked there, for it ignites a firebrand between his own legs; that spreads like wildfire out to the tips of his fingers and toes and ears and even his hair. Though no color shows it … except for his hair.
"Let me see you," he entreats, and she opens her eyes. She gazes at him, wide and tender, with the face of every doe he has ever slain.
"I want to taste," she says. "The flower."
He detaches the blossom gingerly from its calyx, and offers it to her. She inverts it and sucks tentatively at the base.
"Is there nectar?"
"A little bit."
"What does it taste like?"
"Like flower. A little sweet." She lets go of his hand so that she can sit up. "Here, you try." And she brings the tip of the flower to his lips. It has been handled too much, and falls apart between them, leaving stray petals and her fingers at the entrance to his mouth. He pulls her in just enough to taste her flesh with his tongue. She is divine. He always knew that.
Her breath shudders through her chest, and he finds her curled close against him, fingers still in his mouth. The temptation to bite is terrifyingly strong, and he has to release her. He closes her hand in his, bringing it down to cradle against his motionless heart. Instinct and body memory would have him panting in relief at the near escape, but wisdom holds him absolutely still.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
"No."
She shifts to kneel directly in front of him. Her knees are right up against his crossed ankles. She brushes the last flower petal from his lips and takes his face in her warm, sweet hands.
"Edward, look at me. Look."
He does look, of course, how can he not? And how can his gaze not fall to her open blouse? She looks, too, and for a moment sees herself as he sees her. Beautiful. Desired. Her blush deepens, and she is able to see as well as feel its heat rise. Heat always rises, fire burns always upward. Into the cool of this cloudy morning.
She raises her eyes again to meet his. His skin is milk and his eyes are honey. That is what he is to her.
"Look at me, Edward." As her hands gentle and treasure the planes of his face. "You can hear my heart, right?"
"Yes. Every beat."
"Then listen. Hear." And she asks her heart to tell him what no words could ever convey.
His face is so smooth and cool in her hands. She wonders if Carlisle had shaved him before he turned him to stone. Or had he just been a late bloomer, with nothing more than soft peach fuzz on his face? At seventeen. She feels older than he, somehow, and that gives her courage. She wants so much to show him what she feels. Her hands linger on his face, caressing brow, cheekbones, jaw, the edges of his ears, the softness of his hair. Holding, cherishing. Then she stands.
A light breeze comes and she knows it will be cold to do this. But hasn't she vowed to love the cold?
Her fingers are awkward, now, with the buttons, but she manages. The breeze opens her blouse, lifts it away from her body, frees the warmth of her scent. He shoots to his feet, almost fleeing, barely staying.
She sheds her blouse, lets it slip off her shoulders and arms and float to the ground, lets herself stand before him in her white bra and wrap-around skirt. Her eyes are closed again. She is shy. She can't help it. She almost cannot undo the clasp of her bra. Thank heaven it is in front and not in back. She can only imagine herself struggling with it there, elbows gangly on each side like some parody of angels' wings.
She hears him gasp when the bit of white cloth that held her breasts falls away.
The breeze comes and raises gooseflesh all over her. She will do this. Untie the bands that hold the skirt at her waist, unwrap its soft fall from around her legs. She had worn nothing underneath, worried all the way here whether he could tell that she had done such a thing, but still she had held the seed of this moment, or something like it, in her heart from the start.
She takes a deep breath and opens the last panel, raising her arms so that the open skirt billows out behind her like a cape, or a sail.
Her shoes are far away, with his, set aside an hour ago, at the very edge of the meadow. She is completely naked before him, but does not feel embarrassed, only free and true. She asks every inch of her skin to speak for her, to him.
The wayward skirt flutters down, to join the rest of her clothes in the grass. She opens her eyes, and he is crushed with shame. There is no way that she cannot see what she has done to him. He feels like a fourteen year old, with no control over his body at all. He drops his gaze, and sees that one of her feet is curled over the top of the other. She is so young, so human, so dear to him, and still he yearns toward her so carnally as this.
He is not ready for this, not ready for her. How could he be? When all of his previous experiences have been so embarrassing, or so horrific. She advances toward him slowly, hands at her sides, open palms facing toward him. Without clothing to hold it in, her body is surrounded by an invisible cloud of warmth and scent. This is what touches him first. She stops, just close enough but not too close, and he closes his eyes, the better to feel her cloud, the way that it wavers about her in the breeze. It is suffused with her bloodscent, and the combination – washing him like some warm ocean mist – is intoxicating.
"Oh, Bella."
His voice, and the way that he calls her name, goes straight to her heart.
The boy, on the pages of the journal. Sixteen, going on seventeen. How could he know that he was writing down the last ten months of his life?
"Edward, I'm here. Don't be startled."
He is holding his breath. She has to touch him, this boy turned to stone. His shoulders, his chest, through the cloth of his shirt. Not really stone. Not so hard as that. But far more firm than any living flesh. She cannot help but wonder if this is what a corpse with rigor mortis feels like. And cold. As cold as the ground beneath her feet.
Tears come to her eyes. She cannot help it. He has told her, more than once, how the transformation hurt. How no words can even begin to suggest how bad it was. How it is a memory that will never dim with time, because of what he has become. He wants her to be afraid, to never even contemplate that for herself, but all that she can think about is how he suffered, and endured. She thinks of the final beats of his human heart, strong and young and brave, and doomed to die. Her hand touches the place on his chest.
I love you, she thinks, to the heart in its grave.
He has told her, more than once, about how it felt, waking up to the horrific thirst. The thirst that never ends. He has told her about every life that he took, how he lusted for their blood. Wanted it. Always will. And how all of that is nothing to the way that he wants her blood in particular. He wants her to be afraid, to see him for the monster that he is, to never even contemplate that for a lover, let alone for herself. But all she can see is the dead boy, as she undoes his shirt, slips her hands inside to shoulders that are broad, but a little bony, chest so smooth, rib ladder under her fingertips, the slender waist, muscles quivering as her hands curl around it, and there, below, where he is so helplessly brought to life. By her.
He sighs.
"Are you afraid?"
"No."
"Disgusted?"
In answer she brings herself flush with him. He yelps, but holds his ground, and she holds him, too, with her arms around his waist and her lips against his sternum. She turns her face, to place her cheek there. Neither of them is comfortable like this, in part because of his trousers, and in part because she is too short, and so he is poked against her abdomen instead of where, she realizes, she most sincerely wants him, which is between her thighs.
They breathe each other's names in unison, and then get about removing all of his clothing. It is awkward, and they work at cross-purposes sometimes, and there is certainly an obstacle to be negotiated in the process. But at last she is kneeling in front of him, helping him step out of his pants and boxers, even though he is never in any danger of tripping or falling.
"You have knobby knees!"
Her exclamation startles him, as she so often does. It is strange to look down at her, past his naked desire, but he discovers that he can get used to this.
"I love your knees," she says, her hands heating the backs of them, and her head bending to kiss first left, then right. Her hands pass like warm sunlight down the backs of his calves, to his ankles and lastly to rest on the tops of his feet. Everywhere she touches feels like summer, as if he would burst into diamond glory.
"I love your feet, too." He notices that she does not quite dare to look up at him, and thinks perhaps it would be better if he sat. He is glad that she is shy. It helps him feel better about his own uncertainty.
"Bella, I don't know … anything."
"Just hold me."
And he sinks back into the grass with her in his arms.
They lie like that for a long time, just getting used to the feeling of skin against skin, soft against hard, alive upon dead. He does not dare to breathe, and so there are no words, only touches, only her warmth and scent surrounding him.
Every wonder of the world is contained in her skin and her flesh. Her breasts yield to his palms just so, even as they fill him with warmth. Her flanks are so smooth and taut, her belly so tender under his hand. Her hair and the hollow of her neck are a fragrant haven for his face. Her back swales down at her waist, then rises to her buttocks in the graceful curve of some treasured seashell. Her thighs move and twine with his, locking him in the most delicious heat. And her mouth, her mouth, passes over every inch of his face, his neck, his shoulders, his chest, blessing him with her breath, whispering for them both, "You're so beautiful, so beautiful. So beautiful."
They roll together, sometimes he above, sometimes she. He wants her mouth, wants to kiss, though it is so dangerous to put his mouth on her. But she waits for him, holds still for him, and he does. And now he can no longer hold his breath. Hers and his join at the tender gates which they have opened to each other, as they touch and press and hold and release, and pass to one corner and then the other, brushing, seeking, finding; plighting themselves to one another.
She is crying. He can smell her tears; taste them on her cheek and at the edges of her hair.
"Am I hurting you?" he asks, in fear.
"No. I … stay with me, Edward. Stay. Be. With me."
She runs her summer sun hand down his side, his flank, to the crest of his hip, then passes inward and down, to finally touch him where he desires her the most, and the most fiercely. He thinks he will go blind in the shock and the bliss of that moment, that touch. But he does not, and they learn each other now, slowly, carefully, in the most intimate spaces of each other's bodies.
Grass and sky receive soft cries, as they touch and kiss and hold one another, and touch and kiss yet more.
Her lone heartbeat crescendos, and the boy on the ground can barely endure the flood of his own sensations. He keeps one hand clutched into the earth, to anchor himself, for he is afraid that the violence of his trembling may do her harm. He lies below her, praying that somehow this will make what they are doing safe for her, since he cannot stop. Her hair curtains around him, he is enveloped by her scent, and yet, though he breathes, for the first time in his entire existence he is not thinking about blood, but only her, and her tenderness and her heat, and the one place, known, now, to his fingers, hotter than all others, with its mysterious perfume, moving, leaving slick upon his skin, lifting over him, and oh, God! He wills himself to hold absolutely still, so that she can admit him without being torn in half, as he is certain would happen if he did not chain himself to the earth as he has done.
Her eyes are fawn brown, shining, beautiful, gazing at him. He wishes he could put his hands on her, hold her hips, speak to her through their skin in this moment when she will give to him what she can only give once. But all ten fingers are already knuckle-deep in the soil. He says the only thing that he can.
"You are my life."
Hands braced on his shoulders she sinks onto him carefully, wincing, stopping, sinking again. Can they really do this without blood? And then it is done, and she is still alive, and he extricates his hands from the soil, cleans them as best he can in the grass and wraps his arms around her as she lies upon him.
She is cold above and cold below. She feels suspended between now and forever. He is trying so hard to hold still, but neither of them can. She wants more, and so does he. She gets up on her elbows, not enough, braces herself on his shoulders again. They had been so dizzy with flight, now holding, searching, the right movement, the right angle. Not too fast, not too hard, because he could still tear her apart if they are not careful. She sees his smile, and realizes that she is biting her lip.
"Oh, Bella," he whispers, "my dearest, my only."
"Here I am," she replies.
Rocking is better. It is slower but it will work. The joy of living flesh rises between them again. Their eyes squeeze shut, all the world contracts to this place where they are joined, and where their hands touch each other. Later they will see the bruises that his fingers are leaving on her hips, but now there is only sweet and hot and piercing, and his shout as he bursts inside of her. A brace of doves flies up from the edge of the trees, and she follows him with a shudder that ripples through her whole body. She lies on him, like egg pose in yoga, and he holds her quietly until her heart returns to its normal tempo.
They part at last, to lie side by side.
"You're cold," he worries.
She hushes him.
"We're here, Edward, together. That's all that matters. Me with you and you with me. Together." Then she kisses him softly. Brushing across the tops of his brows. Each cheek, gently. One brush for each lavender eyelid, the same color as the flowers in the grass. And at last his pomegranate lips once more. His lips forevermore.
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This story was written for octoberland.