The Way I Love her

Disclaimer: All the characters in the story are the property of Stephanie Meyer. I have borrowed them for my entertainment and (hopefully) your reading pleasure. I make no profit from their use.

Chapter 2: Misunderstanding

Jacob looks up at me and smirks as Bella huddles closer to him. I cannot read her mind, but I know that this is due to an imperceptible (to human and wolf, for once, senses) drop in the temperature. The wind is dying and the storm is abating, but the cold intensifies as we move closer towards dawn.

I close my eyes and breath deeply, but her lovely human scent, the scent of her delicious blood that burns my throat every moment that she is in my presence; is obscured by the noxious fumes radiating from the werewolf who surrounds her. But she is warm. She is comfortable. And that is all that really matters.

He pulls her towards his body more tightly and closes his eyes, allowing pleasurable thoughts to flood his mind. His memory recalls her voice telling him that he is the sun, possessing an internal warmth to keep her going. But he fails to hear the wistful longing behind those words. His warmth was a comfort to her while I was away, but it could never take my place.

Her face is soft, but not desirous. He is unable to comprehend the utterly platonic feelings that underlie her words. She has no passion for him, no erotic feelings that match his own. He is first and foremost a physical creature. The intimate spiritual dynamic that exists between Bella and me will never be apparent or comprehensible to him.

Unwittingly, he has soothed my own feelings of guilt. I am not taking her from a potential romantic partner. His perception of the shared "kiss," as being enjoyable to both participants causes me to laugh out loud. His eyes fly open and he glares at me. He thinks that I am laughing at his incompetent kissing skills, but it is his exceptionally dense interpretation of her response that has me laughing.

He does not see fury in her eyes. He misinterprets that emotion as passion. And he does not recognize the degree to which she shuts down as his lips move against hers. He is also infuriated because the scene that he has replayed in such graphic detail was for his amusement at my discomfort. It bothers him that somehow I have turned the tables on him.

I know how capable she is of shutting off her amorous desires. She has been forced to do it often enough with me to protect me from my natural instincts when I open my mouth over her skin. But this protection is reversed. She is protecting herself from him and his assault, made all the more wretched because she must hurt him in the end. My hidden fists clench at the reenactment of the scene, but I loosen them when I read the complete confusion in his mind.

He is shocked when she punches him and even winces (as I do) at the sound of her knuckle cracking against his face. But he immediately shifts his mind to his own interpretation of her self-defense. He wrongly believes that she is reacting from guilt and fear of what I might do to her if I were to find out. And he is clueless to the fact that Bella has no fear of me at all. What could I possibly do to her?

Then, as if he is able to read my mind, he silently answers my question. His immature assumption is that I will turn her into a vampire to keep her for myself. I choke back another laugh and now he glares at me. If that was "all" it would take to make her mine, I could have done it a year ago when she was begging me at prom. Instead of restraining every instinct in my fiber as I kissed her neck, I could have bitten her and ended this petty rivalry once and for all. Not that I didn't think of it at the time.

As my lips touched her throat, for a single second, I remembered the taste of her sweet blood as I sucked the venom from her hand barely weeks before. It was an act of pure love and impossible self-denial. In the end, I couldn't bear the thought of taking her life. She asked why I didn't let the venom spread so that she could become a permanent part of my world. As if I could let his venom change her. I think that she understands that better now.

The option of Alice changing her was never a serious one. As I read the future as she projected it to Aro, I knew that her decision to change Bella was a split-second act of desperation. She had already smelled Bella's blood and knew very well that she could never stop once she tasted it.

But she used the superhuman force of her mind to push that back and bring forward the year-old image of the two of them, side by side, arms interlinked behind one another, with matching pale skin and golden eyes. They looked like sisters.

Bella knows that Carlisle is fully capable of safely changing her. After all, he created four of us and his thirst for her blood is nowhere near as powerful as mine. And he would do this for me, despite the fact that it goes against his philosophy of preserving human life that he holds so dear.

Yet he would take her life to save mine. He said as much when we voted more than a month ago. He would sacrifice his ideals at her request, because he wants me to have the mate to whom I have chosen to bind myself for the rest of her earthly life. He would give her that dubious gift of immortality to preserve my "life." And then he would not ever have to face losing me.

Even if I were to convince her to remain human and live out a normal life span, he knows that I would return to the Volturi the minute she drew her last breath. And a normal human life span is merely the blank of an eye to an immortal, especially one who has lived hundreds of years like Carlisle has. My choice has left him with no choice.

And the only choice left to Bella, is whether it would be Carlisle or me who would change her. She wants me. She wants my venom to enter her blood stream. Somehow she understands that there is a tie between creator and creation that is one more connection to solidify our union.

She has already agreed to become my wife to attain this. I know that I have the will power to do it. I can taste her blood one last time and then release her to the agony that follows, an agony that will rip through me until the transformation is complete.

I still do not fully comprehend my desire to marry her while she is still human. She thinks that it is a delay tactic, but I know that it is not. Once she is changed, we will leave this place forever, or at least until the present generation dies off. People live longer these days, so perhaps we will have to wait a hundred years this time, not a mere seventy. But a century is hardly very long for us.

I suppose that I just want everyone to know that we did it right, no matter how much longer we live than they do.