A/N: Even as I was writing Waterloo, the Edward POV was unfolding in my head. And it really wouldn't leave me alone after I finished Waterloo, so eventually I wrote it down. I am not continuing Waterloo; this is it. This is just the "courtship" from Edward's POV. I'm not crazy about some of the structural elements of this, which is why I didn't post it on its own. But since I went through all the trouble of writing it, I'd figure I'd share it with you rather than let it sit on my desktop gathering dust.
In keeping with the ABBA theme that inspired Waterloo, I named this Why Did It Have to Be Me, which is the name of another ABBA song, and one of the few sung by one of the guys in the group.
Also, while Edward and Bella might be history scholars in this, I am not. I did research, but I'm sure it was imperfect.
Oh, and nobody beta'd this for me this go around. Any and all mistakes are entirely mine.
*0*0*
Bella Swan drives me absolutely crazy.
She has driven me crazy since the first time I laid eyes on her, although the nature of the crazy has changed a bit over the course of the past two years.
My first encounter with her was at the orientation meeting for our graduate history program at UW. That day was already a disaster. I was late. That's nothing unusual; I'm always late. It's not on purpose, I swear; I think it's genetic. I really do try to be on time, and I always think I am. Then I glance at the clock and it's always fifteen minutes later than I thought it was. How does that happen? I don't get it, but I've always been this way, and I'm always late to everything. And that day was no different. The disaster was compounded when I got lost looking for the seminar room where the meeting was being held. I asked someone for directions, and while she was extremely eager to help, even giving me her number in case I got lost again and needed help, she also turned out to be dead wrong. So I lost another ten minutes fruitlessly searching for a building that didn't exist.
By the time I finally found the seminar room, Dr. Banner was already in the middle of his welcoming speech. I opened the door as quietly as possible but it was no use. Nearly a hundred people turned in unison to look at me. The guy who was late on the very first day. Fantastic first impression. I smiled as apologetically as I could manage and stammered an excuse as I made my way to the first empty seat I could find, which was naturally half-way across the room. I was still ducking my head and muttering my apologies when one very pretty face materialized out of the mass of faces turned in my direction and I started stammering for an entirely different reason.
Okay, so yes, I thought she was hot from the minute I saw her. I'd have been hard-pressed not to notice that. She was petite; really little with perfect, symmetrical features. And the impression was only amplified by her pale skin and wide dark eyes. She had her hair down that day, which I would come to find was a little unusual for her. She usually kept it tangled up on her head in some sort of messy, improvised knot secured with a pen or three. But that first day it was down, tumbling loose and dark around her shoulders. She looked like a sexy china doll in jeans and a tight sweater, sitting in that lecture hall. So of course I noticed that. I also noticed her scowling at me and rolling her eyes in disgust. Then she scoffed softly and muttered something unintelligible under her breath, one perfect eyebrow arched in disbelief. Right…back to my lousy first impression.
It hardly mattered, though, because in short order, I got to know her and first impressions were a thing of the past. That woman was a holy terror. She was fierce, driven and confrontational. It took no time at all for our fellow grad students to start calling her Little Napoleon, owing to her tendancy to bulldoze through every situation and stomp her (tiny) feet until she got her way. She also got the nickname because she was specializing in Napoleonic France. It might have also had something to do with her being short. Whatever the reasons behind her nickname, we might have all chuckled behind her back when we called her Little Napoleon, but no one ever said it to her face. Because that girl was scary.
Anyway, so yeah...me and Little Napoleon. We didn't get along...at all. Whatever. It shouldn't have been a big deal. I'm a polite person. I can be nice to anyone, if I need to, for short periods of time. But that was just the problem. Little Napoleon was in my face All. The. Time.
She was specializing in Napoleonic France, of course, which was all tangled up with my specialization, the history of the British Navy. Because if you're going to study the British Navy, it's hard not to spend a lot of time on what is arguably its pinnacle, its supremacy during the Naploeonic Wars. So there she was, Little Napoleon, in every one of my classes, in every seminar I took. Sometimes the more esoteric or obscure seminars would only have two students; me and her.
And, oh my God, she was so damned argumentative! She had to argue about every goddamned thing, every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Secretly, I suspected that she resented how much the British navy owned France during the war, and she liked to displace her anger on me. Whatever. Bring it on. England owned France on the water. And oh, yeah…they won that war, too. She always seemed to forget that part.
She was always trying to find some reason for England's obvious naval superiority; some secret to why Napoleon could kick ass on land, but not on the high seas. She was always shoving her crazy theories in my face, trying to get a rise out of me or catch me out on something I didn't know. Yeah, good luck with that, sweetheart.
Because here was the other really annoying thing about Little Napoleon. She thought I was stupid. At least at first. In our first graduate seminar together, it was clear that she'd dismissed me out of hand as some pretty-boy airhead who'd have nothing of substance to add to any discussion. So I schooled her…and quick. Then she resented the hell out of me for not being the moron she assumed me to be.
When she realized she couldn't hate me for being stupid, she moved on to hating me for being wealthy. She was always making snide little comments on my car or my lack of student loans. Let's be clear about something: yes, my family has a lot of money. We were fortunate that my grandfather was a kick-ass businessman who had a brilliant idea and a lot of good luck. He left us all set up with hefty trust funds that ensured that none of us would ever have to worry about money. Which was awesome. But he, and then my father after him, also left us with a healthy understanding of the obligation that goes hand-in-hand with privilege. We were never, ever to take it for granted. And just because we didn't have to work to put roofs over our heads didn't mean we were allowed to be idle.
My older brother, Emmett, was the one born with the passion for industry, so he took over the actual running of the company, which left me free to indulge in my passion, books and history. I was grateful for the freedom so I made sure to give back in a million other ways. I was a regular major donor to half a dozen charities and one of the scholarships that paid the tuition of several underprivileged undergrads at this very university was funded by me. Of course, I kept that part completely quiet. Whatever. Nobody's going to accuse me of being some lazy, rich playboy, certainly not Little Miss Righteously Indignant. My one frivolous indulgence was my car. So sue me. It was a sweet ride, and very fuel-efficient, when you got down to it. I only have the one, anyway. Emmett has four.
It was a long first year, battling it out with her in every class, in every study session. Everywhere I turned, there she was, all up in my face, accusing me of being wrong, practically daring me to take her on. And like I'm going to back down from that challenge? I never could. If she threw down the gauntlet, I couldn't resist picking it up. Dr. Banner, the poor bastard who had the misfortune of advising both of us, spent most of his time refereeing our arguments instead of actually guiding our studies. And whose fault was that? Not mine. She always started it. Well, almost always. Sometimes it was fun to throw stuff at her just to get a rise out of her; to watch her start sputtering and flushing, then ripping into my argument. Baiting Little Napoleon might have been one of my favorite sports.
It got worse during our second year, when we started teaching the undergrad Intro to History classes. She was just as much of a tyrant in the classroom as she was everywhere else. Almost immediately, I was besieged during my office hours with tearful undergrads asking to transfer into my sections. She must have been particularly hard on the girls, because they were always the most persistent ones, practically begging me to let them into my classes. So I started resenting her for keeping my classes packed to the gills and she resented me for being "the nice one". Fine. One more log to throw on the fire of our mutual hatred.
Once our interaction with the undergrad population increased, she started ragging on me for a whole new reason. Because now, in addition to committing the unforgivable crimes of being not-stupid and wealthy, Little Napoleon had also decided that I was a man-whore. Look, it's not my fault that a lot of young, impressionable undergrad girls tend to form crushes on any relatively attractive authority figure under the age of forty. All I did was my job, advising them on the class, listening to their problems. Yes, a few of the more persistent ones had put me in the awkward position of explaining that I wouldn't date a student, but I certainly didn't start anything and I never gave in with any of them. None of them had anything to interest me anyway. I needed more than a pretty face. I needed intelligence, confidence and someone who's passionate about something. I did have some standards, despite what she thought.
I did have a social life, don't get me wrong. I had friends and I dated a few women during my first year; never anything serious, as the schedule we kept didn't really allow for a lot of free time. But just the fact that I didn't sleep in the library like some people, coupled with the unfortunate string of love-sick undergrad girls, seemed to cement my reputation, at least in her mind, that I was some ruthless, over-sexed lothario. Nothing could be further from the truth, and my existence lately had been a whole lot more cloistered monk than reckless Don Juan. Whatever. She'd made up her stubborn little mind about me and there was no changing it. Not that I cared. I didn't. At all.
The other kind of annoying thing about Little Napoleon (just add it to the list), was that she always seemed to have the most interesting books and she didn't share. If she stumbled across the mention of some book, no matter how rare and obscure, she wouldn't rest until she'd acquired it through inter-library loan. Most people just didn't have the patience or persistence required to track down some of these books. It figures that Little Napoleon wouldn't be like most people. If that book was out there, she had the tenacity of a badger in getting it. Of course, once she had it, my curiosity would invariably be piqued and I'd want a look. And the little tyrant never would let me, damned her.
In the end, that's what started it all; that's how the "Trafalgar Incident" occurred; it was all over some stupid rare book.
There was a conference room in the History Department. Although it was made available to anyone in any department looking for a space to hold a meeting, there were much better facilities elsewhere on campus, so the History conference room was only used as a last resort. Shelley, the departmental secretary, kept the keys to it and it had become customary for History grads to use it for studying between classes. We all had grad carrels, but the library was a ten minute walk away, and if you only had an hour between classes, it didn't make sense to hike all the way over there. It was dim and kind of dusty, but it served its purpose if you just wanted to get some reading done.
That's what I was heading in there to do that day; to plow through another hundred pages of my Kartock's British Naval Frigates: Second Class. Frigates had long been a favorite of mine and I'd really been enjoying the book. I was looking forward to diving back in. That is, until I pushed the door open and saw the familiar slim shape of Little Napoleon...Bella Swan, hunched over a stack of books at one end of the long table.
I groaned to myself and for a minute, I considered going right back out, but then her head snapped up and she swiveled around to look at the door.
Her hair was piled up on her head and speared with three pens, if I counted correctly. She had her glasses on and they'd slipped down her nose, so she had to tip her head all the way back to see me through them. It was kind of cu…stop! Little Napoleon is not cute. I think I established the whole yeah-she's-hot thing from the outset, but the hotness was completely negated by the badger factor.
The badger factor was dialed up to high today. The minute she registered it was me, her lip curled up in a sneer and she turned back to her book. "Oh, it's just you."
"Nice to see you, too, Swan," I muttered, circling her end of the conference table and taking a chair at the far end on the opposite side. She didn't say anything else, she just hunched back down over her book, one arm folded up with her hand cupping the back of her neck. I stared at the top of her head for another second before dropping into my seat and pulling my book out of my bag.
We read for a while in silence. Except when there's another person with you in an otherwise completely silent room, it's never really silent. Every tiny sound Swan made was amplified times a thousand and completely distracting. She wasn't even being particularly loud, but for some reason, every time she sighed, every time she shifted in her chair, every time she turned a page, my focus was completely shattered. I was really starting to get annoyed; at myself for having uncharacteristically shitty focus, and at her, just for being.
Finally I glanced up at her out of the corner of my eye. Well, she might be distracting me, but I clearly wasn't bothering her. She was completely absorbed in whatever it was she was reading. My eyes flicked down to the book. It was leather-bound, dusty and cracked, with yellowed pages. It looked really old. A frisson of excitement raced down the back of my neck at the sight of it. Old books just did something to me. I couldn't help it. My fingers itched to hold it, to examine the frontispieces, to see what it said inside…
"What are you reading?" My voice sounded epically loud in the silent space and I winced. Swan startled and squinted at me through her glasses again. I knew she only used them to read; she didn't need to peer through them to see me. It was just some tic she'd picked up to make herself look more formidable. For anyone actually intimidated by her, it might have worked, but I was unmoved.
"Um…a journal," she muttered shortly.
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. Like that was going to tell me anything.
She sighed and straightened up, flinching slightly as her back came out of its perma-curl. She was so pale. She really needed to get out more. "It's the journal of a sailor in the Spanish navy."
She said the magic word and I sat up a little straighter. "Really? When?"
She scowled at me, already annoyed at my enthusiasm. "1805. He was at the Battle of Trafalgar."
I whistled through my teeth and eyed her book with renewed interest. "How'd you lay your hands on that?"
"Inter-library loan, Cullen."
"They don't keep shit like that in the stacks, Swan. So how'd you get it?"
She sat back in her chair with a huff. "Angela, okay? She has a friend at the library in Minneapolis that houses it. It's in Rare Books, but she pulled some strings and got me listed as faculty, which I technically am…"
I was laughing before she even finished. "Nice one. I love that you've dragged poor Angela into your fraud."
"Shut up, Cullen! I teach! That makes me sort of faculty."
"Yeah, we both know that's not what they mean when they make those rules."
"Well, not all of us can afford to just call up our rare book dealer when there's something we want."
I shot her a hard stare. She just stared back. She had me there. I did have a rare book dealer.
"What do you even want it for, anyway?" I was trying to sound casual, but dying to know. She stared at me for another beat before huffing and pulling her notepad closer. She reached up to fish one of those pens out of her hair and the whole precarious mess came tumbling down. I swear, I was going to buy the woman stock in a rubber band company. She made a growl of annoyance, twisted it around her hands a few times, then tossed it back over her shoulders in defeat. It really was a pretty color. Such a vicious little package inside such beautiful wrapping.
Swan began to scribble notes on her pad as she spoke. "He talks about a cluster of ships to the south. Not French or Spanish, not English."
"Aaaannnnd?" I sat back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, clearly you've got some notion about whose ships they were. Just spit it out, Swan."
"You are so…"
"Perceptive? Intelligent? Insightful?"
"Pushy and demanding, actually." She glanced back at me, then threw her pen onto the table in frustration. She stood up and made a show of organizing her pile of stuff, which I knew meant that she was nervous. "I'm pursuing a few leads that might point to them being Portuguese."
I just stared at her in silence for a few minutes. She kept her hands busy, stuffing pages into folders. Finally she straightened up and planted her hands on her hips. "What?"
"Are you seriously telling me that you think there were Portuguese war ships at the Battle of Trafalgar?"
"Maybe! Why do you even care, Cullen?"
I stood up abruptly. "What, like I don't know a damned thing about Trafalgar? Do you remember who you're talking to here?"
"Jesus, like you've cornered the market on it! Like if you don't know it, then it's not out there to be known! What pisses you off more, Cullen? That I'm encroaching on your British Naval turf or that I might be right?"
"I'm not pissed off, I just think it's a ridiculous idea and I'm trying to save you the time and energy of chasing your tail like this!"
"Oh, bullshit! You are pissed! Because you know what it means if it's true! That the British weren't so almighty dominant on the water…that they had help!"
"Oh, so because some random sailor that no one's ever heard of before idly makes mention of some ships that he couldn't readily identify, that means the Portuguese entered the Third Coalition months before they actually did? Are you honestly proposing rewriting history like that, Swan?"
"You and I both know that history gets re-written every day based on the evidence that's uncovered."
"And you're going to be the one to re-define the most decisive naval battle of the nineteenth century? Really, Swan?"
"What's the matter, Cullen? Angry that your precious British Navy might not have been the all-mighty powerhouse you make them out to be? Or are you pissed that you didn't find it first?" Her mouth curled up in a satisfied smirk as she crossed her arms over her chest and drew a deep breath.
I saw red. I was furious. We were still standing at opposite ends of the conference table; our voices had gradually risen until we were shouting at each other. Our eyes were bright with anger, we were both breathing hard. I had no idea what had just come over me. Yes, she was pushing all my buttons and getting a rise out of me, but she always did that. Why the hell was I so irrationally angry about her stupid, crazy theory?
And that's when I felt it; the awareness coursed through my body.
I was hard. As a rock. My dick was fully, painfully erect. For Little Napoleon. No! Not for her. I was just…excited. Or something. Some weird switch got flipped in my head or some wires got crossed. My head was thinking 'angry' and my body was thinking… 'sex'. Then it happened- my body assaulted my head with a flood of raunchy imagery. Of Swan, of Swan naked, of Swan laid out on this conference table, of me bending over her, taking Swan, hard and hot, Swan's nails digging into my back as I pounded into her and she screamed out my name…
I broke out in a cold sweat. I hunched over, because my hard on had not diminished in the slightest, especially not after I imagined sliding my hand up around that pale thigh and…fuck! Stop it! What the hell? Was I some thirteen-year-old kid? What the fuck was wrong with me? Stuff like this just didn't happen to me. Especially not when I'm looking at Little Napoleon.
She was still standing there, arms tightly crossed, glaring. As she watched me stutter and stammer, because all my ability to speak coherently had fled, her eyebrows knit together and she looked concerned.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Feeling ill at the thought of my genius dissertation proposal?"
This was where I was supposed to lob it back to her, make some snide comment and knock her argument clean out of the water. But I still couldn't speak. I couldn't get past what had just happened to me…what was still happening to me, because it wasn't going away.
When I continued to stay silent, she scowled again and then huffed in awkward irritation. "Whatever, Cullen. I didn't ask for your opinion in the first place, so kindly stop sticking it in where it's not wanted."
I groaned softly.
Jesus, don't say that. Not right now.
She started stuffing her books into her bag, getting ready to leave. Thank God. Go…get out of here, and maybe this raging, throbbing hard on will go with you. "It's my research anyway," she was saying, not looking at me, "So just stay out of it. And don't even think about asking to see the journal."
She swung her backpack up on to her shoulder and turned to look at me again. I just grimaced and hung on to the edge of the table, praying she wouldn't notice it. Damn, why did I have to be so tall? She kept her eyes on my face, however. I wish I could say the same. My traitorous gaze was busy noticing that her breasts looked fantastic in that tight t-shirt. Stop, already.
"You better take it easy, Cullen," she muttered. "You look like shit."
"Thanks," I finally choked out, and then squeezed my eyes shut in embarrassment. Swan left the room, letting the door slam behind her, and I finally exhaled. Carefully I lowered myself back into my chair. What. The. Fuck. Was. That?
*0*0*
I saw Little Napoleon a few more times that week, thankfully with no humiliating repeat of the conference room incident. She was as snarky and hateful as she always was. I easily slipped back into my usual baiting, adversarial stance and everything seemed normal. I chalked up that freakish reaction to some strange case of crossed wires in my head. Because I wasn't really attracted to her. I couldn't be. I mean, yes, she was beautiful; I'd always noticed that. But there had to be more to a woman than that for me, and I didn't have that with Swan. No way. Impossible.
Plus she hated me. We hated each other, because it was mutual. No, what happened that day, my reaction to her, was just some freaky aberration. I needed to get laid, clearly. It had been too long. That was all.
Unfortunately, I had a massive paper due in a week and a half, so there was nothing I could do about the getting laid thing. It just wasn't going to happen. I was swamped, buried under books and photocopies, my eyes burning and aching from staring at my laptop seemingly 24/7.
Finally, one night after midnight, when I had to read the same sentence three times to comprehend it, I had to declare a momentary defeat. I snapped my laptop shut and headed into the bedroom, falling across my bed without bothering to change out of my sweats and t-shirt.
Then I couldn't sleep. I was exhausted. Every inch of my body was telling me so. But I just couldn't get my brain to shut down and be quiet. I needed something to wipe me out, obliterate all thoughts of armadas, frigates and battle strategies so that I could sleep.
I could jack off.
Now, where the hell did that thought come from? I did it, sure, but not all that often and almost always in the shower in the mornings where it was easy to clean up. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten myself off in bed like some teenager. I probably was a teenager the last time I did it.
Of course, now that I'd thought about it, I couldn't stop thinking about it and I was already half-hard in anticipation. I sighed in defeat and slid my hand down my stomach to get on with things. By the time my hand closed over my cock I was all the way hard. This wouldn't take long, I thought ruefully.
But after several minutes of stroking, I wasn't getting there. What the hell? Was it broken or something? First that completely out-of-line reaction to Little Napoleon in the conference room last month and now I couldn't manage to get myself off? And that's what did it. One flash of Little Napoleon in my head had me arching up off the bed with desire and my hand fisting hard around myself.
No, I couldn't do this. I couldn't rub one out while I fantasized about her. That was just...wrong. I'd never be able to look at her the same way again. Except that apparently, imagining her was the only thing that was going to get me there tonight. So I gave in. I let the images flood my mind. The whole twisted conference room fantasy along with a lot more perverted shit that I hadn't gotten around to imagining that day. And once I gave in, it felt good. I fully indulged myself; I feasted on mental images of her- of Bella Swan. I pictured her naked, I pictured her under me, on top of me, I pictured every square inch of her admittedly perfect little body being plundered by my hands and my mouth.
Now I was getting there. In fact, it felt so good that I didn't want it to end too soon. So I slowed down just so I could imagine Swan a little bit more in conjunction with this. I imagined it was her hand, I imagined it was her, hot and tight around me….and then I was done. I came, long and hard, and as I moaned out my release, I moaned something else as well…"Bella".
I was so fucked.
*0*0*
I was right. It was weird seeing her after I'd whacked off to fantasies about her. She was oblivious, of course, but I felt like a dirty pervert. Not that it kept me from doing it again. Because now that my brain had a hit of luscious Bella Swan fantasies, it wanted more. I had them all the time. The Bella Swan fantasies were becoming like heroin and I was officially a junkie.
It meant that I was hyper-aware of her presence. If Little Napoleon entered a room, I seemed to know it instinctively. It was like I could smell her or something. I found myself watching her all the time and the physical attraction I'd always felt was starting to get out of hand, becoming a whole lot like raging lust and maybe low-grade obsession.
Except that we still hated each other. That hadn't changed at all. We still fought constantly, although every dust-up usually ended with me hard as a rock and desperate for relief. The situation was becoming completely unmanageable.
That's exactly what I was thinking about one night at the library as I tried in vain to research. I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for in the stacks; I just knew I'd know it when I found it. Attempting to do this kind of open-ended hunting when I was already so distracted was a recipe for failure. I couldn't even settle on which books to drag back to my carrel for further exploration. I had a ton of them spread out on one of the long tables scattered at random intervals through the stacks, as I checked and browsed and tried to make sense of the information.
Then I heard her voice and I knew whatever meager headway I'd been making would be shot to shit for the rest of the night. It wasn't enough to make me leave, though. Junkie…heroin…yeah, I was screwed.
She rounded the corner into the little open area where I sat with my books, one arm around Angela's shoulders. Angela was distraught, carrying a huge stack of books, talking a mile a minute. It was very out-of-character for her.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
Swan's head snapped to me. "Oh, Cullen," she said, shortly. "Angela and I just need to sort something out."
I shrugged and turned back to my books, looking at them, but not paying attention to the words on the page.
"Okay, Angie," Swan said, her voice full of that brusque, business-like tone I knew so well. Here she goes, about to storm the castle, as usual. I pitied poor Angela. Swan was clearly about to take her apart about something. "Show me what's got you so freaked."
"Here, it's this," Angela said, flipping through the top book on her stack until she found the passage she was looking for. "Read that! If what he's saying there is true, it blows my paper entirely out of the water. I can't possibly start from scratch now. It's due in ten days!"
Swan was silent for a minute as she read. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she scowled at the page. Then she abruptly flipped to the back, her finger skimming down a page. "Alright, here's what we're going to do. We're going to check out his primary sources. They're in the references. He's just some guy writing a book. Five years ago this guy was just another grad student like us. And you know, anyone can write a book." I could hear the sneer directed at me with that part. "These are just his assertions, Ang. It doesn't necessarily make it so. We need to go read the source material and see for ourselves."
"But…" Angela blinked and stammered. "That will take hours. Maybe days if I can't find them all here."
"It won't take that long if there are two of us. Now, let's get going. I know for a fact that at least four of these are on the shelves here. We'll start there."
Swan pulled Angela up out of her chair and pushed her down one of the aisles ahead of her, barking orders the whole time. I just stared after them as they left.
Swan had the same paper due in ten days. She was buried in her research, the same as Angela, the same as me. And she just dropped everything to go help Angela with her research. That didn't fit at all with what I knew about Little Napoleon. Little Napoleon was a mean, shrill tyrant. She knew what she wanted and she went after it with ruthless zeal. I'd always sort of admired her tenacity and seemingly endless energy. It was just a shame that she never used her considerable powers for good instead of evil. She was not a person who would drop everything and put herself in a very serious bind to selflessly help a friend in trouble. But wasn't that what she just did?
Maybe I was wrong about her. Just because she hated me didn't mean she hated everyone. Maybe she saved all the mean and nasty just for me. That was a sobering thought. And depressing. Because now I think I actually had a thing for her. For Little Napoleon.
I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear my thoughts. I needed to stop calling her Little Napoleon, even in my head, seeing as how I now had…feelings for her. Feelings for a girl who hated my guts. Fuck my life.
*0*0*
Over the next several weeks, I watched her. I'd been watching her, of course. Watching her legs that one day when she wore a skirt; watching the curve of her neck when she sat in front of me in our Nineteenth Century European Politics seminar as she pulled her hair up to the top of her head and speared it with her pen; watching her chest whenever she wore a clingy t-shirt. Yeah, I'd been watching all of that. But now I actually watched her interacting with other people. In the past, I'd always tried to block out her voice; now I strained to hear every word she said.
Here's what I found out: yes, she was a fierce, driven little badger. But she was also kind, in her brusque way. She was loyal to her friends, few as they were. She looked out for the people she cared about. I even eavesdropped on her one day when she was in the conference room talking to her father on her cell. Yes, I'd turned into an obsessed stalker, but whatever. It was worth it to hear her on the phone with him. She was entirely different, soft, funny, and caring. She fussed over him; whether he was eating right, or working too much. He must have made a joke because she laughed. Swan laughed. And I fell. Hard.
Then I had a problem. Because she still hated me. She might smile and chat casually with Angela at the reference desk, but the second I walked past, she'd look at me and her whole face would transform. Her eyes would flash and she'd scowl. Then she would invariably insult me. I wanted her to talk to me the way she talked to her dad. I wanted that soft, smiling girl to smile softly at me. I had no idea how to make that happen.
To start, I tried just being less mean, but she just saw that as a sign of weakness and attacked me harder. It was clear that I was going to have to change up this game and get her to interact with me in an entirely new way, one that didn't involve fighting and insults.
We'd started our third year by then. Summer meant little to us, since we all stayed in Seattle and worked through it. I took a couple of seminars and caught up on my reading. Swan apparently spent the whole thing prepping her dissertation subject because by the end of the first week of classes, she was already completely buried in it. This made my task even harder, because she rarely ventured out of her carrel, which cut into my chances to interact with her.
Luckily, when she did infrequently emerge from her carrel, it was to find me right next door in mine. Well, I suppose luck didn't have much to do with it. My original assignment was a carrel on the second floor near the front. As I stood there in the office, skimming the notification letter that had been in my box, I took advantage of Shelley's phone call to skim the assignment list on her desk and see where Swan had been assigned. The fourth floor, in the back. That wouldn't do. I'd never have a good reason to just casually pass by if she was all the way back there.
I complained about the second floor ones being too close to the bathrooms and really noisy. Shelley apologized, but said there were no free carrels left to move me to. I smiled my friendliest smile at her and asked if I could take a look at the list. She got all flustered and she blushed and let me. I perused the list. Freaking Eric Yorkie had the carrel next to Swan. No, no, no. No way was Yorkie going to get to be next door to her all year. So I made up some bullshit story about Yorkie having a weak bladder and wouldn't it be more convenient for him to take the carrel by the bathrooms? I acted like it was a huge hardship to take the lonely carrel at the back of the fourth floor and Shelley tsked sympathetically and patted my arm.
When I left the office, I had the key to my new fourth floor carrel. And with any luck, the key to a whole lot more.
But having the carrel next to Swan's didn't do me much good when her door was always shut tight and she never ventured out. No, I needed a way in there.
And then I thought of one.
In retrospect, lying to her might have been a low blow. But I rationalized that the lie wasn't very big in the scheme of things, compared to what was at stake. Just as I'd expected, Swan was absolutely furious when I told her that I'd changed my dissertation subject. She raged, she fumed, she smoldered, she looked like she wanted to throw stuff at me. It was hot.
I suppose if I'm confessing morally dubious things I did to get the girl, I should confess to one other thing, aside from lying to her about my dissertation subject. Oh, and sweet-talking Shelley into moving my carrel.
I broke into her laptop and read her dissertation proposal.
Honestly though, can you really call it "breaking in" when she left her laptop in the conference room for over an hour while she taught her class? And there was absolutely no password needed. Anybody could have come along and read it. So I did. Look at it this way: it would only truly be wrong if I was looking to gain from it, to steal her idea for my own or something. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just needed to know what she would be researching so that I could get there first and check out her books. Simple.
I did happen to notice that her dissertation proposal was good. Kind of brilliant, actually. The sort of sexy history that actually sells in the non-fiction section. I decided that if I ever could actually make this thing happen with her, I'd encourage her to shop it around to publishers after we graduated. That would make up for the laptop breaking and entering, right?
All my subterfuge seemed to start paying off right away. On the very first day after I enacted my plan, she voluntarily entered my carrel. Granted, it was just to yell at me and demand her book back, but I counted it as progress. And because I was conveniently located next door to her, I was there to see that she'd fallen asleep at her desk after midnight that night.
Seeing Swan…Bella…asleep, vulnerable, no armor in place, no vitriol spewing at me, kind of did a number on me. It made me imagine her all soft and sleepy like that in bed with me, that tangled dark hair spilling across my chest….yeah, I had to make this work. Of course, once she was fully awake, the snarling little badger was back, but I still managed to wrangle her into my car and I found out where she lived. Not that I'd do anything with that information. Not yet, anyway.
I almost blew it that night when I walked her to her door. She was busy throwing insults over her shoulder at me, I was busy thinking how fantastic it would be to spin her around, pin her to her door and kiss the hell out of her. So when she finally did turn around to face me, I sort of lost my train of thought. Before I knew what I was doing, I was touching her, brushing her hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear. And there was definitely a moment there, a moment when all I could think about was leaning in to kiss her and I was pretty sure she was thinking about kissing me, too. Or at the very least, she sensed what was in the air between us.
But I knew what would happen if I did that. She'd call me a man-whore and a pig. Hell, she might even hit me. And then I'd be even worse off than when I started. So even though I wanted to grab her by the back of the head and just do it, instead I backed off and went home. She looked flustered and confused, which was a vast improvement over mean and nasty, so I figured mission accomplished.
The next few weeks were alternately exhilarating and frustrating. Exhilarating because my plan was working; Bella was talking to me, and not just screaming. Frustrating, because spending that much time together researching, talking, even occasionally arguing, was sending me absolutely around the bend for her. All the traits about her that used to drive me crazy still did, but in a whole new way. She constantly amazed me with her intelligence and insights, even when we disagreed. And her passion and dedication to her work blew me away. I realized that she was pretty much what I'd always been looking for in a woman, I just needed to stop shouting at her long enough to realize it.
*0*0*
I never planned on that night being the night. Yes, I'd made progress with Bella, but in my head I imagined a longer, more traditional route to couple-hood. I figured one night, if the conversation and researching had gone well and she wasn't too hostile, that I'd casually ask her if she wanted to go grab a coffee or something. Then, once we were outside our normal academic setting, maybe we'd finally have a normal conversation, without a single mention of battlefields or dates of engagement or armed combatants. Just a guy and a girl having coffee. Then, with the ice broken, I'd get her to go grab dinner one night. All slow and easy, and I'd have her dating me before she even knew what happened. I had a plan.
Then I ran into her in the stacks unexpectedly. Well, she ran into me. Right into me. Which gave me a split-second to notice again how petite and perfect she was. Yeah, I was pretty much instantly aroused, but I was getting used to being that way in Bella's presence. Then she snarled at me and that kept me from embarrassing myself.
But when she spun around, stretching for a book over her head, just out of her reach, I could no longer control my reaction to her.
I took one step forward, until I was almost flush against her back. I could feel the heat of her skin. I could smell her shampoo. I'd never been so close to her before, and I really liked it. I could feel how perfectly she'd fit up against me. I heard her draw in her breath sharply and I smiled a little. I reached up for her book, but slowly, so I could prolong this moment. Finally, I lowered the book enough to let her hand close around it easily. She turned. I still didn't move. There were just a few inches between us.
"Thanks, Cullen," she murmured. I really wanted her to start calling me by my first name. Preferably, I'd like to hear her scream it.
"No problem," I returned. But I still didn't move.
Bella looked up at me and there was definitely a moment. Her lips parted slightly. Her eyelids drooped a little. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. I wanted to push her back against the shelves and do deplorable things to her. In fact, that was something of a recurrent fantasy of mine. And suddenly, seeing the look on her face, for the first time I was pretty sure something similar was crossing her mind, too. I was seconds away from acting on it, from reaching out, grabbing her, and just kissing her already, when she abruptly cut her eyes away and looked down, exhaling through her mouth.
I took a deep breath and backed up. She pushed past me and stalked off down the aisle. I banged my forehead against the bookshelf, wondering just how long I could hold out until I pounced on her.
I got my answer less than an hour later.
I'd just managed to get my head back into my work, bent over my laptop in my carrel, when she flew through the door with a huff. She must have just discovered that I'd scooped up the Mont St Jean escarpment book. This should be fun.
"What the fuck, Cullen?" she shouted.
I leaned back in my chair, barely able to keep the satisfied smile off my face. Her hands were on her hips, her eyes were flashing, and she was breathing hard. Damn, I loved her like this.
"Can I help you with something, Swan?"
"Mont St Jean! Hand it over!"
"What?" The book was right on the edge of my desk, waiting for her, but I wanted to drag out this little interaction for as long as possible, so I pretended that I had no idea what she was talking about.
"You know what I'm talking about. The topography of the Mont St Jean escarpment. Why do you even have it? You're doing naval blockades in France and Mont St Jean is where the Battle of Waterloo was..."
Okay, she was starting to spout historical facts at me that a toddler would know, so it was time to head this conversation off at the pass before we ended up in a big, ugly fight that would get me nowhere. I stood up, figuring that if my physical nearness had flustered her earlier, it might work again.
"I know where the Battle of Waterloo was fought, Swan. There's a theory that the river traffic…"
"Save it," she snapped. Then she sighed an exhale and raked a hand through her hair, still muttering, "I swear, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were pulling this shit just to get under my skin."
My heart started to pound as she unwittingly landed perilously close to the mark. Maybe this was it, the moment I was waiting for. I knew I'd unsettled her earlier. I saw the desire in her face, even if she tried to pretend it didn't happen. Fuck it. I'm going all in, I decided. I took a step closer to her and watched as confusion and alarm flashed through her eyes. And there was also something else. That same hazy look she had in the stacks.
"Is it working?" I asked her softly, still edging forward.
"What? You're doing it on purpose? You are trying to fuck with me? Why would you do that?" She shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. Her words sounded like she was gearing up for a confrontation, but the rest of her was telling me anything but. She was uneasy, but instead of backing up, she held her ground. She stood still, allowing me to sidle closer, until I was invading her personal space, until I could feel the heat from her body on my skin. I knew it was causing all the synapses in my brain to fire at once and from her face, from her suddenly erratic breathing, I figured the same thing was happening to her, too. She wanted me, whether she was totally aware of it yet or not. I figured it was time to bring it to her attention.
"I'm asking you again," I said slowly, "Is it working? Am I getting under your skin?"
Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open and the electricity between us sang.
"Yes," she whispered, "You're getting under my skin."
I wanted to shout and fist-pump in triumph, but instead, I just smiled and said, "Well, that's good, then."
What she said next shocked the hell out of me and sent a lightning bolt of desire straight to my groin. The words seemed to tumble out of her mouth without her even being fully aware of them
"Do you want to be under my skin?"
And that was it. She broke me. All I could do was grind out my visceral response. "I want to be everywhere." Because that was absolutely true.
I took one more step forward to close the gap between us as I reached up and grabbed her face in my hands. She gasped in surprise, but she didn't even finish making the sound before my mouth was on hers, silencing her completely. It was like the world stopped for a long moment with her mouth under mine, my fingers on her face, her body so close to mine.
The first moments of the kiss pretty much obliterated all coherent thoughts, but once that passed, I worried that she wouldn't kiss me back, that she'd shove me off of her and start screaming. That didn't happen. She made a tiny sound in the back of her throat and shifted a little and then she was moving, her lips against mine, her hands sliding up my arms. I loosened my death-grip on her face so I could slide my fingers back into her hair and cradle her head. Then her lips opened under mine and I was in. Our tongues touched and we moaned in unison. My stomach clenched in desire.
And then it was for real; one hundred percent, completely mutual. Her hands were in my hair, her tongue was in my mouth, her body was pressing against mine. Except that she was still too short, so I put my arm around her waist and pulled her in and up. There. Oh, yeah. Everything aligned just right and I felt her sigh into my mouth. It kind of drove me crazy and before I knew it, I was kissing her jawline, her neck, sucking on her earlobe, tasting the little hollow behind her collarbone. Bella just threw her head back and let me, her fingers gripping my hair and holding my head against her like she'd never let me go. She had no worries. I did not ever want to stop doing this.
I was lost in a fog of lust, my mouth on every patch of creamy bare skin I could reach, my fingers slipping up under the hem of her shirt to touch the skin of her back, when I felt her stiffen and heard her mumbled "Wait."
And here it comes. She's going to pretend that this isn't happening, that she doesn't want this as much as I do.
"What's wrong?"
"We can't do this. This is…"
But there was no way I was letting her backtrack out of this. There was no denying what had been happening, how she'd been touching me just a second ago.
"Why not?" I murmured, right up against her ear, not letting her go in the slightest, continuing to touch her and stroke her everywhere I had been before.
She sighed before she said, "I don't do hook-ups like this."
Glad to hear that, although I never thought she did and this was not in any way a random hook-up. "Good. Neither do I."
"What?"
She sounded completely confused and I realized we were not as much on the same page as I thought. She still seemed to think tonight, right now, was some sort of lust-fueled aberration. No, I was going to have to go balls to the wall and put it all out there, confess everything. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Here goes nothing.
"Do you really not get it? What I've been doing here?"
I felt her little head shake and I exhaled heavily. Either this would be the start of our relationship or she'd absolutely kill me. Maybe both. Either way, I was about to find out.
"I'm still doing the British Navy in Spain for my dissertation."
"What? You lied about that?" Her voice got sharp and angry again, a sound I knew all too well.
"I fibbed a little, yes. I needed to get you to talk to me, deal with me."
"Excuse me?"
She sounded affronted and outraged as she started to stiffen and push me back. But I wasn't ready to back down and let her go just yet. Bella wanted me, if she could just stop being angry at me long enough to realize it.
"Tell me something, Bella," I asked her, "If I asked you out a month ago, what would you have said?"
She scoffed dismissively. Yeah, there's the nasty little badger I know and love so well.
"Exactly. You'd have shut me down. All I did was check out a few books I knew you'd need. It got you into my carrel, and it got me into yours. And you talked to me."
"Are you saying you've wanted this…" she sounded completely flustered. Perfect.
"For a long time," I confessed, pulling her in tighter to me. She was silent, she just looked into my face, those big dark eyes fixed on mine. I stared back intently, willing her to understand just what I was feeling, how much I wanted her. Her hands worked the fabric of my shirt on my shoulders as I watched a million thoughts and emotions flit across her face. I'd never seen Bella so caught off-guard, so uneasy. But she also still wasn't shoving me away, so I took encouragement from that and let her work it through in her head.
Leave it to Swan to ask the one thing I wasn't expecting at all.
"What about all the girls?"
"What girls?" Because I really did have no idea what the hell she was talking about.
"The ones you're always with."
"Like Lauren?" That was all I could come up with. She did see that girl from my Intro to History class back here a few weeks ago. And afterwards, she'd accused me of sleeping with her. And later in the car, the man-whore accusation popped up again. The pieces began to slot into place. She thought I was trying to add her to my imaginary harem. I needed to shut down this line of thinking immediately. "I mean, yeah, I get that she's coming on to me, but I'm not interested. But she's always showing up, following me around, asking me questions about the class. And I am her teacher. It's not like I can tell her to go away."
"But there were others…" she persisted, a little line forming between her eyebrows.
"Freshman girls with crushes on their teacher. I told you…not interested," I said as reassuringly as possible. Then I lowered my voice and leaned my face in a little closer for emphasis. Her eyes locked on my mouth, "There's only one girl I'm interested in, and I have been for quite a while now."
She still held perfectly still in my arms. I leaned in and kissed her gently. Her lips, her cheek, her jaw, her neck. She sighed, a breathy little moan that drove me crazy and her hands came up to my hair again. Yes…
"How long?" she whispered. Figures that she'd want a freaking timeline of my attraction. But if I was going to convince her I was serious, I was going to have to give her everything.
"Do you remember that argument we got into last year about the Trafalgar campaign?"
"Mmmm," she moaned as I nipped at the skin just under her ear. "I mean, yes, I remember. You were such a jackass about that."
"I wanted to rip your goddamned clothes off and take you on the conference table," I whispered, getting hard again just at the memory of that day.
My words seemed to have the same effect on her because then she was yanking my head up, crushing her mouth to mine, our tongues pushing against each other. It was frantic, intense, a little desperate and absolutely fantastic. My hands were everywhere on her; her ribcage, her hips, skimming over her ass and down to her thighs. Squeezing, stroking, pulling. I couldn't touch her enough. Without even thinking about it, I turned us so I could pin her against my desk, instinctively seeking out leverage in my assault on her body.
Bella helped out by hiking herself up on my desk and then things got really intense. Because now I was standing between her thighs, with her calves wrapped around my hips, and my raging hard on was pressed right up against the juncture of her thighs….and oh my God, how did we get here so fast? I couldn't stop to think about it, though, because we were still kissing and kissing and kissing, her fingers in my hair, on my neck, nails digging in. Considering that at the start of the night I thought we might still be weeks out from our first exploratory cup of coffee, the fact that we were making out on my desk, and Bella's legs were wrapped around me as we essentially dry-humped was enough to make me completely brain-dead.
"Do you know how many times I've thought about this?" I ground out against her lips.
"Thought about what?" she rasped.
"Having you like this, in my carrel, on my desk. Every damned night, knowing you were right on the other side of the damned wall…" I couldn't finish that thought because Bella rocked her hips into mine and I lost my words in a long hiss of pleasure.
"Cullen…" Bella whispered between kisses.
"Please don't call me that." I groaned as I moved once more to kiss her neck. I couldn't stand to hear her still keeping that distance between us. It made me fear that all of this might vanish when she came to her senses later. But no, there was no way she could deny what was happening here, the desire, the intensity. To make my point, I dug into her hips and held her still as I thrust my throbbing erection against her. Her head fell back and she moaned, long and low. And somewhere in that sexy sound I heard it: "Edward…"
"That's so much better," I muttered against her throat, trying to suppress my grin of triumph.
The next few minutes were just a haze of lust-fueled grinding and groping and before I knew it, my hands were on her breasts. So fast…it was happening so fast. Not that I was complaining in the least, but I needed to give her an out, to stop this if she didn't feel ready. I took a deep breath, trying to get a handle on myself.
"Do you want to slow this down?" I whispered.
"We probably should," she said, before she shoved her tongue in my mouth again.
"Yeah, probably," I murmured between kissing, licking, biting her lips.
"Oh, damn," Bella moaned.
"Yeah." I couldn't stop thrusting against her, not when, with each one, she gasped and thrust back.
"Take my shirt off," she said.
"Fuck."
I was lost then. Clothes came off and there was all of her skin, her pale, perfect skin. And then my mouth had to follow where my hands went and she was moaning and gripping my hair so tight as I teased her nipples with my tongue and teeth. She asked me if I had a condom, and I felt kind of like a dirt bag that I did, like it might reinforce all of her preconceived notions of me as a man-whore. So I gave her an out again. We didn't have to do this. There was plenty of time, even though I was so hard that I thought I might die if she wanted to stop. She called me on it though, and asked me straight-up if I was going to ignore this the next day.
I freaked. How could she think, after everything I'd done to get her, that I'd just walk away once I had her?
I practically shouted my response. "What? No!"
"Okay, then," she said with a sexy little smile, running her fingers back into my hair. God, that felt good. "We're going to do this, right? You and me? Together?"
I held her eyes with mine and tried to pour every ounce of sincerity I had in that look as I nodded. Yes, tomorrow. Yes, next week. Yes, next year, even. Because I had big, big plans for Bella Swan, even if she didn't know that yet.
She smiled, big and brilliant, before yanking my mouth back to hers and then we were there. The last of our clothes were dispatched and I was sliding into her, taking the woman I'd spent more hours fantasizing about than I cared to count. And it was every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be. Feeling her around me, holding on to me…for a moment, all I could do was close my eyes and breathe her in.
Then she moaned my name in my ear and the animal in me was unleashed. It was hard and hot and a little raw. My desk shook, stuff fell over, she clawed at my back, I think I bit her…but God, it was amazing. And the most amazing part was the sound she made as she threw her head back and came, holding on to me for dear life. And yeah, I was pretty much done then, too, groaning and exploding into her.
Almost immediately, as the sex-fog cleared in my head, I felt a little bad for how this had gone down. Never in a million years did I plan for our first time to be a hard-core fuck-fest on my desk in my carrel. Yes, I wanted to get there eventually, but I also wanted this girl to know I meant this, every bit of it. So I was gentle afterwards, kissing her softly, stroking her face, helping her get dressed. We decimated the H.M.S. Victory with our athletics, but it was a small price to pay. And besides, didn't I have my victory?
"I don't know about you." I said, hoping to segue us out of the library and back to my apartment and my bed. "But there is absolutely no way I'm going to read another word about the Spanish Armada tonight."
She laughed, "Yeah, I'm mentally fried, too."
I pulled her against me again so I could kiss her some more, "I hope the rest of you is still in good working order, because I really want to take you home and try that again someplace a little more conventional."
"That sounds like an excellent idea. But just so you know, tomorrow we're getting back to work and I'm taking back all my research books, you big, fat liar."
It figures that she'd schedule our sexcapades around our research. She'd probably present me with an Excel spreadsheet tomorrow, color coded and blocking out appropriate times for our relationship-based activities.
Then she smiled up at me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, which made my stomach flip like I was some dumb, lovesick kid. That's the only thing that could explain the stupidly sappy, romantic thing I said to her next. "You can have all your damned books. And while you're at it, you can have my body, my heart, and any other parts you'd care to take."
But the sappy stuff seemed to work for her because Bella's whole face softened. "I'll take all of it, thank you very much," she sighed.
"It's all yours, Bella. I surrender," I said sincerely. Because that part I meant wholeheartedly. This battle was over and she won.
The war, however, I was going to call a draw.