I need to pimp before we begin... ElleCC, this woman rocks my world. She rec'd my other story (A Priori) over on TLYDF and I seriously heart her forever.

miztrezboo, allysue08, everyone at Rehab—revrag and detroitangel for beta'ing.

Reviewers, lovers, haters, I heart you.

Every one of you take my breath away.

Now, I love you all, more than words can describe. I think you'll either feel the same or the complete opposite after this chapter. This feels like a bomb inside me, and I'm terrified it will tear us apart.

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"I don't just want your heart,

I want your flesh, your skin and your blood and bones..

your voice, your thoughts, your pulse

…and most of all

your fingerprints everywhere…" anon.

June 2009,

post-bar, burning in a half cold bed, slow and sinking.

She's thinking that maybe she's made some mistakes...

12:36 am

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It was funny, you know, the way he looked at me sometimes. I would have sworn that he was thinking up ideas on how to best marinate and roast me for dinner. I would only ever catch it out of the corner of my eye, but I was very familiar with the behavior.

It wasn't like I really minded it. I liked the attention, but when it was served along with a cold shoulder or a tepid gesture of affection, it settled like a rock in the pit of my stomach. Nothing I could do would get rid of the sickness―the picture in my mind of the last time his hands were on my naked skin, the feel of his body inside mine. It was so vivid that I could barely breathe. If I caught his eye as we walked down the street, his gaze seemed to pierce right through me―stop me cold and dead. And then my benediction would stir the embers and reignite the slow and constant burn that ran through my belly. Wanting nothing more than to tear his clothes off―no matter where we were, no matter who was witness―and introduce the fuel that would feed that fire until it consumed us all, I would avert my eyes and try not to cry.

I was always teetering on the edge of that knife. The blade was moist and slippery from my last fall, and though I could see him down on the other end, I always felt alone in my suffering. It seemed that we could only have but a few weeks of bliss and good company before the fever set in and it was all we could do to not tear into each others flesh and consume the muscle and blood we wanted so badly.

Forbidden and ripe, just bursting with color and flavor, we were succulent and pulsing with life and death and rebirth. We were constantly reborn from the ash of our last great journey. It was never an easy ride and it was never really worth it, because when his steely grey eyes flew back to the earth I always knew that he had seen that certain piece of me that made him want to run.

That was not the look he gave me tonight, at the bar. That look had been erased from my memory the very night I first saw it. The awareness of it was just too dangerous. Had I known he was back this time... I couldn't say how I would have reacted. Seeing him last month at the coffee shop scared the shit out of me. Thinking I was free of him and then spying him so unexpectedly tore my world apart and obliterated the stability I thought I'd found. I had been so wrong about everything. Nothing was healed—the stitches had been ripped open.

Unable to sleep, I padded to the kitchen to get something to eat, or drink, or smoke. It didn't matter. I felt a need to consume and wondered at all the ways I'd twisted my desire for him into something self-destructive or something completely delusional. I'd been tattooed, turned down marriage proposals, smoked too much marijuana, and treasured toxic memories either enhanced or greatly diminished. These were the things I longed to run from, not him.

But I did run. I ran like he was the boogieman, like he was a vampire interested in only one thing. I never wanted to run. Few things would have stopped me from staying on that same path for the rest of my life, should we even have a fraction of that time left. Part of me died when I saw him, and part of me was born again.

My heart danced for him. It sped when he did and it calmed every time we laid together. It stopped when he left.

Black and bruised, in need of life and liberty from the most evil of all of earth's incarnations, it found some relief, some vitality, from an unlikely source. I tapped into it and soon we were fused. I, a parasite leaching from his honest and pure host, was loved by him for all my "flaws". Edward took me as I was and never asked me why my shell was cracked and broken.

Seeming to already know me, he pretended I was okay and therefore I was. I should have known that it was me who taught him that little trick. It must have been the first of many defects I introduced him to. Ignoring the ache in my belly and the hole in my heart I went on from day to day, smiling and laughing, and learned to love another as much as I could. Jasper leaving me that day, so many years ago, might have been the best and worst thing that had ever happened to me.

Edward never quite filled the void that Jasper carved inside me. He never did make the ache truly go away, but what he did manage to do was distract me. I felt a sort of focus again, one that had nothing to do with Jasper.

Of course, Jasper was still around. I wasn't sure why, but I accepted it. After he came home from California, we remained close, but I couldn't bear to let him back in. I decided to move on. Part of me wanted him eternally, forever at my side, but like an impossible feat, I could never complete what we were. I figured he would split, again, the second he knew I was with Edward. But then, I'd never had a boyfriend when he was around, so I didn't know what to expect. He acted as if it didn't matter. We kept a respectable distance, for the most part, and settled for the parts we were allowed.

I never saw much of Jasper's girls. They weren't numerous any longer and I was thankful for that. He spent quite a bit of time with Edward, but I was always around. We got coffees and went to antique stores, watched movies and made dinners. We drank warm vodka with sushi because I didn't like Sake.

I spent a lot of time with him, without Edward; our new "friendship" depended on it. When I hired him at the coffee shop nearly eight years ago, that time tripled. We went from tortured and angry to flirty and almost jovial, until I invited him home one night. I knew Edward was at work. He knew Jasper was coming over. It was a non-issue in our relationship. Edward accepted Jasper as part of me. He just never knew how permanent that part was, neither did he know how intimate. No matter how it's put, omission is not technically a lie.

To say it was a mistake to invite him over that night would be the understatement of my life. Up until that point, his all-seeing eyes had remained, mostly, fixed on the ground. Walls could not contain the force of the explosion and every piece of furniture in my apartment was covered with our DNA that night. There was even a little blood on the carpet.

We drank at work, all shift long and, not wanting to stop the party, I invited him, Rose, and Emmett back to my place. Emmett and Rose declined. I called Edward to check in as we walked to my car and hanging up, I started the engine. The music was fast and fun and he nipped from a bottle of tequila as we drove the half mile to my apartment singing and laughing along with Tom Waits.

"Toro, seriously, I don't know how you can still drink that stuff," I said, wrinkling my nose at him. "I'm gagging at the smell of it. Close that shit until we get to a more ventilated area, please."

"Aw, El. You're still just a lightweight. If you can't handle 'The Bull,' maybe you need to get off the ride." He winked and rolled his window down. "Two pairs of pants and a mohair vest, I'm full of TEQUILA. I can't stand up!" he screamed out into the empty street along with the song, replacing Bourbon with his own poison.

I laughed. "Quiet, you fool! Don't you know this town goes to bed at nine o'clock? You're going to wake the Cleavers. Not to mention tip off the one cop just waiting to pull someone over. Like I need an open intox, and what the fuck do you mean by 'get off the ride'?" I rolled my eyes and pulled into my apartment complex. It was dark save two dim lights high above the parking lot. They were near burnt out and by the look of all the other broken, fizzled out lampposts, would soon be, as well.

"You know what I mean, El." He winked again and smiled, turning his head sideways.

"I'm sure that I don't." I teased. I knew exactly what he meant and the fact that I was now thinking about my previous rides on "El Toro" made me anxious and furious at myself for going through with this. Neither one of us knew what might happen once we were nestled in the confines of my home.

If we were alone together anymore, there certainly wasn't a bed anywhere around. I made damn sure of that. So why had I decided, without really even deciding, that it would be a good idea to have him here tonight?

He swilled from his demon bottle as we walked up the two flights of stairs to my place. Once in, he cranked up some more Tom Waits―it was apparently that kind of night―and kicked his shoes off. I meandered to the kitchen to prepare something a little more user friendly than straight fucking worm death, and picked up Edward's dinner mess. I didn't mind so much the cleaning up after him. He wasn't a slob, but he left a trail behind him everywhere he went. It was like he let his presence in my life known by the little things he left behind. I poked around the kitchen for maybe five minutes and, Jack and Ginger secured with three cherries, I took off my sweatshirt and dropped down next to him on the couch. He nudged my shoulder with his own. "I'll smoke your ass on Bushido Blade," he said, dead seriously.

"You are fucking on, punk."

We played one round. He smoked me, like he said. That had killed all of twenty minutes. I went to make myself another drink and Jasper followed me into the kitchen. I assumed he was going to look for something to eat, but he slowly walked toward me and leaned against the counter. Looking very closely at me, at my cheek, my neck, my shoulder, his eyes rested on my hands as I dug three more cherries out of the bottom of the jar. I dropped them into my drink and brought my fingers to my mouth.

I wasn't sober, by any means, but I knew what I was doing. I wasn't a fucking child. Judging by the way he was standing—half turned toward me, one hand behind him on the edge of the counter, his entire frame rigid and tensed—he was ready to pounce.

My tongue swirled out around my fingertip and nail and I sucked the juice off. I didn't dare look at him. He was breathing heavily and I could see the rise and fall of his chest out of the corner of my eye. I could feel his breath as it fanned over my shoulder and I tilted my head down. Closing my eyes and willing him to disappear, I held my breath so as not to give my position away. I wanted to disappear. I wanted the whole fucking world to just go away, so that it could be him and me, and it would finally be okay.

I exhaled, opened my eyes, and he was gone. Instead of watching him slowly walk away, this time my wish had come true. If I peeked out into the living room, would he be there? Would he have resumed his seat and, not drinking, be staring at the blinking screen where we had left the game menu on? When I rounded the corner, my breath hitched at the accuracy of my vision. His hands were folded in his lap, and I watched him for a moment, trying to gauge what had just happened and where we had just gone.

Coming up with nothing brilliant, I accepted that we crossed the line again. We'd been so good at not even testing it lately that it actually came as a shock how little was needed to get us there. It didn't matter that I had Edward and it didn't matter that he had... whoever he had. We weren't with those people and if we really wanted to, then we would have been.

Sometimes, everything seemed to be so simple―just be together, drop everything else, only for you. Somewhere along the way, we had unwittingly surrounded ourselves with quicksand and forgot to build a bridge. We were tied together, but succumbed at the same time.

"Jasper?" I asked, trying to be quiet for some reason as I walked up behind him.

"Peach, don't." His voice was tired, exhausted even, and he bent his head down to his chest. His messy blonde hair parted over the back of his neck. I could tell it was clean, tangle free, and all I wanted to do was run my fingers through it, but at the same time I wanted to yank it out in fistfuls. His dismissal made my blood boil and his 'oh, woe as me' voice garnered him no sympathy or understanding.

"Don't what? Don't talk about it? Don't let it show?" The storm cloud was churning, waiting for that one stroke of lightning to spear it in two. I shook and my mouth watered. I took a large gulp of my cocktail. Setting it down, I took another step toward him. Nothing had ever looked so soft, felt so warm, been so right, and so fucking wrong.

Turning to me, his eyes slowly rose and met mine. He inhaled and lurched off the couch, dashing to me like he was saving both our lives. Backing me against the wall, his body branded where we touched. He pushed my shoulders roughly and it was everything I could do to keep my hands to myself.

"Don't let me know how close you are. I can't see it anymore. Everyday, you kill me and I let you. If you think for even one minute," he paused, his voice hard and fast. It cut me with every syllable he uttered. His hot breath blew into my eyes and I felt it in my mouth, in the back of my throat, but I could not look up at him. It rushed down my neck and fluttered under the collar of my shirt. I watched the heated words tumble from his strong lips and I needed not to hear them. I was wasting. There was not one inch of space between us and all I could think was that he was still not close enough. "If you think that every minute, Bella, isn't worse than the last..." he seemed unable to finish his thoughts. "Every minute is you."

"Toro," I said, losing the fight against his fury. It was impossible to keep my eyes open and my wits about me. A picture frame pressed into the skin of my skull, just behind my ear, and I rolled my head away. Chest to chest he kept me standing, his arms now underneath mine against the wall. I opened my eyes, expecting him to be blazing, but was met with a mask I didn't think I'd ever seen before. It had all the points of the devil, with the remorse of a sinner—all the softness of an angel, with the determination of the damned.

My knees were weak and shaking, and as he pressed into me he slid his thigh between mine. No breath was drawn, and there were no utterances of any kind. For what seemed like hours, I simply made myself feel him. I pushed into him and he pushed back. I squeezed my legs together and he invaded them further, forcing himself against me. Bringing my hands up, I grazed his back and arms; he ran his fingers over mine. Up and over his shoulders my fingers trailed and I let myself feel the solid weight of him, the warm glow of his skin as it seeped through his shirt and into the palms of my hands.

I imagined every line and plane of each muscle. My back arched against the wall, I leaned into him, and he bent his head to my neck. He pushed my hair back and quickly grazed his nose in it's place, and when his fingers tickled the skin under my ear my body erupted into a million tiny volcanoes. I could feel him on my thigh—how badly he wanted me—and it made me buzz and falter. Finally I inhaled, and scents I recognized swirled in and out of my head―my heart. His odor, so male, mixed with coffee, smoke, and tequila. Like always, it made me swoon, and sooner or later I would be chloroformed by the lust.

Pressing his cheek to my ear, I listened to him gathering breath—almost saying something, but holding back. Paralyzed, I tried to loosen my fingers from his arms, tried to move my face to his, but my bones were defiant and remained still as stone. With my stomach trembling, I clenched my jaw and tried to slow my racing heart, to no avail. He shifted his head and his lips ghosted over my skin. My breaths were shallow and I envied the deepness with which he now took his own. His hands moved down my sides and circled my waist―fingers digging into my flesh.

Vicious and maddening tears spilled from my lids as his touch sent shock waves through my body. Fear enveloped me and I whimpered when I realized that everything I'd managed to rebuild since he last left was being torn down again and, no matter how badly I wanted those walls to stay put, I ached to demolish everything.

"Tell me to stop, Bella. Tell me you want me to stop." The tip of his tongue met my earlobe briefly and I gasped. His voice challenged me and I knew it was his way of letting me know that he wasn't leaving unless I forced him out. It was his way of telling me that he knew my answer before I even did. He was right. I didn't want him to stop. I never wanted him to stop. He could rip my clothes off and bury himself inside me and I would undress him and coax his feral soul into my mouth.

I sobbed. "No."

So quickly it hurt, he grabbed my face between both his hands and, supporting my withering frame, kissed me hard. It was no sweet, romantic kiss. It was loud and rough. His forearms held my shoulders to the wall as he invaded my mouth with his tongue, without any prompting or resistance from me. I felt unhinged. There was no turning back now and even if I wanted to, I doubted that either our bodies would allow it.

My heart jumped into my throat, but then settled back into its proper place between us, warming a spot for him where lately it had been so cold. I pushed at him as he did at me. My breasts smashed flat on the shield of his chest and I threw my arms over his shoulders, grabbing on to him anywhere I could.

In seconds I was flying, no longer of this earth. The ground ceased to anchor me and though I felt him all around me, all I could hear was a whisper of my name. I held on to fabric, flesh—tearing through it to bruise—and found my balance as I wrapped around Jasper. This screaming vortex of unholy and violent love was the one thing I would always come back for. Searing, tender, and wet, his lips covered mine and I tried to fight back. I inflicted, as well, and heard him whimper as I thrust my tongue further into his mouth. Barely breathing, he spun us around and set me on the edge of the piano. I squeezed my legs around him as he tore my shirt off and brought his mouth to my chest.

His hair tickled as he raked his face across my skin and he reached around me to unclasp my bra. Tossing it behind him, he picked me up again and stumbled to the couch. I'd never been so alert, yet so unaware of him. Dreading when we would next break apart, because then I would see just what we were doing, I closed my eyes as he pushed us down onto the cushions. Wasting no time, his mouth and hands were everywhere and I finally plaited my fingers through that hair, pulling him to my breast much too forcefully. He gasped for air and tore my arms away, pinning them over my head. Not thinking, I opened my eyes to find his raging, just inches away.

He was there, more so than he had ever been. I could see into the bottomless pit of his soul and knew that it wanted to devour me. The world was a terrifying place when those pieces of us were in control. No other touch, no other taste, no other flesh would suffice. We'd been there, had that, and we always stumbled back for this. Fear mixed with my hunger for him and for a split second I knew that if one of us could break free, the other would attack and devour, regardless.

It wasn't going to be me. Though he held firm, I arched up into him and sucked that look off of his face. We did not confront it. That was somewhere we didn't want to go. As surely as I knew my own name, I also knew that destruction. Once unlocked, those monsters would take over the world and nothing would be easy ever again. My vanity got off on the conflict and the fucking. It was all novel to me. I had lots of cake, now I wanted to eat it, too.

Our teeth clashed together painfully, marring the flesh in between, until I tasted copper and crimson salt. I didn't know if it was mine or not. Jasper's elbows drove spikes through my arms and I drew as much strength as I could find from behind me and cast him away. His knee hammered into my cunt, pushing the seam of my denims sharply into my soft flesh. I cried out, both in agony and ecstasy, and shoved him again. He fell backward, off the couch, but grabbing onto my hips, managed to pull me down with him.

Half fallen and enraged, I stiffened in his grasp and had to shake my head to focus. He was yanking my jeans off, and then he smiled at me—sick and twisted, but obstinate and resolute. I smiled back. Round about my knees he stopped, wrapping his hands around them and digging his nails in deeply. I spat and cursed. Blood, it was my blood, and it lightly sprinkled my arm, my chest, the carpet. I kicked and writhed to free myself, but he held on tighter. How quickly the tables could turn.

Laying back, I let the pain radiate and dull. My jeans at my ankles, I took advantage of the situation. Palming my breasts, I ground my body into the floor and tried to open my legs. He held firm—for a moment—before I felt him ease up. I cracked my eyelids for a peek at him—I wanted to see him crumble. He was staring at my naked skin and predominantly where my legs were parting. He licked his lips, kneeling before me like a man possessed but denied his salvation. I teased and ran my hand down my torso, but before I could touch myself fully, his hand slammed down on me, denying me access to my own wet skin.

"No, Bella," he growled. "This is mine." The smack... it hurt, but as he kneaded into me with the palm of his hand, slowly and in circles, any sting I felt was reabsorbed and melted into the pulsing heat he was persuading from my body. It opened for him and he played me like a master. Lost, with his fingers inside me, I exploded when his tongue took the stage and nearly pulled his hair out. But I did not scream. I did not make a sound. He pushed harder, pulled faster, added fingers and teeth, yet I would not perform for him. I smiled. Deep, evil laughter erupted from my chest and I pulled away.

That was not the wailing orgasm he thought he was conducting. It was a mockery, an embarrassment. I stood and towered over him, naked to his fully clothed.

"I own this, Jasper," I said. "All you've ever done was toy with it."

"No," he whispered. His head bowed and his body slumped. "I never meant... I never meant to hurt you."

"But you have," I said, reaching for his cheek. He crawled to me and met my hand halfway. "And you never seem sorry for it. You say you are..." His head was shaking back and forth in my hand.

"No," he said again, leaning in to kiss above my navel. "I am sorry. For everything."

"I've heard those words enough for three lifetimes, Toro. I don't ever want to hear them again. I'll never really know, will I? Just how sorry you are."

His arms wrapped around me and I fell to my knees with him. I could feel the apology through his skin, I knew he was sorry, but I was not. I wasn't regretful enough to grant him the forgiveness that was necessary. It would break us apart. We would be left with less than nothing. If we didn't have this, what else was there?

I leaned back and he lay over me. He shed his clothes quickly and held onto me tightly. I sighed and reveled in his strong flesh. It wouldn't do, to stop now. We couldn't walk away from this. It would haunt us until our bones were dust. Slowly, he pushed into me, shuddering with each centimeter we met. Closer and closer he came, tongue and hands fused with skin—his body inside mine wherever he could gain entrance. I wanted more doors, more holes for him to sink into. I would open every one. He pushed, I pushed. Where we joined exploded in a sonic boom. Deeper he forged, until we spasmed―spent and weeping in each others arms.

I didn't dare recollect the sweet fucking nothings Jasper whispered in my ear on the floor of my living room that night. Doing so would only make me want to run back to that bar and wait to see him again. Those beautiful lies appealed to my shallowness and I was easily coerced again, by myself and him, into putting on a happy face. I wasn't that Bella any longer. My skin has bled a thousand times over since then and I tried like hell to believe that not a single time was for him.

Staring at my reflection in the window of my kitchen, I trembled when a few of those lies trickled into my consciousness. "Forever, Bella. We'll figure it out."

We figured nothing. All we did was destroy, and he left me again. I would put oceans between us if I could, but even they weren't permanent enough. I sighed at the black sky, the rain. My hair was still damp from my run home and I gathered it in a knot over my left shoulder. Leaving the kitchen in darkness, I walked slowly through my living room, glad that I had no memory of him here. When I dreamed, I tried to make them, and I knew that some part of me wanted him here. I hoped for no sign of him in my slumber tonight. Just joy and peace, the things my life lacked.

I reached for the lamp next to the couch, to turn it off, and froze. Three raps loudly sliced through the air and my heart stopped. It wouldn't be. It couldn't. Without my permission, my body glided toward the noise as it repeated and before I even touched the knob, I knew. I could smell him through the door. Almost brought to my knees, I took a deep breath and opened it.

She who forgets, will be destined to remember. Thanks for reading, and thank you, Nothingman.