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That night we stopped at a small inn about four hours east of the Iowa border. I waited in the car while James booked a room, too lethargic and starving to consider another attempt to run. We were in the middle of a spread of corn fields as well, and getting out of the car would only mean having to find my way back along the unnamed highway until I found enough traffic to actually hitch, or running directly into the fields. Both of which would do nothing but give James a chance to exercise his sense of smell.

My thoughts circled like this all the while as I waited in the Taurus, finding all the reasons why I wasn't trying to run. I told myself they were reasons, anyway, but there was a quiet, sly piece of my brain that insisted another word was more appropriate: excuses.

Oh, please, I thought, absently tracing the winding bandage on my hand with two fingers. I wouldn't get anywhere if I got out of the car, and then he'd just hurt me again. Probably actually bite me, and wouldn't that be fun?

Still, the dark little voice tsked at me and shook its nonexistent head. If a car appeared right now, it said, keys in the ignition, full tank of gas… would you take it?

"Of course," I murmured aloud, wrapping my arms around my chest to stop the sudden chill. "Of course I would."

But things are different now, that voice reminded me. Maybe you don't know how, and maybe you don't know why, and maybe you don't know what exactly's changed… but you know it's true. I rejected that idea, fighting with myself, brows furrowing as I shook my head. It is, my shadow-self insisted. Edward or no Edward, it is.

Swallowing hard, I drew my feet up onto the seat and wrapped my arms around my knees. I'd been scared pretty steadily for the past two days. I'd been terrified out of my head for at least a few moments of each. But now, that cool familiar mind-voice telling me things I didn't want to hear, no matter how vague… I was as trapped and mindlessly afraid as a fox in a hunter's cage.

I jumped when James suddenly appeared at my window, forearm braced against the glass as he leaned down and fiddled with the door handle. When he pulled the door open, I catalogued his every movement, trying desperately to distract myself from the insidious thoughts that wouldn't quite be silenced. He eyed me suspiciously as I watched him like a deer in headlights, probably confused by my seeming mood swings. After all, I'd gone from annoyed to half-teasing to stony silence to, now, little-girl-in-a-thunderstorm.

"Get out," he said, when it became apparent that I wasn't moving. Slowly, I unfolded my legs and straightened out of the car. James shut my door behind me when I did not, and when he took my elbow to lead me into the inn, he was frowning. "What's wrong with you?"

"I'm fine," I said numbly, letting him pull me forward. "Aside from the whole kidnapped-by-a-psychopath thing."

"These things happen," he said, and caught me neatly as I tripped on the single step leading to the inn entrance. As soon as I was steadied, I pulled my arm away from his hand. He let me do it, barely even glancing down, apparently having taken my answer at face value. I kept pace with him, automatically matching our strides, and was vaguely relieved when he didn't try to grab me again.

Our room was at the end of a long hallway, on the second of three floors. I entered in front of James, not watching him lock the door behind us.

There was only one bed.

This, for some reason, surprised me not at all. I registered it with the tired resignation of a mother coming home to find her toddler has thrown food across the kitchen again. Of course. Fuck. He probably hadn't specified how many people the room was for, and what with my having stayed in the car… I approached the bed and sat down, and then was somehow on my back without really intending on lying down. I hadn't eaten all day, hadn't gotten out of the car in hours upon hours, and now that I'd been presented with a proper mattress, I felt utterly exhausted. What is it about long car rides that does that to your system? It's not like I'd done anything.

James strolled across the room and sat down on the edge of the mattress closest to the television, snagging the remote and turning it on as he did.

"You're hungry," he said, not a question, eyes scanning the television screen as he flipped channels.

"Yes," I concurred, hoping that he'd continue his plan of keeping me alive and relatively healthy.

"Order pizza," James told me, finally settling on the Discovery Channel. A special, I noted with grim amusement, on lions in the wild. I rolled across the bed and reached for the telephone, picking up the little complimentary card that listed numbers of local restaurants. It wasn't even until my hand touched the receiver that the enormity of what I was touching sunk in, immediately and devastatingly followed by the realization that I didn't even know if the Cullens had a phone, let alone their number. And Charlie? I could call my father, my dear, silent, wounded father, and he would… But god, I couldn't even do that, could I? By the time I said hello, James would know, would hear it in my voice, and that would be that.

So I ordered pizza.

And we watched the Discovery Channel.

I stayed at the headboard of the bed, sitting cross-legged, holding a pillow in my lap. James stretched out on his stomach, arms folded to support his chin, sprawled as easily and loosely as the male lions that collapsed, sated, after a kill. Ten minutes into the special there was an extended segment of footage of a hunt, following several lionesses as they loped across a grassy safari and, one by one, attacked a straggling antelope that had drifted from its fleeing herd. I watched the lions hurl themselves through the air to hit the antelope with all their combined weight, claws and teeth sinking into the beast's stomach and neck, rolling in a massive tumble of fur and grass and dirt and blood as the antelope went down beneath them. I shuddered. James tilted his head, stretched his shoulders and torso by lithely twisting from side to side, and sighed. I wondered if he was jealous of the lions.

The pizza arrived about thirty minutes after I'd ordered it. The room phone rang, loud and abrasive, and James asked for one of the few bellhops to carry it up to our door. When he retrieved it from just outside and set it on the mattress, I attacked that pizza with the same ferocity as the lions onscreen. It took me two and a half slices to realize that James was now watching me instead of the television, one feast for another, a slight, bemused smile playing on his lips.

"I've never seen a human eat like that," he commented, reaching down to remove his boots. "You're almost like one of us."

"I'm nothing like you," I said, harsher than I'd really intended, and reached for slice number four. James kicked his second boot against the dresser that the TV sat upon and flopped backwards onto the mattress, landing on his back beside me. I inched away, tilting the box so that the cardboard top flap was between us.

"Careful," James said, one hand drifting up to brush against the back of my bandaged hand, "I might think you don't like me."

"Please don't touch me," I told him, refusing to take my eyes away from the lions. His hand hovered near my shoulder, then slid over to rest on the back of my neck. His thumb smoothed the skin at my clavicle, fitting into the hollow between my throat and my shoulder. He tugged, lightly for him, but it was enough to yank my head sideways and down towards him. I swallowed the piece of crust I'd been chewing on, hand faltering in midair.

"I'm beginning to think," James remarked, as if he weren't gripping me by the throat, "that being nice to you is not the best way to get results. You get complacent," he continued, tugging me closer on the word, "and belligerent." One more tug and the pizza fell from my hand as my temple hit the mattress, my torso twisting down. In a flash James flipped himself over me, bracing himself with one arm as the other hand circled my throat with long, strong fingers. Behind him, the lions roared. I could feel his knees on either side of my thighs, straddling me. There was a wet ripping sound from the television; something had been torn off something else.

"I'm not belligerent," I said, belligerently, trying to ignore the weight of him. We were almost squashing the pizza box. A useless observation.

"You are," James corrected, and inhaled. "I can smell fear on you, Bella. Why are you so stubborn if you're so afraid?"

"I'm stubborn," I told him, very aware of his hand on my throat and of the fact that he wasn't actually squeezing yet, "because I'm afraid." He chuckled.

"That's good, actually. You'd make a decent vampire."

"By all means," I said, words brave but voice shaky, "turn me so I can kill you."

"I don't think so," he said, mock-thoughtful. "Why do that when I can do this?" And James bent his head and pressed his nose into the hollow where his thumb had been, fingers moving away as he breathed in. "Mmm. Vampires don't smell this good." I begged to differ; Edward always smelled like warmth and candles, and James himself had an oddly pleasant earthy scent. But now was not the time.

"Is that why you're keeping me alive?" I asked, voice small.

"I'm keeping you alive," James told me, dragging his face up my neck and forcing me to tilt my head back accommodatingly, "for a number of reasons."

"Will you just tell me? Clearly?" I was sounding increasingly breathless, for various reasons, and I was sincerely hoping that if I could just get him to keep talking, he'd stop. James bared his teeth in a narrow, vampire grin, his face now inches above my own.

"It'll hurt your boyfriend more," he said, and I felt a shaft of pain at the image of Edward that those words produced. "I'll be less bored, with you to play with," he continued, eyes moving from my brows to my nose to my lips, clearly distracted. "And I'll figure it out."

"Figure what out?" The question was a whisper, barely there. I could feel the rumble of a growl, not angry, just hungry, vibrate through his chest to mine.

"Why you're so damn interesting," he answered, and kissed me.

NEXT:

"What-" I started, and then fell immediately silent as his head whipped towards mine. His eyes were dead black, upper lip curled in an instinctive, ferocious snarl.