Last chapter! Thanks for reading, and please review!

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns "Twilight," not me. It's a bummer, but that's just the way things are.

Ten: My Darling

"We were a family my darling, right from the start…"

Esme's POV

The sun was just rising over the trees, and as rays of light began to slip through a gap in the curtains, Esme stared at her husband, marveling at the way his skin shone as it caught the light and reflected it in dizzying prisms of color. Her husband. Esme grinned at the very thought.

"What's so funny?" he whispered, running his hands through her hair.

"I'm just looking at my husband, Dr. Cullen," she said innocently. "You seem to be smiling rather a lot yourself, you know."

"That's just because I'm looking at my wife," he said, his grin matching hers. "Mrs. Cullen."

Esme giggled, delighted. "Will you do me a favor and call me that as much as possible? I'm never going to get tired of hearing it."

"Good, because I'm never going to get tired of saying it," he chuckled. As his hand left her hair and began to trail down her arm, she traced patterns in the contours of his chest with her fingers. He pulled her closer then, and for a while, they didn't speak again.

She sighed. They'd destroyed their bed, again—this had been the third one in the house, and now, like the two they'd used before it, the frame had cracked and the mattress had fallen to the floor in a shower of dust and metal shavings from the twisted wreckage of the box springs. Carlisle was still laughing at her side, and for the first time, Esme noticed that the tangled blankets around them had been mostly torn to shreds.

"We still need practice, don't we?" she said, grinning in spite of herself.

"I'm afraid so," Carlisle said, putting on a very phony expression of suffering. "Oh, well. I suppose we'll manage to improve our technique somehow."

She giggled and threw what was left of a pillow at him before tackling him. The remains of a bed were better than no bed at all.

"I remember you sighing earlier," he said later on. "Worried about our lack of finesse?"

"Sort of," Esme said, lying back against his shoulder. "It's just…" She looked up at him, smiling. "We should go home soon. We said we'd be gone a month, and it's almost been that. Of course Edward's probably missing us. But I was hoping…"

She could feel his eyes on her as she trailed off, but he didn't rush her. Esme sighed again.

"Well, basically I was hoping that after a few weeks alone with you, we could manage to be…close without my destroying the furniture."

"So are you worried about Edward or our furniture?" he teased.

"Edward," she sighed. "Or rather, I'm worried about him having to listen to his parents destroy their bed every night. Though it seems I'm the problem more than you are."

"The second bed was my fault," he argued gently, still grinning. "As was the sofa. But I see what you mean. I have to admit that this particular aspect of marriage is far better than I'd even imagined. Better, but…"

He was snickering now.

"What?" she said, starting to giggle. "Is is that bad?"

"Well, I was thinking that it's a bit…louder than I'd expected," he said apologetically, and though Esme laughed with him now, she had the distinct impression that had they been human, both of them would have been blushing furiously. Of course, had they been human, the destruction of furniture mid-coitus wouldn't have been an issue either.

Esme put on a very prim expression, though she thought it might be ruined by the fact that she could feel the corners of her mouth trying to twist upward into a smile. And the fact that she was completely naked. "Well, Dr. Cullen, I suppose we're just going to have to learn to contain ourselves to some degree. When we leave here, should we make a rule about volume control?"

"Impossible," Carlisle murmured, smiling as he traced the edge of her jaw with his lips. "We'd break any rule to that effect in a day."

Esme wrapped her arms around him again, a delightful shiver of pleasure racing through her. No, she was fairly certain that she would never be able to last a day without this ever again. And they had eternity to spend together: there was tomorrow and the next day and the next…

"If nothing else, we still have some time to practice now," Carlisle whispered.

Esme smiled. "We have forever to practice."

And that's the end! Thanks so much for reading, and please check out a series of one-shots I'll be posting soon under the title "Eternity." (They'll be C/E stories too, but they'll be from the POV of lots of people, both members of the Cullen family and others). Also, I've got a mature version of the wedding night that I'm working on (and it's been done a lot of times before, I know, but I couldn't resist), so if you're interested in reading that, please review and tell me so!