-Thanks for the reviews, guys! :) I seriously love you all.-
A/N: It starts to get a little darker now, but keep in mind that any relationship between James and Bella that is loyal to who they are is going to be dark, it's going to be twisted, but it's going to be oh-so-satisfying. So just stay with me; I swear I won't leave you with the lights out.
Oh, and Vans-- James's POV is coming up in the next chapter, so don't give up on him yet!
I had the idea that maybe, sometime during that night, I rolled over and reached out an arm and laid it over James's stomach. That I might have, at one point, exchanged my pillow for his chest. I don't know, though, if that was real or imagined. When I woke, I woke alone.
I sat up, good hand rubbing the sleep-grit from my eyes. There was light coming through the window to my right, soft and golden and forgiving. I checked the clock on my other side, seeing no sign of my captor-lover-killer. It was just past eight, and I felt better rested than I had in a long time. As I swung my legs over the right edge of the bed to retrieve a piece of cold, uneaten pizza from the box on the floor, the bathroom door creaked behind me.
James paused in the doorframe and tugged his blond hair, water-darkened to a deep brownish-gold, into the customary ponytail. He was shirtless, the jeans he'd come back with the night before slung low on his narrow hips. I couldn't help myself. I stared.
James with a shirt on was good. James without a shirt on was better. His chest was lean, the muscles close beneath his skin. His stomach was taut, a thin line of tawny hair tracing down to disappear in the waistband of his jeans, the dark crystal he wore on a leather thong around his neck his one ornamentation. He watched me watching him, arms falling to his sides.
"Keep looking at me like that and I'll have to bite you," he warned me, a thread of genuine darkness weaving through the careless humor.
"You're going to kill me anyway," I replied, half-breathless. "At least I'd go out smiling." Oh, my god. Did you just say that, Bella Swan? Did you just blatantly flirt with him? James chuckled, shaking his head.
"No," he said. "You wouldn't." I coughed, the moment made strange, and dropped my eyes. James reached behind him into the bathroom and grabbed the undershirt, pulling it over his head and smoothing his hands over his hair. I got up, reached for that slice of pizza, and considered how long it had been since I'd brushed my teeth.
"You know," I said before I thought twice, "I need a toothbrush."
"A toothbrush," he repeated. I glanced at him across the bed, and nodded.
"Don't you?" One corner of his mouth went up.
"No. Bacteria don't grow on me. And I don't eat your food. The most we need is water, to rinse out the blood." I could feel my face scrunching in distaste, which James seemed to find funny. "All right," he said, drawing out the words as if this was all utterly ridiculous, "I'll get you a toothbrush." I flushed.
"Well, if you're going to keep this kidnapping thing up…" I trailed off, feeling stupid, and then feeling mad for feeling stupid. It was a perfectly legitimate point, my needing a toothbrush. He'd threatened me, hurt me, almost killed me, seduced me and refused to let me go. The least he could do was get me a goddamn toothbrush.
"Do you want real breakfast, or is room temperature, ten-hour-old pizza enough for you?" He was patronizing now, moving across the room to shrug into the black button-up he'd left over the back of the desk chair. I dropped the slice of pizza back into the box and stalked towards the bathroom.
"If you'll deign to buy me breakfast, I will eat it." He snorted.
"I was right. Being nice to you turns you into a bitch. Humans." He still didn't sound anything but amused, so I risked a second retort.
"'Being nice to me'? You hit me."
"Oh, Bella," James said, turning his head to look at me over his shoulder as he shook out his jacket, "I tapped you. If I'd hit you, your neck would be broken."
Oh. Well, that was comforting.
In the bathroom, I didn't bother shutting the door. Then, I saw my reflection and reconsidered. My hair was tousled and tangled, which I didn't particularly mind. It was my face that was the problem.
The place on my left cheek, where he'd "tapped" me the night before, was not as livid as it had probably been immediately after. Instead, there was a deep purple smear, high on my cheekbone, just beneath my left eye. The discoloration took up a good section of my cheek, and I had to consider myself lucky I didn't have a black eye.
"You asshole," I whispered, leaning closer to the mirror and gingerly touching the bruise. It stung, ugly and inescapable, at the slightest brush of my fingertips. Angry, helpless tears pricked my eyes, and I blinked them viciously away. I turned on the sink and splashed my face with cold water, gasping at the shock. It felt good, though, on the hot, tight skin of my cheek. I used the little bar of hand soap on the counter by the basin to wash my face, drying it with the small folded towel at the corner of the sink. Then I tucked my hair behind my ears, taming it as much as I could by smoothing it with my hands, and walked stiffly out of the bathroom.
"We're leaving now," James told me unnecessarily, having dumped the pizza box and its sad contents into the miniature trashcan under the desk. The box didn't quite fit, one corner jutting out of the trashcan like a little cardboard iceberg. I said nothing, anger pulsing through me. I couldn't believe I'd let him joke about it, couldn't believe I'd kissed him after he'd hit me, couldn't believe I'd flirted with him. I wasn't sure whom I was more disgusted with: James, or myself. Probably myself. At least he had a reason for being a sadistic, abusive bastard. What the fuck was my excuse?
As I walked past him out the door, James snagged me by the waist. He pulled me back to walk beside him, my hip snug against his, but this time I crossed my arms tightly below my breasts instead of playing along. James growled, low in his chest, and I welcomed it. Thank you, I thought savagely, for being a monster. It was easier, easier to ignore anything and everything that had spun together to create this awful, confusing web I was caught in, when he was the animal.
"Either kill me or don't," I said lowly, "but don't you snarl at me." I felt the tears rising again, and forced them back. His grip on my waist was almost painful.
"And what," he said, lowering his head so that the words stung against my ear as we approached the elevator, "brought this on?" I stopped, and so did he. I think he didn't expect it, or else he'd probably have just dragged me along.
"Did you miss my face?" I asked, twisting to confront him. He smirked.
"I like it. Makes you look fragile. Well. More fragile."
"I," I hissed, wishing to god I could hurt him back, "am not a doll! You don't get to hurt me because you think it's cute! My face is not your coloring book!"
"You know," James said with a mock-sigh, starting to walk and, as I'd expected, dragging me along, "I find it kind of interesting that you think you can say that and it'll actually change things." His tone, starting out contemplative and thoughtful, ended hard. "I'm a vampire, remember? A real one, not like your precious little boyfriend. If you think I'll feel bad about hurting you, you're more stupid than I thought." He jabbed the elevator button viciously, fingers biting into my hip.
"I know that," I snapped, my throat closing on the words. The elevator door opened, and James yanked me into the car. "What do you want from me, then? Why do you—why are you nice to me at all, if that's what you think?" He was right. I was stupider than he'd thought, stupider than I'd thought. I was a fool for thinking there was anything between us. I was a moron for being conflicted about whatever screwed up emotions I may or may not have had in regards to James. And above all, I was a complete and total idiot for thinking, even for a second, that he was anything but a cold killer.
When my next breath was a shuddering sob, I wanted to scream.
"Because it's a laugh," he said cruelly, slamming a fist against the STOP button on the elevator panel and cornering me against the junction of two walls. "Because it's entertainment." I barked a laugh, barely resisting the urge to spit in his face, but only barely. I almost wanted to infuriate him further, almost wanted him to lose control.
"Oh, does it get boring, being immortal? You poor thing." I raised a hand, not really sure what I was going to do with it, and he caught both my wrists and squeezed. I gasped, the tears finally spilling down my cheeks, but my mouth was moving and I couldn't make it stop. "I guess that's the punishment part, right?" I asked, unable to control the near-hysteria. "Lord Byron knows; maybe we should ask him!"
As soon as it was out, I felt my heart skip a beat. Everything in me froze. James's eyes flickered, his head slowly tilting, the panther eying its prey.
"You went through my pockets," he said quietly. I needed, very much, to swallow, but my throat didn't seem to be working properly.
"I'm sorry," I said, the words tripping over each other, and bit back a yelp as his grip tightened to the point of grinding pain.
"Yes," he said, and snapped my left wrist. "You are."
I screamed. James clapped a hand over my mouth, other arm snaking around my waist as my knees crumpled. No pain, not the glass in my hand or his attack on the cut or the time I'd broken a finger in 8th grade, had ever been like this pain. It was so all-consuming and sudden that I almost felt like it wasn't really happening, like I was removed from the fiery snapping knives savaging my arm, and yet even in my distance it was all around me. As my legs folded James clamped me to him, holding me up by his grip on my waist, his other hand muzzling me like a dog.
"Shh," he whispered, almost compassionately, his forearm like a band of iron tight around my lower back. He let go of my mouth, arm wrapping around my shoulders to keep me upright. I was breathing in gasps, in shock, my right hand resting on his shoulder as my left hovered in the air. I couldn't even feel the cut anymore, only the immediate, splintery pain of my broken wrist.
"Oh, fuck," I managed, my voice a harsh sort of sob, unable to believe that he'd done it. That this had happened to me. That I was here, pressed painfully against him in a stopped elevator car, my left arm screaming. James hesitated, black eyes wild or gentle or mad, and then kissed me. His mouth broke through the shards of pain slicing through my head, and when I tasted his lips it was through a glaze of tears.
He broke the kiss and scooped me up bridal style, ignoring my low cry of pain as the movement jostled my wrist.
"I'll fix it," he promised, twisting his hand to unjam the elevator. "Don't worry, I'll fix it." I couldn't talk, rendered mute by pain and fear and an unnamed aching wrench at the awful, confused tenderness in that quiet voice. I could only give in and rest my head against his shoulder, focusing only on breathing evenly as he carried me out of the elevator. "We're checking out," James called to the woman behind the counter, shouldered the lobby door open, and left.