Infinite thanks to antiaol, bmango and mskathy.
As always, Stephanie Meyer owns.
I think I've been pretty clear about the kinky smut content of this fic. Consider yourselves warned.
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Our Lives Unbound, Chapter 11: My Need for Names
After leaving me, alone and glowing in my bed, Bella returns to me that night, meeting me for our fifth consecutive Friday night date at the same restaurant where we met for the very first time. Instead of standing awkwardly at the bar, sipping scotch and trying desperately to control my nerves and my expectations of disappointment, I wait for her by the door, smiling broadly when she rounds the corner and walks my way.
She pulls me down to her by tugging lightly at my hair. As she does, I remember the feeling of her nails scraping across my scalp more forcefully, a thin rush of arousal making me softly groan from the simple contact of lips on lips.
When her hand slips between our bodies, pressing lightly at the space above my heart before brushing over the front of my slacks, I can scarcely contain the groan that longs to escape me. All day, I have been distracted, thinking often of the feel of her in my bed, but also of the other ways in which we have touched each other.
Of the words we spoke in broken, gasping whispers across an invisible wire about confession and care-taking.
The words we didn't say about my hands held tightly behind my back as she took my body into hers and wiped all my fears away.
Around mid-day, when images of her body hovering over mine had become too persistent to ignore, I'd found myself spread out across my couch, my arousal hot and hard in my hand and my eyes clenched closed. It was not the first time I had found myself in that position, remembering her voice and her hushed instruction to meet my own throbbing need.
And it was only inside that swell of memory, with my other hand held in mock restraint above my head, that I had been able to complete the task with pleasure instead of shame.
Imagining that I did so at her command.
As if she knows the tenor of my thoughts, Bella chooses just that moment to take my wrist inside the open circle of her hand, leading me forward and into the restaurant where we are quickly seated. With eager eyes, I devour hers, soaking in the pretty quality of them and the slick, naked pink of her lips that first awakened my senses, back before I even knew what they could do.
Before I knew the feel of them on my mouth or wrapped around my cock.
Before I understood how the words that fell out of them had the power to both sate and possess me.
For her part, Bella too seems restless, or perhaps distracted, her eyes darting often to my lips and hands and wrists, making my skin burn with the memory of being held within her grip, my body so eager to be held that way again.
But I find soon that she's tired, too.
That her days wasted in an office and her nights spent trying to write through drooping eyes have all taken their toll on her.
That our hours of passion and touch the night before have only added to her exhausted state.
As we eat, I find myself leading the conversation more than is typically my wont, but with Bella, it is easier than I would ever have expected. We talk about our days, and I try to explain the story I am working on, encouraged by her nods and questions, and by her smile.
As so often she does, Bella orders one dessert and two forks, but this once I take them both and insist on feeding her. When I get whipped cream on the soft point of her nose, I wipe it gently with my thumb, only to then brush my other fingers across the dark circles that hang beneath her eyes.
And then, so tenderly, I hover over the table to kiss each one.
I want to kiss so much more than just here eyes, though, and as we walk toward the door, I find myself checking my expectations. For an awkward series of moment, we stand outside the restaurant, shuffling our feet. I know that she walked here from her apartment, and I find that her empty hands speak to my empty, wanting day.
"You d-didn't bring a b-b-bag," I murmur uncertainly, my hands in my pockets as the foot of space between us seems to yawn and gape.
She quirks up an eyebrow in challenge. "Neither did you."
I feel my own eyes widen, my cheeks warm, but then I see that she is laughing, her body stepping in to press so closely to mine. When she places her lips against my neck, I exhale in relief and wrap my arms around her waist, feeling her warmth lighting the most dim, uncertain parts of me. With one hand on my chest, she arches her spine to lean back in such a way that she can see me clearly.
As her fingers entwine with my hair, she smiles and kisses me chastely. "It doesn't matter to me where we go. Alice said she might have some people over at my place, so we wouldn't have much privacy." She shrugs. "We can go back to your place, but I'm probably just going to crash on you anyway."
My hopes rise and fall simultaneously as my afternoon musings fade, replaced by the reality of a quieter night by her side.
But after so many nights alone, I am happy to take what she will give me.
Bending down to capture her lips, I push all my will toward finding the courage for what I want to say. Closing my eyes through my inhale, I finally manage, "I'd llll-love it if you st-st-stayed with mmme."
She lets her hand drift down to my neck and gives me a soft, smiling kiss. "I think I'd love that, too."
#~~#~~#
In the darkness of my bedroom, we undress each other with careful hands, but I can feel her fatigue. For a moment, I think she is about to pull me on top of her, and I bite my tongue hard enough to hurt at the memories of failure and disappointment, ruefully wishing in my own lonely shame that she would pin me down and fuck me herself. The thought dims as she lets me fall beside her on the bed. Staring at her in the dim light, I sweep a thumb across the dark circles beneath her eyes and kiss the lines across her forehead in my own silent apology for who I still cannot bring myself to be.
Finally, we arrive at a compromise. Repressing my desires to beg for her to bind me and strike me and take me, I lie beside her with my chest to her spine, my mouth sucking softly at her neck as I cup her breasts and she hums with a quiet contentment. I feel her flesh pressed tightly against my erection as she pushes back against me, whispering softly that these more subtle caresses feel good, and I swallow, resolved. Taking care to touch her gently, I push into her body and begin to move with slow strokes, full of all the tenderness I think she needs.
Much to my relief, she takes that sweetness and returns it to me with the brushing touches of her fingertips across my face. When my hand drifts down to rub softly between her legs, coaxing her to find her pleasure with me, she twists her neck to kiss my lips.
And we are both speechless as we surrender to release.
I have barely slipped from her body before she is settling into my chest, one leg thrown over my hips and her breaths already evening. With the same soft care that belies the unfamiliar surge of emotion I feel, lying here with her body beside me, I caress her hair and push it away from her face, watching her features intently as she slips off into sleep.
And it is a strange thing to be both so intensely satisfied by her presence in my life and my ability to please her, and yet to feel the faint stirrings of disappointment that I could not ask her for the things my mind and body both now seem to need.
I am jolted from my circling thoughts by her quiet sigh and by the touch of her fingertips to first her own lips and then to mine, sending a small burst of something warm down my throat and through my chest. Surprised to find that she is still awake, I adjust my arms to hold her more comfortably as she yawns and rubs her nose against my chest.
"Sorry I was such lousy company tonight."
I shake my head and stroke the bareness of her shoulder. "You're never lousy c-company, Bella."
"Still," she mutters, yawning again, "there was other stuff I wanted to do."
She cannot see my hopeful, surprised reaction, but the tightening of my arms is a giveaway. "Yeah?" I whisper.
"Mmmhmmm." Her head shifts and she makes a happy noise. "All kinds of things I want to do to you."
In my shock, I wait long enough for her breathing to even out again before whispering, so quietly that I can scarcely be heard, "I want that, too."
Less than a minute later, she is snoring.
It takes me much, much longer to calm myself enough to sleep.
#~~#~~#
Come morning, I find not only my bed, but my apartment barren. Vacant.
A similar vacancy appears inside my chest as I dress and wander out into the cold space beyond my room, staring at the empty white walls with a numbness that runs deeper than the usual fog of morning in my mind. I sink into my couch, my neck limp as my head falls against the back of the cushion, my eyes open but unseeing as I remember the soft glow of the previous morning. The memory of her hand and lips on my skin and the sight of her smile.
And my fists clench as I wonder if there is something I have misunderstood.
It is not until I make my way to my coffeemaker that the gap between my expectations and my reality begins to narrow, some hot whisper of a racing pulse appearing deep inside my chest.
I unfold the sheet of thin blue paper taped to the front of the carafe with shaking hands, my eyes raking across the few spare lines of text with the desperation of a convicted man, unsure if he is about to be hung or set free.
When I see that the note is addressed to "Pet" though, all thoughts of untimely ends simultaneously flee my mind, the rope at my neck replaced with a stronger one, being pulled satisfyingly tightly around my arms and chest and hands.
And instead of choking, I am finally breathing freely.
My darling Pet,
I know what you want.
Tonight. 8 p.m.
Answer the door naked.
-Your Bella.
#~~#~~#
By 7:30 I am a shivering mess of anticipation and desire, rough trembles shooting down my spine, and there's a lusty flexing of muscles in my abdomen as I glance at the clock again and again. My efforts to distract myself are all futile, so I set to work cleaning my apartment yet again, searching for something to bring to a shine even though I know that there is nothing I have overlooked.
At ten minutes before eight, I begin to peel my clothes from my body, groaning to the silent room when my cock is finally set free. I take one rough tug at the needy flesh at the base before holding my own wrists behind my back, knowing that I am so keyed up that I will be unable to hold back.
And I want to give Bella my everything.
Naked in my own living room, I stand ready and wanting and uncertain about what is going to happen.
But certain that I want it.
I wait for infinite minutes like that, before finally I hear the firm knocking of her fist against wood, my cock throbbing in time with the sound of impact as I cross the few short steps to the door. I stand there for the space of a few short cycles of my breath, searching for calm and composure.
For dignity, when my clothes are already on the floor.
Standing tall and yet with my head down, I open the door narrowly at first and then all the way when I find her there, supple leather boots up to her knees and a skirt that barely brushes the midpoint of her thighs, her breasts soft and full.
And bound tightly by the stays of a corset.
As I stand there, gaping and aching, she runs a single finger in a line down her flesh, from the center of her clavicle to the place between her breasts where black satin interrupts the creamy white. Tracing beneath the edge of the cup, she parts the jacket she has draped over everything else more widely so that I can see the perfection of her shoulder, soft and bare.
The clearing of her throat brings me back to her eyes, and it is only the intent nature of her gaze that reminds of my own state, nude and waiting.
And of the open state of the door.
"Feel like putting on a show tonight, Pet?" she asks with a mischievous smirk. I swallow hard and imagine it, thinking of her riding my body in a shameful, delicious display of my own depravity for anyone to see. My pause is just long enough for her to form her own conclusions, pushing firmly against my chest until I retreat back a couple of steps, murmuring to herself, "Interesting."
The door closes behind her as she enters the room, and the importance of the moment leaves me literally staggering, my spine falling against the wall behind me. As I sink into it, I stare at her half-revealed form almost breathlessly, but ironically my heart is slowing.
This is right.
A bag falls off her shoulder and is quickly followed by the jacket, one hand coming up to her hip and the other to her chin, forming a strange vision of thoughtfulness and seduction. The combination makes me smile, my whole body relaxing even as my cock continues to tighten.
She steps in closer and takes the tip of her forefinger from her own jaw to mine. Tracing the same sort of path over my skin, she moves down over my sternum and abdomen before circling once around the head of my cock, and I sigh.
"I'm glad you're happy to see me," she says huskily, a hint of a smile flirting with her mouth now as well. Her hand wraps around me and she pumps once before releasing her grip, much to my dismay. "I see you got my note?"
"Yes," I breathe, my eyes ravenous for her body. For her bindings.
She catches me as I appreciate, almost salivating at this image of sex and beauty that is a match for the sorts of fantasies which, until Bella first demanded that I kiss her, I had never known how to even voice, much less enact.
Amused, she gestures to her attire, smirking wryly at my ogling. "After your lovely gift, I thought I'd get a little something for you," she says as she moves to cup her own breasts through the material of the corset, and I can hear my own breath hitch. "Though this is as much for me as it is for you, I suppose." Turning, she runs her fingertips up and down her sides. "You like?"
"I llllove," I admit, longing to touch and suck, to taste the boning over her nipples with my tongue. As she turns back toward me, she takes her lip between her teeth, and I can hear her voice from the night before in my head, pondering the things she would like to do to me.
I shiver at the confirmation that her desires are the match for all the things I am desperate for myself.
Entranced by the vision and the scent of her, I feel myself sinking both mentally and physically. With all my being, I want to move to my knees, longing to erase the inches of height that make me hover over her, but she seems untroubled by them. Her hands move to encircle my wrists, prodding until I place them both above my head.
Her lips meet mine in one soft, breathless kiss before she whispers, "Leave them," her palms lingering as they trace their way down my biceps and shoulders.
She is the one to sink to her knees, and I throw my head back even as I fight to keep my eyes open and trained on hers. Staring directly at me but with her breath spreading out across my naked cock, she murmurs, "My pet's been such a good boy this week. Taking care of me. I thought he deserved a reward."
In one hot motion, she encases my cock inside her mouth, my head nudging her throat as she takes me in so deeply, and I barely choke back my instinct to cry out. For an infinite expanse of time, she bobs up and down, and the sensations overwhelm me. My hands cling to each other, the sharp sting of nails embedding themselves in flesh making my wrists sing, my own restraint my only lifeline to my sanity, and I am sinking deeper still.
Into her mouth.
Into the wall.
Into my mind.
This is right.
The motions of her mouth slow, her lips tracing down to my balls, and I groan out loud. She sucks one into her mouth and then the other, her finger drifting to the spot just behind them and past a place where I have never been touched before. I can barely react before her hand retreats and she kisses the head of my cock, looking up to meet my eyes. "I'm only going to let you come once tonight. Do you want it now, in my mouth, or later in my pussy?"
I've come with her more times in the past two days than I had with a woman in the previous two years; I scan my body and decide that I can hold on. Cursing softly between clenched teeth as I think about the warmth of her pussy, I pulse and then choke out, "Inside you."
Her grin is triumphant as she rises and prods at my hip. I move away from the wall and follow her instructions to lower my arms and clasp my hands behind my back. Speaking in a voice that is low and wet and rich with the sounds of her tongue against her teeth, she breathes into my ear, "Kitchen table. Bent over it. Hands behind your back."
My knees nearly give out with the power of the tremor that racks my body, but I still somehow manage to follow her instructions, kissing the skin beside her mouth just once before moving to the kitchen. The table is clear but for some placemats which I set aside, relocating the chair at the end so that I may place my thighs flush against the edge. My unsteady heart darts and flies as I lower myself to the cool surface of the wood, my still-aching erection brushing it as I twist my neck to rest my cheek.
Subconsciously or not, I face away from her, and in anticipation and – I can name it now – submission, my eyes drift deliciously closed.
For interminable minutes, I wait.
The hand that drifts over my back makes me gasp, but not nearly as hard as the feeling of leather again encircling my wrists. I moan and lift my arms just slightly to make it easier for her to slide the cuffs against my skin, securing them with a click that is louder than the thundering of my pulse or the rasp of my breath.
"Beautiful," she breathes once I am bound, her nails scraping gently at my flesh and making their way toward my ass. "I've been dreaming of you like this all week, Pet."
I grunt my approval and fight to stay still, knowing that the slightest motion makes my cock slide across the wood.
Stillness becomes impossible when her hand comes down in a softly stinging slap across my ass. I fight the sickness in my mind that doesn't think this should feel good, but it does. Her palm meets the other cheek and my sounds of pleasure resonate through the surface of the table, meeting my ear with intensity.
It feels so, so good.
"You like this, Pet?"
"Yes."
"You've been so good," she murmurs, "but at heart you're naughty." The whole time she keeps spanking me, rocking me over the table until I can feel myself sliding, the slickness of my pre-come coating the wood, my breaths melding into one long, vibrating moan. "Getting off like this. Practically fucking your table."
The sounds falling out of my lungs hiccup slightly at my whimper of pleasure and shame, but I can't stop myself from chasing this feeling.
The stinging impact of her palm across my flesh increases in intensity, and I can hear her breath steadily increasing with the effort. While I cannot see her, I can envision her, the tight stays of the corset constricting her lungs, her face flushed and sweating.
Her voice is so low when she speaks again, husky and echoing my own desires and explanations as I have given them to her. "Anything else you need to confess to?"
I cannot mistake the stress on the word 'confess.'
I grunt and groan and search my mind, but her patience is thin and she strikes me once, harder, before pausing.
The words fall out of me in an angry torrent until I am deflated.
Floating.
"I t-touched myself. Yesterday. And thought of you."
Her hand comes down again and I grit my teeth in pleasure and pain.
"I wwwwwwas s-selfish. I wanted you to ffffuck me last night. I knew what you needed, but was sssstill d-disappointed."
I almost yelp at the next impact, but the blows have still not progressed to a place where I don't enjoy it.
"And?" she asks when my stuttering description ends.
I want to tell her everything.
But these are the only crimes I can think of that do not demand that I wade much further back into my memory, into long-shut sections of my life that I haven't the energy to delve into.
And that don't seem fair to really get into.
Not tonight.
"Nothing else?"
"N-no," I stammer, my face and ass both red, but my chest feeling unfettered. Free.
"No visits to sex shops? No pornography?"
As best I can with my face still flush against the wood, I shake my head and whisper, "No. Only on Sundays."
Her laugh is loud against the silence.
"Sundays?"
The soft burn across my face deepens as I realize the sickness I have admitted to.
"Yes."
Her voice is still strong even though it is quiet as she purrs, "Oh, Edward, you really are a naughty boy."
My stomach roils, my abdomen tightening. "Yes."
She wavers for a moment, seemingly on an edge of indecision, but then I feel her hand slide down my flaming, tender skin, reaching between my body and the table to stroke the part of me that is throbbing.
But as her hand retreats, it again sweeps over my sack and up over tender, unexplored flesh.
My breath stops.
"Tell me how naughty you are," she murmurs, her lips wet and sucking against my back as her touch retreats, only to return, cool and slick and probing gently as I gasp.
"So naughty. So bad," I pant as she rubs a soft line back down to my balls and then up along the full length of the crack.
When her wet touch meets the opening between my cheeks again, she whispers, "Has anyone ever touched you here?"
"Nnno."
I fight panic and arousal and the dirty notion twisting in my stomach that this feels good.
That I want it.
Her voice drops an octave and her hand stills. "Are you OK?"
I nod.
A gentle touch strokes my face. "You have to breathe."
For just a moment, I close my eyes, inhaling deeply and realizing just how tight my chest has gotten.
There's a brief but unmistakable moment of doubt, a cracking in her voice as she whispers, "You're sure you're OK?"
Craning my neck, I meet her eyes and try to tell her the best I can that I want this.
"I'm p-perfect."
So softly, she smiles.
"Yes. Yes, you are."
The soft hand on my face becomes a prodding pressure, and I return myself to my position, the wood now warm against my skin. Her fingertips resume their motion between my legs, pressing more suggestively against my opening with every pass, and I feel myself give in.
When she speaks this time, there is no doubt in her voice.
And from the sound of it alone, I throb.
"You know what happens to naughty boys, Edward?"
I shake my head, waiting for her words.
Because I do know.
With every syllable, a finger slowly begins to push inside, my body burning.
"They. Get. Fucked."
I squeeze my eyes closed against the discomfort, moaning low when her other hand prods my hip until I arch my back, making room for her to curl her palm around my length, sliding in long, slow strokes that match the continuing pressure from inside. Slowly, the burn and my hesitation both begin to melt as I surrender.
As I feel.
"Someday, Pet," she murmurs, a dark edge of promise and arousal. "Someday I'm going to fuck you like this. Hard and deep."
With that, she twists her wrist, the penetrating motion of her fingers somehow morphing. Changing.
Touching something I had never even known existed.
I knock my head against the table in my surprise, and I feel my orgasm almost crest over, something sudden and explosive threatening to sweep me away. In my shock and pleasure, I hear my own voice begin.
My instinct is to cry out her name.
But my fantasy is to call her something else entirely.
Uncertain if that is a right that she will grant me, I find my teeth closing over my own tongue instead, a thin taste of blood in my mouth.
But I am at a point now where even that pain is mixing with everything else, just leading me higher.
It occurs to me that she is still speaking to me when her hand stills around my cock, the probing finger inside my ass slowing.
"Would you like that, Pet? For me to fuck you?"
I don't know if I can handle it tonight, and I waver, even as she presses once more against the place she has discovered and which makes me twitch. My fear closes away as the sensation robs me of sense, wanting only more.
Panting, I grunt out, "God, yes," and clench my jaw again.
She kisses my hip and removes her hand from my cock completely, placing it flat against the table by my side as her mouth makes its way up my body to suck at the skin above my shoulder blade. Her breath is hot as she promises, "Someday," and I instantly relax.
The pressure inside me yields slowly as she withdraws, and it's a strange mixture of emptiness and disappointment and relief that replaces the fullness. For a moment, she steps away and I feel anticipation welling up. Unable to see what she is doing, I concentrate hard on listening. There is a rustling of fabric, a soft clicking of low heels on tile.
And then her voice.
"Turn around."
My back is stiff as I rise, facing her and placing the backs of my thighs to the edge of the table and my erection aching after so much stimulation.
And then I take in the vision before me.
Of Bella.
In only the corset and the boots.
"Fuck," I breathe, feeling myself pulse.
"Sit back. Brace your arms behind you."
The tender flesh of my ass is sensitive as I sit at the edge of the table, but it's not as uncomfortable as I had imagined it might be. Perversely, I like how the soreness is a reminder of what she's done to me.
What she's done for me.
Awkwardly, I arrange myself, testing the give of the chain between the cuffs as my hands press back against the wood.
Testing my restraint as she climbs over me.
With her knees on either side of my hips, I feel the heat of her pussy against my abdomen, the lusty rush of her breath across my face as she tilts her head and kisses me.
"Are you all worked up for me, baby?"
"Yes."
"You want to come?"
I twitch. "Yes. Ssso badly. Please."
Raspily, she whispers, "Me, too. You want to feel me come?"
My eyes shut for a moment as I swallow, opening again to take in the fire in her own eyes as I pant, "God, yes."
Slowly, so slowly, she lowers herself over me, and I almost cry out again at the intensity of the wet heat surrounding me. She moves herself over me twice before stopping with my body half inside her. With one arm, she steadies herself against my shoulder as the other reaches down to touch the soft flesh just above where I am prepared to slide more fully into her, and I can feel the motion of her wrist against my hip.
"So sexy," I murmur, and she kisses me again, humming.
"Fuck me," she breathes into my mouth, and I hear my own voice choke out something close to a sob as I take the freedom to move within her. Grateful for the support of my hands behind my back, I move my hips into her in short, slow strokes, rewarded by her moan of pleasure. I feel her hands moving faster, and I am working so hard to keep meeting her need without letting my own crash over me.
"Yes," she pants, and I feel the breath and the word in every region of my spine. "Just like that."
I whimper in pleasure and in restraint, wanting to succumb and needing to keep going. We keep fucking for what feels like hours, the desperate urge to come as restrained as my hands inside my bindings, the burning in my thighs backing the one in my stomach as I try to keep everything under control.
Finally, her breath hitches, something tightening and coiling, and I can feel the tension in her body. "God yes. Yes. Fuck. Just like that, Pet. Just like that."
My voice is a high-pitched whine as I push to keep just that pace and just that pressure, pounding into her now.
It's the first time I've ever fucked anyone and felt in control.
And it doesn't escape me that it's because she's controlling me.
The thought alone starts to send me into a spiral, my eyes moving everywhere, from her own barely open ones, down to the deep black fabric across her perfect breasts, and finally to the slick motion of my cock in and out of her, appearing and disappearing as I move in and out of her body.
And it's too much.
"Fuck," I groan, knowing there's nothing I can do, but she's coming, her hand on my shoulder squeezing and her pussy clenching, my name erupting from her lips over and over as I explode.
It's like floating, emptying into her. Everything is black and white and the intense vision of her face in orgasm behind my eyelids, my entire body tensing and releasing, and the deep rhythmic pulse as my seed streams into her.
Again, all the things I could call her wrestle in my chest, none of them quite making it to my lips.
And I find that my voice joins my wrists among the things that I am keeping tightly bound.
#~~#~~#
After she moves off of me and frees my hands, I find myself obsessed with tactile comfort again, feeling her in my arms and following her as she moves through my space, my hands always connected with some portion of her skin. She lets me peel her out of the corset, worshiping the back of her neck as I sweep her hair away and undo the laces with the utmost care. Just like last time, we end up in the bath, but this time with her back pressed to my chest and my arms encircling her from the very start.
The crash this time is less intense, and I feel more capable of pushing through it, even though my skin and mind feel raw. I do not know if the rush of feeling is less this time, now that I have fully given myself over to the experience, or if it is simply that I know now what to expect. Regardless, all I seem to need is to hold and touch her.
To adore her.
There is one moment as we sit there, silent and basking, when the depths of my feelings for her open up like a canyon before me, and I squeeze too tightly at her chest, my face buried against the soft, damp skin of her neck.
I am a man of words, I tell myself, even if they rarely come easily when spoken aloud.
The obvious choice of words for how desperately I want to hold her to me and keep her with me dangles just beyond my grasp, like I could reach for it and turn it over in my palms, were I to only stretch forward another inch.
I don't.
If anything, I retreat, curling back into myself and into the warm waters where she allows herself to lean into me and where I can kiss her mouth without fear.
Where there are no words for what is happening to me here.
#~~#~~#
Later, dry and warm and spread out in my bed, we speak quietly on things of little consequence. The freedom and happiness rushing through me are still so strange and almost overwhelming, but not unwelcome. As I talk, I try my best not to focus on the sound of my own voice, which is as smooth as it has ever been, here inside this space of warmth and safety, knowing the stutter will return in full force if I allow myself to think about it.
Or if I push myself into too uncharted of territory.
We lapse into silence for a little while as the hour grows late, my fingertips still making devoted, obsessive passes over her skin. Keeping her side in contact with mine, Bella rolls to lie on her back, leaving me hovering slightly over her as she rests the back of her hand on the pillow beside her head.
She turns just her head to look at me, staring with eyes that are soft and questioning.
But for once, as she asks the questions that I know are burning through her, her expression is not afraid.
"I know you don't like to talk about it, but everything tonight was okay?" She threads the fingers of her hand through my own and lifts both to her lips, kissing softly at my knuckles as I think and she waits.
The unexplored pieces of my body that she touched tonight come immediately to mind, but I am surprised to find that they engender less fear than arousal, and I nod. I turn our hands and lift them so that I can place my lips against her skin, parting them across the edge of her palm.
"It was perfect," I say without reservation as I replay it all in my mind.
But it's only then, with the memory of the way my body pulsed inside of hers, that I remember my one moment of hesitation.
The one word that maybe I can approach tonight.
I can already feel the easy softness of my body and my speech beginning to fade as I purse my lips and close my eyes. "Only …" I begin, but I have to stop.
Bella senses my uneasiness and tenses, shifting slightly to rest on her side.
Her palm comes up to touch my cheek, and I work to relax and breathe.
"Edward, you know you can tell me anything."
Looking down at her, I see the old wariness returning and I bend to brush her lips with mine, shaking my head slightly. "It's fine," I murmur. "Just … I was wondering what I should c-call you. Wwwwwhen we're t-together. Like that."
The corner of her mouth quirks up into a little smile, her fingertips now moving softly through my hair. "Hmmm," she hums thoughtfully, sinking back down into the bed and into my chest, but remaining mostly on her side. "I guess 'Bella' might be a little weird."
My throat is dry, the word on my lips, but it's one I don't know how to say.
Not like this.
A desire so dark it makes me quake.
But still, I try.
"Wwwwwwww … wwwwwwould you …" I have to stop, closing my eyes around the block. I keep them that way.
Because in the dark it's always easier.
"Mmmmay I c-c-call yyou Mmmmmm-M-Mistress?"
Her hands are warm on both side of my face, waiting, until finally I summon the courage to stare into warm brown eyes.
Only to find them set to flame.
With an unsettling, delicious intensity, she replies, and with her words, I feel the frightened, broken pieces of my desire reborn.
And for the rest of the night, all I will hear is the echo of her voice, as quietly she tells me, "You may."