-Cue sound of exhausted authorial panting-
Here you go my chickens. Please accept this offer of appeasement should I not be able to update for a bit (and please know that I dearly hope my apprehension about a late post may be unfounded). Cheers!
Bella gently closed the door on the retreating form of Dr. Reyerson, enclosing herself in the soft darkness of her tiny room. Her body ached, her hand throbbed and burned, and her dress rasped and chafed against the film of expelled grief that coated her skin. She let out a deep sigh as the weight of the night, of its events and revelations, settled about her shoulders, ringing in her ears.
The remnants of the Glenfiddich clouded her mind, rendering coherent – or at least productive – thought impossible, and surged uneasily in her gut. Bella felt utterly disgusting.
She slipped out of her dress and undergarments with grim relief, leaving them pooled like a dead thing on the floor, and made her way through the darkened room into the shower.
The geyser of hot water welcomed her, enveloping her sore and sticky flesh with its warm caress, easing the tension out of her bones as she leaned into it, holding herself up with her wounded hand as she draped it over the shower curtain rod and out of the stream of water. Bella completed her ablutions as best she could with one hand, scrubbing the invisible grime of her confrontation, her explosive grief, from her body roughly, as though she could scour the night's events away along with the layers of her skin.
Dr. Reyerson's words swam through her mind, tingling against her overloaded senses like the thick steam that rolled out of the shower, filling the enclosed space of the bathroom. He was right, she knew it; looking at her with his sharp gray eyes, he had seen right through the careful façade she had spent years crafting, but had been kind enough, wise enough to understand the secretive reasons that had been so important to her, to spare her the pity that she had so dreaded, and instead, demanded that she justify to herself the reasons why she had for all intents and purposes run away.
Washing the last remnants of shampoo down the drain, Bella turned off the shower, and wrung out the excessive water from her hair, letting it fall in a slick, silken rope against the heated flesh of her back. Stepping out of the tub enclosure, she caught a glimpse of herself in the clouded mirror, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to see herself as she must have appeared this evening, exposed and uncovered. Curious, captivated, she stepped closer, wiping the condensation out of the way, and looked with new old eyes at the reflection that swam in the glass before her.
The woman that stared back at her, frank in her nakedness, was really no different than the golden clad one she had seen earlier in the night, but that was not what had caught Bella's attention. For the first time in almost five years, she allowed herself to try and see the girl that Edward had left behind, and how she had been transformed into the woman that had stood before him.
Looking at her reflection, she could see the subtle differences worn by the passage of time. Her skin, rosy though it was from the heat of the shower, was still a pale ivory, but now it held a soft glow of health, instead of the pallor of inactivity that had tinged her encapsulated life in Forks. It clung sinuously over the elegant lines of muscle and bone that had replaced the yielding form of the young girl she had once been. Her hips had widened somewhat over the years, emphasizing the narrowness of her waist, the ripened promise of her femininity; and her breasts rose, high and firm over the delicate arch of her ribcage, rose tipped and full.
The sight of the newly apparent femininity before her in the fogged mirror of the lodge bathroom banished forever the image gawky boyish slenderness of the girl she remembered she had once been, reaffirming to her again what the many unwanted and seemingly unwarranted encounters with some of the males of her species had already told her: that as a woman, as a sexual being she was desirable, and that was how she had appeared before Edward tonight.
Bella felt her body flush with the new knowledge, squirming internally with an almost pleasant discomfort and she looked deeper into the mirror, as if she might see this new self peering out at her.
Her face was the same, red puffy eyes excepted, her skin pale and clear, the same tone it had always been, thanks to copious amounts of sun block, with only a smattering of faded freckles across the bridge of her nose – relics from her childhood. It was true that her cheeks had lost some of their softness as the residual baby fat finally melted from her body, and her eyes bore the tired lines of too much knowledge and not enough sleep, but in its essentials, her face had not changed.
Yet tonight, it – she – felt different. Looked different. Something like relief, something like hope shone out from within the paleness of her flesh, the deep brown of her eyes. It was fragile and ephemeral, the spark of life cradled within the thinnest of eggshells, but, insignificant though it may have been, it was hers for the tending. The fluffy white bathrobe with the lodge crest embroidered on it suddenly seemed like a suitable wrapping for the delicate and nascent thing growing within her; so Bella bundled herself up in it as best she could, hissing in pain as her wounded hand protested its sidling journey through the robe's sleeve, and then stepped from the steamy cocoon of the bathroom to the chill darkness of her room.
Though room itself was small, the lodge did not stint on the baser creature comforts. The bed was wide and soft, the white sheets silky and smooth, and the dark comforter was fluffy, and heavy with down. Bella could almost hear her body groaning with gratified relief as she crawled beneath the covers.
Jake would have loved this bed.
But for once, Bella didn't begrudge the absence of her hairy nighttime companion, and happily arranged herself in an ungraceful sprawl across the roomy expanse of bedding.
For now she had the tiny seed of optimism growing within her, and so she didn't dread the quiet stillness of the night, nor the promise of her unbidden dreams that led her through the dark woods to a long and narrow and empty road. Bella was asleep almost before her head hit her pillow.
X X X X X
She awoke sometime later, suddenly out of a deep, languid slumber, strangely alert though the room was dark and silent, her senses tingling, and she realized that she wasn't alone.
Edward.
Bella didn't need the light to see him: his scent permeated the room. It clung, thick and heavy, like incense, like opium, smoky in the recesses of her mind, settling like a drug in the heaviness of her bones, filling her nostrils, and slid against her tongue like a caress when she opened her mouth to take a panting breath, pooling in her lungs, racing through her veins and her desperately pounding heart, until it overtook her brain, overwhelming her, rendering her dizzy and weak, and helpless against the onslaught of his presence.
And so she could not move when the darkness shifted and coalesced next to the night blank window that looked over the Alaskan hillside. The shape of an arm, the curve of an ear, the midnight silhouette of a profusion of unkempt hair, moving closer until the watery light easing in through the bedroom window was blocked out by the bow of his broad shoulders. And though her habitual subconscious thoughts clamored within her, shouting at her to flee, to escape the agony of the man that destroyed her, for whom she bled with every beat of her heart, still she could not move.
So she lay, pinned on her back against the soft mattress, transfixed, as she felt the bed dip as he leaned over her, her numb body shifting with his weight, and the prickle of gooseflesh as his cool breath whispered against her eager, fearful flesh.
He did not speak – he did not have to. She was caught under his spell, the siren song of his body, the terrible perfume that rolled off him in waves – everything she had craved, and everything she had ever dreaded, wrapped up in an inhumanly beautiful package of immortal flesh and bone – and so she was unable to protest at the soft pressure of his hands as he traced the lines of her body beneath the down comforter, peeling it back, exposing her to him.
His eyes glowed at her in the darkness, vivid, alive, alight with desire and longing as he looked at her spread out before him, her fingers fisted in the sheets, powerless to move, her naked form covered only by the soft white bathrobe as her hair flared out against the pillows like Medusa's curls. The intensity of his gaze bore her helpless body into the bed, willing her into stillness as one pale, ghostly white hand reached out and touched the delicate skin of her neck, measuring the throbbing pulse of her jugular as her nervous blood thrummed within her veins.
Her mind rebelled at the contact – it was not right, she was not his. But her body was weak with wanting him, and she arched under his touch as the heat bloomed from the smooth tips of his cold fingers.
He breathed his delicious poisoned breath into her open mouth, his lips grazing over hers as his hand trailed down the front of her robe, and Bella lay still, stunned, captivated by the slow cool caress that parted the fabric covering her breasts, revealing them to the cool night air of her room. They sighed together as his fingers traced the roundness her soft, full feminine flesh, and his lips met hers then, tasting her sweetness and her sorrow as it mingled with his own scent in the perfumed the air around them.
Edward's mouth against hers was heaven and hell wrapped into one. It set her afire with lust, it turned her resolve to jelly as his lips, his hands, his eyes explored her new and unfamiliar woman's body, and made it his, made her Bella again, weak and unsure, her soul wailing with unrequited love and ever present dread. She twisted and sighed against him as his cool fingers traced her heated flesh, as his mouth moved from hers and he tasted the skin of her throat, igniting a throbbing burn deep in the pit of her belly, an aching between her thighs.
Bella found she could move again when his lips released hers, yet her limbs were slow and restless, as though she were swimming, as if she were drowning. Her nerveless hands settled in gentle benediction over the beautiful mess of his hair as he traced over her taut nipples with an open mouth, distracting her as one of his long elegant hands wandered lower, undoing the tie of her robe, laying her bare to him as her heart throbbed and sang within her breast, interrupting the velvet stillness of the room with her violent, gasping breaths.
She began her own exploration then, sliding her fingers over the stiff collar of his shirt, and down, nervously working the slippery buttons through the starched fabric, easing the material off his shoulders as he rose above her, strong and fierce, tracing the beautiful broad planes of his chest, and then his own hands moved in place of hers, divesting himself of the rest of his clothing until he was as bare as she.
Gently, so gently, he placed her anxious palms high on his chest, where his heart would have beat, and slid his own hands between her legs, spreading them wide, granting him passage.
Bella bit her lip then, turning her hot cheek against the cool fabric of her pillow as she felt her body flush and swell, as Edward's body moved over hers, hard and cool and firm and sure, his narrow hips settling gently between her bared thighs. She choked out a sobbing breath, her thundering heart beating out strong enough for the both of them as his chest pressed against hers, and his lips again captured her mouth.
It went on forever, his kiss went on forever, soft and cool, and blistering hot against her lips, as she tasted his tongue against hers. She wanted it to never end, knowing in her deepest heart that it would, but for now, her poor overwhelmed body overrode the protests of her rational mind, screaming to her that she was a woman, finally, and that its demands for her submission to Edward, and his body in all its immortal masculine glory, were not to be denied, and she ground her aching pelvis against his, feeling, rather than hearing him as he moaned against her lips.
Her fingers slid unbidden from his chest and fisted themselves in his hair, tugging and pulling at him in silent, agonized ecstasy as his mouth trailed again over her body, ravaging down the arch of her neck, devouring the swell of her breasts; until at last with a small smile he reached up and grasped her hands, freeing them from their silken confines; and, gathering them into one of his own, he brought them to his lips, and kissed them reverently as his eyes gazed, unblinking, into hers.
They were frozen in that moment, his cool body bathed in the heat of her own, their eyes locked, chests heaving with desperate passionate breaths, as their bodies paused before their inevitable moment of dissolution and completion, and she felt him, strange and foreign and so very right against the secret flesh between her legs.
Oh God, Oh God, Oh God
The chanted words died on her lips, her body throbbed and soared, soft and transparent as a soap bubble, fragile against his predatory hardness. Maddening, fluttering sensations begging to be released swirled between her thighs as she lifted her hips to take him, and Edward groaned, low and guttural, in every way undone, and sank his teeth into the tender skin of her palm, tearing the night apart.
White hot pain exploded behind her eyeballs, all her breath left her in a savage hiss, and Bella's body arched off the bed, up and up and up, tight as a bow and up, as the racing fire burned through her wrist, warring with the lightening that shot over and over, deep and delicious through the cradle of her thighs.
And Bella woke then, suddenly, gasping and panting with guilty arousal, alone in her morning bright room, the real pain of her dream the result of her injured hand fisted in the sheets, weeping fresh crimson over their snowy whiteness, as her body shook with the lingering paroxysms of solitary pleasure, lush and heavy, still chastely wrapped in the monogrammed robe, her bed as empty and virginal as the night before.
Jesus.
And helpless tears smarted in her eyes as the memories from the preceding evening came rushing back to her, as she resigned herself again to the knowledge that the man in her dreams would remain forever that.
I mustn't, Bella told herself, I mustn't cry. I mustn't run away.
Not any more.
But the pain was still fresh, from her hand, from her broken aching heart, from the sight of Edward, before her again in all his real and inhuman beauty, in the lovely nakedness of her newly awakened body's longing dream; and Bella couldn't help but let out a sobbing breath as she eased herself out from under the downy confines of her bed, tainted as it now was with unresolved passion and lust.
It figures, she thought wryly, in spite of her tears, the first sex dream of my life has to be with the one man who was absolutely terrified of my body.
Though the dream stung her old fresh wounds, her aching body thoroughly confused by the odd mingling of desire and despair, Bella felt the strangle lightness of relief as she felt the fragile tendrils of the thing that had been born in her late night conversation with Dr. Reyerson still present in her mind: hope.
It was an odd thing, a foreign thing, and the newness of it so completely absorbed her senses as she rose to prepare herself for the day ahead that she almost didn't notice the small metal disc that winked softly at her from the nightstand beside her bed.
Small.
Shiny.
Round.
Faded pink paint.
Curved edges.
Satin metal gleaming with the repeated polish of smooth stone.
A tiny picture of a lemon in the center.
A bottle cap.
Spinning between nervous fingers on a dingy table in a tiny cafeteria in a little town that nobody knew and she could have cared less about.
A talisman from the past, glistening with innocent intent, shining up at her from the bedside table. And Bella's mind spun away and the vision before her swelled and expanded until all she could see before her was the cap from the lemonade bottle that Edward had swiped from her nervous hands as they spoke electric half truths to each other during an indifferent attempt at lunch all those years ago.
Now lying before her on her bedside table.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh, God.
And I take this moment again for shameless begging for those of you who linger silent in the gallery: please let me know what you are thinking/feeling about my story. I take all thoughts and criticisms seriously, and I sincerely value all of your input - it is instrumental in my craftsmanship, as well as my motivation.
Thanks for reading!
