Chapter 12: Where We'll Never Grow Old

When I woke up I was confused. My thoughts were hazy, still twisted up in dreams and nightmares. I stretched out and tried to take my bearings.

I felt like crap, I was aching in several places and I had the faintest hint of a headache. My arms also felt heavy when I tried to move them and I quickly found it was because I had an ice pack wrapped around each forearm, carefully held in place with medical tape. So, I wasn't great, but I was better than I had been. It was true that I still felt exhausted, but I was refreshed enough that I could tell it would be a bit before I could sleep again. At least I was warm and comfortable for the moment. I pulled the covers up around my shoulders and sat up against the headboard. How long had I been out?

It looked like I was in a hotel room somewhere. I take that back, it looked like I was in a pretty cheap hotel somewhere. For a moment I imagined that I'd dozed off during my job cleaning rooms and that the whole last week had been a dream. Wouldn't that be better, if it had been a dream and I was still in Arizona? In a way that would make more sense than the truth, but the thought of not seeing either of my pallid suitors again made my chest ache a little.

It was the type of room with two beds facing a television, leading to a sink at the end of it and a door leading to a bathroom. It was a room so generic that I could have been literally anywhere in North America, but most likely we hadn't gone far.

I got out of bed, pleased to find that I was still dressed in my gray skirt and dark green tank top. There was a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin on the side table and I gratefully unstrapped my compresses and traded them in for some pain killers. The digital clock on the table was flashing blankly at me and needed to be set. Neither of my companions were around, but I could hear the shower running and Alice's cute Easter dress was folded up neatly on the counter next to the sink.

I knocked politely, "Alice, are you in there?"

There was no response.

Her hearing was pretty good, but maybe she couldn't hear me over the sound of the shower. I cracked the door open a little, letting wisps of steam escape, and tried again, "Alice? Hey, I'm coming in. I kinda don't want to be alone right now."

I started to push the door open only to have a heavy body press against the other side and lean out across the opening; an intricately scarred arm blocked my way and Jasper's questioning face peered out across the threshold. I started back in surprise.

I couldn't help myself, I took a good long look at him. He was dripping wet, his eyes were almost totally black, and, from what little I could see of his chest, he was very naked. He was also the most scarred up motherfucker I'd ever laid eyes on; those scars on his arms kept going to his shoulders, and from there they spread out in wide lazy random patterns that marred most of his skin.

He gave me a curious look, "Bella. I'm surprised you're up so soon. Alice is out dealing with the car right now. Something I can do for you darlin'?"

I took a step back and shook my head, "Sorry. It's nothing. Just wanted to hang out and bug her if she was here. It's fine. You can finish your shower."

The corner of his mouth twitched up in amusement, "I was almost done anyway. I thought you'd prefer it if I didn't smell like smoke all evening. Let me go rinse off and I'll be right out. In the meantime, there should be some pants in a plastic grocery bag by the front door. Grab those for me, would ya."

I found a dirty looking bag after searching around and recovered a pair of flannel pajama pants out of it. They seemed clean, with no sales tags, and had a subdued black, gray, and pink plaid pattern. Where the hell had these come from?

Once I heard the shower turn off I passed them through the crack in the door, "I hate to break it to you Jazz, but I'm pretty sure those are women's pants. Why not just wear what you had on before?"

I could hear him toweling off on the other side of the door, "I took them out of a dead woman's tent, so that would make sense. They were the only pair that looked like they would fit."

I scoffed, "You're not really going wear those, are you?"

Irritation colored his voice momentarily, "Oh grow up Bella, they're just clothes. For your information, the outfit I wore here reeks of smoke and it has little particles of broken glass sticking to it. Between the two of us, if you cut yourself on a piece of glass we're all going to have a real bad evening. Plus that shirt has not one, but two holes in it from me being bitten by psychotic broads."

Right. He'd been bit when he followed that guy. He'd… he'd killed him and the guy's mate had bit him. Just thinking about that made me feel fidgety and anxious in a not-fun way. It's true that I found Jasper's charming menace to be intoxicating, but I'd wanted to believe there were lines. I'd seen him threaten, frighten, and hurt, but I'd hoped there was a hard line in front of kill. The three of us had yet to find a line that at least two of us together couldn't forcibly drag the third one across. I was guilty of that too. But killing a guy… this wasn't Jazz's first time, that much was clear. This wasn't even his second or third time. And given all of that, Alice probably had also…

Jazz swept past me into the room, toweling off his hair, "You look confused. Hey, sorry, I was only teasing. You bit me too, remember? In the car."

I could ask to go home again. They'd understand. Alice had been ready to take me earlier. If I stayed here at this point did that make me some kind of sociopath for not freaking out more? Did it make me complicit? There had to be some line we couldn't blow past. I'd seen enough movies about nice girls dating serial killers to know to know that things weren't supposed to end well for me. I was a nice girl, right? I could just say all that, and Jasper would nod along and be all smug about being right and then they'd take me home and kiss me goodnight or whatever.

But, then again, they'd already rented the room.

Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Jasper was sitting shirtless on the bed still drying his long hair. The rosy pajama pants clung to his legs, tight and wet. It wasn't fair how good they looked on him. Nothing ever looked that good on me. He patted the bed next to him when he saw me looking and I went over and sat hip to hip with him. The black dog and the gentle sheep. Seems about right.

Jasper cleared his throat, "So, I suggest you savor this moment because it only happens once. This is that special awkward time after everything has calmed down, where two people who have recently had sex realize they probably don't know that much about each other and have no idea what to say now."

I laughed. Ugh, it still hurt to laugh. "That's a hell of an icebreaker, Jazz. If you're talking about what happened in the car, I wouldn't exactly call that sex, but yeah, I'm at a loss too."

He shrugged and tossed the towel onto the floor, "I'd call it that. I made you cum. You made Alice cum. It wasn't proper fucking or anything, that's for sure, but it was something very nice. Anyway, semantics aside, how are you holding up?"

"Not well," I admitted, "trying not to think about everything so I don't have to feel super guilty. Hey, like, so, we're in a hotel room. I mean, that's obvious of course. And it's not really a good hotel room, which is kind of odd. I'd think Alice would have demanded a suite or something…"

"You can't carry a sobbing, yelling woman out of the back seat of a car and into a nice hotel," he interrupted, "but please, continue."

"Ok, right," I wet my lips, "so, I'm not holding up that well and I just wanted to let you know up front that I don't think anything is going to happen tonight. Like, nothing serious at least. Sorry. I don't know if there was a plan with you two or anything, but yeah. I can't."

Jasper stood up and took a deep bow, holding my hand in his, "This whole hotel room is yours of course, and everything within it is at your command. Alice and I don't even have to stay here if you don't want. It's easy enough to get a second room, or to arrange transportation to take you back home."

He dropped my hand and the gentlemanly affectation as well, and shrugged, "Honestly, I sorta figured you could use a night off from your life. Whatever you want tonight darlin', it ain't my place to say anything otherwise."

He smiled at me, that easy charming smile that was so rarely real. He was so handsome when he smiled, and I hoped each one I saw was a little less forced. I patted the spot next to me on the bed, returning his earlier invitation, and he plopped back down beside me.

"How long was I out?" I asked, "I've got no sense of time right now."

"You slept about an hour, so it's a little after eight. Alice is out sabotaging the car's engine and pushing it to a mechanic's shop where they tragically won't have the replacement part on hand until tomorrow morning. With her gift, that kind of thing is right up her alley."

Trying to imagine how that worked made me feel exhausted, "Ugh, her shit is even more irritating than what you do. So, I take it our story is that we broke down on our way out of town? Why all the subterfuge with actually busting up the car? Also, isn't Edward going to be mad about that? It is his car, right?"

Jasper gave me a gorgeous spiteful grin, "He's going to be furious, but that's just a nice little extra really. The real problem is that your dad is a fairly competent cop and, from past experience, I know he isn't above checking on our alibi. When you call him and talk to him, I want you to be able to give him a detailed story about what's wrong with the engine and where we took the car."

Well, that answered that. I lapsed into silence. What to say now? He was right, I barely knew anything about him. He was married at eighteen? He was a Major in the army? His real last name was Whitlock? He'd fought a supernatural war across the Texas country side? It all defied any kind of narrative sense.

I looked over at him and realized he'd been studying me for a while. I felt a hot flush of embarrassment creep across my cheeks and I lowered my eyes. This had the effect of me staring at his bare chest while becoming increasingly self conscious under the steady scrutiny of his gaze.

"I wish Alice were back already," I confided quietly, breaking the silence, "everything seems so easy when she's around."

"Yeah," he nodded, "I was thinking the same thing."

It seemed like the conversation was going to lapse again so I continued, not sure what I was trying to say, "You're a little intimidating to deal with all alone. You know that?"

"As a monster, you mean? Yeah. I'm sorry if I scare you," he sounded so resigned to it, even though it wasn't true. He was like a mean old junkyard dog, trained for violence, powerful and brutal, but still at his core unfailingly loyal and endlessly eager for affection. There'd been no sign so far that he might turn on me, instead, as near as I could surmise, he mostly wanted to lick my face and stick his nose in my crotch.

I gave the tiniest of head shakes, "You only scare me as a man." I took a deep breath before continuing, "Like, holy shit, I nearly walked in on you naked and, ok so how do I put this, there's a part of me that really wanted to see that, and then again another larger part that's completely freaked at the thought of going there with you."

His scars weren't uniform, instead they flowed across his body telling a story that I couldn't quite read. They clustered at his shoulders and at his hips, with stray marks all over his torso. Some were big and ragged looking, while others could have almost been put in place by an artist's hand. I'd been avoiding staring at his face too much, but his makeup had washed off and he looked hungry and dangerous. My gloomy drowned prince bearing pale opal skin, all adorned with silver filigree. Only his neck was free of any kind of wounded gilding.

The scars were thickest on his forearms. I'd read once that knife fighters were expected to take their hits on their arms and I wondered if it was like that. All his outfits so far had included long sleeves, so maybe it was something he was sensitive about.

As if sensing my thoughts, or more likely watching my gaze, he said, "Go ahead, it's alright. You can touch them if you like. They don't hurt me or anything. Granted, I'm sure they're not what you were expecting." He sounded nervous, like my reaction to his scars even mattered.

I reached out and tentatively ran my fingertips up his arm. He still felt warm from the shower. The scars were bumpy and harder than regular skin, but abnormally smooth. Given how soft his skin was anyway it was kind of an enticing alternation of textures.

"I like them," I told him after a pause, working up the courage to meet his dark eyes, "they suit you. I was surprised at first of course, but, even if they're a little ugly, they're also super beautiful. Actually, can I be honest?"

"Yeah." He put my hand on a jagged looking one above his left breast and I traced its outlines, finding its cold topography.

"They are kind of a turn on," I admitted, "like, a lot."

He sighed forlornly and then laughed, "If Alice had told me a few days ago that she'd had a vision that I'd end up alone in a hotel room with a seventeen year old human girl who got hot and bothered by scars, I'd have said never in a thousand years. There is no way any version of me would be that stupid. Hopefully you know me well enough at this point to appreciate the irony of me feeling morally squeamish here, well, given my usual lack of morals of any kind."

I put my other hand on his chest as well, fingers tracing his violent past, "Why, because I'm underage? Well I'd say that's pretty rich given how you were bragging about your numerous felonies or whatever. I have to deal with heebie jeebies every time I think about the fact that you've killed people, that shit's probably going to haunt me, so excuse me if I'm somewhat lacking in sympathy here. You're eighteen, right? I don't think a year difference is worth making a big of a deal about. Doesn't Washington have Romeo and Juliet laws?'"

He gave me a half cocked smile, "You're very clever, you know that? I hope that doesn't come off as sarcastic because I really do mean it. Right now, this is one of those things I kept hoping you would puzzle out on your own to spare me having to say anything. You'd just figure it out, in the same infuriating way you've been demolishing our flimsy cover stories all day long. Actually they're pretty good cover stories, but somehow it was like you had your foot in the door from the very start and we never had a chance. I've never failed this hard with a human before, it's humbling."

I curved my fingers into claws and scratched across his chest, slow and languorously, "No more surprises, Jazz. I'm tired of begin caught off guard. Just spit it out, whatever it is."

"You're lucky," he continued, totally failing to spit it out, "that I'm here instead of Alice. This is just one of those things that she doesn't really understand. It's like she's a little color blind, and there are certain common human experiences that are red, red, red. In that sense I was bound be the one to have to do this talk eventually. So, spitting it out here, what if I told you that Alice and I are older than you think?"

"That's not spitting it out. That's asking an annoying question and leaving me hanging. I guess it depends on how much older? You're married, and you've been in the army I guess, and you've lived in Forks for two years. Assuming you joined at eighteen, I guess you look like you could be twenty four at the oldest. That's, what, a seven year gap between us? Seven years is maybe swingable, but yeah, that's well into statutory rape territory, isn't it. Ugh. Fucking great. And what about Alice? There's no way she could be much older than me."

Jazz gently removed my hands and scooted back a little bit so he could fold his legs and sit on the bed facing me. He very patiently waited while I blurted out everything I was thinking. I wasn't upset exactly, just I needed space to try and think through this. This wasn't anything I'd been expecting so it mostly just felt surreal like my whole life had turned into some horrible farce.

"Alice is either eighteen or nineteen, and I'm nineteen as well..." he started explaining.

"Oh, that's not so bad, you had me worried there," I said like a complete and utter rube.

"Please just listen. We're both around nineteen years old physically and mentally because that's when we stopped aging and became cold ones. However I was born in 1844 and I've been wandering this earth for 160 years."

I was such an idiot. I was such a fucking goddamn idiot. Beautiful, wealthy, well cultured, polygot teenagers didn't fucking exist in any reality. Nope, not a real thing. I should have just jumped to immortal amoral monstrosities from the start. It was such an obvious setup. Actually, the bigger tipoff should have been that they were interested in me. Good things didn't happen in my life, so this could only ever have been a setup for misery.

I ground my teeth, feeling tears prickling at the edges of my control. I pushed past my snarky defense mechanisms and forced myself to confront this. The truth was that this revelation stung. I hated it. I hated that they were married. I hated that they had so much more experience than me in the world. I hated that they had so much more experience than me together. Who knows how many years they'd had now. I'd thought they were like me, a young couple nervously discovering that they wanted more than they'd dared to imagine, but everything he'd said so far had pushed me farther and farther back into the distance until I was so small and faint on the horizon I could barely see myself.

I force a smile. I'm sure it was hideous. I don't know how long I'd paused, trying to think about the whole thing, but I pretended that I hadn't.

"So, a 143 year gap. You are so lucky because that looks like it's just under my own personal limit. Any older and I'd have to say no way, but a hundred and forty fucking years is just fucking fine."

"Alice is only about a hundred years old if that helps?" He had a shit eating grin when he said it, but I could tell he wasn't really enjoying this conversation. He looked like he wanted to bolt and he was forcing himself to sit carefully in place.

I pushed him over in irritation and then collapsed bonelessly next to him. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me up next to him in the bed. His body was cooling fast but it was still a pleasant sensation.

I sighed loudly, "I never had a chance, did I? I wish I'd known. Even if I'd been born fifty years ago I'd still be too young for you two. Jesus. I get why you couldn't say anything sooner than this but don't you think it's a little unfair."

He kissed my forehead. I should have been even more irritated at him but it felt nice.

His voice was gentle, "I can't help who I am any more than you can help being you. We just have to take our chances where we find them. I know it probably doesn't help much but we're closer to your level than you'd guess. We're pretty static creatures when everything is said and done."

I rolled my eyes, "Oh, yeah, now I feel better. Well, I might as well really embarrass myself here. So, uh, is this the kind of thing where I need to, like, tell you how grown up I am for my age? Or are you just trying to assuage your guilt in advance of taking advantage of such a young girl and I really needn't bother."

He was so strong around me. His arms were a solid cage that bore the evidence of years of attacks. Nothing could get through. It felt so reassuring. It felt like even my own mind trying to haunt me couldn't get me here.

He grinned down at me, "Oh, believe me, my willpower is nowhere near the level where there's any point in pretending that I'll do the right thing here. If you end up feeling like I fucked you up, come find me in a few years and I'll take responsibly however you need. Say, tell you what, would it help if I told you something else that's objectionable so we can move on and you can be outraged at the next thing instead?"

I laughed, "I am filled with horrified anticipation at what you could possibly say to follow that up. I can add it to my growing list of serious concerns."

"My military service was back when I was human. I joined when I was younger than you, I falsified some papers and snuck in. So, really, not so different from how I'm still living my life. Anyway I was a proud member of the Trans-Mississippi Army, which is a fancy way of saying I'm a bonafide confederate soldier, darlin'."

I snickered in surprise at that. Shit, still hurt to laugh. "Are you for real? Anything else? Are you going to tell me you also spent several decades running a puppy mill or defrauding vulnerable adults out of their pensions? Damn it Jazz, why do you have to be so stupidly awful?"

"Alice doesn't care that I'm awful," he ventured. His accent had come out hard as he pronounced the name of the army and now I was fascinated with the way he drawled out the word "awful."

"Yeah well, lovely as she is, she's awful too. So, let me get this straight, you're a supernatural centenarian serial killer cannibal confederate soldier?" I went slow and stumbled through saying that whole mouthful. "Did I miss anything there? Because that's not what I fucking signed on for when I said we should hang out."

I could feel him shrug as he held me firmly to his chest. I snorted in frustration and buried my face in his neck, trying to find a comfortable position. Too many labels and categories and identities. They didn't actually make anything better. I hated that whole damn list of words; it was just an exercise in drawing boxes around him that separated us from each other. In fact, the whole situation sucked a lot, but at the same time I couldn't imagine a safer spot than where I was right now.

"Easy on the confederate thing if you don't mind. I know how it sounds, but I'm actually rather proud of my service. And Alice is more of the serial killer type if you want to try and label things. She's always so proud of us only eating animals and she's super quick to protest about how she hates hurting people if she doesn't have to, but honestly she's got this whole weird fascination with limbs coming off. Maybe it has something to do with the missing memories thing, like she's preoccupied with ideas of wholeness and dissasemblement. Anyway, I'm more content to simply bash heads in. I'm sorry. I can't imagine you want to hear any of this."

I nipped lightly at his neck in retaliation but he didn't even flinch, "It's better than you lying about it or me finding out on my own way too late. Personally, I've had plenty of time in my life to think about monsters and villains. It's kind of why I like Gothic literature I guess. When you read The Monk you are the monk and you get to live through Ambrosio's fall from godliness into sin and depravity. Sometimes you don't even know for most of the book which of the perspective characters will end up being the hero or the villain. That feels real to me. I'll admit, hearing about it in real life is a lot less enjoyable than I thought it might be, but I still want to know what kind of protagonist you are."

His hand stroked my back in slow easy strokes as he spoke, "I'm the blackest sort of cad. My first love was my Machi and then after she died I was forced into becoming the very sort of supernatural menace she'd tried to save people from. I fought in a war on the side of slavery and then as a cold one I was made a slave who then enslaved others. I turned them into cold ones, trained them, led them into battle, took lovers from among the ranks, and finally killed any survivors who lasted long enough to become dangerous.

"But at my heart I'm a warlord, cut from the same cloth as Vlad Tepes. Or, I used to be. Have you followed the war in Afghanistan at all? I was a regional warlord like that, except I was fighting to rule Texas. I didn't impale people but I left my enemies burning. To know me was to know despair. I was a holocaust in the shape of a man. I mean that in the classical pre-World War II sense of a holocaust as a burnt offering conducted at night. Something that is totally consumed with nothing to show for it."

I was starting to shiver in his grip as neither of us was wearing all that much in the way of clothes, "Well there's that other shoe falling. Or, really at this point, is that the fifth or sixth shoe to drop? Shit got dark fast. So, what's the bridge? How do I reconcile Jasper the unkillable warlord with Jasper the high school student who yearns to be harmless?"

"I did it, you know," he whispered, "I took over Texas. The state I'd joined the confederate army to preserve. Took me 75 years, but I did it. Shoved everyone else off the map. The whole effort was endless and boring. The worst kind of insipid monotony. The day I won, that was one of the worst days of my life. Bella, it was so empty. I missed my Machi; I'd been fighting to die. For everyone I killed I felt their deaths on an emotional level. It was like I died each time too. I was so in love with death, kind of like you are. But no one could beat me. And then there was no one left. And for what? To stroke Maria's ego by winning territory? She was my maker, my captor, and my mate. I loved her in a way, but only because she was death for me too.

"On that day I realized that the kind of man I'd worked all my life to become was pointless. I wasn't strong. I was miserable. I was broken and trapped. Not by Maria, but by my image of myself. So I just walked away from it all. After 75 years of killing everyone I'd ever fought, who was left that could stop me? I went to stay with the only two people I'd ever done anything good for and had a long needed mental breakdown. Maria's enemies regrouped, started carving out chunks of territory again, and before long everything I'd accomplished was undone. All that death and suffering had been for nothing. At some point the Dusk Company stepped in and massacred most of the remaining players because they were drawing too much attention, but even that didn't totally put an end to things. Maria is retired now but Texas is still a minor warzone to this day. Nothing really changed. Except that I did."

I desperately wanted to lighten the mood, "Wow. So, yeah. To quote Alex Trebek from Celebrity Jeapordy: You have lead a horrifying life. Jesus old man, that's rough. Fuck. I don't know. You tell me, how the fuck am I supposed to be feeling about all that?"

His fingers played through my hair on the back of my head at the point where it met my neck. I was still cold but the shivering had stopped as my body had adjusted to his proximity. I felt that line in me, the tension between a truly profound discomfort and total relaxation at being so close to him. The sad thing is Jasper was winning. I wanted to accuse him of calming me down, but I really suspected he wasn't doing anything. I actually did feel this calm around him. Now there was a scary thought.

"I don't know," he said finally, "feelings are my thing, but we are well and truly through the looking glass here. I'm not sure conventional morality has much bearing on my kind to be perfectly honest. I've done more horrible things than anyone else you're ever going to meet, but if I'm telling you the truth, in my mind I'm not a monster. Not really. I'm not a calculating sociopath killing for sport, I'm a bleeding hearted empath with lifelong depression and the distinct misfortune of having been born the best military tactician of my generation. When I think back to the cold hearted boy I used to be I know that I've done some terrible things, but I'm just that, a person who has done horrible things. I'm not a horrible person. And, if redemption is possible, don't I get my shot too? Otherwise, if there's no walking back from the edge for me, then all these things that I've done, all of my experiences, really will have been for nothing."

"I hate to break it to you Jazz, but I don't think most evil men consider themselves to be monsters. Like that old truism goes, even Hitler was a vegetarian."

I looked up from his chest and glanced at his face. I saw a playful smirk develop on his lips as he thought of something terrible to say, "Then I'm one step ahead of them because I've strongly considered the possibility that I'm unredeemable. So, funny enough that you should mention it, but my family all joke around that we're vegetarians too because we eat animals instead of people. How's that for bleak?"

I could feel the mood shifting, and again I knew it was just because of Jazz being Jazz instead of any kind of manipulation. He could charm the pants off the devil herself. "Yeah, that's pretty morbid," I agreed, trying to suppress a grin.

"Now, as to your larger point about the question of evil, I have to say, given what I know of human history, military history in particular, being a terrible person has basically no relation ever on getting laid. So what do you think, want to be my Eva Braun?"

"Oh gross," I laughed painfully, "that's not funny. Seriously, don't say that ever again."

"Sorry, bad joke. But really, I'm very curious about what's going through your head right now."

I smiled in spite of myself. I smiled in spite of everything that I thought I knew about myself. My voice was light and my tone was joking, "I'm thinking that I shouldn't be interested in such a sketchy married older man. It's gross. I should be thoroughly repulsed. Like you were saying about me earlier, it's a situation I thought I'd never be dumb enough to consider. I guess I'm thinking about if I can deal or not."

"Ok, just bear with me," he drawled, "I'll be real with you then. In my experience no relationship is ever exactly what you sign up for. There are usually big ugly things about them that aren't what you expect, challenges you can't spot till you're right up close, and then once you see them you have to decide if they are things you can handle or things you can't. Is the pleasure worth the pain?

"Take Alice for an obvious example. Living with someone who always has one foot in the future is hard and frustrating. And it's a little painful sometimes when she doesn't understand something and I realize that there will always be these gaps in our experiences that we can't quite bridge. But she's wonderful and I love her. Every day with her is a new adventure. She's so totally grounded in the here and now, in how wonderful it is to be alive, and with her I can let the past be the past. I mean, I can literally feel her joy as we make our life together. It'll never be perfect since nothing's ever perfect, but goddamn if she isn't worth it and I will always choose to put the work in."

It was my turn to smirk at him, "So you're telling me that Alice is worth it and I should skip you in favor of her. That's probably really good advice."

He kissed my collar bone, "Glad you were listening."

I rolled over on top of him so I was straddling him and pushed myself up with my hands on his chest so I could look in his face, "Jasper Hale, or Whitlock, whoever you are. You are terrible and I kind of fucking hate you right now. Want to know a secret? All afternoon I've wanted to grab you by your stupid fucking suspenders and kiss you. I was going to go through with it too. So what do you do? You throw them in the trash as soon as I fall asleep."

He shifted under me and helped me stabilize my perch upon him, "Sorry to tell you darlin' but that wasn't exactly a secret to anyone."

"Right, and then when I'm working up the nerve to kiss you fresh out of the shower while you're still warm and you start telling me all kinds of terrible shit about yourself and you totally kill the mood. I'm out of excuses to do it and I can't even really justify myself at this point. You are the last person on Earth I should want to kiss anymore."

"That's going to make it real awkward when you do it in a moment," he said, with a grating amount of arrogance.

My heart fluttered and tried to rip out of my chest. This was it. I was ready, I wanted this, so why was I suddenly so hesitant and uncertain.

I whetted my lips and spoke, "Any chance you can use your dumb power to help me be alright with this? That's a weird request, but if I'm going to be a total idiot I might as well delay the feeling of wanting to bang my head against the wall for later and just enjoy this right now. Wait, I've got it, you saved my life! Yeah, there, that's the perfect reason to give you a kiss."

He lay sprawled out beneath me like a vulnerable maiden, bare chested, clad in only a feminine pair of pants that hugged his body. His honeyed locks pooled around his face as he held cautiously still and let me lead. He was bright eyed and fierce, the waiting hunter.

"Sorry honey, no can do, this is all on you. You have no idea how hungry I am," he drawled, "it's everything I can manage to not push you over and gobble you up. It'll be fine so long as I don't move too much."

"What about Alice?" I asked, wanting to make sure. Needing to make sure.

"What about her? If she were standing right behind you watching us, would that make you more or less inclined?"

That was a good point. I moved my hands so they were on his shoulders pushing him down into the bed. He moved his hands to support me at the waist but I was still in control. I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his hungrily. This wasn't my first kiss, but it was my first kiss with him.

I closed my eyes. His lips were silken and cool, hungry and pressing. We fit together so easily. I pulled back momentarily breathing out my lust only to have him surge forward and kiss me again. Hard, hot. His bottom lip sliding against mine as he took what I wanted him to take. He was squeezing my waist a little too hard and then he pulled away and let me go. I could feel his chest heave beneath my perch as he broke the kiss again and sucked in air.

"Holy shit," I whispered, and then I pressed down on his shoulders as hard as I could, he let me overpower him, and I was kissing all over the side of his neck. The dam had burst and I couldn't hold back. He grabbed my ass and I bit down as hard as I could on the side of his neck, near where his jugular would be if he still had veins.

He winced at that one, "What the fuck, Bella!?" He didn't sound totally displeased.

I let go and nipped lightly at his earlobe.

"I got you again," I growled, "you have such a beautiful neck. Totally unspoiled. Waiting for someone to penetrate your defenses. I did it. It was me. I got to be your first."

He kissed my shoulder, lips pulling hard against the skin, trying to bruise the surface, "I shudder to think of the damage you could do if you really were a cold one."

I heard Alice's airy laugh behind me, "Need some help, love?"

Jasper's lips let go and he took my chin in a free hand, turning my face so he could give me a quick peck on the lips, before he looked over my shoulder and turned his attention on Alice, "Yes please. I seem to have underestimated our darling Isabella yet again and I'm in a bit of a bind here."

I heard her beautiful giggle, "My turn then!"

Frozen hands grabbed me by the ankles from behind and yanked me hard backwards in a classic horror movie move. I clawed for purchase but Jasper just held my gaze and let me fall.

I landed at the foot of the bed in a tangle of topsheets. I'd managed to pull part of the bedding down with me. I looked up and Alice was in front of me, kicking off her shoes and shrugging out of my new crimson rain jacket. The cold night air still hung around her like a spell.

She was dressed formally, in dark slacks and a tight black button-up shirt. She'd been shopping in the young men's section at Goodwill earlier and she looked dashing now. There was something hard about her eyes that made me nervous. She was smiling, and I could tell she was happy to see me, but something was seriously off about her demeanor.

"Stand up." Her voice was pleasant enough but the words were a curt little command.

I put my hands on the carpet under me and started to struggle to my feet. She reached out with her leg like a ballerina and unbalanced me with a delicate push of the ball of her foot against my shoulder. I crashed back against the bed and looked up at her only to see a pleased grin flit across her lips.

"I said stand up." Her words were all sugar coated menace, like a sparkly frosted cupcake with a razor blade pushed into the top as a decoration. I couldn't help it, I felt myself grinning a little too.

"Are we really doing this?" I asked, not really believing it.

She scowled cutely, "Don't make me repeat myself again."

I struggled to comply, getting up as fast as I could manage. I felt a little cowed and vulnerable under her glare.

"Now come over here."

She'd taken a few steps towards the bathroom and I hurried to catch up.

As soon as I was within arms length she sprang her trap. In the blink of an eye she'd grabbed me by the upper forearms, careful to avoid the bruised area lower down where I'd actually been manhandled earlier that evening, and she'd swung me around pretty solidly into a bare patch of wall. By her standards it was nothing but a gentle love tap, but by my standards it hurt. It was literally a shock to my body.

I felt my breath catch in my throat, I was starting to get scared. Her elfin face leered in front of me and I turned my head away. I wanted to hide behind my hair but she'd been so considerate and had braided it all up a few hours ago and now I had nowhere I could escape her beautiful wrath.

"You dirty little sneak," she spat at me, "I was only gone a few minutes. I saw you kissing Jazz. You thought you could steal a kiss and I wouldn't care?"

I wanted to look anywhere other than into her face. I struggled in her grip but she was impossibly strong. I wasn't getting out of this. On the bright side, as long as she was forcing me against the wall like this she couldn't make me look at her. I glanced over at Jasper who was sprawled out on top of the messy bed watching this with obvious fascination. Yeah, he wasn't going to lift a finger for me.

I felt the icy hand of death clamp around my throat. I felt Alice's delicate grip on my windpipe. Her other hand forced my face forward. I stared into her face, a sharp predatory grin plastered across her lips as all the sweetness bled out.

"Don't look over there. I'm right here. You should be looking at me right now. Now, you do admit that you're a dirty little sneak, right? You're the kind of tramp who kisses other people's husbands."

All I could do was nod my head. I looked up and to the side to avoid eye contact. Her eyes were all consuming. I was breathing hard, so painfully conscious of every breath I took.

"Good," she sneered, "at least you know what you are. Everything that is Jasper's is mine, so really that was my kiss that you stole. And I'm not going to fall behind here. You've been doing all the hard work today so I'm going to be your super nice best friend here and make this nice and easy for you. You want to be a good girl for me, right Isabella?"

I didn't react. I was going to fight her and resist for as long as I could. Her hand that had been forcing me to look at her had moved on to stroking my side under my shirt. She felt terrifyingly cold. I was hyper aware of the hand over my throat. She could end this whenever she wanted. I was utterly at her mercy. I was totally and completely helpless to this tiny scrap of a girl.

"Just hold still. This is going to feel really nice."

I held still, anticipation building. She was going to kiss me. I had no choice. It wasn't my fault. This isn't what I wanted. No one could blame me. I couldn't move even if I wanted to.

It was just a kiss. It probably didn't even count if I was forced. Besides, I'd already kissed a murderer. What did it matter anymore if I kissed a girl. No one would ever have to know. I wanted this so bad.

Her lips touched mine as she cut off my air with a press of her fingers. Her kiss took my breath away. It was everything I'd dreamed of. She was well practiced and graceful in her motions; I was soft and yielding beneath her. She was lighter and more teasing than Jasper, more exploratory. I could tell she was less confident than she'd been trying to appear, but she was also bolder too. I felt her tongue trying to enter my mouth and I parted my lips to let her in.

A girl had her tongue in my mouth. I felt her slide against me, something cool and alien inside me. It felt good. It felt so good. Alice! I was kissing Alice! I shuddered against her, trying to breathe and remembering that I couldn't. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I was so fucking helpless right now. I ground forward against her body, wishing she had her leg wedged between mine.

"See, perfectly harmless," she whispered to me, just to me, only to me. She sounded like her normal self except she was still choking the life out of me. It had only been a few seconds but I was desperate for air. I didn't want to die like this. I just wanted to breathe. I needed a breath.

She leaned in for a second kiss. I tapped out.

I delivered a quick double tap with my open hand to her forearm and that was it. Instantly she was backing up, concern lining her face, her dominance taken off and put away like just another social mask. I braced myself against the wall behind me for support.

"I'm so sorry, Bella. Are you okay? I took that too far, didn't I?"

I waved her off weakly, "Oh hush. You're fine. I was pretty into it."

"It was the kiss, right? I really did think you'd like it once you had a chance to try it. Plus, you know, it was only fair. So I just, well, I don't know," she had this adorable sort of way of rambling along breathlessly when she was flustered. She was so worried about me being upset that she couldn't see how blown away I was.

I tried to sound like I was fine, "Alice, hey, I told you, don't worry about it. I didn't tap out because of the kiss. Just, hey, for future reference, I don't like actually having my air cut off. That's all. The threat of being choked is enough and that's the part that does it for me."

Jasper's voice cut into our closed world, "You've done this before?" It was more an observation than a question.

I nodded my head, "I've never really done, like, a scene before, but yeah, I did experiment with getting choked by someone I trust. I figured out what I liked and didn't like about it, and he figured out that he didn't like anything about the experience."

"Someone?" Jasper rolled the word around demandingly. I didn't owe him shit. Then again, if I was trying to open up a little that was something I could start with.

Alice handed me the glass of water from the nightstand as soon as I thought about asking for it. She had a coy little smile, "I thought you said you weren't the kind of girl who did things that needed safewords."

I rolled my eyes at the languorous boy on the bed and turned to Alice, "Well, obviously it was with Jacob. Who else could I trust for something like that? And, yeah, clearly, we didn't use a safeword or anything. I mean, come on."

"Perhaps I'll have to ask him about that," she said teasingly, "we called him while you were asleep and talked for a bit to let him know what was going on. He seemed pretty cool after he calmed down. He invited us to his birthday too, as long as you are okay with it, so we might even show up at the barbecue thing at your house this weekend if the weather lets us."

Alice and Jasper getting friendly with Jake was a blood curdling notion. I'd been fine when they were trading barbs over the phone in the car, but the idea of them talking to him without me made me super uncomfortable. They'd talk about me. Jake was my friend. That was a little closer than I was ready to deal with yet.

"Show Alice how to do it right," Jasper suggested out of the blue. I blinked at him, not comprehending and he flexed his hand in a clenching motion. He had a wicked smile as he considered the idea. From his cues it didn't seem like he was picking up the mantle of control from where Alice had dropped it, more like he was just very used to giving orders and having them be obeyed.

Well, hell! Let's do this. I guided her to the spot on the wall that I'd just left. I felt nervous touching her, but when I put my hand over her neck her eyes sparkled with delight.

"Like this," I said haltingly, "just enough to feel the pressure. So, for me, knowing that you can choke me is enough to scare the shit out of me. With your strength actually doing it is probably a bad idea anyway."

Her hands were running over my sides again beneath my tank top, getting bolder and sliding over the sides of my breasts. Despite having her pinned I still felt like I was the one in the trap.

"What else?" she asked, biting her lip and staring up at me with her big dark eyes.

I leaned in close, pressing my body against hers, trying not to be scared of the contact, "Then, I tell you that I knew you were there when I kissed Jazz. The idea of you being there was a huge turn on for me. That's what I wanted."

She was all sassy defiance, "I came in silently. You couldn't have known."

I put my leg between hers, like I'd wanted her to do with me, and she ground down against my thigh with a ragged little breath. Her poise faltered and then fell aside with a moan. She was so vulnerable and open beneath my grasp.

I squeezed her neck experimentally. She didn't need to breathe.

"You pulled the same stunt at Newton's earlier. I'm not going to fall for the same trick twice. And, well, the way Jazz said it, it just seemed like a set up, 'cause you both are kinda dicks sometimes. I just knew."

"You should do the next part of our scene too," she said softly, totally under my spell. Or was I under her spell?

I felt her hands running over my breasts, squeezing me through my bra. I hesitated as her lips parted in anticipation. They were a sultry red just begging to be kissed.

The girl batted her eyelashes at me, "I get it already, I need to be very gentle with the human girl and scare her silly in the best possible way, but you don't have to be careful with me. Come on, Bella. You're wound so tight, just let go and do it."

I put my other hand on her neck as well and squeezed with both hands as hard as I could. I could feel her windpipe collapse beneath the pressure, and she made little playacted struggling motions with her hands, still mostly just pawing at my breasts.

She went limp in my grasp. If she were a human girl I'd be killing her. In the background Jasper whistled in appreciation. All I could do was stare at her red, red lips.

I must have been standing there too long throttling her because she opened one of her lifeless eyes to peek at me like a sly little corpse. She was still waiting for me, breathless in her anticipation. I was shaking, so scared of what I wanted. It was just a kiss. Something harmless.

I pressed my lips against hers at the corner of her mouth, taking the cowards way out. Not a real kiss at all, but as close as I could muster. I pulled back and let go. I could feel cold sweat prickling at my neck as I tried to breathe. My arms were aching and my hands felt numb from letting go.

Alice came back to life in front of me. There was a moment of rough coughing from her and then it turned into laughter.

"You awful cheat," she growled out in a sign song, and effortlessly she lifted me up and threw me down on the bed beside Jasper.

In a heartbeat she was all over me on the bed. She was kissing my neck, my collarbone, my jaw and cheeks. Everywhere except my mouth. Jasper's hand found mine and I clutched him hard for reassurance.

"I thought I had you," Alice said between kisses, taking out her frustrations tenderly on my flesh.

Alice's right hand crept to the hem of my skirt and started to push below the waistband. Jasper interrupted the action with an awkward cough. We both froze and turned to the third participant on the bed with a united glare of irritation.

"As much as I'm enjoying this vision of sapphic loveliness," he started, "I was looking at the clock and I just remembered that you said you wanted sushi, Alice. If we leave right now we can still make it. We'll be those assholes who show up last minute, but we can do it. Who knows when we'll have a better opportunity?"

"She's mine! You're not going to rescue her this time," Alice growled out possessively, her mouth hovering over my throat.

She looked up at me pleadingly. She gave my pubic mound a firm squeeze through my panties and I knew I wasn't ready. I wanted her so bad. I was unbearably horny, but I was also starving. Hunger clawed at me and made the whole thing less romantic than I wanted. I was also roughed up, strung out on adrenaline, exhausted, and overwhelmed. Alice seducing me was the most natural thing in the world but I wanted it to be perfect when it happened. I mean if, if. That should be "if," not "when." Somewhere special, not in a cheap hotel room that reminded me of my old life.

Honestly, I was just scared. It was too much too fast.

I reached up and stroked the side of her head. She nuzzled into my hand, the spikes of her hair running ticklish and prickly against my skin. I held her gaze, hoping I could convey what I was feeling right now.

"You'll have other chances to ensnare me. You are my beautiful Lamia, and, like an Ouroboros, this isn't the end. For now, just like, let's all take a step back and do this whole date thing in the right order. You two need to take me out to dinner still."

Alice kissed the corner of my mouth petulantly, reminding me of my cop out, and then went over to her makeup bag on the counter to fix her lipstick.

I put my hand on Jasper's chest, feeling his scars beneath my palm, and leaned up to his ear, "Thanks for the save. You're not such a bad guy, you know."

I'd meant it as a private comment, but over at the counter I saw Alice smiling at my words.

Jasper gave my waist an affectionate squeeze and pushed me off of him.

"Don't thank me yet," he chuckled, "you really have no idea yet what a shit show dinner is promising to be."

I thought of Alice's hand at my neck again and smiled. I couldn't wait!


Author's Note: I never intended to write this chapter, but none of the characters would let me move past it. Jasper had his bit to say, and he was going to hijack my story until it was said, and then Alice perked up and said that if we were doing a first kisses chapter she should get hers as well. So there you have it.

I also hadn't intended this whole story to be quite so overtly about kinky subjects but in retrospect it seems somewhat inevitable that it would need to be as a counterpoint to Twilight's cruder interests in dominance and control. A friend reading my early chapters commented about Bella, "Well, someone's got a choking fetish," and I just went "huh, I guess I did write her like that," and then I ran with it. In a way there's nothing more fitting for a vampire story than an obsession with throats, and this chapter is the logical conclusion of that.

Also, I feel like I should have a disclaimer here. Nazis may be fun to conjure up for their thematic associations and for grappling with ideas of evil, but yeah, seriously, fuck Nazis.