AN: WOW! You guys were amazing reviewers last chapter-not that you aren't usually-but I was seriously blown away by your response to the last chapter. I tried my very best to respond to everyone and to answer everyone's questions (and send the teaser out), but at one point, once I'd done about 70+ over the first few days, I really just could not keep up. I'm so so so sorry. I fail as a review replier. In the end, I decided you would probably all appreciate a chapter instead of a review reply, so here's your reward :)

Playlist on my profile updated. Thank you my beta, JosieSwan.

Bella

Oh shit, oh shit, oh motherfucking shit, I thought as I tried to process all the ways that this was fucked up. My brain nearly exploded with the repercussions of Edward's confession. So much that I hadn't understood and couldn't comprehend about the tightly closed man next to me made sense now. Even why he hated me so much.

"Your dad was a member of the IRA," I said slowly. "He died fighting for what he believed in. He died fighting against. . ." I didn't want to say my people, because I didn't necessarily consider myself British in the strictest sense, but in the end, blood was blood. It was in you, flowing through your veins, and you couldn't deny it, even if you wanted to.

"Yes." I watched as he swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing in his throat. He had been so easy to dismiss before this moment as just a spoiled, overly emo, womanizing rock star. The context that I'd always used for Edward was now blown to shit, and I didn't know how to put it back together again. I was unmanned and destroyed and way too fucking vulnerable.

He rolled back over, just enough so he could meet my eyes, and he couldn't help but know it. His decision was all over his face, and while I knew I could stop it, could push him away, I didn't have the emotional grid quite rebuilt just yet. So I gave in and only felt as he dismantled me all over again.

He kissed me for the second time, his lips coasting over mine deliberately and just before my eyes drifted closed and I could fall more into his kiss, into his embrace, I saw the flicker of death and pain in his eyes evaporate into numbness. I realized then that I was only a coping mechanism, just as the other women had been, but at least I realized it, and I knew the reason why. That was enough for me—it had to be, because I couldn't pull away now as his arms grasped me and dragged me physically across the Demilitarized Zone until I fit flush against him.

I was sure that he'd move too fast for me. After all, this was Edward Cullen and his exploits with women were legendary—hadn't he told me to take off my clothes pretty much the first second he'd met me? But he didn't pull the domineering asshat card this time. Instead, he kissed me, not exactly tenderly, but passionately and single-mindedly, as if we were going to only kiss forever.

His hands tightened around my waist, the his rough fingers stroking and teasing my skin, and I pushed my hands into the hair at the base of his neck. I forced myself not to think, but only to revel in how good it felt to be wrapped up and around him.

Our legs and our mouths tangled together, and it felt so fucking good, like a drug you were hesitant to try, but once you did, you couldn't get enough of. Edward might not be on board whispering sweet, romantic nothings in my ear, but there was something so intrinsically physical and sexual about the way his fingers skimmed up my legs, from the calves to my knees to my thighs. I'd never thought I'd admit this, but I didn't even miss the emotional connection when I kissed him. I just wanted to feel this extraordinary, drugging pleasure forever.

Edward's lips were hot on mine and my skin felt too tight and small for the body inside. His hands moved farther up my thighs, until they found the edge of my panties. I tensed, expecting him to go further, to push me harder, until I inevitably gave in, but instead, he stopped where he was, seemingly content to trace the very edge of them. Even that relatively innocuous move had me panting into his mouth, squirming to get closer, to rub against the hard-on that he seemed completely comfortable with sharing with me.

This, I thought dimly, was the danger with kissing him right now. There was nothing to interrupt us, nobody to wrest us back to the reality of "I don't really like you that all that much." And I realized that Edward was probably past caring about that particular point, and I was only about thirty seconds behind him.

I pulled away, knowing that if I didn't do it now, I wouldn't be able to soon, but with his lips free, he proceeded to lick and nibble down the column of my neck, kissing the slope with such skill that I forgot exactly why I'd wanted to stop in the first place.

"Wait," I mumbled breathlessly. "We . . ."

But before I could finish the thought, the door opened and light flooded through the room. I blinked in surprise, my eyes nearly blind at the sudden brightness. Realizing that Emmett had come back, I tried to pull away from Edward, to detangle myself from his arms, so that nobody would know what I had almost succumbed to doing in the dark cocoon of our jail cell. But Edward was having none of it and he held on tight as I struggled to get away.

"Well isn't this an adorable scene." The harsh, metallic voice, totally unemotional and tinged with so much bitterness it dripped with it, wasn't Emmett's. Giving one final shove to Edward, I sat up while rearranging my clothing, and came face to face with a woman—or maybe she was a girl. Except that no girl had a voice like that.

She was tiny, maybe only 5'0" but you'd never mistake her for a child because she was dressed in tight leather pants, black boots and a tight black t-shirt that clung to the curveless planes of her body. I gulped and blinked hard, hoping that whoever this was, she was only a mirage brought on by too long in the dark. Her face was formed into similar hard angles, and her blond hair was pulled back relentlessly from her face, braided into a tight, unforgiving rope that swung behind her. Her eyes were just as dark as her voice, almost black, and completely dead. I had never before met a woman who scared me the living shit out of me, but clearly there was a first time for everything.

"Emmett told me you were a pig, but clearly, I underestimated you," she said, that dead voice morphing into something deeper, something unbearably darker.

"Who the hell are you?" Edward snarled at her, but I noticed he made no move to put me behind him or protect me in any way from Commando Barbie. Well, I supposed I shouldn't be surprised at that. Edward had never made any pretense of being anything other than what he was—a selfish ass. A few kisses weren't going to change that, no matter how mind-blowing they had been.

"You can call me Jane," she said succinctly, and I had a definite hunch that, just like Edward, Jane wasn't her real name.

"And you are?" I couldn't help but ask the question, because my stomach had twisted into a dozen or so boy scout-worthy knots ever since Jane's untimely entrance.

"I'm in charge here." She crossed her arms over her chest and looked coldly at me, like she would rather I evaporated into nothingness. Which made sense, considering I wasn't exactly supposed to be here.

"What about Emmett?" Edward asked casually, and I could tell he was more worried about the fate of the man who'd kidnapped him than his own, which was ridiculous. If Edward cared any less about his own personal safety, he'd probably drop dead from lack of oxygen to his lungs.

"Oh, he's fine," Jane said, and the very timbre of her voice seemed to resonate with her displeasure. I'd been worried before, of course, once I had stopped to really think of how Emmett's "friends" might view my appearance, but because he'd never mentioned any potential difficulty, I'd stupidly assumed that everything would be alright. Clearly, it was not going to be alright, if Jane had anything to say about the matter. And unfortunately, it appeared that she had all the say.

"Good," Edward spoke up again, "because he matters to me. He's important. Remember that."

I didn't exactly think that Edward was in a position to be making demands, but then I remembered, the knowledge rushing back to the forefront of my thoughts, that Edward's father had lived and died as a member of this group. Yes, he was currently kind of incarcerated, but surely that was some sort of misunderstanding. He was, if anything, a member by default. By blood. Me, on the other hand . . .

I was an interloper, and not only that, I was descended, almost directly, from a race that was the sworn, hated enemy. I would have to be very, very careful not to let my British accent slip out, and pray that Edward , in his eagerness to get out of here, didn't sell my secret.

Jane looked at him hard, her gaze sharpening even further, and then she gave a small, nearly-feral smile. I tried not to shudder visibly as her teeth bared. "I'll keep that in mind. Have a good night."

She turned on her boot sole and left the way she'd come—abruptly.

The door closed behind her and we heard the sounds of the locks closing us into our cell. Edward turned to me, and I could tell from the sudden pasty pallor of his skin and tight restrained quality of his voice that he was nervous. "I wasn't expecting her."

"I'm not surprised," I told him almost flippantly, trying to lighten the suddenly suffocating atmosphere in the room, "I wouldn't be expecting her either."

"I forget sometimes that the Red Hands are a militaristic arm of the IRA. Emphasis on the militaristic." He said it almost as if he was speaking to the void and not to me at all.

"I can see why you'd conveniently forget that part," I murmured. And I could. What boy would want to think of his father as part of a militant terrorist organization, no matter how lofty their goals? No doubt it was much easier to think of his dad plotting and working to overthrow the British government in Ireland in an amorphous way. Not with bombs and guns and bullets.

"I could before," Edward said. "I can't now."

I felt sick. The peanut butter and cheap white wonder bread I'd been consuming for days on end was a thick, heavy lump in my stomach and I rubbed it absently as Edward and I lay together on the bed.

After Jane's unexpected appearance, neither of us had mentioned abandoning the bed again, and we'd stretched out like before. Except that this time, as I stared at the empty space between us, I vowed that I'd preserve it this time. It had been a monumental mistake, no matter how good it had felt, to let Edward touch me. And I hadn't just let him touch me, I realized, I had touched him. For what had at the time seemed like a million good, justifiable reasons, but now just felt like selfish weakness—because I had wanted to.

Neither of us had much to say. What else was there to say? There was no point in saying that we were both fucking screwed, because to verbalize it, to say the words out loud, meant that they were true.

So we lay in silence, carefully not touching, and thinking of all the things that we couldn't say. At least I was, and I was fairly sure, from Edward's frozen facial expression, that he was thinking along similar lines.

"You can't let them find out you're British." The words slipped out, as if he'd never meant to say them -only think them- and I closed my eyes in fear and panic and horror as the knots in my stomach tightened.

"I know," I whispered. I couldn't help but wonder what Edward's cautionary warning meant; surely he didn't care what happened to me. He hated me. He'd said it enough, and I'd been so sure that he'd meant it every single time—until now. Maybe, I thought, glancing at him from under the cover of my semi-closed eyes, it was all a matter of his defenses breaking down in an excruciatingly stressful situation.

"Better yet," Edward continued, "just don't talk at all if she comes back."

"Believe me, I wasn't planning on it. But if I had to talk, it would probably be okay. After all, you didn't notice until . . ." I realized that I'd been about to say that my accent hadn't appeared until he'd cornered me. And this particular situation, more than probably any other I'd been in, had the potential for extreme stress.

"I just won't say anything," I corrected, shutting my trap. As much as I hated admitting that he was right, he had my best interests at heart here. Which was a thought I'd never have connected to Edward Cullen.

"That's a better plan," he said.

Feeling strangely better with saying the words rather than just thinking them, my stomach clenched with anxiety and nausea as silence again fell between us. As if he felt the same, Edward spoke up again, not even minutes later, and he picked a topic that I'd never even allowed myself to imagine discussing with him. And not only that, his voice was nice, neutral. The dripping disdain was completely gone.

"So your dad got you into rock music?"

My fingers, tracing the wrinkles in the rough cotton of the sheet, froze. Were we going to have an actual conversation that didn't consist of verbal baiting and insults? It appeared so. "Yes," I said softly. "I guess I didn't like it so much when I was young -when he was alive- but after he died? Music kept me sane."

I halfway expected him to argue the point—that it was stupid to consider myself insane just because I'd lost a parent—but I saw him nod instead, and for the second time in an hour, I wondered just who the Edward was behind the walls, and if I would like him any better than the Edward I'd spent the last few days with.

"I understand," he said. "I get the insane thing, even though I don't remember my dad. My mom alone was probably enough to commit me."

"Same here," I said wryly. "She's spent my entire life desperately trying to make me be everything she was. The music was -is- a good way of fighting her."

To my surprise, Edward chuckled, the sound natural and real, the bitter and scornful edge missing. I opened my eyes a little farther, and I saw that he wasn't even really looking at me. His eyes were focused over my shoulder, on the empty wall, lost in his own memories.

"Esme's so hard she makes you look like Aphrodite," he said. Of course, this was still Edward and he couldn't be nice for long, but I smiled anyway. Only he could manage to work me into an insult about his mother.

"Esme's your mom?"

"Yeah. She's a real piece of work, though I suppose that by the time she met my dad, she'd already spent 18 years being taught to think, to act, one way, and it was a little too late to change. She tried out his life, but it was really only a trial. And when he died, we came back to the life she'd been born to."

He paused, and I wondered if he was clamming up again—deciding that he'd told me too much already—but then he continued, and I realized then that he hadn't been rebuilding the walls. He'd been trying to pick the right words to use to describe the exactly how he'd felt.

"I didn't know my father, and I don't remember the life we had with him. But when I was old enough, I spent all my time learning what it must have been like. I've been angry at Esme for picking for us, because I was sure she'd picked wrong. But now, I'm not so sure she did."

I swallowed hard as the pieces fell into place. "That's why you didn't fight it. This is what you'd always wanted."

He stretched out his long legs, and one of them brushed mine. We both jumped, as if we'd been electrocuted. And it made sense, considering my earlier decision that becoming physically involved was a mistake, for me to react that way, but not for Edward; after all, he spent his entire life burying himself in physicality.

"Sorry," he muttered, and then I knew I was either in an alternate universe or something weird had just happened to the man beside me. I'd never heard him apologize for any of the crap he'd said to me over the last few days, or for manhandling me, or for the untenable situation we'd found ourselves in. And now he'd just gone and apologized for touching my leg.

"Who are you?" I demanded. "Are you still Edward Cullen or are you his good twin?"

He laughed at that, the clear sound breaking down the tension that lay between us. "You make me sound like an asshole."

I rolled my eyes at him. "You are an asshole, remember?"

"As always, you flatter me, Swan." He paused, and I could see the intense thought on his face. He wanted to say something—to ask something—but he was hesitating. Fear didn't mesh with the Edward Cullen I thought I knew, but the last ten minutes had begun to prove that I didn't know him all that well after all.

"Just tell me," I said with exasperation. "You know you want to."

"A blogger, and now a mind reader." Edward sighed. "What happened earlier. . .I've never had to pay a woman to kiss me before. I'm feeling. . .weird about it."

"You're feeling? I think the world just stopped rotating."

"Very funny, Swan. I'm serious." And from his expression, I could tell he was. His green eyes were locked earnestly onto mine, and though he still had that slightly cocky smirk on his lips, he was being sincere-maybe for the first time in his entire fucking life. "I may get women drunk and high and manipulate them into fucking me, but I've never had to pay for one."

"You say this as if I was a professional," I said self-consciously. I wasn't used to this Edward; I didn't know how to handle him. I'd handled the other just fine, because I could dish out verbal volleys as well as he could, but heartfelt confessions, especially from a man that I'd been so sure didn't even have a conscience? Those were more difficult. "You didn't technically pay me anyway."

"Information is more valuable than money. We both know this."

"So what are you saying exactly?"

"I'll tell you what you want to know—within reason. And I definitely want to kiss you again-and more-but the trade's off. I don't want you ruining my perfect record, Swan."

And there the cockiness returned in full force, the lightning charm in his eyes. I couldn't believe that I'd never suspected that he was Irish before. Sure he didn't have an accent, but it was so obvious—in the quicksilver charm, in the sullen broodiness, in the animal magnetism he reveled in.

"Anything I want to know?"

"Fuck no, Swan. There are some things that are off-limits. I get veto power."

"That's not fair."

"Take it or leave it."

I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest. "Fine. Veto power is permissible. But, don't think that because I'm agreeing to this that there will be any more kissing. Because I'm resolved on that point."

"You don't think I could seduce you?" I thought he definitely could, but I also was sure that I had to resist, if I wanted to hold myself together.

"No," I said forcefully. "Absolutely not. That was just a moment of weakness. I'm long past it."

"Well, I'd certainly would be disappointed if you made it easy. Gives me something to do in this godforsaken place."

"I am not your entertainment," I shot back.

"But I'm yours," he grinned.

"That's different. That's scientific inquiry. I want to know how the great Edward Cullen ticks."

"And I just want to make the ice cold Bella Swan melt. How is that any different?"

I swallowed hard. "Resistance is futile, Swan," he said casually, rolling onto his back. "Just remember that."

Emmett

Typically, women liked me. For the last ten years, I'd been comfortable around them (Rosalie excluded) and they were generally pretty damn comfortable around me too. I might not fuck anything vaguely female, like Edward did, but I'd definitely never hurt for female company.

Jane, it appeared, was the exception to the rule. As she stalked out of the hallway and into the kitchen, I could practically feel her disdain, her anger and her utter loathing for me rolling off her in waves. Yeah, Jane and I weren't exactly friends, because I'd rather chop my hand off with a rusty, dull blade than touch her.

Yes, she had all the right parts in all the right places—though I supposed that was debatable—but she was so scary as fuck that you didn't even want to think about touching any of those places while she was in the room. Her version of a girly slap and an offended squeal? Let me whittle your balls off, nice and slow, and then stuff them down your throat. And that was probably one of Jane's kinder methods of castration.

The original plan—I was already beginning to think in nostalgic terms of the point when it had seemed very likely that I'd manage to pull this off with no collateral damage to myself or to others—had been for the boss to show up alone, have a quiet little convo with Edward, and then split. This was why I'd allowed Bella to come along; I'd figured that it couldn't exactly hurt anything, and she'd be good company for my egotistical, narcissistic boss. Plus, the part of me that wished I was still a student, couldn't help but be interested in the potential human experiment. Would they kill each other? Fuck like rabbits? Or, most improbably of all, end up actually liking each other?

Mentally I scoffed at the latter option. The very best that I could possibly hope for would be tolerating each other's company and I should thank God that he hadn't gone all Brit-crazy on her yet, the way he'd done only a week ago with Monaghan.

Jane stared at me from those dead eyes, never blinking, never moving, her face a perfect blank mask of nothing. If she was pissed that I'd brought along a toy for Edward to play with, she didn't look it, though from the tightly coiled energy surrounding her, I had a horrible feeling that it didn't exactly take much to send her off the deep end.

"So," I said as normally as I could, as if I kidnapped rock stars and faced down scary as fuck IRA henchmen—or henchwomen—everyday. "Where's Niall?"

She moved like a snake, swift and deadly. I was up against the wall before I could even blink or move a hand to defend myself—after the first time meeting her, I'd decided that Jane didn't count under the "don't hit women" policy; she was a clause all her own—and with a flat strike of her palm, she pressed my head back against the plaster so hard I saw stars.

"You do not have permission to speak his name," she hissed, her thin lips so compressed together they almost disappeared into the milky white of her face.

I'd forgotten how freakishly protective Jane was of Niall. In fact, I was nearly certain they were sleeping together, which dropped the Red Hands boss down even farther in my estimation, and he was already pretty fucking low as it was.

"Sorry," I gasped, the flat of her hand digging into the skin of my throat until my voice came out in an unattractive squeal. "Won't do it again."

She released me as abruptly as she'd attacked me, and as she walked back into the kitchen, that tight blond braid swinging behind her, I surreptitiously rubbed the soon-to-be-bruised skin of my throat. It was embarrassing enough that she'd managed to pin me, and I had about a foot and a hundred pounds of muscle on her—she didn't need to know she'd hurt me on top of it. Though this was Jane, and every fucking thing she did was deliberate and calculated. Emotionless and remorseless, those were her calling cards. With a hint of sadism thrown in.

"Aro," Jane said pointedly, turning to throw yet another deathly glare my direction, "will be here in a few days."

Oh, that's right, I thought, barely restraining an eye roll, Niall didn't like going by his real name. He liked this Machiavellian, James Bond shit. So Aro it was. Personally, I thought it was stupid and added a complicated cloak-and-dagger wrinkle that was completely unnecessary, but being in charge, Niall did what Niall wanted. And since he was only a step behind Jane in sadistic fuckery, that was usually a fairly terrifying prospect.

She stayed in the kitchen, and I stayed in the small dining area, and we eyed each other through the connecting aisle. I could tell she didn't even want to be in the same room as me, and I sure as fuck wanted to stay as far away from her as I possibly could. "Let's talk about why you brought the girl."

And that was a line of questioning that I didn't really want to get into. I shrugged, keeping my expression carefully blank. If Jane smelled just how little I wanted to discuss the pretty brunette, she'd never let it go. In fact, she'd probably work up some paranoid schizo plot about why Bella was here—to infiltrate the Red Hands or something equally ridiculous. As if Bella could ever be a spy. She hadn't even been very good as a groupie.

"Not good enough," Jane snapped. "Tell me why she's here. Now." The demand was quietly uttered, but absolute. Dread coiled in the pit of my belly and my fists clenched, the skin sweaty and nervous. Rosalie, I uttered like a prayer, like a vow to myself and to her, Rosalie. All it took was a vision of her blond hair falling over her forehead, over those pool blue eyes, and I knew I would do whatever it took to get back to her. Even face psycho-bitch and not back down.

"She's none of your concern," I told her. "Bella is my responsibility, not yours."

"It's my responsibility to make sure that what happens here, stays here," Jane said slyly.

The oily tone of her voice twisted my gut into more knots, but I forced my voice to stay even. "She has no idea what's going on. And it'll stay that way."

"You don't even know what's going on," Jane scoffed.

That was definitely unwelcome news, but I tamped down the swelling panic, telling—no, insisting—to myself that Jane was just a crazy effer, and she liked screwing with me because she hated my guts. Bella and Edward and I would all be safe and unharmed and would get out of here with limbs and brains and skin untouched. Though my certainty that this would happen was dying a slow death with every second that Jane stared unblinking at me, her thin lips twisting into a grimace of a smile.

"Doesn't matter. She will stay unharmed." I didn't add that it was my own damn fault that she was here in the first place, and I would never let her be threatened or hurt. Same with Edward. If not for me, he would be up to his usual tricks. His behavior had never been exactly conservative, but he hadn't ever purposely put himself into a nest of vipers either.

Or rather, the nest of one viper.

"We'll see about that," Jane said, her voice telling me that I was fucking crazy. "Niall may disagree."

We both knew that Niall would definitely disagree—though at one point, I thought hopelessly, I'd been sure that Niall just wanted to talk to Edward. Now, with Jane's appearance, I was no longer quite so sure. There was definitely something going on that I was unaware of, and my own naivety and stupidity had put us all in incredible danger.

As Jane stalked off, her boots making hard, clicking sounds on the linoleum floor, I realized that I was going to have to do something to get us out of here pronto, before the situation disintegrated even more. Possibly before even Niall showed up. That would make things more difficult for me in the long term, since it would mean I hadn't fulfilled my end of the bargain with the Red Hands, but I would deal with that bridge when we came to it. For right now, I had to make sure that we all remained in one fucking piece.

AN: You can still donate to FicsforNashville to get my outtake from this story, called Transgressions of the Mother, which is about Esme (of course).

Shameless Pimp: a month or so ago, JosieSwan and I wrote an entry for the Texts from Last Night contest, The Princess & the Pussycat, which is kind of a story that you either love or hate lol. If you were one of the admiring factions, I encourage you to go vote for us. Link on my profile!