A/N: Thank you to those of you who sent me the PMs and emails wishing me well. Things look much better & I plan on staying far away from the hospital for quite some time. I'm touched by your concern.

Okay, so here we are at long last. I hope you enjoy.

Thank you for reading. As always, please review.

Special thanks to redsock for stepping up when I needed her & to Melee03 for really getting me.

I own nothing Twilight-related. Anything recognizable as Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

….

Chapter 14 – Lavender and Moonlight

From previous chapter:

"I want you to know." I placed a kiss in front of his ear. I can do this. I can put myself out there. "Everything."

I spoke, he listened. His skin, so warm against mine. "Just so you know," I breathed, and move nearer, leaving no room for pride. "The last man that touched me was you."

A low gasp, boarding on rumble rushed past me and suddenly his hands were twisted in my hair, drawing me back, pulling my gaze to meet his dark eyes. His focus darted from mouth to my eyes and back again.

"Why would you tell me such a thing?" He whispered, and loosed his grip on my hair, looking a bit mortified by the need to do so. "Can you even begin to understand what that does?"

I must have shaken my head because a smiled pulled at his mouth and he sat back further. "It's a dangerous effect."

There was a quake along my limbs, my body reacting to the tenor of his response. I hadn't thought about how he would take what I said, but if I had, I wouldn't have predicted something so…primal. The birthday kiss had seemed tentative, if I were to classify it. Our night together: restrained, or reverent for my part.

Those things were wonderful, precious.

This was different.

And I wanted to it happen again.

…..

My hand ran up and along the planes of his face, trembling along the path. He leaned into my palm. I knew his eyes were fixed on me intently but I couldn't make myself look away from his mouth, his lips. His warm breath mixed with mine.

He was so beautiful, and though the term is over-used, his beauty was surreal. I ran the tip of my index finger along his jawline and then to the perfect imperfection where his nose sat slightly off-center. His eyes fluttered closed, his face the picture of contentment.

I wanted feel him, to kiss him. He was the man I'd been thinking about most of my life. It would be in keeping with my newly-founded assertiveness to just lean in and go for it. It would be, but I couldn't make myself do it for some reason. Well, for a particular reason: Rejection. Or, the fear thereof. Which was probably quiet irrational at this point. Surely, he wouldn't be here - again – if activities such as kissing were out-of-bounds.

But my mind would not shut off. I knew I was over-thinking everything.

Now would be a great time to grab him and kiss him passionately. That's what I want to do. That's what Scarlett O'Hara would do. Or, maybe not. Did she ever get assertive? Well, I heard once Vivian Leigh didn't want to kiss Clark Gable. She complained he had bad breath. Her reserve comes across coy as on film. Do guys like coy? Rhett seemed to like it. What is coy anyway? Am I being coy now? Why am I thinking about this right now? Oh my god. Get a grip on yourself. The man of your dreams is leaning back and looking into your eyes and you are debating the outdated flirtation techniques of period piece cinema.

I drew in a long breath to try and calm myself. The problem was, I wasn't calm yet and the staccato intake of air highlighted that fact.

"Bella, I can hear the gears turning in your head."

What is the objective goal of coy behavior? Is it sex? Because I'm thinking that just might be a goal at some point here. Yeah, it is. Sex is my goal. Really hot, make-him-forget-his-own- middle-name sex.

He can forget things, but I can't. I need to stay in control. I need to make sure I don't get so caught up in the moment and just lie there like I must have last time.

Edward's eyes narrowed slightly and leaned back and away from the hand I had on his cheek.

"Bella, are you…are you shaking?" His whisper made the fine hairs of my cheek stand up.

My body answered him with a silent shudder that ended with a clench in my abdomen.

"N-no."

Smooth.

He let out a fairly long sigh and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against him and into a hug. The window we stood by gave off a faintly cool aura, but I was surrounded, cocooned on all sides in his warmth, his scent. He kissed the top of my hair and I felt him shake his head.

"Sorry. I shouldn't have said those things. I didn't mean to scare you."

Scare me?

I leaned back to look at him but kept my arms wrapped around his waist. He brought a hand up and raked his hair.

"You didn't." You definitely, definitely didn't scare me. This ain't fear wracking my body here. "I don't know why I overthink things. I want to be in the moment with you. I want to… want to be with you. I'm just…" I stammered and his features relaxed momentarily then transformed into contemplation, then concern. Just like me. That's what I was. "…concerned."

He shook his head softly. "How is that much different than scared?"

"I not sure I'm…enough," I mumbled, warring with myself between truly hoping he might not hear me and wanting to be honest with him. I fidgeted with the hem of my camisole.

"Bella, maybe I haven't treated you quite the way I should have." He brought his hand to my chin then tilted me up when I hadn't even realized I'd looked down. He held me there and looked into my eyes. I felt myself swallow against the slight pull he created along my throat.

"How can I be clear with you, to tell you what you need to know?" He twisted the thin strap of my top around his finger slowly, then smoothed it back down, creating tingling pinpoints where he touched my flesh.

"This is something I've done, this view you have of yourself…because I walked away before, isn't it?" He shook his head as if he couldn't believe what he'd done. "Do you feel less than… do you know that if I only held you forever it would be enough for me? Everything, anything more is, maybe, more than I deserve. I just want a chance to be with you…to keep you."

I made to open my mouth but my voice failed me because at that moment Edward turned his face to the ceiling. He blinked furiously, moisture painted his bottom lashes.

He kept his eyes fixed upward, suddenly unfocused and unblinking. "Tell me that what you felt before is still there, that what we had hasn't died. Because, I never felt like that before…other than you. I think I've never felt other than with you.

"Are we starting over? At square one? Are we friends in transition or a couple reuniting?"

"What do you want us to be?" I asked. We are whatever you want us to be.

"Is there even an 'us' already as far as you're concerned? Is there a 'we' or…Hell, I don't really know where I stand with you." His voice held a nervous tinge.

How much detail is too much? How in this am I?

I'm in all the way.

As ever. As always.

I ran my hands up through the hair at the base of his neck and turned him down to me.

"This should be easy. Natural. It's… us," I whispered against his lips. "You're here and I'm here…and we can only show each other the rest."

And was I done talking. Done thinking.

Done with everything but feeling.

Because there were no worthy words.

I pressed my mouth to his and, despite the smile I could feel forming on his lips, he pressed back, kissing me for what felt like the first time in forever.

This was our first of forever.

He breathed in deeply, never breaking our kiss, always in contact. The intake played along my skin, invisible feathers along my cheek.

It was as if my entire being existed only where we touched. I could not notice anything beyond the silk of his lips and the heated pulse wherever we touched. All was recollection and recall. Smooth and satin. He ran his tongue along my lower lip, then inside to touch the tip of my own, then slid further to skim its sides, tasting me as I tasted the sweet of him again.

Yet this was different somehow. His moves where tentative, more so than when we were together before, more so than when he'd kissed me on my birthday so long ago. This kiss carried the weight of known loss. Where he held my face was soft, but the hand on my back gripped me so tightly it nearly hurt, as if he thought I might evaporate. It was as though he was trying to remember and memorize me simultaneously. He seemed to want to catalog this moment - just in case. He was sharing with me that he was still afraid this would end, that we would end. With his kiss told me that he was a worried as I was, that he had the same fear of facing loss again. While I didn't wish him such turmoil, it bolstered me in a way. He was no more liable to leave than I – and I wasn't leaving for the wide world.

My hands wound their way under his shirt and moved along the skin of his back. He moaned into my mouth, the sound sliding down my own throat, running along my ribs, echoing down in my lungs.

We continued to kiss, tongues entangled, never parting. I meant to bring a hand around and run it along his chest – the same chest that had rendered me mute earlier in Alice's driveway – but, instead, I felt the coarse hair that stretched from the top of his pajama pants in a narrowing trail toward his navel. I ran my fingers across it and it was my turn to moan.

"Bella," he said, breaking our kiss and moving only enough to hover over my lips. His breath was warm, his voice a rasp. "Are you sure? I don't know if-"

"Shhh," I said softly, and placed two of my fingers on his mouth to silence him. He kissed them quickly before his hand was there and closed over them, and then he brought our clasp to his side. He was still breathing against my mouth; each breath seemed shorter, shallower. He seemed to quit breathing entirely when he began to walk slowly backward, gently pulling me by my hand, toward his bedroom.

By the time we reached the doorway, we'd separated enough that I was able to truly see everything about his face. The point where his throat met his jaw. The slight turn of his nose. The faint creases near his eyes that begged to be tasted. The light that played and danced across his features revealed a mixed look of excitement and an unnamed something more.

The room was bathed in silver moonlight that spilled in from the single window across the white sheets, leaving the rest of the room in shadow.

When we neared the bed, he glanced away to gauge the distance and I could label the look I'd been seeing: Reticence.

I pulled on his hand enough to halt our progress. "Edward," I whispered. "I think maybe I should be asking you if you're sure." Then, the next words left me at level so soft I wasn't sure he'd even be able to hear them. "Do you not want this…me?"

Before I knew it was happening, he had both his hands in my hair cradling the base of skull as he kissed me with a level of intensity that distanced itself from all our earlier kisses. I felt him breathe in deeply, as if he were trying to bring all of me into him. His lips crushed to mine, his tongue delved into the deepest recess of my mouth as his thumbs ran circles deep within the mass of hair where he held me.

I felt him begin to lower us onto the bed as he bent to a sitting position then moved back more, pulling me on top of him in our unbroken kiss. Any reassurance I might have needed about his desire for me pressed against my stomach.

There was tugging at the bottom of my shirt, his palm skimmed across my waist from back to front, and then his hand closed around me there. It felt as though his long fingers reached completely from my navel around to my spine in glorious, hot pressure. I heard myself moan into his mouth and was stunned when the sound returned to me tenfold from him. I shifted against him as I tried to retain balance along the length of his frame. But it was unnecessary for me to worry about falling off; Edward wove one of his legs around my own and secured me to him, his lean thigh aligned with mine, his calf braided against my ankle and foot. He pushed his other hand up between us, shoving our shirts out of the way and bunching them up between us somewhat, pulling us together as if he were anxious to feel skin on skin. He broke our kiss and held my hair back as began to press his lips to my face, my throat, my collarbone. Still holding my hair back with one hand, he gathered the fabric of my camisole top into his fist.

"Bella, please, I need to feel you."

I made a move to sit up and straddle him so I could peel my shirt off, but Edward held me tighter, relinquishing his grasp only when I couldn't suppress a giggle at the Catch 22 of it all. He began to laugh, too, but the sound caught in his throat when I had my shirt half way over my head. Once it was completely off, I felt my hair spill down over my bare back and exposed chest. Reflexively, my hands crossed over my breasts. His eyes narrowed slightly and he shook his head once, slowly. He was sitting up and gently removed first one of my arms, kissing its wrist as he displaced it, and then the other.

Never breaking the gaze we shared, he reached down and removed his shirt, making it as thin as possible before it slipped over his head and landed in a distant corner. I gripped his arms and traced the indentation where his shoulder and bicep met while he ran both his hands up my sides until the pad of his thumbs swept along the swell of my breasts. He cupped one and his thumb rubbed repeatedly across my tensing nipple. Then, he slid his other arm around me, drawing me closer to him, pressing me into his chest, infusing me with himself.

His touch was no longer tentative; he blazed a trail.

Soft kisses along my neck turned to nibbles and then near bites along my collarbone. He licked my skin between kisses. I ran my fingers through his hair while he explored me. Whenever I could, I bent and kissed his forehead, the corners of his mouth, and the slight saltiness of unshed tears from where they still clung to his eyelids.

My hands began pulling down on his pants of their own accord. When he noticed my intent, Edward was still cupping my face in his strong hands. He broke away from our embrace and rested his head on my chest, panting and watching me work them down. His chest kept heaving, and with his head still lowered he began to nod, as if he'd just agreed with himself to go forward.

A monumental shift in our positions while he finished removing his pants left him lying beside me. I could feel my hair splayed out around me as he combed the already tangled ends out with his fingers and continued to kiss me, forever kissing me. He was braced on a single forearm and moved his touch from my hair, to my face, and down to draw a line along my body, pausing briefly over my heart. He pressed his palm flat there and then bent to place his open lips on the spot as his hand slipped lower, lower. I couldn't stop myself from raising my hips and plunging my hands into his hair as soon as he slipped a finger under the band of my panties.

I knew if I shifted ever so slightly I'd be able to feel his erection, but he was trying to be gentlemanly about it. It was touching…but I wanted to touch him.

His fingers skimmed the flat of my stomach as he approached my sex. His focus on our kisses faltered for the first time; while he continued to press his lips to mine, a greater portion of his attention was clearly elsewhere. As was mine. For, while he'd been successful in keeping the physical evidence of his arousal somewhat discreet, there would be no disguising how excited I was.

He gripped the edges of the fabric and dragged it down my thighs and legs. My flesh contracted where the fabric left a wet trail along my inner thighs. I felt my breathing still as I awaited his reaction to the affect he'd had on me. My panties found their way onto the floor and Edward wrapped one arm around me at the waist and the other around my shoulders. He buried his face in my neck and continued to cradle me within his upper arm, while the one at my waist drifted, fingertips dancing along my flesh until they slipped between my folds. A low, soft gasp resounded below my ear and he stilled momentarily, then his deep moan into the hollow of my neck made my thighs clench together over his hand.

"My God, Bella," he rasped, and slipped a single finger inside. "You're killing me Baby."

I bit back a moan at the sensations that flooded me, not trusting what might come out of my mouth. He'd been so composed, worshipful, while I was on the verge of shouting some incredibly vulgar things. He must have noticed what I was doing, because he gently pulled my bottom lip from under my teeth with his own and watched my reaction through hooded lids.

"Please, don't hold back Baby. Let me know how I make you feel."

When he slipped a second finger into me, stretching me, I moaned.

When he curled them in me, searching me, I felt my hands cling to him, dig into the contours of his back, then slip downward and trace the V that had called out to me for so long.

When he found the spot and stroked it, I grabbed his head and crashed my lips against his as I shouted incoherent vowel sounds down his open throat.

I fell back together in his arms. Eventually, I heard him murmuring soft reassurances in my ear that I'd been missing over the thunderous blood rushing around my system.

"Always you."

"Only you."

My trembling hand fumbled its away to him and I took him in my hand for the first time. He hissed as I brushed the tip and felt the thick moisture coat my fingers. His hips moved forward into my hand, pumping rhythmically as he panted near my mouth.

I wrapped my leg around his hip, tucking my ankle against the point where his thigh met his perfect ass, and encouraged him to move over top of me. Which he did, then halted. His weight rested on his forearms and he placed his hands on either side of my face, the pads of his thumbs gently running circles against my temples. His eyes smiled…his other features carried his unique combination of sweet and dangerous.

The heat radiated from him as he was positioned so near me, but without entering me. He shook above me, apparently awaiting some unknown cue. It was my turn to kiss his throat, his shoulders, any part of him I could reach. The tuft of hair below his neck called out to me; I swirled my tongue in it and ran a wet lick up before drawing his Adam's apple into my mouth in a long suck.

"Christ."

He spoke and my suction broke with the movement. He bent and curled over the top of me, bringing my nipple between his lips, pulling at it, drawing it deeply into his mouth. He moved and repeated the same with the other one.

He licked, and touched, and drew long breaths, then pulled back to survey me momentarily. It seemed he was looking for something more, more connection. It was as if he needed another sense to take me in. So, I wanted to give him the only one left: hearing.

The problem was, I didn't know what exactly to say. The high ceiling was invisible in the current light, leaving only the acoustics of reverberated gasps to bounce back down upon us.

The room already was filled with our soft moans; he needed words.

In that moment, I recognized my power. Because, for once, I could say how I felt without judgment. He needed to know and I needed to tell him. Where earlier words had seemed trite, in that moment I accepted that they could, they would, make everything right. I forced myself to break away and speak.

"You're who I'm meant for."

He groaned, his eyes closed, and he bent to place his lips on mine as he began to enter me.

The unspoken words "Take me" rattled around in my brain. The sentiment seemed insufficient somehow, perhaps imbedded in patriarchal notions. The idea that there's a penetration, a plundering, an invasion, so there must be a taking. It seemed off to me…for I was taking him. I was claiming. I was receiving. There would be just as much of me when we were done. He was the one leaving something behind. I'd be the same…but more. I envelope, encase, claim. I receive.

I take him.

There was a responsibility in that concept that I never saw before. I needed to take care of as well as care for.

He was trusting me to be as strong as the both of needed me to be. We were not far distanced from the mess we'd made; we were two short steps from loneliness.

The trust gave way to thrusts and I found I could no longer contemplate the intricacies of the universe.

He was being so careful and slow; it was both touching and torturous. He remained braced on his elbows, hovering and touching with each shallow breath. He placed the flat of his palms beneath me on my shoulder blades and laid kisses along my collarbone, along my neck. I shuddered when he reached a certain spot below my ear.

With each movement, each in then out, he moved fractionally further. The pace made me acutely aware of each new stretch. He continued to quake and I thought, perhaps, he was resisting the urge to plunge ahead and finish the trek. I'd have been inclined to appreciate the need represented by such urgency – I wanted to feel that desired, that wanted – but it occurred to me that the method had been going on for quite some time…and he was not done yet.

Move. Kiss. Slide. Farther. Further. Stretch. Again. Move…

And he's not there yet.

.

Holy shit – has he been taking growth hormones?

I mean, I've been outta commission for a while, but seriously? This fit before?

W.

T.

F.

Oh, yeah, that was question. Here you go: ?

"Ungh… Ed…ward. I…oh God-" I cried out as his hips tilted and the thick head pressed inside me against the spot his fingers had stroked earlier. My limbs left my control and I wrapped around him like an inverted turtle. I clutched and grasped at the contours and sinew of his back. My legs wrap suddenly around his waist and he surged farther into me, much farther.

The change seemed to catch him unawares; a long, moaning curse fell from him as his progress stilled. Only tremulous movements along his limbs from the strain of holding back remained. I ran a hand down the small of his back and smoothed my hand over his hip, willing him to continue, begging him to continue. Without cause, my hands slid between us and my thumbs made a surreptitious return to nestle down within the V I'd only visited earlier.

He remained still over me, partially sheathed within me, completely consuming me. His hands ran circuits along my sides, along my waist. He ran the flat of his hand along my thigh, drawing it up, anchoring himself down. The soft webbing between his thumb and index finger pressed against the back of my right knee while I left the other wrapped around him. I thought perhaps he was going to lift my leg further to the side. Instead, he held fast and spoke softly as he placed kisses between my breasts. The unsteady, tender whisper-laced kisses were barely audible over the pulse thrumming in my ears. After a moment, I calmed myself enough to hear some of what he was saying for the first time.

"Only you…" He pressed his lips to the pulse point on my throat.

"Whatever it takes…" His lips smoothed along my neck, open and moist.

"So sorry, Baby…Mine…please…" The words were hoarse and dry. I felt him swallow against my breast.

My hands flew to his face and pulled him to me. I kissed him deeply, my palms rubbing against the scruff along his cheeks as I delved deeply into this mouth, swallowing any more of his needless apologies. Then I spread my legs, dragging the hand he held me with along the way, hitched my hips forward with more poise than I would've ventured I possessed, and drew the rest of his length into me, to the hilt.

He cried out into my mouth when his hips fully met mine. I think he might have tried to hold fast and allow me adjust, but I was having done of it; I raised myself and ground against him, never feeling so full in my life. Edward broke our kiss and watched the space where our bodies joined. He breathing picked up more and he wrapped his long fingers around my waist, the fingertips of one hand touching the other, completely encircling me in his grasp.

Then he began to move.

Full, long, deep…complete.

His movements were steady. I tried to force my eyes to remain open against the waves his thrusts were creating in my core, but the most I could manage was to peek through foggy slits as he moved above me, within me. He alternated between kissing me, to watching himself slide into me, to staring at me and gauging my reactions. I vaguely registered one of his hands move from my waist as it slid along the smooth sheets, past my body, my face, my hair, sliding until it extended over my head and, probably, latched onto back of the mattress.

The hand he still used to secure my waist tilted my pelvis up. He drew himself up on his knees slightly and slid his length into me slowly, rubbing along my front wall and edges, watching my reaction to each new contact. He drew back out, maneuvered me again, and plunged forward along a different path until he hit a point where my breath caught. The moonlight glinted off his smile and he took in a long breath, drew back, and began to pound repeatedly into me at that angle.

I wanted to scream. I needed to scream. But the sensation was so extreme, so forceful, I could do nothing but hold on. I felt my body draw up into an arc away from the point where we joined. My head was heavy and remained touching the bed while my back mimicked a flesh rainbow.

"Edward! I…I…arrgh…" I began to call out all manner of sounds. Some might have even been words. I clutched at the sheets, pulling, arching further, and shaking. He moved his hand from the mattress and dragged the flat palm down the length of my torso to join his other one in holding my waist.

He continued to pound into me. Not roughly, never roughly. Thoroughly. Fully.

Completely.

I heard myself saying things and couldn't stop. I told him how I'd thought of him every day. I thrashed on the bed and whispered nonsensical rants about how I couldn't concentrate when he'd started at the diner, wet t-shirts and my undying gratitude for him walking me to my truck.

And still he pounded into me and still I kept pouring my heart out to him.

In shallow gasps I shared with him how much his smile both meant to me and pained me when I'd see him at the store, how much it hurt when left me.

I was sobbing about how much he meant to me when Edward suddenly stopped, his eyes wide.

He scooped me up against him, the fine sheen of sweat cool where we made contact. He ran his hands through my hair and kissed every part of my face as if I'd been missing and he'd just found me. He lowered us both back to the bed, kissed the inside of one of my elbows and gently placed it on his shoulders, wrapping around him, holding him. He resumed his long, full thrusts.

Within moments I was falling apart, my release causing my whole being to clench, my lungs tight from my confessions, from my exhaustion. Edward neared the brink, his muscles writhing and contracting. His words caught me; he breathed secrets into my skin and, as I strained to hear the tale, he threw his head back and shouted as he came.

He continued to spill into me, running open mouth kisses wherever he made contact. I stayed silent and he continued to whisper and respond to the confessions I'd been unable to hold back earlier. "I do… so much…" He kissed my eyes and smoothed the damp hair from my face. "Always." He swallowed and ran his nose along my own. "Oh, God Bella. You don't know how much… I do."

He wrapped his arms around me and breathed his words into my hair. "I love you, too."