Author's Notes: Well here's another one! I may as well bang these out while I'm in the writing mood. Thanks to those of you that have reviewed, encouragement really gets my fingers typing. Big thanks to my beta JenJenSon for getting these chapters beta'd and back to me so quickly as she always does. I hope you all enjoy x
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or the characters, and I make no money from this story whatsoever!
I'm Just Addicted
Instinct
Bella POV
After Alice was satisfied that we were suitably congratulated we headed to the cottage.
I gasped as Carlisle came to an abrupt halt at the cottage door and slowly lowered me to my feet and opened the door, which I then stumbled through. I frowned when I could hear him chuckling behind me.
"Well if you hadn't run here and made me feel all dizzy I wouldn't have tripped." I said defiantly, folding my arms across my chest and marched into the kitchen to get a drink.
"You know you aren't truly mad at me Isabella." Carlisle called from where I left him in the living room.
"I can be mad at you if I want." I replied firmly. Moments later Carlisle was in front of me taking my glass from my hand. I stepped back from him to glare up at him but I doubted that my glare looked very convincing. He took a step forward and I subconsciously took a step backwards, I felt slightly nervous under his gaze. He looked amused but possessive and challenging.
"Isabella..." he beckoned seductively, as he continued to move forward until I was backed up against the counter with his body millimetres from mine. He lowered his face until I could feel his cool breath brush across my lips but stopping short. "Are you certain that you are mad at me?"
"I-I..Y-Yes." I stammered, for some reason I was torn between closing the gap between us or running. Was this something to do with vampires being predators? Carlisle must have seen the confusion on my face because he did something very unlike himself and smirked.
"You'd better run fast." He told me lowly. "I'm only giving you a minute head start."
"W-what?" I asked in disbelief, but one look in his dark eyes told me that he was deadly serious. He stepped back slightly and I darted away heading straight for the front door. I was terrified; I was excited. I knew Carlisle would never hurt me but I really hadn't the slightest clue what he was up to.
I made sure to run in zigzags around the trees to try and use my scent to my advantage. Thinking along those lines I scraped my hand against the bark of a tree and then another but in total I got no further than a hundred yards into the woods before Carlisle had me pinned between his hard body and a tree.
"Are you trying to drive me crazy?" he growled, eying my hand. He leant forward and inhaled deeply from my neck. I dared to meet his gaze and it finally hit me that this was Carlisle's reaction to having shared me all afternoon; this was almost a game of territory.
"Is it working?" I croaked out, placing my hands weakly on his chest. His gaze flickered to my hands and I wondered briefly if my blood was actually affecting him more than he let on. Daringly I lifted my grazed hand to stroke his face and sure enough a small growl slipped from his lips. "Go on then."
Tentatively his hand caught mine and guided my palm to his mouth as his licked softly at the grazed skin there. I heard a small whimper before I realised that it was me that had made the sound. There could have been hardly a drop of blood but he savoured it as if it was much more before sliding his free arm around my waist and pulling flush against him.
"You are truly the greatest gift I could have ever been given." He said quietly, pressing my hand to his cheek. Carlisle was Carlisle again. The flare of animalistic behaviour had gone again, leaving my compassionate and loving vampire himself.
I leant up and pressed my lips against his, enjoying the feel of his cool lips as they warmed in temperature against mine. His lips moved over mine in a gentle caress as my arms wound their way around his neck until my fingers toyed with his silky hair. When he pulled away I couldn't help but ask one of the questions I had thought about several times recently.
"Are you going to leave you hair like that?" although granted it came out sounding a little more crude than I had meant it to.
"Is that a problem?" he chuckled.
"No, I just got so used to the blonde...you're still gorgeous either way." I replied honestly.
"Well, Alice and Rosalie are helping me dye it back at the weekend, we were just waiting until we had the time for them to dye it properly." He explained.
"Yeah, you wouldn't want to get stuck with some kind of orange colour in between." I grinned.
"Quite." He frowned, and then he lifted me off of me feet and into his arms completely. "I believe it is time we put you to bed."
"Please." I murmured to myself forgetting that he would obviously hear. He said nothing though and I had the grace to look at least a little embarrassed.
Carlisle ran a bath when we got in; apparently he ran it extra hot so he got in first. Once he had been in the water for a few moments he beckoned me in with him. Fortunately Carlisle's cold body had soaked up some of the heat leaving the water just right.
"You are so beautiful." He told me, kissing my shoulders.
"You're not so bad yourself mister built-like-Greek-a-statue." I snorted, lying back against him. We lay there for some time before climbing out and drying off.
It wasn't long before we were both laid in the bed and I was curled up against him, burying my face in his still warm chest.
"I feel like I need to explain my actions today." Carlisle said quietly. "I feel like I should apologise."
"No apologies." I replied firmly.
"Fine, no apologies but Bella, sometimes I may lose control of myself like earlier. I want you to be certain what you are getting into." He continued.
"I don't care."
"Bella, our kind get possessive, especially males. I would under normal circumstances never display such ungentlemanly behaviour and I do not wish to demean you in any way."
"Carlisle, I don't care." I interrupted, pressing my fingers to his lips. "I love you, I want to know all of you and I want you to feel comfortable being yourself. If that was what you call demeaning me then by all means please...demean me, take me I'm yours. I could never want anything as much as I want you."
I felt him run his hands down the soft curves of my body, one hand sliding under my shirt, resting on the small of my back soothingly.
"What did I do to deserve you?" he murmured into my hair.
"I did have one question, how come you willingly tasted my blood after being so determined not to?" I asked. "And why did it seem to calm you down not cause you to bite me?"
"To be honest I'm not entirely certain why it seemed to calm my behaviour, I can only guess that it has something to do with you offering yourself to me, your very lifeforce." He said thoughtfully. "and no matter how determined I have been not to, I have had the urge to taste your blood for some time now. There are certain instincts that become very hard to ignore when the mating process is new and my control is the only thing that stops me from giving into them. When my behaviour shifts it makes it hard to focus on control."
"Carlisle...I don't want you to have to fight who you are all the time." I said quietly. "I want you to be able to relax and be yourself, nothing you could do would make me love you less. If you want my blood, take it."
"Bella, it would be unwise for me to take your blood. You recently held somewhat of an addiction to pain I do not wish to ruin the hard work you have gone through to recover." He explained. "A lot of the urges that vampires can have when mating could be not just painful but dangerous for you as a human."
"I'm not going to be human forever." I replied, placing a kiss on the smooth skin of his chest.
Carlisle POV
I watched as Alice bounced around Bella at the kitchen table pointing to different pages on numerous magazines. Bella was trying to eat her lunch and looked less than enthused.
"Come on Bella, you have to make some decisions here!" Alice whined. "What colour theme do you want?"
"I don't mind." Bella replied blandly.
"Fine what about the after party?"
"Alice my list of friends and family it hardly huge I doubt I'll need one." She snorted.
"Nonsense." Alice said sounding completely appalled. "What about your dress? All brides are excited about picking their dress."
"I don't mind." Bella shrugged again. Alice huffed and looked at me for assistance but I offered her none.
"I don't think Bella is a fan of your big wedding plans Alice." I told her.
"Well what is the point of getting married if you're not going to have a perfect wedding?" she frowned.
"Exactly." Bella said suddenly standing up and taking her plate to the sink. "The point of getting married is not the dress or the colour scheme it's the actual getting married bit."
"It is?" Rosalie grinned.
"I'm fairly certain that has been the purpose of getting married for some centuries now." I replied with a small smile.
"But the wedding is still important." Alice huffed.
"Not to me." Bella shrugged. "As nice as some of the other stuff is...I'd much rather just have a small wedding and then come home without a huge celebration. It doesn't have to be a big deal."
"What is it that you have against weddings?" Alice asked suspiciously. I saw Bella open her mouth to respond but then it snapped shut again, which made me wonder if there was a little more to it than she and I had discussed previously.
"Could you give us a minute?" I asked Alice. I waited until Alice and Rosalie had left the room before going to Bella and sliding my arms around her waist. "Is there something you want to tell me Bella?"
"Why?" she asked.
"So there is something on your mind." I confirmed, turning her to face me. "If you want to back out of this all you need to do is say so...but I don't think that's what you want."
"No, I haven't changed my mind." She replied, "Of course I haven't changed my mind! It's just..." I just stayed silent, carefully studying her face as she debated her next words. "I just don't like big weddings. I don't like it that people seem to think that somehow if they have a huge, fancy, perfect fairytale wedding that it will mean their marriage will be better or something."
"Bella, whilst some people may think like that there are plenty that do not." I assured her. "You're parents, did they-"
"The whole of my dad's life savings down the drain." She replied quietly. "He gave my mum the wedding she'd always dreamed of but it didn't make them any happier together."
"Bella, we're going to do this wedding how we feel comfortable and I can tell Alice to back right off if you want me to but...it does make her happy to do these things so maybe you should set her some boundaries and let her do her thing if you really don't mind either way?" I suggested.
"That makes sense I guess..." she nodded.
"I'm not saying that you have to Bella, it was only a suggestion." I told her. "But you should have the dress you want, the flowers you want, the place you want."
"I don't really mind about the dress or flowers or...actually I hadn't really thought about the where yet." She admitted. "Where did you want to get married? Where are we even going to live? Are we staying here or moving elsewhere?"
"Alright Bella, slow down." I grinned. "We can stay here or move somewhere else whenever we're ready. We could go back to the states when Alice tells us it's safe or we could go-"
"Actually it's been safe since a few days after you left." Alice's voice piped up as she skipped back into the room. I looked up at her in surprise. "I just didn't say anything because I was busy enjoying being a family again. Just imagine if one day we could all get along and live together, we'd need a castle or something to fit us all in!"
"Alice you're a genius!" Bella suddenly grinned, crossing the room and hugging her as tight as her human strength would allow.
"Yes! Bella that's perfect!" Alice cried out excitedly, having obviously seen something.
"What about getting married at a castle?" Bella suggested, a brilliant smile on her face. "Not like a massive modern mansion thing but an old castle ruin. We're in England; there are plenty of castle ruins around right?"
"I can think of a few." I nodded, to be honest I was more thrilled by the sheer excitement on Bella's face than the wedding planning. "It sounds like a wonderful idea."
"It's perfect." Alice nodded. "Finally we have a starting point!"
Author's Notes: Stay tuned for more! I've got lots of exciting stuff planned and a few spanners to throw in the works as well.