Miss Vanessarae (now this is awesome…she actually changes up some of my words to make sure I got Eddie's accent right…that's just how well she knows Dead Confeds), Miss Viola Cornuta, I do believe I am completely and thoroughly in love with you! I have such gratitude for your talents, for stickin' with me and Eddie, for puttin' up with my demands and general, all-around insanity.

Before this starts, I think I said this before, but y'all should be reading your fics in ½ view. Button at your top right.

Disclaimer: I know. The original characters don't belong to me, but this Southern tale and these characters (and they fuckin' are characters all right), are MINE.

So, this is the Anniversary of Dead Confederates (well, yesterday, technically). I know! It's sheer madness, and silly, sexy shitnanigans. Huge love to those who have been with us since the beginning ('us' because me and the boys, we're a 'unit' of sorts, ha ha ha), and equal adoration to those who have just hopped on this CRAZY train!

This bastard (No, Eddie, shhhh, hush now, baby, I'm not talkin' about you, just the chapter) is dedicated, as always, to my DW h00rs over at Twilighted… because… they just ain't right in the head and there's no fuckin' way I could do this with out them. It's also written with a shout-out and loads of naughty stuff from Eddie to his really hardcore, fuck-hot fans over on Fuckbook—extra special sinful thoughts to y'all.

Congrats to Jewles622 on the birth of her baby!

Major heaps o'love to dedicated reviewers because y'all's input gives me so much food for thought… if you ever wonder if your review is important to a writer, yeah, it really is.

Huge gratitude to my sabertooth tigress, Viola Cornuta, for the extra special care with this and every chapter, as well as piles and piles and piles of emails and chats and literary info…seriously, the woman is a gaddamn goldmine and this chapter would have been half as much without her!

Thanks to a Brit named Nelly who inspired the Doges Palace bit, c/o my Gayle King (and many more endless phonecalls and frighteningly funny conversations, and love—you know—to you).

ENORMOUS A/N at the bottom filled with delicious morsels to feast your fandom on.

~~Put Some South in Your Mouth, y'all~~

Classics and Messy Pieces

~A Tale of One Pretty Clitty~

It was a foggy-bottom night with lush heat-lightning flashing in brazen streaks across the sky. The gut-deep rumble of thunder wrestled with the cloud cover, lifting up cadaverous edges to curlicues and spitting them out. I felt it in my stomach, in my balls, in the balls of my feet, curling my toes, wetting my lips… Bella was near. Bella was here. Echoing the parched thrum of my purr, another boom of carnivorous thunder shook the tilting porch as I quietly opened the door to Swan's domicile and latched the lock back in place.

I hadn't thought I'd get to see Bella until tomorrow; after all, she was spending her post-grad evenin' with mirthless Chuckles. Good goddamn thing she'd called me fifteen minutes ago because I'd been gettin' ready to pull out my old stalker moves.

Pickwick Papers Poppa had finally fuckin' put down the Charleston Post and Courier—the shit newspaper, Pussy and Cuntier, owned by the Manigault family—and made way to his bed to rest his head, weary from holding up the handlebars of his mustache all damn day long.

Stepping into the dark impasse of Bella's house, I followed her fragrance to the kitchen where one fluorescent light tickled the shadows from their hiding places with a buzz-glow-buzz. The flickering flare lifted within her presence alone, and the welcoming smile on her lovely lips. Reaching into the rusting Frigidaire, its own bulb long gone, Bella took out two beers, popped the tops and held one out to me. I grabbed her mouth for a scandalously deep, wet kiss and took the brew she proffered.

Standing at opposite sides of the paltry little shit-hole kitchen, the warped cupboards and scratched screens on the windows and the rubbed-bare lino didn't intrude on our silent, private moment.

I bit my lip and she licked hers.

I motioned her to me, and she lifted a shoulder, trying not to grin.

We both swallowed more beer, enjoying the silence that enveloped us closer than a naked embrace.

Hunting to her, I whispered up her neck, the cool bottle of my beer at her nape, the cold hold of my hand trailing up her ribs to the side of her breast, "You wanna' fuck?"

Bella sucked in a breath and turned her face against mine, sliding her cheek along my jaw, sucking the cleft in my chin, "Might-could."

Our mouths shared breath but remained apart. Giggling, she titled her head back and glugged the last inches from her PBR so her neck stretched, and I plastered it with icy, open-mouthed kisses.

Turning away, she rinsed out the receptacle and set it on the warshboard.

Color had risen in her face; the pinwheel hues of her eyes had darkened and merged.

Her nipples had peaked.

I wondered if she was wearing any panties.

Sidling away, she held her fingertip to her mouth, coquettishly wetting the tip and placating, "Shhhh," before beckoning me with that moistened digit I wanted paddling down to my dick.

Holding the bottle aloft, outward, as if it were a candle, as if I needed its dancing illumination to make sense of the broken-down tumble of clutter that met my every move. I could see perfectly fine in the dark. Bringing the pale lager to my mouth, I knocked it back again. The fluid was warmer than me, tepid even, but it ramped me up and numbed me down. Cringing inwardly, I crept behind Bella through her disorderly home.

Bella had brought me home.

Her house was spick and span as she could make it, and I hated the idea of her cleaning up after any man. No amount of tidying and upkeep would make a dent in Sheriff Swine's packrat tendencies—I could give her everything.

Or nothin'.

Or death.

I didn't like the direction my mind was taking. A protective anger made me want to safeguard Bella from everyone, yet the Petite Pillaging Pirate had made it clear as mud that Bella was meant to be my defender.

That just didn't sit right. Not at all.

Bella started up the stairs, her delicate luminosity more fragile than a luna moth's wings. This woman should never have to be my guardian angel.

Her shoulder blades worked beneath her shirt, like fragile forms taking flight.

I shook my head; everything about Bella was stronger, braver, more courageous than any woman or vampiress I'd ever met.

I drank and looked at her ass above me, its plump handhold captivating me out of my crusty, cursive thoughts.

Midway up, I stopped her with a hand curled around her waist, sweeping down to the tautness inside of her hipbones, "Where's your dad?"

The bare wooden steps whined as she stapled my hand to her tummy and pivoted to purse my mouth closed, "I done told you already, Eddie, shhhh." Giggling, Bella made forward again while I careened beneath the muggy mist of her touch.

Her bare feet slapped, she padded up, her threadbare t-shirt was razzed with runs of threads all over her chest, and never mind wondering about her panties, she obviously wasn't wearing a bra.

When I jumped up beside her, the sweet tip of one of her nipples goddamn winked at me through her Bull's Bay Taxidermy t-shirt that had seen better days.

"What?" I asked of Bella's startled expression, negligently holding my bottle between my thumb and forefinger, cornering her on the ricky-racky, tacky first-floor landing.

"Hush up now," she scolded. But her breath silted, her hips tilted, her tits toppled to me.

"Bella," stern and masterful, I pushed against her, tore off my shirt, and looked her in the eye as I sampled two fingers against her sex, earning a nice little low-down moan.

The air crackled like a hazy, green aura in advance of a lowcountry thunderstorm. Bella pulsed into the bowl I made of my palm.

I couldn't let up… I never would. Ripping a craggy hole into her shirt right over her nipple, I hovered and then sucked, licked, tucked, lathed, "Love, when are you moving?"

Puff Daddy was snoring away, one door down, interrupting my fantasies of fucking against the spindles and maybe breaking a handful of railing so splinters rained over us in the self-same shower storming outside.

I sheared her shirt until it hung off her in limp ribbons, flattering streamers working all over her tits and nipples like tickertape.

With the succulent underside of her breast a line I followed with my nose, then my tongue, on up to the top of the hill, I looked up and wanted to know, "Why not move in with me?"

Pushing her bosom together, Bella held me in the inferno of her delicious clamp. "What?"

Inside of her tits, I mumbled while my fingers tiptoed up and down her stomach, stopping below her bellowing boobs and above her clitoris, "I wouldn't ever leave the toilet seat up."

Bella wrangled me up to where she wanted me, right smack on top of her bud. I smacked it with my tongue, and she wriggled.

I jerked her to me, hopeful.

She sighed against my onslaught, "You don't need to pee. So that don't matter."

Shit.

"You could walk around nekkid, and it wouldn't bother me," I offered.

"Pffft. I already figured that, baby."

Reaching down into her sweats, I tangled two fingers in a braid and branded her sex, then swept my pinkie over her ass, "I'll put the toilet paper right-side-up, I'll walk around naked." Bella looked up at that and swirled her pussy deliriously over my fingers. "I won't use your hairbrush," I added.

Though her eyes were tamped-down, avid, and umber she still had the wherewithal to comeback, "Who are you kiddin'? Do you even own a comb?"

Sensually, she pushed my hair off my forehead and snuck me down to her face, "I couldn't possibly live in sin, baby."

Wicked woman.

Was she talkin' about wedlock now? I closed my eyes and threw my hands over her head, knocking some cracked plaster from the walls. "Huh?"

Scritchin' against my abdomen and slicing her hands up my chest, palpating my paps, she laughed, "I'm just jokin', Eddie."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then wondered if maybe I wasn't marriage material after all?

And fuck me like a Girl Scout—I was on my way to getting' my Vadge Badge.

Badgering me to the opposite corner of the stairwell, Bella sneaked with her hands, her rapturous words, "But where would I do my taxidermy at the double wide?"

Right. Good point. I was fairly sure her hands would be otherwise engaged, permanently, on my cock.

Oh hell on a hot day, of course she read my mind, "That's what I thought; you don't plan on lettin' me do anything other than playin' with your own tool." Bella took to me, weaving our fingers, "And you know what? I haven't even been formally introduced to M'Esme or Carl."

Cunt-ass Christ and enough with the etiquette shit already.

I tucked the collar of my shirt into my back pocket and left it danglin', "You wanna meet them?"

Her voice was husky as she ran her fingers over my chest, pinched my nipples, followed the ruts of muscle along my ribs, "Yeah, I do."

Scorching fucking hot, she slipped lower to twirl a finger around my belly button, and even lower to tug on my coarse hair, lower so her palm pushed my stomach and her fingertips topsided and twisted into my springy pubes. My muscles flexed, and I plaited her tresses around my forearm, "Little bit lower, love, and I'll agree to anything."

A sinful glint sparkled in her eyes when she nipped my lips like a hungry stray kitten, "Damn right you will."

Launching herself at me, she coiled and curled, and I grabbed and touched: tit, hips, ass. Cleft, cunt, cock, nipples. Throats gilded back, groaning.

"Sshhh."

Inside and around and kisses spinning way the fuck out of control and two hands on my dick, tripping me up so I nearly fell down the steep stairwell. We were crocheted together like the fine-gauge wire of shrimp netting. "Mmmm, yes, baby."

I propelled her just far enough away that I could get my fingers back inside of her.

Sucking in a breath that barely reached her lungs before gusting back out, Bella hissed, bit my lips and then pulled them into her mouth, tonguing the slick coolness inside. She stopped undulating her pussy long enough to mutter, "We're gonna get busted, Eddie."

"No chance," I made a pilgrimage over her waist and brought her closer, "super-human hearing, remember?"

Her raspy laughter made her breasts bounce against me, hitting me just fuckin' so, tickling me, "You sayin' you're thinkin' about my dad while you're trying to get in my pants?"

Her amusement was abruptly derailed as I anchored one hand under her ass and destroyed her sweats, "Ain't no laughing matter, Miss Swan." Waving a knuckle over her clitoris, I watched her hanging on to the banister for dear life, "And it appears I'm already in your pants."

One-handed, I unzipped my fly, my belt open, buckle clangin' but not loud enough to waken Sleepy-Dopey-Grumpy. Bella's sweet-as-peaches ass gripped in my hands, I listened to her mewl, "Now."

Turning her around, spreading her legs and lifting her to the step above me, I smoked my length against her pussy… that pretty swollen flesh luring me in. A hand to the middle of her spine, the other raising the globe of her derriere, I swaggered into her lax, open mouth, "Bend over and hold on."

Bella grappled the beveled newel post like it was a hitching fence while I tethered her to me with a fist in her hair. Sliding slowly inside was the sweetest, most demented torture. Keeping up my lazy, drawlin' pace was even more acutely arousing. My face felt crushed beneath the impact of her hot, tight, unearthly clenching and releasing.

Long, deep, slow, I rode her from behind.

I had her hips, swiveling like a kaleidoscope, between my hands, and I felt every bone in her body, and I knew how easily I could snap her.

Blood rushed up and sent a richer infusion to her flesh, especially where I palmed and rubbed her ass—its red-pink coloration a thing I couldn't quantify accurately.

I quaffed her lips still thrusting in, to hold, pulling out, to stop.

My cock was beating with poison, like the fangs of a green mamba filling. Biting, sucking, goddamn fuckin'.

Not. Killing.

I liked watching the swathe of my dick parting her pussy, seeing the way her silken lips tried to suck me back in as I departed her.

Bella snapped back, adder-like, "Eddie, Jesus! Faster!"

Grunting, shaking, I gave her harder, I gave her faster. "You feel that?" Her head hung low and whipped up and down.

My dick was goddamn thick and so rigid and ready to burst… inside, Bella was all heat and liquid and constriction, "Baby," she stopped to moan, "Hmmm. Oh, god." The roll of an orgasm was already simpering up and down my cock from her wavy insides. "So hard, sooooo, ohmygodEddie." I pulled her smack down onto my pelvis and snarled and thrust up into her. "Christ, baby, how long," she howled, "Oh good God, mmmm, how long can you -" The force of my next lunge silenced her.

A definite surge of moistness dampened me.

Hoarding my mouth in between hisses, she wept, "So long, oh baby-baby-baby-please-honey-fuck."

And I knew she was ready because she never cursed.

"Ahhhh. Fuck!" Bella's forehead pounded the wall, her fingers troved back and grabbed my ass, her thighs quivered, and she was up on her tiptoes, biting bloodiness into her lips, mashing back her hips, "OHMYGOODGOD! Uhhhhh, GOD!" Her body stopped, even her hummingbird heart stilled-like it would-momentarily.

"You want this?" Pushing her leg up with my own to the next step so she was wide open, I planted my feet, quirked my head and arrowed my eyes when she looked back over her shoulder. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Her silence was rich with want. A hand on her tit and one wrapped around her waspy waist, holding her forcibly in place, her ass, her shapely back, her neck rippled, and my fingertips on her clit, pinching and pulling… she jumped and shouted.

Charlie goddamn leapt from his bed and found his pistol.

I heard it all and found his thoughts while I fought back my climax: Dangnabbit, heard that fuckin' waxwork boy with his sweaty sheen or some such. Knew he was spreadin' his scat. Little bastard better not be in mah house.

I threw a hand over Bella's mouth, and she clenched even tighter around me. Damn I was gonna' blow my wad, blow our cover, probably goddamn annihilate the stairs, and I was pretty damn sure Sheriff Sumbitch wasn't gonna' like that at all.

I pulled my dick achingly from her pussy and soared to her room. Beneath the coverlet, I hauled her astride me, on top of me, and took up residence in her velvet delta again, smothering her lips with my mouth and begging her to hold still as I gently shifted in and out of her. "Your daddy's coming, but not before me." That was enough to make her lash her head up, berth down onto me, and ride me quick, fast, and hard.

"Oh shit!" I tried to whisper because his thumping footsteps were getting closer, but, hell, so was I. "Bella, what are you?" And I stopped because she draped a finger in my mouth and did some fuckin' savage, primal dance all over me with her body a wild, meandering masterpiece wrenching my cum right out of me! I cranked back and spiraled up and just as the last drops of toxin erupted into her, Bella shoved me out of her bed, and I rolled underneath.

Daddy O' Dickhead had a fuckin' industrial-sized mag-lite trained on Bella's bed as soon as he busted the door open. The cone of light glared around the room, and I could feel it settling on Bella above me. I knew the minute he saw her because his feet shuffled back over the threshold. Injuriously, Bella sat up, the bed springs pinging just over my face as I held my breath, "DAD! Jesus! Can't a girl have any privacy?"

"Christ, Bella." He uttered, floundered, blustered and backed away, "Um, okay. Yeah, sorry. You just continue with what you were doin', I guess?"

In the dark, amongst the dust bunnies, I still had enough presence of mind to look around for Bella's new gash-gadgets… wonderin' if there were any other 'rabbits' under here with me.

I smirked and silently applauded my gal.

She flounced back on the mattress and I began to crawl out when the door creaked open again, "Just so we're clear. He ain't in here, is he?"

The sound of a book hitting wood dented the dense thickness of the night, "Out. Now."

I was against her in a moment, cleanin' up my mess with my fingertips, "Well played, Miss Swan."

Wreathing her lips with my essence, I watched her lick, clean. A bit pissed nonetheless, she chomped down on the pad of my middle finger, "Well, I never. You coulda' just waited, but instead I had to make it look like he caught me masturbating. You are a piece of work, Eddie."

"Funny, I was going to say the same about you," I was talkin' to her tits, and they asked me to suck them. Who was I to say 'no'? A swollen tip in my mouth, I enjoyed her sighs, moans. I laughed as she slapped my hands away only to yank me closer, by my ears.

Later, in her sleep, she talked a blue streak. I spent the time idly touching her but not so much to wake her. I chuckled when she said, "Holy Jesus and little baby chicks, I'm gonna' make a sculpture of your sexy prick, honey… oh damn hell and hot… ain't nuthin' like it."

We-ell, damn straight I'd sit for that sculpture.

Through the night, I was turgid. But not rigid. I was tireless, but relaxed.

At dawn, we were east of Eden. Apples rose in her cheeks with the morning's slumberous flush.

Just as her breathing began to accelerate, a shrill warbler sat right outside her window and burped out an endless stream of ear-splitting bird song. Fucker better not have taken a shit on mah Bronco.

I wanted to kill the screeching mockingbird—it interrupted my plans for first-thing-in-the-morning sex (and considerin' I didn't have morning wood, but all the cunt-whore day wood, I was a might bit irritated)—and woke up Daddy Dungheap.

I couldn't stay because the fuckin' dad to end all dads had some damn precognitive premonition shit to rival my own where I was concerned, the patriarchal, human ball-buster had my paranormal prick on his po-lice radar.

Leaving with a desperate kiss, knowing I'd see her at Luxury Hollows mid-mornin', I beat feet ahead of Sherlock Homey out the window. Not before I caught Bella in a hug. Sometime in the night she'd requisitioned my 't'. "Keep it, love, it looks good on you," I caressed.

I drove home like a good southern boy, bare-chested and with the windows rolled down, pretty fuckin' pleased with mahself.

~The Merchants of Menace~

"Give it some elbow grease, sonny."

"Yeah, put your back into it."

"Like that?"

"Harder, boy!"

"Hand me that wrench, braw."

"Fuck that, pussy, use your demon-given brawn."

"Fuckin' hell, are you sweatin'?"

"Nah, man, glistenin'. Just got me a spritzer from the Wal-Mart."

"Jesus Cuntin' Christ."

"Fuck off, hoe-diddly. You're the one that has me out here in the hot sun because you had to bust your damn Bronco, Boss Hogg."

"What'd he do now?"

"Nothin' you need to know about, Daisy."

"Rosco P. Cocktrain here smashed out his roof and fucked up his aerial when he was lettin' Bella ride him rodeo-style on the way back from the Grits Fest."

"Oh, that's friggin' classic, Duke."

"Shut it, Bo-mo. Makin' love to Bella's a hazard to my surroundin's. It's either trash shit or kill her, you know?"

"Listen to you, makin' love."

"I think it's sweet."

"Brown-noser."

"Girl Scout."

"Least I ain't shacked up with the Batty Bratty Brownie."

It only took five seconds for our banter to devolve into one big brawl of baked-hard dirt clumps, arms lockin', fists booming, boots belting, churnin' up a dust-bowl tornado of limbs trying to wrestle each other to smithereens.

Just good ol' boys.

We'd been shootin' the shit and repairing my Bronco and upgrading the CB and antenna—just another way to waste time before Bella arrived for our day of sex and solitude.

Just downhome boys and our toys.

Toys.

Good goddamn thing I hadn't found Bella's new stash under her bed last night.

Amidst the feints and insults and razzes and beatin's that didn't really hurt, I missed her like an amputee aching after a ghost limb.

Dusting off, I stood apart and rubbed my hand over the hole in my chest, the figurative and literal gap Bella filled with her sublime presence and highlighted with her absence.

Jazz and Em broke apart, grinnin' at me like the cocksuckers at least one of them had been, in days gone by. "What?" I scorned, kickin' a Busch can across the yard and lobbin' it straight to the relative of that annoying-as-fuck mockingbird who'd messed with my mornin' sexing.

Picking himself off the cratered soil, Junior dug around in his back pocket for a fresh toothpick, which he twirled between his lips, "Nothin'. You're just lookin' all more-ish."

I scratched my neck and hissed at a skeeter, "Huh?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong, Brother, I still think you're a moron." He winked at me. "But you're less moody and broody, you seem like you're happy, and you want more."

More.

Yeah, I did, I wanted more.

I wanted more, and now, and forever with Bella.

Like Othello, the Venetian General, I was worried anything could happen to her… not the least at my own hands.

Boorish.

Moorish.

That Moor had killed his lover and then committed suicide with the realization of his wrongdoing.

Not that it was ever right to slay a lady.

Unless it was Jane. Or Chelsea. Or any other Volturi broad.

The only way I could make sure Bella was safe was to change her. But that would only bring down more attention from the Merchants of Menace, the Volturi.

It was a goddamn Catch-22.

Reaching into the open back of the Bronco, I dug around the Styrofoam cooler for a few brewskies, throwing one to Bubba and Jizz, fizzing another open myself.

Seemingly trained to my thoughts, Bub asked, "You really think them Eye-talians are gonna' come here?"

Crossing my arms, squinting my eyes, I took a bead on a turkey vulture overhead, circling, tightening its spiral, lowering to the ground, seeking out roadkill and carrion. "Seems that way."

I fingered Bella's panties in my pocket like they were a talisman and looked around at my brethren.

Sniggering, Em joked, "Good, I fuckin' welcome them. All the world's a stage and I am but a playa'." He finished his beer and aimed it at the blue recycling bin with precision. "Besides, y'all, their cloaks are almost like Snuggies—they're gonna' look goddamn ridiculous in these here parts."

He was one to talk.

Carl could quote Shakesqueer. Fuck, he'd been there at the Globe theatre, watchin' that shit en rondo.

Jizz interrupted my thoughts by shootin' a miniature paper airplane at me. A business card that read The American Shakespeare Center, in Staunton, Vagina. Phone number? 1-877-Much-Ado.

I stifled a chuckle and huddled back into my thoughts.

Bella was just… all kinds of beautiful, the likes of which I'd never appreciated, least not since Maw'd dragged us into the sissy, sibilant, shushed Sistine Chapel with its Michelangelo ceiling. Intricate, arched, iconic…God giving life to Adam through a touch of his fingertip.

I could only give death, in a simile of life that never ended. And not with heraldic touch, but with my teeth, sinking in, splitting her, spilling Bella's blood.

Criss-crossed, star-crossed, never before cosseted, always true and coquettish, Bella deserved more than just this one life.

She was bigger than death.

Always, the fact I couldn't read her mind was infuriating, insufferable, goading me, galling me. At the same damn time, it was a liberating, blissful silence. She said what she thought, and meant what she said… and all the time I just wanted to please her.

Make her and mark her and have her.

And hold her.

Until her mortal demise could no longer do us part.

Somethin' had sparked up in me. I didn't ever believe Bella could be my undoing, she was my Renaissance.

In the face of the twenty-first century's credo Anything Goes, I liked Bella's candor. Within her openness, her frankness, her fuckin' undimmed sensuality, I felt resurgence. Maybe even an awakening of my turn-of-the-last-century mores. There was no friggin' way I'd be beddin' down any more ladies… no way, no how. She was it.

And her rosebud lips on my dick didn't hurt either.

Jazz strolled closer, struttin' in his boots, hangin' down his Stetson, "Yeaah, there's much ado about somethin' goin' on."

Like Iago, Jazz was battle-ready, tried and true and gray and blue… a Confederate through and through, "Y'all need to tell me what happened in Volterra."

Bubba snorted like The Pig and snatched another beer, "Them glorified parasitic politicians just wanted a piece of Eddie."

"Yeah, Aro's little livery head couldn't handle the fact I knew more'n him." I checked my watch, looked down the road, wanting Bella nearer, now.

"Oh, man, I'da liked to unleash a can of whoop on candy-ass Caius that day."

A grim smile was on my lips, "And he'd have liked to unleash on your ass too, Bubba."

"Fuck. That's gross. No offense, other-fucker," he wrapped his paw around Jizz's shoulder.

"None taken. I don't find you the least bit attractive at any rate," Jizzper replied.

I pointed out, "It's not the dick-drabblin'-dragon-breath-demon I'm worried about anyway. It's Arsehole Aro we need to concentrate on."

"Well, spit a nickel with mah pickle, we should just call Critter Control."

"What?"

Jizz concurred, "Fuck yes, they're supposed to take care of unwanted varmint."

I hung my head low and let out a laugh… idiots knew we were in for a battle, and they cared, but more importantly, this was us.

"What'd Maw do at the Castle?" Junior needled.

"Well, she weren't at all happy 'bout the way them vacuous vamps were treatin' Eddie so she took her stiletto and stamped on Armpit's toe, scuffing up his couture, cuntnugget boots."

I nodded, and added, "Then she made us go sightseeing."

"Oh yeah," Bubba laughed, "Like an army of acrimony was gonna' mess with her holiday. Remember that twat at the Doges Palace?"

Doges, dogs… Jacob… Jacobite… bite… Bella.

Bubba snapped his fingers in front of my face, "Yeah, he'd stopped right damn in front of me, blockin' the exit. Europenis—what an ass. I said sorry and made nice, but I really did mean to head-butt the twat, damn tourists. They were like fiddler crabs, scuttlin' all about the place, just askin' to be squashed."

"You just wanted to get to that statue… what was it?"

I came out of my trance of Bella dancing with death. Remembering our crusade, our vacation, the slaughterhouse of the Volturi… their capsule of cruelty and ill-imagined glory. Journeying through time,I remembered, "Juliet's statue in Verona."

She'd been tarnished as me. A tall sculpture, an edict. Heavy, glossy green leaves leavened her shoulders.

For luck, in love.

Green as me, back then.

And now.

"So, let me get this straight," Jazz began.

Bubba interrupted, "He said straight."

I rolled my eyes and gave Jazz the busted-up, tractor-ridden court with my hand, bowing and motioning him to carry on.

He spat his toothpick so it bayoneted the earth. "Aro knows all with a touch, Caius is just queer as folk, and Chelsea's a tramp who can cut your heartstrings?"

"Yep, sounds about right."

"Fuck that bullshit, what about Bella?" Em put the finishing touches on my aerial and looked me over with more smarts than I cared to understand.

I tore up an ant mound and pressed the scallions of little biting bast-herds back to guts, "Well now, she started with a pinching, piercing sting." I clapped my hand over my heart again, feeling Bella residing there… devoted. "A bite that swelled outward. Radiating. Fillin' with the pus of love."

They were silent, for once, those jesters. Waiting for more.

"Fuck you. I ain't sayin' it to y'all before I tell her."

"Christ, Eddie, don't go all soft on us or nothin'." Bubba smiled and shied away.

Jizz grinned like a proud man.

And then came closer, "What about the Sheriff of Effingham?"

"Well, I don't fuckin' know. Hell, I don't even know what Bella wants." I closed up the Bronco and took a look at my Timex again, "She's just a young woman. We haven't even hardly talked about the future."

Clapping a hand to my shoulder, Jizz gave way, "And it ain't even just about you."

Everyone was counting on us.

This was no love story.

At best, it would end broken, gory.

While Jizz and I talked, Bubba pushed out the grill. He was wearing a custom-made 'Kiss Me, I'm Dead' apron he'd picked up at the World's Grits Festival.

"What're you doin?"

"Makin' Bella some dogs, obviously," he fired her up and placed a brace of wieners on the grate.

Just as the scent of fried hot dog was making me nauseous, I remembered, "Junior, thought you were goin' to the Hunley celebration." I needed him to go… get at least one of them out of the way of my honey celebration.

The CSS Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, just off Charleston's coast in 1864, one year after Jizz had been made the Major of uncongenial Maria's army.

"Nah, I wouldn't miss this theatre for the world." He shook with laughter and looked down the drive.

Bubba peered up from his grillin' of chitlins. "The little women are here."

I followed their specs.

What… The… Hell.

Now this, right here, was a farce.

~It was the best of times, it was the worst of times~

Alice had done gone and collected Bella.

Motherfuck.

While the girls alighted, I wanted to know, "What the fuck color is her dress?"

Bubba rolled his eyes, "You and your damn doodie-nomoly, it's pink, dude. Gladiola pink."

Feasting my eyes over the flittery, fluttery confection that left a fair bit of daring boob bare, I couldn't believe that even the goliath gladiator was gettin' in on Maw's plant-talk.

The harsh sun made a transparency of her skirt so I could see the turn of her curvy legs as Bella sauntered to me, Hecate the Hijacker in tow. Closing my eyes the moment I felt Bella glide up against me, I caught her to me, tenderly cradling her rear and turning us around so my body screened us from the others. "Hi."

"Hi."

Slowly so my arousal bubbled instead of boiled, she kissed me from one side of my lips to the other before assuaging the need of four hours without her in a luscious meeting of tongues sinuating.

The Witchy Woman stepped up to us with her double, double, toil and trouble, her voice throwing a bucket of water on my fire burn and cauldron bubble, "Enough of the groping, Eddie. It's girl time."

I swear she had her frigging broomstick shoved up her ass, sideways. My brow furrowed, I looked to Bella in disbelief, "Girl time?"

Stroking my chest and slappin' my cheek lightly, Bella laughed, "Sorry, lover. Me and Alice need to chat… I won't be far."

They needed to chat. I needed to fuck! Crock of shit, this was. And they didn't need to talk, not without me present—who the hell knew what kind of mad crap the Mississippi Mudslinger was going to throw around? Bad enough she'd already told Bella she was gonna' be the end all or be all of our family.

"I don't think -" a finger pressed to my mouth and I looked down at Bella, from this angle I could see clear down between her breasts to her belly button. I forgot what the fuck I was fuming about.

A half-smile turned up her mouth, "Distracted, baby?"

I nodded my head, both of them.

"Good, you just remember that view for later." And off she ambled, next to the Foul Weather Fairy.

Jazz clapped a hand to my shoulder, "Oh, Eddie, you were played."

I shook my head, grinned, and directed the boys to get out the lawn chairs so we could set up as near to the double wide as possible so I could get an earful, yet close enough to the dirt road that we could keep an eye on the Sunday morning matinee ritual rutting between one M'sieur Louisiana and his 'cross-the-road neighbour Mr. Texas.

Fire-ant Alice didn't pull any punches, "I just wanted to say, Bella, that Eddie was a real asshole when I first met him."

I was about to jump up to defend myself when Bella interrupted, thank fuck. "Yeah, he was kind of an asshole when I met him, too."

Or maybe not.

Alice outright laughed, and the boys smothered their chuckles while I shredded the vinyl webbing of my cheap-as-shit chair. The Pixie Stick got serious, "I think you've changed him."

"Nah, I don't believe that. He's the same man, or vampire, he was then. It's just that he's more of who he could be. You know?"

More.

I smiled, that almost made sense.

"Well, the thing is, Bella, you're special. You seem to have been born to be with Eddie, to be the fulcrum of this spectacularly fucked-up family," Alice explained.

We-ell, shit-almighty.

"You don't have to tell me y'all are the epitome of a dysfunctional nuclear family," Bella agreed. "But I don't understand how this can be? I'm just a girl. Eddie and me, we might be-"

Everyone held their breath, and I looked at the ground. I didn't want her to say it, not aloud to Alice, not the first time.

I heard her inhale from inside the trailer, "We have deep feelings for each other,"—Jazz muttered, "Nonsense." Bubba gave me a lingering look, I massaged my chest again, over that growing morass—"but how can I be that important in the grand scheme of things? I'm only human, I don't have super-anything, and, to be honest, I know any one of y'all could kill me with a flick of your fingers, if'n you really wanted to."

My eyes clamped shut. Never.

Just then the Untamed Shrew hollered out the front window, "You boys better not have your listening ears on!"

"No'm!" Bubba denied.

We started fuckin' around to throw her off the scent of our eavesdroppin':

"So we done discussed Cacky, right?"

I sighed heavily, knowing where this was going to end up, "Yes."

"How 'bout that Dasher then?"

Bubba laughed his fool head off, "You fucked a dame called Dasher?"

"Can it, you cunt," I crushed my beer can against his titanium-plated skull, then admitted, "Worst fuckin' lay of my life. What the shit? Dasher? Jesus, that's one of Santa's reindeer. And hell if she didn't squeal-scream-whinny like a doe about to be rawhide when she orgasmed. 'Bout near made me want to rip my ears off my head, that shit did."

Jizz scoffed, "Did you have her sisters too? Prancer, Dancer…"

"VIXEN!" the dumbass duo exclaimed together.

Dickheads.

"Shut up, they're gettin' to the good bit," Bubs tilted his head towards our home.

I picked up Bella's voice, low and throaty, "In fact, you know, I think Eddie wanted to kill me in the beginning."

"Of course he did. Do you honestly have no idea what your blood feels like to him? Feels like, because it's not inside of you, it's throughout you, it colors your skin, it feeds your heart, it perfumes the air; it is a corporeal presence. Did you know we have strong olfactory senses? That a drop of blood from a tiny cut a mile away is discernable. That tiny red bead is a bubble of fragrance, of mouth-watering richness… that each person has their own flavour?"

I hated to admit it, but Alice was makin' me hungry just talkin' about it.

"Your blood has body. It holds the essence of you. I'm not a scholar or anything, not like Carl, but I've done my research. From what I've found along the way, it seems there are only two paths for a vampire and his cantante. The call is so imperative, coercive, one can either give in to the siren song and satiate the thirst that only grows with each second… or one can reach deep inside for unheard of strength, overpower the meaty, warm, luxurious melody to drink and drink fast to discover, instead, what can only be named as enduring, undying love."

Outside, on my lawn chair, I stilled. And pulled up the hem of my shirt to wipe my face; there was no sweat, no tears, just the want for those things.

Want.

Love.

Was that why? With Bella, and now, way the fuck down here in East Bum Fuck, South Carolina?

Bella gasped, and I could hear her heart struggling, and I did smell the fresh waves of aroma sent out from that organ pumping. And it did make me lick my lips and breathe severely, and look towards where I knew she sat on my couch…but it was because I wanted to save it, save her.

"The road less travelled," Bella whispered.

"Exactly," Alice agreed. "You see? I believe I was my sire's singer. That James went off the rails, exiled himself from his high-standing within the Volturi, because he couldn't escape my compelling bewitchment."

Jazz leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, listenin' to his woman.

"Unlike Eddie, he didn't come to me as a lover, but a murderer. I knew he was getting closer, all my life. That's why my parents locked me away; my drawings, my visions, my hysteria. I knew he would be there, waiting. At the asylum, I could feel him watching me. What I see has never been pastoral, or pretty, or fun. No, the glances I get are horrific, terrifying, haunting. My final hallucination before James drank of me was of Jazz. I heard his voice, shouting my name! I saw his face, his scars, his history. It was… heavenly. And then the devil took me, so I could be delivered."

I smelled the tang of Bella's tears, and I wanted to go to her.

"Don't Bella, don't pity me, don't cry for me." She was smoothing away the weeping tracks from my girl's face. Alice let me see her hands gently lifting away the plump drops. "My family gave me away. But these people right here? They are my people. And I would do anything for them. No matter what you hear, what you think, what you might feel at the end, I need you to believe that everything I do is to keep them all alive."

Bubba honked his nose into a hanky, and I shifted in my seat, I couldn't even look at Jazz. And then I didn't need to because the Sunday mornin' showdown began with Penske drivin' dude dumping a heap of pork scratching and beef jerky packages on the side of the road. Louisiana came out swingin', "I'm gonna' make sure you get fined for that, fuckhead!" His face was bright purple like vessels were popping all over it.

Texas Penske spat some baccy juice into the whole lotta' litter and jeered, "Here's a quarter, call someone who gives two shits."

"There's rules here now, you know! And you can't park that eyesore in your driveway no more neither," the Creole cranked up his blood-boilin' another notch.

"The fuck I care." Penske kicked a pile o' trash across the road and stomped inta his single wide.

I thought I was mumbling, "Yeah, nice. Luxury Hollows now has a Neighbourhood Association. And him there's the Head Ass in Charge."

I guess I was talkin' louder than I thought because Louisiana started stalkin' across the road, like he wanted to get torn limb from limb. By yours fuckin' truly.

I stood up and cracked my knuckles, loosened my neck, and got ready to dent his faggot faced-fender with my head.

Bubba cuffed my wrist to the magnolia I was just crossin' beneath and advised, "Easy, Rambo. No need to alert the neighbours." Even the fuckin' magnolia's glossy leaves and fat, waxy blossoms shook at me in disapproval.

Storming back to my chair that was hanging in threads, I let Em soothe the limp-dick's ruffled feathers.

At least Bella had quit crying, because I just couldn't stand that shit no more.

Catching up on Alice's and her conversation, I found them talkin' about me, "I can't explain why you're immune to Eddie's ability, but not mine or Jazz's. Perhaps it's just about being in the present—Eddie is special."

"Yeah he is," Bella's tone was dreamy. I could imagine the way she closed her eyes when she agreed, and that small smile on her lips…the same one she had when she came down from cumming.

"Aro's skill works the same way except he needs to touch you, then he's able to rape every single thought you ever had, as well as those from people you've had dealings with. Because of the nature of his craft, I believe he won't affect you. Jazz works on emotions… as does Chelsea, so there's the possibility she might have a hold over you. Jane, Alec—what they do is physical; he deadens, she inflames… the perfect yin yang twins. I hate to say it, but they're wild cards. Marcus could possibly read your relationships. Caius is just a homosexual, as far as I can tell.

"What I'm trying to tell you is no one knows the scale of your shield, Bella. Not until you meet the others, not until you become one of us."

"Well, don't they just sound like a regular Brady Bunch," Bella played it off, but I could read the worrying creeping into her voice.

"I don't see how I can stop anything bad from happening, Alice."

A distinct illumination unfolded over me. A subtle light, a look inside; Alice blew out her own garrison and allowed me into her eyes. "You have this," she touched Bella's temple, "And you have this," she placed her hand over Bella's heart.

Damn, was she feelin' up my woman?

"You have Eddie." Bella's eyes dilated and dropped and crinkled over a smile.

"There are vampires who are made out of goodness, Bella." She looked up. "For pure reasons, not just ruination or collection, or to do the most disgusting deeds." Bella shook her head, not wanting to know the truth, the abomination of our breed.

"Emmett, Eddie, Rose," the little Prickly Puck paused, and Bella held her breath, "They're not like me, not like Jazz." I knew the upward curve of Bella's mouth followed Alice's own, "That's why he and I are together." I felt her lift her shoulders… acceptance, love.

"Only a handful are compassionate enough to make a vampire for the right reasons. Carl, Irina… Eddie."

Me?

Fuck.

Aliceshowed her ass and shut me out just like that.

And I was back to overhearing them:

"You need to meet Esme and Carl, properly."

With an endearing edge of exasperation, Bella busted my balls and made known, "I told Eddie that last night."

"Stubborn fool."

"He asked me to move in with him."

"Oh shit!"

"I know."

What the hell did that mean?

Quietly, Bella mentioned, "To be turned or not to be turned, that is the question."

"You have time."

"Do I?"

"I can't say for certain, but a little bit yes," Alice said. "Or you can just go on your merry way."

"No, Alice, I can't."

On hearing their footfalls on the balled up rug inside, we relaxed in our seats and pretended we hadn't heard every damn word.

Bella came to me and sat in my lap. "You okay?' I asked.

"Yeah, baby," she ducked her head to put her lips to my throat in the exact place my blood had once thumped, broiling over the ropey muscle. "You? You look like you've been in a fight."

"Ain't nuthin'" I pushed my hips up enough she could feel how I wanted her, alone, without the Tainting Troll, without Bubba's roll, without Jizz's sidelong glances.

"I need to be with you, Bella," I pressed into her ear, I grabbed her derriere.

Bubba intervened, "So, Sis, you gonna' use your powers for good or evil?"

I didn't even want to hear it, "Shut the fuck up, Captain Caveman."

Em nodded to me, mumblin' about 'Better that than you bein' a morose sad-ass.'

Linking her arms around my neck, Bella perked up, "Hey, all this talk on Caius got me thinkin' though."

I shook my head at her and gingerly thumbed her nipples.

She arched into my touch but carried on, a bit more breathily, "What tastes better, pussy or pecker?"

"Hot damn!" Em shouted.

All eyes focused on Jizzper; he'd had enough of both to form a statistical universe that'd withstand academic scrutiny.

Not that I really wanted to know.

The stranger in a strange land took out his toothpick and juggled it from fingertip-to-fingertip. Straightened up and grokked us all—with his swift emo-hippy-bullshit-good-vibrations, Jizz magicked us to a place where everyone was connected, bodies didn't exist, there was no man or woman…just now, and we were combined in one entity… almost.

"Well now, seein' as I'm the only one who's had both snatch and shaft, right?" He paused.

His effervescence was headily enclosing us in some sort of utopian intermarriage.

Bella alone shrugged, "Maybe." Next to me, she looked like an apparition, a dream-weaver, all flexuous and insouciant and delicious in that gladiola-pink sundress.

Through the wavy espousal of hazy whirligigs Jizz turned around us, I managed to break through the trance enough to stare at her.

"Shhhh, he's doin' his hypnosis thing… and I'm just kidding, baby," she assured me.

I drowned back into Jizz's happy-clappy-fuck-who-you-want place and listened, Bella's hand in mine, "It's a toss up. Pussy is soft and sweet with many flavors and ripples and folds. Dick is hard and salty with rugged, velvety texture."

I squirmed.

Bubba spat out his brew.

Bella gaped.

Jazz finished, "Be that as it may, Alice's quim is the best." They adored each other with googly eyes.

"Beer goggles."

"Bull-hockey."

He came right back at me, "And you, my man, are King Tosser the Turd."

With the vicarious spell decidedly broken, I started gathering their various shit and laying it in their arms, "That's it, get the fuck out. Each and every one of you." Bella started towards the driveway until I towed her back to me, "Not you. You're here to stay." I neatened her hair and washed over the swollenness of her eyelids, coddling her from the pain she'd felt earlier.

Bubba was still standing around, complainin' about it being hotter than a popcorn fart.

I shoved him to his monster truck with a, "Go spit shine your cock on Rose's ass or somethin'. And don't come back until tomorrow."

~For Whom the Dinner Bell Tolls~

Bella had hoisted herself up onto the porch freezer. She licked her lips and looked down at her hands fiddling with the lock, "You never let me see inside your ice-chest."

I stilled, was she talkin' about my heart? It felt like I had a heart, as if it was galumping and struggling to beat with every moment at her side or between her thighs. Looking at me with puzzled amusement, she knocked on the white refrigerated coffin she sat upon.

So, she really did want to see inside the fuckin' thing. How well I remembered tryin' to rub one off on her the first time she'd been here while I had her splayed out on the buzzing, cooling container.

I shook my head, repeatedly stubbed the steel toe of my boot against the freezer filled with packets o' platelets so her rack jostled in a pleasant, steady rhythm, "Bella, I wish you wouldn't."

She skipped her fingers between mine, and I let her pull me to her. Against my sensitive earlobe she licked, "I want to know you, Eddie."

Throwing my head back, I yanked her to the edge and grunted as she nibbled up and down the ropey sinews of my neck, "Ahhhh, Mary Motherfucker, that feels so goddamn good, love."

She hummed against my Adam's apple until I shivered, and asked, "You cold, baby?" I felt her smile against my throat.

"Never, not with you." I rolled my head, and she sampled the other side of my jaw, tugging on my flesh, biting my chin, "I know you." I smirked and opened my heavy eyelids, "You talk in your sleep."

Bella's arms wound around me as her god-fucking-damn hellish mouth moved to my chest, my fingers working through the buttons ahead of her because I wasn't gonna' fuckin' make her multitask. "What'd I say?" she queried.

She sucked roughly on one of my nipples when I dipped down at my knees, running my dick against her inner thigh, up and down so she could feel just how unbearably horny she made me, "Not much," I gasped when she bit, and I felt it like a cunting current of smoke and fire straight down my stomach to my groin. "Just how much you like… oh hellafire... my lips." Bella touched them with her thumb, caressing them open so I sucked on that pad of flesh. "My eyes," she got on her knees and kissed each eyelid. "My cock," I grinned, then gritted my teeth when she dropped to all-fours and nuzzled my crotch. Pushing her hair away so I could watch her, I lowered to my own knees to be face-to-face with her, "You said how good you feel with me."

Our kiss was slow, low, moving, soft and sure and tempting and knowing.

Our foreheads met and we stopped. Bella smiled, "Well, I 'spose sleep talkin' has its rewards then."

"For damn sure," I agreed and then admitted, "I envy you that… sleeping."

Framing my face with her hands, Bella kissed all over me, "I know, baby. And I wish I could watch you slumber. It hurts my heart, Eddie," her eyes cloudy as a swamp with pain, "to know you'll never find that peace."

I touched the palm of her hands, one and then the other, with the barest brush of my mouth, "I find peace with you."

Then I returned her fingers to my cock, and I shit you not, the damn thing tried to jump the leash of my jeans to get directly to her hands, her mouth, her snatch. Biting her lip, she resituated me so my shaft was standing straight up against my belly, the tip decidedly making an appearance above the waistband causing Bella to moan and lean over for a swirling lick and yielding suck.

With straight arms, I pushed down on the lid of the freezer on either side of her, cradling the head of my cock in and out of her mouth, seeing her lips enfold and release. "Aren't you hungry," I moaned as I watched her tongue swish from side to side over the taut, purple head of my boner. I didn't know what the fuck I was sayin', but she hadn't eaten all day, and though I was sure my cum was a mouthful and more, she probably needed food, needed to keep her strength up, because fuckin' right I wasn't going to let up on her for the rest of the night.

Wiping the dashes of saliva and my fat drops of pre-release from her lips, Bella parried, "Aren't you?"

I pushed my Pavlov cock back down before it could jump the fence, "All the time."

"So?"

The sago palms rustled like legs shifting underneath hot sheets during a midsummer night's dream.

I rubbed my finger across my upper lip and hummed, and hemmed and hawed, considering… it may have been a brave new world with Bella, but still, "I ain't gonna' eat in front of you, unless it's your pussy."

Joining Bella's giggle was a throaty croak from around near my feet.

You've got be kiddin' me.

Why the fuck was a warty, fat fucker of a toad encroachin' on my territory? I glared at the bumpy little bugger, I wasn't averse to a little toad-in-the-hole play, but didn't the drab and dumpy lopsided creature have any sense of self-preservation? Took me all of a nanosecond to dub the fuck 'Mike-Eye-of-Newt-Newton'.

Jumping down, Bella took the wee shit in her hands.

Fuckin' hoped Bubba had stocked up on Germ-X.

"Y'all are keeping a bullfrog now?"

"I think it's a toad, and no we ain't keeping it. I just haven't squished it yet."

Squinting at the froggy fucker, she pouted, "Oh no, you can't!"

I shrugged, "'S'what I do, Bella."

She arched a sexy eyebrow and stared me down, "You drink toad blood?"

"Well… no. I mean, I kill animals, right?"

"You don't have to murder this little guy though," she declared, nearly rubbin' noses with Newty.

I kept mum as she plopped it back down to the planks, silently promising that other cold-blooded little monster he was gonna' be dead meat as soon as she left.

I managed to scuff and hiss at it so it pissed itself while Bella entered the trailer.

I found her looking around, shuffling through the contents of the cupboard, rifling through the fridge—those human household places I'd stocked up on at Piggly Wiggly last week just for her, "I could just have a fluffer-nutter."

Well, I didn't know exactly what that was, but it sounded kind of kinky so I just nodded my head… until she pulled out some peanut butter.

That cack-colored crap wasn't going to keep her satisfied for the long-term fucking I had planned.

I plonked the plastic jar back on the shelf and suggested, "Can't you make pasta or something? Isn't that what athletes eat?"

Placing both hands inside the opened lapels of my shirt, Bella coyly looked up at me, "Why, Eddie, are you suggestin' I'm going to need my energy?"

I bent to her ear and kissed, "Yes."

Bella sent a baleful look to the sink, which was unfathomably full of dirty pots and pans, "But, baby, it looks like all your dishes done been used already."

So I found myself up to my elbows in sudsy dishsoap. While she chopped some green and red and yellow shit up next to me.

It was really fuckin' weird, and… nice.

After I'd dried a pot, Bella took it to the hob and started a smelly mess sizzling.

Too busy wondering how the hell two vampires had a sink full of dirty crockery, I didn't notice Bella come up behind me until her tits flattened against my back, and she pulled my shirt all the way off my wet arms, trailing beads of soap and water to my fingertips.

When I was half naked, she perched right against me again, her breasts swishing across my back, her hands sinking into the foam with mine, flirting amidst the warm water, guiding me as I sponged over a plate, wanting to spooge in her instead. Our actions sent sloshes of water spouting to my jeans and down my legs, especially when Bella tongued across my shoulders and blew up and down my spine.

Moaning, I observed her hands rising from the water before languidly teasing my abdomen, trailing the clenching muscles, "I can't help it, Eddie, I need to touch you now."

Please, Miss, can I have some more?

I followed the turn of her hands and put my wet palms on her ass, my back to the sink.

Without further ado, she stuffed her hands in my pants and found a fistful of cock. Her free fingers tufted through my crown, her eyes widened and then narrowed, her lips parted just the same way she spread my jeans, deliberately. I grabbed the counter and widened my legs. Gathering the opened placket of my pants, Bella suckled my ribs, drew a lazy line down my abs, robbing me of breath as her tongue tribbled the caving-in muscles at my pelvis. I knew she was going to wrap that mouth 'round my cock.

She fisted my pants and tore them down, but came back up, running fingers over the hair on my thighs that grew more heavy the closer it got to my balls, and my dick waving like a flagpole above her rising head.

She was murmuring and mumbling, but I couldn't concentrate because… then… she melted her tongue to me.

"Oh fuck yes," I was strangling, panting.

Seating herself between my legs, she tapped my thighs further apart and lapped my balls, taking them in her mouth, rolling them on her balmy tongue.

I stuttered, "Uh-uh-uh…"

Her whole damn mouth saturated my length as it arched across the side of my hip; then she swallowed over me, and I crashed against the counter, almost losing my footing against the slippery floor!

The feeling was so fuckin' intense. I swallowed for the last time, looked down, met her eyes as her lips met the middle of cock and then two inches lower, and I bit my tongue and hung my head and slowly, gently, as tenderly as possible so I didn't break her neck thrust into her mouth, that glade of gloriousness that had me pulsating, pulsing, aching, pulling, crying out loud, "Fanny fuckin' Hill!"

All she had to do was cup my balls and draw them down, and I was a fuckin' goner.

I had no idea how long it took my hips to stop lurching, my breath to stop chugging, my hands to unclench, my eyes to open to find Bella before me, backhanding her mouth and licking her lips.

She bent over to pull my jeans back up because I was still completely incapacitated.

I got a good tit shot in the process.

Smiling widely like the cat that ate the canary, more likely the cream, Bella hummed, "Don't know if I'm all that hungry anymore."

I swatted her ass and sucked on her lips and pressed, "Like fuck. Go on, get you some food." I stepped to her before she turned, "Thank you."

Finishing the dishes, I supped on sidelong glances of her as she moved gracefully about my kitchen.

She had far too many clothes on for my likin'.

Bending over to check something of a particularly nauseating stench in the oven, Bella tantalized me beyond reasoning with the lift of her dress over and against her thighs.

Sitting down on one of our mismatched chairs, I called her to me.

Tilting my head, I preyed apart her dress. "Eddie, I'm cookin'!"

"That you are." I slid the side of my hand down her middle, her tits jutting, her hips swaggin'.

"Take it off," I lounged back in the chair with my arms folded behind my head.

Almost shyly, oh so goddamn sweetly, Bella left the frail sundress off her shoulders until it ruffled to the ground like flower petals, fallen at her feet.

No bra, 'course not.

Her nipples were bright and aroused.

I grabbed my hair and snarled, but didn't touch her, "Panties.''

"Oh dear god," Bella pronounced before hooking the diaphanous lacy scrap down her legs.

"Happy now?"

"Almost." I stood, brushed past her so our denuded upper bodies collided and jolted apart, headed to the pantry where I took out a freshly pressed pinafore.

"Eddie, my sauce is burning," she admonished.

Two fingers between her legs and I concurred, "So it is."

Her chin lifted as I placed the pinny over her, taking my time to dress it just right, turning her to tie the ribbons at the back in a bow that sat right on top of her bare ass. I kissed both cheeks, felt over the tears of her tits jutting from the demure, naughty apron, "Now I'm happy."

She read the motto in filigree script on the front of the frilly white fabric, "You come up with that on your own?"

"You had somethin' to do with it." I held my bottom lip between my teeth and appraised Bella in the smock, circling her, caressing a bare throat, a round, creamy shoulder, a trembling tit. "Mmmmm, you still got some South In Your Mouth?" I dipped to kiss her, lunging into her mouth with my tongue and leaving with a wet smack of our lips.

Unsteadily, Bella returned to the stove, throwing over her shoulder, "Where'd you get it?"

"Grits Festival, love." I winked at her.

My nostrils flared while she elegantly, near-nakedly, made her repast. The apron cinched her waist and every so often, when she came near enough, I gathered the sash that wound over her ass.

Sitting across from me, Bella began to eat.

She licked her fork, touched the tines with her teeth sending up a chime. I fidgeted in my chair, not as an act to appear more human, but out of necessity to ease the aching, torturous throbbing of my cock.

She twirled some pasta around the fork–the way she twirled her tongue up and down my dick, the way I twirled her tresses around my forearm when I needed her, hard.

Eating this crap took up too much time, I needed her to work faster.

Hmmmm, maybe some motivation?

I stood up.

Bella gulped and chewed faster.

"Need some incentive, lover?"

"Show me what you got."

Oh hell yes, I will.

I tarried over my belt, lifting it from its brass notches in leather.

"Take a bite."

Oh hell yes, I would.

"Swallow. And another."

I took down my jeans, all the way to floor, and kicked them aside.

Better fuckin' believe it, I could.

"I really wanna fuck you hard. Feel you, riding me. But I need you to eat."

My dick was scant inches from her lips, her fork hung in the air, her eyes skittered from my mouth to my rock rigid dick, trembling to be nearer.

"Eat."

Devouring a few mouthfuls, Bella eyed me the entire time.

Quick as a sprite, she lunged forward with the tip of her tongue, and I wanted it, god I did, but I fluidly stepped back with instinctual grace, "Uh uh uh, not yet, sweetheart."

I pumped myself. And prompted her.

"More."

"Mind if I partake while you eat? I ain't even had an appetizer." I knelt and pushed the negligible skirt up and licked her thighs and hovered over her pussy before pressing my mouth into her, licking, moaning, kissing, groaning. So fuckin' hungry.

Bella's back was a bowed thing, her hips an avowal, her plate shoved away with a crack of china and cutlery to the very edge of the marked-up table.

Now.

"Now." Starving.

Toying with me, she shoved my head back by my hair, "Maybe I should clear the table first."

No fuckin' way.

Finding my feet, I towered over her, "Lick."

Once more, my cock was in her mouth, and I wanted to stay there, but that just wasn't enough.

I cleared the goddamn table, alright. With my arm. Every damn thing clattered to the floor.

Her hands to the top, the near edge, to brace herself, she lifted her hips, and I readied myself, slowing down, touching her inner lips and clit and nest with my head.

Then I slammed into her and cried out!

And stopped and bled out.

And whispered, "Okay, okay, okay. Slow, gentle, soft, slow, tender."

Her sloe-gin eyes blinked up at me, "It's okay, Eddie, you can go faster, baby."

Pounding my fist to the table, I took her.

And then I ceased, I backed out, my feet taking paces away as my dick left her… wetness all over us, her spine arching, her head wavering, her tone raw, "Please!"

A hand to her bottom-heavy tits, pulling up on her nips, as viciously as was pleasurable, I sank my mouth to her lips, sunk my dick right back into her… hard, cold, icy, melting.

Every time, I sloughed out, and I lurched in.

The kitchen filled with desirous din.

Plates breaking, windows cracking, the table creaking, the lino squeaking, the suck of pussy squelching, my resonating cock filling her.

Finally, I lay across her… to nip, to snuggle, to cuddle… to make love.

In… fast. Out… slow.

We both winced and moaned with every plunge and release, each crest and decease.

Fucking.

Lovin'.

In the end there was nothing between us.

No words, no breath, no breadth, no skin.

Subsumed.

My hand covered her pussy, her hand clamped over her mouth, my mouth was stuck between her tits and we both yelled and froze, a frieze.

Ended.

Hours later, and my bedroom was tore up.

Bella was a hot mess.

She fell off of me and simpered; I couldn't understand a damn word she mumbled.

Fuck that pasta shit, tomorrow I was gonna' buy her some Wheaties.

I rolled to the middle of my shitty single bed, laughing… tiredly?

She sighed and slid and groped and found her way on top of me, bedding down for the night, "What?"

"Nothin', love." I made a nest for her in the crook of my arm and quoted, "Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine."

~I would LOVE to hear from you! Please, please tell us what you thought, this was a really important chapter for Eddie… he's been a bit anxious, ladies~

Literary, and other, references in order, I think (y'all, I'm only doin' the ones that got a hard mention… you can try to spot all the others):

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare

Othello, Shakespeare

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Statue of Guilietta in Verona:

cache(DOT)virtualtouris(DOT).com/2673307-Statue_of_Juliet-

Verona(DOT)jpg

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

from A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Macbeth, Shakespeare

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein

(and a lesson on 'grok' from said novel):

"To grok (pronounced /ˈɡrɒk/) is to share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. Author Robert A. Heinlein coined the term in his best-selling 1961 book Stranger in a Strange Land. In Heinlein's view, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed."

The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment."

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

Fanny Hill, John Cleland

Probably some Doctor Seuss rolickin' around there too, because.

"Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine."

from Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

~~ll~~

This is very EXCITING:

A couple of staunch, sexy, talented, sassy, smart ladies who took rather a shine to Eddie on Facebook have been workin' their fool heads off to create:

The Official Dead Confederates First Anniversary Contest:

June 5th to June 18th

Check out his FB album under DC Anniversary Contest for details (link on mah profile).

Make friends with Eddie dcCullen on Farcebook (again, on my profile), go now to see all his sexy savagery and get properly prepared, Eddie style, for the fun times to come. It'll be all sorts of sinful fun and Southern and sultry so y'all should check it out! Coming soon: artwork, new avi's for y'all, music…and prizes, of course. Oh, but you're gonna' have to work for it ;-).

With my love (and Eddie's… well, pretty much whatever y'all want), I give my thanks to the Master-minge who shall remain unnamed, MsEM WetMore (the artist in residence), Lindz (the most fuckin' amazing Robnipulator, you can catch her at robmaniporn(DOT)blogspot(DOT)com/?zx=e1ab584f7b5de5f1), and the TFFA (Twilight Fan Fic Addicts) Blog (twilightfanficaddicts(DOT)/?zx=a7468c2e704c518b).

~~ll~~

Giggle Snort voting ends June 4th (Eddie… Small Fry—yeah, I know, now I'm just baiting the beautiful, dastardly vampire).

Twilight All Human Awards voting NOW OPEN, until the 18th of June (me, Best Author of the Year).

Links on my profile.

~~ll~~

Again, I implore you to read Rebelward Without a Cause outtakes. Specifically, for this chapter, Alice's Seeking Asylum and Jazz's Searching for Oblivion. Most recently we had a glimpse of Eddie's poetic talents in The Hard Bard, and next is a feature on our very own Bubba by my gorgeous friend, favorite writer, and Emmett aficionado, winterstale.

~~ll~~

Many thanks to FL95 for reccing DC's in her story, Cullen Unscripted. Big balmy kiss to you!

Cheers, Rie~