Chapter 24
Once I was a hundred percent sure that Paul was fit and healthy to come home- that would have been forever if Paul hadn't started begging me (damn those puppy dog eyes)- I was barely through the door when Paul's mouth was attacking mine.
"God, I need you so much" Paul groaned into my mouth. I laughed.
"Well, we are most certainly not doing it down here" I joked.
"Yes ma'am" Paul said, knocking his arm into the back of my knee but catching me before I fell.
"Don't be an arse" I mumbled against his chest and he moaned.
"God, you're so hot when you talk like that" he gasped, throwing me onto my bed. I sent a mental thanks to God, thanking him that Charlie was due back for another three hours.
"It turns you on when I insult you?" I asked breathlessly as he kissed and licked my collarbone.
"More than you could ever know" he murmured, sending shivers down my spine.
I flipped us over and growled "You, mister, have too many clothes on."
Paul chuckled underneath me.
"What are you going to do about it?" he teased me, nipping at my neck and I moaned loudly at the glorious feeling that flooded to me.
"This" I said cheekily, while secretly wondering where the hell my new-found confidence had come from, and chained his hands to my bed with Charlie's handcuffs. His eyes widened in shock.
"What...?" he gasped and I laughed.
"I wanna play" I whined playfully, pouting slightly. He groaned.
"You carry on pouting like that and I'll have my way with you faster than you can blink" he growled.
"Well, you would, if you could. But you're at my mercy" I whispered in his ear.
Slowly, I sat up slightly so he would have full view and, even slower, I lifted my top up inch, by inch, by inch. Paul's eyes grew wide, his eyes locked on me like a magnet.
"You like what you see?" I gasped, slipping a finger under my bra and pinching my nipple, just like Paul would do. He could only nod dumbly.
Slowly, my other hand began to descend to my lower lips and moaned Paul's name.
"God Jesus, Bells, you're killing me" Paul gasped out, panting heavily.
"Well, that's kinda the whole point" I said, inserting another finger, and then another. "Oh God!"
Paul whimpered but helped me through my orgasm by saying huskily "That's it, baby, come for me."
I came with a scream of his name and it too k me a couple of minutes to get my strength back.
"Please get me out of these fucking handcuffs!" Paul almost shouted making me laugh breathlessly.
I quickly uncuffed him and he flipped me over. And we continued our make-out session.
~Two weeks later~
'Oh for the love of God and all things that are holly, that is not what I think it is' I thought as I stared at the positive pregnancy test in front of me in the bathroom sink.
I grabbed my mobile and immediately called Emily.
"Hey Bells, what's up?" Emily asked in her usual cheerful voice.
"Hey Em, um...are the guys there?" I said nervously, walking into the kitchen to the fridge and opening a jar of pickles.
"Yeah, why?"
"Urm, can you step outside. I wanna talk to you and I don't wanna talk to you with the guy's eves dropping in on our conversation."
I heard shuffling movement and then Emily said "Okay, what's up."
I took a deep shaky breath and muttered "I'm pregnant."
"Oh my gosh, Bella, that brilliant news" Emily all but screamed. "Right, you get your arse here right now or so help I will..."
"All right, all right, I'm coming" I said quickly. Believe me; you don't want to get on the wrong side of Emily's cursing.
I hung up and drove there quickly (slowly) because I just couldn't wait to tell them the news (please note the sarcasm) because they will act all maturely (NOT!).
When I got there, Emily ushered me into the kitchen where everyone was waiting patiently, and looking very confused.
"Bella has some news" Emily said, beaming ear to ear...err...well...you know what I mean.
"Emily, once I'm done, I'm gonna kill you" I muttered, hiding my face behind my hands before mumbling "I'm pregnant."
There was a stunned silence, and then Kim and Leah launched themselves as me, laughing and congratulating me. Then the guys were on me and joking about how their little girl had finally grown up.
"Oh hush" I rolled my eyes at Embry who was whipping a fake tear from his eye.
~One month later~
"Is this really necessary? I'm gonna look plain next to him no matter what you girls manage to cook up" I sighed as I sat on Emily's chair in her bedroom. She, Leah and Kim were looking at me, judging on what they were going to do with me.
Today was the day I, Isabella Marry Swan, got married to Paul Long and became Isabella Marry Long. I was so nervous I swear I would die of it.
"No one will dare to call you plain when we're through with you" Leah said in a business-like voice that matched all of the girls' expressions.
"Only because they're afraid you'll turn into a big-arsed dog and rip them into fucking pieces" I muttered. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, hoping I'll be able to nap through my torture. I hadn't had the best nights of my life. I was so nervous I kept tossing and turning for hours on end. And, of course, the girls had assured me in the morning that I looked crap because of it. Aren't they a cheerful lot?
I did drift in and out a little bit while they masked, buffed and polished ever surface of my body.
It was after lunchtime when Embry's voice came through the door. "We're back."
"Stay out of here!" Kim shouted, glowering at the door.
"No problem" I heard Jared mutter. "We like to keep the fur on our bodies."
I laughed mentally at Kim's threat of getting a knife and cutting the fur of any werewolf who came into the room. It was so funny watching the guys almost pee their pants under the glare of her.
"Come on" Emily said as we heard the boys' footsteps walk away "let's do her hair."
"Okay" said Leah. "Kim, you can start braiding. I want it intricate. The veil goes here, underneath." Her hands started combing through my hair, hefting it, twisting it, and illustrating in detail what she wanted. "Emily, can you go through the clips and pick out three."
When she was done giving instructions, I heard Emily rummaging around and felt Kim's hands replace hers, shaping my hair with feather-light touch. Leah moved back to my face.
Once Emily had done Leah's commendation on picking out my hair-clips, she was sent off to retrieve my dress and then to locate Jake, who had been dispatched to pick up my mother and her husband, Phil, from their hotel. Downstairs, I could faintly hear the door opening and closing over and over again. Voices began to float up to us.
Leah made me stand so she, Emily and Kim could ease the dress over my hair and makeup. My knees shook so badly as they fastened the long line of pearl buttons up my back that the satin quivered in little wavelets down to the floor.
"Deep breaths, Bella" Kim murmured soothingly and I did as I was told.
"We have to get dressed now" Leah said. "Can you hold yourself together for ten minutes?"
"Uh...I can try?"
They laughed, rolling their eyes as they did so, and darted out the door together. Glad they find this shit funny, because I failed to.
I counted on my breathing, counting each movement of my lungs, and stared at the patterns that the light made on the shiny fabric of my skirt. I was afraid to looking in the mirror- afraid the image of myself in the wedding dress would send me over the edge into a full-scale panic attack.
Kim, Emily and Leah were back just before I had taken nine hundred breaths, in dresses that made them look like they'd just stepped outside of a supermodel magazine. They were breath-taking.
"Wow!"
"Their nothing" Leah said. "No one will be looking at us today. Not while you're in the room."
"Har, har."
"Now, are you in control of yourself?" Kim asked.
"Yes, but are they back? Is my mum here?" The pack had to do a quick patrol to make sure there weren't any vampires nearby before my wedding. Heaven forbid any vampires who dare disrupt my wedding.
"Yeh, they're here, and so is your mum. She just walked in the door and is on her way up" Leah said.
Renee had flown in two days ago, and I'd spent every minute I could with her- every minute that I could pry her away from Sue and the decorations, in other words. As far as I could tell, she was having more fun with this than a kid locked inside Disneyland overnight. In a way, I felt almost as cheated as Charlie. All that wasted terror over her reaction...
"Oh. Bella!" she squealed now, gushing before she was all the way through the door. "Oh, honey, you are so beautiful! Oh, I'm gonna cry! You two are amazing! You girls and Sue should go into business as wedding planners. Where did you find this dress? It's gorgeous! So graceful, so elegant. Bella, you look like you just stepped out of an Austen movie." My mother's voice sounded a little distance away, and everything in the room as slightly blurry. "Such a creative idea, designing the theme around the legends."
The four of us exchanged conspiratorial look. My mum was off on the dress style more than a hundred years. The wedding wasn't actually centred on the legends, but Paul himself. It was a traditional thing in the pack for as long as anyone can remember. In fact, it's been so long that no one actually knows who started the tradition off.
There was a loud, gruff throat-clearing in the doorway.
"Renee, Sue said it's time you got settled down their" Charlie said.
"Well, Charlie, don't you look dashing!" Renee said in a tone that was almost shocked. That might have explained the crustiness of Charlie's answer.
"Sue caught me."
"Is it really time already?" Renee said to herself, sounding almost as nervous as I felt. "This has all gone so fast. I feel dizzy."
That made two of us.
My mother wheeled for the door, only to complete the spin and face me again.
"Oh goodness, I almost forgot! Charlie, where's the box?"
My dad rummaged in his pockets for a minute and then produced a small, white box, which he handed to Renee. Renee lifted the lid and held it out to me.
"Something blue" she said.
"Something Quilteuten, or vaguely similar" Charlie added. "Did you know you were part Quilteute? Your Grandma Swan's mother was Quilteuten. This was hers on her wedding day, and has been passed down. We had a jeweller replace the paste stones with sapphires."
Inside the box were two heavy silver hair combs. Dark blue sapphires were blustered into intricate floral shapes atop the teeth.
"Mum, dad...you shouldn't have."
"We weren't allowed to do anything else" Renee said. "Every time we tried, it was all but ripped out of our grasp like hungry wolves."
A hysterical giggle burst through my lips.
"Perfect" the girls grinned together as Emily slid both combs into my hair under the edge of the thick braids.
"A little colour- that's all you needed" Leah mused. "You are officially done. "Renee, you need to get downstairs."
"Yes ma'am." Renee blew me a kiss and hurried out the door.
"Charlie, would you grab the flowers, please" Emily asked sweetly and he nodded, leaving the room, returning with the two frothy white bouquets. The scent of roses and orange blossom and freesia enveloped me in a soft mist.
I heard the music playing downstairs and began hyperventilating, but took a deep breath, willing myself into composure. The music was familiar, Wagner's traditional march surrounded by a flood of embellishments.
"It's our turn" Emily chimed. "Count to five and follow us." They began a slow, graceful dance down the staircase. I should have realized that having those three as my bridesmaids was a mistake. I would look that much more uncoordinated coming behind them.
A sudden fanfare trilled through the soaring music. I recognized my cue instantly.
As soon as my feet were past the treacherous stairs, I was looking for him. For a brief second, I was distracted by the profusion of white blossoms that hung in garlands from everything in the room that wasn't alive, dripping with long lines of white gossamer ribbons. But I tore my eyes from the bowery canopy and searched until I found him at last, standing before an arch overflowing with more flowers, more gossamer.
I was barely conscious that Sam stood by his side, and Angela's father behind them both. I didn't see my mother where she must have been sitting in the front row, or my new family, or any of the guests- they would have to wait till later.
All I really saw was my Paul's face; it filled my vision and overwhelmed my mind. His eyes were chocolate brown; his perfect face was filled with such love and pride. And then, as he met my awed gaze, he broke into a breathtaking smile of exultation.
Suddenly, it was only the pressure of Charlie's hand on mine that kept me from sprinting headlong down the aisle.
The march was too slow as I struggled to pace my steps to its rhythm. Mercifully, the aisle was very short. And then, at last, I was there. Paul held out his hand. Charlie took my hand and, in a symbol as old as the world, placed it in Paul's, and I knew instantly that I was home.
In that moment, as the minister said his part, my world, which had been upside down for so long now, seemed to settle into its proper position. I looked into Paul's triumphant eyes and knew that I was winning, too. Because nothing else mattered but that I could stay with him, that he was mine to keep forever.
I guess if I had been in another position that I would have been crying, but I was a wolf girl now, and I was stronger.
"I do" I vowed when it was my time to say the binding words, beaming like there was no tomorrow.
When it was his turn to speak, the words rang clear and victorious.
"I do" he vowed.
Mr Weber declared us husband and wife, and then Paul took my face in his hands and kissed me tenderly, adoringly while I placed my hand on the small bump on my stomach of my little Paul.
The crowd erupted into applause, and we turned our bodies to face our friends and family.
AN: One more chapter to go and I've finished the story! :D I can't even begin to tell you have happy I am to have almost finished this book.
Thank you to:
Independantcinderlla, Easypeasy, MegPearl, samanthalynn2388, Feelo Ivashkov, , Hannah Salvatore-sister, emmettsmybigteddybear, TeamCarlisleWhitlock, oddrose, Obsessed-with-reading, JordieGirl13, HermioneCullen, Dottyxox, AthenaRowena, Kittathampster, Ye-Olde-Queen-O'-Darkness, millymollymanda, Iofafa, Delilah69, Traceybvie, Ari-chan07, 143iloveyou143, Keyda87, iloveedwardcullenthevampire, Jennylabob, Speedyraider and STICKYNIKKIO117 for putting my story on your story alert
Thank you to:
Easypeasy, Feelo Ivashkov, RoSaBbAdAsSgUaRdAiNs, PrincessAnastasiaBelilcov, Angel4EverLostInLife, TeamCarlisleWhitlock, The-Black-And-Whote-Cat11, oddrose, obsessed-with-reading, JordieGirl13, HermioneCullen, Dottyxox, DarkShadow722, Haley62, millymollymanda, lofafa, dijah15, Traceybvie, Hunniebee23, 143iloveyou143, keydo87, Nettie13, Gundamseeddestiny, VampireChik97, SWEETVAMPLOVER101, kwhitewolf26 and erh713 for putting my story on your favourite story list
Reviews:
Daddys little crazy bitch: DDDDDDDDDD
Seza3175: Awwww, that you
Oddrose: Thanks: D. I also love reading Paul/Bella stories and am amazed to see how many different personalities Bella's been given. It's funny!
Millymollymanda: I'll try :)
Deliah69: So do I. I mean, it'll be hardly fair if Bella get's her happy ending but he doesn't. Maybe someone should hook him up with someone like Tanya or someone different...
MigratingCoconuts: Thanks =)
143iloveyou143: I will
Baby mama in training: Ahh, congratulations! Do let me know what you call them!
Mizzymarri: I'm really sorry, but I put Leah and Jacob together. You can see that further back in the story. Is there someone else that you'd like to be with?
Sassygirl97: On its way
Britty: same!
VMReiche: Lol
Kathy Hiester: don't all the girls *0* ha, ha, ha
GracefulWolvesInTheNight: That'll be the imprint bond :)
Speedyraider: I'm glad
Kathyxxxxxx: they do make a cute couple
~Poisson Ivy