Chapter Thirty-Four: Interlude After Dawn
Bella was curled up in Jake's arms in the same position she'd been in since dawn. Seth had finally passed out after an hour or so of screaming. Jake had returned halfway through that and he and Bella had held on to each other tightly. Now, when sunshine dared to peak through the windows with rare, cheery warmth, Bella wanted it to go away completely. Or maybe she wanted to concentrate it and put it in her room, the one where Seth now lay sleeping. Maybe the sunshine would help magically heal him faster.
Though she hadn't said anything or given any sort of gesture about the topic she was thinking of, Jake leaned his head down to her ear and whispered, "Doc Fang said it'll only be a few weeks, Bells. Seth will be fine."
She turned her head just enough to look into his eyes out of the up-tilted corners of hers. "How did you know what I was thinking?"
"Because I was thinking the same thing." He smiled a little and planted a small kiss on lips that had been worried red during the stressful night.
Bella sighed and kissed him back for a moment, taking shelter in the warmth of his lips against hers, but her mind wouldn't stop going in circles. She buried her head in the crook of his neck and swirled patterns on his chest. "I can't help but think that all this was my fault. Leah's spine was actually snapped for a few minutes during the battle. Storm nearly lost a leg trying to get to her, he was so insane with worry. And Seth… the only reason Seth is in this condition is because he gunned for Edward the moment the door opened. But Edward wasn't coming after him, wasn't coming after any of the pack. They shouldn't have had to fight because of me."
Jake sighed against her now, his chest expanding and falling back gustily as he cut her self-depreciating tirade off with a heavy hand over her mouth. "Bella, knock it off." His voice was thick with loving patience, all the more firm because of it. "First off, you're one of us, and we protect our own. Second off, Leah is fine. In fact, she and Storm moved on from injured to having wild, crazy wolf sex now that he's finally cooled her down enough. He managed to shut her up long enough to listen to an honest apology and explanation from him. I never thought I'd see the day. It's a miracle." He chuckled, exactly like Sir Walter Locksley, from the new Robin Hood they'd seen not too long ago, when speaking about the 'tumescent glow.'
"Moving on, Seth wanted to get into that fight. He only stayed in the house with you because we told him to protect you. He was damn proud to get a chance, as horrible as it has been for the rest of us to handle. When we were still in our other forms, we all felt that pain when he got crushed. But he shut himself up inside all of our heads so we could continue fighting without being distracted. The only thing that he had going through his head was that he played his part and helped take that bastard leech down. Now, you try and tell that kid that what he did wasn't worthy of anyone's esteem." He looked at her pointedly, and she had to concede the point to him.
"Okay, I guess it makes sense from that point. But—"
"No buts. He did an awesome job and will have the right to gloat over us for the rest of our unnatural lives. End of story."
She laughed at the droll horror in his tone. "I think I can live with that. After all, Douche-ward is dead." She ticked that point off on her finger.
Jake groaned, curling tighter around her in the hopes of squeezing the air from her like a bagpipe. "I think you've spent way too much time with Paul now. We need to find a way to split him and Angela up. He's a bad influence on you both. Ange said fuck earlier tonight! I heard it!"
Bella laughed at his all-too-real-horror now. "Such a drama queen," she stroked her finger down his nose. "She swore before she met him, you know."
"Not as often! And look at you! You used to be so shy! Now you're calling a vampire that stalked you across two continents a douche!"
"No, I called him Douche-ward. And that was from Emmett, dear, not Paul. Although those two are eerily similar…"
"You're calling a werewolf and a vampire similar?"
"Eerily similar, Jake, get it right. I think you ingested too much leech blood when you were nomming on them. You might need to get your head checked out."
He deflated her again, chuckling even as his inner man was completely emasculated. Only Bella could turn a deadly fight between powerful beast and evil creature into 'nomming.'
"I love you, Isabella," he said around the laughter bubbling out of him.
"Cause I'm your reality check?" She grinned cheekily at him, and he nibbled the slight dimple that peeked at him.
"Because you're exactly what I need."
"Excellent. I'll remind you of that next time you do something stupid and we get into an argument about it. It's really nice that you're giving me ammo early on." When he groaned again and thunked a hand to his forehead, she laughed at his 'what-have-I-done?' face. Pulling his hand away, she kissed the skin he'd just abused, leading a trail down that adorable nose to those lips she just couldn't stop kissing. "Poor baby. I'll stop picking on you now and kiss you to make it better."
"That might work." He cheered up instantly, just to make her giggle.
It worked.
"Oh my god, they never stop! I swear, Em, every time we've come in here, they're going at it! They're going to have to neuter him or they'll end up having a dozen puppies!" Rosalie's outraged, highly amused voice preceded Emmett's smothered laughter.
The couple under surveillance laughed abruptly, ruining the necking session they were just starting to get into.
"If you don't want to see it, go to your own place." Jake stuck his tongue out at Rose, who stuck hers back good naturedly.
Emmett grinned and leaned against the doorframe, one arm curled around his wife's shoulder. "We tried. Carlisle and Esme kicked us out."
Bella looked extremely confused—which she was. "Why would they do such a thing?"
"The last time we 'went at it,' " he looked down at the top of Rose's head with a lecherous smile, "we decimated our third house."
Rose shook her head. "That was our forth, darling. First was that Bahama one—"
"The locals assumed it was a freak hurricane," Emmett mused out loud.
"The second was Budapest—"
"Now open to tourists because of the 'extreme, violent haunting,' "
"Third was that cabin up at the top of the mountain in New York."
The male's grin was especially huge this time. "We actually did cause that avalanche. That was fun."
"And then the last one was the one you're thinking of." Rose smiled up at him.
"Oh, you're right. Well, we'd planned on redoing that bathroom anyway."
Bella hid her laughter in Jake's chest, but he wasn't a great hiding spot, as he was laughing harder than she was.
"And you accuse us of g-going at it?" Jake chocked out.
Rosalie looked like she would have turned pink if she could have. "Well, okay, maybe we don't have a lot of room to talk—"
"Any room to talk," Emmett corrected.
"Any room to talk," she agreed, "but we were in our own house—"
"Houses," the lifemates corrected this time.
The vampire's bride threw her hands in the air. "Whatever! The big deal is that we weren't in a place that's going to be teeming with all sorts of life forms," she looked at Jake with friendly disgust as she said that, "at any and all moments of the day!"
Used to being among the packs, where mates could be expected to be found in… erm… compromising… positions, Jake and Bella looked at each other, then back at the other pair and shrugged identically.
"That's almost creepy." Emmett grinned though.
Rose sighed, a long-suffering one that spoke of eons of being the only mature one at times—and that was just with her husband, not counting Alice's magpie attraction to shiny objects when out on a shopping spree. "What we actually meant to come here to say, for the third time," she arched a brow, at the same time giving a pointed look that made Bella blush and the two men smile in male satisfaction and pride, "is that the family would like to meet with your…" she searched for a word, but couldn't find one and turned to her husband for help.
"Muttley Crew?" he offered unhelpfully.
Rolling her eyes, she looked back at Bella. "What do they call themselves?"
"Pack, along with other less polite but equally endearing things." Bella shrugged, smiling warmly in remembrance of all the antics.
"Yes, I can see how that would be apt. Anyway," she flipped a hand up and to the side, dismissing that last thought and nearly tossing her hand into her husband's face (although Bella was never sure if she did that on purpose, or if that was just an added bonus to the dramatic flair), "our family would like to meet with your… pack, to apologize for all the trouble Prince Perfectly Horrid caused, and to give Bella her graduation present from us, even though it'll be a bit early."
Bella turned scarlet. "No, please, no more presents. The last time we tried that—"
"No papercuts this time, promise." Emmett grinned, but the look on Bella's face made Jake growl softly. He could imagine what a papercut in a room full of vampires would end up as.
"Down, boy. Nothing happened. She's obviously in one piece, no chunks taken out of her." Rose rolled her eyes again before looking at Bella in a serious way, one that wasn't common for her—or so most people would think upon first meeting her. "Our family wronged you, Bella, in ways we could never have expected and cannot forgive. If you don't want the present for yourself, fine. We'll give it to Jacob as a wedding present."
Jake choked. "Wedding present? I haven't even proposed!"
Rose's eyes narrowed on him like a naughty schoolboy caught red-handed trying to play hooky. "You've had sex, obviously. So you will get married at one point or another."
Bella choked now, but it was on laughter she was trying to suffocate before Jake could hear it. "I think he's entitled to a choice, Rose."
Jake looked at her like she was mad. "Of course we're going to someday, but… after college, you know? At least after high school! I don't want you to feel like you're stuck in this dump."
"It's not a dump. It just needs some TLC. And a lot of new paint. And a good bookstore. And maybe a theatre." She smiled down at him.
"Well, regardless, I still don't want you to feel trapped." His eyes were serious on hers, obviously thinking on Charlie's relationship with Renée.
"I am most definitely not my mother, Jake. I have no need to go out and see the world. I want my own little slice, and it's right here in La Push. So we're going to go to college, get fancy degrees so we can shove them up some pale-face jerk's ass when we come back and buy property for our own things."
"Your present will help with that," Emmett said eagerly. When the younger couple turned, curiosity piqued, Rosalie locked a hand over his mouth and smiled prettily.
"I think we'll be going with that, now that I don't think you'll refuse the present."
"But… couldn't Alice just see whether I was going to accept it or not?"
"Oh, apparently Alice's visions are a bit… discerning. Anything including you're ragtag Brady Bunch of dogs," she said with as much affection as possible, "doesn't make the cut. Shame." Such droll disappointment made Jake smile.
"Awesome. Then she can't spy on us while we're—"
"IIIIIII think that's enough. We'll see you in a couple of days, then? Will you stay that long?" Bella spoke louder than normal to cover her own obnoxious male's last words.
Rose nodded with a smile, still holding a hand over her husband's mouth. "Of course. Play nice, you two. There's a child upstairs, in case you had forgotten."
The minute those two were out of the house, Jake turned back to Bella, a glint coming into his eyes and turning the old gold to molten depths. "The child upstairs is knocked out by heavy tranquilizers," Jake noted sagely.
"He won't be when his supernatural hearing picks up on us having crazy wolf sex." She arched a brow drolly.
"Well, then, we'll just have to see if the she-wolf can be quiet."
"If I can be quie—" she was cut off by Jake's lips pressing hotly against hers, just as he was lowering her to her back on the thick leather cushions and pressing into her hotly there.
"Yeah, Bells. Quiet. It's simple. All you have to do is keep everything on the inside." He nibbled his way down her neck, down the sensitive bundles of nerves descending from the lobe of her ear.
"Easy—" her voice hitched as he found the sweet spot at the base of her neck, near her collarbone, "—for you to say when you're the one with the d—"
Jake smothered her lips again, laughing, in an attempt to banish the growing vocabulary she had been attaining from Paul. He proceeded to do his best to drive her insane, skimming his hand up the silky skin of her midriff, but stopping just beneath her breasts, brushing light caresses along the skin just below the satin of her bra. Quick as lightning, his hands were suddenly underneath her, running up the smooth plain of her back to her shoulders, releasing the catch of aforementioned article of clothing and skimming back downwards, unfettered by any texture this time. He groaned low in his throat at the feel of all that silk beneath his palms, the simple feeling of just running his hands up and down her skin enough to send him floating in the clouds with pleasure.
He didn't want wild, crazy wolf sex this time. He wanted slow, lingering lovemaking, wanted to sample her bit by tiny bit, brush his lips over every crest and hollow until she was limp and sated and mindless. He wanted to bring her as much joy as she brought to him when they were just lying together and he listened to her breathe, murmuring occasionally as dreams chased across her mind like shooting stars.
So he savored her, slowly undressing her as if he were unwrapping the most precious, delicate gift that was necessary for his survival. (Which she was.) He brushed small kisses along her collarbone, nibbled his way up her neck, took her lips with lips and teeth and tongue, only to smooth his lips back along her cheek and start down the other side of her neck with loving licks and open-mouthed kisses.
He travelled down the soft expanse of her midriff and spread his hands across as much area as his large palms and fingers could take up. Gently, he eased them downwards, taking all manner of attire with them so that she was bare beneath him, so gentle and supple beneath him in dawn's tender morning light.
As he looked at her, skin turned a luminescent gold-peach, her body warm and completely pliant, flowing almost like water even in stillness, he let out a quiet breath in wonder.
"So perfect, Bella," he whispered to her, and was drawn down to her like a magnet in slow motion, in sepia color. He couldn't resist the subtle, instinctive, irresistible pull towards her, reveled when she moaned so quietly as he captured the tips of her breasts, drawing one between kiss-plumped lips and molding the other into his palm, only to slide that hand away, smoothing it along her skin in tactile ecstasy. She bowed up and into his body, silently asking for what he could give. He smiled sweetly and kissed her. His tongue plunged, plundered her mouth and danced a charming tango with hers, even as his fingers entered her with the same lovingly passionate tempo.
She moaned low in her throat again. That sound was guaranteed to spur him on, and he rewarded her with more pleasure, picking up the tempo and lowering his head to her neck so he could suck, kiss, lick, nibble, do anything he wanted—could think off—to that sensitive bundle of nerves on her neck. Jake watched in amazement as she practically lit up like a Christmas tree, an electric current running between those two points of pleasure so strong it played through the link of their souls and caused them to moan identically.
When she trembled, just at the edge of climax, so close but unable to reach it, he rose up, wolf speed aiding him to shove the cutoffs from his hips and enter her before she could blink. The sudden invasion sent her over the precipice, sent her flying. She gasped, a soundless scream of pleasure. Her hips arched, pleading for fast, hard, move! but Jake shook his head.
Languidly, he stretched over her, his massively solid body pressing her much smaller, delicate form into the cushions of the couch and effectively molding them together at every possible point. His hands grasped hers, fingers threading together and weaving them irrevocably closer in one more way. Jake's eyes held hers in a mesmerizing way that had nothing to do with supernatural hoodoo-voodoo and everything to do with the imprint between two souls. His eyes were very nearly glowing, the old-gold color lit from the inside as he stared down at her with absolute love in his eyes.
"Jake…" she whispered, dark chocolate melting in both her eyes and voice. Her body was like heaven beneath his, yielding at every point and bringing him nearly to the edge of release with just that. If she said anything more, he might just disgrace himself right then and there. So he lowered his head and kissed her, rubbed his lips against hers, like sinking into the softest pillows in the entire world, and moved slowly, built her pleasure inch by unbelievable inch. His hips were angled so that each time he entered her, he rasped against that tiny bundle of nerves, and soon each exhaled sigh that she gave became a delicate whimper.
He could feel them both winding tighter and tighter, until the tension was unbearable. He was shaking with the effort to keep the pace slow, and Bella was rolling her head from side to side slowly, until she threw it back and gave the sound he'd been waiting to hear, the small, tortured cry that she gave when she was past her limit and desperate to let go. Smiling, his insides churning with love and immeasurable lust and satisfaction, he enclosed his teeth over the cord of her neck, applying just the right amount of pressure. The love bite was the surest way to set a mate off, something built into the women at birth.
Bella cried out as her body clenched and released, tightening around Jake almost to the point of pain. Jake grit his teeth, wanting so desperately to join her in that instant but holding back, staying inside her until the tidal waves turned into small quakes, then shivers. At long last, he withdrew from her and lay shaking above her, weight braced on his forearms, eyes shut tightly in an effort to cool himself.
"Jake, you didn't—" Bella's voice, so small and confused—maybe even a little hurt—whispered in his ear.
"No protection, sweetheart," Jake opened his eyes and smiled at her gently, unclenching his teeth. "I didn't think it would be fair to gamble on whether or not you would become pregnant. Not when it's you who would really have to deal with it afterwards."
Bella smiled at him made the morning light seem dim. Taking his face in her hands, she pulled him down for a long, scorching kiss. When she lowered her head back just enough to look at him with a decisively bad glint in her eyes, Jake felt his blood pulse in his temple, could actually hear it roaring in his ears. "I love you, Jacob Black."
Before he could even guess what she was about to do next, Bella raised her head and dipped her chin at the same time. Jake had no clue what she was doing until those blunt little teeth of hers locked down on his neck, on that same damn spot he had gently bitten just moments ago. The zing that raced through his bloodstream went straight south, just like she'd known it would, and Jake's jaw popped with an effort to not roar up to the rafters. This effort only made the tendons in his neck stand out more, and the feeling was un-fucking-believable. Jake shuddered, bucked against her, and couldn't stop the upheaval that stole his willpower and left him boneless above her.
Bella laughed, low in her throat, and somewhere in the back of Jake's mind he realized he was probably too heavy for her. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he rolled them—
Straight off the couch.
The thud shook the entire house, knocked the breath out of him, and sent Bella into a fit of silent laughter on top of his chest. Jake raised his head to look down at her—well, glare at her, but the effort was too much and he let his head back down too quickly, and ended up thwacking it against the floor once more. Bella laughed harder at his winded, "Dammit. Fuck. Ow."
"Aw-ww," she tried to croon, but was laughing too hard. "Poor baby. Did you forge-et where you were and fall o-off the couch?"
"Shut up, Bella," he tried to growl, but even he had to smile a little. It was a little humorous.
"Just wait until the guys hear about this."
"Oh, Jesus." He shut his eyes tightly.
"I promise I won't be the one to tell them, though." Bella took pity on him and crawled up his chest, planting kiss all over his face. "I really love you, Jacob Black."
Opening his eyes just enough to gaze into her eyes, Jake smiled. "Because I fall off couches?"
"Because you love me so much you'd sacrifice your own bliss just because you might have made me pregnant. Because you are my own personal sun. Because you're my Jacob, and I love you so, so much."
Bella leaned down and kissed him slowly, putting everything she felt into it and leaving nothing untold. Jake held her still as he returned in kind, kissing her so thoroughly she forgot to breathe and had to stop, gasping for air.
And Jake, clearly forgetting something as well, let his head drop back to land with a solid, very painful sounding thud on the floor again.
"Dammit."