***EPOV***
The jittery high of my arousal was subsiding and taking all my courage with it. Now the guilt and panic returned, thick and palatable.
Would I regret what I had just done, now that the passion was gone? What would my wretched need to possess her cost Bella in the end?
Remorse already invading my mind forcefully, I knew I couldn't keep it out forever.
I was reaching across her delicately breathing form to wrap Bella in the bedspread we had just made love on when I noticed the tiniest flecks of blood on the white fabric.
I had expected this—she had been a virgin, after all. But the sight of her hymenal blood was so devastating to me now, I took my forehead in my hands to hide myself from myself.
I had her blood on her hands. Bella's blood, on my hands. She had given herself to me willingly, but did that mean I had to take her when I knew that it would hurt her?
I threw back my head and let out a guttural sound of despair. I had made this sound only one time before, when I thought that Bella was dead. She was still here with me now, asleep and pleasantly dreaming. But how much longer did I really have with her if I kept making mistakes? When would my passion finally outmatch my reason to the point that I would hurt her so much that I couldn't make it right, couldn't take it back?
I could be stronger than my demon desires, I promised myself, and I would start being stronger the next time I felt the devil tap me on the shoulder, for Bella's sake.
I laid down beside her, as still as the statue that I used to think I was before I met her, and I thought of what I would have to say in the morning to convince her to be patient again.
I would wait for her to wake up, and I would tell her the reasons why.
She wouldn't like it, of course. Still, I would lie to her and dazzle her and bribe her and threaten her if I had to, but I loved her and so I wouldn't touch her again, not until we got home. Not until she was immortal like me. Not until I was absolutely sure that I wouldn't at some point finish with my selfish, wicked pleasure and find the delicate framework of her bones shattered and smashed, her blood running freely.
Not until I changed her. Not until then.
A/N: Thanks for reading. "I surrender what I've been, for who you are. For nothing makes me stronger than your fragile heart" —Sleeping At Last, "Turning Page", Breaking Dawn Part I Soundtrack
