"Test of my patience. There's things that we'll never know. You sunshine, you temptress. My hand's at risk, I fold crisp trepidation. I'll try to shake this soon. Spreading you open is the only way of knowing you"
Fine Line, Harry Styles

Chapter Nineteen
BPOV

*This chapter is rated M for adult content

"I'm very aware of the fact that I am nothing more than a pretty corpse that the earth won't accept back into the ground," I muttered, almost condescendingly as I stared back up at him.

He chuckled darkly, moving away from me to lean back against the tree where I had found refuge from the house for decades before he arrived.

"You're very morose for such a small creature."

Staring up at the underside of his sharp jawline made me want to reach up and graze my fingers against the undoubtedly ridged yet soft skin.

"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

I couldn't help but perceive him as one of the most notable dark and stormy men of literature. Austen may not have preferred him for one of her own characters, but any of the Brontë's would have jumped at the chance to write about his dismissive tone and deep dangerous eyes.

I could tell he wanted to smile, as he looked down at me from the corner of his eye, but he fought it as any good Rochester would.

"So if I'm Mr. Rochester in this novel, does that make you Jane or should I paint you as the mad wife in the attic?"

The pang of honestly shot through me immediately, but it was small compared to the warmth of the day and the licking fire in his dark eyes that seemed to light my insides ablaze.

We stared at each other for a long minute, letting the air hung heavy between us as we fought for dominance in some unannounced war.

He looked away first, letting his head roll back and his eyes slide shut once again.

"Tell me, Isabella, what do you miss most about being mortal?"

I sighed.

"Besides the obvious?" I rolled over onto my side, propping my head up into my palm.

"And what would 'the obvious' be?"

"You can't be that far removed from humanity Edward." Disbelief seeping into my voice, refusing to accept that his stoic nature would make him so profoundly closed off to the very comforts that we were no longer were privy to.

"Isabella, I've lived for over 3 centuries inside stone walls where all that is praised and glorified is ripping into jugulars and fighting over who gets to drain the children because for some reason their blood is just so much more-"

"Stop." I was sitting up now, staring at his unmoved form. He remained as still as a beautiful sculpture, his eyes carved forever closed. He rested like a dead man against a tree.

"Is that too honest for you?" He asked calmly.

My blood boiled underneath my chilled skin. I had a terrible urge to reach out and shake him until he finally snapped and pinned me to the ground, his big bad wolf demeanor was much more tolerable than this detached impassive mass of stone in front of me.

"Jessica Stanley." I threw the name up at him, ready to poke and prod at this chilly demon until he exploded.

Those dark perturbed eyes finally opened, glancing at me from the side. He didn't seem shocked to hear that name come out of my mouth, but I could see the smallest twitch of ire crinkle around the corners of his mouth.

"If you had gotten a little closer, you might have heard Father Marshall practically beg everyone to pray for her safe return." I watched him closely as his head twisted slowly to gaze down at me.

"Don't ask about things that you don't want to know about little mouse." The timbre of his voice was low and dangerous and seemed to vibrate through the space between us.

There was the fire I craved. He hid it deep underneath the thick bravado of his indomitable presence, but it was there. I could feel the world slowing down outside of our little bubble, the breeze falling flat, the bees and birds seeking safer ground as things began to crackle.

I sat up stiffly, putting us eye to eye on the ground.

"What did you do with her?"

The image of the pretty dirty blonde teenager smiling for her school photo was burned into my head the moment I opened the church bulletin this morning before mass. The small blurb was written underneath the picture saying she had left the house for a shopping trip late last week only to never return home. Her car was found broken down and abandoned on the far side of the town lines, where the dark forest met one of the many cliff sides.

I already knew what he had done. I didn't need the details; I just wanted to smack the growing smirk off his face.

"It seems like you already know, Isabella."

Silence encased us, pounding in my ears.

"No more. Not here. Go be a monster somewhere else." I spit out at him, letting the burning look between us wage war for a moment longer before throwing myself back on the ground and sliding my eyelids closed.

It may have been a whole hour before the stiffness finally settled around us and the birds started back up their afternoon chirping and the sun peaked through the clouds, shining golden rays on one half of the backyard.

I hadn't realized that I was holding my breath the entirety of our stretch of silence until I finally let all the trapped air escape my useless lungs in a rush of warm CO2.

I hesitated before I spoke next. I didn't enjoy talking to this demon, but unfortunately, he seemed to be my own choice at the moment to keep the darkness at bay. If I thought to my missing sister or Carlisle coupling with the Volturi woman I would find myself thrown into the depths of my broken mind.

"So, you're telling me you don't miss closing your eyes and falling asleep?"

"Would you consider that one of 'the obvious' pleasures of a frail human life?" I was almost surprised at how quickly he responded.

"It is often the one that I wish for the most." I sighed.

There was a short pause before he responded again. "If I've thought about it even in the last hundred years, I supposed it would be more of a longing for a way to pass the monotonous days rather than as a means of rest. I'm not sure I remember what it feels like to be fatigued."

I opened my eyes, staring up at the deep green canopy of leaves that shaded us from the traveling sunlight that began to flood the yard as more warm rays peaked through the grey clouds above.

"What else is on this arbitrary list?" He asked me before I could probe him further on his thoughts regarding the distinct inability for a vampire to enter a REM cycle.

I laced my fingers together on my stomach, liking the way I could focus on the feeling of the thin silk gauze that made up my dress against my skin, keeping the need to turn and stare at his haunting gaze and chiseled features just barely at bay.

"Some days I feel like I miss every little thing." I paused. "Like how they can cry when they're sad and feel the wetness of real tears dripping down their face. That they can feel satisfied with the things they consume to stay alive. That they can smell a cup of coffee or a turkey dinner that's been cooking in the oven all day, getting goosebumps at the anticipation of that first taste."

I sighed again loudly feeling the melancholy of my words begin to sink deeply into my bones.

"I miss everything. The things I see all of them enjoying around me and even the worst experiences that they have to face I would take in a moment if I could."

I turned over onto my stomach, letting my elbows dig into the grass beneath me and prop up my body so I could look at him again, no longer wishing to deny myself even that small pleasure during all my talk of the thing I could never have in this life. At least I could pretend he was crafted from Italian marble, focusing on his beautiful exterior and ignoring the garish things that came from his appealing mouth.

"You wouldn't feel that way if you didn't live like…this." His sharp chin made a small motion towards the house that had become a home to our little coven.

"What would be your prescribed remedy then sir? Perhaps I should take up slaughtering the local town's people." I was quick to respond to his condemnation of the life we had created here, such brashness was never so present in my words as they were when I spoke to him.

That stupid smirk crept up along his full pink lips, his dark and dangerous eyes capturing mine once again, holding me paralyzed with a certain indecipherable look. It sent a tremor down my spine and a pool of warmth spinning in my stomach.

"Trust me, Isabella, you may play the part of a sweet little creature to these humans, sending your mail, worshiping alongside them, captivating them with your soft and gentle demeanor."

I was frozen looking into the growing storm that raged behind his eyes. He took advantage of that, grabbing one of my wrists from its place on the ground and yanking my entire body up onto my knees, bringing our faces just a whisper apart from one another. My mouth fell agape, a flash of remembrance to when he held his mouth against my neck in the attic sending another wave of warmth down my body and into my stomach.

"Take that mask off little one and what are you?" His nails dug into the hard skin of my wrist. "Huh?" He was mocking me.

"Enough," I finally broke out of my trance and tried to pry my arm away from him, needing space from the intoxicating scent of his breath pushing itself into my open mouth.

"No," He pulled me even harder until I toppled over, falling into his chest awkwardly, feeling all the grace I ever thought I possessed leaving my body as he bent me as he wished, his hands now taking purchase on my biceps, placing me directly in front of his manic, sneering face. "You're always saying 'enough', 'stop', 'no' but its just because you don't want to hear the truth."

My fingers found themselves clutching to the wrinkled and weathered fabric of the black woven shirt he borrowed from Carlisle's closet. It was the only thing that kept my body from completely collapsing into him.

"You think you're missing out on humanity, but you really just never embraced what you are."

"And you're happy being a monster?" I spat back at him, finally finding the footing of my outrage.

"We don't get happiness Bella, we get warm, gushing euphoric pleasure that makes you feel like you've died and gone to whatever heaven you hope exists. You get the greatest pleasure that any person, animal, or creature dead or alive could ever feel crashing through your veins."

He was practically bending me in two at this point, his fingers so close to actually beginning to crack into my skin that I should have been in agony, but I wasn't. The rapid rise and fall of my breath matched his own frantic inhalation. I don't know if it was his words, that dripped like pure sex out of his plush mouth, or the way he held every ounce of control over my body with his large hands that had me feeling like I was about to step off a very steep cliff.

It was a very small, almost nonexistent, rational thought that had me giving a light shove to his immovable chest and with that nudge he suddenly and surprisingly let me go from his demanding grasp.

I nearly fell out of his lap, no longer sure how my limps were supposed to work. I moved backward haphazardly, sitting back down in the grass, leaning on my hands that were outstretched behind me.

Our eyes never breaking their intense hold the entire time.

Some time stretch by and yet the air around us seemed to still crackle and spark, our breathing still as rough and labored as minutes prior.

I let out a large whoosh of air, needing to do something to try and release the tension we'd been dancing around since he arrived in Forks, only partially succeeding at shoving it into a very small and weak box up until this point. Now it felt like the seams were bulging.

"I need to hunt." I breathed out, running a shaky hand through the hair I had painstakingly pinned up this morning before heading to church, a task that Rosalie usually did for me.

The sound of several pins hitting the ground behind me sounded more like bombs dropping down into a desert in our charged bubble of mixed air.

The braid wrapped around my head fell down my back just as I quickly stood and began making my way towards the thick, dark forest, finally breaking away from his gaze that was starting to eat away at my skin like a bacteria.

What started as a normal fast-paced walk suddenly turned into a sprint the moment that I heard him shift from his position on the ground.

I needed space. I needed the shadows of the trees to hide me from these feelings that were crashing like waves inside of me. If my heart could beat I'm sure it would have been slamming against my ribcage as I worked my way deeper and deeper into the nooks and crannies of the woods.

I felt wild and out of control as I sprinted past hundred-year-old evergreens, my feet pounding against the wet ground in their naked state. But no matter how fast or far I ran, a deep aching somewhere below my ribs pounded harder, pinching and pulling in a way I couldn't describe as it was something I never felt before. The pain almost sent me to my knees several times and I clutched to my abdominal as I contained aimlessly running.

It was by some luck or fate that in my own manic state my instincts kicked in and the strong musk of a full-grown buck caught my beast's attention, pulling my body to the west.

I usually liked to stalk my meals, watch them from afar as they grazed, unaware that they were about to take their last breath. There was something peaceful in the unexpected as I would leap upon them, snapping their necks before they had a moment to feel much more than a pair of small hands in their fur.

It was humane. It was decent. It was the only way that I could bare living life like this.

But now was different. The venom flooded down my throat in pools that seemed to drive me deeper into the hysteria that was taking over my body, so different than my usual fade to black scenes. This was bright and blinding, everything up close and magnified.

I had pounced on the large creature before even realizing what was happening.

Had I been more rational I would have heard the tearing of my handmade dress as my abrupt movements split open the fabric of the hem, the whole way up my thigh. But there was no rationality to what was coursing through me as I tore open the neck of the still living and breathing creature under my hands.

The stag toppled over wailing and moaning as I drank from its very life source.

It was such a different experience to feel the red nectar pump into your mouth as the creature's heart worked double-time to keep up with the loss of blood pouring from the wound I had created. Usually, I would spend almost fifteen minutes sucking out each gulp until the blood, quickly cooling in the dead carcass of the animal, was too thick and unappealing to continue.

With the animal slowly dying under my hands it was all over in a matter of moments. My belly full of sloshing fresh plasma, my toes curling painfully at the vibrant waves of pleasure that caressed over me, the most potent I had felt since my newborn year when I couldn't control myself enough to bother to kill the animal beforehand.

When I opened my eyes again, the blinding white light finally began to dissolve. I could see my hands dug into the flesh and fur of the buck, my nails had broken through the skin where I had a death grip on my meal. Unlike the clean and precise feedings I was used to, this slaughter was messy. My dress was soaking in the remnants of blood that hadn't found its way into my mouth and I could feel it still trickling down my chin.

It was the deep and vibrating growl that pierced through me that finally caused me to raise my eyes and stare across the small dimly lit clearing where I had attacked the stag.

Edward was only a few yards away from where I sat braced over what was left of my meal.

His body was low to the ground, crouched in a threatening pose, ready to spring at a moment's notice and attack. But there was no threat, there was only me covered in warm blood that I licked from my lips.

When my eyes locked onto his feral inhuman gaze, so dark that the blackness shadowed the usual bright whites of his eyes, leaving him looking like the devil himself, something seemed to snap inside of me. The aching pound of the space that had nagged at me as I ran away from him filled with warm pooling liquid that sent a violent tremor through my entire body.

My eyes slid shut and my head fell back, suddenly too heavy for my shoulders. Wave after wave of pleasurable electric currents ravaged me from head to toe, my fingers sinking deeper into the flesh of the buck's carcass.

"Ah!" I gasped into the air just once before I was flung backward across the clearing, my back slamming up against a large oak there, sending a splintering crack through its thick trunk.

Edward held me pinned up against the rough bark; he was seething with some vehement emotion that I didn't need to name to know. I felt the same thing rushing through me over and over.

"Edward!" I cried out, my hands couldn't reach his face fast enough as I tangled my fingers through his crazed locks, trying to pull him closer to me. Streaks of the animal's blood staining my hands marked his pale icy skin, adding a glossy coat of red to his hair.

"Shhh," He growled at me, a noise that only sent more shock waves down to my toes that dangled off the ground.

With one hand digging into my hip, pulling my lower body to meet his, his other pushed through my woven braided hair until he found purchase at the roots and snapped my head back, leaving my neck exposed to him.

"Please!" I begged him for something I didn't know, I just knew that whatever it was I needed it to happen now or I might cease to exist.

I didn't get another word out as his teeth sunk into the skin of my neck like an overripe peach.

My ears blared with white noise while my mind turned to mush. My whole body seized into a ridged arch, pushing every part of me again him, feeling the outline of his hard body as it practically ground me to the tree against my back.

A pleasure that I had never felt so fully or deeply coursed through me as he pushed his venom into the gash where his teeth were planted in my neck. I could feel the physical reaction of my body as everything tightened into a pool of warmth underneath my dress, slick and scorching.

I slammed my head even farther back until it made crude contact with the trunk of the oak, my hand digging into the scalp of his head, trying to push him further into my neck, although it was physically impossible

His constant growls sunk into me as his teeth remained planted inside me, his mouth sucking almost violently at the skin there. My obscene moans and cries only made him grip onto me harder.

"Please," I was calling to him again, asking for another unknown wish. This feeling was electrifying and biological, pulling all my atoms together with his as he forced a part of himself inside me.

But I needed more.

He hiked me up higher on the tree; the sound of my dress ripping along the rough texture of the bark went unnoticed by our frantically colliding bodies. The hand that had been holding my waist slid up along my exposed thigh until his fiery fingers found the soft cotton of my undergarments clinging to my hipbones. His fingers dug into the skin there as his body lurched forward again, taking the hem of my dress with him until he was pressed against the thin piece of fabric that hid a part of me that until this moment had been nothing more than a physiological part of my body.

Now it was the epicenter of a million live wires and raw nerve endings, weeping for something it had never had or wanted until I saw his demon eyes devouring me from across the clearing.

He retracted his sharp teeth from my neck but not without pressing his tongue along it, sealing the mark he had left and sent me into another frenzy of high pitch squeals and wanton moans.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as he moved his forehead to press against mine, my eyes finding his looking like a black molten lake, scorching with wild flames that would lick and scar anything in their path. His mouth rested just above mine and I let out another desperate wail, wishing he could open up my mind and take what he needed in order to understand what my body wanted.

"Hmmm," he moaned, the noise vibrating along his throat, causing the hot liquid pooling below my stomach to thicken, sending a sharp scent into the air that I could practically taste on my tongue.

I watched intently as he breathed in, taking all the sex and blood permeated air into his lungs and holding it there. If it was possible, it seemed his eyes darkened even further.

His fingers slithered back into my hair, craning my neck backward so that he could tower over me. His lips traced back and forth over the fresh bite mark he had scarred across my skin there. Even the light touch caused my hips to begin to gyrate on their own, rubbing again the hardness of his own physique.

A low yet threatening growl began rumbling in his throat again as he worked his way up to my ear.

"Mine," he hissed at the same time as his hand, gripping onto my hip, slid closer to my center and he ground himself into me.

I gasped when those long white fingers pressed right at the apex of my thighs, once again throwing my body up into a deep back-breaking bend, my hands finding purchase on his biceps.

The hand in my hair snapped my neck even further back; calling my attention to his face, looming over me.

"Mine!" He roared.

"Yours," I cried out. A response so automatic from my mind that I don't think I could have held it in even if I had tried.

Satisfied with my declaration his lips overtook my bloody ones, molding our faces together until I wasn't sure where my skin started and his ended.

His dominant tongue pried open my mouth, tangled us together, his hand moving my head back and forth, tilting and tugging as he saw fit. And the only thing I could do was slid my fingers back into his thick hair, pulling and twisting the locks violently. Every time a small moan or hiss escaped his mouth I remembered where I still ached for him.

The hardness behind his borrowed jeans was prominent as he slid back and forth against my soaked underwear, sending sensations through my lower half that I never knew existed. I was boiling under my skin, so close to reaching some endpoint and yet still needing something more from him.

Again and again, we pressed our lower halves against each other, his fingers pushing the fabric of my underwear into the glossy softness that pooled in that newfound intimate spot inside me, the only thing left to separate his skin from me.

He swallowed every cry and moan that came out of my mouth, his teeth digging into my bottom lip, pulling and sucking on it until I thought he might rip it from my face.

His mouth, his hands, his hard body all had me falling into a sinful whirlwind of blinding sensation that had me gripping my toes, wrapping my bared hips around him until I could press the heels of my feet into his backside, hoping to bring him closer.

There was nothing but his mouth, his hands, and his hardness pushing me closer and closer towards the edge of the cliff.

I could only imagine this was what it felt like to be electrocuted, struck down by lightning during a dark and stormy night.

Was this what the fires of hell felt like?

His mouth fell away from my swollen and used lips, moving to suck at the spot where his teeth were earlier. The skin there, like a wire that connected to where his fingers played against me, where his center dug into my core.

I was a sputtering mess, but he demanded more, his fingers, tired of the cotton that kept him from the blazing heat underneath, ripped the fabric from my body.

"Ah!"

"Mine!' He growled over and over into my neck. If I lived passed this moment I'm sure I would hear the gravely promise of that word whispered in my head for all eternity.

He cupped me fully with his large hand, my heat spilling out over him, the possessiveness of his hold evident to even my trembling body. A slight pressure to the heel of his hand against the bundle of nerves underneath and I was finished.

He had marked me with his teeth, his words, and now his body was sending me soaring into oblivion.

A/N: Sooooo...I'll just leave this here.