A/N for 2020-08-15: Many thanks to Chayasara for beta-ing and Eeyorefan12 for pre-reading and nudging my characters and plot. As well, thank you to all of you who tell me what you're thinking, or what you're inordinately frustrated with around this story :-)
- Erin
After Esme helped clean Bella up from the vomit and then the diarrhea that seemed to have stolen the very last vestiges of her dignity, Bella didn't feel well, but she did feel like her mind was marginally more in charge of her body than her digestive track had been.
"I'm addicted to vampire venom," she said.
"I think so, yes," Carlisle said.
"But you're not sure."
Edward eyed Carlisle darkly.
"I've only ever seen it once before when I was in Volterra," Carlisle admitted.
"What happened to the person?"
Carlisle sighed. "The man died during withdrawal."
Bella considered several things in the moment between Carlisle's words and her own: one, that medicine had evolved a great deal since then and it might have some benefit for her; two, the Cullens might be helping her now, but it was no guarantee that they would continue to do so, and three, once the morphine wore off, she wasn't sure dying was such a bad idea after all.
"I see." She carefully avoided looking at any of them.
"We'll find a way to get you through this," Edward said.
"You don't have to," Bella said. "You've done your part and gotten me home. Thank you. You don't have to stay. I'm sure there'll be a doctor who'll help me."
When she looked up, she saw that Carlisle was staring at her as was Edward.
"You think we're going to leave you." Bella couldn't quite put her finger on the way Carlisle spoke. There was something more than surprise there.
"You did before." Bella wasn't trying to be unkind. It was simply the truth.
Carlisle stepped closer to her, turning towards the rest of the family. "Give us a moment, please?"
Bella watched all of them trail out except Edward, who stood several steps away, a grim expression on his face accompanied by folded arms. Carlisle looked at his son and then back at Bella.
"You risked your life to first save and then bring us back our son and brother. You are so much"—and here he looked at Edward—"more to us than we are adequately able to express. We owe you a great deal, and you have suffered considerably because of our choices. There is no way we would leave you, Bella. We owe you a debt we will never be able to repay."
Her brain practically spasmed under the weight of guilt, taking in Carlisle's words. They thought they owed her? After the bargain she'd made?
"You—no, I—" But the pain in her midsection didn't let her finish, and she hunched over, attempting to muffle the scream that was trying to escape her throat. Hot coals made a slow dance through her gut.
Too many hands were trying to get her to lie back down again, gently but insistently pulling and stretching her body out. Another very unwelcome memory of what such hands could do replaced the current experience, and her scream morphed into a panicked and continuous "No!"
When her thrashing ended, she bubbled up to consciousness, the click of the IV dial preceding snatches of Carlisle's words. ". . . can't give her more . . . only feasible option . . . "
There were other words, but she didn't grasp them. An unmeasured portion of time had passed when the syllables were sensible again.
"Bella?" Carlisle asked.
"Yeah," she said.
"We need to give you a dose of venom to stop the withdrawal."
"Then do it," Bella gasped, flinching as another wave of pain rippled out from her midsection. "Spit in a cup, whatever. I'll drink it." Emmett's comment made a lot more sense now.
"What you need doesn't come from the liquid," Carlisle said, almost sighing. "It comes from the glands in our tongues."
"Okay," Bella said, riding out what felt like a knife cutting through her midsection, hands shaking over her hips and lower abdomen. She could feel the morphine muddying her thoughts, but its helpful effects weren't strong enough to keep all the pain away.
"Someone will need to lick you, Bella," Edward said, "repeatedly, for several minutes, which, for most of us, activates our hunting instincts."
Oh.
Demetri licking her every time he kissed her. Then, Demetri's lips, pressed to her neck, sucking and licking—his growling—
She shuddered and then didn't have time to regret the movement because her screaming from the next round of pain was so loud.
In the fog of her pain, she could only catch snippets of Rose's voice. ". . . cruel . . . so unfair . . . trauma . . . doesn't deserve that . . ."
She was too much gone to consider how immensely Rose must hate the imposition she was making on their family. Her clothes were again soiled with vomit and sweat. She wouldn't have been surprised if they were soiled with other bodily byproducts, too. Her eyes had begun watering again, or perhaps she was crying. She wasn't sure.
But Esme and Rose were helping her change again, this time dressing her in a light jersey camisole and shorts. The pain came in waves, running up and then over her and then receding again. As they clothed her, Rose and Esme tried to time their movements with these recessions, stopping when Bella began to shudder.
The bed was again clean when she was returned to it, and Carlisle inserted a new IV into her arm, the bag suspended from a hook someone had screwed into the wall. Bits of drywall dust clung to the hook end, and Bella wondered absentmindedly if the hotel would mind the damage. Was this a hotel?
"Where are we?" she mumbled to Esme, who was unwrapping a heated blanket from a package and plugging it in, laying it over top of Bella.
"We're at our house in Seattle."
Seattle. It was all so hard to keep track of. She really was back home. The airplane ride hadn't been a dream.
Esme smiled at Bella, standing up. "You're going to be okay, Bella." She reached to squeeze her hand, but Bella retracted it quickly.
Edward reappeared, clad in a fresh pair of sweatpants and a thick long-sleeved jersey top. She wondered if she'd thrown up on him. Possibly.
Carlisle quietly checked her vitals, frowning as he did so.
"I know," Edward said softly.
"This needs to be done quickly, Bella. Either of us will have enough control—"
"No, I will," Edward said to Carlisle with a finality and bite to his tone that made Bella tense. His voice softened with his next words. "You'll be safe with me."
The words were not reassuring. She remembered the last vampire who had spoken them to her.
He walked around the bed to the other side, swinging himself up onto the bed on one hand, lying down beside her so that his body and hers were only inches of fabric and air apart.
Bella's heart had grown rotors, these poised for an unsteady flight. She was in a room in a bed with two men who could easily kill her . . . or harm her in other ways.
"Do you want Esme or Rose to stay with you?" Carlisle asked.
Edward answered with a firm, "No. It's too much of a risk."
Carlisle eyed Edward and then Esme, who looked apologetically at Bella as she shook her head. Carlisle turned back to Bella. "Is there anything you need for this to be easier or more comfortable?"
A collage of images and feelings flooded her mind. Edward's obvious revulsion for her in the throne room, her guilt at the bargain she'd made and what it had cost him, and then, Demetri, looming over her. "No," she said quickly, staring at the bedding.
"All right," Carlisle said, nodding to her and Edward. He slipped quietly from the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.
And then she and Edward Cullen were alone, in a bed. She closed her eyes at that thought, thinking of something else—anything else.
"Bella?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"We should start."
She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. "Okay."
"I'm going to start at your neck because that's where the lymph nodes are. Then I'm going to move down your arms and then to your legs."
"Why so . . . much?" she asked, trying to wrestle away the ugly imagery at play in her mind.
"I could do less, but I don't think you'd appreciate where I'd have to place the venom."
Either because she was feeling particularly stupid from the morphine or because of her own idiotic curiosity, she asked, "Why?"
"The soft tissues absorb our secretions much more effectively."
Soft tissues. "The . . .?"
"Mouth, genitals, and breasts."
Oh.
"Your skin will absorb it, but it will take longer, and because your body is in shock, it needs a larger dose to calm it right now. Later, we can move to a much smaller regular dose and stretch the time out between them until your body is ready to be weaned."
Regular dose? Her stomach sank. He must loathe her. And he would need to do this regularly. She marvelled at his sense of obligation and morality. Yes, he must resent her for this, for so many other things.
"Okay," she said, squeezing her eyes shut again. When his fingers touched her shoulders, she flinched, anticipating his revulsion and feeling her own, well-earned fear.
"Can I help you sit up?" he asked.
And yet, he was nothing but polite. She might even call it kindness if she didn't know what lay beneath it.
She nodded, tensing as his hands settled on her hips, her muscles and limbs alternating between uselessly rubbery or piano-wire taut.
He leaned her back against his chest, wrapping the electric blanket around her so she was partially insulated from his chill. The sensation made her recall ice cream and coffee and then Silvio's laugh. Her mind took her back to the Italian spring and those few magical sunny afternoons when she knew herself safe from the touch of any vampire in Volterra.
But it wasn't sunny, and it was a vampire's arms she was in again for the second time in as many days—or was it more? She couldn't remember. Her body knew better than to trust the place it found itself in, and soon it had convinced her mind to go along and panic with it.
"Can you try to slow your breathing?" Edward asked.
His fingers ghosted over her arm, a gentle touch.
He was helping her, she reminded herself, even after she'd thrown him to the Volturi.
But it was Demetri's touch she was remembering, along with all his whispered promises that she would be safe.
She flinched as Edward moved again, grimacing at this unwanted show of nerves. He paused for so long that she opened her eyes again and spoke, trying to reassure him. "I'm okay," she lied. She didn't want to say or do anything that would make him feel compelled to offer her unmeant comfort.
Edward's hand brushed away her hair but didn't touch her skin, and she shivered at the imagined contact. He braced her hip with a hand over her clothes, and brought his lips to her clavicle. His hair tickled her chin, and where she'd willingly touched it before, now she could only think of how Demetri's hair had done that same thing as his teeth had lingered at her neck. The sob that broke from her mouth was a refugee of her equally broken trust for all vampires.
With his hand bracing her still, Edward backed away, giving her space. "I'm sorry."
She didn't even know what to say in response to this, so she shook her head, trying to negate whatever kind of responsibility he felt for what she was experiencing. Though her hand felt like lead as she lifted it, she moved her hair aside so that he didn't have to.
He moved very slowly back into place. Where his hands made contact, she tried to ignore the confusing signals her body sent in response to his very particular touch. She had felt the spark amidst other things the first time, and now the electric current travelled through her again.
Don't be stupid, she told herself. It was more than foolish to nurture any kind of feeling like that for him.
Edward's tongue traced the line up from her clavicle to the bones of her shoulder and then back down again, circling smaller and smaller until he had covered the entire triangle of space. He was just starting on the other side when the tingling on her left turned into a molten warmth that sank into her chest and turned into a glowing orange ball of . . . bliss. There was no other word for it. She held back a gasp at the sensation but just. The warmth spread itself outward in tantalizingly small increments, fighting against the pain that wanted to hold on to the aches in her muscles. Edward shifted to the back of her neck, turning her body. The movement made her hips twist, waking up the angry wounds inside.
She hissed in a breath, trying not to link Edward to the events that had been the source of the pain.
"What's wrong?" Edward asked.
Part of her knew that he would know. She knew that he could hear thoughts for miles. He would know what Demetri had done, and even if his gift hadn't told him, his ears would have. Still, she had pretended that no one knew. She didn't want anyone's pity. Her own feelings were more than enough to manage.
At the moment though, feeling half-naked in the arms of the man she still hopelessly and pitifully loved, she wanted to forget that he had told Demetri all her secrets and that he had betrayed her.
She found she couldn't.
Just as she couldn't forget what she'd done to him.
"Things hurt," she said. It was true enough.
"I'm sorry. I'll be more careful," he said.
He kept working on the back of her neck, and the ball of bliss grew, spreading outwards.
At first, Bella couldn't understand why she was straining against it, but then it reached her navel, and her more conscious defenses began activating themselves against any sensation travelling further southwards.
"I think you should stop now," Bella said, suddenly frightened that he wouldn't. She was slumped back against him, her body a loose assembly of jellied appendages, none of them obeying any of her commands. "Please, stop," she repeated, more nervously, the words slurred but unquestionably panicked.
Edward didn't say anything but gently lifted her off of him, carefully laying her back in the bed, the warm blanket loose over top of her.
"We can start again when you're ready."
She nodded, closing her eyes. The trembling in her body didn't seem to have anything to do with the withdrawal.
Edward's voice was soft. "I'm not going to hurt you, Bella. I am completely in control."
But he didn't need to be out of control to hurt her. And because her body was beyond bearing what had been thrust upon it, the truth wriggled out of her heart and out of her mouth. "You were in control before but you still left me." With those words, she promptly passed out.
DISCLAIMER: S. Meyer owns Twilight. No copyright infringement intended.