Eyes closed, Bella stepped blindly into the light.

My heart jumped into my throat and I started sprinting toward her.

"Bella!"

It was only when her eyes flashed open and I got close enough to begin to understand what I was seeing that I realized she hadn't caught on fire. She threw up her hand again, palm forward, and I stumbled to a stop, almost falling to my knees.

The light blazed off her skin, danced in prism-like rainbows across her face and neck, down her arms. She was so bright that I had to squint, like I was trying to stare at the sun.

I thought about falling to my knees on purpose. This was the kind of beauty you worshipped. The kind you built temples for and offered sacrifices to. I wished I had something in my empty hands to give her, but what would a goddess want from a mediocre mortal like me?

It took me a while to see past her incandescence to the expression on her face. She was watching me with wide eyes—it almost looked like she was afraid of something. I took a step toward her, and she cringed just slightly.

"Does that hurt you?" I whispered.

"No," she whispered back.

I took another step toward her—she was the magnet again, and I was just a helpless piece of dull metal. She let her warning hand drop to her side. As she moved, the fire shimmered down her arm. Slowly, I circled around her, keeping my distance, just needing to absorb this, to see her from every

angle.

The sun played off her skin, refracting and magnifying every color light could hold. My eyes were adjusting, and they opened wide with wonder.

I finished my circle, then closed the last few feet between us. I couldn't stop staring, even to blink.

"Bella," I breathed.

"Are you scared now?" she whispered.

"No."

She stared searchingly into my eyes, trying to hear what I was thinking.

I reached toward her, deliberately unhurried, watching her face for permission. Her eyes opened even wider, and she froze. Carefully, slowly, I let my fingertips graze the glistening skin on the back of her arm. I was surprised to find it just as cold as ever. While my fingers were touching her, the reflections of the fire flickered against my skin, and suddenly my hand wasn't mediocre anymore. She was so astonishing that she could make even me less ordinary.

"What are you thinking?" she whispered.

I struggled to find words. "I am… I didn't know…" I took a deep breath, and the words finally came. "I've never seen anything more beautiful— never imagined anything so beautiful could exist."

Her eyes were still wary. Like she thought I was saying what I thought she wanted to hear. But it was only the truth, maybe the truest, most uncensored thing I'd ever said in my life. I was too overwhelmed to filter or pretend.

She started to lift her hand, then dropped it. The shimmer flared. "It's very strange, though," she murmured.

"Amazing," I breathed.

"Aren't you repulsed by my flagrant lack of humanity?"

I shook my head. "Not repulsed."

Her eyes narrowed. "You should be."

"I'm feeling like humanity is pretty overrated."

She pulled her arm from under my fingertips and folded it behind her back. Rather than take her cue, I took a half-step closer to her. I could feel the reflected shine on my face.

And she was suddenly ten feet away from me, her warning hand up again and her jaw clenched.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I need some time," she told me.

"I'll be more careful."

She nodded, then walked to the middle of the meadow, making a little arc when she passed me, keeping those ten feet always between us. She sat down with her back to me, the sunlight incandescent across her shoulder

blades, reminding me of wings. I walked slowly closer, and then sat down facing her when I was about five feet away.

"Is this all right?"

She nodded, but she didn't look sure. "Just let me…….concentrate."

I sat, silent, and after a few seconds, she shut her eyes again. I was fine with that. Seeing her like this—it wasn't something you could get tired of.

I watched her, trying to understand the phenomenon, and she ignored me.

She sighed. "I brought you here for a reason. To show and tell you what I really am without hurting you." She stood up. "I'm the world's greatest predator, aren't I? Everything invites you in—my face, my smell, my beauty, my body, my voice, the way I walk, even my breath. As if I need any of that!"

I watched her race around the meadow going faster than my eyes could watch.

"As if you could outrun me!" She shouted. She stopped and tore a branch off of a tree.

"As if you could fight me off!"

I felt a bit afraid. So this is what she meant by show me.

She ran back over to my side.

"I promise I won't hurt you, Edward. I would never. I couldn't." She sighed. "I saved you from death three times. The second and third time you were aware of. The car crash and the attempted kidnappers. But the first time was from myself."

"What do you mean by 'myself'?"

"Vampires have blood-singers. Their blood smells so good it's hard to resist. You see, every human has a different scent. We smell their blood. Like humans like different ice cream flavors or alcohol drinks.

"It took everything I had—every single year of practice and sacrifice and effort—not to jump up in the middle of that class full of children and—"

She broke off, her eyes darting away from me. "When you walked past me, I could have ruined everything Carlisle has built for us, right then and there. Killed my first human. If I hadn't been denying my thirst for the last… too many years, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself." She stared at me grimly, both of us remembering. "You must have thought I was possessed."

"I couldn't understand why. How you could hate me, just like that…"

"To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my own personal hell to ruin me. The fragrance coming off your skin….

"By the next morning I was in Alaska." She sounded ashamed, as if she was admitting some huge display of cowardice. "I spent two days there,with some old acquaintances… but I was homesick. I hated knowing I'd upset Esme, and the rest of them, my adopted family. In the pure air of the mountains it was hard to believe you were so irresistible. I convinced myself it was weak to run away. I'd dealt with temptation before, not of this magnitude, not even close, but I was strong. Who were you, an insignificant human boy"—she grinned suddenly—"to chase me from the place I wanted to be? Ah, the deadly sin of pride." She shook her head. "So I came back.…"

I couldn't speak.

"I took precautions, hunting, feeding more than usual before seeing you again. I was sure that I was strong enough to treat you like any other human. I was arrogant about it.

"I wanted you to forget my behavior that first day, if possible, so I tried to talk with you like I would with any person.

"Of course, then you were nearly crushed to death in front of my eyes. Later I thought of a perfectly good excuse for why I acted at that moment—because if I hadn't saved you, if your blood had been spilled there in front

of me, I don't think I could have stopped myself from exposing us for what we are. But I only thought of that excuse later. At the time, all I could think was, Not him."

She shut her eyes, her expression agonized. For a long moment she was silent. I waited eagerly, which probably wasn't the brightest reaction. But it was such a relief to finally understand the other half of the story.

"In the hospital?" I asked.

Her eyes flashed up to mine. "I was appalled. I couldn't believe I had put us in danger after all, put myself in your power—you of all people. As if I needed another motive to kill you." We both flinched as that word slipped out, and she continued quickly. "But the disaster had the opposite effect. I fought with Rose, Em, and Jasper when they suggested that now was the time… the worst fight we've ever had. Carlisle sided with me, and Alice." She frowned sourly when she said her name. I couldn't imagine why. "Esme told me to do whatever I had to in order to stay." She shook her head, a little indulgent smile on her lips.

"I knew that I couldn't become more involved with you. I did my very best to stay as far from you as possible. And every day the perfume of your skin, your breath… it hit me as hard as the very first day."

She met my eyes again, and hers were oddly tender.

"And for all that," she continued, "I'd have fared better if I had exposed us all at that first moment, than if now, here—with no witnesses and nothing to stop me—I were to hurt you."

"Why?"

"Oh, Edward." She touched my cheekbone lightly with her fingertips. A shock ran through me at this casual contact. "Edward, I couldn't survive hurting you. You don't know how it's tortured me"—she looked down, ashamed again—"the thought of you, still, white, cold… to never see your face turn red again, to never see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses… I couldn't bear it." She lifted her glorious, agonized eyes to mine. "You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever."

My head was spinning at this rapid change in direction. Just minutes ago I'd thought we were talking about my imminent death. Now, suddenly, we were making declarations.

"You already know how I feel. I'm here because I would rather die with you than live without you." I realized how melodramatic that sounded. "Sorry, I'm an idiot."

"You are an idiot," she agreed with a laugh, and I laughed with her. This whole situation was idiocy—and impossibility and magic.

"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb," she murmured. The word was like another electric jolt to my system.

I tried to cover my reaction. "What a stupid lamb."

She sighed. "What a sick, masochistic lion."

She stared into the forest for a long time, and I wondered what she was thinking.

She turned to face me again before smiling at me.

"Stay very still." She insisted. I froze, trying not to move.

She put her head on my cheek before trailing down to my neck, my shoulders, and finally to my chest, where it stayed for a minute.

Listening to my heart.

"Ah," she pulled away.

"Was that hard for you?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. It was soothing. Did you know that Vampires don't have a heartbeat?"

"I guessed that."

"Don't move," I whispered.

No one could be still like a vampire. She closed her eyes and turned into a statue.

I moved even more slowly than she had, careful not to make one unexpected move. I stroked her cheek, let my fingertips graze across her pale lavender eyelids, the shadows in the hollows under her eyes. I traced the shape of her straight nose, and then, so carefully, her red full lips with a fuller bottom lip. Her lips parted and I could feel her cool breath on my fingertips. I wanted to lean in, to inhale her scent, but I knew that might be too much. If she could control herself, so could I—if only on a much smaller scale.

I tried to move in slow motion so that she could guess everything I would do before I did it. I let my palms slide down the sides of her slender neck, let them rest on her shoulders while my thumbs followed the impossibly fragile curve of her collarbones.

She was much stronger than I was, in so many ways. I seemed to lose control of my hands as they skimmed over the points of her shoulders and down across her sharp shoulder blades. I couldn't stop myself as my arms wrapped around her, pulling her against my chest again. My hands crossed behind her and wrapped around either side of her waist.

She leaned into me, but that was the only movement. She wasn't breathing.

So that gave me a time limit.

I bent down to press my face into her hair for one long second, inhaling a deep lungful of her scent. Then I forced myself to peel my hands off her and move away. One of my hands wouldn't obey completely; it trailed

down her arm and settled on her wrist.

A sudden excitement flared in her eyes. "Can I show you something?"

"Anything."

She grinned. "How about a faster way back to the car?"

I looked at her warily.

"Don't you want to see how I travel in the forest?" she pressed. "I promise it's safe."

"Will you… turn into a bat?"

She burst into laughter. "Like I haven't heard that one before!"

"Right, I'm sure you get that all the time."

"Obviously," I went on. "But I… How would I fit?" I looked at my too-long legs and then back to her delicate frame.

She turned her back to me again. "Trust me."

Feeling like the stupidest, most awkward person in all of history, I hesitantly put my arms around her neck.

"Come on," she said impatiently. She reached back with one hand and grabbed my leg, yanking my knee up past her hip.

"Whoa!"

But she already had my other leg, and instead of toppling backward, she

easily supported my weight. She moved my legs into position around her waist. My face was burning, and I knew I must look like a gorilla on a greyhound.

"Am I hurting you?"

"Please, Edward."

Embarrassed as I was, I was also very aware that my arms and legs were wrapped tightly around her slender body.

Suddenly she grabbed my hand and pressed my palm to her face. She inhaled deeply.

"Easier all the time," she said.

And then she was running.

She streaked through the forest like a bullet, like a ghost. There was no sound, no evidence that her feet ever touched the ground. Her breathing never changed, never indicated any effort. But the trees flew by at deadly speeds, always missing us by inches.

I was too shocked to close my eyes, though the cool air whipped against my face and burned them. It felt like I was sticking my head out the window of an airplane in flight.

Then it was over. We'd hiked hours this morning to reach Bella's meadow, and now, in a matter of minutes—not even minutes, seconds—we were back to the truck.

"Exhilarating, isn't it?" Her voice was high, excited.

"Yeah. Fun."

She laughed.

I climbed off her back and put my feet on the ground.

I looked at the ground as I asked her, "Can I kiss you?"

She smiled. "Yes. I'd like that."

I looked up. "Really?"

She nodded.

I stepped forwards and took her face in my giant hands. I leaned forwards and brushed my lips against Bella's full, pink ones.

I dragged my tongue against her fuller bottom lip, begging for entrance. She happily opened her mouth, letting my tongue enter.

She moaned.

Finally, she pulled away.

"Did you like that? Am I a good kisser?" I teased.

"Yes." She grinned at me.

We walked the short distance to the car, and she insisted on driving. So I let her.

I just wanted to think the day over.