Chapter Fourteen: Earthquake
Much to Jasper's delight, a significant amount of tension had been lifted off of us the instant we all made it back home. I was completely in awe at how my wife handled our meeting with Charlie, and it seemed the rest of the family shared my sentiments. She was brilliant, exceeding every expectation I had of her every step of the way.
The plan for the coming days was quite simple and included a lot of waiting, much to my chagrin. Now that it could be irrevocably proven that Bella was not the danger that the wolves deemed her to be, it would take discussion with Sam before we could make any solid plans. The constant changing of our futures, combined with the giant black holes in them due to Alice not being able to see the wolves, was driving her absolutely mad. She could handle uncertainty, but she couldn't really deal with not knowing even a hint of what was to come.
We would like to stay in Forks throughout the remainder of Bella's first year as a newborn, and then we would find someplace else to go. Staying here until Bella was more stable allowed us to avoid the stresses of travel while her control was still wearing thin, and gave us time to put a new plan in place. To get a new home set up, find new jobs, enroll in new schools, whatever this next chapter of life would hold for us. In Forks, we were far enough from civilization that Bella wasn't uncomfortable, near enough to the wilderness for frequent hunts, and Charlie could be eased into life without his daughter rather than thrust into her absence without a second thought.
We all agreed that though Bella may be extraordinary, we need not push our luck and make her handle more than she potentially was capable of. Stopping yourself from feeding off of your own flesh and blood is an entirely different matter than stopping yourself from attacking a stranger.
As much as I wanted nothing more than to whisk Bella away to our cabin, Carlisle insisted that it was imperative that we all remain together for the time being. We still didn't fully trust the wolves, and though an attack from them was unlikely it could not be altogether ruled out, and we needed to prepare for the worst.
I was sitting on the floor with Bella in my lap, twirling the ends of her hair around my fingers while she quietly read me a book. Occasionally I would place small kisses on her shoulder, cheek, neck, anywhere I could reach and though it had been hours since we last made love I found myself perfectly content to just exist with her like this, surrounded by our family.
You two are making me sick, Emmett's thoughts grumbled, but when I looked at him, he was beaming. Thought all those hours of dicking her down might drive this romantic side of you out. Guess you're still the same pansy you've always been.
I smirked against her skin, then without a word to her on the internal monologue coming from our favorite randy brother, I brushed her hair back over her shoulder to reveal to him the mark I had left on her neck.
His eyes grew wide and his mouth hung open. Shit, man, that's kinky! I didn't think you had it in you.
I was assaulted then with flashes of all the terribly depraved things Emmett and Rose had done over the decades. I was no stranger to these thoughts, of course, but some of them did hold a certain new appeal now that I knew what sex could be like between a husband and his wife.
Emmett wondered excitedly if Rosalie would allow him to do such a thing. He and I, as well as anyone who knew Rosalie, knew that the answer to that was a resounding 'No way in hell, you sick bastard'. She would never allow him to mark her perfect skin in such a way. Yet for some reason, he was still determined to ask her and he ran off to find her in the garage with the exuberance of a teenage boy that was promised his first lay.
I almost felt sorry for the idiot. Rosalie was going to eat him for lunch, and not in the way that I'm sure he was hoping for. Then again, he had teased me relentlessly since his making about being a '90-year-old virgin' so I certainly was not prepared to warn him that karma is a bitch named Rose.
Bella must have been absorbed in whatever she was reading me, for she did not notice any of these silent glances of interaction around her. Of course, I couldn't begin to tell you what she was reading considering I was far too enamored by the soothing cadence of her voice, the smell of her, how she fit so perfectly against me.
I tuned in momentarily to find that she was reading me the works of Edgar Allen Poe, for whatever reason. I always found him to be a bit too tortured for my tastes, but she could read me the phone book and I would remain completely enraptured.
That is, until a vision came screeching into Alice's psyche, interrupting my quiet content with the force of a car crash.
Two men sat at the edge of a large pond. One of them sat in a lawn chair, the other in a wheelchair. Towering evergreens and snow-capped mountains surrounded the men, who sat quietly with their fishing lines cast into the water. Charlie Swan and Billy Black were sharing small talk about the weather, the unseasonably warm and sunny day that had the fish biting with a new vigor not seen since autumn had fallen.
"How's the kids doing?" Charlie asked.
"Well, the girls are good but Jake's still having a hard time. I feel for the kid, first heartbreak and all," Billy replied.Charlie grunted, nodding in agreement.
"Yeah, I know all about that.""How about Bella? How's married life for her?"
Charlie's features twisted with concern, his shoulders hunching in a defeated shrug. "I don't know. She says she's happy. She seems happy, mostly. But something is up."
Billy knew exactly what was up, of course. Her husband is a vampire and that's not exactly information you bring home to daddy.
"Somethings up how? Like, he's controlling her or something? You're not thinking he's hitting on her or something are you?"
Charlie shook his head. "No, I don't really think the kid has it in him. She's got him pretty wrapped." He let out a dry chuckle."
Yeah, well, Bella can do that to a man," Billy teased, smiling fondly. "Young or old, she's got you wrapped too.""
Of course she does. She's my world. But she's different now and I don't know what to make of it."
"Yeah she's different. She's married, Charlie. She's someone's wife, now. She's all grown up."
Another shake of the head from Charlie. "That's not what I mean, Billy. She looks different. She sounds different. I don't know, I'm being crazy I'm sure."
The teasing tone in Billy's posture and features was gone now. "What do you mean she looks different?"
"She's...paler? Prettier? I don't know, she was always a looker but now she looks…" He took a deep, steadying breath. "Well she looks like a damn goddess, Billy. This sounds so stupid."
"I don't think it's stupid, Charlie. You saw how fast Jake grew up. I think you're just now noticing that she's not the little brown eyed girl that ran around with Jake on the Res on her summer visits here."
"No, Billy, it's more than that, even. When she left and she hugged me she was...cold. I don't mean emotionally, like it felt like I was hugging an ice chest. And there was a hardness to her. I'm losing my mind, aren't I? It just doesn't make sense. And she told me…"A pause settled between the two men while Billy watched his friend struggle with information that he already knew.
"What'd she tell you, Charlie?"
"She said she's happier and healthier than she's ever been and that I need to trust her on that. If I don't, then they all have to leave. Shit, Billy, that's a little weird dontcha think?"
Billy sighed and looked out at the water. He seemed to be battling with a decision of some sort. "Charlie, how much do you know about the Quileute legends?"
"Not a whole hell of a lot."
And then Billy told him everything. How Kaheleha became the first Spirit Chief who instilled the power in his men to leave their bodies and roam the lands as spirit warriors. How Chief Taha Aki was slain by Utlapa, leaving him to roam the spirit world with no body to return to. How eventually Taha Aki learned to be one with a great wolf and the battle he fought to get his warriors out of the hands of Utlapa. How he was then able to shift from the wolf form back to that of a man, and how he went on to father generations of shifters.
"Well, that's real fuckin' cool, Billy, but I don't really see how -"
"I am not finished," Billy stated, cutting his eyes to his friend.He continued telling the story with the same vigor he always had around the campfire. He continued on about how eventually Taha Aki decided to stop shifting and began to age. How people in nearby villages eventually started disappearing. He told of how his sons went searching for the cause and ran into the cold ones, and most of them were slain but Yaha Uta brought back pieces of the corpse and found that they began piecing themselves back together.Charlie looked absolutely revolted, but he was struck silent.
Billy didn't stop until all the legends were spilled to this man who had no business knowing them. He even told him about the Third Wife and her great sacrifice. After all, telling this story was second nature to Billy at this point.
"For generations after that, members of the tribe only shifted when Cold Ones were near, to protect our people. They usually came one at a time, sometimes two. They're generally not the most social creatures. That is, until my grandfather Ephraim Black met with a particularly strange Cold One, with yellow eyes instead of red. They promised that they never fed from humans, and a treaty was made. At the time there were five of them. They lived here for some time and then they went on their way." Billy paused, as if he was giving himself one last chance to not say what he was about to. Or perhaps he was giving Charlie a chance to shut him up."They returned though, and this time there were seven of them. Members of our tribe began shifting again to unheard of numbers. These vampires were not a danger on their own, but they brought trouble with them. Eventually though, the wolves and the Cold Ones learned to fight together, but there was a conflict of interest. You see, one of the wolves was in love with a human girl. One that happened to be the girlfriend of one of the Cold Ones. The young wolf did everything in his power to sway the girl, but at the end of the day it was he who she loved and she chose the bloodsucker. And now… Well, Charlie, now their numbers are eight."
"No," Alice whispered, and I was shocked to hear a growl rumbling in my chest.
"Well that certainly complicates things, doesn't it?" I said venomously.
"Edward, what's wrong?" Bella asked.
"Go tell Carlisle, Alice. I'm not sure what this is going to mean for us," I instructed.
"Edward, what the hell is happening?" Bella inquired again as I stood from the floor, bringing her up with me.
I couldn't be sure how she was going to react to this information, so I kept her in my arms with one under her knees and the other behind her shoulders and carried her out of the house. She was already seething at the fact that I hadn't responded to her, which admittedly wasn't making her temper any better equipped to handle the information I was about to give her.
"What the fuck, Edward, put me down and tell me what she saw!"
I continued to ignore her and walked past the garage, where I could hear Emmett and Rose arguing.
"I'm not interested in playing keep up with those two freaks, Emmett! We have years upon years on them and I am not going to do something just because they did!" Rosalie had her full-fledged banshee shrill going and if I weren't dealing with something else at the current moment, I would find it quite funny.
Bella looked towards the garage, her head tilting. "Are they talking about us? Why? Jesus Christ, you all are insane. Absolutely, completely insane. What did I get myself into?"
"You're a little late to be asking those questions, love," I quipped sardonically, continuing on into the woods.
The entire way, she admonished me, begging me to tell her what happened, why I wasn't answering her, cussing and spitting and hissing like an angry kitten. I could not ignore the fact that it was a little bit arousing, to be honest.
Finally once we were deep into the woods I set her down, allowing myself just a brief moment to admire the rays of light filtering through the trees and casting rainbows from her cheek. However the look on her face was angry and filled with venom, so I couldn't enjoy it much longer. "Billy is going to tell your father about us," I informed her quietly.
"No, he can't do that. If the Volturi finds out that he knows they'll kill him. What is Billy thinking? We have to stop him!" She started to walk away, but I reached out to stop her.
"Bella, we can't do anything to stop it. Today is Saturday and they were fishing. It's going to happen soon and there's no way to get the message to them without stepping onto the Reservation, which would be a suicide mission at this point."
"Why would he tell him? Wait...How do you know this is going to happen? Alice can't see the shifters."
"Billy has never shifted. Though he carried on the wolf gene, for all intents and purposes he is fully human."
"How did Charlie take it?"
"I wish I had that answer for you, love, but the vision didn't go that far."
Bella sighed and crossed her arms, closing her eyes and breathing deeply to attempt to calm herself down, which was not just a little bit impressive considering her current lack of control. "So what does this mean?"
"I am not quite sure. Alice of course cannot see how Sam is going to react to the information, but it does give us a little bit of leverage."
"And how in the hell do you expect it does that?" She spat at me.
"The treaty states that neither side is to inform any humans of our existence. The argument could be made that Billy has also broken the treaty."
"Yeah, except two wrongs don't make a right, Edward. It's not like they're going to see it that way. In their eyes, you broke the treaty first so any further breaches are null in void."
"Are you sure you're not interested in going to law school? We could use a lawyer in the family," I asked her with amusement, a smile curling the corner of my lips and my eyebrow raised.
Bella rolled her eyes, which only caused my grin to broaden. The fact that she wasn't absolutely enraged and taking down trees and boulders was managing to take the edge off the situation and allowing me to be a little calmer. "That is not even the point right now," She stated firmly.
"No, it's not. But still. Something to think about," I mused.
"So this really doesn't change anything, it just adds another layer of shit to our pile."
"Precisely."
"And you carried me all the way out here to tell me this why, exactly?"
"Well, I wasn't quite sure how you would react, and Esme really likes her house."
"Please, you have got to stop treating me like a child, Edward!" At this she even stomped her foot, adding some irony to her statement.
I laughed and reached out to pull her to me, placing a kiss on her forehead. "Nine more months, give or take, and I will do just that. Though judging by your ability to calm yourself down after receiving this news, I have a feeling it won't take that long."
A huff fell from her lips and she leaned into me, keeping her arms crossed but laying her head on my chest. "When does the happily ever after start? This was supposed to be our fairytale ending."
I frowned, running my fingers through her hair. "It will be, my love. I promise you that. But you're married to a man who has a penchant for messing everything up, so we simply have some consequences to deal with before we ride into the sunset. I am very sorry, but you know that already."
"I'd rather deal with your consequences than be without you," She said quietly, kissing my chest and unfolding her arms from herself to wrap them around me.
"Well that is something I can promise will never happen. No matter what we go through, we go through it together."
Bella lifted her head and looked up at me, a small smile on her lips and I brought my hand up to place it against her cheek while we gazed into each other's eyes with all the love and devotion in the world.
"I will never get over how beautiful you are, my Bella," I told her, pressing my lips against hers.
"Same to you," she replied, taking my lip between her teeth.
I growled as desire set my body aflame. It had been far too long, and every fiber of my being ached for her.
Carlisle doesn't seem any more worried than he was. It does complicate things, but as long as Charlie handled it well it's not as if things really could have been made worse. Sam contacted him and wanted to meet at the treaty line at sundown, Alice's thoughts called out to me, a little louder than the rest since she was projecting them. I made the decision then to ravish my wife here in the woods until the time came and saw her vision of me taking her roughly against a tree from my sister's mind. Fine, we'll leave you be, but don't get too carried away and pay attention. I'll call to you if things change and we need you. Images of my hands ripping through the fabric of Bella's clothes flashed before me. No! Behave yourself! Stop being such an animal and at least keep the clothes intact, or I'll make you meet with Sam naked.
"Where'd you go just now?" Bella asked me, her soft lips running down the column of my throat.
"Talking to Alice. Turns out we have a little time to spare before meeting with Sam and I have a quota to make."
She pulled back and narrowed her eyes at me a bit, her teeth clamping down on her lower lip that I would be sucking in just a moment. "A quota?"
I nodded, my hands gripping her delectable behind and pulling her against me, grinding my hardness against her and causing her to gasp. "Yes, a quota. I set it for myself the day you woke up from the change."
"Yeah? And what are the stipulations of this quota?"
I leaned down so my mouth was next to her ear, my voice raspy with want and need. "Every single day, until the end of eternity, I have to give you more orgasms then hours in the day."
"Oh God," She sighed, her hands making their way up the back of my shirt.
"I don't think he's going to want anything to do with the things I'm about to do to you, love," I captured her lips with mine, the need to devour and take her overwhelming my already heightened senses. "Now, I believe we have some fantasies to check off of our little list, yes? And considering we're out here...in the woods...all alone...and I still have two years of pent up desire to drain you of your blood, I really think it's time for a little hunting, don't you?" My lips trailed along her jaw, nipping at the fine line of her perfect bone structure and I became alive with primal need. For so long the lines between Bella being my love and my prey were ones that could never be blurred, not in the slightest. Now that she was one of us, I craved to blur that line so extremely that it couldn't even be seen. The raging beast inside me needed to stalk her, to hunt her, to consume her.
"Edward, I just hunted yesterday. I don't need anything but you," She panted, arching herself against me and grinding her hips against my erection with the most delicious sort of friction.
"You aren't hunting, love, I am," My hands traced the curves up her hips and waist, cupping her perfect breasts. "I am a vampire after all. And you, my darling Bella, are my newest victim." A sharp gasp fell from her lips, followed by a pleading moan as I positioned my lips next to her ear, practically growling as I gave one last command.
"Run."
Our gaze connected briefly, long enough to see the excited thrill in her crimson eyes as understanding settled in, her chest heaving as she ran into the forest. I stood in place for a little bit, giving her a head start so the hunt would not be too easy. What was the fun in that? Every atom in my body was buzzing with urgency and I was fighting myself not to let the hunter inside me take over just quite yet.
Finally, the waiting was over and I propelled forward, urging my legs to push me through the flora as fast as they could. I followed the delicious scent of strawberries and flowers that called to me like the most tantalizing elixir and it led me north, then turned east and ran along the edge of the mountainside. Nothing about my actions were being monitored by any sort of conscious thought, I was reduced to pure instinct, driven by a hunger so deep and dark that I would surely never be able to fully sate it.
Her scent led me up vertically against a cliff and I wasted no time scaling the rocks. At the top I found a small plateau of brush and rubble, though the area was not large enough for her to be hiding anywhere. I could hear nothing out of the ordinary. Wind blowing through branches, the tiny inconsequential sounds of small mammals and birds. Far off, the trickling of a stream and the unmistakable sound of the fins of fish fighting against the current.
And just when I thought I had hit a dead end in my hunt there was a crunch of a shoe on the rocks, coming from the right side of where I was standing. There I saw a wall of rock that jutted out from the top of the cliff, hidden by shrubbery and vines and I knew that would be where I would find my prey.
Making my way in the direction of the sound I observed a valley behind the crag, leading down to a deep crevice set into the cliff. At the bottom of said crevice was a scared looking beauty of a woman, her brown locks spreading out in a stark contrast against the stone behind her, her ruby eyes wide. I'm sure she was intending to convey panic and terror, and the animal part of me was reveling in that emotion in her eyes. However, she had never been that great of an actress and the heady, sticky, sweet scent of her arousal gave her away.
"Please, I don't know what you want from me. Just don't hurt me," She begged, drawing a snarl from my lips.
I leaped from the precipice to land in front of her, placing my hand flat against the base of her throat and leaning down to her neck to inhale her scent deeply. "Ah, you smell delicious. You've wasted a lot of my time hunting you, sweetheart. What shall I do with you now that I have you?"
She whimpered and squirmed beneath me, causing my erection to grow impossibly more painful against the fly of my jeans.
"I've wondered so long what your blood would taste like, hot and wet running down my throat. But you've known that, haven't you? You've been teasing me with it." I rasped, tangling my free hand into her hair and tugging it while she nodded. "You've wanted this. I know you have. You've dreamed of me draining you while I took you. Well, sweetheart, I think it's time that I make your dream come true."
"Fuck, Edward," she moaned and I could smell her wetness soaking the inside of her thighs despite her jeans.
"Take my jeans off," I commanded her, and she wasted no time hurriedly unbuttoning them and pushing them down my legs. My erection sprang up between us and she let out another gasp. I breathed heavily against her neck, determined not to place my lips against her skin until I was inside her.
"Mmm, what a good little girl. Now yours," I told her, kicking my pants behind us while she fumbled with her own. I kept my hand firmly pressed against her chest, disabling any potential movement. Continuing to have her undress the both of us, I only removed my hand for her to pull her shirt over her head, at which point she made the silly decision to run from me. Adrenaline, or whatever the supernatural equivalent of it may be, shot through me like I rocket and I ran after her, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her back to me. She let out a small scream as her naked backside pressed up against my bare front.
I clucked my tongue and wrapped an arm around her torso, forcing her arms to her side in the process. "You've made a very grave mistake trying to run from me. I was going to go easy on you and make this quick, but I don't think I can do that now," I told her, my hand snaking down to slide between her legs. I found her absolutely soaked with need, her thighs covered down to her knees which made a growl rumble from my chest. "Looks like you enjoy that, my love. Don't worry, I'm only getting started with you."
"Please…" she pleaded with me, her arms struggling against my grip.
"Please what?" I breathed, my tongue tracing along the outside of her ear and causing her to shudder. "Fuck, I love what I can do to you. How so very easy it is to play your body like the finest of instruments." With my words, I slipped my fingers between her lower lips, groaning as I found them sliding effortlessly over her clitoris.
"Yes, Edward, please. I need you. It's been too long, let me feel you."
I wanted nothing more in this world to tease her eternally for days to come. To bring her to the very edge again and again, only to pull back and make her plead for me until she was quaking and convulsing with the need to come. Unfortunately, we were a bit limited on time and my member was practically about to come to life and start doing some begging of its own.
"I need you to listen to me, love. In just a few moments I am going to be pounding into you with everything I have. I'm going to bite down on that delectable throat of yours and drain you of everything, but I need you to show me how much you fucking love it. I want you to be so lost in pleasure that you are absolutely incapable of doing anything but coming and shattering around me again and again and again. Do you understand?"
She nodded mutely, chewing her lip and panting for me. "Yes, I understand. Please. Fuck me, Edward."
She didn't need to ask twice. In the matter of the blink of an eye I had her turned around, lifted up, and pressed against the side of the rocks. Her legs wrapped around me completely of their own accord and she attempted to arch herself off of the wall but my hips held her sharply in place.
Then simultaneously, I buried my hands in her hair, gripped hard, yanked her head back, sunk my teeth into her neck and my shaft deep into her center. I narrowly avoided biting her hard enough to break her granite skin again. Bella let out the most animalistic roar while she came around me, somehow climaxing from one simple thrust.
She was magnificent. The war cry of the most beautiful hellcat.
I pounded into her relentlessly, never letting up my assault on her all the while sucking hard on her neck to mimic drinking her blood. God, how I wished that I actually was. Over and over, she fell from the very heights of pleasure before immediately shooting back up like the most breathtaking meteor in the night sky of darkness of conflict that surrounded us.
One thing I can say for sure, as feisty as my wife could be she certainly could take her orders well. She was so far gone in euphoric ecstasy that she did nothing but scream and cry intelligible pleas to the heavens and calling my name as if it alone could grant her entry through the pearly gates.
In fact, I was quite lost myself. So lost in fact that I was entirely oblivious to the way each and every thrust in her body crumbled the wall of stone behind us. The only thing that brought me to the surface of reality was when the wall gave way, sending us careening off the edge of an entirely different kind of precipice.
Yet again Bella took me by surprise, never flinching and using the momentum of flying to flip us over mid air. We crashed to the ground below, our bodies caving the earth beneath us and causing the explosion of a low grade earthquake, about a 3.5 on the Richter scale if I had to guess. The force of our collision driving me further into her triggered quite possibly the strongest orgasm I have ever experience and I spilled my venom into her with endless hot spurts. She never stopped though, riding me with complete abandon.
Her chest heaved in front of me and I leaned up to capture one rosy nipple into my mouth, sucking and biting down on it while my fingers sought out her other breast to feel the heavenly softness while we rocked into each other.
I lost count of how many orgasms we shared, but it was certainly more than twenty-four.
As soon as we both started to cool off just a little bit from the mind and earth-bending sex we had just had, Bella erupted into hysterical, tinkling laughter, throwing her head back as if she was experiencing the funniest thing to ever occur.
"Love, are you alright? Did I break you?" I asked, slightly put off by her hysterics. As beautiful as that sound was to my ears, it was not that endearing to feel as if you are being laughed at after pleasuring a woman relentlessly.
"I'm great," she rasped between fits of laughter. "I just...oh god…" She continued laughing and I very nearly became petulant with the need to know what was so God damned funny.
"What? Enlighten me, please!" I shouted, scowling.
"Well, it's just that...that gives a whole new meaning to earth shattering sex, doesn't it?" She kept cackling and this time I couldn't help but join her.
Jesus Christ, marrying this woman was the best thing I have ever done.
Thanks for reading, y'all! If you wanna follow me on face book just search for DaniDarlingxx Fics and you'll find me! Also, check out my very first One Shot titled Lunchroom Confessions. The story is based off of a silly little meme I saw but it's got a ballsy, spunky Bella who goes after what she wants ;)