**Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the Twilight Saga depicted in this story are the legal property of Stephenie Meyer, Summit Entertainment, and Little, Brown & Company, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

Chapter 4: Bedroom

"Do you want to talk about it?" Bella asked, after we had worked together in silence for a quarter of an hour.

I looked up from the box of clothing I was sealing with packing tape. There was no point pretending that I didn't know what she was talking about. I could see the war going on in her eyes—she wanted both to push me until I opened up to her and back off to respect my space. Neither impulse had won out over the other yet. I grinned. "I'm fine, Bella. Really."

That was mostly true. I had been shaken, certainly. Our game four days ago had been…a lot. More than I had been expecting, anyway, from either of us. The sex afterward had been nice and straightforward. I couldn't bear leaving without having Bella on our lab table. So I did. Twice. It had been tender and sweet, with no roles to play, and I immediately felt better, lighter. Then we had pulled on our clothes, sanitized every surface we had touched, and slipped out the window as the dawn peeked over the mountains.

I still hadn't sorted through the implications of the game, or the conversation we'd had before. How it had felt a little like I had invoked my monster, summoned him even, and then let him touch Bella. Or maybe I was being ridiculous. I didn't like losing control, but, at the end of the day, weren't we just talking about a rougher than usual blowjob? Hadn't she said she enjoyed herself? That it had fulfilled the spirit of her fantasy if not the letter of it? If we'd had fun, what was the problem? And yet, I still felt uneasy every time I thought about it. But I wasn't gloomy or brooding.

I didn't think anyway.

Maybe I had been quieter than usual. Bella was looking at me skeptically.

I scooped up the box and crossed to where she was sitting at the desk, sorting through stacks of old papers. I bent to drop a kiss on the bridge of her nose. "It's sweet of you to worry about me, but nothing is wrong."

Or rather, if something was wrong, that was for me to worry about. My hangups should never become her burden, and I suspected that she was far more out of sorts today than I was.

I continued on through the door, down the stairs and out to Emmett's jeep, parked in front of Charlie's house. It was the replacement I had bought for one that had been destroyed, and my brother was good enough to loan it to me for the day in spite of what I had done to the last one. A few boxes of Bella's old things were already waiting, stacked neatly in the bed that usually hauled dirt bikes and ATVs, and I added the one I was carrying.

Charlie had asked Sue to move in with him. She had been struggling to make ends meet on a single income, and Charlie had suggested that maybe they could try taking the next step. It was provisional, just to see how things went, but he wanted Seth to feel welcome. Leah had already moved out, left La Push entirely at the first opportunity, but Seth had a year of high school left. Charlie had hemmed and hawed his way through asking Bella if maybe she wouldn't mind letting the kid have her old room, and she awkwardly agreed.

Whatever he may suspect about how, why, and into what his daughter had changed, Charlie would never really know how morbid the task of cleaning out Bella's old room really was. The most essential and treasured of her belongings had already been removed before the wedding. Bella had promised Charlie she would be back for the rest once she and I were settled, but that had been a lie. What she had left behind was everything she had been willing to enter eternity without, everything she had been willing to leave for her parents as mementos of their dead daughter.

Bella and I had no plans for any of it, nowhere to store it in our little house. After getting off the phone with Charlie on Saturday, Bella had softly confessed to me that she'd completely forgotten that the bedroom hadn't been cleared out.

"A whole room of stuff, my stuff, things I loved, and I haven't thought of it once. I…I can't even remember what's there."

"It's normal, Bella. The human memories fade unless you are focused on keeping them, and you can't focus on everything. Some of it will go." I said the words in my gentlest voice while I stroked her hair.

"I know. Yeah…I know. It's, well…I know." The tone she used made me think she was trying to affect an air of nonchalance, but the repetition, the downcast eyes, and the shaky hands all undermined her completely. I hadn't seen her so off-kilter since becoming a vampire.

I remembered how it felt when my human memories had slipped away, but didn't really think I could relate to what she was going through. I hadn't minded so much. Bella was far more tied to her human life than I had been, than most vampires were allowed to be. From what I could tell, she had retained pretty much all of her memories so far, and with relative ease, probably because of how frequently she interacted with people and places that had been focal points of her human life. But that wouldn't last forever. The reminder of this had unsettled her.

When we arrived today, it was to find the room basically untouched. The bedding had been washed between Renesmee's various sleepovers, the vacuum had made a few passes through, and we'd found Bella's jewelry box open with its contents scattered as though a little girl had found it and tried on everything without putting anything back, but Charlie didn't seem to have moved or changed much of anything.

Bella hadn't been surprised. "When I came here from Phoenix, the room looked pretty much the same as before the divorce."

We had set to work. Bella had begun sorting through the contents of drawers and file folders. I had taken the closet—easily the most disorganized part of the room.

The last box of clothing properly situated in the back of the jeep, I was sure to walk at a human pace back into the house, but then darted at my regular speed up the stairs. It was a Monday and Charlie was at work. We had hoped to do this chore over the weekend, but the weather had been inconveniently sunny. Today was overcast, but according to Alice, it wouldn't rain until nightfall.

Walking back into the bedroom, I saw that Bella had finished sorting through and packing up the contents of the desk.

"How do I manage to accumulate so much crap?" she asked with an exasperated sigh, labeling the box she had just closed and gesturing to an almost full garbage bag. "I was only here for a year and a half. And that's just what was in the desk."

"No idea," I said neutrally. We had only been in our cottage for a year and she had already managed to multiply the clutter there, too. Given that I favored neatness and order, it wasn't my favorite thing about Bella, but I had known what I was getting into.

"We should just get rid of all of it. Maybe donate it? I mean, if I haven't needed it in a year, I probably don't need it at all, right?"

I nodded supportively, but I had a fairly concrete suspicion that Bella didn't part with many possessions. And sure enough….

"Oh, Little Women! I have the one my mom gave me for my ninth birthday at home, of course. It's a keepsake. But I found this copy at a second-hand bookstore and it has the prettiest embossed leather cover. See?" She held it up for me, and I smiled. "I should give this one to Nessie," she muttered to herself, tracing the design with her finger.

I walked to her and swept her hair out of the way so that I could press a kiss into the back of her neck. "Are we ready to tackle the books then?"

"Why not?"

We chatted amiably as we filled the first box. Bella was excited to bring all of these books home with her, even though more than a few were duplicates of ones already on our cottage's bookshelves. She explained how this edition was different than that one, showed me the inscription inside her copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God from her favorite eighth grade teacher, and told the story of how A Wrinkle in Time had gotten a chocolate ice cream stain on the page where Mrs. Whatsit gives Meg her faults.

But when she pulled her copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne off the shelf, her face became inscrutable.

"What is it?" I asked.

I waited for an answer, but she dropped the book into the box and shook her head. Then she changed the subject.

"I can't believe poor Seth is going to get saddled with that dinosaur." She inclined her head back toward the computer sitting on the desk.

I taped the box closed. For a beat I studied her, and decided not to press.

The computer was indeed old, almost eight years by the look of it. "How slow is it?"

Bella shook her head with disgust. "I could turn it on first thing in the morning and have time to get dressed and eat breakfast before it finally finished booting up."

"Well, maybe we could swap it out for him. No one should have to do their homework on Windows 98."

Bella snorted, but agreed.

"Are you all right with this? Your dad getting serious with Sue?" I ventured, starting the second box of books.

I had been having trouble reading her on this topic, but when her head snapped up, her expression was perfectly legible. "Of course!" She stretched her fingers wide to grasp as many book spines in each hand as possible. "I admit to even feeling a bit relieved, because I worried about him without me. And I worried that he would never get over my mom, and he deserved to, you know?"

There was nothing but sincerity in her demeanor, and I nodded.

"It is a little crazy to think that if things work out and they make it official, Seth and Leah will be my step-siblings. That part will take getting used to—but I think that's just the only child in me talking." She nudged me playfully. "Seth would be hyped to have you as a brother-in-law."

I chuckled. She wasn't wrong.

"Well, I already consider them family. Since Jacob imprinted." I rolled my eyes. "We're stuck with him, and they're his pack."

She shoved my shoulder at the dig toward her friend.

"And," I continued, more seriously, "they've always had our back. Seth stood with me against Victoria. They helped protect you when you were pregnant."

A slow, warm smile was taking her face. "I love that about you."

"What?"

"You Cullens look at family as something you join rather than something you are born into."

My brows came together. There were a few absurd things about that statement, least of which was that Bella was now a Cullen herself. "Well…."

"I know," Bella preempted me. "That's how you have to do it when you are a vampire. Still," she shrugged, "I am fully aware that I lucked out with my in-laws—they have been so good to me, treated me like I was family from the moment you chose me. Even though they didn't have to, and even though I brought a lot of danger and uncertainty into their lives." She paused, then had amend for the sake of historical accuracy, "Rosalie excepted."

I laughed.

"But even Rose and I figured things out in the end." Bella raised up on her toes to kiss me. "And I lucked out that you are open to me bringing a whole pack of wolves into the family. Because it looks like that's what's happening. This morning, when I called to say we would be coming by, Charlie asked me if I knew a place where he could get his mom's ring resized."

Honestly, I didn't have a choice, but her point was well taken. There had certainly been a time when I would not have wanted wolves anywhere near my family, let alone in it, and most vampires the world over would agree with that point of view, but things changed. We'd had to work with the Quileutes again and again to protect Forks and Bella; it was hard for any real animosity to survive that, and I defied anyone to find a way to hate Seth Clearwater.

We filled the second box, but needed a third to finish off the books. I took all three of them down to the jeep at once over Bella's protests, which probably didn't help my show of playing human for the neighbors, but I was keen to be done and we were almost there. All that remained was her music, some knickknacks, and a couple of potted cacti.

When I returned, I found Bella seated on her bed, back propped against her headboard, knees drawn close. She was gazing thoughtfully at the empty bookshelves.

"Is everything okay?"

She gave me an uneven smile. "Sorry. I'm just taking a moment."

I quelled my eagerness to complete the packing and joined her on the bed. I sat on the side and leaned back into a reclining position, propped on my elbows. "Take all the time you need." It was natural that this moment would feel big to her.

Bella was quiet for a few minutes, and we stayed close like that in silence.

"It's like I did die, kind of," she said abruptly.

My eyes widened in alarm.

"I didn't think I would feel so separate from my human self, because I didn't at first, and I don't most of the time. But sometimes, more and more, I will catch myself thinking of her as someone I was rather than someone I am." Bella said the words to the fingernails she was picking at rather than to me. "I've noticed a couple of times that information is gone. Charlie asked me if we had a garlic press somewhere in one of the kitchen drawers, and I didn't know. I forgot Angela had little brothers. And it has been hitting me more lately because of the games you and I have been playing. I tried thinking up a comprehensive list of possibilities that we might narrow down together, but it was shorter than I was expecting. It feels like fantasies are missing, like there are gaps or holes, like I'm losing them."

She rubbed her face, and finally looked at me.

"I don't remember," she confessed. "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I don't know if I have read it or not. I've read pretty much everything on my shelves, but you know how it is. You splurge at the bookstore and bring home too many, life happens and one or two slip through the cracks. Is that one of them? Is it another missing memory or did I just never read it? I have no idea."

Her voice was calm, but I wasn't fooled. I extended one of my hands and placed it over her interlaced fingers.

"I accept that it's going to be like this from now on, until I don't even remember what I've forgotten. I don't care about the book. If I did read it, it obviously didn't make that much of an impression. And maybe I didn't and I am reacting over nothing."

I understood. "You're worried about memories you do care about."

Her nod was jerky. "Like you said, I can't focus on everything. It's just hitting me how many memories happened in this room that I wouldn't want to lose, and you and I are taking all of the context away. Seth is going to move in here and it will look completely different." Her voice wavered. "You won't let me forget, will you? Not all the memories I'm talking about involve you, but let's be honest, most of them do."

I considered what was in my power, at all, in this circumstance. After a moment, I ventured, "How about this? Tonight, I'll begin telling you the story of every memory I have in this room. Even the ones where you were asleep. You can add your perspective and all the details you remember. That way, your human memories will have an anchor. Even if there comes a time when you no longer remember the moment itself, you will have the memory of remembering it with me."

Bella's eyes softened with emotion. She uncoiled herself from her ball and shifted her position. I thought she was going to kiss me, but actually she wanted to lay her head on my chest. I let my torso drop to the mattress so that she could settle in, facing up at me. I cradled her jaw in my hand, thumb stroking her cheek, and she closed her eyes.

We fell silent again. I didn't know what was going through her head, what she needed precisely, but I was doing my best to comfort her. Much about our relationship was easier since her turning, but something that had not changed, would never change, was how unbearable it was to see her in pain.

"Do you know what I miss about being human?"

Her voice jolted me, her words a dagger twisting in my heart.

Bella cracked her eyes open, peering up at me. She seemed to have steadied herself. "Don't spiral on me, Edward. There isn't much. If you gave me the choice a thousand times over, I'd make the same one. I enjoy what I am, what we are together." She nuzzled my hand. "But sometimes, it would be nice to cry."

"To cry?"

Bella nodded, a puff of laughter escaping her lips at the horrified expression on my face. "Just for the release. When I was human, emotions would build up and then they would spill over. I would cry, and it was like a safety valve letting out all that built up pressure, maintaining an upper limit on my frustration or sadness or whatever. Sometimes, as a vampire, it feels like emotions just go up and up. It's harder to come back down."

I had no personal frame of reference for what she was describing. My human days were too far away, and I doubted I had done much crying regardless. My generation hadn't exactly been known for encouraging boys to express their emotions that way. But what she was saying made sense. I felt a twinge of amusement at my practical Bella, wishing she could have the ability to cry back for the utility of it, like it was nothing more than a screwdriver that had gone missing from her toolbox.

But the fact she was bringing it up at all meant that she was feeling overwhelmed and struggling to cope. That made me clutch her closer.

"I'm sorry, Bella." I spoke to the ceiling. "I wish I could help."

She raised herself up on her hands and crawled so that our bodies were parallel and her lips could reach mine. She sighed into the kiss. "You are." She lowered herself back down, tucking her head under my chin, her body into my side.

"You know what I mean."

I felt her smile against my collar bone. "Yes, I do know what you mean. You want to take the pain away, not help me with it. Well, too bad." She rubbed my chest reassuringly. "I'll be okay. This was a decision I made with my eyes open. I knew the trade-offs. I'll still feel whatever I feel while I experience the fallout, but I own my choice and I will get through, in no small part because I have you."

"Bella…."

But she could hear my self-recriminations coming a mile away and headed me off. "There is something you can do."

I knew it was bait, but I still took it. "Yes?"

She resituated her body so that it was more squarely atop mine, then I felt her sweet breath against the side of my neck. Her wet tongue trailed around the crest of my ear and my pants were suddenly too tight.

Despite my instinctive physical response, I had reservations.

"Bella, you're vulnerable right now."

She laughed. "Damn right I'm vulnerable. So, comfort me." Bella nibbled my earlobe. "I'm your wife, Edward, not some girl on the rebound you just met."

I grit my teeth and considered my words carefully this time. "I more meant that we were just talking through some pretty heavy stuff. I can see you're feeling a lot right now, and maybe there is a better time."

"What are you talking about? It's our only time. It's our last opportunity. We can make a memory in this room that won't fade."

Was she asking for sex? Or…was she asking for a game? Because I wasn't sure if I was ready for the latter yet. Regardless, I closed my eyes and surrendered. It didn't matter. Whatever she wanted that memory to be, I knew I would give it to her.

I sat us both up, so that she was straddling my lap. Her hair was disheveled and hanging in her face. My gentle fingers smoothed the mess and tucked it back behind in her ears. As I suspected, she was smiling but her ever expressive eyes couldn't hide her turmoil.

"Hold onto me," I warned her before rising to my feet.

Her arms and legs wrapped around my body automatically. "Where are we going?" she asked when I started walking.

"Just to the bathroom."

"Why?" she asked, not on board.

I nudged the ajar bathroom door open with my foot. "You said you wished you could release some of that emotional steam. I thought maybe we could take a shower and then come back to the bedroom after?"

Bella studied me. "You say 'we'—does that mean you are showering with me?"

"Of course."

Her grin was real this time. "Well, that's all right then."

I lowered her socked feet to the bathroom rug, and reached behind me to close the bathroom door. Bella's hands were already on the fastenings of my pants by the time it clicked shut. I kissed the top of her head affectionately and lifted my shirt over my head, dropping it to the floor while she worked my pants and underwear down my legs. I helped her by toeing out of my shoes.

"You're hard," Bella moaned, leaning her cheek into my hip and cupping my erection with her hand.

I took that hand in mine and lifted her to her feet. "Constantly," I murmured into her lips as I kissed her.

She removed her t-shirt and I caressed her breasts in their white cotton bra before I released the clasp and let the garment drop. Two sets of hands pushed her black leggings and panties down and off, her socks carried along. The sweet scent of her arousal called to me and I couldn't resist pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her pubic mound, right above where her slit began. Bella gasped and her knees wobbled unsteadily.

I gazed up at her. "Let's get in the tub."

She nodded, unable to speak. I followed after her, stepping into the cool porcelain tub. Bella turned on the faucet, while I pulled the curtain closed. The pipes in the old house groaned, and then the spray of warm water was raining down on us both.

Bella gave me a jittery smile. "It's kind of crazy, having you in here with me."

I lifted her hand and kissed her palm. "Another fantasy come to life?"

She chuckled, her hair already becoming soaked through and the water running rivulets down her body in fascinating patterns. "Not really. I don't know why, but I never really thought about that. This was where I…. Well, a lot of nights you were in my room. So, this was where I had the privacy to…." She looked significantly at the detachable shower head.

The image in my head was so clear, it was like I had seen the real thing with my own eyes.

"I would have to bite my lip, sometimes my arm, to keep quiet. I was more worried about you hearing me than my dad. He was always downstairs with the TV on, but you were across the hall with vampire hearing."

Oh God. What would it have been like, to have known what she was doing in the shower at the time, to have heard it? Her gasps and moans…my name.

My erection throbbed, dripping precum. She had taken me to the edge so quickly, so easily.

"But I had to," she explained. "I couldn't go back in there and spend the night with you in my bed without it. The way you would touch me, hold me—kiss me, over and over for hours. I would have gone insane."

I closed my eyes and grimaced. The way she described our nights together made it sound like I had been teasing her sexually to the point of torture. Which, in retrospect, maybe was true. Goddamn it.

Her musical laugh echoed off the tile. "Don't feel bad, Edward. I would have been that way regardless." Her touch trailed over my chest.

"Bella," I said, my voice gravelly. "We didn't come in here for you to seduce me."

She continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Just being around you, I was pretty much in a constant state of arousal. You can't help it—you just push all my buttons. Relentlessly." I felt her lips on my collarbone, then her tongue.

Helpless to resist her, my arms came up around her body, pulling her close. Her wet belly slicked across my cock and I almost came.

Suddenly, she snorted against my shoulder, breaking the mood.

I looked down in alarm.

"Sorry," she said. "Something just occurred to me. It's not even funny, really."

"Yes?" I prompted, catching my breath, trying to process the whiplash of what just happened.

"Do…did you ever masturbate while thinking of me? Or were you indoctrinated by the propaganda of your youth that it would make you go blind?" The expression on her face was hard to read. Again, she seemed amused, but there was something underneath that indicated a rawness, a vulnerability. "Or," her eyes dropped to my chest, "was it like the fantasy thing? Where you couldn't let yourself?"

I soothed her wet cheek with the back of my fingers. Under other circumstances, I might have been ashamed at my answer, but now I didn't hesitate. "I masturbated over you."

"Really?" Her whole face lit up. I had known it was the answer she wanted to hear, but I hadn't anticipated just how happy it would make her.

Nodding, I elaborated, "You have an effect on me, too. It wasn't something I did while we were apart, or to prepare before interacting with you, more something that came after. If I was too…stimulated. And, true, I wouldn't fantasize. I would just think about you and what you had done to get me so worked up in the first place."

"While touching yourself."

"While touching myself," I confirmed, and she kissed me exuberantly.

I omitted the information that these instances were few and far between. I could count them on one hand without needing the thumb, and each time, I had made it as quick and perfunctory an experience as possible. I hadn't lingered or basked in the pleasure. She wasn't too far off the mark, both about me having some unaddressed baggage regarding masturbation that likely stemmed from unhealthy antiquated attitudes, and about me not trusting myself to let go in that way. I had fought the need to bring myself release at every turn, worried that it was shameful, that I was sullying her and myself, that I was breaking my own rules about visualization, feeding my monster. If I ignored the erections, they went away. Eventually.

But sometimes, it was too much to overcome. Bella would have an obvious sex dream while I was right beside her, or dance all night with me in a gauzy blue dress, or cling tight to me over two long car rides and an international flight after I'd been starved of the sight of her for months, or throw herself at me and agree to be my wife in the same night…and I couldn't help myself.

I was glad of all that now, so that I could tell her yes without lying.

I held her, reoriented now with my original goal. Seeing her unguarded, even for a moment, brought back to my mind the scared girl, curled in on herself, that I had brought into this bathroom. I reached for the pear-scented shampoo on the nearby ledge. Bella heard me flick the cap open.

"Really, Edward?" she said with some exasperation.

"Really," I responded firmly. She might not want to be taken care of, but her jumpiness and shifting moods told me she was more wound up than she was letting on. She would feel better and enjoy her memory more if she let me pamper her a little first. "Trust me. Trust my years of managing emotions as a vampire."

Her mutinous expression softened. "All right. What do I need to do?"

I poured a measured amount of the shampoo into my hand. "Let me take the lead."

She submitted and I motioned for her to turn her back to me. I gently worked the shampoo into her scalp, careful not to create tangles. I began up by her hairline and gradually massaged my way down to her nape. It didn't take long for her neck to relax, for her to begin leaning into my touch. Either I was pretty good at this considering I had never tried it before, or she had realized I was right.

After using the detachable shower head to rinse the shampoo from her hair, I soaped up my hands and began rubbing the knots out of her shoulders, her back. She moaned at my touch and braced her hands on the tile to keep herself steady.

"So, this is what you do to calm down?" Bella asked, her voice low.

"No," I answered truthfully. "This is how Jasper helps Alice when her visions become too stressful." I kissed her shoulder. "I go for runs."

She chuckled. "Rose said something about you running to Seattle and back every day when we first met."

"Yes." I lifted her right arm from where it was braced on the tile and massaged my way down it. I looked up to see her watching me.

Bella smiled, but it was a sad thing. "I'm sorry that it was so difficult for you to be around me then. But I'm also, just…so grateful that you did it anyway."

My fingers stilled. It felt uncomfortable, letting her think it was strength of character, when really I had been playing roulette with both our lives. I resumed and fixed my attention on my work. "I couldn't help myself."

"I'm glad," Bella whispered, her voice quieter than sound of the water falling around us.

She allowed me to complete my massage of her body, leaving no part of her untouched. When completed, by all appearances, it had the two outcomes I desired: Bella was calm; Bella was aroused. True, she had been aroused before, but now it was less frantic, no longer displaced energy from Bella not wanting to deal with something else.

I turned off the water and she let me towel her dry. "Better?" I asked.

"Better," she nodded. "Can I have my memory now?"

I grinned at her one-track mind. Surveying the pile of clothing on the bathroom floor, I asked, "Do we bother getting dressed?"

Bella shrugged. "Probably not. We're just going in there to have sex in the bed, right?"

"Are we? What's the game?"

She blinked. "We're playing a game? Are you sure?"

I answered in the affirmative, all confidence and ease. I didn't know if she was fooled, but I didn't care. I'd had ample time to think about this in the shower. Whatever reservations I felt about our last game were paltry compared to what she was dealing with at the moment. I was just blowing things out of proportion, and we didn't have time for that. Today was the last day the bedroom was Bella's, and surely she had fantasies that took place there. I couldn't deny her the opportunity, especially with her number of fantasies overall possibly dwindling as her human memories faded.

"Edward, we don't have to if you're not ready."

"I'm ready." I kissed her. "What would you like for your memory?"

Her eyes searched my face, then she considered the clothes. "Okay, get dressed."

I did as instructed. Bella, however, only pulled on her t-shirt and panties. She scooped up the remainder of her clothing and we traversed the hall back to her old bedroom, where she dropped them again. She crossed to the window and closed the curtains.

"Close the door and turn off the light," she called over her shoulder. Scrutinizing the room around her after I did as she asked, she said, "I think that's as dark as we are going to be able to get it."

"Where do you want me?" I asked. I reminded myself how thoroughly I had enjoyed the first two games, and that the third wouldn't have unsettled me so much if I had just stuck to the script. Bella's fantasies weren't the problem; I was.

Bella pointed. "The rocking chair."

That made sense. I had spent many a night there.

I expected Bella to get in the bed, but when I sat, she climbed into my lab. It was a welcome surprise.

"I have two, really," she explained. "Two fantasies for this room. Would it be reasonable if we combined them?"

Seeing no problem with that at the outset, I nodded. I tried not to be distracted by the seaweed locks of her hair leaving wet circles on her thin white shirt.

Bella laced the fingers of her right hand with my left. "Edward?"

"Yes?"

I had just registered that the moment felt ominous before she answered with, "I feel like I have to explain one of these. So you don't judge me."

The dread I had dismissed slithered back. Was this it? What Alice had warned me about? "I won't judge you," I promised, and prayed it was true.

Bella grimaced, her expression timid. "I would judge me. It's one I have always felt weird about, but couldn't stop myself from returning to." She squeezed my hand. "I want to emphasize that this fantasy is different in the sense that I wouldn't want it to have ever actually happened."

"What does that mean?"

"It means it's something that is exciting and sexy as a fantasy, but if it happened in real life, I would have felt very violated."

I couldn't maintain the eye contact anymore. My mind was racing. Before, I had struggled to think of what Bella could possibly ask for that would disgust me, but now scenarios were spider-webbing out from her words. Something that had never occurred to me, something I could never have foreseen her wanting—could Bella really want to play a game where I violated her consent?

My stomach turned. Without question, I would never be able to do that, even if it was all pretend.

"Gah!" Bella's frustration burst from her. "I'm not explaining it right. I'm making it sound even worse than it is." She placed her left hand over our clasped fingers. "Here, let me show you."

Inky watercolor filled my head. The room was dark, the moon outside shrouded in clouds. I sat in the rocking chair, shrouded in shadow, keeping vigil over a human Bella shifting restlessly on the bed, sheets tangled around her bare legs. She had just woken from a dream that had been, according to her sleep-talk…graphic. Her frustration was palpable—whatever completion she had been promised while asleep had been unfulfilled. And then she was touching herself, her fingers in her underwear, her shirt pushed up so that she could reach her tender nipples. She panted my name, again and again, begging me to take her, have her, fuck her. But she thought she was alone. She was unaware that I was in the corner, watching. That I was touching myself, too.

The vision faded. I came back to the room and lovely girl on my lap. The fantasy left me…conflicted. On the one hand, it wasn't nearly as bad as the worst case scenario. At least she didn't want me to bully or overpower her, ignore her pleas, or anything equally ugly. On the other, it was still a violation of consent, and it picked at scab that had never quite healed. I knew that sneaking into her room at night without being invited had been wrong, and Bella's easy acceptance of it had always bothered me. At the time, I had reassured myself that I was only there to desensitize myself to her scent and to protect her from passing threats, be they errant vampires, meteors, or spiders. It was flimsy, but it was all I had. What I was not doing was peeping. It wasn't a sex thing, and I wasn't there for perverted reasons. That was what I had maintained to myself with fanatical conviction.

And now, come to find out Bella had a fantasy where it was a sex thing and I was a pervert. It made me feel dirty in my own skin.

She could read me well. "You're not into it," she surmised.

"I'm just a little surprised," I deflected.

Bella chewed her lip. "I know, it's twisted. I don't know what's wrong with me that I have been carrying that around for years. We won't do that one."

My resolve melted. She had shrunk into herself under my gaze, my revulsion. I was the worst kind of heel.

"Is this one okay?" Bella put her hand back on mine, and opened her thoughts once more.

This one had some things in common with the other superficially, but key details were different. Bella was talking in her sleep, tossing restlessly from a wet dream and awoke with me beside her. But she had fallen asleep in my arms to begin with, so she knew all along that I was there. She had invited me into her bed. Upon waking, she was disoriented, then embarrassed, stuttering through an apology until her thigh brushed against my fully hard cock and registered my burning eyes. The ache that pulsed between her legs was hot and needy and nearly erupted when I rolled on top of her and lifted her leg over my hip. I kissed her, stripped her, and then ate her pussy until she screamed. The fantasy concluded with her riding me, bracing herself with a white-knuckle grip on her headboard, while I came inside her.

"That one is naughtier, from the standpoint that I thought it was impossible and knew shouldn't have been thinking about us having sex. But at least it's not…you know."

My hold on her had tightened and my throat felt dry. Bella could have no idea just how close this fantasy had brushed with reality. The beginning of this scenario had actually happened, only…she hadn't woken up. I had experienced a lustful response beyond anything my body had ever felt before, which culminated me in throwing myself out her window, running into the trees, and barely getting my pants down and hand around my cock before I lost it all over the forest floor.

I could only imagine what I would have done to her in that moment if she had opened her eyes. I would like to think the result would have been something like what she had just showed me—nothing would have made me happier. But it had been so early. We had only just survived James' hunt, my control over my thirst had been such a fragile thing with the memory of her blood so vibrantly recent, and carnal desires were all so new to me.

"So," she said, "that one for sure then?"

She could feel my response to the second fantasy pressing into her bottom.

I considered. "How were you planning on combining the two?"

There was an intuitive place where they might stitch together, but I wanted to know where her head was.

Sure enough, she meekly admitted that she had thought we might start with me secretly on the rocking chair. That she would touch herself and call to me believing she was alone, but then I would answer her summons, revealing myself to her. From there, I would join her in the bed and give us both what we wanted.

Perhaps I should have just accepted her offer of nixing the first fantasy entirely, but I reminded myself that this was Bella's last chance for memories of us in this room. Besides, by fusing the fantasies together, the most repugnant elements of the first fantasy were blunted. I wouldn't be the stalker pervert in the corner for long—I would show myself, and she would invite me into her bed. This was an acceptable compromise.

"Are you sure?" Bella's brow was furrowed with so much concern.

"Yes."

She let loose a stressed breath. "Our safe word—"

"Is fern," I finished for her. But I knew I wouldn't use it. I wouldn't take anything from her today. "Bella, I was taken off guard, but that's all. There is nothing wrong with you or your fantasy. I understand being turned on by something you wouldn't actually want in real life. Believe me, I do," I said, deliberately reminding her of the horrifying things that aroused me in the past. I couldn't throw any stones here. Of course, I couldn't imagine wanting to role-play my demons, but that was neither here nor there. Just another aspect where she and I were different. If this would make her happy, I would do it without complaint.

The worry lines on her face had lessened, and I kissed her tenderly. "I love you Bella, and I am okay with this."

Slowly, she nodded.

I helped her to her feet and she padded over to the bed. She lifted the covers and arranged herself under them, pulling at her clothing, strategically revealing a tempting amount of skin. Her head sank back to her pillow.

"How is your vantage point? Good?"

"Very."

"You can see the underside of my boobs, right?"

"Yes." I smiled fondly at her making sure that I had a good view. "I confess this is strange, though. I didn't think you would enjoy being watched. I wrote off exhibitionism for you entirely."

Bella laughed nervously into her pillow. "You watching me is different than other people watching me. You watching is thrilling—it always has been." Her hands were trembling on top of her comforter. "Now, shush. I'm sleeping."

I held back the snicker, and it only got worse. Somehow, Bella had gotten worse at pretending to be asleep than before, and her sleep-talking line delivery was even faker. I knew it would be a mood-killer, not to mention a little cruel, to laugh at my adorable wife when she was trying to be sexy, so kept my mouth shut and cherished the moment. I loved her. So much.

It was when she started masturbating that mood shifted for me. She was as gorgeous and irresistible as always, but my role brought home how wide the gulf between us had been. Perhaps, how wide it still was. She was so pure-hearted, she saw me jerking off as an uninvited voyeur in the corner of her room as something harmless enough to role-play. She didn't see all the underpinning connotations that I did, that it was symptom of a greater internal rot, a disregard for the autonomy of others. She hadn't hunted men who did this kind of thing in conjunction with their higher crimes and greater evils.

I realized that maybe what had been so initially exciting about these games was that, in them, I got to be Bella's Edward, to see myself through her eyes. Bella loved me unconditionally, trusted me implicitly. In Bella's world, I could take her virginity in the meadow and it would be perfect, everything she dreamed of. I could do dirty things with her in the back of my Volvo after prom and she would walk away without a single bruise. Or bite. I could pretend, like her, that she had never been in any danger from me, that my self-control was perfect, rather than the ramshackle, juryrigged mess held together by duct-tape and prayers I knew it to be. And perhaps that was why the last game had thrown me, because it had revealed the sham: if she had actually been human, my actions would have killed her. I hadn't been Bella's Edward. I had just been me.

Certainly, that was what was unsettling me now. Bella may think me being in her room uninvited was harmless, but I knew better. I knew that deep down…maybe it had partly been a sex thing, maybe I was a pervert, and definitely I had violated her by doing it. It was too real to be a game for me.

Following the script, I should be touching myself by now, but I wasn't. I wouldn't. I wasn't the least bit hard.

In a distant, removed kind of way, I knew that the show she was putting on for me was objectively sexy. This wasn't fake or staged, not anymore. She was really turned on by this—touching herself, exposing her body, for the monster in the corner. Her moans were soul-deep, her hands feverish, her squirms desperate. I was glad; I wanted this to be good for her. I didn't begrudge her a second of it. I held my arms in such a way that she wouldn't know I wasn't playing. I even moved my hand up and down to make it look like I was, knowing it was a key component of the fantasy for her. Bella, I'd realized today, loved the thought of me jerking off to her.

She broke character and made eye contact with me. The pitch of her cries had begun to crescendo. She was even using that word: fuck. A word I had never heard her use at all before that fantasy, and never out loud before this moment. I wasn't sure if that was because she in fact never used it, or if it was just that she knew I didn't really care for cursing and thus didn't use it around me. I would have expected to be repelled, but, go figure, Bella pleading, "Fuck me, Edward," with her hand in her panties was actually the hottest thing in the world.

I was definitely hard now.

She wasn't putting on a show for me anymore. She was inviting me to join her.

I discretely lowered my zipper and extricated my cock because I knew that was what she expected to see when I stood. I approached the bed while she panted and shook with anticipation. I held eye-contact with her as I slid her underwear off, spread her legs, and climbed onto the bed between them. I lowered my head, closer, closer, to her wet heat. The scent was intoxicating. She whimpered when I licked my lips. My beloved Bella—I was going to make her scream.

And scream she did, almost immediately. She had gotten herself so primed with her fingers, that she was on the edge of an orgasm from the moment my lips touched her. So, I carried her over that edge, and immediately knew it wasn't enough. My tongue could do better. I slipped my arms under her thighs to adjust the angle so that my tongue could get as deep as possible. Her thighs clenched and trembled against my ears as I sucked her juices, nuzzled her swollen clitoris. I reached up with my hands, over her stomach, her ribs, and finally cupping the ultimate prize of her perfect breasts. Her nipples were shockingly hard against my palms.

It was a good thing we were alone in the house. Her cries could probably be heard across the street.

I ate her for almost twenty minutes, and in that time she rode pleasure shockwaves on my mouth and fingers—peak and plateau, peak and plateau—with each plateau resting higher than the last, before ascending to bliss again. I heard rips and tears that suggested the bed's pillows were probably a thing of the past. Her nails were clawing my hair. God, I loved doing this to her.

H…heaven. His mouth is goddamn heaven. Ughn—yes, mmmn! The friction when his tongue's this deep. His nose mashed against my clit—so good, it hurts….

I jumped, breaking the contact between Bella's pussy and my mouth. That had been Bella's voice, but I could swear it hadn't been out loud. It had been….

Her hands released my hair, and I sat up, wide-eyed.

She, breathless and covered in pillow stuffing, took in the sight of me. "Wait? Did you hear that?"

I nodded, a little shell-shocked.

Bella gave a ragged whoop. She sat up and kissed me in celebration. "I've been trying for a while, but it hasn't worked," she confessed. "It takes so much concentration to let the shield down, and I seem to need physical contact. But I keep practicing. I am hoping that I can get to the point where I can just send you thoughts whenever."

"Really?"

She was kissing her way down my jaw. "I was just thinking about how much I wished you could know what you were doing to me, and you heard it." Her mouth was at my neck now, her hands plucking at my shirt. "Edward, I want to tear this off you so bad, but I know you don't have anything else to wear. Take it off. Now. All of it."

I was more distracted by the thought-sharing development than she was, clearly. Though, I appreciated that she was considering whether I would have clothes to wear home if she destroyed the ones I had on; she hadn't always displayed such forethought. I couldn't really complain, though. Alice had warned me, when she came home with twice as many clothes for me as everyone else while Bella was in the grips of her transformation.

"Why so many?"

"You'll need them. Oh, and you're getting off-the-rack for a while. No couture. I wouldn't wear clothes you really like for a few years."

"Why not?"

"Because Bella is going to destroy most of them." An understatement.

Standing, I quickly shed my clothing to the ground. Then I rejoined her, naked, on the bed, surrounded by tufts of free-floating cotton.

She was feverish, her hot slit exposed and dripping, white t-shirt heaving. "Edward, your mouth is heaven, but I need…." Her gaze dropped to my swollen cock. "I need," she repeated, unable to formulate the complete sentence.

"Yes, Bella." I sat with my back against the headboard. "I know what you need." My voice was low, confident. I lifted her by the waist and swung her around so that she was facing me, straddling me. She braced her hands against the headboard, on either side of my head. I guided her hips down over my erect cock, sheathing myself inside her in one steady, smooth motion.

A rapturous cry ripped from Bella's throat. "Edward!"

The feeling was mutual. My poor cock had waited too long for this today.

I lifted her t-shirt up and off as she began to move, to rise and fall. I caught her nipples between my fingers and pinched. She responded with a sharp whimper. To vary the stimulation, I turned to kissing, suckling, grazing them with my teeth. I could see in her face that she was trying to draw this out, take her time, but she couldn't slow down. Her rocking was too frantic. She was losing herself.

"Love you, Edward. I love you."

"Bella," I murmured, jaw tight against my own mounting ecstasy.

She paused mid-motion and opened her eyes.

"No, keep going. I'm just going to tell you a story." I trailed my nose along her skin, from her shoulder up to her ear, and she gasped. Her hip movements restarted, even more frenzied than before. "A week after I brought you home from Phoenix, you had a wet dream while I was lying in bed beside you." I heard her sharp intake of breath. "I had never experienced anything so arousing in my entire existence as your body writhing against mine. And when you started talking…? I almost came, here on your sheets. 'Edward, kiss me. My neck. Deeper, I need you deeper inside me,' you said."

I heard wood creak behind me, knew that splintering was next, and reacted instinctively. I captured Bella's wrists and pulled them away from the headboard. She fought me to get back to her support anchor, so I locked them behind her back. And the sheath of her heat went wild, clenching me so tight I thought I would pop.

Grunting, I continued, "I had to get out of here, or I would have lost control. So I jumped out the window, ran to the woods, and jerked my cock while I thought of those words. I shot my cum all over the ground, thinking of your face."

That was the final straw. Her hips jerked like a creature possessed, her inner walls went into full spasm, and she came screaming like a banshee. There was no way I could avoid following immediately after. Two thrusts upward in to her hot, constricting vice, and I was spilling myself into her.

Bella collapsed forward against me. As I floated back down to myself, I realized I was still retraining her arms behind her back. I released her wrists and her arms wrapped around my shoulders immediately. The pulsing pleasure of my orgasm faded slowly while my fingers stroked her bare back in light trails, up and down.

"How does it just keep getting better and better?" she asked, her voice ragged and full of wonder.

I turned my head and kissed her temple.

"Edward?"

"Hmm?"

"Was that story true?"

I groaned. Outside the heat of passion, it seemed again like something pathetic on my part—hardly my finest moment. But what was done was done, and Bella seemed to like it, anyway. "Every word."

She lifted her head off my chest and grinned at me. The happiness I saw there was breathtaking. "Thank you, Edward, for my memory."

Author's Note: I wanted to take some time digging into Bella this chapter. The loss of human memories after turning into a vampire sounds pretty terrifying, and it is something the Happy Ending for Everyone of Breaking Dawn can't save Bella from, so I thought I would mine that for my story.