Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight.

LovelyBrutal, there are no words for how grateful i am to and for you. thank you so much for everything today, this week, and this life.

everyone still buckled up?

hold me close, i'm wasting away

hold me close, i'm too fucked to stand

Anna Wise: Precious Possession

V

You don't have to be an 11th century BC demidevil to track down a target. It is more fun the old fashioned way, but cyberspace isn't without its advantages.

While Jessica puts mile after mile between my cursed heart and the not-so-mere mortal making it work so hard my temperature continues to rise even in his absence, I look up everything about him my phone has to offer. Which isn't much since he doesn't have any social media of his own.

But the shop's page gives me a little bit.

He's done a few tattoos, but is currently the highest rated piercer from here to Seattle. On a get-to-know-us post from a few years ago, I learn he's from Chicago, can play the piano, and ran away at thirteen from the cult he was raised in. He's a Gemini. He's ambidextrous, and he was fired from his first job for throwing a jelly donut at Vince Vaughn.

His name is Edward Cullen, but he goes by Grim.

And ask me -

Go ahead and ask me what the next line says.

"Do you want to stop and get some food?" Jessica shifts in the driver's seat. "I'm like, starving."

Humans shouldn't be allowed to use this word. They have no idea, no way to even begin to comprehend, how deep hunger can go.

"Alice is actually wondering where I am," I reply, which isn't untrue. She's texted twice.

I stare at the words on my screen that I can't get over, then scroll back up to the photo of my next conquest leaned back in a black leather table-chair at Shoot The Moon. Even just the image of him - owlish, oil-slick greenish-grey eyes and cheekbones for days, slouched like a lithe and saturnine prince - sends fresh pangs of longing burning through my veins. The concrete distance growing between us does nothing for how tender I'm turning or how much I hate-love it, and I can't stop rereading the last line of the post.

Atheist, anarchist, and volunteer at Quileute Animal Rescue, Grim has been sober for three years and celibate for two.

Jessica says something about how it's probably better that she get home too, but I only half-hear her. I can't stop rolling the word over and over in my mouth. Celibate. I can't deny how it tickles the sinister in me, how it goads my lips to a grin when I imagine culling his control.

Tempting his resolve.

Making him beg to break his vow for what he's doing to me.

"What are you so happy about?" Jessica teases as we exit back into Forks.

"Nothing." I pocket my phone. "He was kind of cute, right?"

"Oh my god, right? And he was so strong, like every time he would move me a little bit in the chair, I was like, just put me wherever you want, please. Total daddy vibes. And he smelled so good, like … "

She goes on about Anchor while I stare out the window at the sleepy small town, but inside, I'm already six steps ahead. When she drops me off at the quaint little house I'm supposed to call home for the next however long, I go in to maintain our disguise, but Lillin already knows I'm not staying.

"Holy Persephone-" She says in a slow voice as I enter, walking a curious circle around me, eyeing me up and down. "Wow. I haven't seen you like this since -"

"I know," I interrupt, not wanting to hear my first lover's name. There's no denying his permanent place in my life or my body, but I don't want to think about him now. I don't want to think about any of them anymore.

Watching through the curtains, waiting impatiently for Jessica to get going, I feel nosy eyes analyzing everything from my posture to my pink-tinted skin, and I know my only real friend can scent what's happening in me.

"It's fine. I'm just excited," I say plainly, turning my head to meet her feral-red gaze. "Get a grip."

With the sound of Jessica's car completely out of range, I head straight for the back door. I can tell without another word that Lillin wants to discuss this more, but she isn't going to try to stop me, and even if she did -

"Lilette," she calls as I turn the handle.

Ask me what I'd do if she tried to stop me at this point.

Ask how far I'd go to do to him what he did to that little flame.

I pause, my whole body sore with urgent yearning as I glance over my shoulder.

The darkest thing in our antique white, wholesome little country kitchen looks out of place as she struggles for a moment with what to say before finally shrugging in surrender.

"We just got here."

It sounds sort of like a plea, so I give her a nod, and I'm sincere when I say, "I know."

I just found him.

The last thing I want is for this to end anytime soon.

I'll never do anything to risk blowing our cover.

"Don't worry so much."

I blow her a play-kiss, and then I'm out. Racing through the backyard and into night, I slip into one with the earthy symphony of bats, crickets, and coyotes. The dank smell of ever-present moss, permanently damp grass, and hundred year old hemlocks fills my lungs as I move unseen through the lushest parts of town. My hood slips off as I veer deeper into the forest, and I'm wreathed in crisp, cool air and starlight.

Hunger, desire, how supple-petal, pink-soft he makes me feel and how much I resent it, how desperate I am for more of it - all melts into innate instinct as I run. My feet fall with centuries of experience. My pulse soars, and all my senses lead my legs west.

Toward the sea.

Toward six strait-laced feet of ink and sinew.

Every inch of me blushes at just the thought of Edward Grim Cullen, and I push my frame to go faster.

Closing in on La Push, I pick up his scent. It's faint and far away, but it locks in place like a full-body collar. Reining me in and giving him up.

Through the trees, about seven miles from the tattoo shop and the rest of civilization, a sleek, rustic-meets-modern A-frame sits in a clearing near the water. I know he's not here. There's no human pulse anywhere nearby, but just being this close to where he sleeps makes my skin tingle with heat Hades has killed for.

I don't want a son of titans though.

I don't want any god at all.

I want goosebumps and grasping hands, marrow-filled bones and blood-blushed cheeks. A hot mouth and a soft tongue and teeth that couldn't break my skin if they tried. I want weak knees and hips that can't help it and the way their stomachs growl when they're hungry. I want frayed nerves and need that spills for me and ardent little tears because it feels so, so good. I want vulnerability and impulse and arrogance and mettle. Warm skin and beaded sweat and shallow breath and four chambers, brimming with all the risk and thunder of ephemeral life.

I want a soul that dreams when it sleeps, the way only a son of Adam's can.

I want one of the great maker's most favored endeavors.

I want a human.

I want the one that eats and sleeps and denies his most basic instinct right here in this cabin.

My heart throbs in my throat as I creep across the glade, around his home to the glass patio door in the back. Touching its handle brings a palpable rush, the spiked delight of touching any forbidden thing, and the second I open it, a hazy hush swallows everything.

My vision.

My hearing.

My whole world goes soft-focus, soaked and swimming in the unyielding scent of him.

Watermint and warm suede. Gunflint and orris root. Heliotrope and stone fruit and sacred pages. His scent is soothing and evocative at the same time. Delicate and dangerous. Like nostalgia that won't quit. Like a sea of blue lotus mead -

I feel drunk.

I feel high.

I need -

Dragging my fingertips over marble countertops and a teak wood table's edge, I swallow hard. I barely resist the urge to rub up against the walls of books and CDs, to writhe across the thick carpet in front of his fireplace. My veins pang with how bad I want to stretch along and nuzzle against every surface. Just imagining coating myself with his scent and leaving sighs of my own behind, marking everything he owns as mine, makes me dizzy.

Passing an antique street map of Chicago, I run my palm along the entirety of the paper city. Tinting it imperceptibly and permanently with my touch.

Mine, my pulse sings.

All of him.

Everything before now, everything after.

Everything he owns and is.

His whole life.

Mine.

Running my fingers over the back of a grey sofa, I take the first step upstairs, picturing his hand on the banister as I trail my own up the smooth cedar length of it. Tipsy desire races ahead of my feet, taunting me with the thought of his palm covering my fingers. Making me let go. Guiding me down. On top of him. Right here on the staircase.

I hold tighter as I climb higher, but everything sways and softens the closer I come to his bedroom. His scent doubles up, inside and all around me. Every breath floods my mind with flickering visions of us, and each one is another shot of kaleidoscopic moonshine-

I imagine us rushed and rough up against the stairwell wall, and it's like another drink.

Relentlessly slow on the living room floor. Drink.

Hot and heavy and loud out on the back deck, naked like wild things lit by the moon, his sweat on my skin, my lips wrapped around him, pleading for more, more -

Drink.

Drink.

Drink.

Deep in a daze at the top of the stairs, I find the whole open platform of the second floor is his bedroom. No door. No walls. Just slanted windows, washing me and his whole space in shady silver nighttime.

Books stack up from the floor. There's a small cabinet with candles and a handmade, blue-glazed ceramic ashtray. A potted valerian under one window. A pair of heavy duty headphones on a nightstand. Speakers mounted in two corners. Another valerian plant on his dresser. And in the middle of it all, his bed. One of the window-walls for a headboard. No frame. Just a half-made, half-unmade queen, draped in black on black.

For a split second, the siren inside me drowns out all sound. My knees shake with inborn need, and I can't hold out anymore.

I'm in his bed before I even realize it. Twisting, rolling, spreading out and curling up. Shedding my clothes. Slipping into my truth. Yearning with abandon. Reveling in heaven. Invading. Imbuing. Bathing in swells of soft, bamboo sheets. Longing out little moans and trembling with possession. Hunger. Heat. Dragging my burning cheek across cool pillows and pulling the black cashmere blanket over my head. Drenching myself in pervading waves of him until I'm fighting a fever so heavy I can't breathe.

Mine, my whole body hums.

"Mine," I whisper in a shaky breath, sliding black fabric over my parted lips. Nuzzling my crown along the pillow that smells most like him. Getting his scent in my hair. My lungs. Infusing the place he sleeps and dreams and is going to give himself to me in with gossamer soft pheromones. Longing. Belonging. I embed his haven with a sense of homesickness that's going to put butterflies in his stomach and an ache in his chest.

Just like he's done to mine.

Mine.

I grin as I chant it, reaching over and touching his half-burned candles. His white lighter. The beveled backbone of his book stack. I don't want to leave his bed, but I take my clothes and touch everything I can on the way. The dainty green leaves of his plants. The ear pads of his over-sized headphones. Every margin of every page in his journal.

Mine.

I fingertip a border around his whole room. The entire length of his door frame. Every shirt in his closet as I slide inside and crouch in the corner.

The scent of him is overwhelming here too. Clingstone-fresh and cottonmouth-dangerous. So thick. So invasive I can't close my lips long enough to even form the word anymore.

Mine, all my hunger urges and pleads as I crouch in the dark. Waiting. My whole body resounds the promise as I brush my cheek along his long sleeves. Blushing. All the way down to where my feet end and the shadow of hooves begins. Fluttering. I'm fluttering all the way to my marrow and sore with more softness than I know what to do with. So soft I don't know how I'm standing it.

Mine, I swear, biting my too-tender bottom lip.

Mine for the maddening.

Mine to break.

My Grim.