**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 8: Blanket

"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! / It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night," I murmured in Bella's ear, my voice deep and demanding. God I was hungry for her, and I moved my fingers insistently inside her dripping wet core to emphasize just how much.

She whimpered, writhing, but my strong arms held her firmly in place.

It was past midnight. We were on the couch in our parlor and she was on my lap, her back pressed to my chest, her knees on either side of my thighs. I kept nudging them further apart so that she was spread wider, so that my fingers could reach deeper. She was basically naked. Only her button-down blouse remained and it was wide open, while the rest of her clothes, as well as the lap quilt that had covered us only minutes ago, were piled on the floor down by my feet. Her lovely skin reflected the light from the television in front of us in the dark room.

This was a game that had gotten out of hand, spawned from the afternoon Bella and I had watched Romeo and Juliet on the couch after school. We had cuddled chastely under a blanket while Bella ate popcorn and I whispered Romeo's lines to her as a goof. The premise of her fantasy was simple: that the cuddling had not been so chaste, that I couldn't resist touching her everywhere—over the clothing, then under—while I kissed her throat and seduced her with the words of one of her favorite literary characters. That I would bring her to climax with my fingers without actually removing any clothing, just by reaching down beneath the cover of the lap quilt into her open jeans, her panties, and coaxing her to bliss. I would calm her virgin's nerves with tender caresses and low Shakespearian murmurs, and she would cling to me while she went to pieces in my arms. But I had to be careful, because she was human and inexperienced, and we had to be discrete, because her dad would arrive home at any moment.

Tonight, when we selected this game, we had meant to stop there. But sex for Bella and I had developed a slightly desperate edge in the weeks following our time apart, and things escalated hopelessly.

Fifteen minutes into the movie, before Romeo and Juliet had even met, we completed the fantasy…and then just kept going.

Pushing the clothing off of her lower body had barely been a hindrance, but I had lost patience with her bra and it was a shredded mess on the hardwood floor. Her bras seemed to be drawing quite a bit of my ire lately. I was discovering, admitting to myself, just how much I liked Bella naked. Especially her breasts. The intensity of the predilection had flown under the radar because of how normal I assumed it was. Of course I liked to see the woman I loved without her clothes on. I was attracted to her. She was beautiful. Didn't every man feel the same about the object of his affection? But this was, I was beginning to realize, probably more. I found myself imagining Bella's breasts under all different kinds of lighting, in different settings, at inappropriate times, open, exposed, available to me—my hands, my eyes, my mouth. Naked and mine.

Even just the impression of her nipples under fabric when she went without a bra drove me crazy.

The Pandora's Box of my sexuality was open, and I suspected this was one of the things that had escaped. Or, more accurately, it had always been out there, but now was more visible.

One of my hands was working three fingers in an out of her and the other was wrapped around her like a vice, clutching one of those breasts. I reluctantly let go and sought her hand with mine. On the screen before us, the dance had ended, the minstrel was singing, and Romeo was sneaking behind the curtain. It was time for my line.

"If I profane with my unworthiest hand / This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: / My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand / To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss," I said, pressing a passionate kiss into the back of her hand, then her palm, her wrist.

Once, I had looked on this scene with a kind of disdain. Romeo had just laid eyes on the girl. They had never spoken before, and yet he went right to it—declaring himself horny, in love, and putting his hands and lips all over her. It was beyond presumptuous, but since meeting Bella, I thought I understood.

Bella swooned and gasped, but she didn't say the accompanying line.

"Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?" I continued, nuzzling the inside of her wrist while her pussy clenched my fingers. I released her hand and traced my fingers along her jaw, guiding her face toward mine. Her eyes were dark and wanton, lost in desire.

I felt her hands move between our legs as she groped for my zipper. I groaned as she struggled to free my cock.

My voice was rough as I proceeded with Romeo's seduction. "O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. / They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair." I caressed the tip of her nose with mine. "Then move not while my prayer's effect I take." I kissed her and she whimpered sharply. God, it was satisfying how much she wanted me. "Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged."

Bella pressed herself closer, and I felt her delicate fingers close around me and pull my erection out into the open. I groaned as the tip brushed against where she and my probing fingers were joined.

She whispered hungrily, "Then have my lips the sin that they have took."

It was the first time she had recited a line—the memory this game was based on included me saying all of Romeo's lines, not her saying Juliet's. At the time, I'd meant it as gentle ribbing for the way Bella had gushed over the character at school. Given what we were doing just now, it was clear she had remembered my performance fondly and as something more sincere than it had been. But perhaps she was onto something. Much to my surprise, hearing Bella beg for another kiss as Juliet had begged had quite an effect on me.

I pulled my fingers from her heat. "Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!" Lining myself up with her dripping slit, I growled, "Give me my sin again." I kissed her once more and entered her with a demanding surge upward. Bella squirmed with pleasure.

She was…so tight. Goddamn. How did it continue to take my breath away every time?

My hands found their way to her hips and I began thrusting, with purposeful, lingering strokes, into the sweet bliss of her pussy. But I had pushed my Bella too far. She was frantic, trembling, and she broke free to rise and fall at her own breakneck pace. Her hands gripped my forearms for support, nails digging into my skin, and she threw her head back so that we were cheek to cheek.

"I love you, Edward. God, I love you," she panted. "Ughn…Edward!"

I met her churning, jerky, movements, pushing myself as deep as possible as often as I could. "It is my soul that calls upon my name."

She whined, eyes falling closed, and bit her lower lip. If I weren't so caught up in my own delirious pursuit of pleasure, I would have taken a moment to find it endearing just how much Romeo's lines affected her.

With a noise of frustration, she shifted, falling forward so that she was bracing herself on my knees instead, and then she really began riding me in earnest. We both cried out at the change in angle and depth of penetration. My eyes admired the elegant lines of her back under the silk blouse, her long disheveled hair, and her gorgeous backside springing up and down on my lap. My hands fondled, squeezed, that flesh of their own volition. I could see myself moving in and out of her, see the way she stretched around me, gripped me, the glistening wet of her arousal all over my shaft.

I was done for. "Bella, I'm…I'm gonna…."

"Yes," she moaned. "Come, Edward. I need it."

Powerless to do anything else, I obeyed. She followed seconds later, and I grunted as she wrung me dry.

When I came back to myself, I wanted to hold her close, so I slid my arm around her waist and pulled her backward against my chest. She went willingly, but retrieved the lap quilt at my feet first. She pulled it up around us and sighed contentedly as she snuggled into me.

Kissing my cheek, she said, "Thank you."

She always thanked me for turning her fantasies into memories, and it made me melt every time. How could it not? She was so pleased, so happy. They were moments when I knew for certain that I was doing right by her.

We watched the play unfold, though I was distracted. Still being inside her kept me uncomfortably hard, but I resisted the urge to escalate again. I wasn't an animal; I could wait until after the movie. Eventually, we laid down, her head on the arm cushion, my elbow propped behind her to hold my head slightly higher, and she allowed me to slip out of her.

During the balcony scene, while I murmured Romeo's lines, she didn't object when I pushed the quilt down to expose her chest. I sat up a little more, so that I could have an unfettered view of her breasts. I traced their perfection, cupped them in my palms, even bent once or twice to brush my lips against them. Yeah…this was a thing for sure. I could look and touch all night.

Bella was lying on her back now, gazing up at me rather than at the TV screen.

"I have forgot why I did call thee back," Juliet's voice floated over to us.

Leonard Whiting and I answered together as Romeo, "Let me stand here till thou remember it."

"I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, / Rememb'ring how I love thy company," Olivia Hussey replied.

"And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget, / Forgetting any other home but this." I kissed her nipple.

I thought her sigh was just pleasure, but when I pulled back, I could see that she was pensive, too.

I abandoned my role. "What is it?"

Bella shook her head, but she did answer my question. "It's just that, I am. Forgetting any other home but you. More and more every day."

I froze.

"It's all right." She caressed my face. "At least, you make me feel like it will be."

Swallowing, I settled back down on the couch and gathered her body close, dropping kisses of comfort on her scalp. She held me in return. After a few minutes, we returned to the movie, but I forewent reciting any more of Romeo's lines. I hoped that didn't disappoint her too much, but I felt uneasy continuing. Especially because things were going to unravel in the world of the play very soon, and then the lines, I feared, would hit too close to home. Even more than they just did.

Of all Shakespeare's works, this one had never been a favorite for me. Everything about it had been inaccessible, unrelatable. Especially Romeo himself: his ardent declarations, his out-sized emotional responses, his eagerness to die the moment he thought Juliet was lost. And then I lived it, beat for beat. Romeo was a hot-headed idiot, but it turned out he and I were of a kind. I was fortunate my Juliet had gotten to me just in time, saving me, saving us both. I had been poised for his same tragedy, right in the middle of killing myself when she had literally crashed into my arms and stopped me from going through with it. Warm and out of breath and alive. Just few seconds later and it would have been too late—I would have been dead and, right in the lap of the Volturi, having seen things no human was allowed to, Bella's life would have been forfeit. All of it, my fault. It would be hypocrisy beyond words to feel contempt for Romeo after that.

Somehow, Bella still loved the play. She still adored him as a character. I supposed it was better than watching her dream of emotionally ordered, morally upright Austen heroes like Edmund Bertram, as I remembered her doing one afternoon on a blanket in her father's backyard. Here, there was nothing to be jealous over. In all ways that counted, Romeo and I were the same, and no one was more aware of that than Bella.

Despite the melancholy charge in the air, or maybe because of it, Bella and I were touching each other by Act 4, waking desire once more. It wasn't so surprising, I supposed. Our relationship was sort of…like this right now.

When I had made love to her under the piano and that cascade of orgasms took her, it shook me to my core. Whatever Bella said, I was convinced that only extreme neglect on my part could have brought about such a thing. Thank God for my family's ability to provide childcare at the drop of a hat, because I was able to sweep Bella up off that rug and carry her to our bedroom, where I made love to her for days. I had thought that would satisfy the desperation, bring us back to some kind of normalcy. But it didn't, not completely. The physical need was temporarily satiated, but the trauma of starvation was harder to soothe, for both of us. We were each acutely aware of what our relationship was like without physical intimacy, and how alarmingly possible that was. As a result, we were left with a kind of sharp paranoia that nothing could be taken for granted.

We had been systematically moving down Bella's list of fantasies over the past month, but it was almost impossible to stop when we reached the end of a script. Bella's human daydreams had the clipped wings I had come to expect, and thus most of them didn't involve penetration, but we couldn't seem to help ourselves. Penetration had become essential. If I wasn't in her, she was too far away. We acted out the fantasy as planned, but then, without fail, didn't stop. It wasn't like the kind of lustful frenzies that would come over us before. Those only happened once every couple of months, lasted maybe one day, and they were so straightforward, so pure in the emotions that drove them. We had simply been high on sexual pleasure, drunk on love. And happy. Now, the fever never really went away. I was constantly reaching for Bella and she was constantly reaching for me. Even when we were sad—especially when we were sad. Our free time was full of basically nothing else—always again, always more—our vampire constitutions becoming as much a curse as a blessing. An undercurrent ran through every second of our lovemaking hadn't been there before, and I couldn't decide if it was neediness or just fear.

Things weren't bad. On the contrary, I had Bella back, and I felt the truth of that through all of me: she was really back. We were fixed, together, made whole. It was just that we knew where we had broken, that we could break. And not as boyfriend and girlfriend like we had in the past—as husband and wife. We could still break, and no revelation could be more disconcerting. An innocence between us had been lost. That was the only way I could think to describe it.

So, by the time Romeo approached the Capulet tomb, we were both naked under the quilt and making love again. I was on top of her, clutching her close as I drew out her climax, slowly, somberly, as much for comfort as for pleasure. We knew how nearly we had ended up like the lovers in this sad story in our foolish early days, and we were newly wise enough to know that there were more ways love could die than the literal. Now was a period of aftermath, of recent reunion. We were doing the day to day, moment to moment work of healing ourselves and each other. It was tireless and agonizing.

But Bella was right—we had been here before, and things had been even worse then. I had broken up with her, abandoned her "for her own good," and not only had that time apart been longer and more painful, the reconciliation period had been worse as well. Her trauma had lingered for so long. Nightmares, panic attacks, and emotional breakdowns, all triggered by the very idea of me leaving.

Meanwhile, I had spent many a horrid night beside her sleeping form, staring at her ceiling, tortured by the idea that I might lose her to Jacob Black. I had broken her; he put her back together. She never would have looked twice at him otherwise—he was a rival of my own making, a consequence of my mistakes. I had even forced myself to make peace with the idea of sharing her with him if need be, because being anything to her was better than nothing. I was a monogamist down to my very bones, so the idea went against my every instinct and inclination, but it was amazing how that awful year had reordered my worldview and priorities. Faced with what existence actually was without Bella, and then with how it would feel if she had died as a result of my actions…it was amazing how her blood never really tempted me again, even when it bled free-flowing. How I could bandage her cuts without even the slightest uptick of venom in my mouth. And I could deny her nothing. If she wanted to be a vampire, I would make her a vampire. Or…if she wanted a werewolf boyfriend to ride motorcycles and eat hotdogs around a campfire with, to give her human children? Well, I wouldn't begrudge her that either. If that was what it took to make her happy, to keep her, I could make myself accept being one of two. After all, wouldn't that be more bearable than her choosing him outright?

But it had been the very definition of hell to even think about, and nothing could match my relief when she chose me. Only me.

Whatever was going on now was certainly easier than that.

Bella was right, I repeated, reassured myself: we would get through this.

When Romeo drank the poison, Bella turned her head away, shifting beneath me to hide her face in the crook of my neck.

"Do you want me to turn it off?" I asked gently, secretly hoping she would say yes.

She shook her head, but didn't look at the screen again, and when Juliet woke to find him dead beside her sarcophagus, Bella's grip on my bicep tightened.

"I still love it," she insisted afterward. "Maybe even more than ever." And then she echoed my own thoughts. "But it does hit differently, now that I understand her more. I know what she went through, how she felt. The last few years, the experience of watching and reading it has been different." She lifted her bare shoulders. "It doesn't feel like just a story anymore."

I nodded, understanding all too well. "More light and light, more dark and dark our woes."

Bella smiled humorlessly. "Something like that."

We cleaned up our mess and I carried her to our bedroom.

Around 8:30, we pulled ourselves together and did some geography lessons with Renesmee. Then Bella took her out hunting as a reward for how well she had eaten her human food this week. After they were gone, I pulled out the list of Bella's fantasies and crossed off the one we had completed the night before. Pretty much, we were done.

I had found the list shortly after we had reignited our physical relationship under the piano. Gone looking for it, actually. The desperate edge to our sex had been new and I wanted to help soothe it away. The only thing I could think to do was to continue helping Bella feel loved and safe. That was what she said she needed, and it occurred to me that our games were a way I could create that environment for her. She had mentioned making a list, so I had sought it out. I also knew that she was worried about losing her memories, and so acting out each of these seemed like a good way to care for Bella emotionally all around.

When I had brought it to her initially, she had put up some resistance. I could tell she was worried about pushing us too far again, but I had convinced her to sit down with me so that we could talk through each item, one by one, and decide if we wanted turn them into games.

I couldn't help but marvel. My Bella's fantasies were such concrete, specific things. They were all anchored with a premise that was, if not completely realistic, only just outside of possible, and always an actual memory for a jumping off point. They had a beginning, middle, and end, often a script—as though she had returned to them over and over until they were memorized, tweaking and revising until they were precisely what she wanted, with maximum appeal to her particular kinks, quirks, and longings. As though mining the deepest recesses of her psyche was something so safe, she could do it regularly and for no other reason than to get herself off. Her fantasies weren't whims; they were meticulously explored fixations, wishes so thought out, she could have stated them to a genie with no fear of surprises or misinterpretations. It was no wonder she wanted to return to them, to animate them into reality and keep them forever as memories.

It was the exact opposite of how I dealt with my desires.

"You're saying you're okay with all of these?"

My impulse was to just reassure her outright, but I had promised I would start being more truthful about this kind of thing. "Well, the one in the meadow, the one we haven't done, might be…a lot."

Her expression told me I had done the right thing. She looked encouraged by my honesty and not the least bit surprised I felt the way I did. That fantasy had been the one she was most hesitant to detail. "We'll scratch that one then."

But I placed my hand over hers when she went to cross it out. "No. It's not…." I gathered my words and my courage. "The things you want me to do," lure her alone with me into the forest, whisper perverted nothings in her ear, rip her clothes from her body, pin her wrists over her head in the grass, and take, "I want them, too. Very much. But I may need to work up to them."

Her jaw dropped a little. "Really?"

I took a deep breath. This was the point, right? Embracing the parts of my sexuality that were the monster to please her, to make me less fractured. My knee-jerk reaction was still strong, but this is what she wanted and I needed. "Yes."

A tiny noise escaped her throat and, almost imperceptibly, her thighs clenched together. She immediately dropped her eyes back down to the list, embarrassed. But it helped me—if I was going to unleash that part of myself in spite of all my reservations, it helped knowing how horny it made her.

"So," she said, forging forward but not meeting my eyes, "we should start with something easy. This?"

She pointed to the one where, after lunch, we would skip Biology to make out in my car and wind up dry humping to completion in my back seat.

Yes, we started there. And then we went skinny dipping in a forest pond under the stars and I teased her by dragging sprigs of leaves, feathers, and flower petals across her skin, along her jaw, over her nipples, inside her thighs, between her legs, until it was too much and she needed my fingers. A few nights later, we snuck over to the gazebo at the edge of school grounds after ditching an imaginary assembly. Backing her against a wooden pillar wrapped with vines, I slipped my hand up her skirt. I lifted her so that only the tips of her toes were touching the ground and her full body weight was keeping her impaled on my fingers. My thumb tormented her clitoris until she begged for mercy. Then, she dropped to her knees and sucked me dry while I played with her nipples. She'd encouraged me to pinch harder, and harder, and then she screamed. When I asked if she was all right, she gasped that she'd had an orgasm. That gave me pause, but her mouth made me forget my discomfort.

The following weekend, we grabbed some time up at the big house up in my old room, where the bed I bought her was still set up. We pretended it was the night I proposed and she tried to seduce me, only this time, it ended with us pleasuring ourselves for each other's eyes—she rubbed her naked pussy against my pillows, moaning, eyes bright with hunger, and I was unable to keep from jerking my cock right then and there beside her. When I confessed that I really had masturbated that night, after she had gone to sleep, Bella broke from the script and begged me to fuck her. I couldn't help but oblige.

My favorite, I confess, was when we went camping and cuddled inside one sleeping bag to counterbalance the night up the mountain when she'd had to sleep in Jacob's arms for warmth. The fantasy was just some kissing, exploration, and heavy petting, but it was what it represented that I found so satisfying: Bella wished she'd been able to spend the night with me instead of him. Maybe it was petty, but God I liked that.

The one she set in the cab of her truck had been tricky. Unfortunately, the truck was long gone, but I had scoured a few junk yards and surprised her with something comparable. Then, I held her hands behind her back and ate her on the leather bench seat while rain pounded the windshield and she panted that we really shouldn't be doing this because she had so much homework to do.

Bella had been shy to take me through them all, but honestly, as we talked through the list, I had been relieved. I'd spent the last couple of months since we began these games worried that Bella and I may find ourselves sexually incompatible in terms of the things we wanted, but we were actually more in sync than either of us had realized. Her remaining fantasies were tame compared to wanting me to bite her—maybe a consequence of human Bella having been a virgin with very little exposure to pornography. No toys, no anal, no fetishes I didn't already know about. If anything, her tastes were as boring as mine.

The thing I was most relieved was nowhere in evidence: inviting other people into our bedroom. Alice and Jasper sometimes did that with individuals and couples amongst our nomad friends. They were so nonchalant about it, too. I wasn't sure if the reason I couldn't wrap my head around that was because I was a grumpy, old-fashioned prude, or if it was because meeting Bella had been my whole sexual awakening. To the best of my knowledge, she was legitimately the only person on the planet I wanted to have sex with. But my conversation with Jasper had reminded me that some people liked variety, of bodies, of genders—some people were curious, and Bella could be one of them. I didn't know what I would do if Bella wanted other partners. No matter what insanity I had talked myself into years ago during that dark time when I'd had to stand by while she looked at another boy with tender eyes, laughed at his jokes, called him "My Jacob," and kissed him…. Sharing Bella was absolutely unthinkable at this point. The heartbreak would kill me from the inside out. But, thank God, there was nothing remotely like that on Bella's list, and when I broached the subject, her reaction mirrored my feelings. Bella was so uninterested in other people, none of her fantasies even involved us roleplaying as anyone other than ourselves.

The big shock—that Bella had been attracted to me as a vampire and got sopping wet at the idea of me taking her, roughly, and biting her, drinking her blood—was behind us. The list did contain a little masochism and a little submission here and there, but I wasn't surprised to see them crop up at this point. If anything, I suspected those threads of interest ran deeper than Bella had admitted to me and maybe even herself. That didn't thrill me, if I was honest. Light domination I could get on board with, maybe too easily. That was the problem. I still balked at sexual acts my monster liked. But Bella's masochism was a true incompatibility. I was absolutely certain that I was not a sadist, especially not where she was concerned. Causing her pain brought me no pleasure, sexual or otherwise. The only way I could bring myself to satisfy those needs for her was by focusing on how much Bella was enjoying the pain, such as when she begged me to make her sore. The list also had some recurrences of exhibitionism, but only in private and only for my eyes, and that was an area I feared we may be very compatible.

Basically, the foundation of every fantasy on the list was a horny human girl who desperately wished her vampire boyfriend would have sex with her. The through-line of kink that wove in and out of them was that he was dangerous and she was at his mercy—she was both his love and his prey, and that aroused her like crazy.

But now we were almost done. Only one fantasy remained on the list. It was the one I hadn't been ready for when we talked through it a month ago, and I wasn't ready now. The one she'd set in the meadow on first day I took her there, where instead of just showing her my skin in the sun, I ravished her in the grass like some kind of lecherous beast. I knew we were moving in that direction with our games, but I hadn't fully accepted all that entailed. It indulged all the worst of me, and I still couldn't comprehend what Bella got out of it. Just because I was coming to accept her sexual proclivities didn't mean I understood them. Why would she want me to treat her like that? Why would she want to pretend she was weak and defenseless? That I was a villain? Why did she see me that way?

I heard footsteps on our cobblestone walk announcing that Bella had returned home, but I hadn't heard Renesmee's thoughts approach.

"Esme stole her," Bella explained, sullen. "She's gardening on the north end of the property, and Nessie wanted to help. I said, 'Remember how we were going to go the library for some mother-daughter time?' and she was like, 'But Mom, planting trees is important.' And then she ditched me." Bella dropped into the chair beside mine. Her grumpiness startled me out of my brooding.

I laughed. "She's becoming more independent."

Bella grumbled.

"And maybe asserting her own interests?"

She changed the subject. "Is that the list?"

"Yes. I just crossed off Romeo and Juliet on the couch."

She took the piece of paper from me and studied it, frowning. "There were more than twelve. I was more creative, I swear." She exhaled. "Well, this is all I remember now, so it'll have to do."

I studied her. Lately, the fact that she was losing her memories often made her depressed or panicked, but I was pretty sure all she was feeling at the moment was irritation. Likely distracted by the fact that she had a daughter who thought playing outdoors was more fun than reading and she wasn't quite ready to accept it.

"Do you have new fantasies you want to add? Things you've become interested in since you changed?"

Bella considered that. "Not really," she answered. "Now, if I want to do something with you, I pretty much go for it." Her smile was somewhat shy. "And you're terrible at telling me no."

"I am," I agreed. "But I think that's been good for me, even though it got us in a little trouble recently."

She guffawed. "I wouldn't go that far."

"I'm serious," I said, reaching for her hand. "I've carried around a lot of baggage about sex, for a long time. The society I was raised in was repressive and narrow-minded, and after Carlisle turned me, I started associating sexual impulses with the parts of me I thought of as evil. You, being so good and pure of heart, and yet so attuned to your desires challenged a lot of that in a way I couldn't ignore. And that you wanted me…so badly and so often…. It allowed me to indulge, because I was only taking care of you, being a good husband to you. I never would have discovered how much I like sex if it weren't for you and my inability to tell you no. Those parts of me would have stayed buried forever, and if I noticed them at all, it would have only been to feel shame."

Bella dropped the list and climbed into my chair with me. "I love you," she whispered. "You're the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I hate that you think of yourself as evil."

"I don't think of myself as evil when I'm with you," I admitted. "I used to, when we first met, because I was so sure I would ruin or hurt you. But not anymore."

"You didn't."

"I know."

"Because you're good."

I said nothing, but brushed my lips against her cheekbone.

We sat like that in silence for many minutes. Sitting in easy stillness was just one more part of being a vampire that Bella had adapted to nimbly. I was in no hurry to broach the subject I knew I needed to. But eventually, I gathered the will.

"So…one fantasy left."

"You're not ready," she surmised.

My deflection was automatic. "There are things we should talk about first."

"I agree." She laced her fingers with mine. "Where would you like to start?"

I considered, a disquiet rising in me that I did my best to ignore. "More than anything, I'm trying to wrap my head around it."

She smiled, but it was a nervous thing. I didn't know if she was trying to reassure herself or me with it. "I know, it's perverted."

"I didn't say that."

Bella looked down. "I saw your face in the gazebo, when the pain made me come. I know you feel weird about going back into the territory of rough sex."

It was the first time she had ever acknowledged this part of herself out loud beyond saying that she relished feeling sore after sex. I wasn't sure how to respond.

"I'm not expecting you to hurt me like that again. I know you don't like it, and I won't ask you to," she promised.

I took a deep breath. Stroking her cheek, I said, "I'm not as opposed to it as you think. You're right that I don't enjoy hurting you, but I do like giving you pleasure, and if a little pain does that for you, then I am open to doing it from time to time. Within reason." I lifted her chin. "It's more that I am trying to understand…in a broader sense, I guess. So that when we do things like this, I can make sure it's good for you. What do you get out of all of this? Why do you like my monster so much? Why do you want him to do those things to you?"

Bella took her time answering, gathering her thoughts, and when she spoke it was carefully. "To some extent, the answer is that I don't know. I'm aware how unsatisfying that is—I have wondered about it myself, but I don't think it bothers me as much as it bothers you that I want those things. It did at first, but I got used to it. Maybe it just seemed like part of falling in love with a vampire to me, one more weird thing to take in stride." She played with the button on my shirt cuff as she talked. "The first time I dreamed of you drinking my blood was…I don't think it was a sexual thing. I don't remember it that way at least. It felt more like my mind was unpacking new information. But I know after you saved me in Port Angeles the blood dreams were sexual. All I could think was that you cared about me, you were breaking all of your own rules to keep me safe, and you said it was bad to be alone with me because you wanted to drink my blood."

I closed my eyes, jaw tight, as her words sank in.

"I was head over heels," she continued. "And that was the way you wanted me. The way I tempted you. I knew it was bad—what it really meant. But it got snarled up with all this metaphor in my subconscious. I had been turned on before, had wet dreams and dirty thoughts, but not consistently, and not about a particular person. You were so beautiful and your gaze was the most intense thing I had ever experienced. It made me feel hot and nervous and vulnerable. It made me aware of every inch of my skin and everything that was touching it, even before I knew the truth about you."

She nestled closer, laying her head on my shoulder. "For instance, one day, when I was sitting next to you in Biology, during that time when you were pretending I didn't exist, I had the random thought that…that my vagina was an opening, a hole, and it felt…empty." She swallowed and then rushed to elaborate. "I wasn't imagining anything specific or graphic, it was just this crazy thought out of nowhere. It felt empty, and then my muscles clenched together and it was the naughtiest, most pleasurable sensation. I had the strangest certainty that it would feel so much better if only I had something inside me to clench down on. And then I caught your hand out of the corner of my eye, just resting on the lab table while you took notes. I had been masturbating for years at that point, but I had never been brave enough to put anything inside of me, and yet, there your fingers were, looking like they might be just what I needed. They reminded me that you had other body parts that might fit inside me, that might feel good to clench down on. When it dawned on me what I was thinking, I knocked my highlighter off the table trying to move my chair further from yours, and then I realized my underwear was wet. It was mortifying. You lied to me at the hospital and then ignored me for days, but here I was, still drawn to you. I felt pathetic."

I stopped breathing, entranced by her revelation. It wasn't the point of what she was saying, I knew, but the thought of my sweet, innocent, human Bella wet for me—it wrecked me every time. And whatever she thought, I had been utterly incapable of ignoring her. I remembered every breath she took, every beat of her pulse while she sat beside me in class, and the day she dropped her highlighter was so clear it could have been yesterday. I had to bite back a groan, knowing now why that had happened.

"So, that was the mix. I wanted sex, and not in the vague way I was used to—with a particular person. But his lust was for my blood. Things just got…jumbled, I guess, from there. I told you I was aware from all the books I've read of all the literary symbolism of blood drinking and deflowering, but it was more than that. You wanted to kill me, hurt me, but then you chose to save me, every time. The thought of rough sex or sex that hurts had never really appealed to me before, but when I thought of all that violence pent up in you, trying to get out but unable to because of how you felt about me, because you are a protector first and a predator second, I…changed."

I started to feel a little sick. I could feel her hands trembling a little with nerves against the fabric of my shirt.

"It started to seem kind of hot that you were so strong, but you chose to be gentle, and that, in the heat of passion, you might accidentally be less gentle. That you could just take me, as a woman or as prey, but you wouldn't. And your body was so hard, like stone almost—I didn't see how you could possibly make love to me without it hurting, especially if you were taking my virginity. I've never been afraid of pain, physical or emotional. It was always just part of my life and I bore it in silence because that seemed like the thing to do. Besides, loving you hurt already—it always hurt when I was human. I don't know when exactly I started to think of the pain as something sexy, let alone when it started to feel good. Really good."

My erection was gone. Loving me had been painful. She could only conceptualize sex with me as being painful. I had done this to her.

It wasn't until I felt her startle in my arms that I realized I had spoken the sentiment out loud.

"Don't take it like that," Bella said, sitting up. Her eyes looked remarkably clear for what she had just been saying. "It's not your fault, and it's not a bad thing. For all we know, I would have developed the response regardless. It seems possible, given the relationship I had with pain before I met you. Besides, I've done the research and it's relatively normal. A lot of people like a little pain in bed. And," she clarified, speaking in that calm authoritative voice she used when she had done her homework, "for me, it is a little and it is in bed. No interest in it outside of sex. Pain is a scale, and I wouldn't want anything above a four or maybe five out of ten. I wouldn't want you to inflict it in any way that registers as violence toward me, either—like hitting me for instance. It's only sexy in the context of you getting carried away and going a little too hard."

Our conversation in the Port Angeles bay, waves crashing around us, came back to me. "As though I want you so badly my control is slipping."

She smiled, pleased I understood. "Yes, like that. Like…like our first time."

"Our first time?" Isle Esme: a broken headboard, feathers from ripped pillows on every surface, and Bella's skin patched with bruises.

"It was everything I hoped it would be, everything I could ever want."

She had told me that before, but this time I really heard her. Bella always said our first time was "perfect" and I'd taken it as hollow reassurance that she didn't blame me, or that she didn't regret it. She didn't want me to feel guilty, so she was comforting me. But no, all this time, when she said perfect, she meant perfect.

I nodded, doing my best to take all of this in stride and not visibly react in a way that would make her feel judged. I reminded myself that I wanted to understand. "What about the stuff where I take charge? What are your boundaries there?"

"My absolute limit?" Her shoulders lifted and dropped. "I'm not sure. I'll tell you if we get there." Then Bella bit her lip, pensive. "I don't think that I actually enjoy you bossing me around, because I'm pretty sure I hate that, especially out of the bedroom. One of the biggest appeals of becoming a vampire was that I could tell you no when you got high-handed without you being able to just pick me up and make me do what you wanted anyway."

I blinked.

"Don't give me that innocent look," she said sternly. "You knew I hated it. That and not being able to help. Everyone in my life was strong and capable, and there I was, the squishy little human. Everyone had to risk everything to protect me, and I couldn't help at all when the people I loved were in danger." She shuddered. "It's so nice to be on an even playing field with you and everyone else."

"Well…." I trailed off. Did she want me to apologize for doing what I thought was best at the time? Sure, I hadn't always been right. Actually, it had blown up in my face as often as it had worked. Maybe I had run roughshod over her wishes from time to time, but trying to keep a human alive was stressful. Especially a human like Bella, who attracted trouble like a magnet. "I'm sorry?"

She rolled her eyes. "You're the worst."

"If you don't like me ordering you around," I tried to get us back on track, "what do you like?"

"Oh," she waved her hand, "'take your clothes off,' 'spread your legs,' 'get on your knees'—all that's fine. By all means, continue using imperative statements to tell me what you want in bed. It's hot. But I reserve the right to not think of them as orders and only follow them when I want to."

"O…kay."

"I think it's more the thrill of the way things were back then. I hated that I couldn't say no to you in real life, but there was something…freeing, almost, about it in my fantasies." She grimaced. "The stuff you internalize as a girl can be so messed up. I was crazy about you and my sex drive went from what I thought was probably pretty normal to right off the charts. I didn't know what to do. All those feelings were overwhelming, I was a mess, and I didn't want you or anyone else to think I was a slut. Not a nice word, and a bullshit stigma no girl should have to worry about, but it's scary anyway. People are mean, and I knew you were really old-school. But if you took charge, I wouldn't have to lay my cards on the table or put myself out there and risk you losing respect for me. You were this scary, animalistic monster, or so you kept trying to convince me. Well, you could just declare that I was yours, sexually, and give my body everything it was dying for while you took what you wanted. All I had to do was let you."

I didn't like the idea of my Bella feeling anxious under the weight of all that cultural pressure, but couldn't deny how reasonable her worries had been. Fair or not. I would like to think that I never would have judged Bella for her sexual appetite, but I didn't know that for sure. I certainly couldn't boast the high-ground of never having done that to a woman before. Having access to the thoughts of every female around me meant that I was fully aware of the gap between what society expected and what was actually normal. But I had also been smugly superior and easily off-put when it came to lustful thoughts, having spent most of my life not really seeing the appeal of sex. It was probably a blessing that Bella's inner life had been so opaque to me, that I only became aware of her desires in stages so that I was eased into the true intensity of them while my own awoke and came to the fore, but I would never tell her that.

"I think it would be lying to say that was all of the appeal, though. I probably am just a little twisted. I'm into the idea of being your prey, and I can't psychoanalyze that into something not weird." She sighed and made a face. "These days, for me, it's not so much about enjoying the idea of you taking pressure off me by making the choices. That ship sailed a long time ago when I realized I'd die a virgin if I waited for you to make the first move. I had to speak up. Being the main instigator in our sexual relationship has been good for me I think, mostly. I have grown a lot because of it. But I do worry a lot about whether you want me as much as I want you, what you want when you do want me, all of that."

My throat tightened. She was speaking casually, because it was a topic we had been over a lot in the past two months, but I was tense because I knew it was a conversation we would probably continue to have for a long time.

"That's what I like about the idea of you taking charge in the bedroom now. If you're in control, presumably, what's happening is what you want to happen. We're doing what you want, and I know for sure you wanted it to happen in the first place. You're not going along just to make me happy and I'm learning about what you like."

"Bella—"

"I know," she said, "you want me. All our sex is real sex." She pressed a kiss into my lips. "I'm just being honest about my thought process and how I feel."

My heart hurt as I pulled her into an embrace. God, this sucked. I wished so badly that there was a way I could just make it better, banish those worries from her head for good.

"What do you get out of it?" she asked against my chest.

"Hmm?"

"It could be that I have read you wrong," she prefaced, "but I've gotten the impression that you enjoy being bossy while we are having sex. It's not like the pain thing. You seem to like it."

That took me aback. I hadn't realized I was so obvious. Well, I had promised to be more honest about sex. "Yeah, I think I do. Not always. A lot of the time, I prefer you to be the one steering. I've tried to be open about the fact that, for me, sex is about you. Making you feel loved and cared for, making your body feel pleasure, is the whole point. That's easiest when you are the one saying what we do and when. Of course, it's become clear that can't be the basis of our entire sex life. It puts too much pressure on you. And…I was selling my own desires short. I was hiding them from myself and from you, which wasn't fair and probably wasn't healthy. Since we started playing these games and so many of them have cast me as the one in charge, I've discovered…yeah, I like it. And, as you've clearly noticed, I've started to bring that to sex outside of our games, too."

She chuckled. "I knew it. What do you like about it?"

I drew a blank. "I'm not sure."

"Really?"

"I haven't had as much time to think through this stuff as you have. I just started."

She picked up on something in my voice I hadn't realized was there. "And you're scared." Bella stroked my chest. "You're worried that if you look too closely, you'll see your monster, or the men you used to hunt."

Well, if she was just going to cut to the chase…. "A little."

She kissed my jaw. "If it counts for anything, I'm not worried about that at all."

It did count.

The woman I loved was more than I could ever deserve. Her goodness, which I had once been terrified I might destroy, had turned out to be the most resilient force I'd ever encountered. I had to keep reminding myself that if she thought I was decent, worth saving, then it counted. It had to—whose opinion could possibly be worth more? Old habits were hard to break, and no habit was older than my self-loathing, but I was trying.

A week passed and neither of us mentioned the last fantasy on Bella's list. We both knew I wasn't ready.

I did try to initiate, take a lead in the bedroom more often, both to feel out my own responses and to be mindful of what Bella said. If this was a way I could make that nasty voice in her head be quiet, then I would take it.

Things were good, not just between us, but generally. I was feeling happy again, the way I had before we'd somehow gotten ourselves off track, but I did miss our games.

I wasn't sure if I quite believed Bella that she didn't have many new fantasies. I wondered if perhaps she did have them, but they were in the vein of that last one on the list or the mating bites I knew she still wanted. She wouldn't want to pile them on me while I was still sorting through my psychological mess, and I felt guilty for holding us up. She was ready—she had been ready for years, and here I was with all my hangups.

She seemed unbothered, and the one time I brought it up, she reassured me there was no rush, but I wished I could be a less conflicted lover for her.

One night, I joined her on our loveseat in the parlor after putting Renesmee down for bed, and she was reading her battered Austen anthology. For a moment, I just stared at her, an involuntary grin on my face. She was so engrossed, she didn't even realize I wasn't reading. I remembered the way she had looked that afternoon, years ago, lying on her stomach on that blanket in her dad's back yard, ankles locked together, sunlight in her hair as she bowed over that book. She had started two novels, but stopped both in frustration, and then took a nap. I had wished so desperately I could have been a human boy, a human boyfriend, to admit my folly more accurately. That I could have joined her in the sun, just walked up to her like it was nothing. She would smile at me, we would talk about her book and why she didn't want to read it right now, school, friends—anything. Maybe I would even be able to kiss her, touch the skin of her arm, nap with her on the blanket. But I was the ghoulish voyeur in the trees. The monster who told himself he was there to watch over her, but really was just pining over everything he could never have.

It had been such a foolish, selfish dream.

Bella finally noticed I was looking at her rather than my book. "What is it?"

I shook my head, smiling sadly, and opened my old copy of The Brothers Karamazov.

She hesitated, but decided against speaking and went back to her book.

We read in silence for a few minutes. Then something hit me. It started as a nagging thought at the fringes of my consciousness, then burst front and center: a fantasy. That's what I had just remembered. A fantasy of mine.

I told Bella I didn't have them, and by her standards, I didn't. Hers were so defined and complete, grounded in realism and lived experience. Mine was merely a hopeless whim I could never have acted on because it was impossible. I wasn't a human boy and I could never be a human boyfriend. It was a thought so fanciful, my practical Bella said she had dismissed it out of hand. But not me. I, a vampire in a tree, sat wishing I was human with her on that blanket for three full hours. An unsurprising turn, really—I had always been the less realistic of the two of us.

I had a fantasy.

The realization was electric.

"What is it?" she asked me again.

This time I blurted without thinking. "I have a fantasy. About you."

Bella dropped her book. It landed on the edge of the cushion at a precarious, skewampus angle, pages splayed, and then clattered to the hardwood floor. "What?"

I was immediately regretful. I would have to confess to one of the least excusable bouts of my inappropriate behavior, and for what? The scenario seemed too silly and mundane to even say out loud. Besides, there was no sex for us to play. And Bella had no interest in thinking of me as a human; her answer on that question had been nothing if not direct. She liked me as a vampire, as a monster. So much of the sexual charge she felt for me seemed to tie back to that. Would she even be attracted to me as a human? My body burned with shame.

"Never mind," I mumbled, eyes on the printed page in front of me. "Forget I said anything."

Bella ripped the book from my hands and tossed it away with such force, it knocked over a lamp. "Like hell!"

I made myself look at her. Her eyes were bright, her voice breathless—her whole body was vibrating with excitement.

Regret surged through me for getting her hopes up like this. "It's nothing, Bella. I'm sorry—I shouldn't have brought it up."

"Edward, if you don't tell me, so help me, I'll—"

I captured her hands in mine. "It's not what you're thinking. It's not about sex. It's boring and stupid. If I explained it, I would be embarrassed and you would be disappointed. It's not something you'd be interested in."

She searched my face, looking so hurt I was kicking myself. "Maybe I should be the judge of how I feel and what interests me."

There was no getting out of it. I had made the mistake of speaking, and there would be no convincing her to let it drop. I swallowed. "It…it's just, there was an afternoon, around when we met, when I wished I was human so I could sit with you in the sun. That's it."

Her lips parted. "That sounds lovely."

Of course, she would make this into something romantic. "It wasn't. It was creepy. It was during one of the sunny days after you went to La Push, before you went to Port Angeles with Jessica and Angela. I was watching you from the trees while you were reading in your back yard, and I thought about how I wished I could be your human boyfriend so that I could sit and talk with you on the blanket."

She stared at me for a beat.

There were a lot of responses I might have anticipated from Bella following that explanation, but her launching herself at me wasn't one of them. Maybe I was naive, still constantly underestimating both her sex drive and her ability to absorb the most disturbing aspects of my life and behavior without being put off in the slightest. Her hands were all over me, her kisses insistent. In spite of myself, as my initial surprise faded, I felt my body respond.

"Bella," I gasped. "It's not sexy."

"I know," she panted between kisses. "Gross vampire behavior—not respecting human boundaries. It was bad of you. It's bad of me to be turned on by you being bad. Stalking me like I was your prey. Very naughty." My pants ripped open, literally, in her impatient hands. "Bed," she begged. "Edward, take me to bed."

What could I do but please her? I carried her to our bed, and I let her have her way with me.

But her response only validated my initial assessment of the appeal of my fantasy. Bella had been turned on by what actually happened, the monster behaving like a monster. There didn't seem to be any interest in dream of me as a human boy who had permission to be there, joining her in the open. Maybe my monster wasn't my whole sexuality, but the idea that Bella's sexuality primarily responded to him felt more and more like a legitimate fear.

So, I was surprised when Bella bounded up to me the following afternoon in clothes I hadn't seen her wear since her transformation: a long-sleeved thermal shirt dotted with tiny green leaves and a pair of medium wash denim cut-offs. Her legs and feet were bare, her long dark hair hung loose and finger-tousled. A plaid-patched throw blanket was draped over her arm.

"It was this, right?" she asked uncertainly, gesturing to her outfit.

"Huh?"

"I had to dig for a while through the bags of clothes we brought over from Charlie's, but this is what I was wearing that day, isn't it? Or was it my gray shirt? I can't remember."

I realized what she was referring to. I couldn't not, because she had chosen correctly. That was the exact outfit, the exact blanket. "No, you're right."

"Cool," she said with satisfaction. "We have a few hours while Ness is in lessons with Rose. Obviously, we can't use Charlie's at this point, but there's that grove about a mile into the trees—you know the one? I thought it might work. There's a few clouds today, but it's mostly sunny. Enough that we can't go into town, anyway."

Her enthusiasm was evident, but I felt torn. "We don't have to, Bella."

"Of course we do! It's your fantasy."

I paused. I couldn't ask any of the questions that were wriggling inside me—Did she really even want to, or did she feel obligated? Wasn't she worried it would be boring? Did she want to play that I was human? Or would she secretly prefer reenacting what actually happened with me as a vampire watching her in the trees, but then changing the outcome by having me join her on the blanket and ravish her, the way we did with her games?—because I knew she would only reassure me. I wasn't sure if I even wanted the truth. I had a whole new appreciation for the vulnerability Bella must have felt opening up to me about her fantasies. This was awful. The desires represented in the scenario felt so intimate and tied to me, who I was, what I wanted in my heart of hearts. The idea what she might reject or judge or even just lack enthusiasm for my game made me feel sick.

"Okay," I gave in.

She clapped in celebration, then darted to retrieve her Austen anthology and pulled me to my feet. She didn't bother with shoes as we set out, leading me into the trees. With our speed, we arrived at our destination in seconds.

Bella had chosen well. The stretch was mossy and grassy—none of the growth too high. We were catching the end of the spring flowers, dotted here and there in full bloom.

"So," she said, "walk me through the game."

That stumped me. It wasn't defined or specific the way hers were, just a wistful thought that I had lingered on long enough for it to have made an impression.

Bella looked thoughtful when I explained that to her. "That makes sense. All right, so I'm lying on the blanket reading my book. You're my human boyfriend who has come by to see me. Do I know you're coming?"

In an ideal world where I was the opposite of the monster? "Yes, you invited me."

She nodded. "What will we talk about?"

"Your book. School—anything you want."

"Will you kiss me?"

God, wouldn't that be thrilling? To court her and kiss her as a human. "If you'll allow me."

She raised a brow as though I had said something particularly ridiculous. "Well, if I haven't already thrown myself at you, we'll see."

I laughed as I helped her spread out the blanket. "It wouldn't be the same, Bella. If I was human, things would have progressed differently between us."

"Yeah," Bella said sardonically. "More quickly. Sure, you would probably still be your reserved self, but you would be a modern boy, raised with modern sensibilities, and I would have nothing holding me back."

My brows drew together.

Bella snickered. "Edward, as far as I'm concerned, the only reason our physical relationship took so long to get going was that you said we couldn't because something, something, vampire strength, bloodlust, I would die, and I was trying my damnedest to respect that. If you were human and there was nothing in our way? God help me."

My breath hitched. "Really?" She thought she would still be that interested? Even if I was human? Suddenly, my pants were tight.

Her expression was incredulous. "You can't be surprised by that?"

"A little," I admitted. "So…if we were human, and we had been dating for, say," I thought of the timeline of when we had met to the day of this fantasy, "a month…?"

She winced. "I would like to think I would be too shy. I was really shy, remember? But if we had started kissing? The first time you did that, I almost fainted. I'd had no idea my body was capable feeling anything that intense, and if I wasn't terrified that you would push me away to keep from biting me, I don't think I would have been able to keep myself in check. Especially if, oh God, if you had still saved me from the van? Like swept me out of the way, in your arms?" She was practically swooning as she talked herself through the hypotheticals. Then, she sighed in resignation. "If you wanted me, you'd have me at that point. I can't deny it."

Sex. That early in our courtship. Even though she was shy, even though she was a virgin. With human me.

And what about me? How would I have reacted to her willingness if I had no fear of hurting her? I would like to think I would still have worried over her soul, that marriage would have still been a prerequisite, but, "I would want."

My voice was husky and I watched her sway on her feet at the sound. I wasn't the only one turned on.

"So, my human boyfriend is coming over. We're going to hang out, and then he's going to seduce me on this blanket?" she summarized for clarification.

It was up to me. "Yes."

Bella's throat released one those little noises of arousal that always made my cock twitch.

"Is the idea really turning you on this much?" I was still in shock.

She bit her lip. "Yeah."

"Even though I'll just be human? Not my monster?"

Bella a blinked, some of the lust-fog clearing from her eyes. "Do we need to have the 'all of you' conversation again?" she asked sharply.

I laughed, feeling a warm glow inside. "No."

She shook her head in a "what am I going to do with you?" sort of way, and then shooed me so that she could take her place and we could start.

Bella arranged herself on the blanket, reading on her stomach, feet swinging in the air. I got lost for a moment, gazing at her, how beautiful she was. I didn't realize that was staring until I heard her grumble, "Any time."

I smiled and stepped forward, into the sunlight.

"Edward!" she greeted me.

Her performance was comically bad as always, but the joy in her eyes was real. I liked to think she would have looked at me the same way back then if she saw me approach.

Returning her greeting, I sat down beside where she lay. I attempted some small talk about homework that sounded stilted in my own ears. Both of us almost broke character, and we ended up not being able to make eye contact for fear of burst out laughing. I felt silly, but not embarrassed. This was…fun. I enjoyed goofing off with Bella.

I peered down at her open book, "You're reading Sense and Sensibility, huh?"

But the heading on the page said Persuasion. Bella fought a laugh. "No."

"You were," I whispered, conspiratorially.

"I was?" And then her eyes lit up. "I was!"

"Then you got frustrated in chapter two and switched to Mansfield Park."

She made a face, pulling herself up so that she was sitting on her knees. "I'd forgotten the hero in Sense and Sensibility was named Edward. It threw me off."

That took me aback. "Really? That's what it was?"

With a nod, she elaborated. "You weren't at school and I was missing you, not knowing when or even if you'd be back, and then, bam! Your name, rubbed in my face. So, I changed books. But then there was Edmund, and that's close enough to make me think of you every time I read it. At that point, I gave up."

The world around us fell away. My chest felt full. "You were missing me?"

"Of course I was." She smiled devilishly. "And the whole time you were just a stone's throw away, creeping in the trees like a complete weirdo."

The shame I could be feeling was blunted by her revelation. I hadn't confessed to Bella how my thoughts that day had been tinged with such despair, how defeated and full of self-hatred they were. I hadn't been able to see any light in my future, and yet, the girl who had planted herself at the center of my universe had been missing me, too. The whole time I had been wishing I could be with her, she had been wishing I was there. I couldn't help my joy.

I reached for her, pulling her lips to mine. "Bella, I love you."

She tutted. "Little early for that, don't you think? We've only been dating a month. You'll scare a girl off."

I kissed her again, my arm snaking around her waist to pull her to me. This time she moaned.

My whole body was quivering with happiness, with love. I went from one kiss to the next, not really allowing her to catch her breath. My hand in her hair cradled her neck so that I could hold her in place for my lips. I didn't let go until she was leaning into me in that intoxicated way that reassured me that we were both lost in this moment. My hand slipped to caress her neck, traced along the elegant line of her jaw, and then along the neckline of her thermal shirt.

"Bella?" I murmured against her lips.

"Hmm?"

"As your human boyfriend, I would like to take this off of you." I fingered the hem of her shirt.

"Mmnn…," she whimpered.

"Is that a yes?"

She nodded, pulling me back to her lips.

I indulged her, then parted from her to lift the garment up over her head. Her hair fell down around her delicate shoulders and the baby blue lace that hid her breasts from me. With a groan, I leaned forward and ripped the bra in two, right between the cups.

Bella jolted from her lust-drunk state. "Careful! Human boyfriend. Damn it, that was my last blue bra."

I was fondling and kissing her blush-pink nipples while I pushed the straps off her shoulders. "Does the color matter?"

"I don't know, does it?" she griped. "I try to wear blue for you."

That brought a smile to my face. She was sweet, but the view of her perfect chest, catching whatever sunlight there was—no lingerie could ever complete, no matter what color it was. I lifted her higher, so that I was cradling her nakedness against my face. "I prefer them with no bra."

"Uh-huh." Her voice was knowing, slightly bored. She didn't get the scope of what I was saying.

I pinched one of her nipples, hard, just to gain her attention. I was gratified when she cried out.

"I'm serious. No bras, ever again, if I had my way. In fact, in a perfect world, you'd never wear anything that covered your breasts. They would just be bare, all the time. You, naked from the waist up, all day and all night. Mine to look at, touch, kiss—all the time."

Bella went limp in my arms, her breathing faint, but when I tried to pull back to look at her face, her nails slipped into my hair and held me where I was. "Fuck," she gasped. "You really would like that, wouldn't you?"

I grunted, suckling her sweet skin, her hard nipple against my tongue.

"Jesus," she giggled, panting, "my human boyfriend is a pervert."

That word was sobering. I pulled back. Releasing her from my embrace. "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know what came over me."

Bella actually smiled, catching her breath. "I was teasing." When I was still unsure, she flopped herself down on the blanket, on her back, limbs outstretched, naked except for her denim shorts. "I'm actually relieved," she said conversationally. "Finally, here we go—something you want. To be honest, I was starting to suspect something like this, but I wasn't sure." She arched her back, arms over her head, those flawless peaks reaching for the sun, bathed in light, the left one glistening with my saliva. "You like me topless, Edward? Exposed? That can be arranged, you know." Her face was rapt, watching my expression. "Wow, you do like this, don't you? I'll take my top off whenever you want so long as you look at me like that when I do."

"Bella…."

"I like it, too," she said. "As long as it's just you looking."

She held her hand out for mine, and after a short hesitation, I took it. I wasn't sure how I felt about having revealed this, about having her validate and accept it.

Bella placed my hand on her breast. "Let me show you," she whispered. Her hand over mine, she led me down her body, over her delicate ribcage and trembling belly, to dip under the waistband of her shorts. She was wet—very wet, and she proved it to me.

I cupped her pussy, my grip maybe a little too hard, and we both groaned.

"Get naked, human boyfriend."

With a half-smile, I did so, her eyes on me the whole time. Her hand reached out from her reclining position and trailed my chest while I pushed my pants down my legs.

"It's crazy how different your skin feels now that I am a vampire, too. You felt like stone before, but now you just feel like skin." She caressed my cock the moment it was visible. I tensed and groaned.

"If we were really human," I said, voice wry but uneven, "I would probably be putting on a condom right now."

Bella's eyebrows rose, an edge of horror in her voice when she said, "Can you even imagine? We would have gone through so many boxes of condoms."

"You think so?"

"God, yes."

She was so confident it made me giddy. I couldn't get over how good it felt knowing Bella believed she would have been just as horny for me had I not been a vampire. She liked my monster, but she was sure she'd want me regardless.

"Give me a hand with these?" She glanced down to indicate her shorts.

Grinning wolfishly, I lunged so that I was poised over her. Then, I gripped her hips and flipped her over. She cried out, finding herself on her stomach. I reached and pulled the book over, so that it was in front of her, allowing myself to acknowledge a deep, dark thought that I had never allowed to come to full fruition: Bella reading on that blanket really had been in a prime position for ravishing. My monster wasn't permitted to think of it—but I was human at the moment.

I dropped a kiss on her shoulder. "Read," I commanded. Then, I slid my hands under her, stroking the front of her shorts while I undid the fastenings. "Out loud," I clarified as I pulled the denim and the blue lace of her thong down her legs. I wanted to hear the effect of what I was doing to her in her voice.

Nudging her legs apart with my knees, I reached under to trace her slit with my fingers, to lift her pelvis upward.

With a whimper, she began, "He…he persisted in having loved none but her. She had never been supplanted." I teased her entrance but did not slip in—and slip is what my finger definitely would have done. Good God, she was wet. Bella stuttered, skipped words, "H-he n-never believed…her equal….thus…ughnn…thus he-he was obliged to acknowledge—that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally—" she broke off with a needy gasp when I finally pushed two fingers inside her, "that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done." She gave a tiny scream when I pinched her clitoris, and fisted handfuls of the blanket. She tried to begin again, but I pressed my erection against that back of her thigh and she squeaked. "H…he had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them." Her face fell forward, into the book. "God, Edward, just fuck me. I'm dying!"

I swept her hair off her shoulders and neck so that I could trail my lips along her nape. "You want this inside you?" I growled, rocking my hips even harder into her soft flesh, my erection smearing precum on her skin.

"Yes!" she cried into the pages.

If I were a man of more self-control, I might have been able to torment her longer, but, I reassured myself, I was a teenage human male—it was all right if I was impatient. Flimsy excuses, but I was so worked up that, game or no game, I was going to come soon. I gripped her hip in place and dragged my erection across her opening, her cries washing over me. Then I lined myself up, and thrust forward.

Bella hadn't been expecting me to enter her all at once like that, if her choked whine was any indication. "Yes," she groaned. I began to thrust. "Yes." She arched and pressed backward to meet me every time. "Edward, I love you. I love so much."

I kissed my way along her shoulders, feeling light and free.

"Mmnn…deeper," she urged.

In complete agreement, I lifted and repositioned Bella so that she was on her hands and knees, then pushed her shoulders down, and…oh, yeah. That was definitely deeper. Bella's pleasure rang through the grove, filling me with satisfaction. I was surrounded, engulfed by her, and she had me so tight. I was there, on the edge, and I wanted her to come with me. I reached for her clitoris again—I stroked it tenderly, lovingly, then pinched one more time. It sent Bella over the edge. I felt her descend into shuddering spasms all around me and gave in to my own pleasure. I emptied all of myself, everything I had, into her.

We collapsed, in a heap, Bella's hand crumpling pages of the Austen anthology. I became aware of that as feeling returned to my limbs and I started to stroke her hair.

I gently rescued the book, knowing Bella would be upset if it was damaged, and smoothed the pages before closing it and setting it at a safe distance. I didn't realize Bella was watching me with a grin until after. She turned around in my arms so her neck wouldn't be at such an odd angle, which meant that I slipped out of her.

"That was nice." She brushed my hair out of my eyes.

"It was."

She chewed her lip. "Sorry I was so bad at staying in the game."

I shook my head and pressed a kiss to her brow. "You weren't. I got everything I could have hoped for out of that."

"Which was?"

I paused. Honest, I needed to be honest. Every problem we'd ever had, especially in the bedroom, came from white lies and secrets. "Reassurance, mostly. You may have never wished I was human, but you think you still would have wanted me if I was one. We can't know anything for certain, of course, but you have no idea how that thought comforts me. And," I considered my words, "when I was pretending to be human…or just gave myself the excuse of pretending really, I wasn't scared, you know, of him." Then I corrected, "Of me."

Bella inhaled. "That's great."

Holding her close, I wondered if this meant that I might be ready to give her that last fantasy, but I didn't say it out loud. Not yet. I wouldn't want to get her hopes up only to let her down. I needed to be sure.

She caressed the side of my face. "It's not that I never thought of you as a human at all," she said tenderly, pulling my complete attention. "I never wished you were, but that's not the same as not caring or being curious. There is one human aspect of you I would have given anything to see."

"What's that?" I asked, suddenly feeling tight and wrought.

"Your eyes. Carlisle said they were green, and I've tried to picture them so many times."

All air left my lungs.

Her hand sought mine and she weaved our fingers together, as we laid side by side together on that sunny blanket. "You say we can't know, but I do. Edward, I would have taken you however you came to me. Whatever you were, I would have loved you."

Author's Note: Obviously, quite a bit of the dialogue at the beginning of this chapter is from Romeo and Juliet, largely Act 1, Scene 5 (the Capulet ball), and Act 2, Scene 2 (the balcony scene). "More light and light, more dark and dark our woes" is from Act 3, Scene 5. In New Moon, the version of the play Bella and Edward watched on the couch was the 1968 film adaptation directed by Franco Zeffirelli, so that is the one I used. Also, if you haven't seen it, the hype is real. There are a lot of good versions, but that one is legitimately special in my opinion. Even if Leonard Whiting can't cry for shit.

There is also a quote from chapter 23 of Persuasion in there—Austen, forgive me!

I yadda-yadda-ed some of Bella's fantasies this chapter because they would have just been lemons and wouldn't advance the plot or character growth, but some of them seem like they might be fun to write out in more detail. I am considering doing a couple as outtakes. Let me know if that is something that would interest you and, if so, which fantasies you would like to see.