Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight.

LovelyBrutal, i'm in love with your sleepy smile. i'm in love with you coming home. i'm in love with you more than ever, every single day.

now then.

it wouldn't be like drinking your blood for instance.

take me take me

back to your bed

i love you so much that it hurts my head

say i don't mind you under my skin

i let the bad parts in

the bad parts in

Brand New: Degausser

XIII

I think I'm awake.

I'm back on my back on Grim's table with the last thing he said resonating low in my inner ears -

"Relax."

I am, I think, but I also can't.

My body feels drowsy, spellbound, but my mind is spinning, and I can't tell if it's a side-effect of what I am or what he does to me, growing stronger.

Looking up, I concentrate on messy bronze falling over drawn brows and a jaw so treacherous with tension and sharpness, it could only be his. Tightly focused grey-green eyes are locked on my stomach, steadying me as he nudges my tee shirt higher and unbuttoned denim lower. Fleeting and perfunctory as his touch is, it thrills thousands of butterflies beyond measure. The whole world flutters, and my eyes drift closed.

"Too relaxed," he chastens, impatience digging into the bass of his voice as he picks something up from the nearby table. "Keep your eyes open."

I do as he says, but it's hard. Everything's a blur, and not just visually. I don't know what day it is. What time. I don't remember why I'm here. Or laying down. How can I not remember undoing my jeans? Or the conversation we had to have had before this?

So much is blurred, and the longer I look at Grim, the hazier the rest of the room becomes. Even my own reflection is nothing more than a vague shape of pushed-up grey sweater cotton and pale peach skin. Everything that isn't hard edges, strained shoulders, and beautifully ill at ease slips into tricks of light and shadow around me, and I don't think I'm awake anymore.

I think we're home in bed.

Tangled in each other's arms.

Dreaming this together.

This is a dream.

"Deep breath." The insomniac I'm sleeping with speaks so clearly, ardent embers of dark honey flow through me. My pulse pounds to the steadfast beat of his while he takes hold of the top of my belly button, and all I can think is he's touching me.

He's touching me.

He's touching me.

"Breathe," Grim urges, frustration burning close to resentment.

I must do it because the next thing he says is, "Hold it."

He works smoothly, fingertips shifting and gripping my unheavenly body perfectly into place as suspense rises in my throat. Vague recognition of what's about to happen looms in the margins of my mind, and I feel my hands clench for something to grab onto.

"Let go." His cursory tone blends into the surreality weighing me down and I'm suddenly scared to open my mouth.

What if it's not safe?

What if what's true comes out?

"Exhale," he orders, this close to a scold.

My lips part involuntarily around all my air rushing out. Grim shakes his head, his creased brows furrowing with dissatisfaction.

"Again." He sighs gruffly. "Slower."

The need to please him is a deep sea trench in my chest, breaking open.

Nodding, I do it just like he says.

Again.

Slower.

And the sting of his needle is anything but a dream.

It's real.

The surge of hurt and the small cry it pulls from me. The too-bright shine of fluorescent lights and the gritty bassline grinding through overhead speakers. The buzz of tattoo guns down the hall, the sterile smell of latex gloves and disinfectant, and my favorite smell in the whole world. The familiar scent of black flint and ripe apricot, radiating off the man who just marked me.

Again.

It's all real, and it's already over, but I'm not ready for it to end.

Blurry lines sharpen back into clear-cut reality as Grim stands up straight and callously removes my fingers from the leg of his jeans. I swallow around a wince as he presses something cool, soft, and damp to my belly button, and I can't breathe for the second his hand has a hold of mine. The contact is curt, but it leaves my stomach flipping somersaults as he places my fingers on the gauze pad, pressing so I know to hold it in place over the new wound.

"Three to six months for healing," he says, walking away while my head spins and my navel pangs. His heart throbs ardently hard, filling the room with rough, unavoidable rhythm.

"Don't change it," he continues. "Don't touch it except to clean it. Don't wear anything tight over it."

A million tiny flashes of adrenaline course through me, kissing every butterfly then running away, hiding behind my ribs as I look up into the mirror. The physical world takes shape again as he keeps busy cleaning, and the steps that brought me to his table flow back in overlapping undulations.

It's Wednesday. I think. Maybe Thursday. I remember spending this morning the same way I spent the last week of mornings, hiding in his closet instead of the forest while he got dressed. Then running through the woods alongside his drive here. Climbing the shade-covered back wall of the shop and laying down on the warm tar paper roof because that's as far away as I can bear to be now.

Ever since I dreamed of being apart, since I marked him for my world, I haven't been more than ten feet from him.

But today, even that wasn't close enough.

Burning up under a bright blue sky, I listened for his voice just like I have each day before. Up on the roof, I listened while friends stopped in and customers came and went. While pair after pair of females showed up, flirted like it was a rule to, and floated back out on cloud nine, endorphin-high between giggles and sighs.

Seth and Anchor talk the most, especially to girls. The man that owns the place, Birds, he's there today too, but he only talks to girls to tell them no.

When Grim talks to females, it isn't any more than he needs to because deep under the surface, he knows he's mine. The way I kissed every inch of him that first night will ward off any and all potential lovers for as long as he walks the earth. He's professionally polite enough, and I know it won't ever go farther than that, but today -

Today he was warmer to a couple of girls than he ever is with me, and I couldn't stand it.

They weren't girls, really.

They were women his own age, and they smelled like him. Like his type would smell. Earthy-dank and kush-sweet. They didn't giggle or waver. They were cool. Confident. And everyone in the shop knew them.

Roz - Rosalie, the blonde one with messy Dutch braids and her redheaded friend, Victoria - Tori.

I've never been jealous before today.

Not in three thousand years.

It was insufferable.

They weren't even there to see my lover. The auburn one had an appointment with Anchor, but Grim came out just to talk to her friend, and their ease with each other crushed me.

"How's Zappa doing?"

I could hear his smile.

I could feel my heart, howling.

"Good. Big. That dog is eating my whole house."

"How's she getting along with Alaska?"

"Great. He loves having a friend. You have to come see them."

I couldn't endure it. Dazed heedless with envy, I was opening the front door of the shop before I realized what was happening. No plan. No idea what to say or do. Just that I needed him to see me. I needed his attention off her and all over me, whether he liked it or not.

The mechanical sound of paper towels unrolling tugs me back to the present.

"There's more aftercare sheets up front if you need one," Grim says, tearing the paper and drying his hands before pulling on fresh gloves.

My eyes follow him in the ceiling mirror until he's standing over me again, tense resentment rolling off him like heat haze, searing my softness as he nudges my hand aside and takes the gauze from my stomach. Everything in me skips a beat as he grazes where it hurts with fresh, cool quickness, cleaning what he did before walking away again, leaving me bereft.

Slow down, I want to plead, still slightly out of it, soreness and hunger reeling through me, spiked with shots of leftover embarrassment, begrudging, and deeply possessive desire as I stare up at the revealing ceiling.

Look, I almost beg, intoxicated with the sight above me. Mesmerized by the way he's pushed my clothes apart. Quietly wild about the subtle splash of pink glowing around the little barbell in my belly.

Look what I let you do.

Look how yours I am.

Leaning up onto my elbows, I look over my shoulder to watch his real form instead of his reflection as he finishes cleaning up. Practically pacing, eager to leave, prey I can't stay away from keeps himself purposefully turned away. I know why. I know he's hard for me and hates it, and I can hardly breathe around how close I am to beckoning him to my mouth. Right here. Right now.

I know you want it, I want to tell him. You always want it.

I picture myself - edging my head to the end of the table, parting my lips unmistakably wide.

I want it even more than you do, I would tell him. I need it.

"How does it look?" I ask instead of offering him my pleasure-seeking tongue.

He doesn't turn.

I didn't think he would, but I can't help trying to delay the inevitable.

"Seth can take your payment when you're ready," he tells me, closing a drawer. "Leave your jeans like that."

He says it indifferently, not even looking at me before he dips under the curtain, leaving me staring up at my reflection. The unbuttoned button. The half-unzipped zipper. The little peek of private black cotton, exposed in the process.

I know it's for the sake of the piercing, but standing up and walking out of his room with my jeans undone because that's what he said to do feels better than almost anything. My cropped sweater is short enough that it shows off how vulnerable I am with every step. How open I am to him, for him, keeps my cheeks burning the whole run back to Forks.

Alice texted at some point while I was in the shop.

The school called. I told them you have the flu. Come home.

As much as I wanted to climb back onto the roof of Shoot the Moon and revel in my own obedience under November's late afternoon sun, I knew I wouldn't hear the end of it from my sister until I put her mind at ease.

She isn't there when I arrive, so I get into a shower to wash forest fragments from my hair. To be silk-smooth for him later. To be pristine for his pleasure tonight.

I hear my only friend enter when I'm covered in bubbles that smell like small purple flowers. Tossing her keys aside, her footfalls are a steady staccato straight to where I am. She closes the bathroom door gentler than she opens it, but I can tell she's irritated by her sigh.

"So what, you decided to just stop going to school?"

I skip past a sarcastic salutation and the part where I ask if this can wait until I get out.

"Kids miss school all the time," I answer, sliding the half-used bar of grey-toned soap over my knee. "It's just a couple days."

"Five," she replies dryly while an unsettling weight washes over me. "It's been five days."

Ask me how heavy the wake of a black-out is.

Ask how hard it hits, not knowing where I've been.

What I've done.

For five days.

"So," Lilin pushes. "Do you have the flu?"

Her bitter attempt at a joke scrapes the surface, but my head's all muddled. Five days? So many bits and pieces were already missing, and only some of them have come back, and even those are elusive, slippery-jagged fragments. What if there's more? What if I'm missing something important?

"You have to go back next week. Monday morning. You have to go to school."

"Yeah." It comes out like an automatic scratch. "Because I'd be the first senior to ever not finish the year."

"Not finish - " She stops, interrupting herself to start over. "That isn't the plan, Bell-"

"None of this was my idea, Alice." I interrupt her this time, rubbing the soap down my other leg, trying to put everything I can remember in order in my mind. Wisps of something dreamy, dark, and dangerous tickle my nose as I rinse off creamy bubbles and bring the bar under the water.

"So what's your plan then?"

Heliotrope and gun flint.

The soap in my hands.

It smells just like Grim.

Because it's his.

The flash of recollection crashes through me like lightning.

I stole his soap.

"Huh?" Alice jerks my attention back to the present. "How do you propose we keep the Volturi from -"

I shut the faucet off so abruptly it jars us both. I have to get a grip. What else did I take? Did I leave anything behind? Setting down the bar, I heave a breath I wish was more sobering.

"They aren't going to do anything. I could level Jane and Alec before Aro could even blink. So could you," I remind the demon from a deeper circle than the Volturi dare to tread as I open the translucent door to find her standing there. Arms crossed. Eyes hard and wide. Small and still in pale blue scrubs. "Want to hand me my towel or are you just going to stand there upset over nothing?"

She doesn't move. I'm dripping naked, and sure enough, she just stands there. Disbelief fills her warm umber glare as she rakes it up and down my body, but all I can see are the contacts she wears to the hospital, hiding how red I know her irises are underneath.

"Okay, well, as comfortable as this is -" I step out and reach past her, wrapping myself in white cotton as I walk out of the bathroom.

"It's happening," she says, dumbfounded sounding and following me as I dry off on the way to my room.

Forgetfulness, desperation, and yearning swirl unsteadily inside me. Fast, then slow. In one direction, past to present, then the other. Present to past, disjointed and disorienting -

"What's happening?" I ask without looking back. Annoyed with her. With everything. Resentful about what I can't remember. Offended that she's rubbing my nose in it.

Needful to return to him.

Under and above and around and all through everything else, I need him.

"I thought it couldn't." My obstacle stands in the doorway while I scrub the towel through my hair, then slide it back down my arms, my sides, my hips. Careful around the still-tender tips of my breasts and my newly sore belly button.

"I thought you couldn't-"

"Couldn't what?" I finally snap, looking up as I toss the towel to my chair, and I realize she's staring at the metal in me. Grim's metal. The way I made him mark me.

"I thought you weren't able to mate." Her tone is low, but there's unmistakable accusation in it that sinks through me like a stone.

I turn away and walk to my dresser.

"I thought that was the whole point of what you are," she practically reprimands. "That you'll always - "

"We're not mating," I say quickly, feigning carelessness while a flood of fantasies flickers through my mind. Arched hips and panted pleas and pounding hearts lick like flames behind my eyes at how eager I am to get back to his cabin. Into his bed. Onto his cock -

"I mean how would you even survive? He won't last forever and you -"

"Lilin-" I stop her loudly, the volume of my own voice startling all my thoughts as I face her again. I shake my head in an effort to clear it, and drag a breath I need to steady me through my chest. "Chill, please." Then in the gentle comfort of our native tongue, I assure her. "No one's going to find out where we are. I promise. He's not my fucking …"

I swallow around the thought that makes my heart so soft I can't stand it.

"They'll never let me mate, okay? The gods made me to ache and I always will."

"Have you marked him?"

I scoff instead of answering and turn back around, opening the top drawer and rooting aimlessly through delicate cotton.

Have I marked him?

Like that wasn't the first thing I did?

Like there's any part of his life I haven't marked?

I've drawn my lips from the edge of Grim's crown to the daisies on his feet more times than I can count. I've covered him in countless kisses, and those are just the ones I remember -

"I mean from more than his own kind." The hypocrite at my back clarifies. "From ours. For after … "

I know what she means.

I don't know how she knows, but I know if Hades holds a black light to my lover in the afterlife, he'll find him covered in my marks.

It isn't just humans that won't touch Edward Cullen ever again.

When he dies, angels and devils and everything in between will steer clear of what's mine until the end of time.

It started as an accident, but I made sure of that.

He belongs to and in the dark now. With me. Always.

And I can't believe the only friend I've ever had is mad at me for it. I've wished I was like her more times than I can count, especially with this one. I'd give anything to be able to feed from him the way she feeds from men. To sink my teeth in and take deep, greedy drinks of his life into myself and make him one of us the way she's done to lovers she wasn't ready to lose.

But I can't.

Marking him as mine from the rest of our kind is the best I can do.

"What's your point?" I ask, tugging a scrap of see-through sheer black fabric up my legs before opening another drawer. "It's not like what you do is so different, you know. Since when do you care what happens to prey after the fact?"

Grabbing a pair of jeans and pulling them on, I start to button them but then stop.

"I don't know," Alice concedes somewhere behind me. "Since you do, I guess."

I barely hear her. I barely hear my own heart, picking up speed in my chest. I barely hear or see or feel anything but a rush of hot belonging as I press the little denim fly back open and leave it that way before turning around.