*EPOV*

If there was one remnant from Bella's human body that I missed more than her blushing, it was her ears. I didn't realize how much I relied upon the ability to speak at a volume that she couldn't hear until I didn't have that ability anymore.

For example, if she were human, I could have warned my brothers to keep the brotherly teasing to a minimum for the time being because, typical of a newborn, Bella's moods seemed to be on a hair-trigger.

Though, knowing Emmett, such a warning would have probably emboldened him to provoke her even more. After all, getting a rise out of Bella was basically a sport to him. That she was now the strongest and at her most volatile only made her more of a target.

"Well look who finally showed up! Squirt 'n Sparkles!" Emmett grinned, wading out of the glacial lake unabashedly stark naked.

Bella blanched and looked just about anywhere else other than at Emmett. I scowled at him in reproach. "First of all, we all sparkle. And secondly, would you put some damn shorts on?"

"But nobody sparkles like you," he sing-songed in a high-pitched falsetto, batting his eyelashes.

Jasper then emerged from underwater, thankfully wearing swim shorts. Looking even more leonine than usual, he flipped his long, water-logged mane out of his face with a toss of his head.

I could feel Bella tense as she took in the sight of Jasper's scarred body. Reading her alarm, Jasper smiled disarmingly and openly mocked me to put her more at ease.

"It's the skin of a killer, Bella!" He glowered with over-the-top dramatics. She giggled a little shyly and instantly thawed out.

"Nice, Jazz," I said with thick sarcasm. "Why use your gift at all when you can just mock me?" I asked dryly, throwing my hands up in the air.

"Exactly." He winked, pointing at me with finger guns.

Emmett barked out a laugh. "If I haven't put shorts on for the last fifty years for you or anybody else, what makes you think I'm going to for her?" he gestured to Bella, who was intently focused on her feet in the snow.

"... It's part of the Cullen family culture. I get naked. A lot. It's kinda my thing, so...enjoy the view or look away. Or better yet, strip down and join the party. Who cares? They're just bodies.

"Who would've thunk the guy with the x-ray brain would be such a prude? Guess you can take the virginity out of the boy, but not the boy out of the virgin, eh, Eddo?" He asked with a booming laugh.

Bella dissolved into giggles, and in her new voice, it would've been adorable if I wasn't feeling a tad ganged up on. I raised an eyebrow as if to say "Et tu, Brute?"

She held her hands up defensively. "I wasn't laughing at you, I promise! I'll...uh...tell you later," she pursed her lips tightly together in an effort to squelch any further giggles.

"I'm going to hold you to that," I promised, narrowing my eyes at her with put-on sternness.

"Did Alice happen to throw a swimsuit in that bag or are we skinny dipping, too?" Bella asked with a nervous-sounding laugh.

Reaching into the backpack, I quickly produced a bathing suit and handed it to her, noting with relief that it was an innocuous-looking one-piece. It wasn't that I was threatened in any way by my brothers. That would be ridiculous, even for me.

Possessive wasn't the right word. What I was, what we all were when it came to our mates, was fiercely territorial.

And while I trusted my brothers with Bella's life, and by proxy mine, it didn't mean I wanted Bella parading around in next to nothing in front of them because, just like me, they were vampires, but they were also men. Men with eyes and thoughts they often couldn't control.

Bella returned from the cover of the trees in her bathing suit and I honest-to-god whimpered at the sight of her.

It was a retro pinup girl-style bathing suit with a sailor motif. A bright red bow tied at the bust gathered the navy blue and white pin-striped fabric over her chest into a flattering sweetheart neckline.

The bodice was navy blue and cut lower to cover the tops of her legs. And sewn in over her flat pelvic area were two columns of three round red buttons.

Placed directly over her reproductive organs, some part of my mind wondered if the buttons were a subliminal suggestion of fertility. If so, it was a neat trick.

Leave it to Alice to find the one possible style of modest swimwear that would be more attractive (especially to a group of old men like us) than if she had sent along a string bikini.

"Down, boy," Jasper chuckled.

Bella glanced at Jasper who was looking at me salivating over her, and then she smiled and straightened up a little taller, looking rather pleased with herself.

"Immortality looks good on ya, Squirt!" He said, appreciatively imagining how Rosalie's more voluptuous curves would look in that same suit. "So tell me, how do you feel about water slides?" Emmett grinned conspiratorially.

*BPOV*

How did I feel about water slides? I was internally grimacing while concentrating on keeping my face smooth and even. I found it was a lot easier without my traitorous blush.

Visiting water parks was an experience forced upon me by every school I ever went to when I lived in Phoenix. How else were kids supposed to keep cool in the heat when you lived on the face of the sun?

I had dim memories of intensely disliking those field trips because it meant having to stand around self-consciously in my bathing suit with my flat chest and skinny legs while my adolescent male classmates made a game of leering, making rude comments, and untying the halter tops of any unsuspecting female classmates. Meanwhile, the teachers chatted obliviously with the field trip chaperones.

And then there was the ordeal of climbing a monstrous staircase (alongside the aforementioned boys) while awkwardly schlepping a massive inner tube that you had to carry all the way to the top. Just to be rewarded with twenty seconds of fun, followed by the worst wedgie of your life that you had to stealthily dislodge before you stood up at the bottom of the slide.

But not to be outdone by Emmett (and since nobody would be disparaging my body or snapping my straps here or ever again), I instantly replied, "What's not to love?"

Edward flashed me a curious look. He didn't know anything about that particular aversion of mine, but maybe he recognized the slight tightening of my eyes when I said it.

Then he smiled and his eyes moved toward the trees we'd just emerged from. Seconds later I heard with my ears what Edward had heard first with his mind. Alice and...an unfamiliar scent, which I quickly deduced could only mean Rosalie, were joining us.

As if pulled by a magnet, Jasper gravitated toward the treeline and was there to pull Alice into his embrace the moment she danced through the trees.

Emmett stayed right where he was, knee-deep in water with his arms extended. "There she is," he murmured in as gentle of a voice as I'd ever heard him use.

Like a golden meteorite blazing through the line of snowy spruce soldiers, Rosalie jumped from the snowy bank right into Emmett's thick, outstretched arms, kissing him all over his face.

I snuggled deeper into Edward's arms letting my family have their respective reunions without the intrusion of my prying eyes.

It warmed me all over to see with my own eyes how tightly bonded they still were after so many decades together. They'd been separated for mere days but you'd never know it from the desperate way in which they held each other now.

"It never stops feeling like this, you know," Edward whispered into my hair, reading my mind without reading it like he always did. "If anything, the feelings only get stronger." His arms tightened around me.

I couldn't wrap my mind around that. I couldn't imagine loving him more, needing him more than I already did. The idea of it was a little overwhelming.

But that had to work both ways, didn't it? Edward would only love me more? Now there was a concept I could get behind.

I was vaguely aware of the soft sloshing sounds of Emmett carrying Rosalie through the water back to dry land when Rosalie's tentative voice broke into my thoughts.

"Bella?" Her voice came from directly behind me.

In a flash of movement that startled Rose and I both, I'd turned around in Edward's arms to face her. "That's going to take some getting used to," she laughed a little awkwardly and I responded in kind.

"Tell me about it," I muttered, not quite meeting her eyes.

"Look, I…" Rosalie's full, red lips briefly faltered for words. "You already know what I think. But it doesn't do either of us any good for me to hold that against you when there's nothing that can be done about it now, so...Welcome, I guess," she sighed and held out her hand to shake.

I ignored it and, breaking free of Edward's hold, threw my arms around her in a hug, mindful of my strength. She bristled under the unexpected embrace but eventually relaxed and patted me somewhat awkwardly on the back.

"Thanks, Rose," I said sincerely. It was more gracious of a welcome than I had any right to expect, and I could only imagine how greatly it must have cost her.

"That was nice, babe," Emmett kissed Rose's cheek from where he stood behind her, and then he addressed the group of us. "Well, what are we waiting around for? Let's go!"

Then a still-very-naked Emmett was leading the charge through the woods.

Still not yet comfortable with having anyone running behind me, I fell back to bring up the rear. It also helped that back there I didn't have to look at Emmett's naked ass.

His ultra-pale skin was very effectively camouflaged by the snow. If I'd still had my weak human eyes, all I would have seen were his dark brown curls darting through the trees at thrice the speed of an Olympic speed skater.

"As much as I hate to run slow, I have to admit the view is better," Edward chuckled, falling in step beside me.

"You don't have to throw the race on my account. I'm just not trying to tackle anybody else today," I said wryly as I effortlessly hurdled over a fallen tree.

"Shut the front door, you tackled Edward?" Emmett exclaimed from a few hundred feet up ahead. "Shoot, I'd get mauled by that bear all over again just to see you take him down," he chuckled. "Did you get him good?" He asked with boyish enthusiasm.

"Did she ever," Edward's tone was playful, maybe even a little boastful.

I gritted my teeth and growled a little, but said nothing, not appreciating the way they made light of my atrocious behavior.

I knew Emmett well enough to know that, like a dog with a bone, the stronger of a reaction I gave, the harder of a time he'd give me about it.

We followed the sound of rushing water as it curved to the northeast until we came to a stop at a break in the trees.

Just beyond was a swiftly moving river, swollen from the snowmelt. The water was white and frothy as it churned over rocks and rushed downstream, carving through the trees, roaring with power.

I then noticed that both of my sisters were also wearing one-piece bathing suits, and all of a sudden it didn't seem like a coincidence.

A lifetime of fearing for my own mortality taught me to reflexively be afraid. I had to remind myself that nothing in the river could hurt me. Not the water or the rocks or the 100-foot drop at the end of the waterfall downstream that drained into the reservoir from which we just came.

Jasper went to the task of knocking over a dead hemlock tree. With the side of his hand, he split the log in half and then broke the halves into six surfboard-sized planks.

As a human I'd daydreamed about surfing on tsunamis, so why not a Class-5 rapid?

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to, but it is pretty fun," Edward grinned.

"You go first. Show me how it's done," I nodded toward the water.

"And miss your turn? Not a chance. Emmett, you go first. It was your idea."

"Children," Alice rolled her eyes as she tucked a hemlock plank under her arm. "Nothin' to it, Bella. Watch and learn."

Alice walked right up to the raging river hugging the unwieldy plank to her chest like it was a foam kickboard. Bending her knees slightly, she pushed off with her legs and with a graceful arc of her body, dove into furiously churning water.

She landed on the board on her stomach, steadying herself as the most turbulent of the rapids batted the board around a sharp turn.

Once she straightened back out and into a slightly calmer stretch of river, she hopped to her feet and let the driving force of the water push her around the next bend and out of sight.

"The trick is to hold on just tight enough to stay on, but not tight enough that you pulverize the board," Edward tipped, handing me a plank.

I nodded and hugged the board to my chest experimentally to see how hard I could squeeze it before it started to give under the crushing strength of my arms.

This was going to be challenging. The dry, splintery wood had the durability of a Triscuit cracker.

Jasper went next, though his technique was a little different. He hurled the board upstream and crouched at the ready as the board swirled and bobbed over the rapids until it was just about to pass.

Jasper exploded off the ground into a front flip landing on the board on his feet.

"Show off," Edward muttered and rolled his eyes.

I widened my eyes at him in false astonishment. "What do you mean? I thought you were the best at absolutely everything," I teased nudging an elbow into his ribs. He grimaced and rubbed the tender spot with his hand.

"Hope you brought your coupon book, kid, cause it looks like you're in need of the Emmett Cullen strength management course."

Frowning apologetically at Edward, I grumbled, "Sign me up."

Emmett was suddenly intense. "We start at dawn."

And then his stone face broke into his affable dimpled grin. "I've always wanted to say that." Then he turned to Rosalie. "Wanna do doubles, baby?"

I apologized again to Edward, which he waved off with a smile and uttered for at least the fourth time that day "Don't worry about it, love. You just don't know your own strength, yet."

And when I looked back at the water, Rose and Emmett were riding the powerful currents downstream side by side.

"Finally alone," Edward sighed, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into his chest for a scorching kiss.

It was easy to ignore everything around me when Edward kissed me like this. The roar of the rushing water could've been the white noise from a whirring fan.

All I was aware of were his lips moving against my own, the delicious, intoxicating taste of him, and the warm, welcome feeling of his tongue sliding against mine.

Our bodies were pressed tightly together, my breasts pushed up against his chest as he moaned into my kiss. His hands were laced together and resting on the gentle slope where the small of my back curved into my backside.

And then Emmett's distant voice was bellowing, "Fuck yeaaaaah!" as he went over the edge of the waterfall, his voice getting quieter and quieter as he plummeted.

Then the explosive sound as his massive body hit the water below in what sounded like a thousand-pound belly flop. And a second, smaller splash as Rosalie's much sleeker body entered the water a half-second later.

We were both laughing lightly as we separated.

"I guess I'm up," I said, picking up my board that I had leaned up against a tree.

"Wait, before you go," he took hold of my hand. "Now that we're alone, what were you laughing about before?"

I burst into giggles. "Oh, that. It was just really funny to hear Emmett roasting you about being a prude and a virgin and all that when like an hour ago you were nailing me to a tree," I explained in paroxysms of laughter. "I almost said something in your defense but I thought that might come across as trashy."

Edward grinned devilishly. "It's kind of funnier that way, isn't it? That he has no idea just how far off the mark he is when he says those things." His splayed fingers formed a stone cage around my waist as he pulled me to him for another deep, sizzling kiss.

Then, pulling away so that I could see with new crystal clarity just how irresistible he really was when he smoldered at me that way, he murmured, "Besides, Mrs. Cullen, this body," his splayed hands traveled up and down along the curves of my ribcage, waist, and hips, "is sacred.

"And the things we do together are sacred, too." He pulled my hips tightly against his. "And I'd much rather we kept it that way. Just between you and me." Then one last soft parting kiss before he released me.

Thoroughly dazzled, I could only nod in agreement. A moment later, when my wits returned to me, I added with a snicker, "And Alice."

"And Alice," he agreed with a resigned chuckle. "Alright, enough stalling. They're going to think you drowned," he teased, pressing the board into my chest with a gentle shove.

"Nothin' to it, right?" I laughed nervously as I stepped closer to the land's edge.

Leaning cautiously over the edge, deciding my approach, I turned toward Edward who was watching me intently, leaning up against a tree with his arms crossed loosely against his chest. His eyebrow arched waiting for me to say something.

"How anxious would this be making you if I were human?" I called back with a grin, pretending to wobble with precarious balance on the icy rocks.

"Like a 20 out of 10," he admitted with a laugh. "But I never would have let you get that close to the water, so it's sort of moot."

"Let me!" I snarled. "Would love to see you try and stop me now," I laughed, feeling a little drunk on the power thrilling through my limbs.

Without another word, I clutched the plank to my chest and tried to lightly spring off the rocks into the water onto my stomach like I'd seen Alice do.

A slight miscalculation on my part sent me shooting straight to the bottom of the river where I gouged a 3-foot deep hole in the silty bottom where I crash-landed. The board had splintered into a thousand pieces on impact.

The water rushed past me, over me, around me, but I was as immovable as any other boulder at the bottom of this river. I watched the water churn and bubble above me.

Billions of air bubbles formed the furious white froth on the surface, each one as unique as a snowflake. They glittered brilliantly as the daylight streamed through, golden rays of light bouncing this way and that as they refracted through the thick top layer of bubbles.

I could hear the muted, garbled sound of Edward calling my name. Even several feet underwater I could hear the anxiousness in his tone. Silly goose. Worrying even now. Bubbles escaped my nose as I snorted with laughter under the water before shooting back up to the surface.

"Fine. I'm fine," I said, after sucking in a quick breath.

My new body was denser, less buoyant than my human body was, so I had to keep moving to keep from sinking. But the pull of the water was much stronger on the surface. Unanchored by the silt, I let the water move me downstream.

"Bella, here!" Edward called and accurately lobbed his own board into the water, splashing just a couple of feet in front of me.

Lunging for it, I scrambled on top, letting the water cajole my body over the wooden plank so that I didn't have to manhandle the thing too much. I didn't have faith in my ability to pop to a stand without destroying the brittle wood,

Edward stood on the riverbank watching me careen downstream, waving and calling out encouragements as I leaned and paddled to avoid rocks and eddies.

And just before I lost sight of him, I saw Edward dart back into the woods. I wondered briefly if he was going to fashion himself another board to ride.

Returning my focus back to not capsizing, I rode the current for another quarter of a mile, where the water was calm enough that I could actually enjoy the breathtaking scenery of the evergreen forest blanketed in snow with a majestic mountain range backdrop.

I heard the waterfall before I saw it, I guessed in another 300-feet or so, just around one last bend. I didn't think it was possible for vampires to have adrenaline rushes without functioning adrenal glands, but a very similar thrill coursed through me as I drew closer and closer to the edge.

I saw what appeared to be a large, smooth, boulder jutting out from the very edge like a ramp. If I could just line myself up with the boulder, I imagined myself sailing over the edge like Evel Knievel jumping a motorcycle over a stack of school buses.

I paddled hard, building up speed and cheering as I was propelled up the shallow incline of the boulder. but I celebrated too soon. The blasted board got stuck at the very top, and when I tried to dislodge it, it started shredding apart beneath me.

I could hear Emmett laughing raucously below as I was beached at the top of a rock, at the top of the waterfall like a sparkling hood ornament.

As the plank buckled between my weight, the boulder, and the rushing water pouring over my shoulders, I decided any chance I had of looking cool was effectively shot to shit.

I stood up, gave a little bow to my family whistling and howling with laughter below, and then took a swan dive off the rock to the crystal blue water below.

I emerged to the sound of Emmett laughing and slow-clapping. "That was spectacular, kid. Truly spectacular. And here I thought things were gonna get boring again when you stopped trying to die all the time."

I growled. "That reminds me. I owe you a good ass-kicking, and if you weren't naked right now—"

Emmett rolled his eyes and repeatedly opened and shut his hand, pinching the air, in the gesture you made when someone was all talk.

"Can the idle threats wait until after Edward comes down? It's no fun getting you all bent out of shape when he isn't here to get all pissed off about it," Emmett smirked and motioned to the falls behind me with an open palm.

With a reluctant growl, I spun on my heel and watched for Edward. My breath caught in my throat as I saw first the tip of a log going over the edge. Not just a log, a crude canoe that Edward had gouged out of a tree, not unlike the logs you sit in on Splash Mountain at Disneyland.

As he approached the edge, he stood up and stretched his arms out to the side as wide as they would go, sparkling under the midday sun like a disco ball hung from the heavens.

As the canoe carried him over the edge, he jumped out of it, tucking his body into a tight ball like an Olympic high-diver and doing no less than ten full front flips before his body straightened out at the very last second. He cut through the water like an arrow, creating hardly a ripple in his wake.

"And he calls me a show-off," Jasper muttered with grudging admiration.

As Edward emerged, I watched jealously as crystal droplets of water cascaded down the taut, angular planes of his flawless body.

Jasper chuckled then. "Down, girl," he teased, prompting Edward to look at me with my favorite crooked smile.

Alice enthusiastically held up ten fingers over her head. Rosalie, looking bored, held up nine. Something told me that Edward would have to learn to fly before she ever gave him a perfect score, and maybe not even then.

"Nice dive, bro. You went all 'Edward the Sparkling Redeemer,' up there," Emmett grinned, throwing his massive arms out to the side in imitation of the famous statue in Rio.

"I'm just amazed there was any water left by the sound of your dive," Edward countered, grinning right back.

Emmett laughed and raised a fist like he was going to chuck him on the arm, but Edward saw it coming, of course, and Emmett was left swinging at empty air.

Then setting his playful golden eyes on me, Emmett ribbed, "But can we just talk about your wife getting stuck up there like a beached turtle," he guffawed.

"That's the funniest shit I've seen in decades." Doubled over and slapping at his thigh he dropped the punchline. "Maybe I should start calling you Squirtle."

*EPOV*

If I'd learned one thing today about Bella's newborn emotional triggers, it was that she was instantly set off by feeling like she was being laughed at. And there was no doubt about it, Emmett was laughing at her.

I raised a hand to intervene, but before I could get a word out, with her fists balled up at her sides and the tendons straining in her neck, Bella growled through her teeth in a deadly tone.

"I. am. NOT. a POKÉMON. I. am. a VAMPIRE!" And then she lunged for his throat.

*A/N*

Deleted scene:

Emmett spits out a mouthful of water. "What the fuck is a Pokémon?"

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Next time on Blood & Edward—Strength (read: anger) management with Emmett.