*BPOV*

We reconvened after dark, this time outside around a bonfire that Maisie had conjured, as the main house was getting a little too cramped for comfort with all of our visitors.

With a mastery I could only dream of, Eleazar lazily strummed a complicated Spanish-sounding melody on Edward's borrowed acoustic guitar. Beside him, Carmen quietly hummed along in her sultry mezzo-soprano.

Ragnar sat on a tree stump, staring contemplatively into the dancing flames as he stroked his beard. After a successful hunt, his irises gleamed a bone-chilling shade of blood-red with tongues of flame reflecting in the shine of his eyes.

On the other side of the fire, I was sitting on my own stump directly across from him, so I noticed as soon as his focus shifted from the fire to my face.

"This shield of yours," Ragnar began, still stroking his beard, "I'm curious."

I straightened up a little at the attention of the man. It was hard not to be intimidated by him. I was still grappling with the fact that a real-life Viking had shown up on our doorstep.

The idea was as jarring as if Abraham Lincoln had shown up and started making pleasant conversation about what he'd been up to for the last hundred and fifty years.

"What are you curious about?" I asked when Ragnar didn't immediately follow up with a question.

Edward chuckled quietly next to me. "I really wouldn't, Ragnar…" he warned and then explained, "He wants to know what you saved Maisie from. He wants to feel the difference."

I mouthed the word, "Oh."

"Does he do that all the time?" Ragnar asked in an exasperated tone, directing his question to the other Cullen men sitting across the circle. Carlisle fixed his attention on Esme, pretending not to have heard the question. Jasper nodded in an exaggerated way, and Emmett mouthed with huge eyes, "All. The. Time!"

Defending her favorite brother, Alice chimed in from where she was perched on Jasper's lap, "The lack of privacy is a small price to pay. Edward's gift has saved our asses more times than I care to recall."

"More like been a pain in our asses," Rosalie snarked under her breath, though there wasn't any venom in her voice.

"You want to talk about annoying gifts? Come talk to me when you've had to suffer through sixty some odd years of sex frenzies alone," Edward fired back at some silent thought of Jasper's.

Jasper grimaced guiltily.

"Edward's got you there," Emmett declared and Jasper reluctantly nodded in concession.

"Begging your pardon, but did you say sex frenzy?" Tristan asked, sounding a little staggered.

"Really, Edward? You just had to bring that up in front of company, did you?" Esme admonished, sounding mildly mortified.

"It's quite alright, Esme. Color me…intrigued," Tristan insisted, his eyes now landing on Tanya who was coyly pretending not to notice.

"Sure, that's the word for it," Maisie retorted in her thick Scottish brogue with a sarcastic snort and a roll of her eyes.

Emmett was all too happy to provide an explanation. "A sex frenzy is what happens, usually after a hunt, when somebody (or several somebodies) get all horned up and overwhelm Jasper's…ya know…emo-meter," he explained, thunking himself on the temple.

"Anybody around him becomes susceptible to the overflow. Which was really inconvenient for ole Eddo over there who was a hundred-year-old virgin before he met Bella and–"

"Choose your next words very carefully, brother," Edward cut him off in that restrained voice he used that was so peaceful and gentle that it somehow made it sound even more threatening.

"You're kidding, right? A virgin for a century? Why?" Ragnar's laugh was mocking.

He looked from the faces of Tanya, Kate, and Irina, all stunningly beautiful and unattached, and then back at Edward in disbelief. I didn't have to be a mind reader to hear him silently making assumptions about Edward's sexuality.

Edward looked utterly bored by the discourse. Then looking over at me he murmured, "Some things are worth waiting for."

This only elicited another round of laughter from several of the men.

Growing tired of sitting around while Edward got picked on for no good reason, I exchanged a look with Kate. She nodded in silent understanding.

"Sure, I'll shock you, Ragnar," Kate cheerfully interjected and moved over to stand next to the still-chuckling Viking. She held out her hand for Ragnar to touch, waving her fingers in an unspoken invitation.

"Low or High?" Kate asked.

"Do your worst, " Ragnar answered confidently and pressed the tip of his finger against Kate's palm. He cried out in sudden pain. His body jerked unnaturally for a moment before falling backward off his tree stump, landing flat on his back in the dirt.

Maisie gasped and the fire dimmed in intensity as she dashed over to Ragnar's side to help him to his feet. Ragnar laid there on the ground for a minute, dazedly staring up at the stars as if they were cartoonishly circling above his head. And then loud, bellowing peals of laughter erupted from his chest.

"That was very good," he mused, still chuckling, and returned to his seat on the stump. Kate's smile was smug.

"And this is what it feels like when Bella has you under her shield," Kate said, holding up her palm again. Ragnar glanced over at me, and this time he pressed a much more tentative finger to the center of Kate's palm.

Ragnar screamed again and fell backward from his stump. All eyes looked incredulously at me.

"Oops, sorry. I wasn't ready," I shrugged, my bottom lip pulling taut against my teeth in an exaggerated expression of guilt.

*EPOV*

"Fool me once, shame on you…" Ragnar laughed as he dusted himself off.

Then, as if gravity suddenly ceased to exist, the water from a bucket that we kept nearby to douse the fire (we were burning in late August, after all) rose from its confines. It weightlessly glided through the air in an aqueous blob to where it hovered ominously over Bella's head.

And then, as if gravity suddenly returned, the water unceremoniously splattered down on top of Bella, leaving her drenched and spluttering.

Ragnar laughed uproariously, with his head tossed back and one arm clutching his heaving belly. "You should've…seen…your…face!" he said between paroxysms of laughter. "Now we're even," he grinned at my wife.

Everybody erupted into laughter at this lighthearted turn of events. Laughing harder than anybody was Alice. "That was even funnier watching it happen live than it was in my head," she managed to say between giggles.

Bella turned to glare at me as I clapped a hand over my mouth to squelch my own laughter. Ragnar hadn't been wrong. The thunderstruck expression she'd made had been truly hilarious.

"I was defending you!" she seethed as she wrung out her dripping wet hair.

"I know, I'm sorry," I said, laughing even harder now. In the minds of fourteen other still-tittering witnesses, I watched the water splashing down over her surprised face again and again, like watching a Youtube video on repeat.

From fourteen different points of view, I watched her make the same exact affronted face that she wore whenever her human form tripped over a perfectly flat surface. I hadn't seen it in so long. It made me realize how much I missed her clumsiness.

Teasing her now, in a husky voice, I laughed, "You know what they say…Turnabout is fair play."

My eyes swept over her appreciatively, noticing how her sodden tank top now clung to her like a second skin. In the summer breeze, the tightened buds of her nipples pressed noticeably against the wet, clingy fabric of her shirt.

I swallowed a groan of desire and then remembered that there were other men around, men who could plainly see the same thing. I quickly shrugged out of the navy blue button-up I wore over a white undershirt and held it open for Bella to put on so she could cover up.

She raised an eyebrow at me but obliged, sliding her arms through the sleeves.

Caveman, much? Bella silently teased, imagining me throwing her over my shoulder and running away with her.

"Unequivocally," I growled back, wanting nothing more than to do exactly that.

I had been able to think of little else since the other morning when Bella had been so incredibly candid about some of her baser desires. I wouldn't have believed that those tawdry fantasies could have come from my sweet Bella's mind if I'd hadn't seen them with my own eyes.

What else did she fantasize about, I wondered. Presently, I felt like employing some creative interrogation tactics of my own.

Bella seemed to read all of this in my smoldering gaze. Smiling mischievously, she started remembering in vivid detail what it had been like for her to be taken so roughly by me, like a brute, over and over again. The direction of her thoughts made my cock stiffen painfully against the zipper of my rapidly-tightening slacks.

"Bella, please," Jasper gritted through his teeth, squirming uncomfortably beneath Alice who stared unseeingly into the distance as a premonition came to her unbiddenly. In the vision, Alice was seeing the very spot in which we were currently convened, but five minutes into the future.

In the vision, only Kate and Irina remained, looking rather perturbed as everyone else vanished with their mates. Among the last to leave, Tristan wandered off into the darkness after Tanya who eyed him invitingly over her shoulder.

And when Ragnar scooped up Maisie and ran for the coast, meaning to take her back to his boat, the bonfire disappeared, too, leaving Kate and Irina sitting alone in the dark.

"Well, this sucks," Kate grumbled into the darkness.

Back in the present, Emmett laughed darkly with anticipation.

"Tristan, remember what I said about sex frenzies?" he chuckled and nodded to Jasper. Eyes screwed shut, Jasper groaned in frustration and unconsciously tightened his arms around Alice's waist. "Get ready for a demonstration," Emmett guffawed.

Letting out a low grunt of resignation, I tossed a damp and laughing Bella over my shoulder and carried her off just as she had imagined me doing moments earlier. And thus began the exodus as predicted by Alice's vision.

From behind me, I heard Ragnar bark out in laughter. "I didn't think he had it in him!"

Moments later, I was setting Bella down on her feet in our bedroom. "Do you mind if we get out of here?" I asked before we could fully give in to our desires. I didn't want to be within fifty miles of those uncouth men when I finally had Bella to myself, though I didn't say that much out loud.

"Of course not," Bella replied as I knew she would. "Just let me change into some dry clothes and then we'll go. Are we running, riding, or driving?" she asked after she disappeared behind a privacy partition to change.

Adjusting my pants, I answered hoarsely, "Driving." I needed to be able to touch her and I couldn't do that if we ran or rode our motorcycles.

"That's probably for the best," Bella said as she reappeared, wearing a soft pink dress that skimmed just above her knee and a demure white cardigan. Strappy white sandals completed the ensemble.

My surprise at her choice in outfit must've shown on my face because she just shrugged and explained, "Alice left it for me with a note that said, 'Trust me.' Does it look terrible?" she asked self-consciously, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from the front of her pink frock.

"Silly, Bella," I gently scolded. "You still don't see yourself very clearly do you?" I purred and closed the distance between us with deliberately slow steps. "You, my sexy, gorgeous, enchanting wife would look ravishing in a burlap sack," I told her honestly and bent down to place a lingering kiss on her full, slightly parted lips.

She kissed me back just as enthusiastically for a moment and then pulled away. "Alice left clothes for you, too," Bella mentioned nodding toward the privacy partition.

"Which is good, because you smell like a bonfire," she added honestly, wrinkling her nose a little for dramatic effect. Taking a whiff of my undershirt, my own nose wrinkled at the acrid odor of smoke and she laughed.

I quickly changed into the clothes left out for me which were nothing terribly out of the ordinary. Zipping up my tan leather jacket over a light blue button-up and navy slacks, Bella and I were peeling down the driveway in my Ferrari without further delay.

It was one of my favorite things about living in the San Francisco Bay Area. We lived so close to Silicon Valley–the home of tech giants Google, Facebook, Youtube, and several others– that supercars were a dime a dozen. This meant I could drive whatever car I liked and nobody paid me any notice.

"Where to?" Bella asked pleasantly from the passenger seat.

"How's your control?" I asked, glancing over at her and then returning my eyes to the road.

"Not thirsty in the least," she answered automatically and the light gold of her eyes seemed to confirm as much.

"Excellent," I grinned and stepped on the gas.

Less than twenty minutes later, I was pulling into a recently vacated parking spot right out front of the Del Mar Theater in Santa Cruz. It was one of those old art-deco style ones with the big marquee out front featuring only one or two old titles.

"Two for the midnight movie please," I told the box office employee. Reaching into the pocket of my jacket for my wallet, I felt a strange foreign object tucked inside. To my utter confusion, I pulled out a pair of dark-framed glasses along with my wallet.

A tired-looking woman slid the tickets along with my credit card back through the small opening in the box office window.

"Hey, great costumes, you two!" said a woman with huge teased-out hair and a cheap French maid costume as she passed us on her way inside the theater lobby.

"Costumes?" Bella and I looked at each other in confusion and then I looked at the tickets in my hand. I hadn't even paid any attention to what the movie was, because if all went according to plan, we wouldn't be watching much of it anyway.

"You've got to be kidding me," I groaned in dismay when I saw what movie was playing. Across the freshly printed ticket read the words "Rocky Horror Picture Show."

Bella looked down at herself and laughed as the pink dress finally made sense.

Laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation, Bella took the prop glasses from my hand and slid them up over the bridge of my nose. "When in Rome, Brad," she teased, kissing me again, and then tugged my hand through the doors of the theater.

"Damnit, Janet," I griped, trudging along behind her.

Well, it wasn't a Turner Classic Movie, I thought dismally as I pushed the ill-fitting glasses further up my nose. But we would just have to make do.

*BPOV*

"Are we doing what I think we're doing?" I asked as Edward guided me by the hand to our seats in the unoccupied far back row. I took my seat, smoothing my dress over my rear as I sat down and placed my human prop–a tub of popcorn–on the floor by my feet.

"Ideally they would've been showing 'The Bridge on the Water Kwai,' or something and there would be a third of the people here," Edward said irritably as he looked around the room at the two dozen or so mostly inebriated college students scattered in small groups around the auditorium.

Meeting my eyes again, he added in a gentler tone, his thick brows knit together in concern, "So if at any point this gets to be too much for you…just say the word." And then he nodded with his chin toward the wall at the end of the row.

I turned my head to see what he was looking at. A glowing green emergency exit sign above a door that didn't appear to be alarmed. I nodded in understanding. That was comforting at least.

Dropping my shield, I thought, You didn't exactly answer my question, as the house lights dimmed and the paltry audience hooted and hollered at the screen in anticipation.

Placing an elbow on the armrest between us, he leaned closer to me and murmured in a voice so low that only I could hear. "You didn't think you'd tell me that you wanted to mess around in a movie theater and that I'd just let that go, did you?" he answered with a devilish grin.

All I could do was let out a breathy little whimper in response.

Of course, he wouldn't let it go. Edward would move literal mountains to give me everything I wanted in this life. I could feel the nerves clawing around my stomach more like furious starlings trying to escape than fluttery butterflies.

Me and my big mental mouth! It was so much easier to be totally honest with him when I didn't have to say the words out loud! Didn't have to hear the way they sounded hanging in the air between us. And it sure got me into trouble.

And now we were here, in a movie theater, mere yards away from the weak ears of the humans who were paying us absolutely no attention. And Edward was looking at me like he wanted to eat me alive.

Edward's smoldering eyes, the velvety purr of his voice in my ear, and the thrill of getting caught all sent feelings of intense desire coursing through my body. I squirmed under his gaze with nervous excitement. Involuntarily, my thighs, bare under the pink dress, began to rub together in search of some sort of friction.

"Uh uh uh," Edward tsked, and placed a widely-splayed hand on my thigh stilling my movements. "That's for me to do," he teasingly admonished in a voice barely above a breath.

He removed his hand and then I felt the bulky barrier of the armrest between us disappear as he tucked it between the seats.

"Much better," he smiled approvingly.

The hand that had been on my thigh now slipped behind my head to wrap his arm around me. His elbow was supported by the back of my chair, so I didn't feel the weight of it. But my shoulders were too narrow to support the long length of his arm, so his hand was bent at the wrist sort of dangling in front of my left shoulder.

I looked down at it, hovering mere inches above my left breast. I then looked back over at him and smiled teasingly. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to get fresh with me.

Edward's eyes blazed at me. "Oh, I am," he growled. He then lowered his face to place a series of soft, suckling kisses on my neck starting with the sensitive hollow behind my ear and moving downward. I let out a soft moan that was luckily drowned out by the loud cheering of the audience at the wedding scene.

My eyes flew open at the sound of something like rain. No, not rain, rice. Rowdy Rocky Horror fans were throwing rice in the air during a scene when the newlyweds were leaving the church. The sounds of the individual grains hitting the floor mimicked the sound of rain, I realized.

Breaking me from my abstraction, Edward's other hand crept up my thigh, slipping just under the hem of my skirt to tease the bare skin there as his lips continued to work me into an absolute frenzy.

The noisy sounds of my breathing would've been embarrassing had they not been overshadowed by the loud cheering and laughter of the audience.

Unlike any other movie experience I'd ever been to, these movie-goers seemed to be following a script of learned responses to various parts of the film.

For example, in the scene where Janet and Brad get caught in a storm, the audience held newspapers opened up over their heads while some people with water pistols simulated the rain.

In fact, I didn't know what was more distracting, the rowdy audience participation or Edward's fingers moving much too slowly up my leg toward the humid juncture of my thighs.

I growled in frustration at his slow pace. Unfortunately, the sound hadn't been totally swallowed up by the movie that time, though I didn't see any heads turn in our direction.

Edward tsked and moved his hand further up my leg, toward my knee, in the opposite direction of where I needed him most.

"Shh, love, I've barely even touched you and you're already getting riled. I am the only one who should ever hear your sweet sounds," his deep, silky voice chided in my ear. Then I felt his lips on my neck sucking hard enough that it would have left a mark if my skin could bruise.

I hummed in pleasure at the sensation. Then I decided that if Edward was going to be a big ole' tease, well, two could play at that game.

As Edward continued lavishing attention on my throat, my hand reached up to cup the chiseled ridge of his jaw. I let it slide down the side of his neck, down the center of his chest and stomach to where it finally landed on his lap.

I slid my hand from the top of his leg inward, feeling the inseam of his pants under my fingers. My fingers wandered just to where I felt the very tip of a bulge starting to form, and I left my hand right there, very nearly but not quite touching his growing erection. Then it was Edward's turn to squirm.

At that point, Edward captured my lips with his own and I moaned softly into his mouth savoring the sweet, purely-Edward taste of him on my tongue.

Edward was not an overly wet kisser, mostly preferring to keep his tongue to himself. So when I did feel him requesting entry into my mouth, it was like...another kind of making love, but with our mouths, and gah did it ever turn me on!

My fingers traced all around the rigid outline of his arousal, paying special attention to the ridge around the head. I didn't need superhuman senses to notice he had elected to not wear any underwear this evening.

Going commando? My, aren't we…presumptuous, I teased, my lips smiling against his so he knew I wasn't really serious.

"Just…thinking ahead," he breathed, tilting his head to the other side so he could work his way down the other side of my neck.

As his hand inched its way up my thigh, he drew in a sharp breath at the slickness he found there, because, like Edward, I was presumptuous, too.

He let out a low moan.

"Fuck, that's sexy," he rasped in a gravelly voice. " And bad. What if there had been a breeze?" he teased in a whisper, lightly stroking the top of a single finger up and down my cleft, spreading the moisture around my wanton sex, but careful not to touch where I needed him most.

I let out a frustrated whine which Edward cut off with another scorching open-mouthed kiss, swallowing the sound. I then worked his zipper down and reached inside, wrapping my hand around his shaft. Edward softly groaned and gently tried to buck his hips into my hand.

Uh uh uh. That's my job, I mentally chided in a seductive voice, giving him a couple of languid tugs. It was a tad awkward though without any lubricant.

Hmm, what could be done about that, I wondered with a sly smile. Withdrawing my hand, I then rolled onto my hip so that I could more easily lower my face to his lap without having to kneel down in front of him.

"Bella," he hissed in surprise as I pulled his hard length out of his pants and quickly moved my mouth over him, wetting him with my saliva…venom…whatever it was.

His objection quickly died in his throat, making way for the strangled little gasps he made whenever I took as much of him into my mouth as his zipper would allow.

One really cool perk of being able to talk to him with my mind is that it meant I could tease him and taunt him even while my mouth was otherwise occupied. The combined effect of my voice in his head and my mouth on his impossibly hard cock drove him wild every time.

In my own mind, I could be as brazen as I dared. I could imagine the things I wanted to do to him or him to me. I could scream and moan and beg as loud as I wanted in my own head with Edward as my private audience.

I only needed to maintain control over my body so that the sounds didn't come bursting through my mouth in an unguarded moment, which was, of course, easier said than done.

Edward's hand fisted in my hair, making me stop before I could make another pass over him.

"Please, Bella, please. You have to stop. I won't be able to keep quiet if you keep that up," his whispered plea was a desperate high-pitched whine.

Hearing the effect I was having on him so clearly in his voice only made me want him more, but I pulled away from him as requested. As soon as his erection was clear of my mouth, Edward had me on my back laying across two seats before I even knew what was happening.

Thank heaven for movable armrests, I thought, as I felt his fingers sliding under my skirt (still pulled down to cover me) and over my glistening folds.

"I'm not going to taste that sweet pussy of yours right now," he murmured in a voice so low that even my vampire ears struggled to hear him over the loud musical number onscreen and the audience members enthusiastically singing along. "Because there's no question in my mind that I'd make you scream," he chuckled arrogantly.

"So instead," he continued in a darkly seductive voice, "We're going to play a little game."

I let out a little anticipatory growl, liking the sound of this.

Reaching down for the tub of popcorn between our seats, he retrieved one fluffy white kernel and rolled it around the palm of his hand like a numerical die. Simultaneously, he plunged two fingers into me and circled my swollen bundle of nerves with his thumb.

I bit my lip in an effort to keep quiet during the exquisite torment of his fingers expertly manipulating my body, But every now and then a moan or a whimper slipped out.

He then explained, "You're going to hold this between your teeth while I play with you, and if you don't drop it or damage it, I might just let you come," he propositioned with a smirk.

My eyes blazed up at him and I opened my mouth in silent acceptance. "Good girl," he praised silkily as he pressed the salty kernel very delicately between my teeth.

It took a shocking amount of focus and restraint to exact the precise amount of pressure to hold it there without crushing its delicate shape while Edward stroked me inside and out with maddeningly slow strokes.

And as far as a gag went, it worked pretty efficiently. The only sounds that could be heard coming out of me (at least from my mouth) were shallow gasps and pants as Edward built my impending orgasm to an impossibly high peak. It was there that he held me, back arched and silently pleading for release.

My jaw ached to bite down on the fragile popcorn, or just spit it out altogether. But my molten center ached for release even more.

Fuck fuck fuuuck, EDWARD!

"Hmm?" he replied in a smugly disinterested voice. His body and eyes were turned toward the screen, watching Tim Curry sashay around in black lingerie. To anybody else who might've looked back this way, I was completely hidden from sight, probably gone to the restroom, while he was innocently watching the movie.

But then his eyes flashed back down to me and he smirked crookedly, the damned tease!

I whimpered a little in the back of my throat since my mental pleading was getting me nowhere.

At the soft sound, he let out a little moan of his own and picked up the pace a little bit. It was all I needed to go over the edge.

With a quick sweep of his finger between my parted lips, Edward knocked the popcorn to the ground and clamped a hand down over my mouth to muffle my screams as my orgasm crashed over my body in unrelenting waves. The intensity of it left me seeing little stars behind my eyelids as I climaxed.

A low, guttural groan of pure need escaped Edward's lips.

"I need to have you now, Bella, but not here." And before I could fully recover from my orgasm, I felt myself careening through the air as Edward picked me up and darted for the rear exit.

Just on the other side of the door was a short corridor leading back to the main lobby and a clearly marked janitorial closet.

Edward whipped the door open and shut us inside the dark, cramped closet alongside a bright yellow mop bucket and the stringent scent of cleaning chemicals. The door didn't lock, but my back pushed up against it would have kept any mere mortal from pushing it open.

Edward stood between my legs, supporting my weight with one arm while the other hand was pressed flat against the door. I reached down and took Edward in hand and helped to line him up with my entrance. When he was pressed up against my wet channel, he rasped, "Tell me to stop now, Bella, or else I won't be able to."

It was such a ridiculously Edward thing to say. When had I ever wanted him to stop, the silly goose? Certainly not now. Not ever.

I made as much known when I bucked in his arms, impaling myself on him by a few delicious inches. Both of us moaned throatily at the sudden penetration.

"So fucking hot, so fucking tight," he panted as he pushed the rest of the way into me. "I'm not going to last."

Smiling victoriously like a race car driver about to sail through the finish line, I bore down on him internally. A choked cry tore out of his throat and he slammed into me one last time, releasing his seed deep into my core, pulsing and throbbing.

Edward's breath hadn't even returned to normal before he hurriedly set me down on my feet. In a flash of hurried movements, he tugged my dress back down over my hips, zipped himself back into his pants, and was pulling me by the hand back through the door I'd just been pressed up against.

Before I could even huff "What gives?!" I was startled silent by a uniformed man with keys hanging from his belt on the other side of the door, his hand extended to open the door but Edward had beaten him to it.

"Come on, Bella. That is definitely not a bathroom," Edward muttered and shouldered past the stunned custodian who could only gape at us as we passed.

*EPOV*

Later, on the ride home, I turned to Bella who was serenely looking out the window. I gently squeezed her hand, "So how did that live up to your fantasies," I asked curiously.

"Holy crow, Edward, that was so far beyond anything I could have imagined! The popcorn thing was a nice touch," she beamed, and I smiled back. There was nothing that pleased me more than being able to please her.

Then after a brief pause, Bella added, "I'm curious though, why did we do it in the janitor's closet? I could've climbed onto your lap in the theater and nobody would've been any the wiser. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have even been the only ones!" she snorted.

Remembering some suspicious sounds coming from a couple down in front, I was certain she was right.

"Because I'm not willing to share you. Certainly not with a theater full of drunken coeds," I answered honestly.

I was willing to fool around in a theater. The idea seemed almost cliche. Like something normal teenagers did, and I desperately wanted Bella to have some vestige of normalcy in this crazy life she chose, forsaking all else, to be with me. Particularly now, when our world was about to be turned upside down.

I knew the pressure she was under to keep us all safe when we inevitably confronted the Volturi. It couldn't have been an easy burden to bear, and yet she wielded it gracefully, without complaint.

"Well nobody said anything about sharing me," Bella giggled, and I growled at the blasphemy of such a suggestion.

"Not yet," I snapped. "I sure hope that isn't another one of your little fantasies" I blustered as an insecurity I didn't even realize I had reared its ugly head. "Because–"

And before I could tell her that there was no scenario in which I would ever entertain the idea of sharing her with anybody else–man, woman, or dog– she shut me up by pressing a hand over my mouth.

"Now you're talkin' crazy,"' Bella smiled crookedly and rolled her eyes. She shook her head and laughed as if I'd told a funny joke.

Well, I guess that answered that. I blew out a long slow breath, feeling a bit foolish now.

I couldn't ignore the rising trend in Bella's generation to explore polyamorous relationships and throuples. Monogamy was becoming a relic of the church, a church that young people no longer put much stock into.

It was something I'd had to consider once, in my darker moments. When I thought I was losing her to the mongrel, I told her she didn't have to choose. I was terrified that if I did, she'd choose him. I didn't see how any part of her could choose me when he could have given her so much more than I could….

"You know…you're quite adorable when you're jealous. It's surprisingly enjoyable," she quirked a teasing eyebrow in my direction.

I made a face as if I smelled something malodorous. "God, is that how I sound?"

A/N I've been trying sooo hard to write some Volturi-type content to drive this story forward, but every time I try, Bella and Edward are like "How about we fuck instead?" *Rolls eyes* I'm going to have a little chat with them.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this little interlude. And it would absolutely make my day if you dropped me a line in the comments. I love hearing your thoughts and suggestions and try to write them in whenever I can. And after losing both fanfic contests, my battered ego could use the boost. 😞