Chapter 10

Edward

In an effort to dispel some of the tension created by Nahuel and Jacob, Esme and Carlisle took our guest on a tour of the property and the surrounding island. When they left, Emmett and Jasper went back to their individual activities, leaving Jacob and me–now sitting on opposite ends of the same couch– to wait for the ladies to return.

We sat in awkward silence for a couple of minutes. Silent for him, at least. I had no choice but to listen to his anxious mind as it was plagued with questions and doubts.

What if he IS what Nessie wants? Does SHE think that I slow her down? That I'm not smart enough for her? What would I even do if she didn't want me anymore? I can't live without her…

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.

Six and a half years ago, when we first met Nahuel and it became clear that our daughter wasn't the only one of her kind, I had wondered if Nahuel might resurface in our lives someday in pursuit of Renesmee. I had subconsciously hoped for it, I think, because of the slight grudge I would always carry for the man who tried to steal my Bella away from me. Admittedly, It was immature and petty of me, but I hoped that someday he would know what it felt like to have another man try to steal away his reason for existing.

And while a small part of me was perhaps a little smug about the undercurrent of panic and torment I heard in Jacob's thoughts since the moment Nahuel turned up at the airport, another larger part of me felt for the mutt…while simultaneously hating the position this was putting my daughter in.

What could she possibly see in the guy anyway? The dark eyes must make her forget he's a fucking murderer like all the rest of the red-eyed leeches…

Sighing again, I told him with an impatient edge to my voice, "You're not doing yourself any favors by engaging in pissing contests with the guy, ya know."

Jacob sat with a defeated stoop to his posture. At the sound of my voice, his black eyes snapped up to meet my gaze. He thought better of his initial urge to snarl back a rude response and instead replied in a gravelly, tightly controlled voice, "What do you suggest I do?"

My brow furrowed and my lips pinched firmly together into a line as I considered what to tell him. I finally settled on, "Don't you remember how much happier Bella was when I finally stopped getting in her way?" I was being deliberately vague but I knew he would know what I meant.

Jacob nodded and swallowed loudly causing his Adam's apple to bob in his throat. "H-how did you let her go?" he finally asked in a hoarse whisper.

Remembering the times I delivered my Bella to the treaty line, right into the often shirtless arms of my rival, I told him honestly, "It felt like it would kill me every time, as I'm sure it will feel that way to you, too. But it worked out for me in the end, didn't it?" I smiled just a little.

Jacob seemed to consider that for a moment and then sat up a little straighter. "Thanks, Edward."

I nodded almost imperceptibly. And then, hearing the thoughts of Alice, Rosalie, and Renesmee coming back into range, I told him, "It won't be long now," so that he wouldn't say anything else on the matter that Renesmee would overhear.

Not long after, Jacob breathed a sigh of relief as his slightly weaker ears picked up on the faint sounds of snapping twigs and then the crunching of gravel as four sets of supernaturally fast footsteps could be heard traveling up the front drive.

Jacob's patience, evidently, had been stretched beyond waiting inside the house for Renesmee to return. He jumped to his feet and burst out the door, opting to meet her outside so he could ask—beg if he had to—for some alone time. I could hardly blame him. Even after seven years of marriage, I still missed Bella terribly whenever she was away from me.

I once thought that my anxiety would fade when she was no longer a clumsy, fragile human, liable to trip over her own feet and fall into the path of a speeding bus or some similar fate if I wasn't there to steady her. How naive I was, I snorted with derision.

As fate would have it, the ink on our marriage certificate had barely begun to dry before my wife had painted a target on her back by proving herself to be a formidable threat to the Volturi's authority. So, yeah, I worried.

Outside, halfway between the house and the tree line, I watched through Jacob's eyes as Renesmee ran at full tilt right into his waiting embrace. "Can we go to the lake?" he murmured into her hair as he hummed with the sheer relief and pleasure of having her back in his arms. The week apart had been miserable for him, to say the least.

"If you're done eavesdropping, why don't you take me home?" Bella's amused voice asked from where she was standing in the foyer. I had been so distracted by Jacob and Renesmee's emotional reunion that I hadn't immediately noticed when Bella breezed through the open front door. Smiling broadly, I jumped to my feet, smoothly hurdling over the couch in the same motion, and closed the distance between us.

"With pleasure," I purred as I swept her up into my arms and made a beeline for our cottage while she giggled the whole way.

Bella

"Finally," Edward breathed as he kicked the front door shut behind us. His lips were instantly on mine, kissing me with a fervor that made my core throb with anticipation. He carried me with practiced ease around the sideboard in the entryway littered with today's mail, mostly my heirloom seed & starter catalogs and donation requests from charities we'd previously supported.

Opening my mouth to let him in, I moaned into his kiss. It was a frustrated sound. Edward only took his lips off me long enough to murmur, "What's wrong, love?" as he pressed a trail of soft, suckling kisses along the ridge of my jawbone.

"I want you," I gasped sharply as he sucked on the sensitive area beneath my ear. If my skin could still mark up, he would've left a love bite for sure. "But I also want to know what happened while I was gone," I panted breathlessly. "And it's hard to decide what I want most in this moment."

"Hmm," Edward considered, pressing a lingering, worshipful kiss to the silvery crescent-shaped scar where my pulse point used to be. "I bet I could help you decide," he purred, as he strode purposefully to our bedroom. He was looking at me now. Not just looking, he was grinning devilishly. The glint in his sparkling topaz eyes promised the kind of soul-shattering pleasure that they warned you about in catechism.

"I'm sure you could," I breathily replied, a coy, knowing smile spread across my face as he laid me gently in the middle of our large four-poster bed. "You've always been better than me at knowing what I want."

"True," Edward's smile turned a shade arrogant. Settling himself on the bed next to me, his lips resumed their exploration of my throat as his hand ghosted under the hem of my gray henley.

"And right now," his voice was low and husky in my ear, "you want me to show you how much I've missed you."

"Mmm," I hummed with pleasure as his graceful fingers danced over the ridges of my ribcage. As was Edward's way, his touch was sure but just as inquisitive and restrained as the very first time, like he was waiting for me to stop him at any moment (not that I ever would.) I arched my back, wantonly pressing my body into his wandering hands, wanting more of him.

Edward chuckled and acquiesced, cupping his hand over my breast and giving it a gentle but firm squeeze. "My naughty little kitten, never satisfied until she's being manhandled" he teased in my ear. "Is this what you need?" he purred in a velvety voice that was dipped in sin as he pinched the stiffened peak of my nipple through the thin, satiny cups of my bra.

"Yesss," I hissed as the slight sting sent a fresh wave of desire straight to my heated core.

And he wasn't wrong. One of the things I'd learned about myself as we'd explored our desires in the bedroom these last seven years was that I appreciated a rougher touch–something he'd been hesitant to do in the beginning, especially before I learned to drop my shield. Especially after his overzealousness on our honeymoon had left me a bit worse for wear–a traumatizing experience (for him) that had left him a bit timid.

But when he could hear for himself just how wet it made me to feel his hand fisted in my hair or wrapped around my throat? Well, let's just say I didn't have to do any convincing after that.

"But if you'd rather," Edward's hand retreated then, slipping out from under my shirt where he left it draped chastely over my hip, "I'd be happy to tell you all about the indigenous artwork Nahuel brought for Carlisle. Or the necklace he gave to Esme that he made by hand out of polished acai and Tagua seeds, using a porcupine quill as a needle to string them all togeth–"

With an impatient growl, I rolled on top of Edward, straddling his hips with my own. Then, leaning forward until my parted lips were just a hair's breadth from his, I whispered, "Tell me later. I need your mouth for other, more pressing purposes." And then I kissed him as hard as I dared without actually hurting him.

Edward moaned into my mouth and hungrily kissed me back as he curled his hands around the tops of my legs. His wide-splayed hands moved up, sliding under the denim of my skirt, closer to the throbbing heat at the apex of my thighs. But when he was close enough to the damp gusset of my panties to graze me there with his fingers, he slid them around my hips to palm my ass instead.

I bit back a frustrated moan. Such a tease! But two could play at that game, I reasoned as I ground my hips into the rock-hard protrusion straining behind the zipper of his jeans. Edward groaned low in his throat at the contact.

I heard rather than saw the row of silver metal buttons that lined the front of my skirt pop off one by one as Edward tore the skirt from my body in a slow, controlled fashion. With every button that popped off, his eyes seemed to darken a shade until they were as inky and endless as a starless night sky.

He inhaled then deeply through his nose, closing his eyes to fully take in the salty-sweet scent of my arousal that hung thick in the air. When his eyes opened again, they were impossibly an even darker shade of black. With my favorite crooked smile, Edward crooned, "I think you've missed me, too."

Renesmee

It was hard to feel anything but perfectly content lying in Jacob's arms, warm, safe, and cherished as I was. When we were together like this in our special spot under the crooked, leaning trunk of an arbutus tree whose branches stretched over the placid, deep green water of the lake, Jacob's happiness was so complete, so palpable that I sometimes wondered if I inherited some of my Uncle Jasper's empathic abilities, but I knew that wasn't it.

Despite that, there was a heaviness to the silence that hung over us now that neither one of us seemed to know how to break. After an interminable amount of time had passed with nothing except the steady drumming of Jacob's heartbeat in my ear to compete with the chirping of the birds and the chittering of the insects, I could remain silent no longer.

"Jacob, I–I'm sorry that I left like that, without telling you. That wasn't right," I told him, looking up at his serene face with remorseful eyes. His eyes were still closed, though I knew he'd heard me.

Jacob's long, dark lashes fluttered open at the sound of my voice. His deep, penetrating gaze swept over my contrite features, watching me for what felt like a long time before he said anything. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, gravelly from disuse.

"Don't worry about it, Ness. I'm just sorry I put you in a position where you felt like you couldn't tell me the truth." In a softer voice that I almost didn't hear over the chatty warbling of a whippoorwill in a nearby tree, he murmured, "I never want to do that." And then I felt his chiseled abdominal muscles tighten under my fingers as he sat up just enough to kiss me on the forehead before he flopped back down on the ground.

I laid my head back down, resting my cheek against his bare chest. He had one muscled arm folded underneath his head while the other one was tucked around me. I smiled; I couldn't help it. Jacob was so easy. He forgave just as easily as he laughed or smiled.

"There's just one thing I'd like to know…" he added a moment later. His tone was guarded.

I froze. This was the part I was dreading, the part where he asked me a bunch of questions that I didn't have the answers to.

"Did something…happen between you and Nahuel? He sort of made it sound like it did."

I scrambled to a sitting position so that I could better see his face. "What did he say?" I asked in a voice that shook with nerves.

Jacob shook his head. "It doesn't matter what he said. I only care about what you say."

I sighed. "Nothing happened. Not really. But we did have, like, a connection that I've never felt with anyone else before. I don't know how to explain it."

Jacob swallowed loudly. "What kind of connection?"

"I dunno. Like kindred spirits or something. Don't you feel something like that when you're with other wolves?" I asked curiously, hoping he could somehow empathize.

Sitting up now to face me, Jacob snorted and tersely replied, "I'm pretty sure I don't feel the same way about Seth or Paul as Nahuel seems to feel about you."

I frowned and looked down at my hands as I struggled to figure out the right thing to say.

"Jacob, I—" The words died in my throat as I took in his stony expression. Jacob's mouth was a hard, flat line. His brow was furrowed. His temples pulsed compulsively as he clenched and unclenched his jaw, but it was his eyes that killed me. His dark, soulful eyes watched me in the same wary way a convicted man watched an executioner's blade.

I pressed my hand to the side of his face, showing him the inside of my heart the only way I knew how. "I know I love you," I told him, hoping he could hear the certainty in my voice. "Nothing will ever change the way I feel about you, my Jacob." Then, in a smaller voice, I admitted as an afterthought, "That's pretty much the only thing I'm not confused about right now."

At my admission, the hardness in Jacob's face seemed to fall away. The eyes that regarded me now were the warm, trusting, loving ones of the Jacob I loved best. The raw vulnerability I saw in them made my heart ache painfully inside my chest.

"Nessie… " Jacob breathed my name rather than spoke it aloud. Then he reached for my other hand, the one that wasn't pressed to his face. He raised it to his lips and brushed a soft kiss over my knuckles and then placed my open hand over his rapidly beating heart. It only beats for you, his dark umber eyes seemed to say. "I love you, forever."

It was our little thing, ever since I was a child. I would tell him that I loved him like little children were apt to do, and he would smile his warm Jacob smile, and instead of saying "I love you, too" or "I love you more," or any of the other commonly used responses, Jacob only ever said one thing: "I love you, forever." It was cute and sweet and reminded me of that popular children's book. But the way he said it now meant something else entirely.

And then he did something he never did before. He kissed me.

With my chin perched on the side of his finger, Jacob nudged me to look up at him at the same time as he bent down and pressed his warm, soft lips to mine. It was soft and slow and gentle as a whisper at first but then I could feel the passion behind it beginning to build. I froze at first, startled, but as soon as the surprise wore off, I leaned into him, kissing him with all the passion and desire I'd held back from him for so long.

A low moan escaped his lips and the sound of it made my entire body flush with heat from a fire that seemed to burn from within. His hold on me tightened for one brief moment and then he tore himself away, leaving us both gasping for air and also, I thought, for words. As it turned out, Jacob found his before I found mine.

Squaring his shoulders, he began "Renesmee..." and I immediately stiffened. Jacob only called me by my given name when he was being really serious.

"I love you. Forever," he reiterated. "You're the only woman I want or will ever want, but I also understand that you're not exactly wired to feel the same way about me..."

It hadn't escaped my attention how he called me a 'woman.' That was a first for him, too. I didn't know what to say then. It wasn't as if I didn't return his feelings, because I did. More than I could adequately describe. But I also knew that if and when Jacob and I were officially "a thing," there would be no going back after that. No more crushes. No more flirtations. No first kisses or first dates. There was simply no such thing as "casually dating" Jacob Black.

That's not to say any of that existed in my life before now, because it most certainly didn't. But I couldn't deny that Nahuel ignited something in me, something that I had a difficult time ignoring. And, unfortunately, I didn't wear the same blinders that Jacob did.

"Jacob, I–" but he placed a finger over my lips to quiet me.

"Let me finish, please, or else I'll never be able to get this out," he explained with a pleading look. I nodded my head in agreement and he dropped the finger from my lips.

"Nessie, I can't help the way I feel about you. But I never want you to feel like you don't have a choice or like you're obligated to be with me because of how I feel. That's not how this works. I love you however you need to be loved. And if it's not this," he made a motion of waving a hand back and forth between the two of us, "it will be some other way."

Jacob raised his hand to cradle the side of my heated face, "The only thing that matters to me is that you're happy. So if it's with Nahuel…" his voice cracked a little saying the other man's name, "...then just be happy." He concluded with a weak smile, "As it turns out, I'm pretty good at sharing."

The air whooshed out of my lungs like a deflated balloon. Would I ever be worthy of this man's unwavering love? Guilt gnawed at me. I seriously doubted it.

Author's note: Sorry for the little fade to black with Edward & Bella. I had meant to come back to them but this chapter kinda got away from me and there was no great way to transition back to them without giving y'all whiplash. So many dang characters to keep up with in this fic! Lol

Needless to say, there will be more of Edward and Bella's naughty adventures coming soon! As always, thanks for reading and reviewing, and I hope you'll join my Discord to geek out with me in between chapters! And to my American readers, I hope you're all having a marvelous Thanksgiving weekend. I am so very thankful for each and every one of you!

Lastly, I know a lot of people are skeeved out by imprinting, particularly imprinting on a child (and with good reason). But writing this story has really made me realize it's Renesmee that holds all the power. Just think about how easy it would be to manipulate a person who had an unbreakable emotional bond! She could hurt him in unfathomable ways and he'd still be there for her, loving her, because that's what he's programmed to do. Sigh. Poor wolves. What a seriously bum deal.