Springtime Dreams

by EvieBaby

Vampire Bella has finally found the courage to share with Edward all the fantasies she had about him when she was human. The vulnerability is both exhilarating and emotionally dangerous, especially if Edward isn't ready for Bella's darkest desires. Or his own. (Lemons, angst, and fluff. BPOV companion fic to Ferns.)

5. Memory Sinkhole

**Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the Twilight Saga depicted in this story are the legal property of Stephenie Meyer, Summit Entertainment, and Little, Brown & Company, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

---

Chapter 5: Memory Sinkhole

[squeezed in at the top of the page's header margin, in black pen ink and Bella's handwriting, lines from part 1, chapter 23 of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea:]

"We were growing fast to our shell like snails, and I swear it must be easy to lead a snail's existence. Thus, our undersea life began to seem natural to us, and we no longer thought of the days we used to spend on land."

—

The Garlic Press

At first, it seemed normal—so normal that I didn't take note of it at all.

Which box had I packed my baby albums into? What time did the grocery store on Main Street close? Phil's sister's name—what was it? I think it started with a J. In Anne of Green Gables, did the hair dye incident happen before or after Miss Stacy came to Avonlea?

It was all so human and I had been human so recently that how could I have noticed? Like anyone, my life had been full of these little uncertainties. I wasn't particularly scatterbrained, but the world was chaotic and it was normal that details here and there slipped out of my head. The solution was simple: look it up or ask someone who knew, just like everyone else.

And maybe at first it was nothing more than the limits of a normal human memory, but as the months passed, my vampire memories accumulated and they were such crisp, sturdy things. Every detail was accessible and precise, and they built on each other in ways that became dizzying. I would remember not just the moment itself, but every time I had remembered the moment before, everything I had ever told anyone about the moment, and every other memory that had key elements in common with the moment. Sometimes it took a minute for my brain to find the memory, but it was always there. Sometimes it took a minute to sort through the disorienting amount of extra information, but there was never any distortion or ambiguity.

Meanwhile, my human memories became muddier, ever more hazy and dull with each passing week. It was as though my vampire brain was bored by them. It took effort to focus on details—or sometimes even the big things. They were colored by emotion and reeked of subjectivity. Patches of time lost detail and texture, then washed out to nothingness, like a roll of film someone left in the sun. The contrast with my vampire memories was so stark, it undermined my confidence in their validity. How could I trust the particulars with any kind of certainty? Especially when Edward would point out every time I recounted something inaccurately?

Forgetting little things analogous to the way my brain had worked before transformation was how it started. But gradually, the little things got bigger, the gaps wider. My fantasy list, for instance—but that was low stakes. It wasn't going to cost me friends. When Angela called from college to catch up one weekend, I flubbed some details and completely forgot that she had little brothers, even getting stubborn when the dread of not remembering dawned on me and doubling down in my denial. "Since when?" She tried to be nice about it, but I could tell I'd hurt her feelings.

One of the more embarrassing moments happened with Jake. We had been riding our motorcycles up the coast one night and stopped at a gas station to refuel. The main building was closed, but there were some vending machines out front and I saw that they had little bags of caramel corn, a favorite treat of Renesmee.

It was remarkable how blank my mind went in front of that machine. Familiar buttons and slots, but I couldn't seem to connect them to a chain of actions. It was bizarre, standing in front of something so recognizable, knowing that the steps to purchase what was inside were a mundane ritual I had completed a thousand times, and yet I had no clue where to start.

After several seconds of searching the peeling manufacturer's sticker for guidance, I heard Jake's voice. "The hell are you doing, Bella?"

Humiliation washed through me. I had a hard time looking at him as I stammered through an explanation, but I could see his expression morph from bafflement to concern in my peripheral vision.

He bought the caramel corn for me, narrating the steps as he went.

When we mounted our bikes to get back on the road, he hesitated, opened and shut his mouth. I wondered if he was struggling over whether or not he should probe, or if it was bigger than that, if he was unsure of what to even ask?

I ended his struggle and shut down the conversation. "Vampires forget human stuff sometimes," I said, and left it at that.

But the incident left me in a raw emotional state for what happened the next day. Charlie called in the early afternoon while I was at the big house watching Nessie paint birdhouses with Esme. I stepped out onto the patio to take the call.

"Sue's coming over tonight and I'm, uh," he cleared his throat, "trying out a ragù recipe I found online."

I grinned. "Getting ambitious are we?"

"It looks straightforward," he said, defensive. "Mostly."

Sitting down on a stone bench across from the barbecue pit, I pulled up my reservoir of knowledge from all the cooking I had done growing up. "Why don't you just use Gran's recipe, Dad?"

"Is that the one you always made?"

"Of course." Grandma Marie's recipes weren't the most imaginative or technically ambitious, but they turned out good results every time.

"You took the family recipe book with you."

Shoot. He was right—I had. "I'll bring it by. Really, I should make you a copy."

"Sure," he said absently. I could hear him opening and shutting drawer after drawer. "We have a garlic press, don't we, Bells?"

He still talked like that even though I had been married for a year and a half, even though I hadn't lived with him very long to begin with. We should replace the furnace next year. Our hydrangea bush died. Mrs. Haggerty came by to tell us she's selling her house.

It took a moment for the heavy, hollow feeling to settle in my stomach. My memory tried—it really did. First, a second or two to thumb through my brightly lit vampire memories. Then, with a reluctant lurch, my brain attempted to drudge the sloggy depths of my human memories, only to come up empty handed.

"Bells?"

I tried again. Garlic press—did we have one? Could I remember using such a tool, even once? I could conjure up an image of what one looked like, but that was about it.

Panic gripped me, constricted my throat. Birds a mile away were suddenly shrieking too loud for my ears. The texture of my denim jeans was too abrasive for my finger-pads.

"Isabella, are you there?"

"Dad," I croaked, "I have to go." I ended the call then, and felt guilty when I thought about it later. When I dropped off the cookbook, I also brought the garlic press from Esme's fully stocked kitchen with her blessing.

But…in that immediate aftermath, I was just lost. I thought of the vending machine, the look on Jake's face, of the way Angela didn't answer my texts for a week after our last phone call. I thought of the way it was beginning to feel physically strenuous to reach back into my human memories. It took so long and often yielded negligible results. My chest felt tight, constricted, trapped. It hurt. It was exactly the way I felt right before my emotions used to boil over and become tears, back when I could cry.

I whimpered impotently. In desperation, I strained—tried to force the tears to come. I longed for the release, the expression. I was in pain, damn it. I needed this!

They didn't come, of course. They couldn't.

Moaning wretchedly in defeat, I slammed my phone against the stone bench and it shattered into pieces.

"Bella? Are you okay?"

Breathlessly, I reeled, retreating from my tantrum. Jasper had silently joined me on the patio. When, I couldn't say. He hung back, keeping his distance, but the concern on his face seemed sincere. Naturally, he must have been able to feel my emotions blaring, even in the deep recesses of the house.

I shook my head and tried a feeble smile. "Just overreacting."

"I doubt that."

Opening my hand to reveal the electronic debris, I sardonically countered, "I broke my phone."

Jasper cracked a smile. "We should get you a new one then."

He drove and he didn't press. That made me feel safe enough on the ride home to blurt, "I think it's happening. I'm starting to lose my human memories. Like, really lose them. It feels…I'm losing the human me."

He nodded.

"It's awful."

"It is," he agreed. After a mile or two, he added, "It's less painful if you don't fight it. They go faster and the hole they leave behind doesn't feel as big. I know that won't make a difference for you, though. I know you'll fight and I understand why."

Misty trees whipped by our speeding car. "Didn't you?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Some. Mostly no. I reckon I have fewer human memories than about anyone else in the family. More than Alice, at least. Maybe more than Edward. Mostly, I remember the war, battles and such, because I used those memories to survive living under Maria."

"That's so sad."

We rode in silence for a few minutes. I didn't expect him to speak again, but he did. "I think I may have had a sister. I'm not sure. Maybe she was just a pint-sized thing I thought of as a sister. There was an old man who taught me to shoot a rifle, but I don't know who he was. Not sure where exactly I grew up. I tried tracking Whitlocks through Texas census data once, but I couldn't find a farm or a ranch that rang a bell. Details about me, who I was and what I wanted, they fared better. I was a brash kid—thought I understood everything about the world. Needless to say, I actually knew less than nothing. People liked me, looked to me to lead when things went to shit. Pretty sure I was too charming for my own good, a love 'em and leave 'em menace to society. And…I was good with horses." He rubbed his jaw absently. "Mayhap I worked with them, or I just liked riding? Not sure."

Jasper looked my way and smiled darkly, "'Course I haven't been near one since I turned, so who knows. They sense what we are a mile off and spook if we get anywhere near. Couldn't carry our dense weight anyhow. Sometimes the family will drink wild ones when we find a herd, but I don't have the stomach."

I appreciated both his words and the calming influence he was exerting.

"Sorry my experience isn't more helpful. Rose—that's who you should talk to. She's the one who'll get it, and she may even have some advice."

"Probably." But it was a noncommittal concession. I couldn't see myself going to Rose about this. Most likely, I would just get some flavor of an "I told you so."

—

[scribbled quotes in the margins; you remember hearing Carlisle think of Bella spending time in his study going through old medical journals]

It has been claimed that in memory we have a special, logically distinct, access to our own identities, and that without such an access to our own identities, the very notion of a person would be inapplicable. - Mrinal Miri, "Memory and Personal Identity," 1973

…it seems to me arguable that a creature who lacked altogether the ability to have this sort of knowledge of its own past history, would be incapable of knowledge of any sort, and could not qualify as a conscious being or a person. - Sydney Shoemaker, Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity, 1963

It is because I remember my first kiss that I think I am the same person as that awkward adolescent. If I had no memory of past experiences, the sense that I existed in the past would be dramatically compromised. - Stanley B. Klein and Shaun Nichols, "Memory and the Sense of Personal Identity," 1999

—

Bookshelves of a Dead Girl

I was grateful when Jasper didn't blab about my breakdown to the family. At least, neither Alice nor Edward mentioned anything and I couldn't fathom either of them being able to restrain themselves. A day later, when Edward noticed my new phone, his surprise seemed genuine.

But hiding what I was worrying about couldn't continue. Charlie called again and this time Edward was nearby. He announced shyly that he had asked Sue to move in, and I couldn't have been happier for him. Then he launched into this awkward roundabout ramble, finally asking whether or not I would be okay with Seth having my room. Of course, I was. The room wasn't even mine anymore and hadn't been for a long time. At least, that was how I remembered it. Apparently, the bedroom was still full of my things.

"A whole room of stuff," I whispered to Edward faintly after I hung up. "My stuff, things I loved, and I haven't thought of it once. I…I can't even remember what's there."

He held me and spoke gently. "It's normal, Bella. The human memories fade unless you are focused on keeping them, and you can't focus on everything. Some of it will go."

No kidding.

I tried to work up the will to share with him what I was experiencing, but the words wouldn't come. In the moment, all I could muster was, "I know. Yeah…I know. It's, well…I know."

We'd just had our little adventure at the school the night before and Edward seemed…off. His brush with the darker, more selfish side of his sexuality had shaken him, perhaps even left him feeling ashamed. I was conscientious of how fragile he appeared to be at the moment, unsure how he would react if I heaped my worries on him. Most likely, he would wallow in guilt over having turned me in the first place and that wasn't what either of us needed.

However, my resolve to bear my fears alone could not withstand the emotional upset of actually packing up my room. He knew something was wrong when a second-hand copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea staggered me for a moment, and I cracked.

"It's like I did die, kind of," I blurted to him when we were almost done. I was seated with my back against the headboard of my old bed, my knees clutched close, gazing at my empty desk, closet, and shelves.

Edward was lying on the bed, perpendicular to me, and the look on his face when I said those words was everything I feared it would be.

I had to look away, but I tried to explain. Now that I was finally voicing my fears, I couldn't stop. "I didn't think I would feel so separate from my human self, because I didn't at first, and I don't most of the time. But sometimes, more and more, I will catch myself thinking of her as someone I was rather than someone I am." I swallowed my misgivings and confessed to him about the garlic press, about Angela's brothers, about my incomplete fantasy list. It felt good to get it out.

"I don't remember," I continued. "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I don't know if I have read it or not. I've read pretty much everything on my shelves, but you know how it is. You splurge at the bookstore and bring home too many, life happens and one or two slip through the cracks. Is that one of them? Is it another missing memory or did I just never read it? I have no idea."

He reached out and placed his hand over mine. His concern appeared to be bordering on agony. I first felt guilty, and then tried to push down a sharp spike of resentment for his reaction. It was exhausting having to hide or downplay the elements of my adjustment to vampire life that were unsettling, difficult, or painful—having to reassure him constantly that he wasn't the villain of this piece. Why couldn't I just share how I was feeling without him taking the blame automatically onto himself?

It made me feel like I was going through all of this alone.

"I accept that it's going to be like this from now on, until I don't even remember what I've forgotten," I clarified for him. "I don't care about the book. If I did read it, it obviously didn't make that much of an impression. And maybe I didn't and I am reacting over nothing."

Of course, he saw through me and cut right to the heart of my fears. "You're worried about memories you do care about."

I was surprised when my lip trembled—my emotions much closer to the surface than I had thought. I nodded. "Like you said, I can't focus on everything. It's just hitting me how many memories happened in this room that I wouldn't want to lose, and you and I are taking all of the context away. Seth is going to move in here and it will look completely different." I finally broke down and just pleaded, "You won't let me forget, will you? Not all the memories I'm talking about involve you, but let's be honest, most of them do."

It was a childish request—and unkind of me. There was nothing he could do, and asking him for help he could not give was a horrible thing to do to him. My instinct had been to turn to him to feel safe and I hadn't known the words were coming until they were leaving my mouth.

But Edward didn't flinch. "How about this? Tonight, I'll begin telling you the story of every memory I have in this room. Even the ones where you were asleep. You can add your perspective and all the details you remember. That way, your human memories will have an anchor. Even if there comes a time when you no longer remember the moment itself, you will have the memory of remembering it with me."

I'm not sure how, but I had forgotten that I was married to the best man in the world. Seeking his strength, I shifted toward him and laid my head on his chest. He caressed my jaw. I closed my eyes and a weight lifted from me. It was remarkable how much smaller my worries always felt while in his arms.

Still, it would have been nice if….

"Do you know what I miss about being human?"

Edward tensed beneath me and I knew he would take that the worst possible way. But I needed to open up to him, to share my fear and pain—the load was becoming too heavy to carry on my own. I was tired of being alone.

"Don't spiral on me, Edward. There isn't much. If you gave me the choice a thousand times over, I'd make the same one. I enjoy what I am, what we are together." I kissed the palm of the hand that rested on my cheek. "But sometimes, it would be nice to cry."

"To cry?"

He sounded so horrified, a humorless chuckle bubbled out of me. "Just for the release. When I was human, emotions would build up and then they would spill over. I thought it was annoying at the time, but I would cry, and it was like a safety valve letting out all that built up pressure, maintaining an upper limit on my frustration or sadness or whatever. Sometimes, as a vampire, it feels like emotions just go up and up. It's harder to come back down."

His grip on me tightened. "I'm sorry, Bella. I wish I could help."

Didn't he understand that he was helping? I felt better than I had in weeks and all he had done was listen to and hold me.

I raised myself up and crawled to close the distance between our lips. Kissing him softly, I asserted, "You are."

"You know what I mean," he said as I tucked my body into his.

This silly man. "Yes, I do know what you mean. You want to take the pain away, not help me with it. Well, too bad." I didn't know how to make him understand that I had made my own choices—he was not responsible for them. I didn't need him to take my suffering onto himself. Just being by my side was enough. I patted his chest. "I'll be okay. This was a decision I made with my eyes open. I knew the trade-offs. I'll still feel whatever I feel while I experience the fallout, but I own my choice and I will get through, in no small part because I have you."

But he didn't drop it. "Bella…."

So I cut him off. "There is something you can do."

And he conceded. "Yes?"

I tried rolling my body against his suggestively, but there was a desperate, pathetic edge in my movements. It was humiliating. Yet, I pushed forward and made my offer clear by licking his earlobe.

Of course, it didn't work. Edward had an iron will when it came to resisting my advances for my own good.

"Bella, you're vulnerable right now."

That was such a ridiculous thing for him to say, I laughed. There was a slightly bitter tinge to the sound. "Damn right I'm vulnerable. So, comfort me. I'm your wife, Edward, not some girl on the rebound you just met."

My throat constricted and I resisted the urge to curl up into myself. I hated begging. Especially for this—for sex. It was such a demeaning experience. But we should be past that now, right? He wouldn't make me beg for it, would he?

A silent moment, and when he spoke, it was in that controlled, formal voice of his that made me want to rip my hair out. "I more meant that we were just talking through some pretty heavy stuff. I can see you're feeling a lot right now, and maybe there is a better time."

"What are you talking about? It's our only time," I burst out. "It's our last opportunity. We can make a memory in this room that won't fade."

It was an emotionally naked plea. I wasn't asking for anything elaborate—just comfort. I knew that sex had been a little weird for us since our break-in at the school. As if in penance for wanting a single rough, face-fucking blow job so badly, he'd only initiated the schmaltziest of lovemaking. His efforts had been focused on me, my body, and my pleasure exclusively. Slow, gentle, and romantic were all that had been permitted from the second we exited that supply closet.

Well, that was just fine. Honestly, the idea of Edward pampering me with loving touches sounded like exactly what I needed at the moment.

He sat us up.

Resolutely, I forced a brave smile and clung to him, not leaving his lap. He swept my hair away from my face and studied me. I held my breath, hoping. But I refused to plead anymore than I already had.

His eyes made a decision and he spoke. "Hold onto me."

Edward stood, suddenly, and began walking, which forced me to do as he said.

"Where are we going?" I asked in a slight panic.

"Just to the bathroom."

"Why?"

He carried me into the cool, tiled room. "You said you wished you could release some of that emotional steam. I thought maybe we could take a shower and then come back to the bedroom after?"

My mouth opened, then closed. The expression on his face was all tenderness. "You say 'we'—does that mean you are showering with me?" I clarified.

"Of course."

My smile of relief was involuntary. "Well, that's all right then."

I was already stripping him when he set me down and closed the door, using my speed and limited poise to get his pants off. He helped me by tossing his shirt aside and stepping out of his shoes. The sight of his cock was comforting—he was erect. My seduction had at least been somewhat effective.

On my knees, I grasped at his hips and cupped him. My mouth watered to take him inside. "You're hard."

Predictably, he pulled me away and to my feet. But then he kissed me and murmured, "Constantly," which took me completely off guard.

A soft glow settled over me as we removed my clothing and climbed into the tub. I felt safe and cared for. His love and desire for me were right at the surface and plain to see. The water was pleasantly warm as it ran down my naked body, both stimulating and soothing the nerves beneath my skin as it flowed. The beauty of his body was stunning as usual—his wide shoulders and sculpted chest, right in my eyeline, looked jarring next to the old familiar pattern of tile.

"It's kind of crazy, having you in here with me," I admitted.

His smile was a little cocky as he lifted the palm of my hand to his lips. "Another fantasy come to life?"

I laughed, slightly giddy. He was intoxicatingly adorable. "Not really," I confessed, feeling brave. "I don't know why, but I never really thought about that. This was where I…. Well, a lot of nights you were in my room. So, this was where I had the privacy to…." My eyes drifted significantly to the detachable shower head over my shoulder.

Edward's eyes went wide as my words registered. His expression bordered on scandalized, and that might have triggered a sense of shame in me, if not for his fully visible erection. At my words, I saw a shiver and tremble run up the shaft and then a heavy drop of precum appeared.

Officially egged on, I added, "I would have to bite my lip, sometimes my arm, to keep quiet. I was more worried about you hearing me than my dad. He was always downstairs with the TV on, but you were across the hall with vampire hearing. But I had to," I insisted. "I couldn't go back in there and spend the night with you in my bed without it. The way you would touch me, hold me—kiss me, over and over for hours. I would have gone insane."

He winced.

"Don't feel bad, Edward. I would have been that way regardless."

"Bella," he scolded when I reached out and trailed a caress from his pectoral down to his abs. "We didn't come in here for you to seduce me."

What a ludicrous thing to say—of course we had. I ignored him.

"Just being around you," I made my voice throaty, "I was pretty much in a constant state of arousal. You can't help it—you just push all my buttons. Relentlessly."

I leaned into him, wet skin brushing wet skin, and kissed his collarbone. His chest rumbled and my pussy clenched. I licked the trail of water droplets along the line of the bone. With a growl, his hands seized me against him. His hard cock dragged across my slippery stomach and then rocked into me. My knees would have given out if it weren't for his strong arms holding me tight.

I wanted, needed, Edward to fuck me—right here in the shower where I used to make myself come over and over just so that I could stand being in the same bed with him. Those chaste nights would have been unbearable otherwise. Had they been torture for him to? I hoped so. I needed to believe that he had struggled to keep his hands off me. That he'd needed to take himself in hand as often as I had humped the shower head in this tub.

Of course, then I reminded myself that Edward had probably been conditioned to think that masturbating would first give him hairy palms and then the floor would open up and drop him straight to hell.

A giggle came out more like a snort, my body feeling taut and giddy in a way that was unpleasantly antsy.

Edward stiffened.

"Sorry," I spoke to his shoulder and clung to him. "Something just occurred to me. It's not even funny, really."

"Yes?"

Screw it—I needed to know. It was too important to me. Had he longed for me the way I longed for him? Addressed his needs the way I had? Or had my fantasies of his sexy hand on his hard cock been as foolish and naive as everything else I had dreamed of?

I peered up at him so that I could watch his face, but I tried to ask the question like the answer didn't matter to me. "Do…did you ever masturbate while thinking of me? Or were you indoctrinated by the propaganda of your youth that it would make you go blind? Or," I swallowed as my eyes dropped involuntarily, "was it like the fantasy thing? Where you couldn't let yourself?"

Silence swelled between us and stretched. My shoulders were stiff and tight. I didn't dare breathe.

Then, softly, his fingers touched my cheek.

"I masturbated over you," he said.

Happiness and…relief detonated inside me. I beamed up at him. "Really?"

He nodded. "You have an effect on me, too. It wasn't something I did while we were apart, or to prepare before interacting with you, more something that came after. If I was too…stimulated. And, true, I wouldn't fantasize. I would just think about you and what you had done to get me so worked up in the first place."

All of those caveats and qualifiers were so indelibly Edward that they further convinced me—he wasn't just saying this to make me feel better. It was the truth: Edward masturbated over me. "While touching yourself."

"While touching myself," he reiterated and a shiver of pure, carnal pleasure rolled down me and thrummed between my legs.

I launched myself at him, kissing his lips with unbridled hunger.

So eager was I for him to pin me against the tile and fuck me until the water turned cold that I could have screamed when Edward reached for the shampoo.

"Really, Edward?"

"Really," he said with a finality that I recognized well. I knew it meant that sex would happen on his timetable, not mine.

I sighed.

But then he said softly, with tenderness, "Trust me. Trust my years of managing emotions as a vampire."

My frustration melted. I studied his expression and realized that he was concerned. My high-strung emotions were still giving him pause in spite of his body's interest. He didn't want to comfort me with sex; he wanted to comfort me and then make love to me. It was sweet, really.

"All right," I submitted. "What do I need to do?"

"Let me take the lead."

So, I did.

He washed my hair with a deliberate gentleness that made me want to cry. If I were human, I probably would have. His every touch was so full of tenderness and consideration that there was nothing I could do but melt into his arms. After rinsing my hair, he washed and massaged my body inch by inch while we carried on conversation in low murmurs. No part of me was too small for his attention. Each segment of each finger on each of my hands received its due. We were naked and together, under a steady spray of warm water, with nothing between us. He was right—this was working. I could feel the nervous energy that pressed against my insides slowly deflate.

I had thought only sex could release tension this way, could make me feel this close to him. I was wrong.

A future of eternity stretched before me where any time life got to be too much, I could come here, to a bathtub with Edward. A place where he had the power to make all the pain and fear melt away. I sighed, leaning into his strong chest while he soaped my breasts and stomach. I could handle anything if I had these arms to return home to. I floated, certain that no one living had ever been as safe and loved as I was in this moment.

My cunt hummed with a steady flutter of warm bliss. My skin was alive with feeling, alert to every sensation as he soothed the muscles of my thighs. It wasn't my usual urgent or needy kind of horniness. Just the opposite—it was relaxing and pleasant, a tide of pleasure that rose and fell in all of me at a leisurely pace that was reassuring.

"Better?" he asked after he had toweled my skin dry while supporting my body, propped against his.

"Better," I agreed wholeheartedly. "Can I have my memory now?"

Edward grinned and nodded. He gestured to the pile of our clothes on the bathroom floor. "Do we bother getting dressed?"

I envisioned him lifting me into his arms and carrying my willing and ready body across the hall. "Probably not. We're just going in there to have sex in the bed, right?" The bed where we had laid side by side in chaste longing night after night.

This was it, the moment where the promise of all of those cumulative nights would be fulfilled. A fresh surge of slick wet flooded my pussy in anticipation.

"Are we? What's the game?"

That jolted me. Honestly, the possibility hadn't even crossed my mind. "We're playing a game? Are you sure?"

"Yes."

He said the word with conviction, but I wasn't so sure how deep it went. I had been treading lightly in that area, giving him space to the best of my ability. It was obvious to me that our last game had rattled him.

"Edward, we don't have to if you're not ready."

"I'm ready." He kissed me, passionately. The reangling of his pelvis when he did made me aware of his fully aroused cock. "What would you like for your memory?" he murmured, voice husky, his dark eyes searching mine.

I held onto my hesitation a moment longer, but the lure was too great. Now that he had broached the possibility, all I could think about were my human girl dreams of doing naughty things in the dead of night with my boyfriend, who wasn't even supposed to be there. Who had snuck in through my window. Whose perfect body pressed against mine all night, every night, filling my panties with hungry, hot aching and my dreams with pure sin.

How could I say no?

I swallowed. "Okay, get dressed."

—

Watched From the Shadows

"Where do you want me?" he asked in the dim room.

We had closed the windows and door, shut off the lights. He looked delicious in his gray v-neck and dark jeans. I was more exposed, wearing only a light-weight t-shirt and panties—what I had worn to bed back in Arizona, where the nights hadn't been rainy and cold.

What I had always wished I'd had the courage to wear to bed when Edward spent the night.

I was so aroused my knees were unsteady, and that made my answer a forgone conclusion. "The rocking chair." I was too horny, too blissed from our shower, to worry what he would think about me wanting him there.

He sat as directed and I went to him, pulled forward by the insatiable drive to be close to him. He cradled me in his lap and threaded his fingers with mine, waiting patiently for me to speak.

I considered carefully. On the one hand, I didn't want to push him if he wasn't ready. On the other, I was more at peace with my sexual urges than I had ever been. Our foray into trespassing may have stirred up things for him, but anxieties had only been laid to rest for me. In the past, I had been consumed with shame over my darker lusts—my attraction to his vampiric aspects, his deadliness, our predator/prey relationship. But his confession in our old classroom had been a revelation.

Contrary to my fears, I wasn't alone. He felt it too, and he was a mess. Part of me felt guilty for being so comforted, but how could it have been anything but a relief to realize, it wasn't that I was a deviant and he was a saint who would judge me with disgust if he ever found out—we were both deviants, both perverts. Two halves of a whole.

Our problems in bed? It wasn't me, wasn't my fault like I had always assumed. It wasn't that he didn't want me—it wasn't even that he didn't want the same things as me. He was broken…or, maybe blocked was a better way to phrase it, unable to let himself enjoy his sexuality.

The thought of the expression of agonized pleasure on his face in that supply closet, his cries of relief and sobs of ecstasy as he fucked my face, emboldened me.

Maybe…maybe he just needed permission to indulge this part of himself.

"I have two, really," I announced bravely. "Two fantasies for this room. Would it be reasonable if we combined them?"

He nodded.

But now I had to ease him into this. "Edward?"

"Yes?"

I inhaled a bracing breath. "I feel like I have to explain one of these. So you don't judge me."

He tried to hide it, but my words unnerved him. "I won't judge you."

Maybe there was a better way to approach this. Some of my uncertainty creeped back. My persistent fascination with him watching me from this rocking chair was definitely…iffy. Not the least because, in most iterations, a key component was the idea that I didn't know he was there. Only in the fantasy. Of course I didn't want that in real life. Still, it was a gross thing to masturbate to, I couldn't deny it.

My voice wavered as I spoke, my grip on him tightening. "I would judge me. It's one I have always felt weird about, but couldn't stop myself from returning to." Perhaps he would take it better if I clarified, "I want to emphasize that this fantasy is different in the sense that I wouldn't want it to have ever actually happened."

That only threw his guard up more. "What does that mean?"

"It means it's something that is exciting and sexy as a fantasy, but if it happened in real life, I would have felt very violated."

He looked slightly stunned. Revulsion pulled at his lips. I watched as scenarios chased themselves around in his eyes. What was he thinking? That I wanted him to rape me or something?

"Gah! I'm not explaining it right," I burst out, frustrated with the mess I had made. "I'm making it sound even worse than it is." I reached over and placed my grip atop our clasped fingers, sandwiching his hand between my two palms. "Here, let me show you."

My shield dropped immediately and the flood of thoughts from me to him flowed so freely, it shocked me. I'm not sure if it was my desperation to reassure him or if all my practice was paying off, but it had never been so easy before.

I took him back to a version of this room that had belonged to the human girl. The space was full of clutter and disarray. A slight chill filled the air because it was snowy outside and, unbeknownst to me, someone had briefly opened the window to climb in. The dead of night was darker than usual with the moon behind clouds and the reflection from the patchy piles of snow weak. Still, if I had looked directly at the rocking chair, I would have seen the outline of a head silhouetted against the window. But I didn't. I was in my own little world.

I had been dreaming of Edward, my mysterious, beautiful Biology lab partner. I shouldn't…but I did. Constantly. He made my body tingle all over with awareness of him. In my dreams, we rolled around kissing in the back seat of his Volvo. His hands were on me—over the clothes, then slowly, lecherously, they began slipping under. I woke from just such a dream right after his hand had slipped under the waistband of my jeans, the tips of his strong fingers brushing against the top of my slit.

Alone in my bed, my mind still grasping greedily to hold onto my dream, I was wet. My pussy was needy and hot. My blankets were tangled around my naked legs in a way that told me I had been restless in sleep. I had to kick my legs free before I could reach my hand down into my panties. God, the ache was sharp. I stroked my clitoris and moaned into the silence. Edward…I wanted Edward and I told the dark room so. I thought I was alone, and that made me bold. Explicit. As I chased my orgasm, I called to the object of my lust, begging him to fuck me.

The figure in the chair slowly recovered from his shock. I wanted him. I was feverishly writhing on a bed mere feet from him with my hand in my panties, whimpering his name, but he couldn't touch me. So, he looked on enraptured, touched himself and wanted, longed.

When I pulled both of us back from the memory and into the present, severing the connection, I held my breath and studied Edward. I had tried to frame the fantasy in such a way that it would be as appealing as possible. But I could see almost immediately that I had been unsuccessful in communicating the excitement and star-crossed romance I had felt. The thrill at the forbidden naughtiness of him eavesdropping, learning and seeing more than he bargained for, hadn't translated.

He didn't seem outright revolted, but the expression on his face was…perplexed, I think. Perhaps even troubled.

"You're not into it."

He blinked, then his eyes refocused on my face. When he spoke, it was to spare my feelings. "I'm just a little surprised."

The diplomacy of his answer only underscored how much he didn't relate to my fantasy. It was a sobering experience, the opposite of every other fantasy I had shown him up to this point. I didn't realize how self-assured I had become. After the others had gone over so well, especially my Biology classroom scenario which I had once believed he would reject outright, I had gotten comfortable. Too comfortable.

Fidgeting self-consciously, I fought the shame rising in my chest. I couldn't meet his eyes, so I spoke to my knees. "I know, it's twisted. I don't know what's wrong with me that I have been carrying that around for years. We won't do that one."

I scrambled to regroup emotionally, to push past this awkward moment of miscalculation. Trembling, I reached for his hand once more and tried again, this time with something I thought—hoped—he would like better.

"Is this one okay?"

In many ways it began the same, but was also completely different. We knew each other better, for one thing. He wasn't the strange boy who sat next to me in Biology—he was my vampire boyfriend who held me while I slept. He belonged in my bed, as much a part of my regular night as my quilt or pillow. I had kissed him until I was sleepy and drifted off with his fingers in my hair.

Until I woke squirming and straining against his hard body, gasping from the pleasure of his thigh between my legs. My eyes opened to find his staring in intense hunger. I was tempting him, testing his resolve. I started to apologize, but he cut me off with a hard kiss, rocked his body toward mine and pressed his erection into my thigh. I swooned, going boneless against my mattress as he nudged my legs apart with his knee and rolled his body on top of mine. He hooked my legs around him and kissed me with a growl. I had tempted him too far, and he could do nothing but take me.

One by one, our articles of clothing hit the floor as he stripped us both. Then he kissed and licked his way down my body to my pussy. I tried to keep quiet but I couldn't—he made me come too hard. He entered me in the afterglow, stretched me open with the unyielding bliss that is his cock, rolled us over, and let me ride him to ecstasy.

When I pulled us back to the present, my cunt was buzzing with heat and I could feel his erection pressing into me from below.

"That one is naughtier," I conceded, "from the standpoint that I thought it was impossible and knew I shouldn't have been thinking about us having sex. But at least it's not…you know." I cringed—what had I been thinking showing him that other one?

This second fantasy was clearly the better fit. I wriggled against his hard cock, comforted by his reaction. "So, that one for sure then?"

I was confident, but he took a moment before answering.

"How were you planning on combining the two?"

Warm shame rose in me as I answered with misgiving. "It was silly—I just thought it would make sense to start with you in the chair. I would wake up, start playing with myself, and when I started calling your name, you would join me on the bed and we would transition into the other."

An apology for even bringing up the first fantasy was forming on my tongue when he nodded curtly.

"That's acceptable."

My breath caught in shock. I scrambled for a moment before I could respond. "Are you sure?" I asked uncertainly.

"Yes."

His jaw had a determined set to it, but it didn't put my worries to rest. The last thing I wanted was for him to play a game that made him uncomfortable in some misguided ploy to make me happy.

I reminded him that saying no when things went too far was built into the game. "Our safe word—"

"Is fern," he cut me off. "Bella, I was taken off guard, but that's all. There is nothing wrong with you or your fantasy. I understand being turned on by something you wouldn't actually want in real life. Believe me, I do."

I swallowed at the reminder of his sexual response to thoughts of drinking me, feeling both turned on and saddened.

Edward's gaze was tender and he kissed me. "I love you Bella, and I am okay with this."

After a moment, I conceded, trusting that he knew his limits.

When he helped me to my feet, it hit me that we were really doing this. We were going to have sex in my old room, on the bed where I had burned for him nightly. And not only that, I was finally going to touch myself while he watched. My knees wobbled in response, but I made it to the bed.

There I considered my props carefully and rumpled the bedding before I climbed in. Initially, I pulled the covers over myself, but that lasted only a second or two. I…I wanted him to be able to see everything. I wanted my body to be exposed for his eyes.

So, bedding was arranged and rearranged so that one of my legs was completely uncovered. A corner of quilt draped across my hips in a paltry way that I hoped kept the gusset of my panties in view, if in shadow. Feeling shy, I rested my head on the pillow and pushed the hem of my t-shirt upward. And then up again, only becoming satisfied when it barely covered my nipples. The underside swell of my breasts should be completely visible, but I needed to check.

"How is your vantage point? Good?"

"Very." His gravelly voice came from where I knew the rocking chair to be and it made the moment so real. My pussy clenched in anticipation.

"You can see the underside of my boobs, right?"

"Yes." I heard the smile in his voice. But then his tone changed to one of curiosity. "I confess this is strange, though. I didn't think you would enjoy being watched. I wrote off exhibitionism for you entirely."

My nerves startled a giddy laugh out of me. I was staring at the printed pattern on my pillowcase rather than having to look him in the eye, feeling the cool air against my mostly bare skin, and that made me bold. "You watching me is different than other people watching me. You watching is thrilling—it always has been."

My daring confession left me lightheaded with whirling emotions. I couldn't believe that we were actually doing this.

"Now, shush. I'm sleeping," I said, eager, so eager, to begin.

I knew the fantasy was supposed to begin with me asleep, and I dutifully reproduced that—but I was also impatient now. So I rushed through that part with only the most half-hearted gestures pretending. I can say that having my eyes closed made me both less self-conscious and more…aware. Aware of his eyes on me, of the fabric of my bedding and meager clothing against my skin.

I was exposed. And Edward was looking.

When my fingers slipped down into my panties, displacing the quilt entirely, my throat emitted a needy sob of pleasure. My clit was hyper-sensitive and slick. I was so wet the backs of my fingers became coated as they made contact with the inside of my underwear.

Squirming against my touch, pulsing my hips in a way I hoped looked sinfully tempting, I reminded myself that I was a human girl. There was a lecherous monster in my room and I was in imminent danger of being ravished…but I didn't know that. Not yet. It was so freeing—I could hump my hand wantonly, push my shirt up higher still and pinch my nipples so hard I could scream, because I was alone, right? I was just fulfilling the promise of my dream. A lovely bit of fantasy where the boy of my dreams was stripping me naked in his back seat so that he could have his way with me.

"Edward," I gasped, hips bucking when I heard him shift his weight in the chair. "My Edward."

Ungh. Just knowing he could hear me was going to make me come all on its own.

God oh God, a bone-deep tingling sensation was washing through me. I was dreaming of him and, in mere moments, he would appear out of the darkness as if I had summoned him.

I groaned, "God, Edward take me. Have me. Fuck me." And there I broke. It was too much and I couldn't wait anymore. My head repositioned on the pillow and my eyes found his. "Fuck me, Edward. Fuck me, please!"

He came to save me in my time of need, just like I knew he would, rising out of the chair and stalking toward me with a purposefulness that made the inner walls of my pussy flutter. His eyes were the black predator gaze that made me freeze and surrender every time. He removed my underwear, tossed it aside, and pushed my legs open, wide open, without breaking eye contact.

Oh Lord, I was going to hyperventilate.

When his head dipped and his tongue touched my clit, I did. I had been trying to keep myself from coming until I could come on his cock, but there was no hope for me now. The orgasm shot through me in seconds.

Edward didn't stop. His tongue became relentless and insistent—demanding my pleasure. He sucked each lip of my labia so hard it would have left a hickey had I been human. Then he did the same with my clit. When I came down from my second orgasm, he backed off from my battered, overstimulated nub and instead managed to get his tongue so deep inside me it felt like fucking. Only a tongue can wriggle and lap and swirl.

I could hear myself screaming, but I didn't care.

His upper arms were under my thighs, keeping me angled for maximum depth of penetration, and his hands continued up over my trembling tummy to reach my breasts. My sensitive breasts—nipples already sore from the way I had been treating them.

And I was coming again. Distantly, I was aware of myself groping at the bedding with my nails, of the sound of tearing fabric. But only distantly. My body was wracked with shockwave after shockwave of pleasure as Edward ate me, relentlessly.

God, he was so good to me. Not for the first time, I wished that there was a way I could make him understand, to share with him just what he did to me.

I clutched at his hair, humping his face like the demon in heat I was, and made a half-hearted attempt to lower my shield.

H…heaven. His mouth is goddamn heaven. Ughn—yes, mmmn! The friction when his tongue's this deep. His nose mashed against my clit—so good, it hurts….

But it was no use. It had to be—there was no way I could concentrate in the midst of all this bliss.

Yet…he stiffened. Then he stopped. And then, oh God no, he pulled away. I moaned mournfully at the loss of his mouth.

Edward sat up, wide-eyed.

Then comprehension clicked. "Wait," I said, more breathless than I thought I would be. "Did you hear that?"

He nodded, looking like he had been struck by lightning.

I gave a whoop of celebration, but my movements were a drunken, slaphappy mess. I kissed him, tasting myself on his lips and tongue with a thrill. He had done a number on me—I was at the same time exhausted with overstimulation and in a near state of frenzy needing more.

"I've been trying for a while, but it hasn't worked," I offered feebly. "It takes so much concentration to let the shield down, and I seem to need physical contact. But I keep practicing. I am hoping that I can get to the point where I can just send you thoughts whenever."

"Really?" He looked riveted by the idea, but my mind was officially one-track.

His hard cock was right there and I was in rapture of it. I knew exactly how it would feel pushing inside me when my pussy was already this battered and beaten with pleasure.

My fingers plucked at his clothes as I kissed my way down his neck, down the collar of his shirt. "I was just thinking about how much I wished you could know what you were doing to me, and you heard it," I answered out of obligation, but then brought us back to the urgent matter at hand. "Edward," I tugged fist-fulls of his shirt. "I want to tear this off you so bad, but I know you don't have anything else to wear. Take it off. Now. All of it."

With a smirk, he did as I asked. His long-lined naked body looked like perfect sin. His beauty was, as always, breathtakingly otherworldly, but just now it struck me particularly hard. For the first time in a long while, I felt plain and unremarkable and human next to him.

Rather than unsettling me, this heightened my excitement. The dead human girl I used to be…I felt close to her. It warmed me. I was here in her room, on her bed, and this is what I needed—to be human Bella right now. To know in my bones, not just in my head, that she was still alive inside of me. To know I was still complete, still whole.

Part of it was the dark room, the lack of mirrors, but I also knew much of it was Edward. He could still do this to me. For me. He could still make me feel human, and he could make the human girl's dreams come true.

"Edward, your mouth is heaven, but I need…." I cut to the chase, looking at his cock and shamelessly begging for it. "I need."

He climbed onto the bed with me and sat with his back against the headboard, just like in the fantasy I had shown him. "Yes, Bella," he said with growling confidence. "I know what you need."

He grabbed me by my waist and lifted me as though I weighed nothing, swinging my leg over his body, facing him. Edward lowered me, thighs spread wide on either side of his hips, right down onto his cock. I cried out, hips writhing instinctively to slow the penetration. I was both sore from pleasure and under-prepared due a lack of stretching. He was so big that even now, over a year into marriage with him, my pussy still needed a good fingering or the first penetration of a fuck session would hurt.

But my body's resistance was just a reflex—I loved the way it felt when he entered me like this. His iron grip and steady pressure meant that he entered me to hilt in one, smooth, slow motion. My insides were strained to the point of tight discomfort, of aching. It felt just like I was a human girl being ravished by my love for the first time in the dead of night.

Yes…Edward did know exactly what I needed.

My body collapsed bonelessly into his and I reveled in the burn, stretched open to what felt like the bursting point. "Edward!"

For a piece of a part of a second, I thought I could just stay there like that, forever. Content in the particular euphoria of having him completely inside of me. But again, my body had instincts. And needs.

Right now, I needed to come on his cock.

Bracing my palms on his naked chest, I rocked my hips. Back and forth. I moaned, my movements becoming more frantic, more like rising and falling. Edward watched me with hot eyes and a jaw clenched with pleasure.

His hands gripped the hem of my t-shirt at my waist and lifted, knuckles trailing up the skin of my sides as he went. He bared my breasts, kissed them…and then pinched. Gently, but they were so abused at this point that it was the perfect stinging bliss. My cunt clamped down on his giant hardness, and with a whimper I lost all control.

"Love you, Edward," I rasped, leaning into him and bracing myself against the headboard as I rode him frantically. "I love you."

"Bella." He said in a way that was meant to get my attention.

I could have died—did he want me to stop? Now?

But when I peeked at his face he shook his head. "No, keep going. I'm just going to tell you a story."

He gathered me close and dipped his head to run the tip of his nose up my arm, along my shoulder, and to my earlobe. My breath caught. He kissed the skin of my throat, and, with a moan, I began riding him again.

"A week after I brought you home from Phoenix, you had a wet dream while I was lying in bed beside you," he revealed.

That shocked me into stillness once more, but this time he gripped my hips and made me move. Which…was so fucking hot.

Edward's strained voice continued. "I had never experienced anything so arousing in my entire existence as your body writhing against mine. And when you started talking…? I almost came, here on your sheets. 'Edward, kiss me. My neck. Deeper, I need you deeper inside me,' you said."

I felt clearly the sensation of his cock twitching inside me as he said the words, threatening to explode. My hips were a hurricane of desperate movement.

Edward reached up to pull each of my hands, on either side of his head, away from the headboard. I realized after the fact that he was probably just trying to save the bed from permanent damage that we would have to explain to Charlie, but in the moment I fought him. I needed to ride him hard and that required that I brace myself somehow. But he won the struggle.

He pinned my wrists together, behind my back. I…I had never felt anything like it. Never dared to dream anything like it besides the most fleeting thoughts. Edward…retraining me. The powerlessness of it intensified the realism of pretending I was human. I thought of how I used to masturbate to the thought of him holding me down dragging his cock across my cheek.

My pussy gripped down on him so hard I think it must have hurt both of us, but I couldn't help myself. I was hurtling toward an orgasm—one so big I could feel my entire body bracing itself.

Edward growled in my ear and thrust up into me. "I had to get out of here, or I would have lost control. So I jumped out the window, ran to the woods, and jerked my cock while I thought of those words. I shot my cum all over the ground, thinking of your face."

His story, his grip on my wrists, his cock bursting cum up inside me—I didn't stand a chance. I came in waves, the ecstasy slamming into me, over and over. My body trembled and seized with it as he held himself deep, grunting in my ear. The comedown was full of sharp aftershocks of bliss that hit me every time I tried to breathe.

My body collapsed into Edward's arms. He released my wrists and held me. As I came back to myself, he was stroking my bare back soothingly up and down my spine.

"How does it just keep getting better and better?"

He didn't answer, only dropped a kiss on my head, but could swear I felt him smile against my hair.

"Edward?"

"Hmm?"

I hesitated, but I needed to know. "Was that story true?" It was so vivid in my head—so close to my own dearest fantasies.

He groaned and spoke reluctantly. "Every word."

Perfect contentment washed through me. Again, I had been scared to open myself up to him, to share a fantasy I thought would scare him off, but again…we were the same. Every layer we dug into him merely revealed all the ways we wanted the same things. Maybe my fears of incompatibility had been completely unfounded. Maybe Edward and I were perfect for each other in every way after all.

"Thank you, Edward, for my memory."

—

But in the 1970s it was discovered that patients only had "flashbacks" when electrical stimulation of the surface of the brain also affected the limbic system, the part of the brain believed to be essential for emotions. Conscious recollection apparently is not possible without some kind of emotional component.

[...]

When we think about ourselves we do not imagine a static personality; we are aware of ourselves as evolving, changing, adapting, and readapting; we think of ourselves as "aging" and suddenly we can feel we are becoming young again. And yet we know we are always the same person. - Israel Rosenfield, "Memory and Identity," 1995

—

Dead Girl Revived

That night, after we arrived home, unloaded all of my old things off of Emmett's jeep, then made our daughter dinner and put her to bed, Edward and I curled up together in our room.

Firing up the record player beside the bed, he put on some old, crooning jazz album and made love to me. He was gentle. His mood was sunny and playful. Afterward, he held my naked body against his and stroked my hair.

"The first time I came to visit your room was the night after Mike Newton asked you to the dance."

"The day you started talking to me again," I corrected.

His chest rumbled with laughter under me, but he did not concede. "I started talking to you again because Newton asked you to the dance. I realized I was jealous and my feelings for you had grown out of control. I was too far gone. So, I gave up."

"Oh," I whispered, awash with warm surprise at his frankness.

"I gorged on as much blood as I could make myself swallow, knowing that if I was going to start talking to you again, I needed to be as well-fed as possible. And then I walked around your neighborhood, stared up at what I thought might be your window. I told myself I wouldn't get any closer…."

He talked for hours, sharing every detail of my room and me in my room that he remembered. Sometimes I spoke too, to answer a question he had or add context to an observation. Eventually, the memories became mutual ones, and we each took turns sharing and comparing our versions until the sun rose and flooded our bedroom with light.

The frantic anguish over my vanishing memories quieted. Just for a night.

As far as I knew, everything was perfect.