**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 6: Dark Water
[there is a large piece of paper folded up and shoved between journal pages; upon unfolding, you recognize it as a photocopy of a page from Madonna's scandalous 1992 publication Sex—a favorite coffee table book of Alice's…. Your sister is a bad influence.
The following quote is highlighted:]
There is something comforting about being tied up. Like when you were a baby and your mother strapped you in the car seat. She wanted you to be safe. It was an act of love.
—
Masturbation Therapy
I didn't go looking for books on kinky sex. At least, not on purpose. Not initially. That first one, it found me—shoved behind a selection of cookbooks in a tiny used book store in Olympia.
By the time I stumbled upon it, Alice had already tried to lure me away twice, to no avail. We finally agreed to meet up later, after the store closed, and she left me to browse musty old books with bent corners, highlighted paragraphs, and penned inscriptions in peace. There was the ever faintest tinge of mildew on the air, probably not detectable to the human nose, that informed me some of these books had mild water damage. The shop only had a few customers aside from me at the moment—a couple of harried-looking college students and an old man with a cappuccino in a travel mug and a Santa beard—and the aisles of shelves felt isolated. Private.
And there my fingers fell on the spine of Come Hither: A Commonsense Guide to Kinky Sex by Dr. Gloria Brame tucked behind a giant hardbound copy of The Joy of Cooking.
I don't know how long I stared at the cover. My fingers trembled as they traced the illustrations. A blindfold…handcuffs. Irresistibly, I thought of the way I felt when Edward had held my hands behind my back while he thrust up into me on my old bed. I thought of the first day with the glass dildo, when I had pictured my vulnerable human body pinned down by Edward while he dragged his cock across my cheek and lips. Nervous, I looked all around me, furtively, to reassure myself that no one was watching. No one could see what I was holding.
My eyes landed on a reading nook in a corner, a moth-eaten wingback chair with a crocheted throw beside a dingy window. Before I knew it, I had tucked myself into the chair with my stack of books—most of them innocuous, full of recipes to teach Charlie and Renesmee. Skittishly, I opened the book against my thighs so that the cover was hidden to anyone passing. I scanned the table of contents and my breathing stopped: "Chapter 5: Erotic Bondage." And…oh, dear God—right below it: "Chapter 6: Erotic Pain."
Shit.
Was…was I ready for this? Stumbling organically on moments of kinky bliss while in bed with Edward was one thing. Those were spur of the moment; he didn't plan them, I didn't ask for them. They weren't labeled, and I in turn was spared from being labeled. But, if I read this, all that could change. My plausible deniability would be gone. This was a deliberate pursuit of those moments, with the aim to understand the way they made me feel and replicate them. This would give me a vocabulary to describe my perversions. It would give them a name.
Swallowing, I thumbed to the first page of chapter five, thankful that my heart was inert because otherwise it would be hammering so loud the woman at the cash register would be able to hear it from across the shop.
"Bondage is perhaps the single most common kinky sex fantasy."
Oh…well, that was more comforting than it had any right to be.
"The idea of being tied up and helpless is frightening to some people for precisely the same reasons it's so erotic to others: Bondage makes a person physically vulnerable."
I could understand both sides of that. The idea of being helpless and vulnerable in general filled me with panic and fear. But the idea of being helpless and vulnerable to Edward? My pussy twinged with the first stirrings of arousal.
As I read, my eyes followed the faded pencil underlines of a former owner:
"…one of the main attractions of bondage is that it allows them to embrace a more primal, sensual, and sexual being within themselves. Physical restraint relieves them of the normal mental restraints humans share—whether that is self-consciousness about our bodies, insecurity about our ability to satisfy our partners, guilt or shame about enjoying sex, or any of the other types of sex-related anxieties that inhibit us. This is because the person who's tied up—powerless to cover himself, incapable of escape, and vulnerable to his partner's caresses—has surrendered sexual control to his partner. In surrender, he turns over the responsibility for his passionate responses to his partner."
Flustered, I licked my dry lips and drew in a shaky breath. I was unable to keep from picturing my body in a bondage scenario with Edward. Me powerless and pinned as his strong body loomed over mine. Of course, my vampire strength would make most any restraint other than Edward's grip largely decorative. But maybe that wasn't so bad. It was all a game after all—it would be pretend, like my fantasies.
And if this book was correct, the reason this game appealed to me was that it set me free to experience my desire for Edward in ways that I normally felt too inhibited to pursue.
"Bondage, under any circumstances, is a physically and emotionally intense experience. It is the very essence of helplessness to be deprived the use of our limbs or to have our senses blocked. Even in a fully consensual setting, where the partners are longtime lovers, the bound person's body will go on full alert, reacting as if it were in danger."
Yes, that was true. My mind recursed back to my old bedroom again. The way it felt when he seized my wrists, fought my strength and won, then held me captive for his fucking. I wasn't even free to brace myself with the headboard—I could do nothing but take his deep, relentless thrusts.
Even though my mind and heart knew I was completely safe, in the moment, my body had felt like Edward was dangerous. Dangerous and powerful. I wished I knew more about vampire physiology. Maybe there was a way to ask Carlisle without revealing why I was curious, but it seemed to me that my body had reacted the way this sexologist said a human's would—the instinctive chemical reaction to danger, creating a high that intensified sexual response, without actually being in any kind of peril or feeling any fear.
My every nerve officially tense, I scanned the rest of the chapter. My quick-paced reading screeched to a halt over the descriptions of bondage play scenarios and one of the most common being the "Sex Slave." Her description of the roleplay left my pussy in a state of mortifying tingling.
I ended up finishing most of the book in the one sitting, but I didn't go near chapter 6. Exploring and acknowledging that particular demon was a bridge too far for me at the moment. I wasn't ready for that label.
By the time the light from the window beside me began to dim as twilight approached, my head was spinning with tales of nipple torture, sensory deprivation games, and an off-hand mention of an ice dildo. The book made it sound like it was a toy for inciting pain, and for a human it would be, but for me…? Would it give me back an approximation to the human feeling of being penetrated by my vampire husband?
But there was no time to think of that now—the store was closing and Alice could stroll up any second. I panicked at first, gaze casting about for a place to stash my shameful find, to ditch it, much like the person before me had.
Yet, that didn't happen. I looked down at the book, resting in my lap, and when I imagined letting go of it, of the answers it might set me on the path to finding, I grew impossibly brave. Not only did I not hide it away or abandon it, I rose and made my way to the book store's section on sexuality. There was a page at the back where Dr. Brame listed books in the same vein as hers. I sought them out, and when I approached the register, I had two piles: one of cookbooks and the other of BDSM educational material and erotica.
I wanted to know. I wanted to understand.
But I still hid them at the bottom of the shopping bag so Alice wouldn't see.
When I arrived home, the cottage was empty. Edward had taken Renesmee to the symphony, and they wouldn't be home for several hours. I puttered around the kitchen for a few minutes, pretending to myself that I was going to do some cleaning, but deep down I knew I was too worked up.
Edward wasn't here for me to drag to bed, so I would take care of myself. This actually wasn't an unappealing prospect—it might even be preferable in its way. I often took time for myself like this. Once I'd thought that marriage to Edward would mean that I didn't need masturbation anymore. After all, why would I need to dream if the real thing was within arm's reach?
I guess I hadn't realized how often I would want to try things out, close my eyes and picture hypotheticals in the consequence-free environment of my imagination. Sometimes I made myself laugh, sometimes I scared myself, and sometimes I followed an inkling to its natural conclusion only to discover that it wasn't for me. I worked out frustrations and fears. I scratched itches. I burned off extra energy, took the edge off my lust so I wasn't too demanding of Edward.
Afterward, I felt relaxed and centered. At peace and refreshed—the way I used to feel as a human after a full night's rest or a really good cry.
I looked again at the cover of my new book, right before I tucked it away in a crate storing books I had no room for on my shelves, and knew this time would be a little different. Tonight I was going to pursue the types of elements that usually only creeped in as intrusive thoughts. I was going to think of myself as Edward's prey—deliberately, with the express intention of enjoying it. I was going to imagine him overpowering me, being rough with me, forcing pleasure upon me, and I was going to submit and enjoy. And come.
—
A Sex Slave In Mind Only
Come I did, for hours. Harder than I ever had on my own fingers before. I lay sprawled, twisted in our bedding, panting in luxuriant nakedness between bouts. But the need only heightened, became more persistent and acute. These fantasies were pushing my buttons in a way that didn't let up, I think because I was alone.
I needed him to ever hope to feel satisfied.
When I heard Edward arrive home around midnight and carry our sleeping daughter inside the cottage to her bed, I rose and pulled on a silk dressing gown, seeking him out before he came to find me.
He was backing out of Renesmee's dark room and closing the door soundlessly when his head turned at my approach. Immaculate in his black-tie tux, he did a double take at the sight of me.
I knew I was a mess—rumpled hair, hard nipples visibly straining against thin silk, and hungry eyes. I carried the thick perfume of my arousal with me.
Edward swallowed.
I held out my hand, and he took it.
I led him straight to our bedroom where I opened my dressing gown and launched myself at him the second the door closed behind us. Edward groaned into our kiss, his strong hands seizing my nude body against his. I sighed my surrender and allowed myself to sink into his arms, cradled in his power. I felt the whisper touch of the silk sliding down my shoulders and arms to pool at our feet.
"I've been waiting for you," I murmured against his lips.
His eyes flickered to our bed and the mussed sheets. I knew my scent must be bombarding him. "I see that."
My hand caressed the front of his trousers between our bodies. "I can't wait anymore."
"You don't have to," he promised.
But when he reached for his bow tie, I stopped him. "Leave it on," I pleaded. "Just this first time."
He growled, lifting my thighs on either side of his hips and walking to the bed, where he tumbled us to the mattress.
I enjoyed the feeling of being naked when he was clothed and I wasn't going to hide from that anymore. I loved that it created a playfully uneven power dynamic, that it made my body a spectacle for his eyes and touch, and I loved the way his clothes felt against my bare skin. I squirmed wantonly into his weight above me as his kiss turned demanding. He reached down to lower his zipper, but it took him longer than it might have because my pussy, dripping and in heat, sought out and rocked against his hand as it extricated his cock.
Edward broke from our kiss. "For God's sake! Bella, what's gotten into you?"
But I could only answer with a whimper. I clenched the sheets on either side of my hips and spread my thighs as wide as they would go.
He gazed down at me—my face alight with hunger, my body open and trembling with anticipation.
His cock hovered just out of reach. My hips raised toward it, hopefully.
And before I knew it, I was recreating something from one of my fantasies earlier in the day: I released my grip on the sheets and slid my hands under my hips, pressed them together behind my back…as though they were bound. I was bound and naked and helpless and his. He was clothed and looming over me, free to do whatever he wanted with my eager, exposed body.
The air between us changed. His eyes grew shrewd and dark—for the smallest instant I had the paranoid suspicion that he could hear my thoughts, but I knew for certain that I had not lowered my shield. I might have known something inside him had snapped when he swore before descending upon me, taking my lips with his again and sheathing himself to the hilt.
I moaned into his mouth—in joy and relief. How I had needed this, for hours. Not just his cock, but his mouth on mine, his weight pressed into me, his strained groan in my ear.
"Tight," he grunted between kisses. "God, you're tight."
His words thrilled me. They always did when he expressed them in a way that let me know it was just as good for him as it was for me. If he kept talking like that, he would send me over the edge in moments.
He gave me a single thrust. Hard, deep, bottoming out in my cunt to a point of aching.
My answering whimper was sharp. "How does my pussy feel?"
"Perfect," he growled, thrusting again, hips slamming into my thighs. "Jesus, it's perfect."
I bit my lip and closed my eyes, concentrating on clamping down on him, holding him tighter.
He cried out and his body jerked above mine in response. One of his hands gripped my hip, hard, in an effort to brace himself. "Perfect pussy," he groaned into my neck. "God Bella, you're gonna make me come."
Every nerve in my body shivered in pleasure. "You can. You can come in this pussy—whenever you want. That's what it's for. It exists for you to spill your come inside of. It's yours. I'm yours."
Edward's form froze atop mine as I spoke. For a second, I worried that I had gone too far, gotten too deep into the sex slave scenario I had been masturbating to all evening. Should I walk it back, reassure him? He knew I was my own person and this was just pillow talk, right?
But then his hips pulled back, snapped forward, and he was off in a frenzy, fucking me into the mattress like a man possessed. I knew he had lost his head because there was no regard for the fact that my arms were pinned beneath my body. Knowing that I had pushed Edward past his limits of reason and control did what it always did for me, and I was spiraling toward an orgasm almost immediately.
My body rocked with the force of him crashing repeatedly against my thighs. The fabric of his suit jacket rubbed against my nipples until they felt raw. He kissed and sucked the skin of my neck and throat, leaving love bites, hickeys, and trails of wet saliva in his wake. His grip on my hip was absolute, especially with no hands of my own that I could use, and I was his to take. And he was simply taking, in a way he almost never did. I came twice, then three times as he relentlessly continued on.
When he finally finished, shooting me full of his cum just like I had told him to, it was with a snarl that made my toes curl and pushed me higher into one last climax. The come-down was so intense that my whimpers of pleasure were sobs.
I was just registering that, wow, my cunt felt uncomfortably full and tired now that the impulse to be good and fucked was satisfied, when Edward lifted himself up. His cock slid out of me—still hard. I was bonelessly content, but he was turning me over onto my stomach, nudging my legs apart, and….
He wasn't done. He entered me from behind. My overstimulated pussy tried to squirm away, but his weight pressed me down into the mattress, his grip at the nape of my neck held fast, and he would not be denied. I gasped to be full of him again so soon, too soon, and clawed at the blankets. "Edward!"
He dropped a lingering kiss on my shoulder and I felt his tuxedo graze the expanse of my bare back. "Do you want me to stop, Bella?"
"No," I groaned greedily, pushing backward to try to force him even deeper.
So he fucked me again.
And when I had come my fill once more, he allowed me to turn over and catch my breath. I watched while he shed his clothes and his dark, unsettling stare made my stomach flutter and my sore pussy clench. His lean-muscled body stalked toward me like a panther. I felt human and we weren't even playing a game. My gaze was irresistibly drawn downward as he rejoined me on the bed. How was he still hard?
"Bella?" He lifted my chin with his finger until I was looking him in the eye. "More?"
My breath caught. It was then that I truly knew what I was in for.
So far, in this journal I have mainly focused on our normal: sex a couple times a day and few times a night, mostly in the bedroom, usually tender and intimate, sometimes initiated by Edward but more often by me. And I have detailed the ways my fantasies and deviant desires have disrupted that normal: festering in my mind with their temptation until I started us down the path of sex games.
What I haven't discussed at all is a phenomenon that, frankly, I do not understand. I don't even know where to properly begin, but, here—I'll try.
Sometimes…out of nowhere, with no warning, Edward turns into a demon who tortures me with orgasms for hours until I beg him to stop. Afterward, he acts like it was nothing out of the ordinary and if I ask questions he laughs them off and breaks into plural pronouns—a lot of talk of we. He seems to think it is normal for vampire couples to enter sex frenzies from time to time, and who am I to say that he is wrong? After all, he's the one who has spent decades sharing a house with three mated vampire pairs.
So, normal? It's possible, I guess. But I don't experience it the way he describes. He talks about it like it's a fever, a bout of compulsive obsession, but for me…I feel normal. Before and during, I'm just me. In the past, I have wondered if this means I am broken in some way. Am I like this all the time and that's why I am so hopelessly horny? Or am I not experiencing what Edward does at all, and I'm only able to keep up with him when he descends because I'm such a sex glutton?
Regardless, in the year and a half since I changed, there have been three occurrences.
The first was right after I transformed. As soon as Renesmee fell asleep for the night and Edward was sure I was well fed, he made love to me from sunset to sunrise—non-stop, no breaks. For a moment, I had thought this is what every night would be like and found the prospect both overwhelming and exciting. I wasn't sure I'd be able to take it, but needn't have worried. The next night, Edward was passionate but far more reserved. And the next night. After a week or two, I decided that the reason that one night was so crazy must have been because it was the first. He had just been pent up from all those years of restraint, that's all.
The second instance was the night after everything was finally resolved with the Volturi. For the first time since we married, we could truly relax. We could trust that we were safe. And Edward went mad, fucking my brains out for nearly twelve hours straight. I understood—I needed the release, too. But, God, I was raw afterward. Sore, bruised, and tender. When I collated the new data, the main thing both instances seemed to have in common was perhaps relief that I was safe? I had almost died right before I was changed, and our whole world was in the balance of Renesmee's trial. That sounded like a plausible explanation, knowing what I did of Edward. I had been in danger, now I was safe, and he was expressing how he felt.
But then it happened a third time. This one wasn't that long ago, just back in February. Edward and I were in the forest, hunting, while his parents watched our daughter. It was broad daylight. He'd gotten in some kind of argument with Rosalie earlier and was in a touchy sort of mood. I triggered his temper and the two of us ended up in a short but loud shouting match—our worst fight since I changed, but it wasn't even that bad. We made up almost immediately, hugging and apologizing in minutes. Then we started to make love and things got out of hand. Edward had never fucked me with his full strength before, but he did that day. The fallen tree he bent me over was hammered into the half-frozen ground, and it still wasn't enough for him. He kept at me for hours, albeit with slightly less force. We arrived home well after dark with leaves in our hair to a disapproving Carlisle and Esme, who gave us a minor lecture about responsibility while Emmett and Jasper tried to keep a straight face and Rose gloated from the stairs.
All I could figure was, that was make-up sex, right? So maybe it was fear of losing me in some way, not just danger?
But here, tonight, Edward was complicating things again. No danger, no fight, no inkling that we could be separated or lose each other in any way. Yet, here we were, at the top of the roller coaster, on the precipice of plunging down into the wild ride of mad frenzy.
"More?" That's what he always asked me on these feverish nights, at intervals. He would keep going until I said no, until the experience was more pain than pleasure and I begged him to stop.
What had set him off tonight? I couldn't say. I could only conclude that I have no idea at all what triggers this response in him or what it means. I just thank God while it's happening.
Did I want more?
Gazing up at my beautiful sex-god of a husband, I nodded. "Yes, please."
—
Fever Dreams
He did give me more. He gave me more well past the sunrise, until we heard our daughter stir around 10 a.m., and we were forced into a hiatus.
I was grateful when Edward volunteered to prepare Nessie's breakfast, giving me the chance to clean myself up. I winced as I climbed into the shower. My neck, shoulders and breasts were sore from Edward's suckling and nipping. The cheeks of my ass and inside of my thighs were bruised though they gave no outward indication. My slit was swollen and tender from acute overuse.
On nights like this, Edward gave parts of himself respites—if his cock started to chafe, for instance, he'd switch to using his tongue or his fingers on me for a while. We healed quickly, so his cock would be refreshed and ready to start all over again in a half hour. But no such reprieve was granted to me. The stimulation to my pussy was pretty much constant. These frenzies were a battle of wills and endurance between us: how long could I take it before he broke me with pleasure?
But this time, he hadn't broken me, not yet. I was still saying yes when our lives outside our bed intruded.
My face twisted in a grimace when the water rolled down over my raw skin, but again, we heal fast. By the time my shower ended, the pain was bearable, and by noon it was gone completely.
I might have even recovered faster if Edward hadn't taken to heart that I was still under a verbal contract of, "More." When we dropped off Renesmee for her schooling with Rosalie, he put his finger to his lips and led me into the pantry at the big house. There, I endured an excruciatingly drawn-out quickie. He lifted my skirt and then my leg up around his hip, ripped the gusset of my panties in half and entered me as we clung together, unable to vocalize our pleasure in any way. His thrusts were slow and shallow, making it impossible for an orgasm to gather steam quickly.
"More?" he asked after I came, clinging to his shoulders as silent shivers of ecstasy overtook me.
I nodded.
So he found me a little over an hour later, when I was on hold with the cable company, trying to resolve a discrepancy on our bill. I had thrown my ruined underwear in the trash and hadn't bothered to replace them; it was a good call. Edward came up behind me while I was bent over our kitchen counter, phone to my ear, and slipped his hand under my skirt. He squared his body so that I had no escape—I couldn't even turn around in his arms or raise my elbows up from the marble. He leaned over me, whispering dirty nothings about my wet, greedy pussy in my free ear, his erection pressed into my ass. His touch started off firm but gentle, then escalated until the thrusts of his fingers had me on my tip-toes and hammered me against the cabinets.
"More?"
Yes. Always, yes.
We had a night out planned. Peter and Charlotte were passing through and we were seeing a movie with them along with Alice and Jasper. Edward suggested we cancel and stay in. I could see in his eyes exactly what he meant by that, but I didn't want to miss out on the chance for a date night, to spend time with friends, and…I was feeling playful. How fun would it be to tease each other all night, then come home and let all that pent up energy explode? Maybe if we did, tonight would be like last night…. So I declined to cancel. As such, a hunt was in order, just as a precautionary measure. We weren't terribly thirsty, but when spending time in an enclosed space with humans, it was always better to be overly cautious. That was the idea anyway.
Soon after Edward and I entered the forest, he had me against a tall ancient tree. His ravenous kisses were an ambush, and before I could catch my breath, articles of my clothing were hitting the forest floor.
"Edward!" I gasped.
"You said you wanted more," he murmured devilishly as he shed his shirt.
My ability to think about anything rationally short-circuited at the sight of his bare, sculpted chest. "We were supposed to hunt…" I protested feebly.
He grinned as his pants and boxers fell. "We will," he said, parting my legs. "This first."
I cried out in a breathy moan as he entered me.
We didn't hunt. Edward fucked me against that tree in every position he could think of until he announced that he could hear Alice and Jasper's thoughts approaching as they came looking for us.
My knees wobbled as I tried to pull my clothes back on. Edward chuckled at my lack of coordination and I tried to glare at him, but I may have been too blissed out for my facial muscles to respond. He helped me with the buttons on my shirt.
Pressing a kiss to my lips, he sighed contentedly, then nuzzled my nose with his. "More?"
Immediately, my knees felt weak again.
Was this real? Could I keep this going forever just by continuing to say yes?
I think I was starting to feel it—the fever Edward described. My mind was full of nothing but thoughts of him, desire for him. After we cleaned up and dressed for our date, I was all over him in the car. He was attempting to drive, but I made it as difficult for him as I could (licking his ear and fondling him between his legs while I purred something about how badly I wanted to feel him come in my mouth) until he was forced to pull over so I could blow him.
We arrived slightly late, which was inconvenient considering Peter and Charlotte needed to use our back seat to store their gear. Though we got some looks from our companions, no one said anything. Edward didn't allow me to grope him during the movie, which was probably for the best, but I grew antsy as the runtime dragged. I was partially regretting coming out at all, imagining that Edward and I were home in our bed rather than paying any attention to the story unfolding on the screen in front of me.
Afterward, Alice and Jasper left to hunt pretty much immediately; from the communication I saw passing between Alice and Edward, I would guess that the close proximity to humans had been a lot for Jasper. Funny, I had barely noticed them, even having skipped my hunt. But then, the fever was taking me, so maybe that wasn't surprising. I could think of nothing but sex as Edward and I saw Peter and Charlotte off.
The night air was clean and cold. Every breath of it left me feeling invigorated. We stood in yellow lamp light next to the Volvo, one of three cars in the entire parking lot. The streets of Port Angeles around us were largely empty and silent. It was after 1 a.m. on a weeknight, so most of the residents were asleep.
When Edward asked, "Shall we head home? Relieve Rose of her babysitting duties?" my skin hummed with anticipation. It was a challenge. I knew the question was really just another, "More?"
I leaned against the passenger side door, arched my neck, and let one side of my oversized cardigan slide off my shoulder, down my upper arm. Edward's eyes traced over the thin ribbons that served as straps for my sundress and the skin of my shoulder and cleavage. I saw the exact moment he locked in on my nipple, tight and hard under the thin cotton of my bodice with no bra to obscure it. I wasn't wearing panties either, and beneath my skirt, my pussy had become a dripping mess. I could feel my upper inner thighs getting slick as Edward stared. There was purpose in his gaze. Intention.
For one wild moment, I thought he was going to take me right there, against the car, in the open where any passerby might see. I tensed at the idea, discovering that I didn't like the idea of an audience.
I need not have worried. Instead of pouncing on me, Edward asked where I would like to go. My heart swelled with affection. He was so considerate, so wonderful.
Wanting him all the more, I directed us toward the beach and we made our way there at a leisurely pace.
My lust was at a pleasant hum, not desperate or needy (not yet). Just familiar. Comforting. His hand in mine sent a delicious thrill climbing up my arm. His scent filled my lungs, smothering me with a sense of belonging. The light breeze as we walked reminded me of my nakedness under my dress at every step, caressing up my legs and blowing cold on the wet skin between my thighs.
I clarified for him that I was not initiating a game and his input was welcome. He wanted to know if there was a game to be had in Port Angeles. But I shook my head. "I got everything I wanted that night," I reassured him.
Edward seemed confused, so I elaborated, "My first date with you. I wouldn't change a second of it."
He made a face.
"Don't look at me like that. They didn't hurt me, and if they hadn't hassled me, you wouldn't have revealed yourself. I'm not saying I enjoyed that part, I'm saying it all worked out." I made no apologies—what happened had led to me getting to have Edward. Some of the experiences of our courtship were horrible, horrifying even, but I would take them over again a thousand times if the reward at the end was the life I had now.
He still looked grumpy, so I waxed poetic about that night, about him, painting a picture of how I remembered it. "You came back after being gone for a week that felt like forever. You saved my life, charmed my friends, gave me your coat. You bought me mushroom ravioli and didn't flirt with the waitress at all, even though she was prettier than me and drooling over you." He looked away, so I reached up and turned his head back toward me. I wished he could understand what he had been to me that night, in the moment I had needed him most. "You let me in, for the first time. It was our first honest conversation, in the restaurant and the car, and it was everything to me. I was already head over heels, and then you go and do all that."
Just remembering it now was making me feel sloppy with affection inside. Couldn't he see how good to me he was? How happy he made my life with his presence? I kissed him, with all my gratitude, all my hunger and my love. "I was hopelessly gone after that." Another kiss, open-mouthed. I shuddered as his tongue brushed mine. He moaned and pulled me tight against him. "Yours," I gasped, "just yours." I deepened the kiss and sank into my need, into his arms.
"Edward, I need you to make love to me."
"Yes," he promised.
I shivered. God, yes. I needed him naked. "Is anyone looking at us? Thinking about us?"
He cocked his head, listening with his mind. While he did, his fingers were fiddling absently with my ribbon shoulder straps. His left thumb brushed against my cotton-covered nipple. "No, no one."
"Good." I wasted no time undoing the buttons of his shirt—I needed to taste his skin.
He let me, his groans of enjoyment filling me with satisfaction, but he still tried to pump the brakes.
"Bella…?"
Suppressing a growl of frustration, I reminded myself that I didn't want to do this in the open either. "The water," I prompted. "Like our honeymoon."
My mind had been swirling with thoughts of that Brazilian beach from the moment I heard the waves in the distance. I knew the two coastlines couldn't be more different from one another, but one of the perks of being a vampire was that—soft sand or jagged rocks? mild-temperatured gentle waves or freezing cold surges?—it didn't really matter.
He swept me up, bridal-style, and took a running leap off the side of the pier with me in his arms. We landed on the beach nimbly thanks to his natural grace. He carried me under the shadow of the tall wooden dock, where I eagerly stripped for him.
Edward seemed shaken by my lack of underwear, but he was crazy if he thought I was going to put any on after the day I'd had. He already destroyed one pair, and then he spent the ensuing hours finding every opportunity to lift my skirt and have his way with me. Ease of access for him had been my primary consideration when dressing for our date tonight, and I was slightly disappointed he hadn't discovered my lack of panties earlier at some point with his hand.
He stashed our clothes where the tide wouldn't get them and then I practically dragged him into the water. My enthusiasm couldn't be contained and my contentment was near perfect. I was with my husband, my mate, and he was going to make love to me in the water, under the moonlight. There was nothing better in the world I could have hoped for.
I stopped before the water rose over my breasts, guessing Edward would prefer them to be visible, and pressed my back to one of the dock's giant timber pillars.
His amber eyes blinked down at me. "Here?"
The moonlight and shadows painted the lines of his broad shoulders in silhouette as he crowded close to me. God, he was gorgeous. It never ceased to stun me.
"Here," I declared, and pulled him close, enfolding him in my legs and arms. The emotional high I got when his skin pressed into mine never dulled with time or repetition. "Love me, Edward."
His eyes were affectionate and his touch was tender as he spread my slit open and positioned himself. Edward entered me slowly, gently—the sensation was all pleasure, one of becoming whole with him. There wasn't even the slightest twinge of discomfort from the moment he started to when he was sheathed to the hilt. He stroked the side of my neck where my pulse used to be with his thumb, then he traced my cheekbone and brow with his lips, ending with a kiss.
"I do," he breathed against my skin. "I love you, Bella."
I couldn't take it—he was too lovely. I needed to kiss him. He groaned at the first touch of our tongues and began rocking into me. The cool water around and between us rose and fell at a dreamy pace. The growing pleasure that Edward was nurturing inside me was full-bodied, spread out over all of me, rather than focalized; a soft, buzzing bliss rather than something sharp or intense. It climbed gradually to its culmination, helped along by Edward's thumb rolling in feather-light circles over my clitoris.
After my first peak, he steadily, patiently pushed me even higher. I was hopelessly swept up. There was nothing I could do—he played my body as expertly as he played his piano. When my second climax came, his face dropped into the cradle of my neck in response, and, holding himself deep, with choked grunting and trembling biceps, filled me with everything he had to give.
I held him, stroking his hair and dotting his shoulder with kisses. I babbled nonsense about how good he was at this, how incredible he made my body feel. Euphoria hung over me like a cloud. I wanted to ride this fever into eternity. In fact, a wild certainty seized me in that moment that I could spend from now until the heat death of the universe with Edward's cock inside me and it still wouldn't be enough.
As if to taunt me and my silly thoughts, Edward shifted his weight made to withdraw from me. My legs tightened to pull him back in automatically. "Just a little longer," I begged.
He laughed and dropped a kiss on the hairline of my temple. "Whatever you want, Bella love."
I sighed happily, not knowing that his fever had broken.
—
Leap of Courage
It was an hour or so before I figured it out. We played in the water and Edward taught me to swim as a vampire. I should have suspected when he never took an opportunity to tease my body even though we were, quite literally, frolicking naked.
We swam up the coast to an inaccessible cove, dotted with giant rocks jutting up from the water and surrounded by steep cliff-faces.
"I like it," I announced my verdict on swimming with my vampire body. "Though, it is a little uncomfortable, not having my sense of smell." I dipped under the water and pushed my hair away from my face before reemerging so that it would no longer stick to my cheeks.
Edward was grinning at me. "It takes getting used to."
"Is the water here really that empty, or did everything just scram when we came swimming by?" I was legitimately curious, but that didn't last long.
He kissed me—just a tender brush of his lips against mine, but it stoked my fever from a small hearth-fire to a full blaze.
"We're predators, Bella," he said, but I was barely listening. "You can't blame them."
With a moan, I launched myself at him. I had gone from a state of wanting to needing with only the barest touch, but he…. Well, he was kissing me, holding me, but there was no…. Oh, God.
I pulled back and my eyes searched his face. I saw how relaxed his muscles were, the ease in his shoulders. His eyes were amiable without even a hint of that single-minded, predatory glint that I had grown accustomed to in the past twenty-four hours.
My heart plummeted.
"Damn it," I swore. I leaned into him, automatically seeking comfort, but with too much force. My forehead bashed into his chest as though I were hitting it against a wall.
"Bella…?" His voice was full of concern.
"You're done, aren't you?" I accused.
He laughed, and God it hurt.
"It's not funny." The level of disappointment, devastation even, I was feeling was ridiculous. A part of me was objective enough to see that—but I was too forlorn to laugh. I hadn't realized until that moment just what this mutual frenzy had meant to me and how desperately I had been hoping it could continue.
He cradled my neck in his hand. "It's not a big deal either."
I winced at his light tone.
"I can take care of you," he offered. "Whatever you need."
He didn't understand.
But then he took my hand in his. "Here," he said, leading us down his sculpted abs, beneath the water, and to his cock. He closed my hand in his grip around his soft length, and as we stood across from one another, his face grew intent, his eyes fell closed. He swelled, grew, and became erect in our hands.
I felt light-headed, never having experienced anything so riveting. Just…fuck, that was hot. I licked my lower lip, then bit it to suppress a moan.
"You don't have to. You're not obligated," I said, but the words sounded thin and feeble even in my own ears.
"Bella, let me help you come." He said it like a command. "Anything you want."
His words sent a thrill down my spine. What could I do? I had some misgivings that were stirring at the back of my mind—there was something unsettling about Edward being able to will himself hard, about how quickly he had reached for it as a solution. Those things would come to haunt me, but in the moment, they were quiet concerns. The truth was that I was too tempted, too easily seduced.
Edward was hard. His hand was pressing mine to his erection. I could feel every ridge and vein against my palm. I could feel it twitch and strain at his own words, as though fulfilling the promise of helping me come was the most exciting thing in the world. I could never have hoped to resist.
"Okay."
He nodded in satisfaction, but no sooner had he than I became unsure again. If…if the frenzy for him was over, I wouldn't want to burden him with an expectation of repeating last night. Really, I should be focused on bringing myself to the same place he was. The trouble with that was, when I thought of instances where my orgasm left me fully satiated rather than wanting more, I inevitably thought of times like, well, the beginning of last night: when Edward had lost his head and fucked me into the mattress with my hands pinned.
I could have easily stopped then for the night and been perfectly content—it was Edward who had pushed us forward, and I had followed along out of sheer adrenaline.
And once I pictured that encounter, the one that had started all of this, my mind flooded with others: first, naturally, the instance that had inspired my recent reading—when he had locked my wrists behind my back and used me like a fuck doll in my old bed; then, the brutal fuck against the wall in the laundry room right after we started our games; the time he bent me over the hood of his car after I teased him too far on a long drive, the hot hood searing my nipples, his grip dragging me back onto his cock every time I thought we were done; the time he hammered a goddamned tree into the ground with the force of his thrusts while I screamed loud enough I was sure I could be heard for miles; our…our honeymoon, the night I pushed him past his breaking point and he tore my black lace nightgown from my body to make love to me with violent eyes and gentle hands.
Huh…. Maybe it wasn't merely his roughness or my powerlessness, per se. Maybe the most important component was the feeling that Edward's self-control had been pushed past a point of no return. Was that even the kind of thing that could be replicated deliberately? Or did it have to be organic?
"What is it?" Edward asked.
I found myself eyeing one of the large boulders rising out of the surf near the coastline. "Edward…would you maybe be willing to try something different?"
As soon as the words had left my mouth I felt sick and wanted to take them back. I couldn't ask this of him. Could I?
He let go of my hand, and it drifted through the water away from his cock and back toward me.
"How different?"
His question steadied me, gave me purchase in my churning thoughts, because the answer was, "Not different, really. Just…more. More intense than we usually do." We've done this, I reminded myself. We did this last night. Why couldn't we do it again on purpose? "Would you maybe be willing to be a little rough with me?"
"Rough?"
He did not like that word. My worst fear—he closed off, immediately, eyes wary.
I spread my palms and scrambled to explain. "Not very! I don't want you to hurt me." My frantic brain suddenly swirled with everything I had read about in my book, including some things that many people included in "rough" sex—such as being humiliated or degraded. It was undeniable at this point that I got a thrill from the thought of being tied up or dominated by Edward, but having him be unkind to me didn't appeal at all. "And I don't want you to call me names." All energy deflated in me at the thought. My heart would break if he called me a "worthless slut" or a "dirty whore" or anything like it. Even in the guise of a game. I swallowed, my throat feeling strangely tight. "In fact, please, please don't do that ever."
Some of the defensiveness in his expression faded. His eyes turned tender as he studied me, then he bent down and pressed his lips to the bridge of my nose. "I promise," he said.
I heaved a breath that hurt, in a bone-deep emotional way. I was making a mess of this. This was too soon, too early, and I was too vulnerable here. I should have read more of the books I picked up first. I should have let them stew in my brain longer, tried out more scenarios in my masturbation sessions. I wasn't ready to try to explain any of this to Edward—I couldn't even explain it to myself yet!
But I had already opened the can of worms, and my husband was staring down at me, full of concern at the way he could see me falling to pieces, and with a hint of fear at the edges. I had shocked him with my word choice: rough. I couldn't leave it like this. I couldn't have him thinking I wanted him to beat me or something.
"I'm not explaining this well at all." I took a deep breath and tried to start over. "I don't want you to be rough with me like you don't love me or want to punish me. I don't want you to not care about my feelings or my enjoyment. I just want…I want you to be rough with me like you want me too much, like I've tempted you too far, and then you can't help yourself and you can't be gentle anymore."
To my surprise, recognition flashed in his eyes. Then he looked away and I saw…I think it was resignation.
"If it's too far for you, I understand," I whispered. "I only brought it up because, if you have leveled out and we're trying to get me to the same place, I think this might work."
His gaze swung back to me. "Why would you think that?"
I tried to downplay my inner turmoil, but I could feel how jerky my movements were. I was the one who had started this conversation, the least I could do was be honest. "Because it always has. We've never done it on purpose before, but sometimes we get caught up, and you go too far, too hard. It…really does it for me."
That sent him reeling—more than I thought it would. His hands lifted from the water and rubbed his face. "Jesus Bella. Testing my self-control is not a game. Not now, and definitely not when you were alive."
He was right, of course. But he also didn't understand at all. Did he think that I was unappreciative? That I didn't understand the danger I was in every second I had spent with him as a human? That I didn't value his strength of character and self-sacrifice? God, I wanted to crawl in a hole and die.
"I know."
But he was just getting started—the volume of his voice was rising as he became more upset. "My restraint wasn't for fun, or some weird, old-fashioned quirk. Your life literally depended on it."
Everything in me moved as one to comfort him. I took his hands in mine and whispered my reassurance, "I know."
How could I make him understand? But then the moonlight caught the scar on the heel of my hand and my breath hitched. Of course—the one thing he never brought up, but I could never forget.
I placed my right hand in his, palm facing toward him.
"I know," I repeated. Now that I was soothing him, my voice found steadiness and conviction. "Your self-control is an expression of your character, your desire to be a good person. With me, it was an act of love. A day in, day out, struggle you endured to be with me, and the pinnacle was this. He bit me, and you saved me. You sucked the venom out so that I could stay human until I could make the choice for myself. You drank my blood and somehow managed to stop once the venom was gone, before you killed me. This," I traced my finger over my scar, "is the most romantic thing you have ever done for me, and it was an act of unparalleled self-control."
His outrage had deflated by the time I finished, and I released a little of my dread.
Edward lifted my palm to his lips and kissed the raised, crystalline line. I was struck by how wounded he seemed.
Compelled forward by the need to undo the damage I had done to his piece of mind, I continued: "Your self-control makes me feel safe and loved. It always has. Don't ever worry that my fantasies mean that I am not taking that seriously. It's only because I know from experience that even if you 'lost' control, you would never, ever hurt me that I can even fantasize about it in the first place. Even when you snap, there's still that line that you would never cross, because you're a good person and you love me."
I stroked his cheek, hating myself for even going down this path. Just look what it had done to him.
My heart in my throat, I reiterated, "I'm going to say that one more time, to make sure that you are really hearing me, Edward: You losing control is only sexy because I know, even if you did, I would be safe with you."
His eyes lingered on my face as though they were looking for something. I don't know if he found it, because he shook his head and sighed. "If you get that I'm this way because I love you, then why would you want something different sexually?"
I laughed—not because it was funny, but because it wasn't. "I know. It seems maybe a little self-defeating. Ungrateful, even. It's just…watching you constantly visibly restrain yourself and succeed, every time, it makes a girl feel resistible."
Edward blinked. "Bella, if you were the least bit resistible, I would have been able to walk away from you when we met. I tried, but I came back. I always came back."
He said it like the idea that he was capable of resisting me was the stupidest thing he had ever heard. I have no shame to say that it warmed me. It put salve on a wound that I didn't even know I had.
I felt giddy with relief—though whether it was because of his words or because we seemed to be on the other side of a near-disastrous conversation, I couldn't say for certain.
Having just let go of the figurative breath I had been holding, I wasn't prepared for Edward's next words.
"So, basically, you'd like me to not be gentle?" He said it matter-of-factly, as though he were simply assembling data. And then, in the same tone, "You'd like me to fuck you."
Nothing could have prepared me for what it was like to hear Edward say that sentence. That word. The entire world tilted. And, holy Jesus my fever was surging again, full force. My poor cunt was going to catch on fire, even submerged in water.
I blinked. Was he saying what I think he was saying? Was he saying that, yes, he would fuck me?
"Not always," I protested. "Just sometimes."
"Now." He said it like a statement. Oh my God, he was saying yes.
I tried to nod, but my neck felt stiff. Still, he seemed to understand.
"Where?"
I gestured hesitantly to where I had been looking before. "Those rocks. I thought maybe you could bend me over one and…." I swallowed, unable to finish.
Edward nodded, a determined cast to his features that was sexy as hell.
Without warning, he arm snaked behind me and lifted my body several inches out of the water and into his.
I gasped, then grinned and kissed him. He never failed to pleasantly surprise me. "You spoil me."
But his face was grim. "I'm going to try. I don't know if this is something I can force."
He was getting the wrong idea and I didn't want him to stress himself out.
"Don't force it. I'm telling you all these things about what I like and how I feel because I want to be open. I know you always obsess over what I am thinking, and I don't want you to have to guess—not about this stuff. But I also don't want you to feel like I'm asking you to change or do things that are uncomfortable for you just for my sake."
Edward still seemed determined. "That's not the case here. Like you said, I've done this before."
My smile widened. "As recently as last night."
That jarred him a little. "Last night?"
It was absurd—did he not understand that constant stimulation could turn painful, especially after hours and hours? That his relentless attentions were a form of 'rough'? He was adorably naïve.
"Edward," I said, trailing my lips over his cheek with sensuous slowness, "you kept at me all night without stopping. You only let up when we heard Renesmee wake. I was sore for hours today." The mere memory could turn me on.
He didn't sound convinced. "Sore?"
I nodded, nuzzling him. I wanted him to understand what it felt like for me when he was relentless: that I liked it, looked forward to it, needed it. That it made me feel alive. I wasn't sure how to explain, but I tried. "That's the best part of you losing your head. When I was human, I was sore after every time, no matter how gentle you tried to be. It takes a lot to make me sore these days, but ten hours of non-stop fucking will do it. It's the most incredible sensation—satisfying. Naughty, like I'm carrying around a secret. I can't so much as take a step without remembering that you were inside me, without being fully aware that I am empty, but I was full, stretched full, by you. That my body was used to bring yours pleasure."
My nails tightened on his biceps at the thought of him coming in me. I was picturing what it felt like when his cock rubbed me raw on the inside, when his hip bones battered my inner thighs into tenderness. He clenched his hands on the cheeks of my ass as my pussy rocked against his thigh. I sighed, noting with bliss that he was hard again.
"Unfortunately, I heal so fast now that all that delicious aching was gone by noon. I needed more." With a moan, I licked along his jawline, then along his brow, pulling him even closer. "Thank God, you couldn't leave me alone today. Constantly touching me, groping me, fingering me—keeping me hungry. But now you'll finish me off, won't you? You'll give it to me so hard, I'll remember what sore really feels like."
He made a primal noise, low in his throat, and…just for the barest second, his teeth raked my neck. And yeah, that did almost finish me off.
I knew I had succeeded in breaking down his inhibitions—I was in for it now. Rough treatment of my neck by his mouth was one of the hallmarks of Edward losing control. Usually it was kissing or love bites, like last night. To be blessed with a scrape of his teeth was a special kind of Edward's control snapping, one that sent my pussy into a pleasure meltdown every time.
Lightheaded in my triumph, I was only marginally aware of my body being jostled and didn't know we had arrived at the giant rock I had indicated until I was being bent over and pressed into it. He was holding me down, like he had last night after he turned me onto my stomach. His erection brushed the inside of my thigh ominously and I gasped, gripping the water-slick surface of the rock.
But then he hesitated.
For the love of God, if he tried to prep me….
"No foreplay," I reminded him. "And don't you dare go slow."
The next thing I felt was his fingers on my cunt, but it was only to part my lips. His tip teased my hole and I tensed in delicious dread and anticipation. It had been nearly two hours since we made love under the pier—in that time, any stretching or loosening from accommodating him would have worn off, any cum that could lubricate me had leaked out. I was gushing with my own wildfire arousal, and that would keep him from causing any actual damage, but this was still going to hurt. In the most heavenly way.
He entered me all at once, in a single merciless stroke. I screamed—because it ripped me open, making my inner walls throb with pangs and aches; because I felt so whole, so full of him, he was stroking all of the inside of me with the bulk of his cock; because it was sublime.
"Bella?" He sounded concerned.
It took incredible effort to speak. "That was perfect. Keep going." I pressed my forehead to the cool stone in front of me, straining with all my might to hold back my orgasm. But it was no use. "Oh God, I'm already coming."
It was a buzzing in my cunt that grew, and swelled, and vibrated intensely until it spilled over as hot ecstasy. My body was awash in it. But rather than drift lazily in a euphoric haze, I was breaking against the repeated blows of pleasure Edward was inflicting on me with rolling, brutal thrusts. My body keeled into the rock with every surge, held in place by his grip at the base of my neck. My breasts were pressed into the coarse surface, and my hard nipples chafed at the friction inflicted by every slap of his hips against my ass. My nails clawed for purchase in the stone—all I could do was wait out the storm of Edward's fucking.
The pleasure was the sharp, excruciating kind that shocked my body with every escalation and made me scream from the sheer intensity. His strokes became deeper, more pointed, his grunts more pained, and I knew he was close.
That was good. Because I was at the edge. And then I was gone, shaking and seizing from the force of my cresting bliss.
Edward groaned when my cunt went into spasm. His free hand seized my hip. He pushed himself so hard and deep I could feel the acute sting of him tapping at the entrance of my womb, and there he let himself go. Spilling, spurting what felt like a never-ending hot flood into me.
In the throbbing aftermath, the only thought I could form was…fuck, that was good.
Edward held me, cradling my torso and resting his forehead on my back, trying to catch his breath. "Was that what you were looking for?"
I laughed breathlessly, joyously. "You were perfect. No notes."
—
Wings of Wax
It was all downhill from there. You see, I took the wrong lesson from what just happened. I came away thinking, Wow. See Bella, you are too paranoid about how Edward will react to your darker desires. You just need to talk them through with him, trust him. He may have a knee-jerk reaction, but he works past it. He won't judge you—he can't. Remember what he told you in your old Biology classroom? You both get off on the same dark things. You need to trust how well suited you both are.
Edward and I had been having so many difficult, intimate conversations lately, and they had all ended up going better than I had ever dared dream. That gave me tragic confidence, enticing me to fly too close to the sun.
It started with my wedding ring slipping off my finger as we lay crumpled together against that rock, recovering from our violent orgasms. I wriggled out from under him and dove into the shallow surf to retrieve the ring.
"Bella, are you okay?"
"My wedding ring." I held it up in triumph of my successful rescue. "It slipped off and fell in the water."
"How?"
We climbed up on a lower, smoother part of the rock that made a comfortable seat.
"It's a little loose," I explained. "It's almost come off a few times tonight, but I always caught it in time."
"Loose?"
"It only seems to be a problem when I get it wet. I lost some weight early in the pregnancy." I demonstrated the fit, rotating the ring on my finger for his examination. "I gained some of the weight back once we figured out what Renesmee needed nutritionally, but not all of it. I guess the change is permanent now."
Of course he saw this as a problem to be fixed. "Well then, we should get it resized."
He was sweet. I kissed him and then made myself comfortable on the rock, scooting down further and lying back. The waves rose and fell up and down our legs and I was enjoying the feeling. It was gentle and soothing after the my gloriously rough fuck. I just wanted to bask and enjoy.
Edward smiled at me, our fingers still entwined. "Are we taking a moment?"
I nodded. "It's nice here."
I closed my eyes and drifted in contentment as Edward's featherlight touch traced the lines of my breasts. I loved the way he did this—it was one of his favorite things to do while we cuddled. It was worshipful, with a touch of awe in the way his fingers caressed, in the way his palm cupped. He never seemed to tire of looking at or touching them.
While I basked in his attentions, my mind drifted. Disparate threads were tying themselves together, leading from one thought to the next. Edward's teeth on my neck. My wedding ring. Seeing Charlotte again. My mind started circling around the strange and seductive ritual of mating bites.
Deep in my most private wonderings, I had been toying with the idea. Like, with seriousness—ever since our night in our old Biology classroom. I'd been plagued with erotic dreams about him biting me and drinking my blood for years. Dreams that had filled me with shame and doubt of my worthiness to love him. Meanwhile, he had been obsessed with the thought of drinking me and it wasn't just a thirst for sustenance, he confessed to me, but an erotic longing. The desire to bite me made him hard. Drinking me would be orgasmic for him. Mating bites seemed a reasonable, safe outlet for Edward and I to exorcise these lusts that haunted us, to transform them and reclaim them as something beautiful. He constantly gnawed on my neck, anyway—why not direct that into something loving rather than keep it as the dirty little thing we never acknowledged?
Normally, my thoughts would have been where all that stayed. But I was full of invincible confidence, bolstered by weeks of hard conversations that ended with increased intimacy. By this last most perfect twenty-four hours.
So, rather than let the thought pass as I would have previously, I foolishly, recklessly began the conversation that would break both our hearts.
"Edward? Can I ask you something?"
"What would you like to know?"
"Why was a marriage ceremony such a big deal for you?"
"I told you." He sounded confused and I realized I had not explained myself well.
"I know—you're traditional," I smiled at my husband fondly, "and you wanted to do everything you could to safeguard my soul. I meant, why the human version specifically? I didn't question it at the time because I didn't know that there was a vampire equivalent."
He reacted the way I had expected he would—his walls went up again. "There isn't a vampire equivalent."
I coached myself not to panic, to let him work through his feelings on the idea while we talked. "Peter and Charlotte aren't married?" I pressed.
"They aren't," he said stubbornly. "They're mated, not married."
I laughed at the absurdity. "That is a semantic difference and nothing else, Edward Cullen. We're mated, too, aren't we?"
That got him. He knew I was right and conceded the point, switching tacks. "My family doesn't do things that way."
Now we were on more productive footing. "Why not? It doesn't hurt anyone, and we dress so covered up around humans that no one but other vampires would ever see it."
"Doesn't hurt?" he said incredulously.
He was being so literal. But he was also calmer than I expected. There was tension in his muscles that revealed his discomfort, but his voice was even and composed.
I sat up so that we were side by side again. "You know what I mean. I'm not seeing the harm. I can understand why Rosalie or Carlisle might not find the idea appealing, but I don't see why it should be viewed so negatively."
"Because we live differently than the vampires who think that way," he argued. "It's a claiming ritual—like property. There is one of us who has a bite, you know? Just one, and it's Jasper. Alice didn't do it—Maria did, even though they didn't have a mate bond, she marked him. You might not know if you weren't looking for it mixed in with all those newborn bites, but Alice knows it's there, at the base of his neck, and they both have to live with that."
I could see how that could be distressing for Alice, and I was sympathetic. It must feel like her husband was walking around with a tattoo of his ex's name—I wouldn't care for that either if I were her.
But I didn't let myself get distracted from the issue at hand. "We're still caught up in semantics and symbols. Are you going to try to tell me that marriage wasn't the same way for thousands of years? Marriage is worse, even—because it was used to just treat the woman as property. At least mating bites are exchanged. Maria may have used the bite to consolidate power, but what about Peter and Charlotte? There is nothing but love and commitment there, and that is all their bites mean. Just like this," I waved my wedding ring for emphasis, "doesn't mean you own me. Not to us. What matters most is what these symbols mean to the couple."
His fingers tugged at his hair and he wouldn't look at me. "You're not wrong. But I don't think you're seeing fully what the bite means in the wider sense. Peter and Charlotte aren't necessarily representative."
"I didn't just talk to Charlotte about it. Garrett was the one who first brought it up." I held my hand, palm up, in front of Edward. "He was curious why you had placed your bite in such a non-traditional place. When I explained, he said that he didn't know how he would feel if his mate had another man's bite on her body."
"Garrett's a jackass," Edward said with uncharacteristic venom that amused me. Then he seemed to catch himself. He covered my hand tenderly with both of his, as if to protect it from the world. "Don't listen to him."
I studied Edward, no longer confident about the source of his distress. "You just admitted that Maria's bite bothers Alice. James' doesn't bother you?"
"Obviously, it does," he said, fury in his eye. Not at me, but at the memory of someone trying to hurt me. My heart warmed. "But not in the way you are meaning right now, because I'm civilized and you aren't property."
His reframing of the ritual cleared a lot of things up for me. "That's it, isn't it? The difference for you? You see exchanging bites as uncivilized."
"It is uncivilized." His voice rose and he gesticulated wildly. "Bella, I don't know why we are having this conversation."
It was all so dramatic and yet, it hadn't once occurred to him that there was really only one reason I would be pursuing this topic with such determination. "You don't? Really?"
A moment, then his eyes widened.
I saw the signs, but I was still trying not to panic. Trying to trust. It was time to lay my cards on the table here. "Come on. You have to admit, it's romantic and sexy. Way more than an expensive party and a legal contract."
"No, I don't feel that way." He said it with such finality, such conviction, I knew that was the end of it.
I did my best to accept his refusal with grace. I even attempted humor. "You look so scandalized. I've seen that look before, you know—the night I threw myself at you. You bought me a bed, put it in your bedroom, invited me to spend the night with you in it while your family was away, and then you were shocked when I thought we should have sex." I forced a laugh. "Sometimes we're on such different wavelengths. To me, it seemed like a natural extension of everything we were already doing and feeling, but from the way you reacted, the idea had never occurred to you. I'm sorry for the reenactment."
Edward sighed, the fight leaving him. His arm came up around me, tucking me into his side. "I didn't know. I'm aware that sounds unbelievable, but I didn't know."
I quirked a brow at him. "How horny I was? I know you didn't know. And I'm glad, because I didn't want you to. For a while there, it was the only shred of dignity I had left."
He shook his head. "I know that I look good to humans on the surface, that we are attractive to our intended food, but I also know how many things about me are unsettling up close. So, I was sure that you would be frightened of my teeth, that my eyes would make you feel like prey, and, most especially, that my touch would be cold and unpleasant. I kept our kisses fairly chaste and stayed on top of the covers while you slept to keep myself in check, yes, but it was also because I didn't want to push you too far and see you cringe away."
Oh God, my poor Edward was so innocent. Still even now, he had no idea the effect he'd had on me. "That's insane," I blurted.
"I figured it out! It took a while, but I figured it out. You didn't take the fact that I was a vampire seriously at all."
I snorted, baffled by how far off he was. "Wrong. I took it seriously. I just…," I smiled, reminded myself to be brave—Edward had already confessed his side of it. It was time for me to make things equal, "found those things exciting."
He stared at me, nonplussed.
So, I spelled things out for him. "Edward, your teeth were scary—of course they were. Your eyes made me feel like rabbit dinner, especially the blacker they got. Your skin never felt human in the slightest. I wasn't blind to those things or ignoring them. I was enjoying them." I swallowed, feeling jittery. It was scarier than I thought it would be admitting these things to him. I had a new respect for Edward's courage to open up about his side of this. "There's something I should probably confess to you. You won't like it, but it feels wrong not to tell you at this point, since we have been so honest with each other."
I couldn't look at him, but I was determined. I could do this. It was important.
"The wet dreams I used to have about you? Well, they pretty much always included an aspect of you drinking my blood. Not realistically! I know that any real-world scenario would have sent you into a frenzy and left me dead. More, like it is in the movies. It was just in dreams; I didn't fantasize."
I raised my eyes to his face and saw that he was dumbfounded. Fully immobilized with shock. I raised my hand to stroke the side of his face in comfort.
"I don't think it was ever supposed to be literal. Just a metaphor for all the ways I wanted you to take me, all the ways I wanted to satisfy you. The dream, the one you overheard?" I reminded him. Edward, kiss me. My neck. Deeper, I need you deeper inside me. "It was like that."
He still didn't say anything, so I kept going, bringing him into my thought and coping processes—the only explanations I had been able to come up with for my obsession over the years since I met him.
"I could blame Hollywood, or Anne Rice, but who knows where it came from, really? The association was there. Why do you think I went into a full swoon every time you kissed my neck? It was the most thrilling thing ever, because it was so dangerous, so loaded. Because you were a vampire and I was a human. That's the iconic image—the lecherous vampire bites the maiden's neck, penetrates her with his teeth, and she's never the same again."
Finally he spoke, and it was forceful. "Bella, stop it. It's not like that." He pulled away. "It was never like that."
By now I was getting rattled, losing confidence. I had thought that if we just continued through, things would get better, like they had during the other conversations. But that wasn't happening. I didn't think that I had ever seen this particular look in Edward's eyes before.
Revulsion. Not at what I was saying. At me.
It filled me with desperation.
"Not in real life maybe. Not exactly. But Edward, please understand that it's different for me than it is for you. Remember, you did drink my blood. And while that experience was so painful and, frankly, nightmarish that it destroyed the cinematic version, it did more than that. It flipped the script on its head. In the stories, it's all lust, and the blood-drinking deflowers the girl, makes her worldly and brings her closer to darkness. But when you drank me, it was all for love. You did it to preserve my innocence, because you couldn't bear it being taken from me without my consent. I can't think of that with the disgust that you do. I can't."
His manner was shell-shocked, his gaze far off. I didn't think he was listening to me anymore.
But I was compelled to keep trying. "I told you—as far as I'm concerned, it was the most romantic thing you have ever done for me."
Silence. He said nothing. He didn't, wouldn't, look at me. My throat made an ugly, pathetic noise that I realized was a sob. I became aware of the signifiers my body was throwing out about how I was feeling and registered that, if I were human, I would be bawling. I wasn't sure if this is better or worse. On the one hand, I was maintaining far more dignity this way than I would have otherwise. On the other, I knew that if I were crying, Edward wouldn't have been able to detach himself from my words.
Our dysfunctional negotiating tactics from our first days of marriage came back to me. His weakness: tears. My weakness: sex. Suddenly, it seemed unfair. He still had his ultimate trump card—if anything, it had increased in power; mine was gone forever.
"I can see that this whole thing was a bad idea. I thought I might try, because we have been doing so good with hard conversations lately, and you told me about some of your darkest desires. I…I thought it might be okay to tell you mine." I was running out of both will and steam. "Especially given how similar they were."
He wheeled on me, rage in his eyes. "Similar?"
I didn't shrink back, though part of me wanted to, because my own temper kicked up. He was not going to push all of these perversions off onto me. "Yes, Edward. Similar. We were both a little into the idea of you biting me and drinking my blood. I thought exchanging mating bites might be a way we could work through that mess that's…healthy? Maybe? I don't know—it was an idea. Clearly it was a bad one and I'm sorry for bringing it up."
He leapt off the rock, away from me. His arms were flailing again. "Drinking your blood is not a fantasy we are turning into a game."
That shocked me. Were we even having the same conversation? "I never suggested we do. Mating bites aren't a game, Edward, they're permanent scars. I was asking you to marry me."
"We're already married!" He spat.
God, this was stupid. We were so off track, so lost. I wanted him to understand that I had never treated this lightly, as a mere kink. "The human way, and this wouldn't have undermined that ceremony in any way. Couples renew their vows all the time." I bit my lip. Then I pleaded, "Are vampire customs really so horrible? Is it really so crazy that I don't want to spend an eternity feeling disgusted by what we are?"
Edward exploded. "Thirsting for blood is something we should feel disgust over, always. Period!"
"Thirst for blood is such a small part of it."
"For you!"
That retort slapped me in the face with the truth of it. He had a point. Maybe I didn't understand; maybe this was just too deviant a desire for him, too linked to the urge to kill, to ever redeem with romance and ritual. "You're right, Edward. I'm sorry."
I wished to God that I had just listened to my instincts and never brought it up to begin with.
Edward was pulling at his hair again. "No mating bites—ever!"
"I got that," I reassured him. I would never, ever be bringing this up again.
"It's sick, is what it is. Wanting to bite the person you love is sick," he said nastily.
I'll regret it forever, but goddamn it, my temper flared again. "Laying it on a little thick there, Edward? Drinking my blood in reality may not have been pleasurable for me, but I know it was for you, whether you admit it or not. It wasn't just me who was turned on by the idea. You wanted it, too. I know you did—you told me."
And then he….
Sorry. I had to step away for a minute. This is hard. My pen is hovering over the page, but it is difficult to make it write this.
He…he said: "You obviously weren't listening. You don't know what you're talking about. What I like, what I don't like, and what I just put up with because you never stop!"
And then…. I just…I broke.
Author's Note: The book that Bella finds is a real one, published in the year 2000 and still widely available. For all of Bella's research and resources cited throughout this work, I wanted to limit myself to materials published before 2008, i.e. things she would have had access to. This was most limiting when it came to BDSM, as I discovered the vast majority of useful resources were published within the last ten years or so. Dr. Gloria Brame was one of the few sex positive voices talking about this stuff in the mainstream in the late twentieth century. I certainly didn't want the first book poor Bella picked up to be one that linked masochism with psychopathy (a common belief in the field of Psychology before the 1980s and 90s).