Author's Note: Thank you to BrierLynn03 for pre-reading!
Chapter 21 - Compromise (part 2)
The alarm bells that distantly sounded in his head didn't keep Edward from immediately responding with an appreciative groan when Bella's warm mouth met his own, his arms tightening around her. His tongue immediately pried her lips open and sought out that haven of delicious warmth it knew exactly where to find, like it had a mind of its own.
She certainly didn't appear to have a problem with that. Bella moaned into his mouth, wiggling her body closer to his chest in a way that left no question she intended to take things as far as he'd allow.
He shouldn't allow anything, the voice of reason buried somewhere deep inside his head screamed. She was going after him a little too urgently, too desperate and vulnerable after the emotional events of the night.
And he wasn't much better.
He should put a stop to it right then. She was injured, on painkillers. She was still coming down from a panic attack, her body still wracked with the occasional light shudder ever since he'd frightened her.
She'd been traumatized that night. Not even half an hour ago, she thought he was Albert — her attacker — and she was screaming in terror for him to put her down. At that very moment, they were in a bed that she'd previously refused to even sleep in because he used it to kidnap her.
All of that added up to the fact that he shouldn't be doing this. It was practically tantamount to taking advantage of the woman he loved at her most vulnerable, something he deemed utterly reprehensible.
But God, he was at his most vulnerable too, and she was all over him, kissing him frantically. He needed this too: her kiss, her touch, her. It wasn't even so much the sensuality of it. He just needed the closeness of his mate, more than he'd ever needed oxygen, blood, or any other substance on the whole damn planet aside from her. He urgently needed to reconnect with her, any way he could.
So while he would have never presumed to make advances of his own right then, he just didn't have it in him to resist hers — not after their awful fight, being forced to leave her when he wasn't sure she'd even want to speak to him upon his return, and even how keyed up he still was from the euphoria of destroying an enemy who dared threaten her.
Even so, the alarm bells rang more urgently when, after moving from his lap without breaking their kiss, Bella fisted the front of his shirt in her hands and lay back, trying to pull him down on top of her.
"Bella," he tried to caution her, breaking the kiss and resisting her tugs. But she only pulled harder, whimpering.
"Please," she begged, and leaned back up to kiss him hard. "Please, Edward. I missed you so much."
He cupped her face in his hands, looked deep into her teary eyes — and though he couldn't honestly say that he found the certainty and assurance there he was looking for, he just didn't have the heart to deny her at least that one small request, his body over hers.
In the last twelve hours alone, he'd kidnapped her, had her held captive against her will, for God's sake, and then terrified her and broken her finger. If there was anything he could give her, including a chance to call the shots just as far as he could allow without risking hurting her, then he was going to do that.
So he gave in, caught his weight on one hand as he followed her down, until he rested on his elbow. His other hand went to her waist, beneath her back, cradling her and slightly lifting her up against him. Her legs she kept pressed together tightly, something that seemed very intentional on her part, with both of hers between his as he carefully straddled her.
Despite that reminder of how things had changed in their physical relationship since Albert — the old Bella would have all but sold her soul to get her legs around him every chance she got — he was quickly warming up to their new position. Having her under him satisfied all the individual parts of his nature: the lustful monster who wanted control, the man in love who just wanted her as close as he could get her, and the protective mate who wanted to cover and shield her with his own body.
The lingering scent of Jacob Black, though repellent, only added fire to Edward's passion, flooding him with the overpowering urge to remove it. With every kiss, every touch of his own skin to hers, he erased more and more of that foul scent on her — and replaced it with his own.
The dog would never have her like this, not so long as breath passed through Edward Cullen's lungs. And neither would anyone else. Only him. Only he got her like this.
Mine. The word pounded through his entire being, sending his head spinning with hazy lust as he kissed her. He lifted her body up closer toward him with the hand at her back, held her as tightly as he dared risk, deepened the kiss even more. Mine. My mate. If not for his tongue buried deep in her mouth, he'd have likely said those words out loud. He said it with his kiss instead, staking his claim and branding her his own.
Bella felt the difference, the sudden intensity in him, and she responded eagerly, humming encouragingly into his mouth. Her hands found their way under his shirt, blazing across his ribs like trails of fire. Not even the feel of her splint dragging lightly across his bare skin dampened his ardor this time.
He wasn't about to stop her. He returned the skin-on-skin favor, in fact, with the hand at her waist, as his thumb edged carefully beneath the hem of her shirt to caress the smooth flesh there. He wanted to touch all of it. He wanted to run his fingers, his hands, his tongue over every creamy inch of her. He wanted every millimeter of it to smell of him and him alone. Not anyone else, ever — for all of eternity. Bella belonged only to him, just as he belonged only to her.
No one else could ever hold such a claim over him. Had she really worried for even a moment that she might have the slightest competition in Tanya? Though that hadn't been his primary focus when Alice showed him her memories of the night, he was a little floored by it now. His Bella had been jealous over him. Even more remarkable, she, as a human, had picked up on the female attention to her mate in the first place. Tanya had done nothing overt, nothing a human should even notice. Bella had sensed it instinctively.
God, she was made for him. As blasphemous as it might sound, this woman was born to become a vampire. His vampire.
He couldn't go too far down that road, at the moment, imagining what it would be like when a golden-eyed, fierce Bella decided to stake her claim on him the first time they were subjected to Tanya once Bella was changed. His pants got tighter just thinking about it.
He focused, instead, on what it must have felt like for Bella while he was gone, learning of Tanya's feelings. And that sobered him. Absurd though the notion might be — that the bland and generic Tanya could ever hold any attraction for him, when he could possess the beauty that was Bella — he knew it to have been an honest concern. He had seen it in her eyes in Alice's memory of the night. Bella wasn't just a little worried when she questioned Alice about it. The idea of Tanya's interest in him had genuinely upset her, scared her.
He knew that feeling well, by now, thanks to Jacob Black. And it wasn't a good one.
He double-checked his control, found it to be generally intact. He was in no danger of losing focus, so fixated as he was on Bella's every reaction, on being sure that she was okay with what he was doing. And so he decided that if this was Bella's way of staking her claim on him, just as he was already surreptitiously staking his own by marking her with his scent, he could do his part by relaxing a few more of his strict boundaries for the night.
Perhaps letting her take things at least a little farther than he usually permitted would even kill two birds with one stone. The only thing Jacob Black could truly offer Bella that he couldn't, after all, was this — the physical side of a relationship, the pleasures of the flesh. Sexual intercourse, at least while she was still human.
He wasn't naive. If there was one human experience he'd long known Bella would want before her human body died — or would have wanted before what Albert did to her, at any rate — it was that one. The one he had summarily dismissed as impossible for them.
But he'd had plenty of time to think about that, on his long run home after killing Victoria, obsessing over the question of whether Jacob Black had attempted to seduce his mate that night and just how close he'd gotten — closer than he should have, to leave that much of his smell on her.
Enough time to wonder if maybe that was Jacob's long-term strategy to pull Bella's interest away from him, and whether or not it might eventually work.
Enough time to decide that if that was what it took to keep her, he'd find a goddam way to manage it himself, the difficulty be damned.
Maybe he could even command enough of her attention that way that she'd never even think about Jacob Black again, much less waste her time with visiting him.
And while it would necessarily be a slow and painstaking process for them to get there, for so many different reasons, there was no reason he couldn't start laying the groundwork that very night.
As he carefully explored Bella's mouth, aware of exactly how breathless and dazzled he was leaving her with his slow, deep kiss, his fingers slowly began to inch their way up her torso beneath her shirt. Tentative at first, his caresses grew bolder and more sensual at her eager response to this development.
He ran the palm of his hand across her smooth belly, splaying his fingers out, feeling the little twitches of her muscles that indicated he was having an effect. He skimmed his fingertips up and down her ribs at her sides, enjoying the interplay of fiery heat and icy cold between their skin, almost as much as he enjoyed the way she writhed around, unable to remain still.
He grasped her side just above the waist to hold her still, stroking the flesh just above with his thumb, back and forth, just the tiniest bit higher with each swipe.
Bella arched her back, encouraging him to go farther, though he still kept his fingers well within the bounds of decency. He kept her easily in place, resisting her efforts to squirm any higher or lower. He wouldn't take it too far, that night, when he still couldn't trust that either of them were thinking perfectly clearly. He was simply testing the waters, letting them both get used to the idea of more.
But a mishap was almost bound to happen, given both of their overwrought emotional states combined with their mutual inexperience. And it did.
As she squirmed beneath him, her body naturally seeking greater contact, his fingers pushing the boundaries as far as he dared, the two moved in opposite directions at the same time...
And his thumb swiped softly across the underside of her breast, quite accidentally.
The contact was significant enough to drive home the point that she was wearing no bra, hardly surprising since he'd kidnapped her from her bedroom after she began preparing for bed in her bathroom. She'd had no clothes in the bathroom to change into, but she must have removed her bra there when she washed up, left it in the laundry hamper.
But that really wasn't the important detail here, his racing brain knew.
It was her reaction that mattered. It held the potential to either absolve or destroy him.
Bella stiffened and inhaled sharply at the moment of contact, wrenching her mouth away from his. She stared up at him with wide eyes, frozen, like she wasn't sure how to respond. Her heart seemed to skip a few beats and then try to make up for lost time — and not in a good way.
Like a freight train slamming into him, Edward came fully back to reality. God, what the fuck had he been thinking to be so careless? With torturously perfect recall, every detail she'd tearfully told him about that monster mauling and groping her tender breasts, torturing and hurting her, came back to the forefront of his mind.
I never thought that would hurt so bad, she'd whispered that night, about being touched there. It'd had the ring of a confession to it — like she was almost ashamed to admit she'd ever thought of her mate touching her that way at all. He couldn't possibly have told her, that night, that she had never been alone in those thoughts.
It shouldn't, had been all he'd been able to say, desperate for her to know he'd never hurt her that way. He was hurting you on purpose, Bella.
Fury flooded him afresh. Of fucking course she reacted badly to his cold touch there, so unexpected and feeling exactly like that monster's. Her body still expected it to hurt. It probably even told her that it did.
He immediately pulled his hand away, dropped his fingers right back down to where they started, at her waist, where he quickly slid them back out of her shirt and goddamn kept them there. An apology was already forming on his lips, almost before he even had his hands out of the danger zone.
But Bella reached up and put her fingers over his lips, shaking her head to stop him. She took a deep breath, her face growing determined.
"I'm okay," she lied. And he knew it was a lie. It was written all over her face. It was in the way she wouldn't make eye contact when she said it. It was in the shuddery breath she drew first.
But he was committed enough to the idea of letting Bella take the lead, for the night, that he still didn't stop her when she went after his lips again, despite the expanding uneasiness in the pit of his gut that something wasn't quite right.
Need.
It was the one thing Bella could feel, coursing through her veins, when she first grabbed Edward and kissed him.
She needed him. All she'd needed all night, despite her anger, was Edward home safe. He could have been killed. He could have been killed because of her, and that sunk in the moment Alice told him, earlier, right in front of her, that his new plan was risky — a new plan that wouldn't even have been needed, if not for her trip to La Push.
She had put him and his family in unimaginable danger with her impulsivity and selfishness — and then she had to wait for hours, wait to find out if they would all make it out alive or if she had killed any of them.
But they had made it out okay, and so had Edward. And now she had him again, right there in their future home. He was safe. His family was safe. And he had just made everything right between them about Jacob. Everything. Nothing else mattered.
She just needed Edward.
But that wasn't all she needed. Just as much, she needed Edward to make her forget.
There were so many things she desperately needed to forget:
James. Victoria. Danger. Her attack.
Jacob. Her guilt about Jacob and how she was going to handle the fact that he was in love with her, without further upsetting Edward.
Her near-constant worries about sex and Edward and pain and just the scary unknown of it all, especially the closer she and Edward grew physically again.
The terror she felt when she woke up being carried toward a bed, by a man with Edward's face, and there was no way it could be Edward, because he was supposed to be over 100 miles away.
Albert.
Above all, she wanted to forget Albert.
She didn't want to be afraid of anything anymore. She didn't want to be afraid of being touched anymore. She wanted to forget all of it.
If she could just get past her biggest fears, push through them even one time, she would be okay, she believed. She wouldn't be afraid anymore.
She thought she was getting there. As Edward's hand snaked beneath her shirt, caressing and touching and making her feel so good, she thought for a moment she had overcome it. She wanted nothing more in life than to get his fingers just a few inches higher — or maybe even lower — which he frustratingly refused to do. He kept her firmly in place, his fingers stroking her, his thumbs teasing toward her but never quite carrying through, careful and so damn respectful as always.
She thought she wanted him not to be. She truly believed that.
She believed it right up until she zigged when Edward zagged, and everything fell apart.
His cold thumb rubbed firmly across her breast, the only man to ever touch her there aside from Albert — and she nearly screamed. Her body rebelled, tensing up beneath him, despite her mind's reassurance that this was fine; more than fine.
It all came flooding back to her, no matter how much she didn't want it — the pain, Albert's fingers cruelly twisting her nipples, his mouth on her, hurting her, scraping her raw.
Herself screaming, begging him to stop. Calling him Edward when she said it, because he made her.
And he hadn't stopped. He hadn't.
The real Edward would, if she asked him to. He would.
Wouldn't he?
He looked just like him...that was all she could see, all of a sudden...
Him.
Her stomach lurched. She couldn't do this. She would never be able to do this. For just a second, she panicked that she was about to throw up all over Edward, the bed, and herself.
Then she slowed down, really saw the look on Edward's face. It only made it worse. His mouth was open, looking down at her with horrified eyes. He looked stricken. Thoroughly embarrassed and ashamed. Worst of all, apologetic. His hand disappeared from inside her shirt so quickly she wasn't even sure how it happened.
He knew, she realized. He knew exactly where her mind went when he finally touched her, a time she should only have been thinking of him, her mate.
He was about to say something, start telling her how this was all a mistake...how he wouldn't ever touch her again.
She panicked all over again. If she didn't stop him, if she didn't shake it off and convince him she was fine right then, he would never, ever try again.
Frustration and determination flooded her in equal measure. She was sick of this. Edward was there, right in front of her, and he was safe. He wouldn't hurt her. She needed him, damn it.
And she was going to have as much of him as he would give her that night, her ridiculous fears notwithstanding.
She wasn't losing control like that ever again. She could control it.
She was fixing at least one of her problems that night, and she was doing it right then.
He was unsure, at first, when Bella immediately began kissing him again after his accidental overstep. She kissed him like her life depended on him responding to it. And so he did, tentatively...carefully.
They should probably discuss what had just happened, Edward distantly knew, regardless of how much coaxing and/or sternness it would require on his part to make that happen.
But forcing her to talk could backfire on him too, if he pushed the slightest bit too hard and made her feel trapped in the process. He'd learned that lesson the hard way, more than once. And for now, this still seemed to be what she wanted.
So he didn't try to stop her. He may have gentled his kisses, slowed things down as much as he could. And his hand, though still resting lightly at her waist, outside her clothes, never moved again.
But otherwise, Edward's commitment to letting Bella take the lead for the night still hadn't diminished.
So he still didn't stop her, after everything seemed to be progressing smoothly again, when she slowly dragged his t-shirt up his torso, baring his chest and back to her questing hands.
He didn't stop her when she pulled it all the way up and over his head, either. In fact, he helped her, reaching up with the hand he'd had at her waist to gently free the garment, when she struggled and got it caught in her splint, and throw it out of the way for her. That done, he eagerly dug that same hand into her hair with a groan and brought her mouth back to his, since kissing was obviously something she was just fine with.
But they were in uncharted waters now, with him half-naked. He'd never allowed this before. He was having difficulty remembering why.
Her touch was exquisite. Her heat, all along his body, with one fewer layer between them, was driving him mad.
He wanted both of his arms free, rather than using one to hold himself up. So he shifted just enough onto his side that he was still partially atop her but resting to his side, with very little of his weight on her. His now free arm quickly enveloped her waist — outside her shirt, this time — holding her tightly to him. His hand in her hair slid through the soft tresses and around to the back of her neck, keeping their mouths sealed together.
The feel of her hot hands on his naked skin as he deeply kissed her was quickly driving him to distraction. He'd never experienced her touch up and down his bare back, across his chest and abs. God, why had he denied himself this? If he'd known just how good Bella could make him feel simply by removing his shirt, he'd probably never have stopped her.
Her fingertips trailed across one of his nipples, gently scraping her fingernail across the rock-hard surface as she eagerly explored him, and his hips jerked with unexpected pleasure. It was like nothing he'd ever experienced.
He would have desperately loved to return that favor her fingers had just done for him, to make her feel the same glorious sensations her touch gave him. It was incredibly unfair to her that now, when her mate was finally willing, it was no longer a possibility for her.
At least, it wasn't a possibility until they worked through it, until he slowly and carefully helped Bella's body understand that his intimate touch was far different than the only one she'd ever experienced in her life, up until that point; that her mate's body would bring her pleasure, rather than pain.
And that was something he still had no idea how to go about doing. It seemed like an almost insurmountable obstacle, working through her obviously strong fears, when the thought of making her the least bit uncomfortable was torture. How could he ever put her through that?
His enthusiasm began to wane. But then Bella repeated the touch that had nearly done him in the first time, on both his nipples simultaneously this time, and he forgot about everything except feeling.
That gave him an idea, when his brain started functioning again. Could he do the same for her, eventually? Make her forget everything except how good he was making her feel, and work their way up to each boundary slowly, patiently, until she was more worried that he wouldn't touch her than she was that he would? Perhaps that was the answer. He'd have to give that some consideration...later.
For the moment, he couldn't do much more than groan deeply into her mouth and try to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head as Bella continued having her wicked way with his chest and abs. So this was what it meant to get felt up. He'd heard that phrase from a few different generations of teenagers, and now he could finally see the appeal for himself. Was Bella actually counting each individual muscle in his six-pack as she groped it? He kind of thought she just might be. Whatever she was doing, she was clearly enjoying herself.
Needing to do something, since he had to keep his own hands mostly to himself, he tilted her head with the hand in her hair to get better access to her mouth. At the same time, he shifted his hips away from her, hoping she hadn't just felt his raging erection when his hips bumped hers.
He still had no plans to stop her. He was going to let her take this just as far as he sanely and safely could — and if it wiped away the last trace of Jacob Black's scent from her skin in the process, then all the better.
It wasn't until he felt her one good hand travel downward, start frantically fumbling between their bodies to pop loose the button on his jeans, that something resembling coherent thought finally made it through the haze of his possessive lust.
This was getting a little too serious, especially after what happened earlier, when he accidentally brushed her breast.
Bella wasn't ready for where this was now headed, even if she thought she was. Not even close. Edward wasn't even sure he was, not without some serious mental preparation. Not to mention the fact that he still had no real intention of crossing certain lines while she was still human, no matter what kind of jealousy-fueled, lust-addled decisions he'd made on the way home, about holding on to his mate's interest any way he had to keep it.
He was, however, more open than ever to the idea of compromise, seeing how well the one he'd offered her about Jacob was working out so far.
Their situation might necessitate keeping his own hands to himself, for now. But if Bella could regain some of her sexual confidence and her physical trust in him by letting her hands wander freely, he was prepared to break a few more of his rules...or let her break them, more accurately.
His hand came out of her hair, down to his own waist, curled itself loosely around her fingers at his button. "These stay on," he stopped his kisses just long enough to mumble against her lips, tugging at his waistband with both their hands so she'd understand what he meant. But he didn't pull her hand away from the area, as he might have done in the past. Maybe Bella didn't fully understand what he was getting at, but he was giving her free rein to do as she pleased with him, beyond that one rule — and maybe one other he should clarify.
"So do yours," he amended, and let his tongue find its way back into her mouth like it was guided by a homing beacon.
He let go of her hand, left it right where it was, and threaded his own back into the safe zone of her hair. It was starting to smell more like him than Jacob, of which he heartily approved. His lips ventured away from her mouth, across her cheek, down across her chin, on their careful way to her creamy throat. If kissing her was the one thing he could do, then he was determined to reacquaint his lips with that delicious territory they'd been denied for far too many months now.
But Bella wasn't entirely satisfied with his compromise. Her neck tipped back to give him greater access, but her fingers went right back to what they had been doing, tugging almost desperately at his button. He could feel her growing frustrated when she couldn't get it loose. It appeared he wasn't the only one having issues with manual dexterity that night.
He reluctantly pulled back to look into her eyes, sparing a hand to still her fingers again. "I said those stay on. We need to take this slowly, love."
That answer only irritated her. She huffed with impatience, and he tried to soothe her by resuming the path of his lips down the smooth column of her throat. He didn't let go of her fingers this time, though he still didn't move them away. They were in something of a stalemate on that issue.
"Please," she whispered, squirming and gasping as his tongue darted out to taste the hollow at her throat — and God, how he'd missed that. "Please, Edward. I need you."
"You have me," he assured her calmly, feeling her shiver as he gave her a soft, wet kiss to the side of her neck, his lips moving oh-so-slowly and gently. Her other hand reflexively gripped his shoulder, so he smiled, did it again. "But I'm not particularly inclined to say no to you right now, so please don't ask me for anything you're not sure you really want. My control has already taken a beating tonight."
He'd murmured those words against her neck, but he needed to see her eyes. He pulled back only as far as necessary to do so.
And when she saw the seriousness in his, he found in hers exactly what he'd expected from the beginning.
Hesitance. Uncertainty.
She knew she didn't really want to take this much farther. And she was counting on him to stop her, as he always had.
She probably had been counting on him to stop it since the moment she kissed him, before he decided to let her take things further than usual.
Bucket of ice water, meet erection.
So this time, when she grit her teeth with determination and her fingers stubbornly started fidgeting with his button again, he did pull her hand away from the front of his pants. He brought it all the way up to his lips, planted a soft kiss to the back of her knuckles. Then he held her gaze with his own.
"I think that's far enough for tonight, love."
He knew he was doing the right thing. But he wasn't prepared for the look of sheer hurt, anger, and betrayal that took over her face.
She turned her head away as she tried to roll away from him, but not before he saw the humiliated tears spring up in her eyes; not before he both saw and smelled the beginning of a rosy blush climbing upward from her chest.
He let go of her hand then, planted his on the bed beside her waist, using his arm as a barrier to prevent her rolling away.
This, he had a fairly good idea of how to handle now. He was beginning to learn exactly when and how Bella responded favorably to a show of dominance from him.
When she was pushing him away out of insecurity or embarrassment or some reluctance to be honest with him about her feelings? That was most definitely one of those times it worked.
But when they were arguing over Jacob Black, and/or when he was trying to place any type of protective restrictions on her freedom, even if meant solely to keep her safe? Yeah, that was most definitely not.
He could work within those boundaries. And this situation, thankfully, fell into the first category.
So he tugged her right back into place beneath him. "I don't think so," he mildly scolded, and felt her body go instantly pliant and supple. He had to suppress his immediate purr at that reaction, because he really did need her to take him seriously about this. "Don't hide from me, Bella. Just talk to me."
Her gaze darted across his but didn't stay. She turned her head to the side, looking away toward the fireplace, as her fingers nervously twisted together against her stomach. She wasn't reaching out to touch him anymore, and her lovely blush had taken over her skin all the way to the top of her head.
"It's nothing," she minimized, bobbing a shoulder. "It's just that...I mean, this bed is here, and we're here, and...and I know how patient you've been with me. I guess I just wanted to, you know...get over at least one thing tonight."
When he only stared at her, gobsmacked, she grew even more embarrassed — and quickly changed her story, unfortunately diverting him away from the real issue she'd come so close to bringing up...
One he forgot about instantly at her next words, when she turned her face completely away, fought tears as she said them.
"Never mind. It's stupid. I know you don't really want to anyway."
As usual, her words could set his head spinning and turn him inside out just as quickly as her kisses — enough to make him miss the importance of what she had started to say, in favor of focusing on that last sentence.
She thought he didn't want her? For the love of God...
So apparently, she had missed the part where he just all but invited her to have her way with him, so long as she did it with his clothes on.
He may have completely missed the point, but he was starting to figure out at least one thing about his mate. Basically, no matter what he said or how he meant it, Bella's insecurities would simply find the absolute most mind-bogglingly negative interpretation of it, and then run with it.
"Bella, what am I going to do with you?" he asked, his lip pulling up at the corner. Out of his three choices — because it was either amusement, tear all his hair out, or do something stupid like trying to prove how much he wanted her — amusement was probably his safest option, all things considered.
But her lips turned down, her expression still one of hurt. "Nothing, probably," she grumbled in response to his question. "Like usual. Unless I make you mad enough, I guess."
Suddenly, nothing was amusing anymore. His stomach bottomed out like he'd just gone into freefall. His body went almost perfectly still. He wasn't even breathing.
Of its own volition, a single finger went to her chin, firmly turned her face toward his worried one, demanding eye contact.
"Explain that last statement to me, please."
His deadly serious tone caught her attention, her eyes finally focusing on him. She fidgeted beneath his intense scrutiny, worrying her lip.
"It didn't really mean anything. I shouldn't have even said it. Just forget it."
Yeah. Like hell.
"Bella Swan, if you value my sanity, you'll tell me what you meant by that." Or even if she didn't value his sanity, she was still going to tell him, because he wasn't letting this go. Those frightening words had just dropped a boulder into the pit of his stomach. He needed to know exactly why his mate suddenly associated him being angry with him desiring her sexually. That was disturbing...on a few levels.
Her fidgeting quickly turned to outright squirming. She tried to turn away in the other direction, but the finger at her chin was joined by his thumb, gently holding her in place.
"It's okay," he assured her softly, seeing the panic on her face. She wasn't afraid of him, just of opening up to him. "We're okay. But please talk to me right now. I need to know what you meant by that, before I go completely mad imagining the worst."
His obvious desperation got through to her, overcame her reluctance to talk, if only for his sake. "It's really not a big deal. I was just talking about...I mean, earlier tonight, in my room, when you were so mad at me...just for a second, I thought..."
His head dipped closer when she maddeningly trailed off, as though he could see right into her mind, extract the truth himself. Things weren't sounding any better for him yet. Far from it.
"When I was mad at you, you thought what?" His tone had gone harsh, demanding, but God, he needed a goddamn answer.
His head was spinning, possible explanations racing through his mind, each more horrifying than the last.
Albert had been furious with her when he attacked her, Edward knew. She had explicitly told him as much. And it had been his face she'd been looking into when it happened, which was bound to leave its mark on her. There was no way it couldn't, and he understood that all too painfully well.
Had Bella, confronted with Edward's visible anger and jealousy that night, alone with him in her bedroom, picked up on his struggle with the possessive instinct to mark her with his scent, misunderstood it, and feared it was all happening to her all over again?
At the time, he'd momentarily worried that she feared he was about to physically lash out in anger, even strike her. That had gutted him effectively enough, because Jesus, he would never. But had it been even worse? Had he actually let her believe he was about to hurt her the way Albert hurt her? Had she believed he was about to attack her?
But no. She had been aroused tonight when they argued, his monster defended itself. If she hadn't, he would have backed off far sooner. There was no question in his mind about that. It was her response that had further inflamed his.
Unless...
And his bones grew even colder with this thought...
What if he had been mistaken about what he believed to be Bella's arousal, when he caged her in against her bedroom wall like a brute, got in her face?
Oh, he knew he hadn't mistaken the actual scent of her body's lubrication, but had he possibly misconstrued the reasoning for it? Had her body, believing that attack was imminent, simply prepared itself as a fear response, a means of protecting her from injury?
That sometimes happened — one more horrifying tidbit he'd picked up in the '20s, when he'd willingly subjected himself to the minds of monsters, night after night. At least one depraved rapist he'd tracked had hated it when that happened. He'd preferred to cause as much pain to his victims as possible, and that type of bodily response only interfered. The bastard had successfully used that as a defense in court once, too, when he had been caught, just before Edward learned of him in the newspaper. And a turn-of-the-century, all-male jury had believed him, agreed it was proof that his victim must have wanted it.
Him, Edward had taken his time killing — the same night the bastard was acquitted, when Edward stalked his every step out of the courtroom and soon caught him looking for another victim to 'celebrate' his acquittal. At least Edward had finished the goddamn job that time, unlike with Albert, who was arguably even worse. That was one asshole who would never hurt anybody again.
Turning his mind from the horrific past to the even more horrifying present, Bella was biting her lip, her eyes refusing to hold his gaze. Her voice was hesitant, unsure. But he'd made it pretty clear he wasn't letting this go, so she did her best to explain something she clearly didn't even understand herself.
"It just seemed like maybe you wanted...you know...to do something then, when we were fighting. I don't know what, or even how to explain it. But I could feel it too, kind of a — a pull. I thought maybe...I know this sounds stupid, but I thought maybe it was a vampire thing. A mate thing. Like, that that's how mates solve disagreements or something."
There was one hell of a lot to unpack from that — like just how damn close she'd come to the truth on her own, without him explaining a goddamn thing — but only one thing actually mattered.
"Did I scare you, in any way at all?" he questioned, as though his next breath depended on her answer. "Tell me the truth, Bella."
He'd be on his knees by the bed, begging forgiveness, before the next word was fully out of her mouth, if that word was a yes. And he wouldn't get up any time soon.
But Bella released him from his agony. And he could see that she was telling the truth. She was too frustrated with his lack of comprehension not to be.
"No! That's what I was trying to say before, about getting you mad enough to...to want me like that. I was mad at you too, but...but everything just felt — I don't know — different. Not like it's been since...since Albert. That's why I thought it was a mate thing."
She grew shy, licked her lips while he processed her words and tried to remember how to breathe.
"It felt different how?" he pushed, eyes locked on hers, because he knew this was somehow important. "I need you to spell this out for me, Bella. What, exactly, were you feeling?"
Her gaze faltered but didn't drop completely. She looked him in the eye when she went in for the kill.
"Like I wasn't scared at all, or even nervous. Like I wanted you to lose control. Like...like whatever it was you wanted to do to me — I wanted you to do it too."
Fucking hell.
That might be a crude, vulgar mental response that he'd never actually say out loud, at least not within earshot of a lady, but it was currently the only words that sprang to his short-circuiting mind. He'd probably picked up that phrase from Emmett. He couldn't remember right then. He wasn't even sure he remembered his own name or where he was.
There were multiple different directions he could take from what his mate had just said. He could focus on the fact that she'd just openly admitted to being nervous about his touch since her attack, which he knew but still made him flinch to hear her say it out loud.
He could go with that statement about wanting him to lose control, try to explain all the reasons that she really didn't want that, no matter how much she might think she did — at least not until she was changed, anyway.
He could probably just get out of the whole thing by tackling and deconstructing her theory that rough, angry sex was how mates solved fights. It wasn't — at least not that he was aware of — unless one counted Rosalie and Emmett. And that was mainly just Rosalie knocking Emmett around when they argued, because Emmett got a charge out of her fiery temper, for some weird reason Edward had never examined too closely. Even that didn't usually last long.
In general, from what his mind had been unwillingly subjected to for the past 80 years, thanks to the three blissfully mated couples with whom he resided, he got the impression that vampire makeup sex was actually less enthusiastic and rough than usual, more tender and geared toward reconnecting.
But he could certainly see the appeal of Bella's theory, now that he thought about it. If that was something Bella might enjoy, he'd file it away for later consideration.
His pants started to tighten again. Much later consideration, he amended. Like, a century or two down the road.
After all, he intended to keep her forever, so that was how long Bella would probably continue driving him to the brink of insanity on a scarily frequent basis. Her stubbornness certainly wasn't going to improve as a vampire. If anything, it would likely only become worse. This would not be their last argument, nor their last chance to test her theory.
Bella, who was trying not to look like she couldn't wait for his reaction to her last words, was squirming under him in a different way now. One that had little to do with shyness or embarrassment.
He ducked his head, hid a smile. He'd just thought of a way to kill several birds with one stone: getting rid of the rest of Jacob's lingering scent on her, lessening the nervous tension in the room a notch, and most importantly, assuring Bella that she was very much wanted by him — all without crossing any more lines that night.
"You're more perceptive than you give yourself credit for. There was something I wanted to do to you in your room tonight, actually," he started carefully, and watched with satisfaction as her eyes widened, her heart speeding up. His lips twitched, but he held it in. "And you were right. It's strictly a vampire thing. Would you be interested in hearing about it? Or better yet, might I just show you?"
Her breath caught. And ah, there it was...his little mate was quickly growing aroused again. Real arousal this time, not the emotion-fueled desperation of their earlier kisses. Eyes wide and fixed on him, she slowly nodded.
"Hold very still, now," he teased, his eyes twinkling, as he very slowly dipped his head toward her collarbone. "Don't move."
Bella wasn't good at that. But then, she never had been, not even the first time he'd kissed her, when he first said those same words to her. But he didn't really expect her to. By now, he'd take it as an indication he wasn't doing his job well if she actually managed it.
He wasn't really sure how she might react when she felt his tongue slowly start dragging its way up from the neckline of her tanktop at her collarbone, up the center of her throat, and around her chin to just below her ear, where he planted a gentle kiss. He didn't know if she would giggle, or if she would yell "ew" and push him away, tell him to put his tongue back in his mouth. If she did, given the way he'd set this up, he could play it off as a joke.
She did none of those things. She tipped her head back, her heart beating an unsteady staccato as he slowly repeated his ministrations on her other side. He blew his cool breath across the wet trail of his venom he'd left, and she shivered.
"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice tremoring. "And why does it feel so damn good?"
He chuckled against her skin, letting his cold breath blow across it and transfer even more of his scent to her. That little bit of profanity rolling from his mate's tongue in response to his marking had an effect on him he'd rather she not know about — one he felt he should probably be a little ashamed of, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
"I'm marking you with my scent, to answer your first question. It's exactly as barbaric as it sounds, before you even ask. But essentially, it tells every other supernatural creature who gets within 100 feet of you that you belong to me. And if you must know, I like that."
Bella whimpered, tried to stifle it. "And my second question?"
"Why it feels so good?" Edward ran his nose down her neck, satisfying himself with the potency of his mark. Absolutely no trace of Jacob Black remained on her exposed skin. He'd done a fairly good job with his hands in her hair earlier, too. Once she changed her clothes, there would be no trace of the dog left on her. Possessively, he cupped her chin in his hand. "Because it's supposed to," he told her, and captured her lips in a quick, deep kiss.
She squeaked with surprise, but he had already released her by the time she caught up, his lips once again traveling around her jawline, where he felt his scent could be just a bit stronger. But when he inhaled deeply with his nose against her jugular, checking that important area too, she seemed to notice — and get the wrong idea.
"Oh! You never got to hunt," Bella gasped suddenly, intensely examining him from up close, as though she hadn't noticed his pitch-black eyes before, the dark circles beneath them. To be fair, not all of the black in his eyes was thirst, at the moment. At least, not thirst for blood. But it was too late. Bella was on a mission now. Her fingers stroked the skin next to his eye softly, and he couldn't resist closing them, making a humming sound of contentment as he leaned into her touch.
"I'll be fine," he tried to salvage the moment, dipping back down and gently nuzzling her. "I'm not leaving you again any time soon."
She tipped her head back further, clearly enjoying his attention to that spot under her ear, but she impressively held the thread of conversation, despite his best effort to distract her.
"No...you need to hunt, Edward. I can look at you and tell." Her voice was disapproving.
He was just going to have to try harder.
His lips traveled back down her neck, moving against her as he spoke, trailing his breath across her skin, punctuated with soft kisses between sentences.
"You're in no danger. It seems strange now to think your blood ever presented such a temptation to me. Keeping it right where it is is practically my life's work now. And believe me, it's a full-time job."
His voice held a hint of humor in it on that last sentence — being a very relaxed, satisfied vampire at the moment, having thoroughly scented his mate to even his strict standards of satisfaction — but Bella frowned, pushed at his shoulders.
"It's not me I'm worried about! I'm not going to just let you starve. You're going hunting."
There was more than a hint of humor this time, as he finally relented and pulled back, hovering above her to look down. He could barely hide the amusement on his face.
"I am?"
She glared at him. "Yes. Tomorrow."
He really didn't need to let this woman see just how much he actually enjoyed it when she attempted to boss him around. She'd just take it and run with it, and then where would he be?
"While you will be doing...what, exactly?"
"Does it matter?" she huffed. He just raised an eyebrow. Pointedly. "Fine. I'll be at home. My home, because you're going to fix this mess with Charlie for me."
He'd already planned to do that much, actually. But he was enjoying this conversation way too much to simply admit it.
"I repeat...I am?"
Her glare intensified. "You made it. So yes. I don't care how, but fix it."
He kissed the tip of her nose, just because it made her glare harder. "Yes, ma'am. Any other instructions?"
She narrowed her eyes, considered her options. They both knew what she'd likely pick. It was barely even a fair question.
"Yes. Kiss me again."
He didn't argue with that one. He just did it. At length.
And then he stopped taking orders and gave one: time for Bella to go to sleep.
And time for him to vacate that bed for a little while.
Bella awoke late the next morning, tucked beneath soft blankets amid what had to be, like, a zillion-thread-count sheets. She could hear the sound of a fire crackling in the fireplace, and her head rested on a pillow that felt as soft as a cloud. She stretched languidly, not fully cognizant of where she was yet.
Before she even opened her eyes, she heard a perky voice. "He left a note and he's already on his way back, so please don't panic. I promised I wouldn't let you."
Alice.
Bella's eyes popped open and she jumped. Alice's voice had come from across the room, but she was already waving a piece of paper under Bella's nose by the time her eyes focused. And she was smirking.
"You look cozy," the little pixie remarked. "And Edward was frighteningly cheerful this morning. It creeped me out a little. Good night?"
Bella couldn't control the pink that flooded her cheeks, but she could ignore it completely, along with Alice's nosy question.
She reached out, snatched the piece of paper and quickly turned it so she could read it.
Gone to fix my mess, as instructed. Be back in your arms as quickly as I can, and I'm very fast. I love you more than anything. —Edward Cullen
"He signed it," she heard her own voice say, with an adoring smile on her face. "His whole name." For some reason, that was adorably amusing. Who else would it be from? He also seemed to have adopted that phrasing she'd said to him in his car the day before, when she was pleading with him to come back safely: "I love you more than anything." He'd repeated it twice now. They had a...a thing. A word thing.
Yes, there was a stupid, dreamy smile on her face. Yes, she knew Alice saw it. No, she didn't care.
Alice rolled her eyes, but it was good-natured. "Ugh. It's a good thing I love you both."
Everything felt better that morning. Not perfect...but better. She looked up, straight at Alice. "I love you too, Alice. I'm sorry about..."
She'd have finished that sentence if she could have breathed. But Alice landed in the center of the bed with a bounce, immediately squeezing the air out of her lungs with a huge hug.
"I'm sorry too. Let's never fight again, okay?"
"We're going to fight if you break my mate, Alice," came an amused voice from the doorway. Oxygen resumed its flow through Bella's lungs when Alice released her, only for her breath to catch all over again at the sight of Edward leaning casually against the doorframe, wearing jeans and a button-up shirt. His arms were crossed, his shirt sleeves rolled halfway up.
It was a sunny morning. The sun streamed in from behind him, since he hadn't bothered to close the door, so his muscled forearms glittered in the light.
"And you," he teased, fixing his still-dark eyes on Bella. So wherever he'd been, it wasn't hunting. "Breathe, please. It would help smooth things over if you're not blue when I take you back to Charlie in a few minutes. I promised him you were whole and intact."
He went to see Charlie?
She forgot all about Alice. She was out of the bed and across the floor to Edward in three seconds, where he caught her by the waist and steadied her.
"You talked to him? What did you say?"
The fact that he hesitated wasn't reassuring. His next words were even less so.
"I'd like to remind you that you specifically indicated you had no preference regarding my methods, so long as I cleaned up my mess."
It was such a good morning. She really didn't feel like wanting to kill him again. So she took a deep breath.
"Um...okay. Noted. What did you do?"
He still hedged. "It was a very productive conversation, first of all. You're not grounded anymore. You're free to come and go from your home as you choose. And your father has also lifted his restriction on our time spent together. In fact, he's not even going to bring up your disappearance last night."
She could only stare. "Is he still alive? Did you drug him or something?"
Edward rolled his eyes. "Don't be so dramatic. Of course not. I just showed him this."
She didn't know where he'd been carrying it, and she didn't really care. But she immediately recognized that piece of paper he was suddenly holding out to her.
A copy of the deed to their cottage. With both of their names on it as owner. It had been filed with the county now, too, she could see at the top, so it was fully official. The Cullens worked fast.
Her jaw nearly hit the floor.
"You did what?"
"I wasn't entirely truthful with him. I took advantage of the lie Carlisle and Esme told him, about where I was for all of those months. He now believes the emergency with my biological family that took me away was a family illness, followed by a death. I inherited a large sum of money and bought a house with it — one which I've offered to share with you, should the rules in Charlie's home remain untenable for you.
"I also made it clear that you and I would be quite well off financially, with no need for parental assistance — or supervision, for that matter — but only if you're unhappy at home, or should you feel the need to run away again. I expressed that I was quite alarmed to have to return from my camping trip in the middle of the night, when Alice called to let me know my girlfriend showed up in tears on my doorstep, having walked there alone. And I may have mentioned that I wouldn't leave you in his care a moment longer, were I to have any reason to believe you might become upset enough to attempt something so dangerous again."
It took a moment to process all of that. Edward had, essentially, threatened Charlie to drop her punishment and cede the last of his authority over her. Or was that extortion? Maybe blackmail. Something like that. One of those bad things you really weren't supposed to try on cops.
How could he be so calm when she could barely breathe? She was practically hyperventilating.
"And he didn't try to shoot you? Oh my God, what would have happened if he shot you?"
A smile played at Edward's lips. "Very little. I suppose it might sting a bit, if it was at close range. I can't honestly tell you that he didn't ask himself that same question. Would you like to go home now? He's very eager to see you."
She had no doubt of it.
"I think I'm going back to bed," she groaned, dropping her face into her hands. "Forever."
That time, Edward outright chuckled, but in a way that made her stomach clench. "Careful, love. I might just agree to that. I don't really have to hunt today, if you've changed your mind about sending me away."
Alice, who had followed Bella across the room and stood close by, was staring back and forth between them like she was watching a tennis match...a very entertaining one.
Bella's head popped back up. "Wait. You're actually going hunting today?"
Edward cocked an eyebrow at her. "I seem to remember being informed that I am."
She latched onto that one. If he was going to listen to her, for once, then she was taking advantage.
"Yes! You definitely are! I can handle one day alone with Charlie." She glared at him pointedly. "I think."
Edward took mercy on her. "You won't have to. Your father already had plans to go hunting in La Push today. He's leaving as soon as you're home safely. He doesn't know I'm leaving again too, and he wants a little time to cool down before he has to spend time with me. Mostly so that he doesn't try to shoot me."
"So where will I be while you're gone?" Bella asked curiously, knowing he likely already had some plan for that. She was trying to let him know she'd willingly go along with it this time, now that they had cleared the air about Jacob, rather than making implications that her mate was a kidnapper. But Edward's eyes still grew cautious. His next words were hesitant.
"Esme seems to feel you might enjoy a day at home alone. My family would obviously need to be close by, outside, but no one will bother you or interfere. If that's what you wish, I mean. If not, I'm sure Alice would love to keep you company. Or you're free to invite Jacob over too, of course," he added, though a little grudgingly. Alice snorted with disdain at that one, and Edward shot his sister a look. But Bella barely noticed.
A day all to herself...
At least, all to herself after she got through what was sure to be a very awkward conversation with Charlie.
It sounded absolutely heavenly. No pressure. Nobody watching her every move, at least so long as she stayed inside and away from the windows. A whole day of peace.
"I'll be fine," she was hasty to respond, before Alice could get any ideas about hair, makeup, nail polish, or any other form of torture along those lines. "I mean, I'd rather be with you. Always. But I think a day alone would be good for me."
Edward finally pulled her close, relief evident in his expression, and put his lips to her forehead. "Then that's what you'll have."
But his eyes were worried when he pulled back. "I trust you'll honor our deal? You won't try to go to La Push while I'm gone?"
Truth be told, she didn't really even want to see Jacob again any time soon, after that almost frighteningly intense hug he'd ambushed her with as she was leaving — at least, not until she figured out how to make it abundantly clear that there was no hope for a future between them and that he needed to move on.
The only reason she had pushed back so hard with Edward about Jacob in the first place was the whole forbid thing. It was just a bad precedent she hadn't really wanted to set. Edward could be bossy enough already without thinking he could get away with things like that. She had never meant the whole thing to spin as far out of control as it did.
"I promise. I won't even leave the house. Unless it's an emergency, I mean."
It might have been her imagination, but Edward's jaw seemed to tighten, his eyes grow hard at that qualifier she tacked onto the end. It also might have been her imagination that Alice was suddenly looking at him with concern — disapproving concern. And was that a tiny shake of his head in Alice's direction, a warning not to put voice to whatever she was thinking?
No. She was becoming paranoid, Bella decided. Too pessimistic. It had been a good morning so far — assuming that Edward's predictions that Charlie wouldn't shoot either of them held true — and she was not going to go looking for trouble where there wasn't any.
Laundry wouldn't have been her first choice for how to spend her quiet day alone, but there was something peacefully redundant and simple about it. So that was where she started.
To her amazement, Charlie hadn't said a single word about either her being grounded or her disappearance the night before. He'd just given her a relieved hug when she walked in the door with Edward, who was possessively gripping her hand like a bodyguard. Then Charlie had kissed her on top of the head and told her he was going hunting with some guys in La Push. Harry Clearwater was coming to pick him up any minute, to avoid having Charlie's cruiser out in the woods.
Charlie didn't even look at Edward, who was as polite and civil as always. The entire thing was surreal. Edward had clearly gotten his point across.
The hard part was when Edward left, only minutes after Charlie. He'd tried to keep it light, for Bella's sake. But it was clearly very difficult for him to leave her.
He smiled, made a typical Edward joke about her clumsiness and avoiding peril while he was gone — peril like stairs or even walking across flat surfaces. But then he looked deep into her eyes, studying her like he was trying to memorize every feature, and his teasing smile faded.
He softly took her face between trembling hands, brought his lips to hers, and not so softly kissed the breath right out of her. By the time he was done, she was the one trembling. If not for the deep circles under his eyes, she'd have changed her mind right then and begged him to stay.
But he needed to hunt, so she gathered her resolve and all but pushed him out the door. And then she put her back up against that door and spent the next minute catching her breath and resisting the urge to call him back.
Both of her overprotective men were going to be gone most of the day, and even laundry couldn't fill up all of the hours. She finished every bit of her homework. She pre-made as much of dinner as she could — Charlie's favorites, because why not add bribery to all the threats/extortion/blackmail?
Finally, those rays of sunshine outside couldn't be ignored anymore. It felt strange, knowing there were vampires out in the woods watching. She didn't even know for sure which ones, Cullens or Denalis, but it wasn't like things could really get any weirder with any of them. So she snagged a book and a blanket, and out she went to soak up some sun and read.
Nobody bothered her. She didn't see so much as a flash of movement in the woods. But being outside felt frightening, initially. Too exposed. At first, she couldn't stop staring at that spot in her yard where she had first seen Albert.
But eventually, with the full knowledge that she was even closer to her protectors outside than she had been in the house, she was able to relax. Her eyes still occasionally darted to that spot from which she'd been abducted, but it happened less and less frequently.
She ended up falling asleep, in fact. And there wasn't a single dream.
It was dark by the time she opened her eyes with a start, looking all around to see where she was.
The phone inside was ringing, she realized. That must have been what woke her up. As she sat there trying to get her bearings, it stopped — and then started again almost immediately.
Heart hammering in her throat, she jumped up and ran for the door. Was it Edward? Was something wrong?
What if she'd been wrong, and there was no one in the woods watching over her? What if they'd been pulled away somehow? She'd just been outside alone, in the dark...
How long had Edward been trying to call? He'd be frantic...
"Hello? I'm here! I'm fine!"
But it wasn't Edward.
"Bells...thank God." It was Charlie, and he sounded as shaken up as she'd ever heard.
"Dad? What's going on?" she asked fearfully. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd heard Charlie sound like that. One or two of them had to do with her. The rest had been Renee.
"It's Harry Clearwater," Charlie said, and she realized he sounded almost like he'd been crying. "Something got hold of him out in the woods today. Some kind of animal."
Oh, God...no, no, no...
"What kind of animal?"
She could almost hear Charlie shaking his head. "I don't know, kid. We were split up. I never saw it. I could only hear him start screaming. God, Bells..."
She couldn't even breathe. She'd been down this road before. Animal attack meant vampire. A vampire had been in La Push that day, stalking her father's hunting party. Probably one of the ones after her.
Oh, please, no...no...
"Is he..."
"He's gone." Charlie sounded awful. "He had some injuries, but...but I think he would have made it. He had a massive heart attack while we were carrying him out. I tried, Bells. I did CPR for half an hour until the paramedics finally found us. But he's gone."
Gone. Just like that.
Harry had a wife. Kids. She had at least vague memories of Harry Clearwater as far back as she could remember: Charlie, Billy Black, and Harry. The three had been near inseparable those first summers she spent in Forks with Charlie, when Renee had first left him. They'd been there for her dad when he needed them. She'd understood that, to some extent, even as a youngster. And so she'd always had a soft spot in her heart for her dad's best friends.
And now, one-third of that trio was dead. Because of her and the trouble she'd brought to La Push.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Dad." Her voice broke on the last word, tears starting to fall.
Hearing her pain nearly did Charlie in too. He sniffed a couple times before he spoke, cleared his throat.
"Bells, listen. I can't bear to pull anybody away from Sue and the kids right now, but I need a favor. I'd ask Jake, but the poor kid's a mess right now too. He was out there with us today, saw the whole thing. Kid could probably use a friend, if you want to call him."
The words were out of her mouth before she even thought about them. "I'm more worried about you right now. What can I do to help?"
Charlie took a deep shuddering breath. "That's why I'm calling. I need you to come down here and get me."
TO BE CONTINUED...