**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 3: Biology
It was the strangest thing. For the three days following our prom night fantasy, both of us kept saying that we didn't want to do this, that we weren't going to do this…and yet, here we were, on day four, letting ourselves into Forks High School at one in the morning. God, this was ridiculous. We were turning into sex fiends. The campus was deserted due to Spring Break, but we made absolutely sure. There were no cars in any of the parking lots, no lights left on, no audible heartbeats within a mile. There were also no cameras or alarms.
We were still going to hell, make no mistake, but we probably weren't going to get caught tonight.
"Well, that's a smell," Bella said as she climbed into Mr. Banner's classroom.
I had gone in first and was holding the awning style window open for her. "Yeah, I think a student may have spilled some hydrochloric acid."
It wasn't the only aroma on the air, but it was the most prominent. High school science classrooms almost always had a mix of septic notes, from all the chemicals and heavy cleaners, and a slight mustiness. There were just too many gadgets and supplies for everything to remain properly dusted. The moonlight illuminated the lab tables and stools, the posters of Newton's Laws on the wall, the safety guidelines for chemistry labs affixed with peeling tape to the supply cabinet door, and the plastic-boned anatomy skeleton beside the teacher's desk. The white board at the front of the classroom had been left over the break with a diagram depicting the cycle of photosynthesis in multiple marker colors, and the television on the wheeled cart was tucked in the corner.
"This is crazy." She hopped from the windowsill to the floor and landed nimbly.
I grinned. "It's your fantasy."
Straightening her clothes, Bella cocked a brow at me. "You're the one who suggested we go for a walk tonight and just so happened to lead us here."
My hands paused while securing the window shut. I wanted to look at her, but found I couldn't bring myself to. Her observation was apt—I was the one pushing, the one who couldn't stop thinking about the scenario. And, quite damningly, while Bella's pleasure had arguably been the priority of our previous games, this one was all about me. Was I being selfish?
I released a heavy breath and turned toward her. "You're right. This is too far. We should go."
Bella snorted with laughter, shaking her head at me fondly. "Not a chance." She bounded over to our old lab table and vaulted, heel of her hand braced against the formica surface, up so that she was sitting on it, facing my old seat. "I like how excited you are for this." She crooked her finger, beckoning me.
Automatically, my feet obeyed, and I found myself in the seat where I had spent some of the worst and best hours of my life—the precise place where I had met the person who would simultaneously be my monstrous nature's greatest temptation and the love of my life. The person who, by the grace of God-knew-what, was right in front of me.
"No need to look so glum." Her voice was kind as her fingers slipped into my hair.
I closed my eyes and shook my head slightly, trying to get out of my own head.
"Is it really so bad?" Bella whispered, and I heard vulnerability there. "Letting me see what you want? How much you want it?"
"Of course not," I denied. I didn't manage to convince her or myself.
An awkward silence stretched between us. I wanted to end it, to reassure her, but I didn't know how. Somehow we had blundered onto a subject I didn't know how to discuss. I had never tried, and I couldn't fathom how to do it right—how to be honest without hurting her feelings, without tainting her memories or experiences. Without sounding weak-willed and pathetic. I should have been anticipating this. It stood to reason that if we were going to be excavating Bella's sexual psyche for our games, mine would come up at some point, and Bella had already hinted she was thinking about it.
It was her voice that cut through the quiet. "I just…don't understand. I thought it made sense before we got married, before you turned me. Why talk about what we couldn't have yet? But nothing has changed. I know nothing about what you want, what you like, aside from what I have gathered from your reactions. You…. It seems like you are enjoying our sex life?"
The way her voice went up at the end and made the statement a question broke my heart. "Yes," I said immediately, earnestly. "Very much." I could still see her doubt lingering, so I went further. "Over the years, I've heard the thoughts of so many humans and vampires, preoccupied constantly with sex. They provided me with a fairly detailed picture, and the sheer number of perspectives gave that picture a lot of nuance and scope. I thought I understood physical love, what it was, how it must feel, even though I had no personal experience, but…that was arrogant. Of course, I had no idea. What I have with you, Bella, is something completely new in a world that I thought had run out of surprises for me. And it has always been more—more than I expected, more than I deserved."
Bella was touched, convinced. She was also undeterred. "But you won't let me in." I opened my mouth, but she raised a hand in a plea to let her finish. "Don't think I missed the way you reacted when I suggested we play some games for your fantasies, too. I know it's hard. It's scary. Believe me, I do. I don't even know where I got the courage to start telling you what I wanted sexually, to keep doing it, especially because, in the beginning anyway, you just rejected me over and over again."
She gave me a firm look at the protest she could see coming. "When I first asked you if it was possible for us to have sex, you said no, even though you knew vampires who had done it. When I told you I wanted to be human when I lost my virginity, you first said no, and then said not until we were married. When we finally did have sex, you told me never again until I was changed. Trying to navigate through where we can compromise versus something that is a hard limit for you has always been difficult because you don't differentiate between the two, not to mention it being an absolute minefield for my ego. All those times 'no, it's not possible' turned out to just mean 'I think it's a bad idea'. Those conversations were always terrifying and often discouraging."
I could see the pain I had put her through in her large, expressive eyes. My head slumped forward and hung. "I'm sorry, Bella."
She cradled my face and raised my chin. She waited patiently until I met her gaze before she spoke. "Don't be sorry. I didn't say all that to make you feel guilty. I know you were scared of hurting me, and I know you never lied to me. That wasn't the point. You were figuring things out as you went, just like I was. The point was that it was important we kept having the conversation, and I wanted you to know that I understand how it feels to be the one opening up. I can't promise you how I will react—I mean, I would say that, when it comes to you, I'm pretty much down for anything, but my brain isn't so fogged up with lust that I can't comprehend the possibility of you wanting something I wouldn't enjoy. If you are this reluctant to tell me, I mean, that's a clue, right? But I can promise you we will keep talking about it until we figure out where we stand. You can trust me, Edward."
For a moment, I was too overcome to speak. She was…too good to me. It was a comfort, a significant one, that she was committed to approaching my desires the same way I was to hers. But then the dark cloud came over me again, because she was still nowhere near the heart of the issue. "It's not like that."
"Then what's it like?" Her tone was more curious than frustrated.
I sighed, bracing myself. She was right—the conversation was necessary, for the sake of the intimacy we had been working tirelessly to build. I should have taken a moment to gather my thoughts, formulate the best way to present the information. Instead, I blurted, "I don't have any fantasies. Not really in general, and definitely not about you specifically. I don't think of you that way."
The look on her face was everything I had dreaded it would be. She was so shocked, so hurt.
"You don't fantasize about me." It was a statement, not a question. She believed me, and so quickly it reminded me of the way she used to doubt her worth. She tried to withdraw her hands from me, but I caught and held them.
Well, now she knew the truth and I couldn't take it back, but I could make it better than it was by explaining.
"That was poorly phrased," I said gently. "It would be more accurate maybe to say that I can't think of you that way. That I would never allow myself to."
Her brow furrowed in a way that was so pitiable, so pained. "Why not?"
With a heart full of heavy disgust, I took her right hand and guided it with my left, back, behind her and down, under the lab table, until she was touching the splintered mess of the wooden strut I had destroyed.
Some of her hurt was replaced with confusion. "Wow, that's…."
"What I did the first time I met you."
Her gaze swung back to me sharply.
"Gripping that strut until I turned it to pulp was the only anchor I had keeping me in my seat." My throat felt tight, but I needed to keep going. She had to know that if there was a failing here, it was mine, not hers. "Bella, I don't know how to make you understand how truly close it was that day."
I saw the moment her surprise began to transform into concern for me, and I shook my head, but she touched me anyway, pulling my head against her chest.
"I don't think you can understand," I concluded bitterly. She stiffened but didn't let go. I was glad I didn't have to look her in the eye for this. "Not just because you haven't met a human whose blood 'sings' for you, but you also just seem to have an easier time than most managing your thirst. You were able to be around humans mere days after your transformation, for crying out loud."
"Not humans," she cut in. "Just Charlie. And that's different. You and I both know the thirst is easier to manage when it's someone you love."
I supposed she would say the same about our half-human daughter, about Jacob and Seth. The scent of their blood wasn't fully human, but they still smelled…edible. Marginally more appetizing than an animal, at least. She hadn't struggled with any of them. I didn't see the point of bringing up the hiker she had scented on her first ever hunt, but not pursued—it was clear that Bella's discomfort in being singled out was blinding her. She didn't understand how thirst was for most of us, how it was for me, and it was fruitless to press the issue.
Instead, I continued diplomatically. "I can't hear your thoughts, so I don't know for certain, but I can hear other people's and I know it is different for everyone. How they describe their thirst, what sets it off, how acutely they feel it. I learned the hard way that visualizing a kill was a dangerous thing for me to do."
Somehow I had slid down until my head was in her lap, my cheek against her thigh. I wrapped my arms under her knees, clutching her legs to my chest. My shame was palpable in the air. "Visualizing led to me rebelling and leaving Carlisle in the first place. It was why I struggled so much to return, and why my adjustment back to my old diet was so difficult. It took years. First would come the spike of hunger, then the fantasy. The fantasy would take hold, and the next thing I knew, I would be rationalizing, creating an exception. And then I would have to go home to Carlisle and Esme with red eyes."
Her hand came to rest on my head. As always, her touch was loving, forgiving.
"We all have our own strategies for keeping to our diet. Rosalie calls my methods repression, and strictly speaking, she's right. But it's what works for me. I am very careful about whether and when I allow myself to imagine the act of drinking someone." Should I continue? Surely, I shouldn't. But my mouth kept moving, my eyes fixed on a chart of endangered species classifications across the room. Her hand was stroking my hair. "With you, it was obviously out of the question. That first day, sitting here, I let myself plan how I might do it—how I would get you alone, how I would deal with witnesses, but I knew better than to picture myself actually drinking you. There would have been no turning back if I had." I almost stopped there, but went on to confess. "I only let myself do it once—our first day in the meadow, after I was almost certain it was safe. I had to know, beyond doubt, that I was strong enough, so I leaned my face into your neck, breathed in your scent, and thought it through. In detail. How I would do it, what it would taste like, how it would feel. But, in that moment, I wasn't really tempted. Like you said, it's easier when it's someone you love." We were in agreement on that at least.
"But I didn't get cocky. I never thought about it again. I didn't want those visuals in my head in any kind of concrete way. So, that's how it works for me: my body tells me it wants something—to rip your throat open and drink your blood, to touch your cheek, to kiss your shoulder—I think it, an image pops into my head, and I push it aside. I have to stop before it becomes solid, something I can revisit and obsess over. The urge is just a moment that comes and goes; I don't follow it."
Her hand stilled. Silence fell over the classroom again. There was more, but I knew I couldn't stomach volunteering the information; she would have to ask. And she would ask, I was certain of it.
"Edward?" she said finally.
"Yes?"
"There's still something I'm not clear on."
I resigned myself. "Okay." I lifted my head and looked up at her. Her skin was glowing in the moonlight.
"I understand not fantasizing about drinking my blood. That makes complete sense to me, and incidentally, I appreciate that you didn't spend a lot of time visualizing killing me." She gave me a hesitant, crooked smile that I couldn't bring myself to return. "But why do the same with thoughts about touching and kissing me? I understand being close to me like that could trigger the thirst, especially early on, but after you loved me?"
There it was. "You are assuming bloodlust and carnal lust are always distinct and separate for me." I drew in a weighty breath. "That's not the case," I admitted. "At least, not to a point where I trusted myself. And not just with you—with most of the human women I have found attractive over the years, as well. It has always been safer just to keep all physical desires on lockdown."
Her mouth formed a soft O, registering her shock. "I thought you said you never really…before me…?"
Was that what she was taking away from this? "I hadn't, not really. I actually thought for many years that I wasn't capable of feeling sexual desire in the way most people seem to; I lived celibate for a long time with barely any discomfort or unhappiness. Until I met you. I wasn't exaggerating when I told you I think I needed to fall in love for my sexuality to fully wake up. But there were moments here and there, women I got to know briefly who were appealing to me in that confusing way of jumbled physical responses. Maybe three or four in ninety-odd years. Nothing ever came of that, obviously, and in terms of intensity, there is no comparison to you at all."
"And urges to take me for my blood and take me for your sexual pleasure were mixed together for you?"
The actual, salient point of what I had told her. "Not always, but often enough." Kissing Bella had a way of lowering my defenses until the thirst charged in. The sweet scent of her blood was as likely to make me want to kiss her neck as bite it. My mouth filling with venom for her would regularly trigger an erection, or vice versa. It had been a nightmare. "It did get better the longer we were together, and naturally I don't feel that way when we are intimate now."
Words could not describe my relief at no longer having to hear her heartbeat or smell the sweetness of what it was pumping through her veins during sex. I didn't have to dread that the memory of how her blood tasted would flash through my mind right before I came. I could finally put that disgusting part of myself to rest for good.
I was pleased to see some traces of revulsion in Bella's eyes, but there wasn't nearly enough, and there was something else there that was far more prevalent. It…couldn't be fascination? I had to be reading her wrong. I hoped I was reading her wrong.
"So," she summarized, "you don't have fantasies about me." She was actually taking this pretty well, much better than I thought she would. I had worried this would hit a part of her self-esteem that was particularly vulnerable, but I shouldn't have underestimated Bella's endless ability to take in creepy, horrible, run-for-the-hills information about me like it was nothing.
"None," I agreed. And thank God. There was absolutely nothing about my sexuality prior to her transformation that I wanted to carry forward into our marriage.
She tucked one side of her long dark hair behind her ear. "Not even now? New ones—since I changed?"
I shook my head. "I'm not sure that's a switch I know how to flip."
"But you are open to mine?"
I kissed the palm of her hand. "Very. If you couldn't tell, your fantasies have been quite the vicarious experience for me."
She studied me for a long minute, biting her lip. Something was troubling her. "Will you promise me something, Edward?"
"What?"
"That you'll tell me if there is something you want. Anything. Nothing is off limits until we talk about it, okay?"
I nodded.
"And that you'll tell me if there's something you don't want to do. You won't just go along with it to make me happy."
"I promise."
"Our safe word is fern," she reminded me.
I chuckled. "I'm aware. But I haven't needed it."
She glanced down, fidgeting on her perch in front of me. "You know you can also use it if I am ever…too much, right?"
"Too much?"
Bella winced. "Like last Saturday, maybe. When you were trying to finish that book, and I just kept coming back for more, over and over again."
Her meaning dawned on me. "Is that what you are worried about?"
She shrugged and it was a fretful, tense thing. "You just said that you went a century without sex and you didn't even really mind. I just…I can't even imagine. That sounds like a hellscape to me."
I burst out laughing. She tried to pull away at the same time I tried to pull her close, and her head wound up on my shoulder.
"It's not funny," she spoke into my neck. "If sex is something you could take or leave and I'm basically a demon in heat, that's a problem. I was so worried before I turned that I was going to lose the way I desired you, that you were going to come second to blood, and sex would be an afterthought." She sat up, a sour cast to her bottom lip. "But, nope. Not even close. Do you remember telling me how vampire personalities more or less become locked in versions of their human selves at the time they were changed? Their likes and dislikes, their temperaments? And some of it becomes heightened?"
"Yeah."
She was in a full ramble now. "Well, Carlisle thinks I've had such an easy transition because of how much time I had to psychologically prepare, but what if that's not it? What if I was just so focused on how much I wanted to still want you and how much I didn't want to want blood that it…stuck. And now, I'm just like this, forever."
I was pretty sure it didn't really work like that, but I didn't see how dismissing her anxieties as baseless could possibly be helpful. She was genuinely concerned, and it was clear that it wasn't the idea that she might be a freak that was the problem, more that she worried what it meant for us as a couple.
I tried again to tug her toward me, and this time she allowed it. I pulled her down off the table, into my lap, and kissed her adorably furrowed brow. "Bella, if you are like this forever, then I would say that we are going to have a very happy marriage."
She scowled at me. "I would take more confidence from that if you weren't still laughing." But before I could respond, she had begun again, asking me about my conclusion. "You really don't think it will be a problem if my sex drive is so much higher than yours? Too high?"
Higher than mine and too high were two different things. Was hers higher than mine? It seemed likely given the evidence, but not at all by the gap she was imagining. Was it too high? I didn't think so. Sure, sometimes she wanted more, and more often, than I was expecting, but usually all it took was knowing she was turned on to wake my body up.
"Bella, my sex drive after meeting you doesn't even compare to how I was before. Trust me, I can keep up. I have been, haven't I?" To emphasize my point, I pulled her closer so that there was no way she could miss how aroused I had become.
I watched her eyes widen, then darken. It was such an appealing sight that I had to kiss her. Her arms circled my neck with a sigh and I felt her squirm closer. My sweet Bella. How could she possibly think that there was such a thing as too much of this?
Seated sideways as she was, one of her breasts was pressed fully against my chest, while the other was not quite there. It called to my hand. I had meant my caress for the top of her clothes, to start slow, but when my fingers snagged on the hem of her long-sleeved dusky-blue henley on their way up from her thigh, I adapted, sliding my hand under instead. The smooth skin of her abdomen quivered under my touch. The fabric of her bra felt lacy and so thin it was probably translucent—I could feel every minute detail of her hard nipple through it. I groaned, my hand clenching involuntarily.
Her mouth broke from mine and her whimper echoed in the empty classroom.
And just like that, I felt a distinct and urgent need to strip her naked and take her on this lab table. I had the button on her jeans undone and her zipper down before her hand covered mine, stilling my movement.
"Edward, the fantasy," she cautioned, her chin against my shoulder.
It took a moment for my lust-clouded brain to register the words. The specific scenario that had brought us here tonight came flooding back. Shame swept through me as, once again, I felt selfish. I had dragged her here, and it was such a one-sided game.
"We don't have to—" I began.
But Bella's hand pushed against my chest, parting us far enough that we could see each other's faces. "Oh yes, we do." Her jaw was set, determined. "You have been thinking about this non-stop since I showed it to you, I can tell. You want this. And as we just discussed, you never ask me for anything in the bedroom. Let me do this for you."
I could see there was no dissuading her at this point. What she said was true, I just….
I tried a different tactic. "Well, maybe we don't have to follow the fantasy exactly. We could change up some of the details."
She raised a skeptical eyebrow at me, rightly suspecting that I was still trying to get out of it, and pushed my hand away from the fastenings of her jeans. She yanked the zipper back up with an expression of what were you thinking? I had completely gone off script with that move.
I hunched my shoulders defensively. "I wanted you naked."
Bella rolled her eyes, but then she froze, the most peculiar emotions passing over her face. She was studying me with such scrutiny that, for a moment, I was sure I was in trouble, but when she finally spoke, her voice was shaky. "Oh. Okay."
I didn't think that was desire I was hearing. It sounded more like…nerves. Was she nervous? What was happening?
She swallowed and swung her legs so that her ankle boots touched the ground. "So," she announced, "it's spring of our junior year. You and I have just started seeing each other. I know you're a vampire, but we haven't been to the meadow yet, and Mr. Banner is showing a movie in class."
Bella let go of me and stood. Her voice still had that wobble, but if I had to describe her face, I would say she looked sure, fierce even. She walked to the corner where the television was.
"We don't have to go that far," I said. I wasn't particularly interested in fooling around to Lorenzo's Oil, regardless of whether it was true to the actual memory or not.
She crouched over the dusty DVD player, examining the disk already inside. "I'm not going to wheel it out in front of the desks, and I don't care what we put on." The TV blinked on and the disk whirred in its tray. Bella pressed the play button for a documentary about the solar system. She smiled at me over her shoulder. "I'm just going for a bit of ambiance. It's not like I paid attention to whatever he put on the first time around." She was walking back to me now as production logos and title cards flashed across the screen. "All I could think about was the two of us, sitting side by side in the dark, and how badly I wanted to touch you."
My erection tightened painfully. "You were thinking about this? In class?" I asked, referring to what we were about to reenact.
She reached the stool beside mine but didn't sit in it. The button on her jeans was still undone, and I couldn't look away. The film's narrator began his introduction. "No. During class, all I could muster was wishing my shoulder might brush against yours, or that you would hold my hand under the desk. But it felt intimate—we were so close, and the dark made it feel more private than it was. That whole side of my body tingled, dying for you to lean close. Both days, when I changed for Gym afterward, my underwear was wet."
There was no unsteadiness in her voice now. God, she was sexy.
"This fantasy came later, over months of masturbating in the shower, knowing that when I got out, you would be waiting in my bedroom. I wanted to touch your body so badly, and this scenario was my outlet."
Now I was the one shaking. Which was crazy, because my stomach was so tight with anticipation, I could barely move.
Bella skittishly fingered the zip of her jeans. "Do you want to take my clothes off? Or do you want me to?"
At first, I thought I couldn't have heard her correctly. Then, once I processed that she had really said what I thought she said, I felt like the stool had been yanked out from under me.
"Edward?"
"Your clothes off?" I managed, my voice sounding strange in my own ears.
"You wanted me naked." She said it like she was reminding me, and her shyness was back. We had tread well outside her comfort zone, I knew that for certain, but she still had the steely determination about her.
I goggled at her, frozen.
Bella took pity on us both and stopped waiting for an answer. She lifted her henley over her head in one smooth motion and dropped it to the ground. Her bra was everything I had suspected it was: delicate crème-colored lace with the pink of her nipples starkly visible. Each leg lifted, followed by the sound of a boot falling to the tile floor. She pushed her zipper back down, and I watched, not breathing, as she peeled her jeans down her legs and stepped out of them. Her underwear matched the bra and was every bit as see-through. The moonlight shone directly onto her skin through the windows, making her shimmer and glow. The narrator of the documentary was concluding his introduction by extolling the beauty and majesty of Saturn's rings and Jupiter's storms as Bella's bra and underwear dropped to the pile.
And then, there I was, back in Mr. Banner's classroom, in my old seat, so overwhelmed by Bella that I could not breathe, desperate because I had no idea how I was going to get through the next hour. The same all over again, and yet completely different. Whatever Bella could read of my reaction, she seemed to like it. She pushed her stool close to mine and sat, facing the front.
"Bella," I choked.
"Shh." She bent toward me and whispered, "Don't disrupt the class." She smiled wickedly. "We're supposed to watch the video."
I moaned and leaned in to kiss her, but she eluded me.
"Behave," she scolded. "Play the game."
She was right; I had to pull myself together. Somehow. Or we'd never get through this. But she was so beautiful and so naked, and right next to me. And if we played the game…I wouldn't be allowed to touch her. This game was about her touching me.
Bella placed her left hand on the lab table and looked at me significantly.
I groaned and obeyed, placing my right hand beside hers, settling in for my torture.
The narrator of the documentary had finished summarizing the formation of the universe at large and was now beginning the deep-dive into the formation of our sun. One minute passed. Then two, three. And still Bella did not move. She wasn't even looking at me, her eyes fixed dutifully on the screen in the corner. I copied her, doing my level best not to look at her in all her loveliness. If she was trying to build the anticipation, to remind me of the hell that sluggish eking of time those two days of watching a film in Biology had been, it was working. I had thought then that those minutes were slow; they had nothing on these minutes now.
Finally, at six minutes, twenty-three seconds, the pinkie of Bella's hand lifted and reached toward my hand. The feather-light brush of her skin against mine sent ripples through every sensory nerve on the back of my hand, spiraling pleasure from that one focal point. She caressed, growing bolder. At seven minutes, four seconds she began incorporating her other fingers, and forty-two seconds after that, she placed her hand over mine. At ten minutes, eighteen seconds she turned my hand over and traced my palm with such deliberate, sensual contact, the resulting tingles climbed up my arm and made my whole body shudder. Her touch traveled up the inside of my forearm, lovingly grazing every inch while the narrator droned on about the scorching temperatures of Mercury…until her hand discreetly dropped to my thigh.
I tried to bite back the noise my throat made, but was unsuccessful. Bella looked at me sharply. "Quiet," she mouthed, but I could see how much she was enjoying this.
She conducted the same slow exploration on my thigh as she had my hand and arm. My teeth grit against the urge to growl, to speak, to beg. She was drawing this out every bit as much as she had in the thoughts she had shown me. I had believed, hoped, that she would be too impatient to draw it out so much when it came time, but I had underestimated her. At eighteen minutes, twelve seconds, she slid her touch down into my inner thigh; three hundred eighty-two seconds later, she began moving higher. And at thirty minutes on the dot, she finally, finally, cupped me, fully hard and twitching with desperation. My hips jerked and my grunt was inhuman.
"Careful," Bella chided, her breath on my ear. "This classroom is full of people. We can't get caught."
She reoriented her hand so that the heel was pressed into me, and then she rubbed. She stroked, up and down—all the way up to the tip, all the way down to the balls. Slowly, deliberately, and with firm pressure. It was all I could do to stay quiet, to keep from flailing in my seat. I closed my eyes, and tried to hold on. I couldn't look at her, but I knew she was there, the sight of her sitting naked at this lab table was burned into my mind and would follow me forever.
Within minutes, I gasped, "Bella, I'm…."
But she knew, and she stopped me from coming with a well-placed squeeze. She let me cool down. And then she began again. And again. After the second time, she lowered my zipper and released my erection through the opening, making a show of furtively looking around to check that we hadn't been caught. She brought me to the brink over and over, but never let me finish. The near-peaks were getting closer and closer, the pleasure becoming so sharp it was agony. I was lost, a mess, completely out of control, when my head rolled back and my hand clutched at the table leg for support.
"Don't break it, Edward!" The alarm in her voice was real this time.
I allowed myself to look at her fully at last. "Let me touch you," I rasped, eyes on her breasts and the way they moved, jiggled, as she fondled me.
"Not yet."
"Bella!" I growled, my voice dangerously low.
She let go of me, and held up seven fingers. She dropped each in a countdown, even saying the last few out loud. "Three…two…one." Elation was evident on every inch of her face. "Hour's up. Class is over."
She leapt up and used her full speed to run and shut the DVD player and television off. I pursued her, the sight of her naked bottom in the air too tempting to ignore. My hands were all over her as she straightened up, and I was kissing her face, her neck, her shoulders. Her startled cry became a giggle, but I wasn't playing anymore.
"Walk me to my next class, Edward."
I followed her out the classroom door into the pitch-dark hall only because I knew where she was leading me and what she would do to me there. I wasn't following the rules anymore. I wasn't going to say my lines or pretend we weren't absolutely alone. I was groping every inch of her I could reach, my touch feverish and demanding, my mouth gnawing on the nape of her neck. When it became apparent that she couldn't walk properly anymore, whether because I was hindering her or because I had pushed her own arousal too far, I lifted her against me and walked us both to the supply closet. Her ankles locked around my waist and her arms around my neck, my naked erection bobbing against her dripping wet opening as we walked, her bare body flush against my clothed one.
"God, Edward," she gasped, clutching me.
Maybe the door to the supply closet was locked and maybe it wasn't; I yanked it open with too much force for it to matter either way.
Once inside, Bella leaned back to look at me. Her whole body was trembling, but there were no nerves this time. It was all lust, just lust. She knew what I wanted, what she had promised me with her fantasy. I loosened my grip on her waist and she slid down my body, dragging her skin along the tip of my overstimulated cock, down onto her knees.
I had never had an erection so painful in my life. At this point, it was swollen, sore, and aching for release. And yet, she didn't take me into her mouth right away. Instead, she locked eye contact and pressed a kiss against the head that was so tender, so affectionate, it took my breath away. She nuzzled her face against the shaft, and used one of her delicate hands to adjust the angle to meet her open lips. I braced against the concrete wall behind me at the feel of her breath on my oversensitive skin. When her mouth slid over me at last, took me inside, I involuntarily gushed precum all over her tongue.
By the rules of our game, she was human, so my body should have been locked down. Nothing could have been more dangerous than me moving, at all, with my cock in her mouth. I was supposed to let her dictate the pace, let her tease me, kiss me, stroke me, swallow me as she pleased—but I didn't. I couldn't. My self-control had frayed to nothingness. Before I consciously registered what I had done, I plunged deeper into her wet mouth. Not gently. I caressed her face in apology, but then I pulled back and did it again. And a third time. My ears heard the noises I was making in the dark room, but my brain was too overloaded to process them.
She had performed oral sex on me a few times before—but not like this. I had never lost control, behaved like a feral animal, used her mouth for my pleasure. At least I restrained myself from holding her head, pulling her hair. But, honestly, I didn't need to. She held steady, didn't flinch or pull back, let me take whatever I needed.
After all of her edging, I was on a hair-trigger, and very soon I was coming. The release came over me in wave after wave of sharp, biting pleasure that wracked my whole body, radiated from my center and spread to the tips of my fingers and toes, to my scalp. It continued, and continued, until the acuity of the ecstasy became too much to bear and I jerked myself out of her mouth, panting and moaning.
When I finally came back to myself, Bella had risen to her feet and was holding me, her head tucked under my chin, hand stroking the side of my face. As sanity returned, so did my capacity for horror.
Bella was ahead of me. "Don't apologize."
My mouth opened and started to form incoherent vowel sounds. I wasn't even sure what I was trying to say.
"No," she said, moving her fingers to cover my lips. "Don't apologize. That was everything we both wanted."
But that wasn't true, and it gave me something concrete to focus on. I pulled her fingers out of the way and managed some words. "But your fantasy."
"My fantasy was to touch you until I drove you crazy. Behold, my success." She tilted her head back and smiled up at me. "Don't think for a second that I am missing the dialogue where I had to talk you in here with me instead of going to our next classes. This was so much better."
I was unconvinced.
She pressed a sweet kiss against my mouth. "It's not every day that Edward Cullen loses control. This is a memory I will cherish forever."
Bella was pleased, there was no mistaking that, but I didn't think I felt the same this time. This game didn't feel as harmless as the others in the aftermath. Just what were we poking awake inside of me?
Author's Note: Reading Midnight Sun and listening to the way Edward described and experienced his sexuality, I thought he sounded pretty demisexual. He never used the word, and hell, maybe I'm over-thinking this and he's just a middle-aged LDS woman's idea of a perfect Mormon boy waiting patiently for the right girl. You could also accuse me of bias, given that I am a demi myself, but sue me—I decided to run with it for this story.
To clarify, for those unfamiliar with demisexuality, bloodlust getting cross-contaminated with lust-lust isn't part of it—that's just some weird vampire shit Edward developed by repressing every "bad thought" he's had for a hundred years. I hope you all are on board for things to get a bit angsty for a few chapters. I promise to end on a fluffy note, but Edward has some issues to work through and no therapist, so….
