**BPOV**

"Uuugh," I groaned, throwing a pillow over my head. "Early. Much too early." My complaints were muffled by the pillow.

From much too far away, Edward chuckled at my obvious misery.

The pillow was abruptly removed from my face, replaced by the perfection of Edward's golden eyes and wide smile leaning over me. He was freshly changed and showered.

"You look like you were...what's the expression? Rode hard and put away wet," he cackled at his bawdy joke.

"Doesn't get any more accurate than that," I said in a wry tone, but grinning triumphantly.

I swung the comforter off of me, blushing as I looked down at my sports bra and bare torso. I had never bothered to put my shirt back on last night, and in the bright light of day, and in the absence of the heated desire that coursed through me hours ago, I was suddenly self-conscious. I scrambled to put my shirt back on.

Cold fetters wrapped around my wrists before I could throw the shirt over my head.

"Don't," Edward's velvet voice murmured. "Don't ever feel like you need to hide yourself from me. There isn't one square inch of your body that I don't find utterly alluring."

His topaz eyes drank me in, bedhead and all, like I was a tall glass of water in the middle of the desert. (Or blood, to be more precise.) He released his hold on my wrists.

I smiled shyly and swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. I groaned at the soreness in my legs that flared by the movement.

"Are you alright, love?" Concern flashed across his face, and I could feel him surveying my body for possible injuries.

"I'm fine, Edward," I said a little shortly. "I feel like I've been, well...humping a boulder. Nothing a little Tylenol and a hot shower won't cure," I smiled convincingly.

He barked out a laugh, then clamped his lips shut when I scowled at him.

"Sorry love, that must be very uncomfortable. I can help with that, but you'll need to remove your pants," he suggested in an irresistibly silken voice.

"I will?" I squeaked, wondering briefly if I was still dreaming.

He nodded his head, gripping the baggy pants by the fabric at my hips.

"May I?" Edward waited for me to nod before pulling my sweats down around my ankles, leaving me in my bra and cotton panties. He then gave me a light shove so I was sitting back down on the bed. He knelt down in front of me.

"As it turns out," his cool breath washed over my face, "cold is better for muscle soreness than heat."

He cupped his icy palms over the tops of my legs, just above the knees. Ever so slowly, he slid his hands up my thighs applying the perfect amount of pressure to soothe my aching muscles.

A very sultry sounding moan escaped my mouth at the pleasant sensation of his hands gliding over my skin.

"So responsive," Edward's laugh was sinful. "I am going to have so much fun with you on our honeymoon, Bella." It almost sounded like a threat.

His hands reached the juncture where my thighs met my body. On the inside of my thighs, his thumbs were as close as they could get to my core without actually touching.

"Why wait?" I whimpered, desperate for contact.

"Because it's too much fun teasing you," he chuckled again. "And because you're worth the wait." Then his hands were gone.

He started again, but this time he wrapped both of his hands around my left leg, encircling it with his fingers. He worked his way up my leg applying slow, steady pressure. The coolness of his unrelenting hands worked out every kink and knot in their path as I moaned and sighed in relief.

Once again, he came within a millimeter of pressing against where I wanted him most, then he maddeningly started over again on the other leg.

On his third approach, when I was at the point of combustion, he withdrew his hands completely and then, at vampire speed, pulled my sweatpants back up over my legs and hips with a light snap of the waistband.

"Any better?" he asked with a guileless smile.

"Worse. Much worse," I grumbled. Edward's shoulders quivered in silent laughter.

"Better get moving, love. Alice's orders. Wouldn't want to anger the pixie." Edward retrieved the towel that I hung up to dry after the previous night's shower and tossed it across my lap.

"Ah yes, cake for breakfast before squeezing me into my wedding dress...whose brilliant idea was that? And why do you have to leave again?" I whined, trudging for the door.

"Because Alice doesn't trust me to stay out of her head when you're trying on your gown," he rolled his eyes.

"Well, you can be sure there will be lemon cake at the wedding. I wouldn't want my mother-in-law to haunt me from the grave!" I shuddered, vividly remembering the way her cat-like eyes pierced through me in my dream, and how small I had felt.

"You are so absurd, my Bella."

"What?" I snorted derisively. "Vampires and werewolves get to be real but ghosts don't? Do you have a pet unicorn I don't know about?" I snickered and closed the door behind me just in time to block a pillow that had been whizzing toward my head.

As I walked down the hall, I could hear Charlie letting himself in the front door.

"Hey Dad, long night?" I called down the stairs to where I could hear him hanging up his keys.

"Yeah, I'm bushed. Didn't expect you to be up so early," he called back.

"Alice wants me over there pronto for some wedding planning stuff. I'll bring you back some cake samples!"

"Sounds good kiddo, have fun. I'm gonna go hit the sack."

"'Night Dad!"

I slipped into the bathroom and closed the door behind me, hanging up my towel on the bar and shedding my clothes. I ran the water and relieved myself waiting for the old pipes to heat up.

As the bathroom began to steam up, memories of last night-in reality, just a few hours ago-started to come back to me.

Even with the mirror fogged up, I could see how red my face was. Holy crow. I masturbated myself to orgasm while grinding on Edward's...while he watched! Were we finally past the excruciating days of him denying me?

When he rain-checked his own pleasure for 'next time,' I was disappointed of course, but also somehow simultaneously...relieved? I contemplated this as I threw back the shower curtain and stepped under the hot spray.

I had been telling myself for months that I was ready for a more physical love with Edward. I had been tormenting him with my insatiable desires almost nightly.

We'd make out, I'd want more, he'd refuse me- citing my safety, of course- and then I'd wallow in hurt and rejection. But now that I was so close to getting what I wanted, I was just the slightest bit, well, terrified.

I didn't have the faintest idea what to do with a man! Least of all, one that wasn't human! What if I couldn't please him?

Sure, we were both virgins, but he'd had eighty-some-odd years to learn the inner workings of the female mind. He had a fair bit more knowledge to guide him.

Then there was the compatibility of our anatomy to consider. There was nothing about Edward that could be considered small. He was well over six feet tall, with long hands and feet to match. If last night was any indication, that would be no exception. I wondered how it would possibly fit and how much it would hurt.

The pain was just a small part of my anxiety. Something else occurred to me then. Would he even be able to enjoy making love to me being as careful as he would have to be not to hurt me?

It was selfish of me to demand this of him, of that I knew. It wasn't as if I hadn't thought it through. I knew I would regret never getting to experience physical intimacy in my human body.

And if there was anything Edward hated, it was the thought of me having regrets in my next life. That bit of manipulation was the only way I'd managed to get him to agree to try in the first place.

Though if something did go wrong, if I got hurt, Edward would never forgive himself.

Certainly, my regrets would be nothing compared to his, but still, I pushed, as if immortality and an eternity with him weren't enough. I sighed in disgust. My selfishness knew no bounds.

My unbreakable faith in his self-control made it all but impossible to imagine him being anything other than tender and gentle with me.

Meanwhile, the memory of him throwing me violently into a cake table at that worst-of-all birthday parties buzzed around my consciousness like an annoying fly. I swatted it away, though it wouldn't be detracted.

I remembered the cold detachment in Edward's eyes, heard it in his voice in the days following my birthday party when he was gearing up to leave me. But if I really thought about it, he never fully seemed like himself after the episode with James.

He had been planning to leave me all that time, biding his time until my broken body had healed.

Jasper's lapse had just been the final straw. As Edward told it, it had been the sign he needed that gave him the strength to leave me as he did.

Edward ran away from me the first chance he got when my life had been endangered by those outside forces.

What would he be capable of doing if he were the one to cause me harm, however accidentally? My knees wobbled at the thought.

What would be the trigger the next time, I wondered. A fractured pelvis-at my own insistence? Not that he'd see it that way.

My dream flashed before my eyes. If the injury was something worse, something fatal or close to it and he'd been forced to change me...The sterile room. Alice's sad eyes. It all just seemed sooo...plausible. Too plausible.

I let out a shaky sigh and held onto the tile to keep myself upright. I hurriedly shut off the water and threw a towel around myself. Without bothering to dry my hair, I marched back to my room with a pit of anxiety in my stomach.

**EPOV**

Something was wrong. I knew Bella's routines. I knew how long she usually took in the shower and knew the familiar sounds of her getting ready for her day. I also knew that the accelerated rate of her heartbeat and the labored sounds of her breathing were starting to resemble those of a person having a panic attack.

I fought with myself over whether or not to go check on her. Was I really prepared to go barge in on her in the shower? If I startled her and she screamed, her father would hear. Or, more likely, she could slip and fall and I wouldn't be able to catch her without seeing her warm, wet body stark naked.

Fortunately, she made the decision for me when she abruptly shut off the water after scarcely turning it on. Shortly after, I heard her striding purposefully down the hallway toward the bedroom. Well, this certainly couldn't be good, I thought forebodingly.

Her door creaked open. Before she could even set foot through the doorway, I was there at her side.

"Bella! What's wrong?" I demanded at first sight of her anxious face. She was nearly as pale as the white towel she had wrapped herself in. Her soaking wet hair hung limply, stuck to the sides of her face. I watched the small rivulets of water drip down her shoulders, leaving small wet splotches on the carpet at her feet. She looked cold with goosebumps raised all down her arms.

I frowned and darted to the linen closet in the hallway for another towel and was back before she had time to take her next breath. I draped the towel over her head like a bridal veil, and then tucked her hair inside, twisting it into a knot on top of her head like I had seen her do so many times before.

I then took her by the hand and led her over to the bed, where I sat her down and wrapped the quilt around her thin frame.

She said nothing at first, intensifying my own anxiety. I willed myself to be patient as I watched the small bones of her temple pulse as she clenched and unclenched her jaw.

What could have happened in the short time since she had left this room to make her go from flirtatious and teasing to petrified and shaking? If she didn't start talking soon, I was going to lose my mind.

"I have...questions," she said in an oddly detached voice.

"Ask me anything," I urged, anxiety bleeding into my voice.

Another long silence as I watched her formulate what she was going to say next. I furrowed my brow in consternation.

"I was just wondering…" she began, then faltered.

"You were just wondering..." My urgent tone willed her to speak.

"You left because I got hurt. Because you didn't want me to keep getting hurt," she started again.

It was a rather simplistic explanation, but not yet understanding what she was getting at, I didn't interrupt.

"I need to know, need you to promise me that no matter what happens on our honeymoon that you won't leave me."

I could feel the astonishment wash over me.

"What?-I...yes, of course!" I floundered. "I swear to you, Bella, I will never leave you. Now, will you please tell me where your head is?" I beseeched her, desperate to know what I had missed.

"You left because I got hurt," she repeated in a barely recognizable monotone. "And you said there's a chance I might get hurt," she concluded vaguely, though I was beginning to fill in the blanks.

"And you are worried that if I accidentally hurt you on our honeymoon, I would be so fraught with guilt that I would be convinced to leave you a second time," I finished for her.

"Something like that, yes."

I squeezed my eyes shut and exhaled slowly through my nose.

"You're angry," she pointed out in a tremulous voice.

"Furious," I opened my eyes. "At myself," I amended, my brooding dark eyes boring into her concerned ones. I smoothed out the tiny "v" worried between her brows with the pad of my thumb.

"May I ask what brought on this sudden concern that I'll hurt you? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're finally seeing sense, but before you seemed so sure that I wasn't capable of such a thing," I asked in a gentler voice. Had I hurt her or frightened her in some way last night that she wasn't letting on about?

Her gaze dropped into her lap, but I propped her head back up with a finger under her chin.

"It's not that I'm less sure of that," she explained softly, still shifty-eyed. "I just...if you left-"

I started to cut in, to deny the possibility, but her eyes flashed in a way that insisted I let her finish.

"If you left as a result of something I asked for, no, something I demanded, that would surely kill me."

I thought the pain in her voice would surely kill me.

"So if that's the case, if there is even the remotest possibility of that, then there's no deal," she shook her head resolutely.

My eyes shot open, dragged down by the weight of my jaw.

"Are you calling off the wedding?" I asked quietly, waiting for her to rip my cold dead heart out of my chest.

"No," she smiled weakly. "I'm just letting you off the hook for that clause in our...eternity pact. I can't always have my cake and eat it, too. Whenever I try, I just ruin everything. So have it your way, Edward. I...can be patient."

"Bella, I…" had no godly idea what to say to that. I should have been elated. Exultant. But all I could feel was the sharp pang of disappointment that here I was taking away yet something else from my self-sacrificing little lamb.

90/10 Alice had said. I would take that bet. It was better odds than she had given me for not killing her in the meadow on our first date. Certainly, nothing could be harder than it was to not kill her myself in the ballet studio, and I already passed that test. It was time to stop betting against myself, especially if it meant erasing that sad, empty look in Bella's eyes. I could do this for her. I would.

My phone vibrated in my pocket; I ignored it.

I took Bella's hands in my own. "No, Bella, no. I can't let you do that. You never have and never could ruin anything. That's always been my role," I muttered wryly. "I feel a lot more confident going into it, now. All the practice has helped," I cracked half a smile.

"We can try. We will try. I promised you we would, and I won't go back on my word. No matter what happens, we will be together, Bella. I take those marriage vows very seriously. Once you say 'I do,' you're stuck with me. For as long as we both shall live."

"That's a long time," she whispered with a smile.

"A very long time," I agreed, folding her into my arms. I could feel her tension melting away.

"Now, unless there's anything else..." I paused to gauge her reaction, a gentle shake of her head. "Let's go get you some of that cake," I patted her softly on the knee.

**A/N** What I love about writing this fic is that sometimes I'll be planning to write about something but then the words just pour out of me into something completely different. This chapter, for example, was supposed to be some light fluff..maybe Bella getting frisky with herself in the shower as revenge for Edward teasing her with the sexy massage. But then Bella got to thinking in the shower, and the chapter just took a completely different turn. Bella will definitely get her revenge at some point, but today, she apparently had some more trauma to work out.