"When I tell you to please stand back while I do the talking, I mean it, Bella. Please, never do this again."

She scowled at me and I growled in response.

"I was fine, don't overreact, please."

Of course she thought I was overreacting.

Earlier, while we were in queue for passport control - an activity that had required all of my senses working together at full capacity, given that Bella was standing right next to me and we were in a human-filled area - a middle-aged lady kept pushing herself in our direction, as if that was going to help her advance faster. I tried to position myself between her and Bella, but I knew that was a feeble - if not completely inefficient - way to cover her scent. So I turned my head towards the lady, keeping Bella in place with a strength that nobody around us would have guessed, and I told her:

"Ma'am, if you don't mind, my wife and I had a very long flight and she is not feeling too good. I would appreciate it if you would keep a respectful distance."

She happened to be American, just like us, so there was no need for me to test my knowledge of the Russian language. Her eyes widened when she heard my words and her thoughts made a few somersaults before deciding that she didn't like me. Bella broke off my grip and stepped forward, closer to the lady.

My sanity caught on fire.

"Please excuse my husband, he's not feeling well himself. Turbulent flight."

Bella's voice, smooth and sweet, like melted chocolate, contrasted greatly with my harsh tone. It was enough for the lady to decide that I was a 'raging imbecile' and my wife 'quite a cupcake'.

"I'm in a hurry," the woman said, sending daggers with her eyes in my direction.

"Everyone is, but pushing the people in front of you like that won't get you to your destination faster," I let her know.

The woman's heart started pumping louder from anger and I realized I might have made a mistake. My arm draped across Bella with dread.

"We can let you step in front of us, actually," my wife offered generously and seemingly in control of her needs.

"Bella," I hissed, too fast for the lady to hear. "I got it."

The lady huffed and made a step back eventually. She didn't come closer again, something about my behaviour assuring her that it was for the best to keep her distance.

As we got inside our rented car, Bella scolded me for scaring the lady earlier.

"She was getting way too close," I explained.

"I understand, Edward, I swear I do. But listen to me for a second: since we're technically on the run and we are bound to meet humans on our way, wouldn't it be a good idea to get used to facing them or something?"

"You will slowly get used to it. But let's not push our luck, how about that?"

She didn't protest further and remained quiet throughout the rest of our short drive. I couldn't risk driving further than the city limits. Luckily for us, there were a few small houses up for renting close to the outskirts of the town, destined for tourists who visited Belaya Gora for hiking purposes. Arranged in a disrupted circle formation that brought back a pale memory of a summer camp from my childhood, the houses were as big as our bathrooms in Forks. It made sense, in a way: the people coming there weren't seeking comfort, just a place to crash in after their long hikes. The biggest silver lining was the safe distance between them - a distance that would've been non-existent had we been to a motel or a hotel.

There was an unnerving scent in the air around the camp, one that I couldn't exactly identify: in a way, it reminded me of sawdust and moss. But there was more to it, and it bothered me that I couldn't exactly understand its source. I tried to ignore it.

It was peak season for summer hikes, which meant that most of the houses were occupied. The man who was taking care of the renting process - a lively Russian in his thirties, who smelled as if he had a little too much alcohol in his system for a Thursday night - told me the best he could offer us was a house where the shower was only working during certain intervals throughout the day. A quick dive into his mind showed me that there was, in fact, another house available, one that he kept free in case his mistress from a nearby village came into town.

I didn't have to take too much money out of my wallet to convince him to give us his love-nest.

"Why do I get the feeling that you are bribing people every step of the way?" Bella asked me when we entered the small house.

"Probably because I am."

She rolled her eyes.

"You don't have to throw your money left and right, you know? I would've been fine if we would've stayed in the other house - or in the woods, for what it's worth."

"We might be on the run, but we're not animals. If there is the slightest chance to put a roof above your head while we're traveling around, I take it."

As modest as it was, the house felt welcoming. There was a bunk bed on the right side and a table on the other. Right beside the table I could see a fridge and a microwave oven. A long rocking chair that was clearly meant for lounging reigned close to the center of the room. The walls were flanked with windows on each side, revealing the forest outside - in other circumstances, I might have appreciated the rustic aesthetic, but right now I didn't want anyone creeping on us, so I improvised some curtains, using the sheets from the top bed.

As Bella unpacked and went to take a shower into the hilariously-small bathroom, I made a few phone-calls to our family. Thankfully, everyone was safe so far: Carlisle and Esme had left Brazil and they were now in Liberia. Alice and Jasper were in a plane, on their way to Peru, as Rosalie informed me when I called her and Emmett.

"We'll stay in Warsaw for a few more days. It's been raining a lot, so at least we've got that going," she said.

For one reason or another, Rosalie didn't seem as pissed over the phone as she usually was when we were talking face to face. I decided to take a chance and see if she might be willing to let her guard down just a little more.

"So how are you feeling, Rose?"

"Beyond stressed as hell and watching my every step? I guess not as bad as I had expected - having Em around helps."

"He sure is a lucky charm."

"It would be nice if we could get to spend more than three days in a row in a certain place, you know? This is a stupid rule anyway, if you ask me."

I smiled, glad that I took that chance earlier.

"We might be laying it on thick, but it's for the best," I said.

"I can't wait for this to be over. Have you seen the news today?"

"I don't really have access to a TV where I am right now."

"That Elijah guy told the press to 'offer him some space' - apparently the constant interviews on top of the investigation got to him."

"That was quicker than I'd expected," I admitted.

"You think? Ugh, I hate weak men. If you can't commit to something, just don't even bother. Now not only did he alarm the Volturi about us with his confessions, but he is also wasting people's time with his fifteen minutes of fame."

"Rose, you know it's for the best that he caved so quickly - that's if he caved for good."

Rosalie let out a noisy sigh and agreed. I heard Emmett on the other end, announcing proudly from a distance that 'baby, the water is ready'.

"I guess you've got to go."

"Yes," - she hesitated for a few seconds - "I hope you stay safe… both of you."

"You're very generous today, Rose."

"Sometimes I wonder how I've ever put up with you for so long," she snickered and I could almost see the eye-roll beyond her voice.

"Take care as well."

I hung up and turned around, only to see Bella dressing up in her favourite nighttime attire: sweatpants and a soft T-shirt. She used to wear it every night when I visited her in Charlie's house in Forks - and even after, when we moved in together after our wedding.

It surprised me a little. She hadn't dressed in pajamas in weeks, for obvious reasons: she no longer needed to sleep. Seeing her again brought back all the memories from her past life and I wondered if dressing up like that had had the same effect on her as well.

"Mmmmm, I haven't seen you dressed like this in forever."

"Couldn't even remember what it felt like. I don't even know why I did it now."

She noticed a weirdly-shaped hole close to her waist and grimaced. I tried not to laugh upon remembering how her shirt got that hole.

A few weeks before our wedding, she suggested that we should have a little bit of practice before venturing into making love for the first time. As I had done so many times before, I couldn't refuse her request - and it wasn't like I wasn't already burning with desire for her, constantly finding excuses to shower her with kisses and longing touches. It was during that first night of our so-called practice that her shirt ripped.

As usual, she went to take a shower, before telling Charlie she was going to sleep. He seemed understandably suspicious, given that it wasn't even ten P.M., but he let it slide. Bella's excitement, however, made her trip in the darkness, right after she had opened her bedroom door, where I was waiting for her. I got by her side to catch her just before she had the chance to fall, but it was too late for her T-shirt. The doorknob had already caught it at an unusual angle and ripped the soft material. It didn't matter much: her shirt ended up on the floor anyway, soon after that.

That had been the first night Bella slept almost naked beside me. After seeing her bare breasts for the very first time, I had little interest to do anything else besides tracing the perfect beads of her nipples with my fingers, watching as they hardened upon meeting my cold touch, and encircling them with my tongue, over and over again. That, coupled with her reactions - flushed skin, raging heartbeat, shaky breaths, boiling blood and moans that could only be muffled by my fingers in her mouth - got me unbelievably hard.

I felt very close to exploding that night - especially after she had fallen asleep, leaving me to dwell painfully on the hungers her body had awakened in me. It took all of my willpower to not pull her from the dreams she was lost in and tell her that I could no longer find a reason to care about waiting before marriage and that I had to have her then and there. A little before dawn, I made sure to put her T-shirt back on - gently, so as not to wake her up - to avoid Charlie seeing his daughter like that had he decided to check up on her before going to work.

The following nights had been more or less the same. She came back from the shower early each night, lying to her father about feeling overwhelmed by homework, only to stay up until the early hours of the morning with me, surrendering her body in my hands with careless abandon. Little did she understand the amount of control I needed to channel into my every action.

In the cover of darkness, I discovered how her wetness seeped through her underwear and soaked the thick material of her sweatpants - and how much I craved to taste that wetness. With the snow falling endlessly outside and ice crystals arranging in flower patterns on her window, we learned just how much harder my body could get. In the silence of the house, I offered Bella her first orgasm, rubbing gently on the most sensitive spot between her legs through her underwear until she came undone without warning, taking both me and herself by surprise. But throughout the unspeakable pleasures we were discovering together, the poisoned thirst for her blood never left me.

Seeing Bella in her old shirt and sweatpants now brought me back to that time, when the only one threatening her safety was myself. However, looking back, I had always been a somewhat manageable threat. It had always been in my power and no one else's to keep her safe.

But the Volturi? It wasn't exactly under my control to protect her from them fully and that drove me crazy. If I could, I would have killed them all at once and watch them burn while holding Bella's hand in mine.

"You're beautiful, as always," I told her in the end.

"Thank you!"

Her demure smile set my cold insides ablaze. She climbed into the bottom bed, next to me, glueing her body to mine. It wasn't much, but being able to hold her close and feeling her hands on me had unspeakable effects on my mind: it wasn't just Bella's mental silence that was calming, but her touches too.

"So I had some thoughts while I was in the shower," she began.

"I am not surprised," I kissed her forehead. "Willing to share them with me?"

She nodded and I could tell with just a short glance towards her face that she was not only willing, but eager.

"Okay, one of those thoughts is more of a question than anything else."

"I'm all ears."

"So I've seen you fight both James and Victoria before, right?"

"Right."

"While you were a little too fast for me to comprehend what you were doing, I do remember thinking you were pretty good at it."

I had no idea where she was going with this - or whatever it was that brought her these certain thoughts in the first place.

"So my question was this: how did you do it? How long did it take for you to learn?"

"Well, I owe most of my fighting skills to Jasper," I answered immediately.

"I know, you've told me that before. But how?"

"Hundreds of hours of training, Bella."

"Which I assume were separated into weeks."

"Years even - you see, when Jasper joined our family, I almost envied him. He had been a major in the Confederate Army in his human days and he had fought in the Southern vampires wars after being turned, being one of the very few survivors. And as you know, my ambition as a human had been to become a soldier after turning 18. So when Jasper came along, it didn't take me long to ask him to teach me how to fight."

"You wanted to know what you've missed out on, I assume."

"Something like that - that, coupled with the rising tensions left after World War II in the vampire world, made me believe that it might not be the worst idea to learn some proper fighting techniques."

"What tensions? I thought that was a purely human war."

"And it was, love. But it wasn't just the Nazis that wanted to purge every being that didn't meet their absurd, inhumane standards. In the background of those conflicts, the Volturi got inspired and thought of… perfecting our kind."

There was no reason to hide the disgust in my voice.

"You see, they had this plan of removing those of us who had no gifts whatsoever."

"Like Rosalie and Emmett," she whispered.

"Exactly - this way, they could reduce our already small-population, making their surveillance mission much easier."

"But that sounds awful!"

"It was. Rumours of an incoming vampire war began to spread - if it wasn't for a whistleblower from the Volturi's guard, nobody would have known."

"So you wanted to be prepared to protect your family," she said.

"I couldn't risk losing anyone. But in the end, I didn't have to. The Volturi made it out to be one big misunderstanding when the word got out and they heard of the rebellions that were forming all around the world. Their reputation is everything to them. Having their plans disclosed without their will would have left a big stain on that reputation."

Bella remained silent for a while, taking everything in. Outside our house, the world was silent, the darkness barely humming - with the exception of one woman who was still awake, whose thoughts were one long stream of worrying about wolves coming too close to the camp.

"To get back to your initial questions: Jasper taught me how to fight. Learning how to do this took maybe a week at best. Perfecting my skills took years."

"Do you think you could have done it faster?"

"There is a learning curve, Bella. Learning the basics is really easy, but building on them doesn't happen overnight."

"What if you're training everyday?" she pressed.

"You are awfully curious today, aren't you?" I teased.

She laughed, but there was an edge hidden inside the crystalline sound. I needed to see her face, to get a peek at her emotions, so I snatched her from her comfortable place and positioned her in my lap.

"Tell me where this is all coming from," I requested, catching a stray strand of her hair between my fingers and placing it carefully behind her ear.

"Okay, but don't freak out, promise?"

I reached out to press my lips to her cheek, then further down, to the hollow of her neck.

"Promise," I said against her skin.

"I was thinking," - her voice was a little shaken from her suddenly irregular breathing pattern - "that since we are on the run and technically followed by the Volturi... it might be useful if you could teach me a thing or two about how to fight."

I almost froze in place, but I made an effort to hide my reaction from her and continued moving my mouth on her neck.

"It won't come down to that, Bella."

"I know you think it won't, but you can never be too prepared."

She tried to pull back and in response I pulled her closer. If we were going to have this conversation, I needed to remain calm.

"Please understand that this is not the time, nor the place for you to learn how to fight."

"It definitely is, Edward. If not now, when?"

Never, if possible. The thought of Bella trying to defend herself instead of letting me do it - even in her strong vampire form - was unacceptable and completely intolerable. Newborns were strong, but also awfully unpredictable. That exact unpredictability could be their fatal flaw. A moment of overconfidence could cost Bella her life - and mine, because there was no scenario in which I could continue to live on an Earth barren of her existence.

"Listen, I cannot even begin to imagine going out there with you and picture you as my opponent," I told her.

"But you can't hurt me now."

"That's not the point."

She pushed me away, to look me in the eyes.

"Please, listen to me for a minute here. I don't know what is going to happen, but let's say they somehow find us. What happens then? I should be able to protect myself, at least a little. It would be a lot better than standing there like an idiot, letting you do all the hard work and improvising moves in hopes not to get killed."

She unleashed on me the full power of her eyes, overthrowing my next argument. I needed my control back, but it was nowhere to be found.

"Besides, you cannot protect both of us," she went on, taking advantage of my momentary silence. "One of us could get killed so easily if you'll be the only one knowing how to fight. Can you imagine that possibility?"

I didn't want to, but I could. A life without her held no interest to me. It would have been pointless to even consider finding joy in her absence. Why was she torturing me?

"I think teaching me how to fight would be a small sacrifice compared to… anything else that could happen."

"Oh, Bella..."

Looking at her hurt. She knew just how to play her cards and I couldn't blame her. To see those scarlet eyes that were once chocolate-brown and to imagine a world without them was worse than burning through the nine circles of the inferno.

"I've never taught someone how to do this," I admitted.

"It's all right, you can be a good teacher - you've shown me how to hunt, remember?"

"I only gave you guidelines, you did the rest going by instinct."

She positioned her hands on each side of my face and subdued my stubbornness with her gaze.

"Please, Edward?"

I didn't respond. All of a sudden, I felt the urge to subdue her as well - only in a much different way.

I decided to save it for later.

"It can't hurt me to learn a few things and you know that," she continued.

This was impossible. I grabbed her shirt in my fist and closed my eyes, exhaling loudly.

"Please?"

Her hands were stronger than she realized as she held my face. I broke out of her grip carefully and opened my eyes. We stared at each other for a while, waiting for the other to surrender.

When that didn't happen, I finally spoke:

"We'll do this on my terms. Do you understand?"

Bella fought to suppress her grin, but didn't manage to.

"Of course," she answered without thinking. "What are your terms?"

"We will train as far away from humans as possible."

"Yes, that is only reasonable," she hurried to say. "Thank you for this!"

"I am not finished."

Her grin faded for a bit, waiting for me to continue.

"I will only teach you how to defend yourself, Bella. You don't need to know about being on the offensive side."

"But that is the whole poi-"

I pressed my index finger to her lips, to stop her complaint in the tracks.

"My terms, love. I make the rules, if you want me to teach you. Take it or leave it."

She frowned at me. I allowed my finger to slip to her bottom lip, feeling the plump flesh there.

"Fine, I'll take it," she mumbled under my finger.

"You might want to change your clothes for this," I said inattentively, too focused on her lips.

Bella looked down at her holey T-shirt.

"Fair enough, give me a minute," she said, disappearing from my arms.

I watched her as she changed, replacing her sweatpants with a pair of hiking pants that hugged the curves of her hips perfectly. She found a hoodie and a pair of hefty boots to complete her outfit - the combination made her look just like a tourist getting ready for a hike.

"I am ready to go," she said, after she put up her hair in a ponytail.

"Keep in mind we have two hours at best. The sun rises early here, a little after three A.M. and we need to be back before dawn. We don't want any early hikers seeing us in the sunlight."

Her soft sigh, filled with quiet resignation, sent a shiver down my spine.

I knew this wasn't the life any of us had expected when we got married and made our agreement for her change. She deserved her gap year in Cardiff. She deserved to be able to adjust to being a newborn at her own pace. She deserved to be happy and loved every single day. I wanted to offer her so much more than a life on the run. I wanted to give her more than this existence that damned us to live like fugitives, only going out after nightfall.

But alas, it was only after nightfall that we were safe in these doomed sunny places.

"Come on, let's find a place to do this right," I said lacklusterly, rising up from the bed.

And without a sound, she followed me outside and we dissolved into the night.


As small as it was, Belaya Gora had a skiing resort that was open late until March. Thankfully, we were close to the beginning of August, which meant that the modest slopes were all but abandoned.

If we would've had more time on hand, I might have gone the extra mile and I would have started the chair lift just for the fun of it. But since it was almost one in the morning and the sun was set to rise soon, our best option was running uphill.

When we arrived at the top, we found a wide plateau. It was nothing like what I had seen at other skiing resorts in the past. This plateau had only one tiny chalet, as a further testament to the small city vibes that Belaya Gora had.

"Let's try to not make too much of a mess here, okay?" I said, taking Bella's hand in mine and placing a kiss on it.

"I can try, but I have no idea what this training consists of."

"We'll figure it out along the way."

I kissed her forehead and let go of her hand, walking away from her, until there was a considerable distance between us. She remained unmoved, watching me carefully.

On our way to the plateau, I tried to go back in time, to the first days when Jasper began training me. I remembered the basics, but I also remembered how rough they could get. That wasn't a problem: our brotherly punches and kicks were fun, nothing more than a game that, at times, got Esme worried enough to ask us to stop. But with Bella, I had to remind myself not to get rough at any point - she might have been, for all intents and purposes, unbreakable, but my most primal instincts were still to protect her, no matter the cost.

"Since you are a newborn, love, your strongest traits are your speed and your strength," I said. "In a critical scenario, running away is your best bet to save yourself."

She nodded, allowing me to continue.

"But if you're a millisecond too late, running away is futile. That is when you will need to get defensive. Most of the time, the attackers go for the easiest kill when it comes to newborns."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that they will try to get you from behind and rip your body in half before you get to do anything else."

Bella's teeth sunk into her bottom lip and I wondered what was going through her mind at that moment.

"Allow me to demonstrate," I said, not wanting to take her by surprise and involuntarily scare her.

The next second, I was behind her, my arms locked around her body like a cage. She still gasped from shock.

"It's all right," I murmured. "Now show me how you would normally go about escaping my grip."

I heard her chuckle, then I blinked and she was no longer in my arms. She had used her force to break free from my strong embrace - as expected. Without a warning, her hand pushed me to the ground, on my back. In an instant I was back on my legs again, grabbing Bella by the waist and dragging her until our bodies met once again, in the same position as before.

"How did you-"

"You made it easy for me, love," I laughed in her ear. "You've used your strength, as your instinct told you to do, right?"

"Yes - and I had you for a second!"

"A second is not enough. You need to put me in a position where I cannot escape you, not vice-versa."

She looked up at me, seemingly displeased with her own failure.

"Okay, then what do I do?"

Gripping her a little tighter, I spoke:

"You'll want to bend forward from your waist first. Try to do it now."

And she did, in a movement so unanticipatedly sensual that it reminded me of anything but fighting with her.

"Like this?"

"Exactly like this," I answered, chasing away my excitement of having her perfect bottom pressed against me. "This will allow you some space to move. You will be able to throw your elbows from side to side in the direction of your attacker's face, to distract him and escape. But be careful about your escape - you'll want to twist around until you are behind your attacker, not in front of him. This way, you get to grab him and toss him to the ground, in a powerless position."

"Okay, I think I got it," she said. "Can I try?"

"Please do."

With that, she bent further and started replicating my instructions. I avoided her blows by letting her slip away. She twisted, elegant as a tigress, and grabbed me by my hips, trying to throw me to the ground. Instead, she ended up on the ground in my place, as I grabbed her wrists, turned around and flung her down.

"I don't understand! Where did I go wrong?"

"Grab me by my shoulders next time," I told her. "This way, it won't be as easy for me to dethrone your move."

When we tried again, I was the one who ended up on the ground - and I felt proud. We practiced a few more times, so that she could perfect her technique, before moving on to the next part of our lesson.

"Another easy kill consists of the attacker locking his arm against the victim's head and ripping it."

"Sounds unpleasant," she muttered.

"It is. Let me show you what I meant."

With as much care as possible, I clasped one arm around her neck and pushed her down into a crouching position.

"Many newborns have the instinct to bite in this position," I explained, as I held her down and caressed her face with my free hand. "Don't do that. Now if there is only one attacker, it'll be easier for you, because you'll be able to use your hands and your legs as well. Try to use your hand to throw a punch."

She did and I let her go. To my delight, she stepped behind me, as I had taught her with the previous move.

"Good job stepping behind me," I lauded her. "When you do that, use your legs to kick your opponent behind his knees, to get him down."

For a second, she looked unsure, and I didn't need to read her mind to understand her hesitation.

"Come on, Bella, there is no universe in which you can hurt me. Let's do this from the beginning."

And we did, and she made an effort to push away her indecision. This time, I ended up on the ground, with her coming on top of me with a victorious smile.

"Amazing," I breathed. "Why don't you try to do this without using your hands, as if there are multiple attackers holding you down?"

It took a couple of trials and errors, but Bella was a fast learner and this allowed us to try more techniques than I had expected. She was graceful, even in her faults: her body twisted and curled in on itself in ways I had never seen before, trying to defend herself against my made-up attacks. We ended up in all sorts of variations of her on top of me and me on top of her, laughing at how absurdly fun it all turned out to be.

Of course she tried to test my limits and begged me to teach her how to attack, not only how to defend. I couldn't allow it - if I even considered her plea, that meant accepting the possibility of a future in which I wasn't there to protect her. The mere thought was callous and unacceptable.

"Come on, just one tiny little move, Edward!" she asked right after she had me immobilized on the ground - it seemed that she had found her go-to technique.

"Forget it already."

With one snap motion, I slinked away from underneath her body, rising up. She remained there, at my feet, looking up at me. Her ponytail was tousled from our training, but her clothes intact.

"You've done good today, Bella," I told her, unable to resist grazing her silky lips with my finger. "Amazing actually."

The corners of her mouth rose up in a devastating smile.

"I've had a good teacher," she stated.

"Flattery won't change my mind, beautiful, I hope you know that."

Somewhere far away, I heard the forest murmuring - unusually loud for the late hour. Bella didn't seem to notice, her eyes having turned playful after my last response. She got up slowly on her knees, propping one innocent palm on my left hip.

"It's late," I murmured. "I think we're done for today."

"There's still a bit of time before the sun rises, right?"

She leaned further to press a soft kiss on my abdomen through my shirt, right above the waist of my jeans.

"Fifteen minutes at best," I responded.

The horizon was still pitch black to the west, protecting us in a veil of darkness - but not for long, judging by the soft glow announcing the morning to the east.

I tried to single out the small noises around us, in search for the cause behind the small disruption earlier. Nothing seemed to be there. Only Bella's accelerated breath through my shirt filled my ears.

"I don't know if I can wait for this until we get back," she whispered, her lips traveling further south.

She seemed surprised to find that I was already hard and ready beneath my jeans. It was impossible not to be, with her standing on her knees in front of me like that, a sight all too voluptuous to resist. She unzipped my jeans carefully, her eyes locked on mine. When my erection sprung free out of my pants, her gaze broke away and her lips parted with hunger. Slowly, she let her fingers wander through the wild patch of hair at the base of my shaft.

The anticipation grew inside me, thick and heavy. It made my entire body tense up, longing for liberation. The built up tension from our training showed. Bella took her time, despite us not really having enough time at hand, but I couldn't find a reason to stop her at that moment. I needed the wet warmth of her mouth, of her tongue on me.

I grabbed the nape of her neck, a little too eager for her to begin. She draped her tongue slowly on my shaft, covering the distance between my testicles to my tip. The movement set me alight in a second and I groaned.

The forest murmured again.

"I want to do this all day today," Bella muttered, her mouth sowing wet kisses around my tip.

"Agreed," I managed to say, incapacitated by the electricity surging in my veins.

She trailed off, back to the base of my member, driving me insane. I watched her as she closed her eyes and moaned slightly. This kind of teasing should have been illegal.

"You're making me run mad here, love," I said, knotting my fingers around her ponytail.

Bella seemed pleased by my remark and started moving her tongue between my testicles. My violent growl scared a few nearby creatures, awakening them from their sleep.

The unknown murmur grew closer, adorned with a whirring sound. It forced me to move my eyes from the beautiful sight of my wife and search the darkness. I couldn't see anyone. I couldn't hear anyone. The only scent in my airways was Bella's: lavender dripping with molten sugar.

She seemed undisturbed in her mission. It was admittedly difficult to pay attention to something other than her mouth on me - almost impossible. But as more seconds passed, I couldn't deny it anymore: there was something in the woods.

"I love your taste," Bella's words set my mind spinning in a million directions, unplaiting the most carnal fantasies of me and her and driving away my reason.

I pulled hard on her hair, unable to resist longer, forgetting about the world around us. Feeling my urgency, she took me in her mouth, swallowing me slowly, inch by inch.

"Yes, Bella, yes..."

I felt her hum of pleasure reverberating in my penis and I couldn't help it: using the hand that was tied in her hair, I forced her down until her lips touched my testicles. Had she been human, this would have been not only hurtful, but she would have probably choked as well, out of instinct. Tears would have pooled in the corners of her eyes from the pain. But being a vampire, she only lodged her fingernails in my hips and rose her eyes up to me, to watch my reaction.

"Does it feel good when I am in this deep?" my voice was low and guttural, barely reminiscent of how I normally sounded. This was a voice that only she and I knew.

Bella nodded her head to signal an elated 'yes' and I held her there, not wanting to move, perfectly content, swathed completely in her mouth. I could smell how wet she was. The scent was potent and sweet, burning on the tip of my tongue.

Through my heavy eyelids, I saw that the sky was a shade lighter in the east, reminding me of the impending sunrise.

I flinched when the rumble of the forest returned, almost as if I someone woke me up from a deep trance. It was closer now, unnervingly so. With the same hand I used to keep myself deep in Bella's throat, I slowly separated my body from her, to listen closer. The sounds did not belong to an animal. But they couldn't belong to a person either, because there were no accompanying thoughts.

"What's going on?"

Bella seemed both confused and upset, judging by her voice. In less than a second, I hid my erection back in my jeans and closed the zipper, all the while pulling Bella up and behind me.

"Edward?"

"We're not alone," I breathed. "Stay behind me."

This made no sense and my brain tried hard to process the unknown. Bella hugged me from behind, looking over my shoulders, scanning the shadows.

Freed from the heavenly cage of her lips, I could concentrate a little better. I could now understand that the source of the rumble was not the forest itself, but the racing footsteps of someone. I heard the calm breathing behind the effort and I sensed the icy undertone in the approaching smell: whoever it was, the creature was one of our kind.

It felt like ages, not mere seconds, had passed until an unknown figure emerged from the darkness. My arms held Bella in place behind me, ready to get rid of whoever dared to approach her.

The figure stopped in place, still in the cover of the trees, as if something took it by surprise. The silence of its mind was deafening, upturning my every instinct. Why couldn't I hear its thoughts? This felt wrong in every possible way.

Before I got to find a resolution to my confusion, the figure detached from the shadows, this time with confidence, stepping towards us. My jaws clenched and I felt ready to attack. But my instincts got tilted once again when I realized that the figure was, in fact, a girl. Small and frail, barely five feet in height and unnaturally thin, the girl couldn't have been older than an eighth-grader.

Her ginger eyes glowered from underneath a misshaped fringe and I shook my head in disbelief. Then, just as I was getting ready to open my mouth, the girl spoke first:

"Who the hell are you?"


I hope you don't hate me (too much) for this cliffhanger, haha!

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