This was both the best and the worst idea at the same time - but it was difficult to remind myself why it was the worst when I watched the tip of my shaft disappearing in Bella's mouth.
We were in the bedroom upstairs - me pressed against the door, Bella on her knees in front of me, swallowing every inch of my erection deep in her throat. My chest was vibrating, ready to erupt in a growl, but then I felt her nails digging in my hips and saw her looking up with reproachful eyes.
To stop the sound in its tracks, I grabbed a robe from the hanger next to us, crumpled its sleeve in my fist, and bit hard into the fabric, ripping it to shreds. Bella nodded approvingly, continuing her mission with fervour. There was no sight more erotic than her taking me in her mouth and forcing my length down her throat with unstoppable rapacity.
I felt her tongue moving along with her lips and I couldn't help myself from grabbing her hair in my fist and using it as leverage to get her to swallow me deeper. As I did this, I saw one of her hands disappearing from my hip and sliding down her jeans and between her legs. Suddenly, it became impossible to focus on anything else but the movement of that hand.
Even if she was covered by her jeans, it was all too easy to imagine the show beyond the curtain. The wet sounds of her fingers rubbing against her clitoris, combined with the feeling of being sucked with such fervour, were almost enough to make me come. Another sound, somehow even more deliciously insolent, alerted me that she had now inserted one of her fingers inside herself.
I almost collapsed then and there from the pleasure.
I needed to tell her to slide another finger in, and then another. I wanted to tell her how mouth-watering her arousal smelled and how I craved to please her with my own mouth, just to get a perfect taste. I burned to come in her mouth and then immediately fuck her on the king-size bed, until she exploded as well. Preferably for days on end.
"It's official, you are, in fact, worse than Emmett and Rose. Who, by the way, have called to see how you are."
Alice's complaint pulled me up from the perfect haze I was in, reminding me in an instant why this was a bad idea. The thoughts from downstairs had been coming and going, with Bella's shield slipping easily now that she was more concentrated on pleasing me with her mouth than anything else.
"Love, everyone can hear us," I managed to say.
She let me out of her mouth, not impressed with the way her plan evolved.
"Well, now that we are using words, they can."
Bella stood up from her place, her eyes burning with the same fire as mine did. I took the hand with which she had pleased herself seconds ago and raised it up to the level of my face. Her index finger was coated in a thick layer of her own juices, tempting me. Without further consideration, I took that finger in my mouth. As soon as I did that, my taste buds went into a frenzy: the familiar taste of Bella always had this effect, making my erection throb painfully for release. I licked her finger clean before letting it go.
Once my mouth was free, she reached out to kiss me - although 'kiss' might have been too mild of a term for what she was doing. She was almost eating me alive, her mouth opening to heighten the connection. Our tongues soon found themselves in a ruthless battle, in which everyone was winning. The taste of me and the taste of her blended together and I could no longer care about anything and anyone but Bella.
Listening to my instincts, I grabbed her shoulders and made her turn around, with her face against the wall. I undid the buttons of her pants and rolled them off her hips, along with her underwear, revealing her round bottom. In other circumstances, I might have prolonged my perusal of her gorgeous buttocks, but not now. Grabbing her ass tightly in my palms, I pushed at her dripping wet entrance and slid inside her body all at once. I made a Herculean effort not to roar when I felt her walls squeezing me tightly. A sharp intake of air on Bella's part assured me that the bluntness that had seeped in my actions was more than welcome.
I had barely started to push when another thought of Alice made its way into my head:
"Come on, now, there are kids in this house."
I sighed, exasperated. I needed the release so badly and I hated the fact that I had to wait for it profusely. Bella gasped when I exited her body without warning and managed to mutter a 'get back in' under her breath when I turned around. On the TV table, I saw a small block of post-its and a pen. I rushed to grab them, closing my zipper as I darted across the room. I almost ripped the delicate paper when I started writing my note for her:
'I am dying to fuck you, Bella. Plain and simple. In fact, I am sure you've got a good preview of how much I am aching to have you. But I can't do that with Alice bugging me from downstairs and everyone else hearing.'
Bella was right behind me, pulling her jeans back up and reading as I wrote. Her breath caught up and she grabbed the pen from my hand, starting to write her own note on another post-it:
'How do you expect me to go downstairs now knowing that?'
I smiled, taking back the pen and responding:
'Soaking wet, I hope.'
"Well, you've succeeded there," she murmured.
"I'll take very good care of you, I promise," I murmured, leaving the post-it down and pulling her in for a kiss. I felt my taste lingering on her tongue and I burned to have her on her knees in front of me again. She pressed her body on me, my erection pushing shamelessly against her abdomen. "I will make sure to not leave an inch of you unsatisfied when we're able to be alone again."
Parting from her physically hurt, but it had to be done. I was ready to head to the door when she grabbed another post-it and began writing on it. When I looked over her shoulder to see what she had written, time froze in place. Only two words were written on the pale paper, yet they had had the effect of a nuclear bomb on me:
'With ropes?'
She looked up at me with an innocence that had me spellbound. I wondered if she even understood what she was doing to me with those words.
"With absolutely anything you want, my Bella," I grunted, unable to resist this plea.
A little victorious smile lightened her mien and she disappeared from the room before I did. I followed her half-heartedly out the door, coming downstairs to the admonitory eyes of Alice, the understanding thoughts of Jasper and the disgusted expression of Nellie. Bella made herself comfortable on the sofa, next to the kid.
It had been almost two days since Bella and I had our little getaway in the rented car. What did they expect? I was glad Jasper understood - if only for the fact that his power allowed him to feel perfectly well how much anguish that brought me.
"So how's Emmett?" I asked, trying to ignore their gazes.
"He was ready to pack a bag and come here, when he heard that we were all together," Jasper answered.
"What? He didn't know you and Alice joined us?"
"We tried to keep him out of the loop a little. You know how he gets," Jasper's mind cleared things up.
"Em and Rose are safe, why would we bring this upon them?" Bella replied.
"He just doesn't like to know that he cannot help..."
"But Rose keeps him grounded," Alice pointed out.
"I'll make sure to call him later," I said. "Out of all the times he could suffer from fear of missing out, this is not it."
"I think it's sweet he cares," Nellie's thought came as a whisper to me, before fading into nothingness when Bella lost control of her shield again.
"Yes, do that, but we've got bigger problems than caressing Em's ego right now," Alice pointed out.
"Like what?" Bella asked.
"Like Demetri talking to Siobhan later on and getting Edward's trail from her mind. I had just seen him doing that a few minutes ago."
"That won't be enough though, she had only met me, not you, Alice," I said.
"I know, but they don't know that. Ireland was their closest bet in terms of finding someone who had met us, so that Demetri could have a full grasp of who he is searching for. They haven't decided their next stop."
"It won't be tough," Jasper offered. "You've met almost every friend of Carlisle's and the Volturi know full well that he has friends all throughout the world. They could take Demetri to Alaska, if they want to be sure."
He was right. Demetri had not been there when Aro, Jane, Alec and Felix went to search for us in Denali.
"They might just do that," Alice offered. "We'll have to wait and see."
"Does that mean I get time to hunt?" Nell's thoughts came back, along with the thoughts of others, when Bella gained back control of her power. The back and forth of hearing voices was confusing enough for me, but I was willing to bet that it didn't compare to the whiplash it gave her. I felt the need to take her in my arms and convince her to take a break - even if that meant Alice would preach to me all night long about the importance of keeping up with her training.
"This might be a good idea for all of us, actually," I replied to Nell's mental inquisition. "We don't know when we'll have such a large window of opportunity again, so we might as well power up."
"What are you talking about?" my brother demanded.
"Hunting."
Jasper's mind took him back to almost two weeks ago, to the last time he had the chance to hunt. He had drunk from a few armadillos, but that certainly had not sated him as much as he needed.
"I could get on board with that," he agreed.
"Me too," Alice jumped instantly - not necessarily because she was thirsty, but because she wanted Jasper to be as comfortable as possible.
"We could try our hand at some yaks."
"Ummm, I was thinking of something a little more satisfying than that," Nell didn't voice her disapproval out loud, guessing - rightly so - that it would make me mad to even suggest that in Bella's presence.
"You do your thing, just keep your phone with you, in case something comes up," I told her.
"That's what I thought," she said.
We parted ways soon after, with the kid going to a village within the Dolpa district right as the evening was setting in, while the rest of us made our way to the Kanjeralwa Mountain. We made sure to avoid the tourist tracks - Bella might have resisted the temptation of human blood in Taipei, but she was still a three-month old newborn vampire, so being safe certainly felt better than potentially feeling sorry.
The sun had set completely by the time we found a herd of yaks to attack. Bella and Jasper were the first to launch, taking down four animals at once in their stride. Right until that very moment, I had never noticed how similar their hunting styles were: a little erratic from afar, but so very graceful and elegant upon closer inspection. The way they gave in to instincts was captivating in a way that would have set any human running for their life, an unspoken lethal grace surrounding their every move.
I got three yaks down in a few seconds - two for me, and one more for Bella, since the rest of them would be gone by the time she would be finished with her own catch - while Alice got one for herself. The familiarity of hunting with my family made me go easy on my prey, taking my time to savour it. Under the starry sky, I felt nothing but bliss as I drank.
When I was finished, I dragged the body of the third animal right where Bella was standing on her knees feeding herself, growling softly as she was trying to draw out more blood from the already-drained animal. I touched her hair gently, to get her attention. She looked up in an instant, her eyes glowing with appetency.
"I've got you one more," I told her, kneeling by her side.
The potent scent awakened her, and she launched over the yak I had brought just a fraction of a second after thanking me. I kept caressing her hair as she drank, watching her. I barely registered the sounds of Alice's and Jasper's background conversation and thoughts, too lost into observing my wife.
In her human days, I had watched her numerous times eating. While the food she was eating inspired no hunger in me, the joy beyond her act made me happy. But that joy paled in comparison to what I was feeling now, for Bella looked a hundred times more fulfilled while greedily gulping down blood, than any of the times she had eaten human food. Her lips were forming a perfect seal, while her teeth kept gnawing at the veins hidden beneath the layers of muscle and fat. Only her hands stood completely still, with her fingers buried deep between the ribs of her meal.
She had been born for this.
A bit of blood dripped down on her chin when she finished and lifted her face from the animal's throat to meet my eyes. I made sure to clean it before it got on her blouse.
"Satisfied?" I asked.
"Very. Thank you once again for that."
"Always a pleasure, Bella."
"You've watched me again," she observed with a small grin.
She liked to call me out on this particular habit - not that I felt the tiniest bit ashamed of the voyeuristic pleasure that overcame me when I observed my wife in these moments.
"It's not my fault you're so irresistible when you're hunting."
"I'm only a step above being a savage," Bella grimaced.
"Well, I won't contradict you there. But this only makes you more fascinating to me."
She smiled sheepishly - a funny contradiction to the goddess-like determination she had had minutes ago - and I leaned to kiss her coyness away. Her taste was masked by the taste of blood, but not entirely. I could still feel her natural sweetness beneath the delectable tang of the blood and this automatically made me crave more, so I bit down her lower lip. This was enough for Bella to get carried away: she pushed me down until my back was on the ground and leaned over me to deepen the kiss. I grabbed her neck in return, pressing my finger in the small space where her clavicle bones met. My small gesture made her gasp, making me realize I was all too ready to take her.
"We're still here, brother," Jasper's thought wasn't annoyed, just slightly amused, when it hit me.
I had to separate myself from my wife, grunting when I did so.
"Still not alone," I reminded her gently, rising up on my feet and helping her up as well.
Alice and Jasper were two hundred feet away from us, waiting hand in hand.
"I love you, guys, but a little privacy never hurt," Bella mumbled.
"Ah, to be young and in love..." Jasper's mental voice was relaxed, the excitement in the air fogging up his own judgement.
"We'll all have our much needed privacy when you polish up your technique," Alice chirped, and suddenly they were both right by our side. "Besides, Jazz just had an idea - although I'm sure Edward has already seen it."
"I'm sorry, but no, I wasn't paying attention."
"Well, do tell them, handsome," my sister encouraged Jasper.
"It wasn't exactly my idea per se, Nell kind of planted it in my head."
"She kept asking me about my battle scars when we were up in the air. So naturally, I told her a few bits about the war I've been in."
"She wants Jasper to teach her how to fight!" Alice chirped.
"The girl is still worried sick about that werewolf, so she wants every advantage she can get."
"But she doesn't need to, we'll have me next time," Bella protested. "Edward, you've seen the effect my shield has had on the thing!"
"I also know what came after."
"Not my point."
She confronted me with her eyes, clearly not in the mood to be reminded of the awful consequence of her bravery.
"So what is your idea, Jazz?" I demanded, not quite willing to start an argument with her while my brother and sister were there watching.
His words started melding uncomfortably with Alice's unspoken excitement when he answered:
"First of all, I will teach Nellie what she asked me to. And second, it might not be the worst idea to resume that other training with Bella, while we're at it."
"The fight training?" Bella seemed to be thrilled all of a sudden, no trace of the previous low-boiling fury - sometimes she was tough to keep up with.
"The defense training," I corrected her.
"That," Alice said. "We should split it: a quarter of day for this, and the rest for Bella extending her shield. At this point, the shield is still our main priority, but that won't be enough if we catch the next full moon together."
"You might be right," Bella offered. "I haven't done any fight training in a while."
"Then call Nellie and let's proceed," Alice ushered, clapping her hands.
"Now don't give me that look. You know this needs to be done for the collective good."
Half-heartedly, I took my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and started dialing Nell's number.
I was once again on my back, thrown to the ground. Somewhere in the background, I heard Nellie's giggle. She did seem to enjoy learning how to fight from the master himself, Jasper, judging by the sounds. The thoughts of those around me were more of a blur that came and went - it seemed that Bella couldn't extend her shield for longer periods of time when she had to focus her attention in too many places at once.
"Now," she said, her hand gripping my throat. "Why don't we cut to the chase already?"
"I think we've done that already, love."
"You know what I mean."
"Forget about it."
She rolled her eyes, and her hand tightened around my neck a little. I found myself unreasonably aroused at this small gesture of hers.
"You're in no position to talk, Mr. Cullen."
"I think I'll be the judge of that," I said and quickly rolled her off me and to the side, coming on top of her in a second and trapping her body underneath me.
"Show me how to attack," she demanded.
It was only the fourth time she was asking me that - I had expected way worse.
"I don't think so."
"But I'm getting bored with these moves!"
"You are being childish. You need to perfect these moves."
"I've perfected them," Bella complained.
"Do you really think so?"
"I know so."
Her cockiness was endearing, just as any other part of her personality, but she could use some toning down when it came to this. Because yes, she was incredibly good - after all, that training we had done in Belaya Gora had not been for nothing - but she still had a penchant for letting her newborn instincts get the best of her at times and make her an easy target.
Without another word, I circled her waist tightly with my arms and stood up, throwing her body in the air and flinging it back to the ground, immobilizing her between my legs.
"You know so, huh?"
"Show-off," she growled, twisting herself to get away from me. But as soon as she set herself free, I leaned over to grab her ankle and blocked her knees from going further with my arm, bringing her down once again in the process.
"Come on now!"
"What?" I asked. "I thought you've perfected these moves."
"Well, yeah, but not when you launch a surprise attack."
"Do you think you get an attack-warning mid-battle?"
"Obviously not, but-"
"Then why are we having this conversation instead of practicing?"
We got back to what we were doing. Bella was angry this time around and she didn't shy away from putting her rage into the way she moved. I found that rage enticing in ways I did not expect - the fact that it had been over two days since we got to make love properly did not help in that regard, most certainly.
I found it harder and harder to concentrate on much else the more time passed without being intimate with her. Perhaps I had been a little spoiled during the times she and I had been alone in the past couple of months, with the constant impetuous lovemaking. But it wasn't only about the need to find a release and to seek pleasure in the meantime - sex brought us together in a way that words alone never could. It made claiming each other as easy as breathing. Once inside her, I knew I was complete to my very core. And I craved this feeling of completion now more than ever.
Trying to make do with what I could, I started being a little bolder whenever our bodies met in the throes of fighting - after all, Jasper and Nellie were busy doing their own thing, while Alice was concentrating on admiring him and shifting through visions. So I made sure to let Bella know just how much this coaching session affected me whenever our bodies met.
Pressing my length against her in between the moments of teaching and learning brought back a deluge of memories from her human days. This was most definitely not the first, nor the last time my excitement got the best of me. Back in March, we had visited her father for his birthday - the only problem was that I had not seen Bella for a week at that point, thanks to an extended hunting trip in the Appalachian Mountains with Carlisle and Esme. Seeing Bella again after being parted from her for so long had had a most powerful effect on me.
As she was doing the dishes in the kitchen after everyone had eaten, I managed to find an excuse to leave Charlie and his friends alone in the living room, where they were watching a baseball game, to get to the kitchen. I barely said a word to her - I only grazed my throbbing member against her ass and it had been enough for her to lift up the skirt Alice had chosen for her, push her underwear to the side and reveal the wet proof of how much she had missed me. We made love against the kitchen sink, with the water running to mask the noises, and everyone else a thin wall away from us.
Right now, there was no thin wall to allow us the slightest illusion of intimacy. And even if it were, it would have been useless when we had three super-hearing vampires so annoyingly close to us. This made me well up with unspoken frustration. If I could have a moment alone with her, just a moment...
But all of my frustrations crumbled when I heard Alice's gasp from the other side of the field. It was impossible to discern her thoughts now, seeing that Bella was too focused to respond to my mock attacks to do anything else. I stopped right away and my wife took the chance to lock me to the ground, under her body.
"Wait," I wheezed.
"What happened?"
"Alice."
Just as I uttered her name, she was right next to us - and so were Jasper and Nellie. For an unbearably long moment, confusion lingered in the air, as Bella was getting control back over her shield. But once she did, the thoughts around me started to swarm in my head.
"The twins! Those were the dumb twins that found me," Nell seemed to be annoyed.
"Jazz was right."
"This doesn't feel right."
"What is it, Alice?" Bella demanded.
"Demetri," she uttered. "He's got Edward's trail. They're taking him to Alaska now, like Jasper predicted, to get mine as well."
"Oh, man, the beast has been unleashed," Nellie's quick thought made its way into my brain.
As Alice talked, I caught glimpses of the images she had just seen: Aro, Demetri and the twins, in the Denali wilderness. The Denali sisters, terrified by this visit. Tanya, asking the Volturi if I was okay. Jane, punishing her curiosity with her gift. Demetri, getting exactly what he needed and starting his tracking mission.
Painful shivers crossed my spine.
"How long?" Jasper said.
"Tomorrow evening. That's when they arrive in Denali."
"We have to leave this place by then," I said. "Get as far away as possible from them."
A short succession of images flashed through Alice's mind: a baobab forest, pristine waters, a couple of lemurs, our little group covered from head to toe in garments, hats and sunglasses.
"Madagascar it is," I murmured.
"That looked like Antsiranana, I've been there once," she thought.
"Right, your fifth honeymoon," I remembered. "But the population density is huge there."
"What did I tell you about giving Bella some credit after these months? And especially after what she did in the woods in Taipei?"
"Wait, what?" Bella seemed confused by this strange exchange - long ago, this used to be Emmett's reaction to these mental conversations Alice and I had, before his confusion turned into exasperation.
"I second that," Nellie offered.
"We'll be heading to Antsiranana, in Madagascar," I explained. "I'll call the airport to get clearance for take off tomorrow morning."
"That's as far as we can get from here and from them at the same time," Jasper agreed.
"But are we sure the plane will be ready by then?"
Another quick glance into the future showed Alice the only outcome available, and she rushed to explain it:
"With a one-hour delay, but yes. It will be. It won't affect us too much."
The next day, we were boarding our plane dressed in a way that left no inch of our skin uncovered. Alice and Jasper wore matching oversized hoodies, that covered them up to their fingers. My sister had chosen trench-coats and hats for me and my wife, making us look like a pair of amateur detectives. For Nellie, she had chosen a fluffy pink tracksuit from her own wardrobe, that had the kid boiling with rage.
We were a strange-looking group, to say the least. While we did attract some curious looks from the people around us along the way, it was far less conspicuous than shining our way through the airport and to the tarmac.
This flight had not been as peacefully gleeful as the one from Taipei to Dolpa. No one played Hearts, no one laughed. An ominous silence flew along with us, undisturbed by our collective wish to relax, even if just for a few hours. It wasn't all bad, of course: the silence allowed Bella to play with her gift relentlessly. With no one to distract her attention, she managed to keep it up almost the entire duration of the flight.
The airport in Antsiranana was smaller than most train stations in the United States. This fascinated Nellie, for whatever reason. If I had to be honest, her constant amazement when it came to airports and airplanes was endearing. It was such an unusual thing to get hung up on. This just proved that at heart, she was still very much a child who had never got to experience these small wonders in her human life and she made up for it now. When I found myself wondering whether she had ever got the chance to visit Disneyland and what her reaction would be to a place like that - from complaining about how consumerism-filled that place was to probably secretly enjoying all the rides - I knew I had to stop.
Getting back to worrying about Alice's past visions was the last thing I needed. And yet, I found myself doing it anyway, despite my best intentions.
I know I say this a lot, but: thank you so much, guys! I am so very thankful for each and every one of you who follow this story. Your support makes this journey so very fulfilling!
If you've got any thoughts or questions on this chapter, I'd be so very happy if you decided to share them! Reading and responding to your reviews makes my heart sing with joy, as sappy as that sounds.
Until next time, stay safe and happy!
