Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight, SM does....I own a 6 foot cardboard Dark Knight

Resolve Dissolve

BPOV

I hate Edward Cullen, with his stupid amazing clear green eyes and his beautiful mess of bronze hair. I repeated this silently, willing my subconscious to listen to me, for what felt like hours before I went to bed. Of course it listened to me, but put its own playful little spin on my dreams.

He moved against me with a strength I had not recognised before. His body pushed me against a wall, his feet kicking my ankles away from each other as he moved himself closer to me. One hand grasped my leg and hooked it around his hip as he thrust into to me with a low growl of lust. His fingers unzipped my jeans and he impatiently forced them down off my feet. My teeth grazed his neck before I moved my mouth down across his chest and stomach, stopping at the waist of his jeans. Elegant fingers grasped my elbows and hauled me upright before ripping his own zipper down, using his feet to pull down his jeans he slid his fingers into the elastic of my underwear, slowly pulling them down my thighs until I pulled his body back into mine and kissed him angrily.

I don't know who pulled away first but we stopped, breathing heavily, our eyes raking across each other with anger, lust and wanton need.

It was barely more than a second but it felt like forever before our lips crashed together again. His cock twitched against my leg and my fingers curled around the shaft, guiding the tip to where I needed it to be. With a violent thrust he was inside me and we moved against each other like we had been doing it for an age, each knowing the others reactions before they happened. His teeth bit down on my lip and I cried out in ecstasy and pain and all of the other emotions that were tearing through my body. When his eyes finally looked into my own I trembled as an unexplainable bomb of pleasure went off somewhere deep inside me, and he gasped,

"I love you Bella."

Wiping the strands of hair off my face I sat up after waking, staring at nothing through the darkness.

"Stupid Edward fucking Cullen." I mumbled, before collapsing back down on the bed and falling into a deep dreamless slumber.

EPOV

"I love you Bella."

I had said it, I had heard myself say it, and I would be surprised if no one else in the house had heard it. What the fuck? I was going to have to talk to Carlisle. This couldn't continue. I had to think about my sanity. That was one of the most...indecent...dreams that I had ever had. All I could think about was making her mine. As I had thrust into her I had actually screamed in triumph in my head. I had almost started doing laps of the room. I had to stop thinking about her, I had to otherwise my brain was going to slowly dissolve and start dribbling out of my ears.

I added another point to my list of survival; thou shalt not keep having wet dreams about Bella Swan. How I was going to stop I had no idea, but I would. I would not be defeated by my own mind.

BPOV

This was one morning that I was not looking forward to picking Alice up, because when I did we would have to drive into school and take part in the memorial that had been planned by the faculty. I would never have wished this kind of thing to happen to her, for her to have been killed under the wheels of a runaway van, but I did not want to sit and pretend that I had cared about her, that it bothered me that she would not be in school every day. My heart would ache every time I thought about her parents and the rest of her family, thinking about how they are coping with the obvious hole in their lives now. But the actual loss of Lauren did not stir in me any emotion more than the annoyance I felt at having to attend this pantomime of a memorial.

I'm an awful person.

Alice hopped into my truck and I drove us in the direction of the school. She had regained her sparkle in the days since the accident and the air of mischievousness was back surrounding her as she pulled out a notepad and pen, preparing to ask me the series of questions she had developed.

"Did you dream again last night?" She asked, poised to mark down whatever words escaped my mouth

"Yes." I had started to be slightly guarded, it was one thing having a giggle with Alice in the mornings about my mental subconscious, it was another thing entirely to have her write it all down. It just made it seem like she was my therapist.

"Was there any changes?"

"It was, um, rougher." I bit my lip as I told her, noting the slight rise in her eyebrows.

"Rougher how?"

"Alice," I sighed, "You know this makes me uncomfortable."

"I know, Bella, but please indulge me?" I can't ever say no to Alice, especially when she looks at me with a look akin to a tiny puppy silently asking to be loved.

"Fine. It was like we were angry with each other, but couldn't stop touching each other."

"Thank you." She smiled and wrote down more than I had said.

"What are you writing down? I didn't say that much!"

"I'm writing down my theory about why there has been a change in the tone of your dreams."

"Well tell me then Freud."

"You won't like it." She sniggered as she continued to write furiously across the paper and I strained across to read it.

I caught one word. Edward. I shook my head, refusing to be drawn on the subject. Alice was making more and more comments about the way Edward and I interact. I should never have told her about the eyes, about those beautiful eyes and the russet hair between my fingers. She was, once again, putting two and two together and making five.

What if she is right though? The question tumbled through my brain, finally breaking free from where I had it chained tightly to a corner. It sprinted away from the darkness and performed summersaults all the way down to my stomach, making it churn with the very idea of Edward Cullen.

"It's not about Edward." I whispered.

"Isn't it?" Alice replied, quirking an eyebrow at me.

EPOV

Carlisle told us he was going out of town with Esme when we were gathered at the table eating breakfast. There goes my chance to talk things through with him this week, I thought. Emmett could barely contain his glee at the thought and I knew what was racing through his mind. Any time our parents left us alone for more than a day he planned a party. Great. Just what I needed to endure, a party, where there would be people wanting to ask me questions, to get to know me. They did it every time. Somehow thinking that by asking me a few questions that barely scratched the surface they would turn me into a devoted love interest. It was not going to happen.

"There is the memorial at school today is there not?" Asked Carlisle as he spooned porridge up to his mouth.

"Yeah, for that Lauren girl." Answered Emmett, not really paying attention. If my assumptions were right then he was working out where he could get a keg and a full bar of spirits. That part of the plan was one I could get on board with; I'd sequester a bottle of Jack and hide in my room. I would manage to avoid spending time with anyone. Especially Bella.

"It's sad, I really don't know how I would cope if one of you were taken from us." Added Esme, looking around the table at us with her perpetually sad eyes.

"You don't need to worry about that Esme, Edward here is handy in a crisis." Emmett gestured toward me with his knife.

"We are very proud of the way you reacted, Edward." Carlisle told me.

"I didn't even remember to check her pulse." I told him. "Not so much the doctor's son."

"Regardless, you saved her life."

"Thanks." I mumbled, embarrassed by the unwarranted praise. It wasn't why I had saved Bella, it wasn't why I had taken her into my arms and thrown us to the ground, and it wasn't why I had been gripped with terror when she had fainted.

BPOV

"I don't want to go to school today." Announced Alice as I neared the school parking lot.

"Me neither." I admitted.

"So, let's not." She said pulling out her phone. Before I could respond she had called Jasper. "Bells and I don't want to go to school today." There was silence as she listened to his response. "OK, see you there." She slid her phone shut.

"Well?"

"Keep driving. Jasper said to meet us at his place."

Smiling I drove past the school taking a quick peek at the students assembled in the grounds. A few lifted their heads to look at the truck as it rumbled past but no one really paid any attention. I was a good student, I very rarely took days off, so this one day wouldn't be a big deal. I was sure I could swing an excuse to convince Charlie that I couldn't go. He would understand and not question whatever came spilling out of my mouth.

Rosalie was standing beside Jasper when we arrived at their house, which surprised me. Her face was completely unreadable and I wasn't sure if she was going to yell at us for making her brother skip school or was going to join us for a day of god knows what. When a smile appeared on her mouth as I parked I knew we weren't going to get a lecture.

"I don't know who thought of it but Brava. Seriously. I've never dreaded school so much in my life." She announced to us.

"You are ditching too?" Alice asked excitedly as a car pulled up behind us.

"Well, yeah." Rosalie answered rolling her eyes. "Of course!"

"I never knew you had it in you." She sniggered before turning round to greet Emmett. Great, if Emmett was in the car behind us then I knew who else was in my vicinity.

"What's the deal folks?"

EPOV

Bella was standing with Alice, Jasper and Rosalie outside the house. She and Alice had obviously just arrived. What's going on? I wondered if something bad had happened but everyone seemed fine, just standing about talking amongst themselves.

"What's this all about?" I said softly and Emmett just shrugged at me, unable to tear his eyes away from Rosalie's legs, before bouncing out of the car in a hurry.

Great, there goes rules number 8 and 10 and I'd already broken my first five cardinal rules. What were another 2 in the grand scheme of things? Staying away from Bella Swan was the hardest thing I'd ever have to do and I was failing at every turn.

"Hey Edward, want to ditch?" Asked Jasper as he slid his arm around Alice's waist.

"Why not?" I shrugged. We stood for a while after making the decision, no one quite knowing what to do or where to go. "I thought this kind of thing would be more exciting to be honest."

Bella looked like she was going to laugh, or make some sort of comment about what I said but she caught herself, realising that it was me that had spoken. Her teeth bit down onto her lip and a frown creased her forehead. I wanted to smooth away the creases with my finger tips. Wanted to make her smile and laugh and gasp and moan and cry my name in pleasure. Right, hold on, rewind and erase that. I wanted to ignore her and not care about any of that shit. I checked that my brain hadn't actually started the slow dribble out my ears when Emmet said,

"Let's go to the mansion."

He would say that, he would want to invite Rosalie to his den like some sort of predator. He had edged closer to Rosalie as I went through my internal struggle to save my brain.

"Rosalie, you come with us, everyone else follow Edward's car."

BPOV

Alice sat on Jaspers lap as I drove sedately behind Edward's car, in no hurry to see where the beast lay dormant until he decided to come to school and ask me stupid questions that were none of his business. His Volvo turned into what looked like a small gap in the trees but was actually a barely laid track, all but hidden, that led to his house.

"I've not been to Edward's house before. This is exciting." Alice was muttering excitedly into Jaspers ear as I parked the truck.

"It's only a house Alice." I told her, even though that wasn't exactly the truth.

It was, as they had called it, a mansion. The white outer walls were only broken by the huge expanses of glass of which there were more than brick. Even under the near constant cloud cover of Forks the mansion gleamed. Rolling expanses of land surrounded it, looking like the property boundaries were never ending.

An expanse of water steadily roared down towards an unknown resting point at one part of the gardens, beyond that sat a dilapidated stone building in the midst of renovation. I think I was spinning in circles taking it all in until someone placed their hand on my covered shoulder to stop me.

"It's beautiful." I breathed.

"I know." He replied, his words caressing me. Had he always had that velvet voice? The one that sounded like he didn't know whether to rip my clothes off or shout at me? Edward smiled crookedly at my reaction to his home and my stomach felt like it fell right out of my body.

"Sorry. I've just never seen a house like this outside Architectural Digest."

"You read Architectural Digest?"

"Sometimes." When I'm at the doctors and have a long wait ahead of me, but he didn't need to know that. He made a noise in his throat and walked away, disappearing into the open door and into the house I couldn't wait to get a look at inside.

EPOV

She reads Architectural Digest? I almost kissed her right then. Slowly but surely all of my defences against this girl were dissolving, leaving me with no reason to not take her into my arms except my own determination to be lonely. What was the point in that? I looked at Emmett as he walked Rosalie around the bottom floor of the house. He made it look easy, like being attracted to someone was the most normal thing in the world. Which it is, the abnormal thing in the world was me. What was wrong with me?

Why couldn't I just relax and see what happens? I didn't want to be too attached to her because despite the protestations of our adopted parents I was sure that we were not going to live in Forks until graduation. Sure that when I finally let that final defensive barrier down I would be forced to leave behind the very thing that had made me feel complete. The one thing that made me feel like a normal, fully functional human being. Which would be....nice.

Bella was standing looking around the lounge, taking in the wooden flooring, the high ceilings, and the discrete art on the walls. All of the effort Esme had put into making the house a home was evident and as Bella started spinning like she did outside an absolutely moronic grin split my face in half.

"Stop spinning, Bella." Laughed Jasper. "Come on Edward, give us the tour seeing as Emmett is busy." He scowled in the direction his sister had disappeared in.

Jasper did, of course, know every part of the house from when we were children, but he had asked for the benefit of Alice and Bella. I would do anything to stop Bella from spinning any more, from what I had seen of her she was constantly tripping and falling. Esme would kill me if I let something happen to one of her various pieces of art sourced from around the world.

"Alright, come on." I made a sweeping gesture with my arms and led them down to the entertainment room. "This....is the entertainment room."

"The massive television and shelves of DVD's gave that one away." I caught Bella mumble as she wandered over to the shelves. Her fingers seemed to travel involuntarily to the spines, tilting her head she read the titles occasionally stroking down the full length of the box when she came to one that made her mouth twitch up slightly at the corners.

Don't do it Edward, she might be recognising something seriously shit that she liked, it doesn't mean you have anything in common, I was speaking to myself again. It can't be healthy. But she was walking her fingertips along the shelf where I kept my own collection. Focus Cullen.

"You have a fridge down here?" Alice asked.

"Well, yeah, no point in having to go up to the kitchen to get a drink in the middle of a film." I shrugged, thinking it obvious.

"Oh, the kitchen. Can we look at the kitchen?" Bella had wandered back over to us, addressing the question to Jasper and not me.

"If you ask very nicely then I'll let you have a peak." I told her, forcing her to look at me, forcing her to address me.

"Please, Edward, can I have a look in your kitchen?" She had asked me, with obvious chagrin, and I couldn't exactly refuse.

BPOV

Ask him nicely? To see his fucking kitchen? This man-child was driving me absolutely nuts. It was like he knew just how to antagonize me and make me question my very existence. But I was desperate to see his kitchen so I asked as nicely as I could without inflicting any severe psychological harm on myself. Surprisingly he smiled at me and gestured for me to follow him up a set of stairs.

Cullen's house was better than I expected, natural sunlight danced across every room with the exception of the entertainment room in the basement. I hadn't realised Forks had so much sunlight. He looked behind at me once with a slight smile.

"Watch the step here." His voice carried down to me but I wasn't paying attention, I was too busy looking at the photographs that lined the stairway.

"Sorry, what did you say?" I asked as I reached the top of the stairs.

"I said watch the..." He didn't get to finish the sentence and he didn't need to as I realised what he had said as I tripped over the very step he warned me about. I braced myself for impact but I once again found myself in Cullen's arms. My fingers dug into his arm slightly before I realised that he had angled me upright again.

"You've got to stop saving me." Closing my eyes I sighed, knowing that the slight contact with him had made my face a bright red.

"You've got to stop needing saved." He spat back, obviously annoyed with me.

"Sorry."

"This is the kitchen." He told me shortly and sat himself down on one of the solid wooden chairs.

It was pretty much what I had expected, only a thousand times better. The black granite work top contrasted against the glossy white cupboards, sporadically interspersed with brushed steel appliances. It was everything I would have liked to have at Charlie's. Huge windows loomed up from the floor across one wall, affording a breathtaking view of acres of land.

I was dying to open the fridge, something I did in every house I could without being caught. I did it every time I was at Alice's, never finding anything more than a block of cheese and some condiments. Until she reminded me that she ate with Jasper almost every night I was adamant that I was going to start doing her grocery shopping.

That was when I had noticed that Alice and Jasper had not followed us up to the kitchen.

"Where are Alice and Jasper?"

"Downstairs probably. I'll go check." Cullen left through a door I had not noticed.

Smirking to myself I trailed my fingers along the counter, feeling the smooth, cold granite and was surprised at how pleasant the feeling was. Slowly I made my way over to the fridge, surreptitiously checking that no one was approaching, and opened it wide.

Condiments lined the door, a carton of milk sat unopened along with cartons of juice, including a blood red tomato juice that I couldn't understand being appealing to anyone. Cullen's Mom obviously took a lot of care over feeding her men. There were wrapped meats, bowls of things slowly soaking up marinades, drawers full of vegetables and a small portion of the fridge was dedicated, I was surprised to note, to a handful of CD's.

"HmmMmm." Cullen cleared his throat and I slammed the fridge shut with embarrassment.

"Sorry." I immediately told him, backing away from it like it was going to attack me.

"Hungry?"

"No, curious. I always check people's fridges. It's just something I do." I found myself telling him, unable to stop the words from spewing forth from my mouth. "I used to keep CD's in my fridge in Phoenix, but I didn't think it would matter in a place as cold as Forks." It was true, it used to drive Renée crazy when she opened the fridge to grab a cold drink and find my CD's in there. The sound quality was noticeably better when they had been kept in the fridge.

"You did?" He looked at me perplexed, like he was pondering how I survived leaving the house on my own without a carer. And then he said the last thing I had expected.

"Emmett and I are having a party. I would like it very much if you would come."

A/N: I'm really behind in replying to reviews, sorry. I appreciate them very much. I'm going to start again from now with the whole replying to them thing. So if I haven't replied to your review then I apologise profusely. Any questions can be sent to me in a pm.

I hope you enjoy the chapter. I have alot of work and college commitments to deal with this week, so another update will be next week some time.