A/N: Well...this chapter is the infamous cottage scene. I will warn you now, as I wrote it, it basically turned into one gigantic (and I mean gigantic) lemon—difficult as I find those to write. So for those of you who aren't into that, you may just want to skip over this chapter. For plot purposes, suffice it to say that Bella gets her cottage.
Oh, and for anyone who may argue that a lemon like this is totally out of canon, I will certainly concede that point. But if you're like me, you'll agree that that was at least ONE way the original was sorely lacking...and the point of this whole exercise for me has been to fill in the bits that were lacking. That includes the lemons! ; )
"No. No way!" Bella insisted, shaking her head and shooting me a sharp glance. I knew she'd react this way to any mention of another birthday, but I also knew that Alice had no intention of letting her off the hook, at least where the presents were concerned.
Besides, I was looking forward to Bella having these presents myself.
"No, this doesn't count," she continued. "I stopped aging three days ago. I am eighteen forever."
"Whatever," Alice said with a shrug. "We're celebrating anyway, so suck it up."
Bella sighed, looking from my face to Alice's. She knew there was little use in arguing with Alice once she had her mind made up.
Alice knew it, too. Her smile widened. "Are you ready to open your present?"
"Presents," I reminded her, pulling another key from my pocket, this one tied with a blue bow. I knew Bella would have a very good idea what the present from me would be, since we had discussed it at length before the wedding. She just didn't know its precise make and model.
"Mine first," Alice stated flatly, sticking her tongue out at me. Mine is better. And I know you want it, too, Edward.
She had me there, but I couldn't let her get her way quite so easily. "Mine is closer."
"But look at how she's dressed," Alice complained, sweeping a hand in Bella's direction. "It's been killing me all day. That is clearly the priority."
True, Bella looked a little worse for wear in her torn dress and my shirt, but I knew her well enough to know that when we got where we were going, she wasn't going to suddenly become absorbed in playing dress-up. She had probably forgotten what she had on.
Alice grinned. "I know—I'll play you for it. Rock, paper, scissors."
Jasper chuckled. He'd had this offer from his wife before, and knew she didn't make the offer if she didn't already know that she would win.
It was my turn to sigh. "Why don't you just tell me who wins?"
"I do," she beamed. "Excellent."
"It's probably better that I wait for morning, anyway," I told Bella, with a small smile and a nod at Seth and Jacob, still passed out on our couch. "I think it might be more fun if Jacob was awake for the big reveal, don't you agree? So that someone there is able to express the right level of enthusiasm?"
Bella grinned at me gratefully.
"Yay," Alice sang. "Bella, give Ness—Renesmee to Rosalie."
"Where does she usually sleep?"
Alice shrugged. "In Rose's arms. Or Jacob's. Or Esme's. You get the picture. She has never been set down in her entire life. She's going to be the most spoiled half-vampire in existence."
Rosalie laughed, delighted to take our sleeping daughter back into her arms. "She is also the most unspoiled half-vampire in existence. The beauty of being one of a kind." She smiled warmly at Bella, and I was pleased to see it. The strange alliance of Bella's pregnancy seemed to have continued, and Rosalie was more content than I had ever seen her. Having a baby in the family had thawed her icy exterior considerably.
Emmett was watching his wife with a small smile playing about his lips. He was thinking the exact same thing, and had been delighted to reap the benefits of it for himself, too.
Once Bella was sure Renesmee was settled, Alice grabbed her elbow and started to steer her toward the back door. "Let's go, let's go!"
"Is it outside?" Bella asked.
"Sort of." Alice gave her another shove toward the door.
"Enjoy your gift," Rosalie called. "It's from all of us. Esme especially."
Bella seemed surprised that no one but Alice and I had moved. "Aren't you coming, too?"
"We'll give you a chance to appreciate it alone," Rosalie told her. "You can tell us about it...later."
Emmett snorted. At least we assume there'll be something to tell, bro. Just try not to knock it down on the first night, huh?
Bella looked at him warily for a moment, then smiled. I simply rolled my eyes at him and followed her and Alice outside.
"There's the enthusiasm I'm looking for," Alice said approvingly, taking in Bella's pleased expression. She let go of Bella's arm and leaped across the river.
"C'mon, Bella!" she called, and we followed her into the forest.
After a few minutes, Alice whirled around and skipped back toward Bella. "Don't attack me!" She jumped on Bella's back and clasped her hands over Bella's eyes.
"What are you doing?" Bella demanded.
"Making sure you can't see."
A blindfold might have been easier. "I could take care of that without the theatrics," I pointed out.
Alice ignored the logic of my offer. "You might let her cheat. Take her hand and lead her forward."
"Alice, I—"
"Don't bother, Bella. We're doing this my way."
I laced my fingers through my wife's and gave them a gentle squeeze. "Just a few seconds more, Bella. Then she'll go annoy someone else." I tugged her forward and she followed me with ease, as though the possibility of stumbling didn't even occur to her. She was already as comfortable in her new body as I might have expected her to be after a few months.
Stop pretending you haven't been looking forward to this yourself, Edward. I saw what you were up to when you were supposed to be hunting this afternoon. "You might be a little more appreciative," Alice scolded me aloud. "This is as much for you as it is for her."
"True," I admitted, smiling to myself and giving Bella's hand another squeeze. Very true. "Thank you again, Alice."
"Yeah, yeah. Okay." Alice's voice raised an octave with her excitement. "Stop there. Turn her just a little to the right. Yes, like that. Okay. Are you ready?"
"I'm ready," Bella told her. She leaned forward slightly, craning her neck as she tried to figure out the surprise based on what her other senses were telling her.
Alice hopped down from Bella's back and waited.
Before us stood a small stone cottage, glowing a warm gray in the soft light from the stars. I had known about it, of course, and seen it in the other's minds, but this was the first time I had seen it with my own eyes.
They had outdone themselves.
It was like something from a storybook, a fairy tale cottage in an enchanted wood built for a princess – a princess with humble tastes.
It was relatively tiny, only a few rooms in size. Small windows with painted shutters opened to the forest. A small path of flat stones led from where we stood up to the arch of the heavy wooden front door, complete with a metal ring for a knocker. The door was flanked by a small garden full of fragrant roses, their scent mixing with the honeysuckle which crept up one wall to the sloped shingle roof.
I felt Bella tense slightly beside me, but it was a different kind of tension than she usually displayed in reaction to a gift. It was more of a tension of anticipation. I grinned to myself in the darkness.
"What do you think?" Alice asked in a soft voice, eager for approval.
Bella's mouth opened but no sound came forth—she was still staring at the cottage, drinking it in.
"Esme thought we might like a place of our own for a while, but she didn't want us too far away," I explained quietly. For now, I decided to leave out the reason for Esme thinking we might want a place of our own: her familiarity with two previous sets of newlyweds. "And she loves any excuse to renovate. This little place has been crumbling away out here for at least a hundred years." Carlisle had owned it for at least that long, but had never had a need to do anything with what we assumed was originally a hunter's cabin.
Bella simply continued to stare, her jaw hanging slack.
"Don't you like it?" Alice asked anxiously, her smile fading. "I mean, I'm sure we could fix it up differently, if you want. Emmett was all for adding a few thousand square feet, a second story, columns, and a tower, but Esme thought you would like it best the way it was meant to look." She pressed ahead, her voice climbing an octave. "If she was wrong, we can get back to work. It won't take long to—"
"Shh!" Bella interrupted with a hiss. Alice pressed her lips together and waited, but her thoughts were a flurry of plans as to how the cottage could be altered, and how long each change would take.
I waited quietly too, but I had a very good feeling that Alice's concerns were unfounded.
"You're giving me a house for my birthday?" Bella asked finally.
"Us," I corrected. "And it's no more than a cottage. I think the word house implies more legroom."
"No knocking my house," she whispered, squeezing my hand.
Alice's face broke into a wide smile. "You like it."
Bella shook her head vehemently.
"Love it?"
Bella nodded.
Alice giggled excitedly and clapped her hands, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. "I can't wait to tell Esme!"
"Why didn't she come?" Bella asked.
Alice shot me a meaningful glance and a devious smile. Should I tell her it was your idea that as few people come as possible so that you could be rid of us that much faster? "Oh, you know..." she said instead. "They all remember how you are about presents. They didn't want to put you under too much pressure to like it."
Nice cover, Alice.
"But of course I love it. How could I not?"
"They'll like that." Alice patted Bella's arm affectionately. "Anyhoo, your closet is stocked. Use it wisely." And soon...please. "And...I guess that's everything."
Bella looked at her with confusion. "Aren't you going to come inside?"
Should I come in? Hang out for a while, Edward? Alice thought teasingly, but took a few steps back. "Edward knows his way around. I'll stop by...later. Call me if you can't match your clothes right." She hesitated for a fraction of an instant, winked at me, then took off into the trees just after tossing her parting words over her shoulder: "Jazz wants to hunt. See you!"
Bella seemed mystified by Alice's sudden departure. "That was weird. Am I really that bad? They didn't have to stay away. Now I feel guilty. I didn't even thank her right. We should go back, tell Esme—"
God, no. We weren't leaving here until the morning, not if I had anything to say about it. The strawberry and freesia scent wafting from my wife's skin, mixing delectably with the smell of the roses, the trees and the honeysuckle in the night air, was stirring the threads of physical want in my abdomen.
"Bella, don't be silly. No one thinks you're that unreasonable."
"Then what—"
"Alone time is their other gift. Alice was trying to be subtle about it," I finally admitted, smiling a little awkwardly. That Bella hadn't clued in to that sooner made me feel a little uncertain. She was so new...maybe she wasn't ready yet. The moment in the forest earlier could have been an aberration, a residual effect of the thrill of the hunt.
Bella stared at me for a moment. "Oh."
I wasn't sure what to make of that, or the look on her face. Before it had been so much easier to tell what she wanted, so obvious when her breathing would accelerate and her heart rate sped.
Well, we could go inside at least.
"Let me show you what they've done," I said, taking her hand to pull her forward up the stone path.
She chuckled suddenly, startling me.
"Do I get to hear the joke?"
"It's not a very good one," she shrugged. "I was just thinking—today is the first and last day of forever. It's kind of hard to wrap my head around it. Even with all this extra room for wrapping." She laughed again, shaking her head, and I laughed with her. We had reached the front door, and I gestured to the knob, waiting for her to unlock it.
"You're such a natural at this, Bella; I forget how very strange this all must be for you. I wish I could hear it." Yes, that would certainly make all of this so much easier. At least that way I would have a clue if she was thinking anything at all like what I was thinking—or trying not to think while we had been in the house with the rest of the family. How her skin had felt under mine this afternoon...so soft, so smooth...just the right temperature, no longer hot in contrast to my coolness, no longer fragile under my stone fingers.
Impulsively, I reached around and picked her up into my arms.
"Hey!"
"Thresholds are part of my job description," I smiled. "But I'm curious. Tell me what you're thinking about right now." Tell me you want me, too.
She looked up at me as we stepped inside, before turning her head to take in the sight of the little living room. "Everything. All at the same time, you know. Good things and things to worry about and things that are new. How I keep using too many superlatives in my head. Right now, I'm thinking that Esme is an artist. It's so perfect!"
The interior was as much a scene from a fairy tale as the exterior. The floor was stone, too, covered here and there by an eclectic mix of warm rugs. The ceiling had long, exposed wooden beams and the walls were either stone or covered with a sort of wood panelling, such that nails could be pounded in and artwork hung. A fireplace in the corner held the remnants of a driftwood fire Alice must have lit earlier, not for the warmth but for effect, contributing a low, romantic light and a sense of coziness.
The furniture Esme had chosen was a mishmash of different styles and eras, again eclectic but altogether complimentary. It was a place where we would be able to escape with our daughter, recline in the chairs or the overstuffed sofa with a good book, or simply enjoy each other's company.
"We're lucky Esme thought to add an extra room," I said at the thought of our infant child. "No one was planning for Ness—Renesmee."
Bella frowned as she looked up at my face. "Not you, too."
"Sorry, love. I hear it in their thoughts all the time, you know. It's rubbing off on me." And the fact was, part of me agreed with them that 'Renesmee' was a lot of name for such a little girl...although I also thought Bella's gesture in creating that name was very touching. At least we hadn't had a boy she would have insisted naming Edward. That was a name that didn't belong in this century.
Bella sighed, so I changed the subject. "I'm sure you're dying to see the closet. Or, at least I'll tell Alice that you were, to make her feel good." Not that Alice hadn't had a jolly old time simply doing the shopping, whether Bella ever wore anything she had purchased or not.
"Should I be afraid?"
"Terrified." I chuckled.
I carried her down the short, arched hallway that led to the two bedrooms at the back of the cottage.
"That will be Renesmee's room," I told her, nodding to a small room with a pale wooden floor, currently empty of furniture. "They didn't have time to do much with it, what with the angry werewolves..."
Bella laughed quietly as I turned into the doorway of the last room, across the hall from Renesmee's.
"Here's our room," I said, looking down at her face so I could watch her reaction. "Esme tried to bring some of her island back here for us. She guessed that we would get attached."
Bella's eyes widened a little as she took in the huge white bed, surrounded by bolts of the gauzy white fabric which mimicked the mosquito netting necessary on the island. I saw a flicker of understanding when she focused on the pale wooden floor, the colour chosen deliberately by Esme because it so closely matched the colour of the beach sand on the island. The walls had been painted a brilliant light blue, as similar as Esme could find to the shade of the tropical sky, and big glass doors set in the back wall opened onto a small garden with a still, clear pond—not an ocean, but as close as we would get here in the middle of the Olympic peninsula forest.
Bella's mouth opened and closed several times before she finally managed to squeak out a single syllable: "Oh."
"I know," I murmured, blocked as always from her mind but more than able to read what she was thinking from the expression on her face: it was perfect. Perfect for us. And a perfect reminder of the blissful weeks we had spent on Isle Esme, utterly alone, no noise, no obligations—just us. Just us learning each other's bodies for the first time.
At the memory, the delicious sort of knot that had been building somewhere around my stomach and groin started to tighten. I took in a deep breath through my nose, pulling the scent that was Bella—incredibly, the same as her human scent, yet somehow more—deep into my lungs. It increased the size of the knot, prompting me to say something to distract myself before I simply threw her to the bed and tore the remaining scraps of the silk dress from her body like an animal.
"The closet is through those double doors," I chuckled, knowing Bella wouldn't be nearly as impressed by it as Alice hoped. "I should warn you—it's bigger than this room."
Since she was staring into my eyes, I assumed she heard me but she didn't immediately acknowledge what I had said. Her breath hitched a little and she shifted her body in my arms, somehow pressing herself more tightly against my chest. I gloried in the fact that I could squeeze her against me in return, delighted to let go of the instinct to hold her as carefully as I might hold a butterfly in my palm so as to avoid crushing her.
She licked her lips and craned her neck to bring her face closer to mine, winding her fingers into the hair at the back of my neck. "We're going to tell Alice that I ran right to the clothes," she whispered, her eyelids heavy. "We're going to tell her I spent hours in there playing dress-up. We're going to lie."
Thank God.
Unbidden, a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a growl rolled up from the back of my throat. I leaned in to press my mouth to hers, shedding the very last of that instinct to treat her body like a soap bubble. Here, in my arms, she felt as substantial as I was, just as strong, finally able to receive and return all of the physical passion I had felt for her for so long. Our lips crashed together fiercely, both of us sucking and nipping with teeth, tongues tangling without a hint of restraint, demanding in their exploration of each other's mouths.
In a single fluid motion, I set her back on her feet and grabbed what was left of the shoulder straps of her dress, pulling it apart easily and letting it fall to the floor. I reached for her bra straps as she tugged at my shirt sleeves, yanking the shirt into two pieces and tossing each piece to the side before reaching for the waistband of my pants and disposing of them just as easily. Not even a second had passed before we were both completely naked and falling to the floor with a crash that we barely heard.
In the forest earlier I had wanted to savour this moment, a second honeymoon of sorts, and had had visions of a slow, gentle and loving seduction as we reintroduced our bodies to each other as physical equals. I had pictured spending hours exploring my wife's new skin with my tongue, kissing every inch of her and teasing her into a frenzy before we finally came together and made love at a reverent pace until the sun started to rise.
It wasn't going to happen that way. At least not this first time. The need I felt was too great, too all-encompassing, and it appeared now that she was in exactly the same frame of mind. The frantic desire had to be sated; neither of us was in enough control of our want for the other to take our time with it.
She ended up on top when we hit the floor, and immediately snaked one hand behind my neck again to pull my face to hers while the other reached down to stroke my length with the heel of her palm. The beginnings of the erection I had had outside had turned rock hard in the last few seconds and throbbed almost painfully under her touch, not because she wasn't careful with her greater strength, but because I was now engorged to the point of physical strain. I wasn't going to be able to wait, not even for a moment.
I curled my forearm around her waist and with a quick flick flipped her onto her back. My left hand reached for a handful of her hair while my right slid the length of her body over her torso, between her breasts, down her flat stomach to the soft curls between her legs. She gasped when my hand slipped over her sensitive folds and my middle finger plunged inside her urgently, wanting only to see if she was ready for me. I moaned again at the wetness I found there and quickly settled my legs between hers, my right hand now reaching for her left knee, hitching it up so that she was spread open underneath me.
I drew back for just a moment, long enough to catch her heated gaze with mine, her red eyes looking up at my golden ones. The red seemed to have deepened somehow with her need, turning them almost black, and there was no mistaking the urgency there—she wanted this hard and fast, too, as much as I did. There would be plenty of time for tenderness later.
With that assurance, I pushed inside her with one continuous stroke, pausing only when our hips were pressed together and there was literally no further I could go. I hesitated there for just a moment, feeling her heat and her softness around me, enveloping me, welcoming me just as she had when she was human. It was the same but different, somehow more intense, as though her body had solidified, finally able to receive everything I could give her.
Another gasp escaped her throat and her eyes rolled back into her head briefly. She pulled the leg I still held in my hand free and wrapped it around my waist, bringing the other up as well so that her body was firmly clamped against mine. Her inner walls clenched around me, prompting me to moan out loud. I put an arm under her shoulders and the other under her ass—yes, ass, I thought, in some remote part of my brain. I would finally allow myself to think of my wife's body in those terms in these moments, as something I was entitled to use for my pleasure as much as she was entitled to use mine. In that position, I was able to pull her upper body against mine while she fused our lower bodies together with her legs around my waist.
I drew back and then pushed forward again, this time causing both of us to moan at the sensation. So warm, so wet, so tight, as though no one had ever been here before—and in a sense, no one had. The third time I drew back and pushed forward, straining as deep as I could go, I felt Bella's legs tighten their grasp around me, crushing me in a way that might have been slightly painful if it hadn't been associated with such unbelievable, unparalleled pleasure. Her inner walls clenched at the same time and she cried my name out loud, pulsing against me. I felt a small tinge of pride at the knowledge that I had made her come within no more than thirty seconds inside her, but I wasn't done with her yet.
Not by a long shot.
I didn't know what sort of forces of light or darkness I should thank for bringing this woman and her incredible body to me without even making me wait while she got used to being a newborn vampire, but I wasn't about to squander the gift I was being given. No, this was going to be a long, memorable night.
"Edward," she sighed as she settled back down from her orgasm, relaxing slightly in my arms. When I pushed my length back into her for the fourth and then the fifth time, however, she tensed up again, re-establishing the tight grip her legs had around my waist. She pressed a heel into my backside, encouraging me to go deeper, harder. "More," she murmured, "Please, more."
"Bella," I groaned, "God, how you feel around me, in my arms...I had no idea..." And truthfully, despite the decades of listening to others' thoughts about sex, both vampire and human, whether I wanted to or not, there had been no way for anyone's mind to fully encapsulate these sensations in a way that did them justice. Physically, I was a seventeen-year-old male, and if I had had the slightest idea of what this would be like, I don't know that Bella would have made it to the end of her junior year of high school before I changed her and made her mine so we could do this, early twentieth century morals be damned.
It was a good thing I was already familiar with my vampire body's ability to recover quickly, though. I could feel myself edging toward climax already and I didn't want to hold back even if I could. It had been weeks, far too long since I had last orgasmed, and I wanted it, needed it as soon as possible.
I grabbed Bella's thighs and unclasped her legs from my waist, prompting a grunt of dissatisfaction from her until she saw that I was simply moving them up to my shoulders. Positioning them that way and then grasping her hips, I could pull her body onto mine and get even deeper with each thrust. The thrusts came faster now, pulling back, then pushing in quickly, almost roughly, pulling back again at a slightly slower pace, then inside again fast. She was clutching my arms, nails digging into my skin as she moaned, tossing her head back and forth against the floor. I could feel her body tensing around me again and knew I would join her this time.
I bent at the waist for yet a deeper angle, still holding her legs over my shoulders, and continued to thrust inside her. "Come with me, love," I muttered in a low voice. "I want to feel you, too, when I come inside you."
"It's...it's..." she thrashed a little bit under me from the sensations but I was able to keep her in place with my grip on her legs and the angle I maintained, pressing her body under mine. "It's...now..." she finally croaked as her inner walls clenched around me, needlessly telling me what was already obvious from her body and the increased wetness where we were joined. With a final hard thrust as deep as I could manage, I felt my own body tense and let go, the relief and euphoria pouring over me in waves as I pulsed inside her, increasing the wetness between us even more. An animalistic growl rang through the room, and I wasn't entirely surprised to realize it was coming from me, ripping through me as an audible echo of the intensity of the climax I felt from the bottom of my feet to the ends of my hair. The pulsing continued for long, delicious moments, much longer than I could recall ever experiencing on the island. Sex with Bella on the island had been incredible, indescribable, but it was a pale shadow compared to this.
I didn't know how much time passed before I was able to move enough that I could release my grip on Bella's legs. I let them fall to my sides but made no effort to pull away from her or pull myself from where I still rested inside her, twitching periodically but otherwise quite happily spent. Her eyes were closed, but she ran her hands through my hair absently, gathering herself together. I turned my head so I could lay my cheek against one soft breast, studying the creamy whiteness of the other breast as I came down from the mind-shattering high I had just experienced. The intensity... perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, but I had had no way to imagine it, to predict it.
"We didn't even make it to the bed. I'm sorry," I murmured eventually, reluctant to break the contented silence but reluctant to simply stay on the floor as we were indefinitely.
She chuckled. "Like that's somehow your fault. You didn't see me rushing over there."
"I suppose that's true."
"And here I was worried that I wouldn't feel like this for a long time."
"No one is more pleasantly surprised than I am, believe me. While it was one thing to exercise restraint when I knew to do otherwise might kill you, to exercise restraint for an indeterminate number of months while you settled into being a vampire might have actually driven me to distraction." I tried to imagine what it might have been like to simply wait for her desire to return while I spent every minute of every day wanting her as much as I had ten minutes ago and shuddered at the thought. It would have been torture.
"Do you think you might have just jumped me eventually?" she teased, her voice light.
"I don't know. That would have made me an unconscionable brute. I'm not sure what I would have done. I'm just glad I don't have to worry about it."
"No." She shifted under me slightly, actively clenching her inner walls around me. I was already almost hard again, and that sensation was all I needed to complete the job. "No, you don't."
I chuckled and moved so I could lean down and kiss her, slowly, deeply. I slid further inside her and she moaned, reaching around to clutch me against her body. "We're taking our time this time. There are all kinds of things I can do to you now that I couldn't do before, you know."
"Hmm. Do tell," she purred. Actually purred. I had to shake my head a little to keep it clear enough not to simply give into the impulse to ravage her again on the floor.
Slipping my arms around her back, I wrestled us up so that I was on my feet but she was still curled around me, not breaking our connection. "And this time, we're making use of the bed."
"If you insist," she murmured, and buried her nose into my neck. I shivered as she feathered soft kisses from my shoulder to my jaw.
Unwilling to withdraw from my place inside her body for even a moment, I carefully maneuvered us down onto the soft white bed, unwrapping my right arm from around her waist only long enough to yank the comforter out of the way. Pressing her back onto the mattress, I hovered over her for a moment without moving, taking the opportunity to gaze at her face and sear the way she looked into my memory. Her dark hair was fanned out against the pillow, a dark contrast to the ivory fabric. In the faint light a human eye would not have been able to perceive its many hues, mahogany highlighted by subtler streaks of colour almost burgundy and deep gold. Her eyes were still as dark as before, heavy but shining with excitement and love. Her lips, which when human used to redden and swell slightly when we kissed for protracted periods, now simply remained a deep red, pouty and full. Her cheeks could no longer flush when I made her come, but instead they held a kind of radiance, a glow emanating somehow from within.
But this was still Bella, and she eventually squirmed with discomfort as I continued to stare at her. She drew her lower lip between her teeth and chewed it self-consciously, releasing it only to run her tongue over it in an absent but insanely sexy way. It glistened slightly in the faint light, and I couldn't resist ducking my head to kiss the moisture away.
"What?" she murmured softly when I pulled back again. "What are you looking at?"
I chuckled. "Isn't it obvious? You. Your stunning, incomparable beauty."
Bella rolled her eyes but smiled. "You sure that's not just your post-coital glow talking?"
"Definitely not. Besides, I'm not post anything, given that I'm still inside you and the night is still young." To emphasize the point, I drew back, then pushed inside her again slowly, savouring each soft, wet millimetre of her flesh surrounding mine. Fast and hard had been what we had both needed a few minutes ago, but nothing, nothing could compare to this sensation of warmth and pure connectedness. "God," I breathed when I was sheathed back within her again, as deep as I could go. I repeated the same action a few more times, just as slowly. My eyes had closed of their own volition, but I forced them open now so I could look down at Bella. Her lids were half-open, but her irises had rolled back into her head.
Pull back. Push forward...slowly...Again. Again.
"Edward..." she murmured huskily, "You feel so amazing...I can't...even this brain...I can hardly process it."
"I know, love...I know..." I managed to say. I had moved this slowly with her before when she was still human out of sheer necessity, the need to ensure I didn't rip her in half...but this was something completely and utterly different. Then, so much of myself had been absorbed in concentrating on how much pressure I was putting on her fragile body, whether too much of my stone weight was crushing her, whether the slightest wrong move would cause her serious internal injury.
Now, I could concentrate exclusively on the sensations, the friction, the warmth...Except that there was no need to concentrate.
I could simply let myself feel.
Pull back. Push forward...slowly...Again. Again.
On the island, I had thought I had finally come to understand what all the fuss was about, why people—and vampires—thought about sex as much as they did, in such graphic detail.
But this...
The fuss hadn't done it justice.
We moved together that way for a long while, occasionally kissing, alternating between soft brushes of lips and deeper kisses, tongues pushing against each other hotly, needing even more and more of a connection. At other moments, we simply pressed our cheeks together, or I rested my forehead against her shoulder while she tangled her fingers in my hair.
Eventually I felt her inner walls start to tighten around me. Before, on the floor, it had all been so frenzied I had hardly noticed the difference in the way her inner muscles felt now compared to when she was human. Then, although my skin was sensitive enough that I had been able to feel the signs of her body moving toward release, the pressure had been faint, gentle as a whisper.
Now, the muscles were like my own, clenching around me with delicious force. I sped my movements slightly in response and she let out a low moan.
"God, Edward, I'm so...close..."
"I know, I can feel you around me..." My voice was low in her ear.
"What...what can you feel?" she asked quietly, pressing her fingertips into my shoulder blades. "Tell me."
I hesitated. She wanted talk? Dirty talk?
That was new. I wasn't sure I could manage it. Not yet.
But I could give her something.
"You're soft and warm...and when you're close you tighten around me. And you get...wetter. I can tell when you're ready to come," I murmured softly, so close to her ear that my lips brushed against her lobe as I spoke.
"God," she groaned again and hitched her knees up, changing the angle so I could go deeper. She wrapped her legs around my waist and dug her heels into the backs of my thighs—then surprised the hell out of me. "I can feel you, too," she whispered. "You're already like granite in me but you get even harder...When you come I can feel it, all of it spilling inside me so wet. I'm so glad I'm changed now so you'll let me..." She hesitated for a brief moment as if deciding on her next words, then let them tumble out in a rush. "...you'll let me...take you in my mouth."
I completely lost it.
With a growl that bordered on a roar, I thrust inside her as hard as I could, once...twice...and I was done for, coming ferociously, in wave after wave. Within seconds she caught up and found her own release, moaning my name as she clutched me with arms, thighs, feet, crushing the needless air out of my chest.
When she loosened her grasp I fell against her, for some reason panting as if I had just run a human marathon. We lay like that for a long moment, until I finally pulled out of her and flopped down on my back at her side. She rolled over and curled into my body, throwing a leg over mine and an arm over my chest.
I couldn't speak, but she chuckled.
"Did I get your attention?"
"Uh...you could say so," I finally managed to reply, making a conscious effort to slow my breathing. I turned my head towards her. "Where did that come from?"
"I told you on the island I wanted to try that," she shrugged, raising an eyebrow at me seductively. "It's not my fault you wouldn't let me." She trailed her fingertips down my chest to my belly button, then back up again.
"It wasn't that I wasn't interested, believe me..." It was true that I had kept the scope of our activities on the island rather limited, but the reasons had all been related to Bella's safety and my uncertainly about the extent of my control. I hadn't wanted to test those limits by engaging in something that might affect me in a way that made me reach out and crush her skull without meaning to.
"Well, that's good. Because I'm definitely interested." Her fingertips traced their way down my chest again, but this time didn't stop at my belly button. She skimmed through the faint trail of hair that led downwards, and continued until she could run them over my length, from tip to base.
Instantly, I was hard again.
I started to roll over toward her, her name a gasp on my lips. "Bella..."
"Stay still," she murmured. In a quick movement she scrambled over so she was kneeling between my thighs, her hand still caressing my erection. "You're going to have to tell me what you...like." She looked up at me from under her long eyelashes, her expression both shy and seductive. I started to sit up to reach for her, but her free hand shot out to my chest, pushing me back down to the mattress.
With her strength, she could have held me there if she wanted. It was disorienting, so different than what I was used to...But it was also...What was the word Emmett might use? Hot.
I decided not to put up a fight.
Wrapping her little hand around the base of my erection, she leaned down and tentatively ran the tip of her tongue from base to tip.
My back arched at the sensation. Mistaking it for another escape attempt, Bella put her hand back on my chest and pushed me down again. "Do I have to tie you up, Mr. Cullen?"
Good Lord...
"Bella..." I breathed. "What in the..."
"Shh..." she commanded. "Unless you have directions to give, keep quiet."
"But where did you..."
She licked me again from base to tip, this time using the flat part of her tongue. I was almost grateful for her hand on my chest, restraining me from launching off the bed and through the ceiling. "I'm sure I've told you...You would have been shocked at some of the reading material Renee used to keep lying around the house. I was always...curious."
Thank you, Renee.
The third time she licked me, she paused to twirl her tongue around the head, making me gasp harshly.
"The only problem is," she continued between passes with her tongue, "reading...is....different... than...doing. So you'll have to tell me...what...works." With that, she ducked her head and took me into her mouth—all of me, until I actually felt myself hit the back of her throat. When she closed her lips around me and started to move with a gentle suction, my eyes rolled back into my head and a strange gurgling noise escaped unbidden from my throat.
Expanded vampire mind or no, I completely lost the ability to form a coherent thought as her mouth and tongue and hand moved around me, alternately sucking and licking, sucking and stroking. I had the briefest of moments where my early twentieth-century sensibilities reared their ugly head and it occurred to me that a lady didn't do this sort of thing...
But that thought evaporated in an instant when she suddenly decided to experiment with her teeth, and carefully ran them along my length, stopping at the tip to use her tongue again to lick it firmly, swirling around the entire circumference. At the same time, she used her hand to stroke me, up and down, turning her wrist slightly with the downstroke, using the moisture from her mouth.
The heat of her mouth...the wetness...the feeling when I would bump against the back of her throat, making her moan and send vibrations down the length of me, into my stomach and out through every inch of my body...I almost felt like I would actually pass out, were such a thing possible for a vampire.
It was as though she had as much an innate gift for this as she seemed to have for her new body in general. There was little I could add to improve upon the process, so I simply pressed my back into the mattress and clutched at the sheets, moving only once or twice to guide her hand in a slightly different way. I felt the fabric of the sheets tear in my fingers but couldn't possibly have cared less. I lifted my head from the pillow a few times to watch her, but the sight of what she was doing, her plump red lips and her slim fingers wrapped around me, bobbing up and down, glancing up at me from under her eyelashes...I knew if I kept watching I would lose it, and I definitely didn't want this to end any time soon.
So instead I laid back and lost myself in the sensations. The friction, the warmth, the wetness...
God.
I was suddenly becoming religious. Where else could something like this come from, if not from heaven itself?
Eventually there was just no way to hold back any longer. I could feel the tension building in my groin, rising and radiating outward as she worked, humming and moaning around me.
"Bella...I..." I managed to say, and reached out a hand to her cheek, trying to warn her that she might want to move.
She pushed my hand away, redoubling her efforts, taking me even deeper into her throat as she sucked and swirled her tongue over my most sensitive skin...up...down...around. I gave up any notion of telling her what to do and simply submitted, throwing my head back into the pillow. The tension was building...building...And finally broke through. With a roar that practically filled the room and rattled the glass in the windows, I came almost violently, spilling into her mouth. I could feel her swallow around me and it made me come even harder, wave after wave of my release coursing through my body.
I wasn't sure how long it took before I regained my senses, but Bella had released me from her mouth and scooted back up to my side after a few last licks and a gentle squeeze. I throbbed under her hand.
When I finally opened my eyes again and turned to her, she was resting her chin on my chest, gazing at me with a self-satisfied smirk. This was certainly not a Bella I was used to, but I wasn't about to complain.
I cleared my throat so I could find my voice. "Is it monstrous that I enjoyed that as much as I did?"
She rolled her eyes. "What did I tell you about the 'monster' talk?"
"You know what I mean."
"If you mean that you're feeling all 1918 on me, you need to forget it," she said, arching an eyebrow.
"I can't even imagine what you could possibly have read that gave you the information to do...that," I sighed at the memory and felt my whole body shiver.
She chuckled. "Reading for the basics...the rest was instinct. Judging your reactions. I have a feeling the vampire senses allowed me to...appreciate the nuances in a way I might not have been able to otherwise."
"Then I should thank myself for changing you."
She smiled. "I'm glad you can joke about that now."
I still didn't consider it a laughing matter, but it was what it was and as circumstance had had it, it had been unavoidable. Besides, I tried to remind myself firmly, it was her choice. Her choice. If I kept questioning it for the rest of eternity, I was sure to drive myself mad.
Saying nothing further, I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer to my chest. She snuggled in and rested her cheek against my shoulder as she gazed through the window outside. The sky was just barely beginning to lighten, but a lark was already awake, singing somewhere nearby.
We were quiet for a long moment. Bella was the first to speak. "Do you miss it?"
"Miss what?" I murmured.
"All of it—the warmth, the soft skin, the tasty smell...I'm not losing anything at all, and I just wondered if it was a little bit sad for you that you were."
I laughed quietly at the very idea that there was anything at all I should be sad about right now. "It would be hard to find someone less sad than I am now. Impossible, I'd venture. Not many people get every single thing they want, plus all the things they didn't think to ask for, in the same day." The love of my life...married to me...at my side for eternity...a child I had never even dreamed of hoping for...peace with the wolves...no prospect of an angry Volturi showing up, wondering why Bella was still human despite their orders...
I lacked nothing.
"Are you avoiding the question?" she asked.
I pressed my palm to her cheek. "You are warm," I told her. Not hot as she'd been before, but warm to my touch. The same temperature as I was.
I traced the backs of my fingers slowly down her face, creating a path from her jaw to her throat and then down to her waist. She drew in a sharp breath and I saw her eyes roll back a little at my touch.
"You are soft." Soft to me. Smooth as satin.
"And as for the scent, well, I couldn't say I missed that." I almost shuddered at the memory of how difficult it had been not to be overtaken by it before during moments of passion, when my control was already stretched to its maximum and I was giving it to my body's desires. "Do you remember the scent of those hikers on our hunt?"
"I've been trying very hard not to," she frowned slightly.
"Imagine kissing that."
Her eyes widened in comprehension. "Oh."
"Precisely. So the answer is no. I am purely full of joy, because I am missing nothing. No one has more than I do now," I told her truthfully.
She drew herself up so she could press her mouth to mine, answering me with a slow, deep kiss. She sighed into my mouth as her tongue tangled with mine.
When she finally pulled back, it was because she had another question. "How long does this go on? I mean, Carlisle and Esme, Em and Rose, Alice and Jasper—they don't spend all day locked in their rooms. They're out in public, fully clothed, all the time. Does this...craving ever let up?" She twisted her body even closer to mine as if to emphasize her point.
I certainly hope not, I thought, but answered her differently. "That's difficult to say. Everyone is different and, well, so far you're the very most different of all. The average young vampire is too obsessed with thirst to notice much else for a while. That doesn't seem to apply to you." Thank God. There it was, I was getting religious again. "With the average vampire, though, after that first year, other needs make themselves known. Neither thirst nor any other desire really ever fades. It's simply a matter of learning to balance them, learning to prioritize and manage..."
"How long?" she insisted. I smiled, thinking back to our family's earliest days.
"Rosalie and Emmett were the worst. It took a solid decade before I could stand to be within a five-mile radius of them." It had been obnoxious, really, bordering on impolite. They couldn't even be in the same room with each other without having their hands on one another...and they'd been loud, too. Typical Emmett. "Even Carlisle and Esme had a difficult time stomaching it. They kicked the happy couple out eventually. Esme built them a house, too. It was grander than this one, but then, Esme knows what Rose likes, and she knows what you like."
"So, after ten years, then?" she asked, but sounded a little sceptical. I wondered if that was because she couldn't imagine the sheer lust lasting ten years, or if she couldn't imagine it lasting only ten years. If she felt as I did—and tonight certainly suggested that she did—it was definitely the latter. "Everybody is normal again? Like they are now?"
I smiled again. "Well, I'm not sure what you mean by normal. You've seen my family going about life in a fairly human way, but you've been sleeping nights." I winked at her. "There's a tremendous amount of time left over when you don't have to sleep. It makes balancing your...interests quite easy. There's a reason why I'm the best musician in the family, why—besides Carlisle—I've read the most books, studied the most sciences, become fluent in the most languages....Emmett would have you believe that I'm such a know-it-all because of the mind reading, but the truth is that I've just had a lot of free time."
We laughed together and she ducked down to kiss me again, rubbing the palm of her hand up and down my ribcage. We were pressed so closely together that our laughter created a lovely sort of friction between our bodies. I had been resting, only semi-hard for a few minutes, but now I could feel myself stiffening again.
"I hope you don't mind that I'll be taking up some of that free time now," she murmured against my lips. "Maybe a lot of it."
"All of it, I hope," I murmured back, sliding my own hand down her waist and over her ass, pressing her into my hardness. She started to wriggle her way up, intent, perhaps, on sliding down onto me.
I had other plans at the moment.
"Hmm...not yet, Mrs. Cullen," I told her, and flipped her onto her back. "There's something I want to try now, too." I climbed down her body, gently pushing her knees apart so that I could situate myself between her legs. I grabbed her right foot and drew it up to my lips, placing a soft kiss on her ankle. She watched me with dark eyes as I kissed my way up her leg, pausing to give special attention to the soft spot behind her knee. She sucked in a sharp breath of air when I reached her inner thigh and opened my mouth to press the tip of my tongue against her skin, tracing a slow circle. I gripped her hip with my hand and let my thumb travel inward, over her slick folds. It never ceased to amaze me how wet she got. For me.
I found her most sensitive spot and pressed the pad of my thumb against it firmly, again tracing a slow circle. Her back arched and she threw her head against the pillow.
I chuckled to myself and moved my hand away, earning a low groan of protest from my wife. I ignored it and reached for her left foot, intent on making the same slow journey from ankle to thigh. She didn't lift her head this time to watch, but I heard her breathing accelerate and the scent of her arousal in the air intensified.
Yes. There were still signals. They were just different, and I was going to enjoy learning each and every one of them.
When I got back up to her inner thigh again, she reached down to tangle her fingers in my hair. She pulled gently, her other hand grasping for my shoulder. "Edward..." she murmured as she tried to pull me back up her body.
"Patience, wife." I traced my thumb back over the path it had found previously, over the soft skin of her inner thigh to her center, now even wetter than before. I groaned quietly and took a deep breath through my nose. Intoxicating. I found the same sensitive bundle of nerves I had previously and her back arched up off the bed in response. Rubbing another slow circle, I let two fingers stroke gently backwards and up into her soft opening. I moved them around experimentally, curling them until I found the small area I was looking for.
"Edward!" she gasped, arching up again at what I hoped was an intensely pleasurable sensation. She moaned and writhed against my fingers.
Ah, yes. Found it.
I massaged intently for a few moments, watching her reaction for indications of what worked best. She was so wet she was slippery, making it almost difficult to find purchase against her steadily hardening nub. I had touched her this way on the island, as carefully and gently as physically possible, but never with my face so close to her center. I hadn't trusted my ability to concentrate on not hurting her if I put myself so near her femoral artery, which would have been pounding with blood. That, combined with the scent of her arousal, might have sent me over the edge.
Now, however, I had no such concerns. And I planned to put some of the knowledge gleaned however unwittingly from the minds of my brothers and virtually every other sexually active male I'd ever run across into full use.
I continued the motion of my fingers inside her, stroking against her wet inner walls. I used my other hand to grip her right thigh to hold her in place for a moment, then moved my thumb out of the way so I could replace it with my tongue, flattening it tentatively against her engorged nub. This part was entirely new.
Holy mother of...I gaspedjust as she did. The taste...I hadn't been prepared for the taste of her on my tongue, shocking in its ambrosial sweetness, its husky sexiness, its pure essence of...Bella. Different, very different, but as compelling as her human blood had been. It sang to me, drew me in, tempted me onwards.
Suddenly, I couldn't get enough.
I yanked my fingers out of her and gripped both of her thighs, pushing them further apart so I could sink my face between them, diving directly for the source of that taste. She gasped again and thrashed against me as I shoved my tongue inside her as far as I could go, tightening my grip on her thighs so I had the best access. I lapped at her almost frantically, barely conscious of the noises she was making, gasps and groans interspersed with the sound of my name deep in her throat. Her hands were back in my hair but they were no longer trying to pull me away—they pressed me forward. I was more than happy to receive the encouragement.
Minutes passed as I continued to tongue her entrance, almost selfish in my focus on that and that alone. It was almost an afterthought when I remembered that I should touch her most sensitive spot, too, and I wasn't particularly gentle when I pressed down on it again with the pads of two fingers. Bella let out something resembling a shriek at the sensation. She ground herself against me shamelessly. "God...more...please, more..." she managed to croak out.
Delighted to accommodate her request, I pressed down even more firmly and then started to trace small circles, still working at her with my tongue, alternating licking her folds and pushing it inside her. There was a taste that I knew wasn't solely hers, and I recognized it as my own release from earlier. The realization made something primal in me groan. I was suddenly conscious of my hardness again and the tightness in my stomach. This...was amazing. But I needed to get inside her and come again...soon.
"Come for me, baby," I muttered against her, not moving my lips from my place at her entrance. The vibrations coursed up her body and my fingers tightened their circles. Her thighs were starting to shake, which I assumed meant she was close. I dipped my tongue back inside her, waiting, continuing the circles at the same time.
Seconds later, she was muttering darkly, words—curse words—I had never heard her say, ever. I might have been shocked—or amused—if it weren't so unbelievably...hot. Her nails dug into my scalp and she cried out my name as her whole body convulsed with the force of her orgasm. The wetness surged against my tongue and I greedily sought out all of it, hurrying because I still wanted to...
In a single quick movement I was back up her body, pressing my chest against hers as I pushed my erection inside her in one smooth, deep stroke. As I had hoped, I managed to catch the last few waves of her orgasm, her inner walls pulsing around me as I pumped into her, hard. At the same time, I clamped my mouth down on hers, shoving my tongue between her lips just as I had shoved it inside her elsewhere moments ago. She groaned and sucked at it furiously.
This wasn't going to last long, but I couldn't make myself care. I was too focused, too intent on finding the release I still saw on Bella's face, even as I felt her tensing up once more, tightening around me yet again.
I wouldn't have believed it possible, but this orgasm, pulsing and pouring inside her as my hips pounded against hers and she screamed my name in my ear, was even more intense than the last...and the last before that. It was impossible, it had to be impossible. Could it be that every time would be that much better than the time before? I couldn't wrap my mind around it.
What would tomorrow night be like? Or next week? Or...next year?
Panting, quivering, I collapsed against her, for the moment unconcerned by the heft of my weight on her chest. If it were too much, I figured dazedly, she could shove me off. She was strong enough.
The thought had me laughing—the very idea of my petite Bella, about whom I had spent the last year and a half constantly worrying, left to her own devices to push her oaf of a husband off of her because he was too overcome by his own orgasm to move himself.
And the idea that that oaf was me, the very same Edward who had always been so preoccupied by her fragility and her virtue and treating her like the most delicate and precious flower...
How my life had changed.
How I had changed.
It was insane.
But I wouldn't have traded a moment of it for the entire universe.
Gah! Anyone else need a cigarette? Anyone else wish they were a vampire?
Thanks to katinki for pre-reading this and encouraging me to actually go ahead and post it. That last section was for you, babe...I remembered your special request.