Edward:

If people's minds were like radio stations, Bella's was like a radio station with the volume turned all the way down. But for a few seconds while she was looking at me with love shining in her eyes, it was as if someone had turned the volume on her thoughts up, and then down again. In that moment, I truly understood how unique Bella was.

The closest I could come to describing how I perceived other people's thoughts was to liken them to a verbal-visual narration of what they were seeing, since people tended to think in a combination of words and images. With Bella, I not only saw, in vivid imagery, what she was thinking about, I could perceive her feelings as well. In that brief slice of time, she became more than three-dimensional. The difference was like looking at a small black and white picture of Bella, and then looking at the real thing, in glorious life-size Technicolor. It was as close to being Bella as I would ever get, and it lasted for a heart-breakingly short span of time. The experience nearly brought me to my knees, and not because of the brief melding, though that was life-changing enough in and of itself; rather it was the nature of her thoughts and feelings that almost felled me.

It was the most intimate of penetrations. I saw myself thought Bella's emotions; I saw how deeply she loved me and how highly she thought of me, un-dead monster that I was. I felt her longing to experience physical intimacy with me, while she was still human, in the quaint, old fashioned atmosphere of this hotel, in that bedroom she was so taken with. I saw us in the bed together, tangled in the sheets, exactly as she had fantasized us. I noticed with a surge of tenderness that in her thoughts of us together, she wore the nightgown I had just given her.

I knew then that it was only a matter of time before I caved, and gave Bella what we both wanted so desperately. Not tonight…it was too risky an undertaking in such a public place. But soon. I had no doubts about that. I would fight it for as long as I could, but I knew for certain, now that I had been given that glimpse into her mind, that it was a battle I had lost the moment I met her.

I would always love Bella, whether she was vampire or mortal. I couldn't help it. But I'd be lying if I said her humanity was not very dear to me. I wanted to experience intimacy with her while she was human just as much as she did. Not for the first time, I wished I had the soul of a poet so I could describe what it felt like to touch Bella. The closest I could come to illustrating it was with an incident from my mortal life: I had been out without my gloves in the dead of winter. When I came back in to the house, my hands red and raw with cold, my mother had taken them into hers, scolding me for my carelessness. Her warm skin felt boiling hot, and seared my icy hands.

That is what it felt like to touch Bella, or be touched by her; the tingling pain of heat and life being communicated to cold, dead tissue. I wanted to experience that painfully pleasurable heat to the fullest, by getting as close to her as only a man could. By immolating myself in her.

I felt the tell-tale tightening in my groin as my thoughts wandered down this dangerous path.

"Edward?"

I focused again on her pale face, framed by my even paler hands. "How did you do it?" I asked, in a hushed voice.

"I…I don't know," she stammered, bewildered. "As far as I know, I didn't do anything." She hesitated. "Uh…what exactly did you see?"

"Well, I have never experienced anything quite like it. Not with anybody." Unable to resist, I kissed her quickly before continuing. "I felt your feelings. I felt your love for me. I saw…" I hesitated, and she understood immediately, seeing it all again herself. My enhanced senses noted all the signs of her sudden arousal. Her pupils dilated. Her scent sharpened, and not only from the blood rushing to her skin and staining her cheeks with her embarrassment. She looked down, her lashes shielding her eyes from me.

"Bella," I murmured, stepping closer to her, slipping a hand around her waist and holding her lightly against me. "Please don't be embarrassed. It was…" My voice became unsteady, and I stopped. "It was…"

She smiled, moved to tears, understanding the depth of my emotion, and hearing what I couldn't say. Leaning forward, she went up on her toes, skimming up my body, seeking out my mouth with her lips. I pulled her roughly closer and she gasped as she felt the incontrovertible evidence of my desire for her. I deepened the kiss, hunching over her, arching her backward over my arm as I devoured her mouth.

Then she shifted her hips, sliding them across my pelvis. I hissed on an intake of breath, and took a step back, snatching at her shoulders to keep her away from me. A hurt look flashed across her face, and was immediately hidden under a look of sympathy.

"You know I want it as much as you do, don't you?" I asked hoarsely.

She looked down. "Don't you?" I repeated insistently, ducking my head to catch her eyes. It was imperative that she understood this.

"Yes. Yes, I do," she whispered, then more loudly, "The question is, are you ever going to do anything about it?"

Yes, Bella, I will. Probably much sooner than you are prepared for. I said nothing out loud. I couldn't. It would only make her push harder. I said nothing, yet her expression changed, as if something in my eyes had given her hope.

I checked my phone after Bella had gone to sleep, but Alice still hadn't returned my call. I tried her again, but got no answer. This time, I couldn't even leave a message. None of the others had called me either, which means that Alice had to have told them something, as well as Charlie. I needed to find out what it was. I would call Carlisle to check on the Seattle situation, and see if I could find out what he knew without giving anything away.

He picked up on the first ring, as he always did. "Hello?"

"Carlisle."

"Edward!" he said, happy to hear my voice. "How is Bella?"

"She's fine," I replied neutrally.

"Good. I wasn't sure how she would take being carried off like that."

What the hell? "Well, you know Bella," I hedged.

"Yes," he said fondly, chuckling. "That I do. I think it was a very good idea to take her away until the threat is past. I just wish you had let me know about your plans," he continued reproachfully.

"I am sorry, Carlisle," I said. "It was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Listen," I rushed on, eager to change the subject. "I have been trying to reach Alice. Do you know where she is?"

"Alice and Jasper went on a hunting trip. She said she'd probably be out of range for the duration. She'll back before we faced the newborns." I heard his pager go off on his end. "Edward, I have to go. They are paging me from the hospital. I'll call you back later." He hung up before I could say goodbye.

I slipped my phone in my pocket, thinking hard. Evidently, Alice had told my family that I had taken Bella away for her safety. Did it mean she was unaware that I had also taken Bella to prevent her change? If that was the case, what reason did she have for giving me a cover story, and why hadn't she called me to let me know she was doing it? Surely she had time to make one call before her hunting trip. Something was fishy; there were too many unanswered questions, and I was starting to think Alice might have her own agenda when it came to Bella and me.

Suddenly, I was eager to get on the road again. After finding out that Alice had told Charlie that Bella and I had run off on a vacation together, I had figured it was safe for me to make a decision on where to take her. Unable to delay my decision any longer, I had called ahead to have the place in New Mexico readied for our arrival. It was the only one of my retreats that no one but me new about. Alice might see visions of it, but wouldn't know where it was. Its location provided difficulties, though. First of all, getting there would require precise timing. I would be driving from cloudy weather into one of the sunniest states in America. If we left early in the morning, and drove straight through, we could arrive at my place some time during the night. It would be rough on Bella, but it could not be helped. I could not get caught on New Mexico's highways in broad daylight without possibly launching a few new ET-sighting rumors single handedly.

I tried Alice one more time with no success, and then started preparing for an early departure. I emptied our shopping bags, and packed the contents into our new suitcases, leaving one of the carryalls empty, ready for the last of Bella's things. I worked at vampire speed, and in minutes the zipped up suitcases were by the door, and the shopping bags were neatly rolled up and wedged into the wastebasket.

With my plans made and nothing left to do, thoughts of those brief, intoxicating seconds inside Bella's mind intruded again. With my perfect recall, I relived the memory of her love for me, and all the feelings of desire, need and arousal the thought of me engendered in her. The memory was an aphrodisiac, and my body's response to it had become Pavlovian; I had but to think of it and I felt the familiar stirring in my loins that added yet another strain on my already precarious control. I couldn't even go into the bedroom to watch her sleep, let alone lie down next to her.

I sighed in frustration. I had never imagined that she could get anymore desirable than she already was, but with that one tantalizing glimpse into her inner self, Bella had suddenly gotten that much harder for me to resist.

At dawn, I started running her a bath, and went to squat down beside her bed. "Bella," I said softly, smoothing back her hair. "It's time to wake up, love."

She moaned in protest, snuggling down deeper into the bedding. "Bella," I repeated a little more firmly, gently prying the covers out of her hands and pulling them back.

She opened her eyes and frowned sleepily. "Edward. I love you, but go away."

I bit back a chuckle. "Not until you are up and in the bathroom," I stood, took a hold of her wrists, and gently pulled her upright. "We have a long way to go, so we need to make an early start," I continued, sending her stumbling off to the bathroom with a light smack to her bottom.

While Bella bathed, humming softly to herself, I took our cases down to the car, and by dint of a little coaxing and promises to pay whatever price was required on such short notice, got the Inn to put together a boxed breakfast and lunch for Bella. I went back up to the room to find her dressed and busy packing the rest of her belongings in her carryall and backpack. She was hot and fragrant from her bath, and I couldn't resist embracing her from behind and inhaling her for a few blissful seconds.

"You ready?" I murmured into her hair.

She zipped up her carryall, and slung it over her shoulder. "Ready," she said, looking up at me.

"So where are we headed?" She asked, as she climbed into the car and belted herself in, her backpack between her knees.

"I have a place in New Mexico. We are going there," I said, pulling out of the parking space.

"New Mexico? Isn't that a little sunny for you?"

"It's in the middle of nowhere, Bella. Way off the beaten track, no one around for miles. It isn't that big of an issue." I shrugged. "Anyway, living in perpetually cloudy places can be wearying. It's nice to have a break from all that once in a while, without having to worry about being seen."

"It must be quite some place." She spoke with a touch of yearning that I didn't quite understand, and I longed, yet again, for another peek into her beautiful mind.

That day was one of the most wonderful, and at the same time the hardest I had ever experienced. Bella read to me, we talked about nothing and everything, spent hours in companionable silence, sang along to CDs, argued about my not allowing her to call Alice, and every second was precious to me. The hard part of being stuck in a car for hours on end with Bella was being stuck in a car for hours on end with Bella. The smell of her, concentrated within that small space, was only occasionally alleviated when it became too much for me and we opened the windows…and then of course there was the persistent memory of those few addictive seconds inside her head.

I looked at her pensively, scrunched down in her seat, her bare feet up on the dashboard and her nose buried in that vampire love story she thought I hadn't noticed, reading by the weak illumination of a book light. She had been eating an apple, and was now gnawing on the core. What had caused her mind to open up to me like that? Will it accidentally happen again? Sensing my eyes on her, she looked up.

"Oh, I am sorry, is my chewing bothering you?" She opened the window, throwing what was left of the core out into the darkness.

"Nothing you do could bother me," I said, reaching out and grazing her cheek with my knuckles.

She gave me a Look. "I think we both know that isn't true," she said archly. "I do things that bother you all the time."

"You got me," I laughed, giving her ponytail a playful yank. She punched me in the side and then groaned, cradling her hand against her chest. "Serves you right, brat," I chided her.

I pulled into an all-night gas station, coming to a stop in front of one of the pumps, behind a pick-up truck. While I was filling up the tank, Bella went inside to find the bathroom. I kept an eye on her as she went, but she headed straight to the back of the store and into the restroom. Only on the way back did she eye the payphone speculatively, before darting a look at me. I pretended not to notice. She got back into the car, and I headed in to pay, wondering at there still being gas stations willing to let you pump before you paid. Two men were just finishing up at the register, and I nodded at them, moving to let them pass. They were carrying twelve-packs of beer, and their heads were full of thoughts of the party winding down at their place. Moments later I heard the pick-up drive away. I lingered a while longer, buying a few snacks and drinks for Bella, and then paid and headed out to the car.

Lost in thought as I was, I was almost at the car before I noticed.

Bella wasn't there.

It was the last rational thought I had.

To be continued…

I apologize for the cliffhanger. It just seemed to be the right place to stop.