AN. This week, I got snow. A lot of snow. I nearly got stuck on a train in a blizzard there was so much fucking snow! It was a veritable winter wonderland of frosty awesomeness in my little section of the UK! And I was happy... and then I woke up this morning and my throat decided it would rebel, a virus set up home there, and I lost the power of speech. Now, everyone else within the confines of the flat found this oooooh sooooo amusing (fuckers), so I had to take to operating on a series of flash cards that read: 'fuck off', 'bring me water', & 'because you love me', I then had to add a fourth... 'I will kill you' because they took advantage of my inability to politely tell them to STFU. I could have written more, but I find those four work very well - feel free to employ them next time you get ill. They're very effective. I did have a bell initially to make requests too, but I may or may not have abused that, so they hid it. Then I passed out later after a massive giggle/cough fit over some twitter fuckery and then standing up too fast, and I got that bitch back pronto! Mwahaha! Fuckin' A!

Enough of my *sad panda face* (have you seen a sad panda? fuck! those things are... well... sad looking! They should be given xanax or something, it's just wrong!). Here is chapter 18 - consider it my christmas present to you all. You make gift me with reviews... I like them... plus, it's nearly by birthday *cheeky grin*

End of Chapter 17...

Limbs twitched in the folds of the white sheets she lay on, before a deep sigh tumbled from her mouth. Every muscle rolled and roiled in unison as she rolled onto her side and stilled. Face buried in the white cotton.

We waited.

She was still.

A hum of contentment rumbled out from the bed, and then stopped.

She shifted.

Wide eyes framed with a sea of black lashes flicked open and met my own.

I was lost in the red.

BPOV

I dreamed and drifted in the darkness, cocooned in a blanket, protected from the beating drum that whispered on the periphery, tattooing out battle signals to the distant troops. I could feel the rumbles of their cries vibrating at the borders of my defenses, but they couldn't touch me here. I just was, floating, being caressed and held in suspension in the black.

Gradually, the darkness faded and the whispers stilled, until there was nothing but a bright red burning behind the lids of my eyes. Sleep no longer held me in its arms.

Shit.

I'd forgotten to close the curtains. Again! I hoped like hell I wasn't hung over.

Ugh! I soooo couldn't be assed to move right now. Every muscle was taut and aching, even in my stillness. I could feel the stiffness leaving my limbs, but it felt like it was almost too much to get up and move right now. I cautiously pointed my toes, fraction by fraction, testing the waters. Finding no screaming response, I carefully stretched upwards from there, trying to exorcise the last of the strain from my body. I could feel each joint and muscle pop and roll in a wave like sequence, from the tip of my toes to the top of my head. The tension release along my spine, as each piece jolted out of the stress was heavenly. I sighed in contentment, stirring the air around me. The smell of fresh cotton and sunshine filled my system, along with a thousand other scents that danced around me, as my lungs expanded in response to the contraction and expansion of my muscles. I held the air there, tasting the molecules as they bounced like frantic rubber balls over my tongue, and down my throat. They tickled and teased, but I forced down the need to cough, trapping the flavours there, and marvelled at their complexity.

Fuck... what did I take last night? I'm still tripping!?!

The red was distracting.
Unnerving... and still streaming into my eyes.

It's too fucking early to be awake! Plus, my mouth was dry and raw. I could feel saliva watering from the backs of my cheeks in an attempt to bring relief to the desert that had taken up home there. How lovely.

Damn it! Why hadn't someone come in and closed the curtains!

Ugh!

My body automatically rolled to one side, as I buried my face in the source of the freshness. The red faded from behind my eyes, and the relief moaned up my throat and out of my mouth unbidden.

Fuuuck! That's nice.

And no urge to vomit... Success!

I revelled in the stillness and contentment of the moment. Maybe I could stay here all day, and nobody would bother me.

That thought made me pause.

Figures danced in the recesses of my mind, shadow puppets, whose outlines were projected in fuzzy relief on the walls there.

Somebody should be waking me up...

I reached for names, faces, something...

But found nothing.

The pause stretched out.

The shadows scrawling across the walls picked up their pace, twirling their arms and dancing to an invisible beat that only they could hear; the steps a mystery to me, and the sounds too faint to discern. I tried to reach out to them, but their pace ramped up again, and raced to dizzy frantic heights, every turn they took dancing them just out of my grasp.

Why the fuck was there nothing!?!

My eyes shot open.

The darkness chased back, and a bright white flooded my vision, momentarily blinding me as my pupils contracted to pull in the scene. My eyes catalogued one thousand five hundred and three individual threads per square inch in the fabric that stretched out in front of me. It swept away in miniature mountains; peaks and troughs rising and falling, as they basked in stark relief and dusky shadows. The tiny threads lay smooth and sequenced in a precise pattern, stretching over the surface like corn fields bowing to the invisible hand of the wind. There was one thread right in front of me, though, that skipped a weave, a glaring flaw that stood out and waved its red flag at me. It disjointed the crisscrossed tessellation of cotton rods from the regimented scores that flanked it. I was transfixed. I felt like I was staring at it for hours, analysing the surrounding ranks of threads for further breaks. But it wasn't hours. My mind told me the whole process was taking me zero point three five seven two nine seconds. Now zero point three eight four one seconds. Whispers filtered behind my eyes that whatever it was, it was still fucking soft, screw the pattern!

It startled me. My eyes widened to take in more of the scene.

My territory expanded, and I was suddenly blinded by two blazing suns. Their gravity pinned me as I drank them in.

Oh God!

So beautiful...

Flaming arcs of solar flares and black steel swirled and twined together, sprawling outwards from twin black holes that threatened to pull me in with their infinite depths.

The black holes suddenly flared outwards, expanding, and swallowing parts of the suns. My limbs bunched and tensed, my hands shot out and braced themselves, gripping something that gave like butter under my fingers. I couldn't look away from them, but I could put some distance between us. I would surely get lost in them. They would draw me in and swallow me whole! I released like a bullet from a gun, and with a crack that whipped through the air, I shot backwards from the sea of white in defence.

Suddenly, I was pressed up against something solid. A wall. 21.3ft wide by 16ft high. I was balancing on the balls of my feet, the wooden beams flexing slightly underneath the applied pressure. It would provide an excellent spring point for any rapid movement. You won't need it though. Arms spread wide and low. To achieve a more efficient centre of gravity, and defense. Bees buzzed and howled in an angry swarm somewhere close. I focused for the source with my ears. My eyes remained focused on the celestial anomalies in front of me. A flash sparked behind my eyes. The bees' sting something wicked. I could feel the prickle on the back of my right leg as it was kissed with the ghost of a memory. I wanted to scratch at it, but couldn't move.

A flicker of movement to the right in front of me spiralled my vision outwards again. I had already catalogued the two figures, one male, and one female, both stunning, with golden hair that glowed in the warm sunshine that filtered through the partly shuttered window, had already made a note of the room artfully decorated in shades of white and cream, and the intricacies of the whorls in the mahogany furniture that rose like fingerprints across the surface. My eyes had counted the floor boards and calculated the distance and area between myself and any of three potential exits – two windows leading outside, and a door with an undetermined landscape on the other side. I'd seen and discounted these things already. What I hadn't noticed, was the face attached to the black holes. They had blinded me. My vision spun out in slow motion as I took him in. The cosmic bodies were his eyes, which were surrounded by jungle like curtains of fringed charcoal black lashes. One bat of those and I would be bowled over. The bees were fainter now, further away maybe. My limbs cranked back a notch in their readiness. My eyes continued their crawl. Over the slope of his nose, between his brows, up over the cheekbones that softened downwards to finish in a slightly dimpled chin, and lips that spread rosy, wide and inviting. There was a feint outline above one eye that transfixed me, as glints of light twinkled along the edges. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I wanted to see more...

The three of them hadn't moved. I shifted eight millimetres to right, and then waited.

We were all still.

I shifted a foot further.

8 feet from the door – your best option.
16 feet from the first window, the most direct to freedom, but they will reach you first.
21 feet from the second window – the same principle applies.

I could run, but I was curious now.

Curiosity killed the cat you know... Hush now!

The shift threw the outline into stark relief. No longer flat, the new angle illuminated crags and valleys of shadow, sunken down into the skin that looped in repetition to form a broken circle. It took me half a second to recognise the pattern as the imprints as individual teeth marks. It took only a sixteenth of a second for the bees to appear again, and rage and disgust to crawl out of my pores. I could feel my lips pull back from my teeth and my eyes narrow to dangerous slits.

Someone had hurt this man. This angel. Because that's what he was – backlit by bars of light like wings that penetrated through the shutters, swirling with dust like feathers, slicing through the soft curls that crept like hanging vines around his face, framing the perfection of his features.

He took a slow step backwards, dropping his eyes and his face from mine. His features flickered to sadness momentarily, before becoming subservient. Pliant. Submissive. Palms turned out an upwards in deference.

Fuck that!

This man should never look like that!

The thought caused a key to tumble in a lock in my mind, pins spinning and clicking into place, causing a hidden door to fly open, and walls to fall. The contents fell and buried me in place.

A wall of colour and sound roared down upon me all at once. Pictures and movies, smells and feelings, all clawed at me for attention, and my mind fractured and split to accommodate them all. These weren't foreign though, didn't confuse me... I didn't need the flashbacks that came. I remembered everything. In vivid Technicolor detail, complete with surround sound, and high definition quality. Nothing was missing. Nothing...

How unfucking fair is this! They'd always said the memories faded! That you had to hang on to them! What the fuck?!?

I ran forward and crushed myself to him, burying myself in his chest.

"Jasper."

His name whispered and fell from my lips like a talisman against the scenes that flashed like gun powder behind my eyes.

Arms slowly came up and wrapped themselves around me as I broke down in tearless sobs. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I was trying to cry – the tears would never come again.

And there's win number one. No more tears...

Jaspers hands ran up and down my spine, and gently through the strands of my hair, repeating over and over again, increasing gradually in pressure, until the sobs slowed and stopped. Losing some of those memories had obviously been too much to hope for. God forbid something swing in my god damn favour! I could feel the rage trying to crawl out from under my skin, but Jasper's soothing hands kept it contained. If I could only stay like this in his arms forever, there wouldn't be a problem.

The man had magic hands.

I pulled the air I no longer needed deep and held it there. My face pressed into his shirt.

It was all there, but I found I could think around it. I could section off the terrors that had threatened to bury human Bella.

I wasn't human Bella any more.

I shouldn't have been shocked, but I was. I could now recognise and understand the fascination and detail the fucking sheets had held for me. Easily distracted... I was like a fucking budgie with a mirror!

Like right now, I was just fucking bowled over by the taste of Jasper on my tongue from the air I had breathed off his shirt. Jesus fuck! If I thought he smelled good before, then I was a freaking idiot! I might never breath again – might keep him trapped inside me here forever! Get a grip there B. I was also thinking about how the bees had actually been me, and I have to say, that's one pissy sound. The enhanced vision was also motherfucking AWESOME, and the instant replay that was going on in my mind was topping that trip I'd taken to the IMAX in Los Angeles to watch Blue Planet, and I was just remembering staring at the sheets, and then Jasper... Jasper, who looked like an angel that had fallen from heaven, Jasper, who'd looked so sad at the face I'd pulled whilst transfixed by that bite above his eye...

Oh god! He didn't think I was disgusted with him did he? Of course he did you idiot, you saw what he was like when he retold his story... what assumptions do you expect him to make. Preferably none. He's a man B, it's what they do...

I leaned back from his arms and looked up at him. His chin tilted downward, his eyes drawing to mine, angling his head slightly to the right... hiding that bite mark...

I reached up one hand to trace the outline of the scar I could see above his eye. He tried to pull away, but I pinned him in place with my free hand. High five for the newborn strength! Every muscle in his body was screaming within him to pull away, but, as I made contact with his skin and softly outlined it with my fingertip, he stopped resisting and leaned into me.

I almost expected him to be cool still, but he felt warm beneath my touch, the skin there almost human in texture, not the marble-like smoothness of my memories, maybe softly polished sandstone. My other hand released the vicelike hold on his arm, and I used both to gently pull his face down to mine, still having to lean up on the tips of my toes to reach him, and pressed my lips to the jagged edges, before pulling back.

"Nobody is going to hurt you again."

His face relaxed and stretched into the most blinding of smiles. His hands stroked up and down my arms before he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. My whole body would have melted to the ground. My emotions were everywhere, and nowhere, racing and cycling through all the thoughts that were spinning like a top in my mind.

A throat cleared behind me, causing me to whip round in the confines of Jaspers arms. Alert. Ready. Capable.

Peter's lips twitched in amusement, and Charlotte scowled up at him, roughly poking him in the side.

"Damn woman! What the fuck?"

She rolled her eyes and huffed at him, muttering under her breath, clearly aware we would all hear.

"Fucking men. No sense of timing! You're lucky you're good in bed Peter. Just sayin'"

She strolled forwards, winking at me, as he pouted behind her.

I knew we like her.

I had to hold back a giggle, and feeling Jasper shaking slightly behind me wasn't helping matters.

I turned back to Jasper, and was nearly facing him when I was knocked to my knees, drowning in a sea of devastation; my unbeating heart ripped out on the floor and torn into a million pieces.

My fingers etched deep grooves in the wooden floor boards, as I desperately tried to anchor myself against the swirling cyclone of devastation that threatened to sweep me away. Oh god! How would I go on? It felt like the world was ending around me, fireballs reigning down from the sky causing annihilation and death.

The bed...

I'd killed the BED!

The bed and sheets lay in tatters. Fragments of wood had exploded outwards from a central point. I scrambled forwards on my hands, grasping at the wooden shards of frame and springs that littered the floor like a bombsite. They melted through my fingers like flour, as the pressure caused them to disintegrate.

That crack was the bed! I'd killed the fucking bed! And the sheets!

Oh God! The humanity!

I tore my eyes from the scene that threatened to gut me, and I looked over my shoulder.

Peter caught my eye and stepped carefully forward, learning down to my level, and placing his hands on my shoulders.

"I knew you'd break some beds, but not this quickly!"

He collapsed into a fit of laughter.

I cocked back a fist and slammed it into his face.

He shot backwards from the force, the look of surprise on his face comical as the whole scene froze for a second before playing out in slow motion. He landed ass first in a wardrobe that exploded like glass around him.

Jasper and Charlotte burst out laughing at his frozen shocked features, as he sat there, immobile amongst the rubble.

I turned my glare to the two of them, and Jasper quickly stifled his laughter and crossed over slowly to me, as Charlotte darted across the room to Peter, scolding him about knowing better.

I was torn between rage and concern. My face was twitching, unsure which way to go, attempting to split between the two.

"Jasper, why do I feel like I'm PMSing?"

He started to chuckle. It didn't piss me off like Peter's tittering, but if he kept laughing at me I'd make no promises..He held out a hand, which I needlessly took, and rose from the floor before I was even aware I'd made the decision.

The air swirled around me, the sudden updraft bringing the most glorious of smells to my nose.

JPOV

"What smells like Toblerone? And..." Sniff "... pie!"

I grinned down at her. She was still shorter than me by a few inches, but no less deadly as she'd just proven with Peter. Silly fucker. He had as much newborn experience as I did. He knew better than to go taunting her before she'd been fed. Damn if it wasn't the funniest thing I'd seen in years, her getting the drop on him. I'd rarely seen it happen with his freaky instincts for knowing when shit was about to go down.

"You do, Bella."

Her eyes widened even more. They were pretty big before her change, but now those things seemed to have tractor like powers, drawing me into their multifaceted orbs. Red was a colour I'd tried to avoid for so long, but fuck me if they weren't the most beautiful thing my eyes had laid themselves on in a long time.

"No fucking way!" she cried out in astonishment.

She brought her arm up to her face, running her nose along the alabaster skin there, and inhaling deeply, pausing, and then poking her pink little tongue out, and swiped across her wrist, before releasing this guttural sex moan that went straight to my cock.

Hello!?! Look who's suddenly found his dick! That's what that thing is? Who knew!

I stuffed my hands in my pockets quickly. Not the day to be wearing tight jeans apparently.

"Oh God! Jasper, I taste sooooo fucking good! Try me!"

She thrust her arm in front of my face, and it took all my restraint not to give in to those wide ruby eyes and lick the shit out of her arm like a god damn cat! I cleared my throat and tried to ignore the sniggering coming from the two people behind me. I gently reached out and brought a hand under her chin, tilting her face back to mine.

"Bella."

It took a second for her focus to come back to me. Her eyes darting all over the place before they finally settled on my own.

"You're hungry, you'll settle down when you get something to eat."

She looked longingly at her arm for a moment.

"Guess chocolate is off the menu now..." she muttered sadly.

"Unless you want to be throwing that shit back up. Oh, and it'll probably taste like shit."

She looked fucking heartbroken at that, so I hastily added, "But Emmett swore that Red Wolves tasted like candied apples... I'm sure we can track something down that tastes close."

Sadness briefly flickered over her face, and I nearly kicked myself from bringing him up, before hope glazed over her features, stunning me with the innocence of her upturned face. She was pushing that fat bottom lip out, and I'm pretty sure it was intentional and she knew I wouldn't be able to turn that face down, but I nodded like one of the stupid bobble headed dolls. Behind Bella, Peter made a whipping motion with his hand that Charlotte either missed, or chose to ignore. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he merely winked back. I just rolled my eyes.

Some days I really miss being feared the shit out of.

I turned by focus back to the lady next to me, grasping her hand firmly in my own and tugging her towards the terrace door, obscured by a heavy curtain. I pulled it back, opened the door and motioned for her to step outside.

Thank God for my manners, because there was no way I'd ever be able to hide the lust that burned in my eyes as her ass swung gracefully by me, or my wonder at the rays of light that hit her skin causing her whole being to light up, or the way the light played through the loose waves of her hair.

Maybe Bella was right, and you are a sensitive little flower...

I straightened my back and set my shoulders. I had a job to do, and Bella needed something down her throat before she ended up going off on someone again.

I took her hand in mine, and gestured out into the distance with my head, grinning at her.

"Let's go for a run."

Her eyes sparkled in anticipation.

I had so much to teach her.

BPOV

Thank God Jasper grabbed a hold of my hand when I stepped outside, or I'd have run off like a naughty school child. I was dazed by the new world that my eyes had been opened to. Sure, I had all these memories all rattling around inside my new tricked out mind, but it was like seeing everything for the first time all over again. If the room inside and the sheets had blown my mind, the outside world was like a nuclear bomb, levelling all reason, as it bombarded me in waves off energy and light, squashing all reason and logic.

We were running before I was even aware of it. Apparently, the new upgrades came with top of the line autopilot, because I was eye-balling shit the out of fucking everything as we darted through brush and over the rocky landscape. Only the gentle pressure of Jasper's hand in mine kept me from stopping and ogling the most innocuous shit, like a rock, then a leaf, or this odd smell that wafted from behind a tree stump as we shot past. The list was endless, and I wanted to look at it all.

For someone who suffered balance issues for a good 70% of their life, running was quickly shooting up the top of my list of favourite things to do. It was almost spiritual. The whispers of wind on my skin and the rhythmic tapping of our feet as we flew over the ground was trance inducing. My mind was lulled into an almost relaxed state, and then, the thousands of things screaming for attention inside my head, faded to the background, becoming a mere rumble of thunder on the distant horizon.

The wind shifted, blowing a hot and heady scent right in my face.

I froze, skidding to a halt, and almost pulling Jasper's arm off.

He whirled around to face me. I'd stopped breathing. I could feel my eyes were wild in my face, darting everywhere, trying to find the source of the smell.

"Bella."

Jasper was right in my face. His eyes were demanding my attention.

"It's ok. It's the herd of deer we'll be hunting."

That was deer?!? Jeeze! What the fuck did I smell like to him before?!? How the fuck am I not dead already? I'd have taken a chunk out of my ass had I smelled like that and that was only deer!

I released the unneeded breath. My lungs instinctually drew another in. The smell flooded my lungs, triggering animalistic reactions I didn't know I had. I shifted to the balls of my feet, my ears listening for the sounds that would trigger me, my mouth dropping open slightly to taste the air, and my mind taking note of the wind direction and speed. To be honest, it freaked me the fuck out a little, but Jasper was still there, in front of me, monitoring my reactions, watching.

I trusted him with this. He moved slowly behind me, placing his hands on the tops of my shoulders, and leaned in close to whisper in my ear, his breath teasing strands of my hair against my skin. I'd be shivering if I still felt the cold.

"You can smell them?"

I nodded. Not quite trusting myself to speak and not drool, what must be venom, out of my mouth like an idiot. His hands moved slowly down the sides of my arms, and I had to suppress the urge to shudder.

"Can you feel the vibrations under your feet?"

My mind was telling me yes. I could feel the tiny earthquakes tremble up my calves, causing the muscles there to twitch and shake.

"You can see them. But where are they?"

All of my senses were working overtime as the scent and sound, the feel, of the animals was clouding everything. I was completely taken over by, directed and focused by, his questions. My eyes darted to the east, and my body leaned that way under the strain of his hands pinning me in place. I could feel an embarrassing whine building up inside of me.

I could smell them. I could hear them. I wanted them. He better get the fuck out of the way.

He must have sensed that, because suddenly his hands were gone, and so was I. His whispered "Go get 'em" floating in my wake.

One moment I was next to Jasper, and the next I was a tumbling mass of limbs, brown and white fur, and dirt, tumbling and sliding across the ground, as my teeth sunk into steaming hotness that erupted into my mouth. I greedily sucked at the elixir that arched and sprayed like a hose, trying to cover it with my mouth as the jets decreased in height.

It was gone before I'd realised it had started. Disgruntled, I threw the ball of fuzz to the ground and shot off in search of more. I could feel another predator circling, but it stayed far enough out of my radius for me to deal with it.

I quickly caught another creature. Slightly less crazed, I somehow managed to sink my hand straight into its back haunches as I reached to catch it. The grip allowed me to get a better angle on its neck, however, and my teeth slid hungrily over the vein pulsating like thunder in its throat. I got more that time.

It took another four goes before I was finally getting the hang of it and felt somewhat satiated and a lot more stable from the sloshing mass moving in my stomach. I was able to focus on the final hunt, able to latch onto that main artery that flashed like a beacon. Only a small amount of spray spilled from my mouth, as the deer thrashed and bucked in the cage of my arms. This was a definite improvement, even though the jeans and cotton shirt I'd been changed into were now beyond help.

I finally looked up. My eyes scanned the area for Jasper as I held the lifeless form of the deer in my arms.

He was striding gracefully through the brush towards me, his movement controlled and animalistic, even in his calm state. He glittered and shone in the sunlight and I wondered how I had ever considered anyone beautiful before him.

I averted my eyes to the carcass in my arms.

JPOV

She was a crimson goddess, decked out in the colours of war. There was blood smeared across her cheeks, dirt and grass matted into her hair. Fuck if she wasn't just a vision. The sunlight refracted a rainbow of red on the scrub around her, making her look like something otherworldly and ethereal. She'd been all kinds of focused on my approach after she'd stopped long enough for me to recognise she was finished and a lot more compus mentus, and then had looked a little embarrassed. What I wouldn't give to feel the emotions radiating out of her right now. I only had her body language to go on right now, and that was giving me fuck all. I was over-reliant on my extra sense, and shit out of practice at reading people like a normal person.

Her face screwed up as she eyed the deer in her arms, hand absentmindedly running through its fur.

"I feel like I should feel bad, but I haven't eaten anyone, and the fucker tried to bite me! Who knew deer were fucking biters!?! Little shit!"

Her eyes were comically wide as she gestured and waved at the tears and rips in her shirt. I swallowed audibly. Slivers of pearly white skin glittered through the holes. I had to chuckle to cover the keening moan that threatened to ooze out of my mouth, and it came out lower and huskier than normal. Her eyes tracked the bobbing of my adam's apple as the rumble of laughter echoed up out of my chest, up my neck, finally fixing on my face. It took everything I had not to buckle under the power of her eyes.

They flickered back down again. She shifted awkwardly in place with the beast in her arms.

"What do we do with Bambi here?"

In her earlier frenzy, she'd dropped the bodies where they lay, and I'd picked up and buried each of them after she'd moved on, keeping a track of her progress at all times. We were isolated out here, but with her luck, she'd run across a party of boy scouts or some shit, and that would be the end of them. She'd gain a few wilderness survival badges though.

"Now we take out the trash."

I picked 'Bambi' out her arms and gestured her to follow me. There was a crevasse in one of the massive monoliths jutting out of the land around us that would do just nicely. I pushed the body in and made a show of dusting my hands down.

"Job done."

I gave her a cheeky wink, and she giggled the most delicious cacophony of notes, before looking horrified at her reaction. It made me smile wider, and she just rolled her eyes at me.

I grabbed a hold of her hand, and walked us to the edge of the plateau we'd found ourselves on. The land fell away below, and stretched out in a multitude of reds, sands, and browns, interspersed with the occasional ancient tree that stood proud and solitary from the ground. I lay back on the rock, basking in the sun.

Bella lay down next to me and mirrored my position, looking curious.

"What are we doing?"

Her voice chimed, low and sultry. She looked all sleepy and full, her hair splayed out in a halo around her.

"Just taking a moment. Peter and I like to do this after a hunt. You can almost feel warm again."

I grasped her hand in mine to settle her, and held it there.

Her fingers squeezed back, gently, trying to control the pressure she was exerting. The focus was making her face screw up in the cutest of ways. She looked pleased with herself, and settled back, the picture of relaxed. I rolled slightly to face her, taking in her form in repose. I'd had three days, and it somehow wasn't enough.

"You did good, Bella."

I watched her try fight her mouth from inching out into a grin. She should be proud though, even admitting that the first two deer were a fucking disaster, she still got it quicker that most, and all off her own instincts. I smiled freely for her, safe in the awareness that she couldn't see. It wouldn't be easy and she'd be tested by her own self control, but she could do this, and I'd help her. I rolled onto my back again, still aware of her in my peripheral vision.

"This is nice," she muttered.

I had to agree. A warmth that had nothing to do with the sun spread through me, emanating from our joined hands.

Yeah. A man could get used to this.

AN 2.0 – Yeah. Harmless fluff. I gave it to you at the end there – consider not leaving you with an uber cliffy my Christmas gift to you (I was soooo tempted, but lucky for you the snow has made me all pleasant and frisky!). Nearly had you at the beginning thinking she'd lost it all though... admit it, you were getting a wee bit cheezd off thurrr... bwahahaha! Anyways. As I told all of those that left me a cheeky review for chap 17, I'm heading off on holiday to the US-of-Aiiii and won't be back until 14th January. Legit reason sheeples - It's my birthday (31st December) WOOOOO! and baby sis is turning 21 on the 3rd Jan, so we're hitting Vegas and going skiing avec la familia! I'm going to be uber poor in the 2010, but it's going to be soooo worth it! The new notebook will be coming with me, and I have a fuckton of plane bound hours, so you'll have an update when I get back and can type it all up for some beta dry humping .:*kisses chris – mwah*:.

So I'll see you all in the New Year – I'll be the slightly older, slightly less wiser fool with the red hair and the crazy eyes frequently seen cackling like a crazy person on the 10.23 to London. Happy 'whatever you celebrate in December' and National 'Lucy Day of Greatness' – parties are being held worldwide under the code name 'New Years Eve' - just drop my name at the door *wink, wink*

Viva Las Vegas bitches! Arrrrriba!