As I felt myself beginning to drift, I heard the springs shift and creak as Jake rolled over on the mattress.
"Vampire slayers don't sleep on the floor, Bella," he whispered. "Silly girl." His long arm found the blanket and tugged at it. I smiled, my eyes closed.
"They do when there's nowhere else to lay down," I said. The one room cabin hadn't had a phone, or much of anything else; I wondered if Sam had been here before. There was no way it would fit four werewolves and a human overnight, no matter how small the latter may have been. The tiny cook-stove and sink were the only modern accommodations, running water being the major selling point. A tiny bathroom and a wrap around porch were the only other features worth mentioning.
"You could sleep up here," he murmured, his hand growing still. "I thought you knew by now I wasn't going to eat you." I sat up, finding his eyes glinting in the dim light, and rested my head on my arms along the edge of the bed. His long arm barely brushed against me as we faced each other. Please let me touch you. Still the wrong thing to say. I laughed quietly at myself and tried to cover my tracks.
"That's not a line that gets a girl in to bed, Jake--maybe just make her run screaming instead," I said, smirking. His mouth dropped open a little and I laughed out loud at the shock on his face. "Goodnight," I said, laying back down. "I want that look on your face to be the last thing I see before I fall asleep."
Things were quiet for a moment, but then I heard the springs again. My eyes flew open and I sat up just in time to see Jake, naked and bitten, swing his legs over the side and push the bed back against the wall. He lay down next to me, close but not touching, and this time I knew my mouth was hanging open. I snapped it shut and lay down in a huff, my back to him. He laughed; not loudly, not with his full body, but still…it was so familiar…My body ignored me again and rolled over to face him. We were both smiling.
"What kind of line does get a girl in to bed, Bella?" he whispered. In spite of the momentary boldness, his eyes looked a little anxious. I suddenly felt nervous too, and dropped my eyes to look once again at the raised flesh of his wounds.
"You tell me," I tried, and looked up at him again. My smile was weak.
"I don't know," he said, and I suddenly understood why he looked anxious. Years in the woods, alone…His eyebrows lowered as he watched me, and I realized he was probably thinking the worst.
"I don't know either, Jake," I told him, and we watched each other.
"Really?" He looked skeptical, but curiosity crept in to his eyes. They held me steadily, as if he had learned in the past two days how to master their movement. Their constant roaming had unnerved me the first night we were together, but that feeling was nothing compared to the fear beginning to clutch at my guts. I was a twenty five year old virgin, with no woodsy excuses.
I sighed and closed my eyes. "Really." I knew without his asking that an explanation was going to be necessary. "I never wanted to…I wanted to want to, if that makes any sense…but I never did."
"Why not?" His warm breath rolled over my face.
I thought of the split second in the car before he had flown away through the open door, before it had seemed that the whole world was ending. He knew; I had told him a thousand times in a thousand ways since I'd heard his strangled voice scream my name from the edge of my father's front lawn. I love you. For whatever reason, he refused to acknowledge it.
"I've only loved two people, and neither was available to try." I opened my eyes and rolled on to my stomach, raising my head so that I was looking down on his face. He still looked skeptical. Fine then. "If you want to know why they weren't around, I'll give you their names and you can call and ask them in the morning." I artfully swung my hair over his face and rolled over with my back towards him once more.
He didn't move and I once again drifted towards sleep; he interrupted me just as I was replaying his shocked face. His voice was close to my ear. "Do I know them?" I thought for a minute he must be joking, but he continued. "Well, do I know him? I know…Edward." I couldn't help it; I rolled over again. Our faces were inches apart, and even in the half-light, I could see a strange wetness in his eyes. "I'm just curious," he protested, as if he thought I would object.
I shook my head. My hair mixed with his, and I inhaled the scent of his breath; I felt the heat radiating off of him and moved as close as I could, testing the boundary. I realized that my movement had stilled his chest, and then I saw his steady pulse thrumming in the soft dip of his collarbone. He was holding his breath. "You know him," I whispered.
And then I kissed him.