Nothing matched. My weakness, the size of me, versus the size and strength of him. The heat pouring into my mouth, the chill running down my spine. The dry, rough skin of his fingertips, our wet cheeks sticking together as our damp eyelashes tangled, the desperate way I dug my nails in to his shoulder, his low sigh echoing through me as he felt it.

Not enough had changed—I kneeled in front of him, his long legs wide. His back was flat against the wall, and I pursued him until he was hard against it, as if he were running away. And in a fashion, he was; in his youth he had been impulsive, arrogant, even pushy, but as a man Jacob Black was afraid of me. The starlight helped him hide, and he fought it, but the tremble in his body, the hesitation in his posture all spoke to me just as loudly as the hands that swept my hair away, and the lips that bent to press my face once more with the gentlest pressure. He wanted me, badly, and he was terrified.

I wrapped my arms around his waist, slowly sliding my hands across the delicate skin of his belly, feeling each eerie mound of smooth scar tissue, and buried my face in his chest. His nakedness fractured my hunger, replacing it with the physical need to soothe him; I tried to tell him with no words how I loved him.

Here—where the gunshot wound sprayed startling white across his copper chest.

Here—where I sucked the last of the venom from his wrist.

Here—in the cleft of his collarbone, the dip of his pelvis, the instep of his foot. The palm of his hand, the arc of his cheekbone, the smooth, textureless scar dividing his broad mouth. I love you everywhere, my hands said. I will never hurt you.

As surely as if he heard me, he stilled himself and let me roam. He seemed to need to be explored, the shields of solitude deliberately released as he kept his instincts from reacting. Beyond his breath—his shuddering, deep sighs were the only voice he allowed himself as he felt me finding him. I never strayed to places I thought might frighten him.

"Bella," he eventually whispered, and I knew it was all he could muster. I placed my weight on my knees and raised my face to his.

"You are so beautiful," I whispered back to him, wrapping my hands in his long, tangled hair, parting his lips with mine. I inhaled the heat of his body as I kissed him, and felt his arms pull me closer, their banded strength against my back like bars of iron.

"Sort of beautiful?" He asked softly, smiling against me, his eyebrows raised. I knew he was trying to joke and asking for reassurance at the same time. I didn't smile back, just kissed his shadowy face again, feeling the rough and smooth beneath my mouth; if I could memorize these textures, I thought to myself, if I could keep this scent, this heat, in my mind, I could be content. I could be whole.

"Only to a foolish child who can't say what she means," I said, and fought myself to be able to pull back enough to look in his eyes. "To someone who can, you are just beautiful." I began to kiss his jawline, gently guiding his head with my hands, sliding my mouth across the prominent bones and then down to his throat. His pulse ran beneath the smooth skin, and I got lost there for a moment until I felt his arms releasing me. I pulled back and looked up at him. His face was serious, almost troubled.

"Bella, I…" He didn't finish, but no words were necessary; I could tell the moment had passed. I kissed his mouth again, and then gingerly extracted myself, motioning for him to lay down before wedging in close to him and pulling the covers over us. He looked at me, his brow low, his body still once again. I waited.

"I want to explain," he began, but I cut him off, my words reassuring, as I realized he thought I might need a reason not to move quickly towards the things forbidden us by time apart. I didn't need any reason to rush enjoying him.
"You don't need to," I said, and reached out to touch him. I could tell now that it would be alright, that breaking the spell of touching once wouldn't mean I never could again. I moved even closer to him, and he closed his eyes, looking slightly relieved.

"I want to," he said slowly, weighing the words. "Call me macho for being embarrassed by this, but…I don't want you to feel…I don't know." He sighed. "I've wanted to be with you for so long…"

"Jake. There's nothing wrong with…this." I continued to run my hands along his ribs, beneath the blanket, letting my fingertips graze his hipbone, then slide back along the same trajectory. His long arms were folded between us, and I could barely reach over them, but I managed.

"I know." He smiled. "Well, I hoped not." He was not self conscious of his body; he was self conscious of our past. "I've always wanted this, you know that," he whispered to me. "I've always been drawn to you, but…I want to be with you." He finished, his voice suddenly a little harsher.

"I don't know what you mean," I said, gently smiling and pushing the tangles from his eyes. "You're with me now, Jake."

"Exactly," he said, and gave me a wry smile that quickly faded. "I want this feeling to stay—I don't want to frighten you, Bella." His brow lowered, his black eyes searched mine. "I don't want to…forget you, if we get too close," he said. "I don't want to lose control."

I'd heard the speech before. My hand stilled, and he immediately noticed; perhaps he even realized what I was thinking, if not in the graphic terms that my mind was using. Suddenly, before I understood what was happening, I was flat on my back and his large body was suspended over mine. His face was so close that I could feel the tremors rippling through him, ending with the slight point of contact at our foreheads. The heat shimmered off of him in waves. "Bella, please—listen, I will be with you. I will. But…not tonight." He pressed his forehead harder against mine, sudden tears springing up in my eyes. "I love you, I love you so much I can't—" He shuddered again and a few of his own tears joined mine. "I love you, and I want it to be perfect. I want it to be beautiful," he whispered. His breath was sweet.

"It can't be perfect, Jake," I said, and a small laugh slipped out of me. He raised his head to see me clearly, a frightened look on his face. "It's just us, Jake, it's just two people that love each other and don't know what they're doing." I touched his sunken cheek, softening the fear. "It will just be us, loving each other." I sighed. "And it's okay if its not tonight."

His face lowered to mine, and I suddenly saw a ghost of what he feared in his eyes. It was as if I had given him permission to return my attention by prolonging the time we could wait; his mouth, when it reached mine, was fierce, tugging my lips apart, pushing wetly inside. Lightning invaded my abdomen as I felt his tongue slip inside my mouth, a small fire raged across my body as my back arched to meet his chest. I was still fully clothed—his right hand slid across and under me, the warmth of it seeped through the fabric covering me and greeted the flames there already. My hands scrabbled across his iron back, pulling him to me; he responded roughly, ripping my shirt where his hand supported me, and allowing me to drop as he tore it along the front along my stomach. His mouth raged against mine and then he abruptly picked me up and slammed my back against the wall, my legs hitched over his arms as he neatly folded me in half with his weight. I gasped into his open mouth, feeling the need in my body clawing to get out; he relented, his face pulling slightly away and growling low. He raised his face to mine, and something wild lingered there.

"I want you," he said. He was pleading—with me, with himself, I didn't know.

"You have me," I whimpered, and bit his lips, my hands raking across his shoulders. I knew I was reaching for the things we'd just said we would wait for. Our combined weight rested on the taunt muscles of his thighs.

But I calmed him, somehow, with these words, and the pressure of his body against mine slowly eased. He gently stroked my bare belly, his warm touch eliciting shivers, and the heat in his mouth slid across the tender flesh of my throat. "I think I believe you," he murmured, and then let my legs down, unlocking his arms from their post under my thighs. I tried to catch my breath as his hands moved over me—finding the places I had found on him, gliding across me, demure but curious. It was then that I felt where his nails had dug in to my skin of my back earlier, but I closed my eyes and refused to acknowledge the pain there. He hadn't smelled the blood, perhaps dulled by the other aromas filling the heated space between us. His hands slowed, and I opened my eyes and looked at him. His face was frozen—desperation battled with lust. "But…Why now, Bells?" His voice shook. "Why now, after all this time?"

It was a difficult question to answer; my head throbbed at the rapid change, my body cooling from the lack of contact. Jacob and everyone else had either ignored or avoided asking me what I'd done in the long years since I'd been gone, even Emily. They probably assumed I'd spent my time in Phoenix pining for Edward, and they were at least partially right. Jacob slowly extracted himself from my body, but I wasn't ready to let him go. My ankles pulled him tight while I fought with myself, the flush of heat his skin left on mine still glowing.

"I loved you a long time ago," I said, knowing it wasn't enough. Seconds before, our bodies locked together, I thought then it would be enough, but I was beginning to see that words, and sighs, and how avariciously, desperately, my body needed his could not be enough. Only time would be enough. "I loved you when we were children, Jake—I loved you the whole time. I just didn't know."

"But you knew you loved him," he said, and his hoarse voice lapsed into confusion and hurt. I released my hands from his back and gently untucked his long arms from behind me, sliding down his thighs as I loosed my ankles. "I'm always playing second fiddle to that guy," he said, letting me down, and in spite of the attempt I knew the joke wasn't real. My head swam from how quickly his moods changed, and I pressed my hands to my temples, cursing the mercurial instincts of the wolf.

"It's different," I said. He knew that it was, but that was no comfort. I settled my weight and looked in to his dark eyes, his chest still. In a way, it was reasonable. He just wanted to know why it mattered—how the tiny difference then could bloom in to love now, after years, after everything. I hoped he would understand. "It was tough to go from being basically alone, except for Renee, to having two loves in one really short lifetime. From zero to sixty, you know?" He looked at me and raised an eyebrow, but waited. "And then I went back down to nothing. I know it's not like your time in the woods, Jake, but try to imagine…I was alone too, in a different wilderness." We were facing each other, the starlight making his features bewitching to see, but I found myself looking through him--through the wooden walls of the shack that sheltered us, past the black wall of trees beyond. I saw myself as a teenager, weeping night after night, calling his house and hanging up, writing letters to no one. "The older I got," I said, "the further I came from someone who could be with Edward." His head hung, in spite of what he knew must have been coming, in spite of what he'd asked himself. I spoke again, my eyes locked on the past. "And that is what let me pay attention to myself, Jake." I shifted, still seeing that thin, brown eyed girl—filling out job applications, watching Renee and her husbands, driving a busted red truck through the desert. "And then…I realized I hadn't thought about Edward…that way…for a long time. And I'd never stopped thinking about you."

I stood up and moved over to the window. The rain had swept the clouds from the sky, leaving only enough whipped fringe behind to refract the gentle glow of the stars. The moon, buried there by the horizon, was slender and winking. "I went a lot of places, Jake…I thought of you everywhere—what you would think of the food I was eating, whether you'd like the people I met, what you would say to me about what I was thinking." I turned back to him, knowing he couldn't see my face in the shadows. "I loved you more the longer I was human."

It was strange, knowing Jake finally could not ignore that he held all the power and could do with it what he liked; he could not love me in return—or worse, resent me so much he wouldn't want to be with me anyway. He could go back in to the wolf, he could banish me from La Push, he could leave me humiliated for his friends to find in the morning. I didn't care. I'd made peace with myself by finally telling the men I loved how my heart felt: Charlie knew I loved him; Edward both knew I loved him and that I wouldn't be with him now even if I thought it possible; Jacob knew I loved him, even if he didn't like how it came to be. I was done. I could leave Forks. I could leave planet Earth, and I didn't care.

But instead of the horrors he could have perpetrated on me, Jacob stood up and walked towards me. His heavy hands rested on my bare shoulders for a split second until he moved to fill the shallow gap between us, his heat announcing the approach of his bare skin. I pressed myself in to him—into the scars, into the smooth, rich muscle below, into the years between us. "You have me," I said again, and felt him return my words with his body, the way mine spoke to him before. We soon fell asleep beneath the blanket, our limbs laying haphazardly on top of one another and our faces mere inches apart, sharing breath.