Author's Notes (January 13, 2011): Thanks to the usual culprits—duskwatcher2153, Aleeab4u and GreatChemistry—for polishing words, making Bella less of a contortionist and making the end of this chapter much better than it was. I should also thank afoolishmortal and spanglemaker9 for getting the word out about SotPM. Finally, thanks to everyone on Twitter. You helped me with vampire biology, math, history and sweepage.

Chapter pic: bit(dot)ly/sotpm17-pic

Chapter music: bit(dot)ly/sotpm17-music

WARNING: This chapter contains content that may be disquieting to some. If you are a sensitive reader when it comes to extreme violence (and all that can imply), I strongly urge you to skip Beth's tale. I can roughly explain its importance in a review reply if you tell me you need it.

"SINS OF THE PIANO MAN"
CHAPTER 17: THE WAGES OF SIN

Oh, I'm crying out mercy, mercy, mercy
Hold my feet to the fire, baby
I'm beginning to think that I might've underestimated you

"Hold My Feet to the Fire" by Ha Ha Tonka

EDWARD MASEN
It was only minutes past six in the morning when Bella squirmed in her sleep, wriggling her bottom against my groin. God help me. I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut. Not even being certifiably dead and unable to sleep was enough to stop morning wood, apparently.

Bella's heart rate changed, quickened as her body began to stir from slumber. I smelled the rush of fragrant blood pass through the carotid artery at her neck—a viscid wine that smelled of freesias and roses and crisply cut Bermuda grass. Foolishly, I licked along the slender column of her neck, feeling gooseflesh rise beneath my tongue.

"Mmm," she hummed, rolling her hips backward. Lacking as she was when it came to a sense of self-preservation, she liked when I did this. Lacking as I was in common sense, I gave in to the sinfulness again.

I pulled her closer and kissed behind her ear with a sigh, telling myself that that would have to be enough. I had to be careful, especially at the moment. Bella's scent fluctuated, ebbed and flowed throughout a month, as her body went through the ancient and mysterious motions of womanhood. It took willpower to be around her during her cycle, but the blood was different, and so minutely tolerable; it was a common scent to pass on a daily basis, one vampires adjusted to out of sheer necessity. That, I could handle. Somewhat.

It was the week before, a week such as this, which nearly drove me mad with want, not only as a man, but as a bloodthirsty creature. Her hormones would be the death of us. To make matters worse, they put her in a similar frame of passionate thought. I could smell it coursing through her, that barely contained pulsing lust; the desire to come together, to mate.

These were notions often ignored or denied in the modern world, but they still existed, still simmered beneath a more pristine surface of supposed civility, where men and women convinced themselves that that their brains, not their bodies, were in control. Being a creature forced to address the nature of head versus body on a regular basis, I knew such notions didn't exist without some manner of self-delusion.

Yet, for my and Bella's sake, I hoped the modern world was at least somewhat right—that the mind had the final say regarding consent. We'd survived a week like this in October, but only, I suspected, because our relationship had been mostly chaste. There had only been the one encounter at the Cullens' mansion before a week of pseudo-reprieve in the form of her monthly cycle. Not that that hadn't been its own kind of private hell. How would we survive this week now that I'd so unwisely allowed things to become more physical between us? I had no doubt that Bella would push for more.

I also had no doubt that I'd have considerable trouble pushing her away.

Awake now, Bella rolled over and gave me a small smile, effectively clearing my thoughts for the moment. She said nothing as she lifted a warm hand to my face and began to trace my features. Beginning at my left temple, she ran a fingertip up along my hairline until she came to the middle of my forehead, where she swept down along the bridge of my nose. She crossed over, beneath an eye, down a cheek, over lips.

I kissed the pad of her finger and regarded her as steadily as I could, though I was keenly and uncomfortably aware of the fact that I was being closely scrutinized. Her hand dropped to the pillow both our heads rested on, but she still watched, still studied. Was I passing her test?

I reached up and smoothed back a stray tangle of hair from her face. Though she'd slept a fair amount, she looked tired, the circles under her eyes nearly as dark as my own before hunting. "You're sure you don't want me to come with you today?" I asked.

Charlie's in-home care was to begin, and Bella had plans to go and meet the nurses who would be taking turns visiting him. They would tend him twice a day until he needed more constant care; he probably needed more care now, but he'd refused it.

I'd wanted to go with Bella to meet the caretakers, to help her assess their competence —mind reading seemed helpful, in such cases—but since finding the jacket and my somewhat ill-conceived and poorly-timed offer to help her financially, she'd been more distant and, as such, I wasn't invited along this time. Whether she was trying to prove something to herself or to me, I hadn't yet decided. Her mind, of course, was utterly silent on the matter.

"No, I'll go by myself today. I'll be fine," she said, none too convincingly.

Holding back a sigh, I nodded and tried to reassure her. "This will be good for him. And for you. You'll feel more at ease, knowing he's being looked after."

She nodded hesitantly as she chewed her lip.

Using my thumb, I tugged it free from her teeth and leaned in to kiss her, hoping to take her mind away from darker thoughts, but she drew back quickly.

"Wait. Uh, need to brush my teeth."

I lay back with a sigh and watched her scramble out of bed awkwardly; she wore only a pair of red underwear and a t-shirt. Gooseflesh covered her body as she sprinted to the bathroom, soft curves moving in delightful ways. She'd gained a little weight, thankfully, since I'd begun eating with her. She carried it well. Extremely well.

I discretely adjusted myself beneath the sheets. At this rate, it was going to be a long day.

"Can I kiss you now?" I asked teasingly when she came back into the room. Gently, I pulled her into bed. I was playing a dangerous game, and I didn't want to stop, even knowing I would eventually have to.

Bella's mouth was warm as I slid a hand down her front, smiling into our kiss when her heart skipped a beat. But she didn't respond like she usually did, her body stiffening, her knees turning toward one another. She pulled away from the kiss.

This time was different. This time, I was rejected. I didn't much care for it, frankly.

"Not today," she whispered, apologetic.

I asked what was wrong, but I already knew.

She wouldn't look me in the eye as she said, "I'm just not in the mood right now."

I wanted to tell her that I could change that, that all it'd take was a little work—her scent told me it wouldn't take much work, even—but I knew better and had no desire to bend her to my will. Nodding, I took my hands away from her and turned to lie on my back, to look at the light blue ceiling above. I felt frustrated. On several levels.

"I've been thinking about us, is all," she said, answering my question. "About you."

My stomach muscles clenched, and I felt the slimy, clutching hand of nausea, as if I were preparing to throw up human food. I'd already done that last night, though. This nausea was borne purely from trepidation.

"And?" I prompted.

And the jacket, was what, not to mention the pillowcase. If I'd any blood left in my body, I would have blushed—from awkwardness, embarrassment, fear. Deep, burning shame.

"It's nothing bad," Bella assured me, but she sounded a little unsure herself.

I glanced at her. "If it's nothing bad, tell me."

She shook her head. "Not yet. We'll talk about it later." She smiled, then lifted a hand and placed it against my cheek, where she scratched rhythmically at the permanent, but thankfully light beard growth; the lingering evidence of my drunken carelessness before I was turned. "Relax. I said it's nothing bad."

Leaning over me, she kissed me chastely. The fire between us was gone, and I was left with an echo of coldness—a perception of it, rather than a physical feeling.

"I love you," Bella said, perhaps sensing my anxiety.

"I love you, too," I replied in a hushed voice. "More than you'll ever know."

As we lay on our backs, side by side, I silently faced reality. It was only a matter of time. We would have a discussion about the jacket—why I had it, what it meant—and she would be less charitable toward evasiveness this time. I knew it was coming, felt it in everything she hadn't been saying in the three days since she'd found it. Was she angry? She might even be afraid; she knew as well as I that it wasn't appropriate for me to have it.

I was running out of believable lies, not to mention running out of the desire to concoct and issue them. But it'd never been about what I'd desired, not when it came to Bella's safety. That thought was sobering and extinguished any and all smoldering embers—at least for now.

For the forty-second time, I paced the length of the living room, trying to come up with a believable story to tell Bella. Lucky whimpered from where he lay beneath the piano bench, his chin propped up on his paws. He'd been watching me for a while now, his brown eyes following left to right, right to left, over and over. The whimper became a constant, high-pitched whine.

I stopped and stared at him. "What?" I challenged in an irritable tone. "It's not as if you haven't seen me do this before."

As if he'd understood, Lucky snorted and flopped his tail about, so that it hit the floor with a loud sound. Swish-thump, swish-thump. "Stop worrying," he seemed to say.

"Mm," I said, "dogs are supposed to tell their masters not to worry. I have ample reason to, I assure you." But the mutt was right about one thing: I wasn't getting anywhere behaving this way.

Eventually seeking more productive distraction that wouldn't drive Lucky mad, I went to the folders which held my victims' names. I had hours until Bella would be back. I might as well do something. Sometimes I saw Alice now, when Bella was working, but there was still a wedge between the Cullens and myself, so long as they kept secrets. No, if I couldn't be with Bella, today I wanted to be alone. Introspective. Perhaps a little moody. It came with the line of work.

Particularly this work.

There were sixty-six folders, one for each year of my sins, from 1921 to 1987. There technically should have been more, but I had no means of knowing how many innocent lives I'd negatively affected by stealing donated blood, much less the names of those victims.

Some years were completed, my victims' voices unknowingly heard in orchestras throughout the world. Most were not. It wasn't a comfortable experience, dredging up their pasts with the full detail that infallible vampire recall allows.

I sat at the piano, leaving Lucky beneath the bench. Touching the names in the thirty-eighth folder—1959—I revisited my crimes. I'd headed south at the start of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of my kind had, but mind reading had narrowed my travel down to specific places, those where racial tensions were at their worst.

Where war and great civil unrest exists, vampires lurk in shadows, waiting like vultures, seeing a world flush with opportunity, flush with blood. It was no different then. A vampire didn't have to hunt so discriminately under such circumstances, where one crime was easily lumped with another and blamed on some human.

August 28 – Beth ?

I didn't know her last name. There had been no pleasantries shared between us before I'd taken her life, and yet from her thoughts alone, I knew she was one of my most innocent victims, a girl I'd not meant to kill. It had actually been the boy with her that I'd wanted, but everything had gotten out of my very fragile control…

It was twilight when the young girl passed the nickel and dime store after visiting the nearby grocer; she'd waited until later in the day to do her shopping, to avoid as many people as possible. Her white skirt and braided, midnight-black hair swayed in the thickly humid breeze as she walked; a glow, the shine of sweat, was on her dark, cocoa-colored skin. I was sitting on a bench across the street from her, sifting through the thoughts a mile and a half around me, searching for my next meal.

Disturbed thoughts had led me to this small Alabama town, where the residents were barely containing one rage or another. Racial tension was nearly stifling, and the town was in decline since Interstate 20 had been developed, thus redirecting the flow of traffic—and much-needed business. Poverty and anger are rarely peaceful bedfellows.

I was counting on that.

Humans, I'd learned, eventually broke under stress. Someone would snap, either on purpose or by accident, but there was absolutely no doubt that it would happen. It was only a matter of time. I was thirsty and hoped it would be sooner, than later.

I watched the girl pause at a street corner, her brows pulled together. If she went straight, it would take her longer to get home—nearly five-mile walk in the cloying, mosquito-laden heat that got trapped between buildings—but the roads that way were main ones and better lit. If she went to the right, the roads were quiet and dark, but she'd make it home more quickly, needing only to walk four miles; the trees along that path kept it cooler, too; nothing could be done for the mosquitoes, of course. She sighed, knowing that she'd probably be in trouble no matter what she did. It was already well past the time her mother had told her to be home.

As she debated within herself, she wiggled the fingers of her right hand. A small paper bag was tucked under her arm tightly enough that she'd long since lost feeling in her fingertips. The bag itself held four oranges, which hadn't been cheap, but she was happy she'd saved up for them. They were birthday presents for her twin brothers, Noah and David, who were turning five the next day.

Her thoughts were youthfully innocent and peaceful, and I homed in on them as she contemplated how she could make her brothers' birthday special. Assuming the neighboring Mrs. Campbell would let her borrow some sugar, she planned to bake a pecan pie. Being a miser of sorts, the old woman would probably only part with half of what the recipe called for, but that'd be all right. The girl knew she was a good cook and could make do with what she had. She had the pecans, at least. They'd fallen from the tree in her grandmother's backyard, and she'd spent much of the night before shelling them until the tips of her fingers were raw.

The pecan pie decided it. If she didn't make it to her street soon enough, old and crotchety Mrs. Campbell would already be going to bed, and she needed that sugar, even if she was given less than what the recipe called for. The girl turned off the main street, then, going down the quiet side road where the only activity was from crickets and the occasional, green-bodied wink of a firefly. She quietly hummed "Happy Birthday" beneath her breath.

I listened to her thoughts until she was out of range. It was always a strange feeling, to one minute hear everything a person thought, and in the next to hear absolutely nothing from them, like abruptly losing a radio signal. As much as my ability sometimes robbed me of peace, I heavily relied upon it and used it to quell my curiosity. I was sad when the girl went out of range some twenty minutes later.

The evening was still as people had gone home for dinner, and I began to wonder if I would have my own meal tonight. In this southern climate, I could only safely come out in the late afternoon, when the sun was easing past the horizon. With only half of a day open to me, my chances of a meal were somewhat slimmer. Nor was it the twelfth, the one day I allowed myself to rest in peaceful minds and drink innocent blood. I thought of the girl, of her pleasant thoughts, but I wouldn't take from an innocent this night. I won't, I thought to myself forcefully, commanding myself to obey, to keep the hunger locked down tightly.

But I did imagine it, tempted myself with memories of mostly willing, good-hearted victims and their slippery-thick copper and salt. It had been eight days since my last kill—of a woman who'd poisoned her husband—and my throat was stripped raw by a hellfire, teeming slickly with venom. Only blood would soothe the burn.

As I was in the middle of replaying my last taste of innocent blood, a flock of blackbirds flew up in the distance—about three miles away, I judged. They flew frantically, a massive tangled horde of black-winged bodies, clearly disturbed by something below. At this hour of the day, they would have been resting.

I looked around the main street. No one was out; thoughts were quiet. I decided I might as well see what had caused the commotion. I was bored, anyhow. Again. Spending eternity trapped in a mostly one-track mind had a tendency to be monotonous.

It only took a few minutes of walking at a human pace for me to end up on the quiet side road the girl had been thinking of earlier. In these types of towns, it wasn't uncommon for main roads to suddenly drop off into wilderness, which is precisely what happened here.

Two blocks away, and I was on a dirt and gravel roads so narrow that likely only one car could travel along them at a time. The smell of oak, red cedar and sweet gum trees were heavy in the air, along with that wet, green scent that was purely southern air—thick and humid. A misty fog snaked along the base of some tree trunks, promising midnight chill.

I walked on, enjoying the increasing silence as more and more individuals dropped out of the range of my mind reading. Perhaps it was the mental silence that allowed me to hear the pealing scream in the distance.

Oh, God. The girl.

Taking to the cover of the woods, I ran with purpose, weaving through trees, jumping over swampy puddles and bramble, toward the sound of agony. It didn't take long—thirty seconds, perhaps—for me to grab hold of Beth's thoughts once more. She was within range.

And in danger.

It would take me only a minute to get to her, but so much can happen in a minute.

"Stop!" she was crying, as she blindly clawed at a pale, blue-eyed face that hovered above her own. "Please!"

The boy's thoughts hit me like lightning on a dry plain, catching fire until I was left seeing only red—the red of my fury, the red of his blood. He was my meal ticket, then.

Fucking cunt! He slapped her across the face with one hand while fumbling with the other to unbutton his fly. "Shut your mouth, Beth. We all know you give it for free." All black girls did. His dad said so. Fucking sluts.

The boy pulled and stretched the neck of her worn shirt, until a small, brown-skinned breast was on display, stark against faded yellow fabric. Stark against the red of my angry thirst. Stark against the orange in the boy's peripheral vision; one had rolled from the brown paper bag, collecting dirt along the way.

Skirt pushed up, underwear coldly shoved to one side, Beth felt the intrusive push of willful flesh against reluctant flesh. She screamed behind a quieting hand that smelled acridly of grass and shelled peas. She knew the boy, and that made it all the worse. Her father was a farmhand for his father—had been for fifteen years. The betrayal was sharp, deep and personal. There had been a time when they'd played together, she and the boy, briefly, before it was wrong to do so, before their parents made them stop.

The boy was grunting like a hog, lost to fleshly sensation and indifferent to the tears that wetted his hand. Beth went still and closed her eyes, tight. Her mind tucked in on itself, went to a place where no one could hurt her.

Cutting off my air supply, I leapt out of the woods as I neared them, dirt flying up around my feet with the impact of landing. Silent, I slipped behind the boy and reached out, grabbing him by his neck, pulling him away from Beth, who gasped at the sudden relief. The boy came away with a startled yelp, his breeches hanging down around his knees. I locked eyes with him and bared my teeth before throwing him bodily, several feet away, his limbs flying awkwardly out to catch himself. He landed beneath a hickory tree, in a muddy bed of grasses that caught him with a wet splat.

My eyes met Beth's, then; her cheeks were stained with tears, but she'd stopped crying. She'd pushed her skirt down and pulled the neck of her shirt up, but she lay still again now, frightened and unsure. What now? her mind screamed. I was just another white man, after all—just another man, period. Was I a good one? She would run, I thought, if she knew the answer to that question.

I strode over to the quaking form of the boy, whose whole right side was covered in grass and mud. He'd managed to halfway pull up his pants, mainly to hide the fact that he'd pissed himself in fear. He couldn't have been older than sixteen, if that, but he was old enough to know what he had done, to know that it was wrong, no matter what his father had said.

He stared at me, silent and afraid. I saw myself in his mind's eye, ghostly pale, black-eyed. The monster wasn't far from the surface, and he was thirsty.

Oh, fuck. Those eyes…Not right. He's gonna kill me.

"I am," I confirmed, using some of my air as I squatted down in front of him, sitting back on my heels.

"I'll do anything you want," he whispered.

"You can't give me anything," I said, "and you've taken enough." We both knew this.

With one more glance at Beth, I picked up the boy, marveling—as I always did—at how fragile and slight these creatures were, and how little they knew it. I carried him into the belly of the forest, leaving Beth behind. There was nothing I could do for her in the moment. I was too thirsty to be near her for any length of time.

I hated this boy. I hated his thoughts. I hated what he had done. And most of all, I hated that he'd ruined his life, ruined another's life. I hated him, because in some ways we were far too alike. I was merely the stronger monster.

"Please, make it quick," the boy begged. He lay limply now; one shoulder was dislocated from when he'd tried to run away, and I'd grabbed him. A fine layer of sweat was on his brow.

"She said please," I reminded him mockingly, and his eyes went round and out of focus. He began to pray.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…

Sitting on the forest floor, cradling him in my arms, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to one ear. He flinched beneath my coldness as I used the last of my air to speak. "Pray harder. I don't think God's listening," I told him, and then sank my teeth into his skin.

The blood. It was all that mattered.

I sucked and licked his thick, sweaty neck. He was a pudgy boy, still round with the fat of youth and perhaps overfed; he was salty, very salty. He was exactly what I'd wanted.

When his body was no more than a hollow shell, I detached myself from him with a satisfied sigh and shoved his body away, now abundantly aware of the foulness about him, the foulness I'd taken into myself. As my senses returned in full, I registered a fast-beating heart, a human heart. Beth was still out there on the road, her mind on pecan pies and oranges. She was in shock.

Carefully, I wiped blood from my face and neck, licking the last remnants from my fingertips. I sat for ten minutes, forcing myself to breathe the night air, counting her heartbeats as I came down from the blinding madness of the hunt. It would still be dangerous to see her, but she was alone and young and—I looked at the boy's body in disdain—taken advantage of. I couldn't leave her there.

I returned to the dirt road slowly, trying to figure out what I could do to help her. Having spent time in the thoughts of the local authorities, I wasn't sure what good they would do for a young black girl, even one who'd been raped. I groaned. And now the boy who'd done this to her would be missing. Fuck. Had I made things worse?

It was dark out now, the stars shining brightly, and it was under this haunting light that I found Beth crawling around on her knees.

Where's it gone? Can't have gone far… Wish I could see. It's so cold. I gotta find it.

She felt my presence and turned around so quickly that she fell back on her bottom. She was still crying, but I didn't think she knew that. "I don't want trouble," she said frantically, scrambling backward, her boot-covered feet finding no purchase in dirt and gravel.

I kept my distance as I replied, "I'm sorry he hurt you. I wish very much that I'd gotten here sooner."

The muscles around her mouth and eyes twitched, as if she might cry out—in pain, in anger, in something deep and corrosive—but she calmed herself, bottled it up, despite shock. "Don't matter. I been touched before. They take what they want." She shrugged bitterly, a grimace on her round face. She picked at a loose thread from her clothes.

I looked at her closely, and it was from doing so that I saw the blood on her skirt, where the boy had pushed it up around her thighs and hips, where she'd attempted to wipe herself clean of the memory.

Knowing better, I took a deep lungful of air.

For a long time, I stared at that red stain, trembling—disgusted with the situation, disgusted with the boy, disgusted with myself.

Why hadn't I stopped breathing before returning to her?

But I kept breathing, kept pulling in the scents around me—oranges and pecans and honey, earth and trees, sex and fear and salty sweat. I kept staring, kept seeing red, red, red. And then I smelled adrenaline as she realized I wasn't innocent, wasn't going to save her this time—if saving her is what I'd really done in the first place. I wondered. Had I saved her with good intention or had I been a predator of a different kind, before I'd ever pulled the boy off her?

I was moving closer, drifting like a deceptively lazy breeze, but I was aware of every sound, every tiny shift of nature, of the fine hair on Beth's arms. A hunter sees all, feels all.

It wasn't the twelfth, and as I pushed her head to one side, bared her neck to my teeth, it didn't matter. At least it would be quick.

As I drank, she stared up at the sky sleepily, still in shock, still wondering where the fourth orange had rolled. When it was over, I sat beside her stiffening corpse and watched the moon rise high in the sky. A thick, suffocating fog rolled in, settling low on the ground to shroud the faces of my victims.

"Rest in peace, Beth," I whispered as I marked down the last music note and gave the piece a title. "Blood Oranges." I slipped the staff paper into the plastic sleeves inside the folder, then closed everything up, tried to bury the memories and guilt—an impossibility, truly.

As if sensing my unease, Lucky whimpered and nudged my bare heel with his wet nose. It was a comfort. He'd been with me for a few years now. He was still living. I wasn't that monster anymore—or, I was, but I held him at bay. Even with Bella.

At least, I hoped I did.

I moved from the piano bench and lay down on the floor. I always felt unnerved after composing, especially since giving up live human blood. There was a disconcerting dissension between the creature I'd been, and the one I was now, and a creeping fear that at any moment I might snap and become him again—become a slave to blood. There'd be fewer books, less music and certainly no Bella. I hadn't been clean for long—if I could even be called "clean" now—would I slip one day?

I clicked my tongue, and Lucky rose to come lie beside me. He cuddled close to my side and rested his chin on my stomach with a sigh. He was warm and completely nonjudgmental.

Massaging the scruff of his neck, I said, "You know, I think you're the only one who really knows me." I snorted. "Well, you, and perhaps Alice Cullen."

My cell phone vibrated in my pocket.

Speak of the devil…

"Hello, Alice," I answered, wondering if she'd seen me speak of her. "Calling to tell me the winning numbers for the day?"

"Ha, ha," she said dryly. "But, really, how much do you want to know?"

I laughed. "I thought you didn't like to interfere."

"I never said I didn't like to. I said I didn't. Mostly. There's a difference."

"All right, Carnac. What is it?"

"It's Bella."

I sat up abruptly. Lucky grunted in annoyance and stalked off to his dog bed. "What's wrong with Bella?" I asked. "Is it Charlie?"

"Well, Bella's…okay," Alice said slowly, "but she is having a little meltdown."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she's getting trashed, and she really shouldn't drive."

I groaned. "Where is she?"

"At the Crescent Club, near Lake Crescent. Off the—"

"I know where it is," I interrupted. "Alice, is she all right? Is she safe there?"

"She's okay," she replied. "She's just upset, I think. Don't worry about her safety. She's drowning her sorrows with a couple of old guys, but they seem harmless."

"All right. I'll get going," I said. "Alice?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"What can I expect with her? Over the next few days."

"Are you asking me to check your future?"

I huffed. "Perhaps."

Alice let out a tinkling laugh that echoed, loud and tinny, through the phone. "Curiosity killed the cat, you know. If I tell you, it's going to ruin everything—so, nope. You're on your own, I'm afraid."

I was beginning to think she'd been a witch in her human life.

"Go get Bella," she said, and I could tell she was smiling.

"I'm getting in the car now. Anything else?"

"A word of advice?"

"Might as well hear it, since that's all you're giving me."

"Just love her. It's all she wants. It's all you want, really. Don't make it complicated. And…try not to lie so much. Give her what truth you can."

I frowned, thinking over her words. "Do you see… What do you see in our future? Not the immediate—the long-term."—if there could be any sort of long-term—"Can you see it?"

"There are two paths right now," she started vaguely, sounding exactly like a carnival fortuneteller, "and on both, she'll always love you. There's just some question of how long you have together."

The Crescent Club was a quiet bar tucked between a mass of trees near Lake Crescent. As far as bars went, it was a nicer establishment and only smelled slightly of urine, vomit and smoke. At least Bella chose well.

To say Bella was drunk was really an understatement. The amount of alcohol in her bloodstream was theoretically impressive and obscured her scent in the most disturbing of ways.

Sitting up at the bar, a dozen shot glasses littered around her, she'd attracted quite an older male following, but this proved to be as innocuous as Alice thought it was. They were buying shots with her and drowning them with commendable diligence, the only difference being that they were typical daytime drinkers and substantially heavier than Bella. I'd learned over the years that most women had no idea of when to stop, thinking they could drink as much as a man with the same results. This day, Bella didn't seem to care, one way or the other.

It was a wonder she was able to sit upright.

"Edward! What're you doin' here?" she said loudly—too loudly in the small pub—when she caught sight of me. "I din know you're coming!"

"I'm taking you home," I said, shaking my head and actually trying to hold back laughter. I shouldn't find this funny in the least, but the thoughts around her were innocent enough, and Bella did look rather…tanked. I tilted my head to one side. "How likely are you to be sick?" In my car, no less.

Maybe we should take hers…

"Pfft, I'm fine," she said, swaying a little, even though she was seated. "I could drink you under a table."

I did laugh then. "I think you're already well under the table, perhaps even under the pub itself." I grabbed her by her elbow, helping her to her feet. "Come on, then."

She resisted, but only slightly, stumbling against me, using my shirt for balance. It stretched under her tugging. "Hey, I'm not done with my drink!"

"Small miracles," I muttered as I tucked two twenties beneath an empty shot glass. I turned her toward the doorway and put my arm around her waist, lest she go careening off into walls like a haywire pinball.

"Bye, Frank!" Bella called cheerfully at the front door, waving to a rotund man in a Sturgis Motorcycle Rally jacket, who she'd been sitting beside. He turned and waved a meaty hand, smiling through the wiry curls of his substantial salt-and-pepper beard. He was missing a molar. From a fistfight, I suspected, not tooth decay.

"See ya 'round, Bellaaa," he said in a raspy voice, then belched with gusto.

"Making friends in high places, I see," I said as I made sure Bella was buckled in the passenger's seat. Again. She was being uncooperative and kept unbuckling it between giggles.

I buckled the seatbelt one more time and fixed her with a stern stare. "Don't touch it."

"Or what?" She grinned, a mischievous light in her eyes.

"I don't know," I said, "but you won't like it."

She laughed loudly, her head tilting back. For now, she was happy, but I knew there was a reason—or reasons—she'd gone to the bar in the first place. It was late afternoon, and I had to wonder when she'd begun drinking. I sniffed. Awhile ago, it seemed.

"What about my car?" she asked, and turned around in her seat to look out the rear window, even though her Honda was parked to the right of us.

"We'll come back to get it," I promised, giving her knee a very gentle squeeze.

"Okay."

She leaned over, then, and kissed my cheek. "You're good to me," she said with a sigh. Having tilted the seat back to rest, she settled down as we pulled out of the parking lot, a warm hand on my thigh.

Bella walked unsteadily into the kitchen from the garage. I held onto her hands and looked at her closely. "Do you want anything? There's food from last night…"

She wrapped her arms around my neck. "I just want you," she said, and one slender leg curled around mine.

"Is that so?" Without thinking, I grabbed her behind the knee and held her close, leaning back into the kitchen counter, so her weight was pressed against me. Even with alcohol obscuring her scent, I knew what she was on about. One would have to be fool not to know.

The question was what was I thinking, reacting like this?

"You're a very friendly drunk." It would be better for us if she weren't.

"I am with you," she said in a low voice. "Only with you."

I touched her lower lip, felt her warm breath flow across my thumb. "That's a comfort."

Fingers began tinkering at the top button of my jeans. "Stop," I said softly. "You're inebriated. We are not doing anything."

No matter how much other parts of me were considering it by giving me a play-by-play in my mind. Being with Bella in any intimate capacity was risk enough; to do anything while she was drunk, while her hormones were doing such devilishly wonderful things… I saw blood and broken bones. I saw mistakes and oranges and Beth. There could be no pleasure down that path, only agony. I knew well how good intentions could go awry.

Never mind the fact that Bella had clearly not wanted us to do anything earlier in the day. I didn't want her to regret being with me.

"In-eee-bree-aye-ted," Bella said, trying to mimic my lower register. She snorted a laugh shortly after.

Sighing, I kissed her forehead and let her leg drop from my hand. "Exactly." Bending at the knees, I swept her up in my arms. "Come on. Let's get you to bed. Maybe a painkiller wouldn't go amiss, either."

"Ooh, you're taking me to bed."

"To sleep," I said firmly.

"But I want to do stuff."

"I'm not even sure you're capable of that right now." Indeed, Bella was resting in my arms like a limp dishrag, her glazed eyes drifting casually between my face and the ceiling.

Bella giggled against my neck as I laid her down on the bed, and I found myself laughing with her. I'd seen her tipsy before, but not flat-out drunk like this. It was entertaining, even if a little unnervingly reminiscent of other women I'd seen in this state. And killed.

I made her take a painkiller and drink a glass of water. Passion went out of her with the softness of the bed, and I all but took her jeans off for her.

I climbed into bed beside her and smiled when she grabbed at the collar of my shirt, snuggled up close and fell asleep instantly.

Bella didn't sleep peacefully, though. Whether that was from what had upset her earlier in the day or from drinking, I didn't know, but she tossed and turned for the six hours she slept, her eyes shifting uneasily beneath their covering lids. She dreamed, calling out for me, calling out for Charlie. Her heart rioted under the effects of drink and stress.

At ten, she jerked awake, gasping loudly into the night.

"Shh, shh," I soothed, holding her close. "You're all right."

She stared up at me, her eyes darting left and right, searching. "Edward?"

I kissed her forehead and stroked her hair. "I'm here."

Fiercely gripping the unforgiving skin of my shoulder, she slowly returned to the waking world.

"All right now?" I asked some time later.

She nodded. "I want you," she said quietly, foregoing preamble.

My hand stilled on the back of her neck. "What's changed? This morning you didn't want me at all." I sounded surprisingly bitter about that and unnecessarily cleared my throat.

"I was still thinking," she replied.

"About us and me, you said?"

She nodded.

"And what conclusions did you come to?" I asked hesitantly.

"It doesn't matter." She sounded as perplexed as I felt and shrugged.

"What do you mean?"

"I just want you," she said and rested a hand on my chest. "More than anything else, that's what I decided."

I felt a knot in my stomach come apart. I wasn't going to lose her. Not over the jacket, at least.

I teased her. "It took drinking to excess to realize this?"

"No, that came after the epiphany. I needed a break for a little while. From everything."

That I could understand, even if I couldn't appreciate liquor.

"And you're sober now?" I asked.

"Completely," she said, and then sat up and pulled off her shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra and dark pink nipples stood out in the cold air of the room. I reached out and brushed a line from the hollow of her neck down to the edge of her underwear.

"You're beautiful," I told her.

We bared ourselves to each other, then, vulnerable yet bold in the night. I traced the fluid lines of her body, traversed the scars and bumps and bruises that made up the roadmap of her humanity. I saw her flaws and treasured them all, simply because they were hers, because they meant she was alive.

Against my better judgment, we played with fire, each of us standing close enough to the flames to get burned; each of us impassioned enough not to care. I breathed in her scent as we faced each other and moved together, her leg thrown over my hip.

Here, nothing but us mattered. We were safe from the past, safe even from inevitable futures. There was no death, no Charlie, no blood—simply us. It wouldn't last, I knew, but I grabbed hold of it now.

She slid along the length of me, feverish and slick and wanting. If we were to tilt, only slightly, all bets would be off.

We should stop, a part of me thought, but I only held her tighter.

"Make love to me," Bella said, breathless.

I couldn't think straight. Her blood pumped wildly, flooding up and down twisting vascular highways. I smelled her need, her heat, her deep desire for me. And I kept breathing it in, wanting more. She smelled of roses and freesia, crisp grass and sex.

And I nodded.

Parts of me were frightened, but more parts were willing, and so it was that I found myself on my back as Bella slid down, her hands braced against my chest, her dark brown eyes open and staring into mine. Her body warmed my own as she moved over me, as I pushed upward; we almost felt the same, beneath her smoldering heat.

I grabbed hold of her waist, desperately needing to touch her with my hands, to know that this wasn't another one of my farfetched fantasies when it came to Bella.

It wasn't.

Echoing the burn in my throat, her skin, her whole body, was a flickering flame, bright and hot in the night. Her abdominal pulse thumped beneath my thumbs.

Bella twisted her hips and gave me a small smile as she placed her hands over my own. "Not so tight?" she asked, patting my knuckles.

I immediately let my hands drop to the bed. My body froze beneath hers. "I'm sorry. Are you hurt?" I frantically looked over her stomach, her hips, her breasts—anywhere I'd touched her—but I couldn't see bruises.

Yet.

I was still taking inventory, when she put a hand to my cheek. "Edward? Look at me." I forced myself to look into her eyes and was surprised to only find love there, not revulsion. "It's okay," she said. "I'm not hurt. I'd tell you if anything hurt." She smiled gently. "I'm okay. Really."

"I can't lose you," I whispered. I didn't like how ominous that sounded, when spoken, but it was the truth. Losing her was not an option.

"You won't lose me," she said simply, and began to move again, this time leaning close, veiling us in dark waves of hair. She took my hands, and I let her guide them to her hips.

It was no small effort to hold back as a monster. I was so very afraid, but Bella was confident, more so than I'd ever seen her, and I slowly allowed myself to find solace in that. I marveled at her body, which fit so well, so warmly against my own. In spite of our temperature differences, sweat beaded on Bella's breasts—a sign of laboring love.

She groaned in low tones as I pulled her hips down—pushed my hips up—harder, sometimes faster. "That's it," I encouraged, smiling as I felt her thighs shake in anticipation.

It was dangerous, but soon all I could think of was how I wanted her to feel, how I wanted to feel. Loved. Alive. Free.

I breathed her in, savored the burn. She lived. I touched her. She remained unbroken.

I was perhaps still a monster, but I was not the same monster. Because of her.

Something inside me healed—that painful ache of loneliness—as she let go around me, as I felt the undulating notes of pleasure ripple through her body, heard them as they came tumbling from her mouth in one sustained cry. It was a feeling, a sound that called to me, siren-like, and I came inside her, holding her firmly by her thighs, trembling and hissing through my teeth as I held back my strength. She laced our fingers and threw back her head, exposing a long, slender throat that ticked on both sides with the sign of lively, flowing blood. I watched, not out of thirst, but out of wonder.

"I love you," I said once we'd come down from our high. It felt like there should be other words to give her—I love you seemed inadequate—but it was all I had. I held her close, following the hilly ridges of her spine with my fingers, trying to express through touch what I had no words for.

We were still connected, and I wondered how long it was feasible for us to stay that way. And when Bella might want me again. Now that we'd made love, I wondered what else we could do—how and where and how often. I had a very thorough imagination.

My fantasies were interrupted when Bella kissed my shoulder and sat up. We both groaned a little with the movement, and then laughed, almost shyly. "You definitely didn't hurt me," she said, grinning as she stretched. She was glowing.

I'd made her that way.

"You have no idea how glad I am of that."

It was to be short-lived relief, as it turned out.

"Edward, we need to talk about why you think you would hurt me," she said, quirking a brow. And I saw that determined glint in her brown eyes. It was a Swan look, I'd learned; a little owlish, as if, on the inside, she were saying, Checkmate.

I stared at her with what I hoped was a neutral expression, while I prepared myself as best I could. She couldn't possibly be about to do what I thought she was… Could she?

Oh, God. She wasn't even going to let us put our clothes on for this. We remained naked, still connected below the waist as she said words that made me want to run from the room, run away from the whole state of Washington.

"I don't think you're human."