Chapter Fourteen

BPOV

The heat of the morning sun beats down on us, blistering my skin and turning Edward's a butterscotch brown. Reaching over one shoulder, he bunches the fabric in his hand and removes the pesky, plastered shirt from his body in one, swift movement. Those ridges and tightly-coiled muscles of his ripple under the sun. Pressing my thighs tightly together, I try to squelch the desire to dart across the lawn from the "For Sale" sign I'm inspecting in the front yard. Somehow I maintain my distance, turning as the crunch of gravel under tires pulls me from my sinful thoughts.

A blue minivan pulls into the drive, timid in its pace. Before the driver or passenger side doors open, the back door slides open, revealing a pigtailed girl with a face full of freckles. Hoping out of the van, she skips her way across the lawn, a doll swinging in her hand.

"Zoey," a woman I presume is her mother calls. The woman gives me an apologetic smile and shoves her sunshades onto her forehead. "Kids," she says, shrugging, as though that one word explains everything.

I nod, swallowing the discomfort lodge inside my throat. It still hurts sometimes, to be reminded of something that once could have been, to be reminded of what may never be.

"Can I help you with something?"

"We were passing through and saw the sign." She nods at the red and white sign wedged into the ground beside me. "We've been looking for a house. My husband says there's no way it's within our budget, but I begged him to stop anyway. This home … it's exactly what I picture when I imagine my family dream house."

Following the line of her eyes, I try to imagine what she sees. Maybe she's thinking of Christmas morning, of the little, freckle-faced girl ripping open presents. Maybe she imagines family dinners, of smiles and laughter.

When I stare at the house I think of whiskey nights and broken promises. I think of pain and hurt and attempts to make everything all better with coats of paint and late-night love-making to the man living in my pool house. I remember insulting words and slaps in the face.

"What is your max price?" I ask.

Edward crosses the lawn as the woman blushes and confesses her price. The numbers she stumbles over are far lower than my asking price, but one glance at the pigtailed girl chasing a butterfly around the lawn makes the decision for me. Edward nods, smiling and wrapping his arms around me. His body is warm and protective, loving me in a way I've so lacked over the years.

I smile at the brown-haired woman. "What a coincidence. That's the exact price we were asking for."

Edward's childhood bedroom in his parents' Chicago home is crowded. It's crowded with our belongings from our recent move, crowded with the excitement flowing through the air.

"I can't believe I got accepted," Edward mumbles. The paper he clutches flutters in his shaking hands.

"I knew you would." I squeal, bouncing on my heels. My exuberance causes him to drop the paper. I've rarely felt this excited, this intoxicated with happiness and laughter and promise.

"Hey, hey, hey," Esme's voice calls up the stairway. Within seconds she's joining us in the upstairs bedroom. "What's with all the hollering?"

"Edward heard back from IIT," I say, my face hurting from my violent grin. "He starts in the fall."

"Oh, sweetie," Esme cries.

They embrace and I stoop down, snatching the forgotten paper from the floor. I read the words over and over, mumbling, "IIT College of Architecture. I knew you could do it. I knew you could do it."

Carlisle overhears all the commotion and soon joins us, a proud grin gracing his face. He declares a night of celebration and debauchery, or Thai food, which is debauchery, but only on my stomach.

"I'm gonna make celebratory love to you tonight," Edward mumbles in my ear. His tongue darts out, teasing my lobe. Esme smirks nearby, her back leaning against her husband's chest.

"You're embarrassing me in front of your folks." I elbow him, my face burning hot. "They've already overheard us enough, don't you think?"

"We gotta get our own place." He groans, burying his face in the crook of my neck. "Making love to you quietly is torture."

"Sweet torture," I whisper, my words partly smothered by his kiss.

I hear Carlisle and Esme discreetly disappear from the room, pulling the door behind them, but I don't watch them leave. No, my eyes are closed and my mouth is open. I'm lost in a wonderland of heated kisses, of my body bumping against Edward's childhood desk. Trophies fall from the walls and clatter to the floor. We land on his bed in a sea of flailing limbs, struggling to remove the clothes that separate our wanton bodies.

"This is like high school," I say, giggling as he tugs my shirt over my head. "Sneaking around behind your parents' back."

"This is nothing like high school." He licks his bottom lip and cups my strapless bra. "I was a geek in high school, long before it was cool to be a geek. Girls didn't give me a second glance."

Raising and lowering my breasts, the curves of flesh eventually peek over the tops of the cups, revealing the top half-moon of my nipples. I reach behind me, unhooking my bra. The fabric falls away, my breasts now trapped in his hands. Taking his time, he slowly, tortuously skims the pad of his roughened thumb over the sensitive buds. They harden under his touch; harden to the point of pain and desperation for relief.

Threading my fingers in his hair, I guide his face to my chest. His breath is warm against my flesh, partly soothing the aching need of my nipples until his hot tongue darts out, teasing one with the tip. Rolling his tongue around the elongated peak, he moans my name and sucks my nipple into his mouth. Flickering tongue transforms into a gentle sucking and I fall back on the bed, my hips rolling on their own accord. His hand travels up my bare leg, sneaking below the fabric of my skirt, and cupping my sex.

I'm hot, so hot between my legs and wet for him. His fingers ease the scrap of fabric aside and he slides two fingers easily in. Sticky-sweet sounds fills the air, the sound of his palm slapping against my clit, the sound of his fingers delving deep. Eyes roaming my body, they eventually rest on where his hand works me, only rising to meet mine when I tense and cry his name, spasming around his deft fingers.

Entangling the crotch of my panties with his wet fingers, he pulls them away from my body and tosses them aside. I open my legs wide and he's there, his mouth between my legs within seconds. Spreading me with his fingers, he takes a long lick, blowing a hot breath on my needy nub and flicking it with his flattened tongue. I clench my muscles, tightening the ones inside with each swipe of his tongue until I hear the zipper lowering on his jeans.

Brushing his hands from his fly I pull him free, wrapping my hand around the base and stroking upward, upward, upward until he's hovering over me. Jutting forward, he enters me in one swoop, releasing one shuddering breath and we both moan. Filling me to the hilt, he delves deeply inside, stroking that spot the natural curve of his cock always seems to find. It paralyzes me, only to melt my bones, the heat trickling from my core and down my legs, tingling my toes. I clench and clench and clench until my body is clenching on its own, milking him in a constant rhythm that he loves.

"I feel you," he moans. "I feel you squeezing me. God, you feel so good."

Picking up pace, his hips swivel, his movements jerking me further up the bed until my hands are on the headboard, my heels digging into his back. Desperate for more, always desperate for more, I dig my heels in deeper, forcing him harder and harder until warm fluids fills me, spilling around his cock and soaking the bed below us.

Exhausted, he crumbles beside me, pulling my legs back around him when I attempt to remove them.

"When will the apartment be ready?" he asks, wiping the sweat from his brow.

"Another week. Why?"

"Because I plan on doing that on every surface of our new home."

I smile and close my eyes, breathing in the moment. The air is humid from our love-making. My bones are sore, my thighs are sticky, and I'm not as young as I once was.

"What are you thinking about?" he asks, propping his elbow on the bed, leaning against his fist. "You look deep in thought."

"Thinking about how old I am."

He groans and closes his eyes. "Don't remind me. I'm starting college in the fall. College. I'm old enough to be a professor."

Edward pretends to be disgruntled with his exaggerated claim, but I see the excitement in his eyes. My own acceptance letter to a local college is tucked in the top drawer of his desk. I want to tell him. I want to tell him that I've decided to change my career path. Dreams of going back to school and teaching young children are gone now. Instead, I have a new dream, to become a counselor and to help others like me overcome their demons.

But I'll save my acceptance letter for another day. For now, I want him to bask in his own glory, to concentrate on his own happiness. Because he deserves it. He deserves to have one day without the worries of moving into a new apartment, a day of not catching my far away gaze as I think about my parents' recent divorce. He deserves a day of unbroken happiness and I'll give it to him. Because we aren't broken. Sure, there are cracks and dents in the surface of our relationship, but we're not shattered all the way through. The pieces of our past aren't completely broken. They're bound together. We're bound together.

Bound together by love.

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