The music picks up and Edward pulls me along with him. His eyes are still burning a hole into mine. We spin and twirl and he lifts me higher and higher, when he sets me down, I am so close to him. I can feel his chest rise and fall. I feel his hips as they twist. His thighs brush against mine with every movement and now, he wants to talk about Peter?

"I swear, I'm not playing games. I'm just not sure what you want me to say." I could explain to Edward how often I've thought about breaking things off with Peter but how chicken shit I am to just do it.

"I want the truth. I want to know why you love him; why you stay faithful to him. What makes him worth it? Just tell me."

Edward asks for the truth, but I just don't think he knows how complicated it is.

"I stay with Peter because it's easy. It's what my parents expect of me. They trust me with him. He's my routine. He's familiar and safe. And I'm with him because I feel like it's part of who I am."

"But not because you love him?" he asks in an almost whisper.

I shake my head and look away. I feel ashamed, like I just admitted how pathetic I am.

Our dancing slows. Now we're swaying more than dancing, but he's still holding me tight and close. I'm still leaning in to him and our breathing is fast and synchronized.

There's no other place that I'd rather be.

"It doesn't have to be that way, especially if you don't love him. He doesn't make you who you are, Bella. Don't you ever get bored of him?"

I laugh without meaning to. "I get bored every day, Edward, but I'm getting by. You know how that is. In time in won't matter if Peter and I break up now or in May, after we graduate."

"True, but you don't have to be bored. Life is too short for that."

He dips me backward, that is so not in the routine. My hair flips and flies when he pulls me back up.

His eyes just keep getting darker and darker, and I just keep slipping and drowning in them.

"I know, I just never cared before," I admit with a shrug.

"You should care." His eyes narrow and he dips me again.

My body is hot. My skin is threatening to sweat. My heart is beating triple time in my chest. There's too much closeness and talk and intimacy. It all burrows down into my soul and tries to turn me inside out.

The song changes and we stop dancing The Volta, even though we weren't really dancing that at all.

We begin to practice The Galliard and everything is going good. Edward and I really have rhythm together, our moves look precise.

Then he does that thing where he draws me into him, like a magnet. Opposites that attract and then have to be pried apart.

"I just can't see the appeal of monogamy, Bella. One person? Really?" His eyes mirror humor, but I think there's something richer to his questioning.

Without thinking, I mold against him a little more. A boldness takes over, one that may be playing with fire, but one that is willing to get burned.

"Have you ever been turned on by just the brush of a knee, or the gentle touch of an arm innocently resting beside yours in a movie theater?" I trace my fingers across his chest.

"No."

"Have you ever felt someone eyes drinking you in from across the room? Knowing for certain that you're the one they want, you're the one they are positively going home with?"

"Kind of," he answers with a narrow of his eyes as they drop down to look at my mouth.

I shift up to stand on my tip-toes and speak low and direct into his ear, my lips so close to his sensitive skin.

The tension in his hold around my waist tightens.

"Have you ever... had an orgasm... just from a kiss?" I speak each word with such emphasis I feel his shudder.

"No" falls from his mouth with an unsure cough and I feel like I just won the battle. Take that Edward Cullen!

"Then yeah, I suppose you wouldn't understand." I step back out of his arms and bow to him before turning and walking away.

When I pick up my water bottle to take a drink, Edward is still watching me.

"Thirsty?" I ask.

"Shit!" He spins away from me. In a move I'm sure I'm not supposed to see, I watch as he adjusts his junk.

Score one for me!

/ / /

We dance for a little while longer before he suddenly turns to me. "Let's go for a drive again."

"Right now?"

Edward points to the window. "Yeah, there's a full moon tonight."

He doesn't even wait for me to say yes. He's already clicking off buttons and turning off lights.

He tells me to go home and he'll meet me there. He's in this excited rush.

I still don't know what he's planning.

When he pulls up to my house riding a motorcycle, my heart practically lunges up into my throat.

He turns off the bike and I start to protest as soon as he kicks the kickstand open and leans the bike over.

He ignores me and stands to shrugs off his jacket. "Put this on."

He turns and unstraps a helmet from the back and shoves it my way. "And this too."

I slip my arms into his leather jacket, it's so warm and it smells so good. It also swallows me whole, but I zip it up anyway and try not to bury my face in it.

He helps me adjust the helmet strap under my chin, and it fits well enough.

That gleam is in his eyes again…it's pure excitement and life and...just plain ol' happy.

I like that I get to share it with him, it rubs off on straddles the bike and puts on his helmet. He motions for me to join him. My legs are kind of heavy and resistant, but I go.

He cocks his head to the side. "Get on."

"I'm scared," I say with a nervous laugh.

"You know you can trust me."

I take his offered hand and climb on behind him.

He slips on a pair of gloves and flexes his hands.

He turns his head to the side to talk to me. "You have to hold on to me good, you can put your hands in my sweatshirt pocket." He grabs my hands and sticks them in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.

He starts up the motorcycle and rumble is outstanding. The vibration jars my body. He curls his fingers up underneath my knee and I slide down the seat as he pulls me in tighter to his back.

My mind wants to go there—to think about us like this. The way his legs are wide open and his thighs are flexed and tight in his jeans. The way mine are open too and cradling his. How my front, boobs and all, are pressed up against his back. And now my hands, how there's only a few scraps of material between my fingertips and his flesh.

But after he takes off and gets up to a good speed, all I can concentrate is holding on. I turn to lay my head against his shoulder.

I stretch my arms and curl them more around his waist, holding him in a hug.

The wind whips around all the strands of my hair that are flying out from underneath my helmet.

The air is a little chilly, but I don't feel it. I might as well be cuddled up next to a fire.

We get caught at the first stop light we come to. He slows down gently.

Edward handles this bike with ease. I feel safe and secure with him driving. I never would have thought that.

"Are you scared now?" He turns his head to the side and shouts over the engine.

"No!"

"I bet ol' Petey never made you feel like this, huh?"

Then he revs the motor and the tires make a short squealing sound and we take off again.

My grip on him tightens but not because I feel like I'm about to fall. I just need him closer.

Edward's right, he knows. Peter's never made me feel like this, so alive and free. I'm pretty sure, he never will.

What Edward doesn't know is that he's ruining me, I don't know if any other guy will ever make me feel like this again.

Edward is setting the bar so high.

"The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling." ~ Hugh Latime