It was dark in my apartment, nothing but candlelight to guide me into my bedroom. The glow grew gradually brighter as I made my way forward, the light flickering gently, and I could see a shadow in front of me, just beyond the doorway of my room, and, strangely I felt no fear. I felt… content. Even though I didn't immediately recognise the stranger.

As I stepped through the door, a small, lithe body pressed me back against the wall, gentle hands on my waist, fingers barely brushing the brief strip of skin that was visible where my shirt ended and my jeans began, and a pair of ice cold, though extremely soft, lips sought out my own.

I returned the kiss eagerly, my hands threading through short, soft hair, in an effort to keep that heavenly mouth on my own for as long as I possibly could. I didn't care about oxygen; at that moment, it didn't matter. All that mattered was the person pressed close against me.

I shivered, despite my now-flushed skin, and a soft gasp escaped my lips as one of those hands reached behind me to cup my ass, bringing a thigh in-between my own. I groaned as said thigh moved to grind against me and into my centre, and my head fell back against the wall, oxygen now a necessity.

My breathing was ragged, and it wasn't helped any by the fact that those lips were now trailing down the side of my neck – cold as ice, but leaving a blazing fire in their wake. My heart was pounding in my ears, and when teeth grazed softly against my pulse point, my head spun and my knees shook, and a soft chuckle emitted from the girl in front of me.

"Shall we move this over to the bed?" A velvet voice asked me, a mere whisper in my ear, full of want, and need, and desire – the promise of things yet to come. I could only nod as teeth grazed my earlobe, just with the right amount of pressure to make my legs shake again, and the hands wrapped around me tightened, as though afraid I might fall.

I finally opened my eyes, titling my head forward again, wanting to capture her lips once more, and my eyes connected with ones of a deep, molten golden, swirling with emotion. I took in the wild, wanting look in those eyes, the dishevelled look of her hair from where I'd run my fingers through it, and the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in unnecessary air.

"Alice," I murmured as she finally kissed me, my head beginning to spin once more as I allowed her to pull me towards the bed, our bodies pressed flush against each other the whole time as her knees hit the back of the bed, causing her to fall backwards and for me to land on top of her, my knees on either side of her body, straddling her waist…

And that was when I woke up, sweating and startled, in my own bed, my mind racing and my heart pounding almost as much as it had been in that stupid dream. My breath came out in quick gasps, as I was suddenly breathless – I could believe that I'd had another stupid sex dream.

Because it had been happening all week.

Apparently, it was too much to ask to get a decent night's sleep, without waking up a sweaty mess, with an uncomfortable, and highly irritating, ache in-between my legs.

And not only that, I was also furious with myself. My subconscious mind was quite the masochist, I was coming to find out, and it was with a groan that I rolled out of bed, glancing at the clock and seeing with dismay that I still had another two hours before I was due to be at work.

Stupid, stupid, idiotic dreams.

I blamed Alice almost as much as myself – not that she'd done anything to provoke my mind. Well, other than being pretty damn se –

No, Bella, no. Alice wasn't sexy. Alice was just... Alice. Just another vampire. Another vampire who, apparently, I was supposed to be getting into a serious relationship with sometime soon.

Seriously. All I ever wanted was a normal life, and what do I get?

This.

She'd been avoiding me all week, ever since the big revelation – and what I suspected to be the cause of my dreams. I'd seen her at work, but only briefly – whenever she saw me, she'd quickly disappear on some sort of 'business'. It was like I'd dreamed of when I'd first learned that I'd have to put up with her presence – except now, ironically, I actually wanted to talk to her.

It was kind of important, really, when you thought about it. I mean, when she'd first revealed her reason for being here, she'd told me that we had a month before the Volturi came looking for me. However, now around half of the time had passed, and I was no closer to being safe than I had been before.

I climbed into the shower with a contented sigh, letting the scalding water wash away any remnants of the dream from my skin, knowing that I had plenty of time to just stand and think. I often did a lot of thinking in the shower, allowing my mind to wander. It relaxed me, for some relatively unknown reason, but I wasn't going to question anything that was going to help me get through all of this.

I was distantly aware of the phone ringing from my bedroom, but I was unwilling to leave the shower just yet and assumed that if it were really important, they'd leave me a message. Besides – were they not aware of the absolutely ridiculous hour of the morning?

I had no idea how long I stayed in that shower for, but it was long enough for me to start sweating again under the intense heat, and for the skin on my fingers to start to wrinkle, so regretfully I turned off the water and wrapped a towel around myself before heading back into my room.

I ran a towel through my hair before checking my phone, realising excitedly that it had been Angela that had rang me. I had filled her in, sorta, on what was going on with Alice, using the excuse that she thought I could be in danger from Edward. It hadn't worked as well as I'd liked – if Angela's threats to get on a plane and 'fly her ass back over there to kick his sorry ass herself' were anything to go by. I had eventually managed to talk her into staying where she was, promising that I'd keep her updated, and to let her have free reign if Edward ever tried anything.

"Do you have any idea what time it is over here? You woke me up." I didn't bother with any usual greeting – we were far too close for that now.

"No, I did not."

"How do you know? Installed cameras in here when you visited?"

"Please. And capture all your sordid little escapades on camera? No, thank you. I could do without the mental scarring." I grinned, cheering up in spite of myself – just talking to Ange always had that affect. It was times like these that I regretted we didn't live closer to each other. "And I know I didn't wake you up because you're cranky when you get woken up."

"I am not."

"Yes, you are. Do you not remember that time that I was visiting and I could sleep?"

"You made a cocktail. At three in the morning."

"Hey, copious amounts of vodka make me sleepy! Anyway, it woke you up, and I swear to God, Bella, I have never seen anyone look as murderous as you did in that moment. I feared for my life."

"Yeah, I'm sure. Besides, that cocktail shaker was loud. You have no-one to blame but yourself."

"I did! And it's not my fault you chose to buy the noisiest one." As I laughed with her, I felt myself start to ease up a little more, and I asked the regular questions – how she was, how things were going – in the hope that I could stall her asking about Alice for a little while longer.

"Everything's fine here. Boring as ever – oh! You'll never guess who called me the other day. Ben."

"Really?" Angela and Ben had broken up during their first year at college – I had been surprised, because really, those two had seemed perfect for each other. I don't think anyone, even those two themselves, really understand why they'd broken up, but I suspected it had a little something to do with college experimentation and realising that staying with the same person from high school until old age was a pretty daunting thing. Either way, it'd been an amicable break-up, but they'd lost touch over recent years.

"Yup. He wants to meet up. I told him I'd think about it – what do you think I should do?" I knew then that this was why she'd called me, knowing that it would be so early – it was instinct to ring the other immediately for advice when we were unsure of what to do.

"I say go for it. I mean, it won't harm anyone, will it? Unless you don't want to go." I knew there must be something else nagging at her – otherwise she would have accepted the invitation without talking to me first.

"I don't know. Won't it be weird? I mean, we haven't seen each other for years…" She trailed off, and I realised had eerily similar her and my situations were. I nearly laughed, but decided that it wasn't worth the questions she would ask me.

"Maybe so, but you won't know if you don't try. Just give him a chance – you might have an awful time, or you might have an awesome one. I'd say it's worth the risk, wouldn't you?"

"See, I knew you'd be able to convince me what was the right thing to do."

"It's because I'm awesome."

It was such a damn shame that I wasn't as good at giving myself advice as I was at giving Angela some.

"So, how are things with Alice?"

"Alright." I made a face at the mention of her name – not that Angela could see it. "She hasn't spoken to me for a while."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"I guess."

"You want to talk to her, don't you?"

"I just… yeah, ok. I want to talk to her."

"Then do it. I mean, seriously, how hard can it be?" I smothered a laugh again because really, Ange had no idea how hard it could be. As it was, I just decided to agree with her, knowing that that would be the easiest way to steer conversation onto other topics.

"Oh, and what about Nikki?"

"…You couldn't have just skipped to a topic that didn't involve the women in my life right now?"

"Nope. This is your karma for being a womaniser. And don't even think about changing the subject, Swan. I'm onto you." Ok, so sometimes it was awesome having someone who knew you so well – and other times, it could be a pain in the ass, regardless of the fact that they were trying to help.

"I am not a womaniser!"

"You were. Don't even try to deny it. If you sleep around, even only a little, you're a womaniser. You could get anyone to fall for you, if you wanted… And stop distracting me. Nikki. Go."

"I haven't spoken to her, either," I sighed, twisted the damp ends of my hair around one of my fingers absentmindedly, only then realising that I hadn't yet gotten changed and had dripped water onto most of the side of the bed where I was sitting. Damn phone call distractions.

"Please tell me you haven't been avoiding her."

"No. I just... haven't gone out of my way not to avoid her."

"Bella!"

"What? It's not my fault!"

"No, it's not, but still. You need to talk to her. Promise me – you'll speak to Alice, and you'll speak to Nikki. Today. And then I expect your sorry ass to ring me later, after you've seen them both, with a progress report."

"What are you, my therapist?"

"I may as well be, honey. Feel free to pay me, if you want."

"Funny. Call Ben, and I'll speak to you later."

"Bye gorgeous." I hung up the phone with a wry smile, wondering how she managed to convince me to do the two things I'd been avoiding all week in just a short (ish) phone call.

I glanced at the clock, seeing that I was now (thankfully) back on schedule and dressed quickly, grabbing an apple on my way out of the door, and attempted to mentally steel myself for the day ahead.

x-x-x

I was getting anxious by lunch, having not seen Alice at all – I usually caught a brief glimpse of her on my travels, and the fact that I hadn't made me worry slightly. Did she know that I'd chosen today to talk to her? Was she avoiding me? I mean, she had been previously, but in the running-away-when-she-saw-me way, not the avoiding my floor completely way.

I sighed and tried to distract myself with the mundane conversation of my colleagues as we ate, barely able to focus on the conversation, so desperate was I to catch a glance of the girl I'd originally wanted to avoid (had it really only been two weeks since she'd arrived here? It felt like so, so much longer).

Seeing nothing, I went back up to my office in a foul mood, trying to immerse myself in my work and succeeding, for a brief, precious hour, when I became absorbed in particularly interesting article about psychological behaviour. Yeah, we published anything – literally.

I was done pretty quickly with that, though – why was that always the way? You sped through something you enjoyed doing, especially when you wanted to pass time. I had some photocopying to do, and whereas I usually had Alex do that for me, I decided that the mundane task might keep my mind occupied, for a little while, at least.

The photocopying room on my floor was right down the other end from my office, and I smiled and nodded appropriately as I passed people I knew and people I didn't. It had taken me a little while to gain an ounce of respect here – I was young, after all, when I'd started out, but I'd managed to claw my way up the ladder without too much difficulty.

It helped that I wasn't one to socialise much.

There was already someone in the room, I heard, as I paused outside the half-shut door. The sound of voice came from within, and I opened the door slightly hesitantly, wary of interrupting anything.

I saw, much to my shock and surprise, that Alice was the owner of one of the voices, and she was talking to a guy who I had affectionately (well, not really), christened the Mike Newton of our floor.

He was around my age, and wanted to sleep with anything that had a nice pair of legs. He was leering at Alice as he spoke, and I saw her eyes flicker over to mine, a slightly desperate edge to her look, apparently wanting me to rescue her. I didn't say anything, instead hanging back, curious as to how she'd get rid of the guy still chatting away.

"So, I was wondering – are you doing anything tonight?"

"I… I'm gay." I nearly choked, I was so shocked – and I saw from the disbelief on the guy's face that he was, too.

"What?"

"Yup. Sorry. But I love the ladies. So if you'll, um, excuse me…" She trailed off and tried to slip past him, but his hand gripped her arm.

"Hey, wait. You can't be gay. I mean, you're – "

"If you say finish that with 'too hot to be gay', then I will take great pleasure in punching you in the face," I chipped in, finally, having known what it was like to be on the receiving end of Mike 2.0's so called 'charm'.

"Whatever, Bella. No-one asked you." I scoffed and was about to make a snarky reply when a rather annoyed voice called out from behind me:

"Zack! Are you done copying yet?" He groaned and (reluctantly) let go of Alice's arm before he shouldered past me. I glared after him before I shut the door heavily, hoping it might catch his back on the way out. It didn't, but at least it offered me and Alice a little bit of privacy.

"Thanks," she murmured, moving back a few steps so that she was stood close to the far wall, as far away from me as she could probably get.

"For what? I didn't do much." It was the first time I'd seen her, up close, for a while. Well, in real-life anyway. Her eyes were light again, meaning that she must have hunted recently. I saw that she was appraising me in a similar way, though with an intensity that made me look away.

"It was enough to get his attention off of me."

"True." I started to copy the papers that I needed, if only so that I could look away from her face – her gaze was making me feel hot all over, and it didn't help that whenever I looked at her, I would get vivid flashes of her in the slightly compromising positions that my dreams had lead to.

Thank God she wasn't a mind reader.

"I'm sorry, you know. For avoiding you. I just figured that you'd want some space."

"Actually, I didn't. Not really. Not anymore." I chanced a brief look up, saw that she had come closer to me, and promptly looked down again. She wasn't helping matters by wearing a skirt that showed off far too much of her legs, which seemed far longer than they should have. I mean, she was tiny. And the blouse that she was wearing –

No, no, no.

No bad thoughts. This is supposed to be a serious conversation.

If Alice saw anything of my internal battle, she didn't mention it, and I wasn't about to bring up the warring sides of my brain – or well, really, it was the horny side and the logical side.

I felt like a teenage boy.

"Aren't we running out of time, though?" It was the first thought that wasn't entirely inappropriate to come out of my mouth – God, was it really these dreams that had made me such a mess around her? She hadn't made me this crazy last time we'd spoken, had she?

I couldn't remember – the things she'd revealed that night had took precedence over everything else. And the time that, I'd still been royally pissed off. And I didn't really want to dig back into my memories of when we'd been back in Forks.

Or maybe, just maybe, I was terrified of what I'd find.

"Huh?" Her voice startled me out of my slightly alarming inner-monologue, and it took me a moment to remember what I'd actually asked her.

"You said that the Volturi were coming in a month. And it's been around two weeks since then. That only gives us two weeks to…"

"Oh! God, I completely forgot."

"What? You forgot?"

"Oh, no, not about you! God, I really am awful at explaining things." She sighed and ran one hand through her hair, before she bit her lips softly as she thought. The motion made my mouth go a little dry, and I looked away again hurriedly, not wanting to blurt out any of the other thoughts floating around my head in a moment of weakness.

"I had another vision – they're going to catch Victoria at the same time, that's not changed. But then there's going to be some sort of commotion in… Romania, I think, that's going to keep them busy for a while. They're not going to come for you for at least another two months or so."

"Really?" I felt as though a great weight had been lifted – as though I could breathe again. Alice grinned at my visible relief, and I gulped.

Why, oh, why did I have to be gay right now?

Any why, why, why did she have to be so damn gorgeous?

"Yep. So, the pressure's off. But…" She trailed off, and I glanced up again automatically, noticing that she was biting her lip again.

"But?"

"I was wondering if you maybe wanted to go out tomorrow night? Just… just as friends. If you want." She was rambling, and I wondered why – had she not seen this coming?

I debated for only a brief second – I already knew what my answer would be. I'd had a lot of time to think, in the week without us talking, and I'd decided that maybe, just maybe, being with her wouldn't be so bad.

"I would love to."

A/N:

I suck at updates. I know.

I know a few people wanted to see more of Angela, so I hoped this chapter helped a little with that. I was going to add Nikki's and Bella's encounter to this chapter, but it's… Half past midnight, and I figure you'd rather have this bit now than a longer chapter whenever I get my ass back into writing mode again.

But, enough rambling.

Everyone who reviewed; thank you so much. You're all indescribably awesome, and they make my day, and make writing this so much more fun.

So yeah. You guys are all awesome. 3