Disclaimer: All the Twilight stuff belongs to Stephenie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended. I'm just playing in her sandbox.

Chapter 107 Simple Question

"Yea, Rose. Thanks. I'm ready to go home."

~oooOooo~

EPOV

I checked on my son. He was asleep in his crib in the little room that Alice had decorated just off of mine and Bella's room. I leaned down and kissed him, breathing in the soft baby smell of him that I had missed all day.

It was fairly late at night and I got undressed quietly. We never wore clothes to bed, but I knew that I had hurt my wife's feelings at the very least, and she was probably mad - really mad. I knew Bella was awake when I crawled into bed with her, but she didn't yell at me or order me out, and for that I was thankful.I could smell the dried tears on her face and I leaned over and kissed her cheek before lying back, my head on the pillow on my side of the bed. She turned over and without a word, put her head on my shoulder and wrapped an arm over my stomach. She didn't speak for the longest time, but I knew by her soft breaths that she was still awake.

I reached a hand up to move a strand of hair off her face and I let my fingers gently trail down her arm, noticing that her breathing sped up. She nuzzled her face into my neck and held me tightly as I hugged her to me. I propped myself up on the arm that was under her and leaned over her to look into her deep chocolate eyes and place a kiss on her soft lips. I had no idea when she was going to start yelling at me or crying and I was barely keeping it together. I was still angry. Another man had seen my wife and I felt the overwhelming need to claim her, to mark what was mine . . .

Her mouth opened to me and I roughly pulled her hip to mine as I kissed her hard, relenting only long enough to allow her to breath. She held me tightly as I tried to consume her. I grasped her breasts, harder than I should have and probably painfully as I sought to cover her with my body, licking and sucking every exposed part of her skin and ripping the clothing from her body in my effort to get to the rest.

She never refused me, never acted in any way like she wanted me to stop.

I scooted down the bed, my lips never leaving her skin as I stared where her curls had been. I took an unnecessary deep breath, struggling with all I had to contain my rage as I licked and sucked every part of her, causing her to scream and writhe on the bed above me.

" . . . mine, only mine . . . no one else . . . ever, never Bella . . . only ever mine . . ."

"Yours, only ever yours, Edward," she moaned as she made every possible effort to pull the hair from my head, grabbing me to her.

She came that way twice before I was willing to move up her body. It was all I could do not to bite her . . . literally . . . as I licked and nipped at her skin. The blood had come to the surface in several places as I had sucked too hard on her tender skin there . . .

I kissed her with all that I had, thankful that my brother had seen to it that I was completely fed and full. I sucked the skin of her neck and breast, knowing it would leave marks and somewhere in my mind, realizing that I was doing it intentionally. Her lips would be bruised as well, but I found it hard to care.

I came in my wife time and time again as I claimed her, my scent covering her. I had no idea why she was allowing me near her. She had to be mad and confused and she had to know how angry I was with her. I would have stopped on a dime had she asked me to or given me any indication that she hadn't wanted me, wanted this attention from me . . . but the request never came. She told me she loved me as she held me to her.

I knelt between her legs, sitting on my heels as I pulled her legs up onto my thighs and stroked her. I stroked myself and she watched as I came in streams, covering her stomach with my venom filled semen. She reached her arms up towards me, entreating me to lie down on her and I complied, suckling the breast she offered and continuing to come all over her as I fed from her, emptying one breast and hungrily moving to the other without being prompted.

She knew how much I loved her. She knew.

I had missed her all day, and I could relax now. I was home, and she was mine. I felt her arms around me and heard her tell me that she loved me as I fell asleep, my body still covering hers.

~oooOooo~

I awoke as she gently pushed against my shoulder, her face sleepy as the sun came in our windows and rainbows danced around the room, refracting off my skin. I moved off of her and she got up without a word and went to shower, dressing before she came out of the bathroom.

I continued to lie in bed, stunned. Her mannerisms said she was angry . . . but she had made love to me, let me lie with her and held me all night . . . I had claimed her . . .

"Bella, I . . . ," she cut me off, turning sharply to face me.

"Just because I'm mad at you, Edward, does not have anything to do with the fact that I love you more than anything. I even accept your need to claim me as yours. I get it, you're male and a vampire," she said as she left our room and slammed the door.

I dressed quickly and followed her into the kitchen where she was making breakfast.

"You're mad at me? What the hell is that about. You're the one that let another man see you and touch you!" I all but yelled.

I heard my family gather in the living room and Renee waking in her room, but I didn't care. This was between me and my wife.

"Edward Anthony Cullen! You never even took the time to ask me about it . . . but you certainly seemed to enjoy it when you first saw me, didn't you?" she asked, hands on her hips in a defiant stance.

There was an irate vampire inches from her face, screaming at her and she didn't give an inch.

"Of course I liked it, you're my wife and I love you." I told her, towering over her not inches from her face, the exhale of my breath blowing strands of her hair, "You can have hair there braided its so long or none at all for all I care. It's you I love, not the details, Bella!"

"Then why the hell are you yelling and angry with me . . . insisting on marking me, and why did you run off yesterday, breaking things and throwing a childish temper tantrum instead of talking to me?"

"Childish! Childish? In 119 years I don't think I have ever been called childish," I said as I stormed out of the room, passing my siblings and mother in law as I went to my room to get my son.

I had been away from him all day yesterday and it wasn't happening two days in a row.

"Masen and I are leaving, we'll see you this evening at the train station," I announced before she even had time to voice an objection. I left the flat at vampire speed with my son in my arms, thankfully having remembered to grab a diaper bag and a few bottles of milk for him.

Once we were a distance away from the flat, I slowed my pace and tried to calm myself. The small creature with his arms around my neck had quite a calming effect on me and it took only a few of his smiles to have me smiling as well. We spent the day looking at things and I spent the day explaining them. He wanted to know everything about the things he saw, whether it was a strawberry or a statue or a ball to play with.

I carried him, since I never tired I had no need of a stroller. We strolled along the streets, looking at the people, the dogs they wee walking and the items in the store windows, eventually passing the first displays in the window of a toy store called Le Nain Blue. Masen stared in the store window and reached his hand out, fisting at something he saw there.

"Would you like to go in the toy store?" I asked aloud, talking to him like he was a human baby rather than listening to his thoughts.

He gave me the funniest look then broke out laughing, his mind telling me that he did indeed want to go in and see the things inside. I explained the concept of toys to him as best I could. He had toys at home, of course, but he wanted to know why there was a whole store full of them and what it was that you were supposed to do with them.

"These little cars are for pushing along the ground with one hand and crawling after them. I think that most children enjoy watching the wheels turn, Masen, but I can't be sure what the attraction is other than that," I explained, realizing just how much I really didn't know about human babies and the why's of what they did.

I had been to medical school, of course . . . twice. I knew the growth and development process . . . I had just never had occasion to think about the why of what they did. We walked along the aisles looking at almost each and everything, Masen wanting to touch and feel the texture of almost anything that wasn't in a box or wrapped up. From where he sat in the crook of my elbow with an arm over my shoulder, he had a free hand to grab whatever I was showing him. As we came to the infant toys, I picked up a jack in the box and turned the handle so that he could see what it did. His movements were quite fast for a human and borderline vampire speed as he grabbed the offending clown's head and crushed it in his hand. I was still holding the box in one hand and turning the handle in the other as he waved the clown, severed from the box, through the air and threw it down the aisle.

"Can I help you, Sir?" the sales girl asked, retrieving the mutilated part of the toy from the floor in a bit of a huff.

She rightly thought that my son had thrown something . . . till she saw the crushed head of the clown and his ripped clothing. No amount of pulling from an human infant or throwing it on the floor for that matter, could have caused the kind of damage she was looking at. Her attitude changed on a dime, and she feared that my son had been hurt by the faulty toy and that i would be outraged.

"Oh, my," she gasped, "that one must have been defective, is the baby alright, sir? Did it frighten him?" she asked, coming to place her hand on my son's back as he sat in my arms.

"He's fine. No harm done. Luckily, I was the one winding up the toy and it was pointed down the aisle when it exploded out like that. I would check the others though, if I were you. I'm sure that you wouldn't want a child hurt or frightened by one whose spring was wound as tightly as that one must have been!" I offered as I continued to pick up things and let my son touch them.

She disappeared for a moment and reappeared with a cart which she loaded all the Jack in the Box's and took them off the display floor,

"I know, I know, son," I mentally soothed him. "The toy surprised you and you reacted, but you need to learn to hold your reactions till you see if there really is danger, if it is something that is going to try and hurt you. It's important because you're already so much stronger than most things around you, you could hurt people as well as destroying objects."

He continued to ask questions and I answered him as honestly as possible,

"Yes, you ruined the toy, son. Your fingers crushed the clown's head and you ripped it loose from the box."

"No, I'm not angry with you."

"No, the lady isn't mad at you either."

"Yes, you can have a toy from here to take home with us if you want one."

We looked at the different size balls and blocks, and though he liked them, something else had caught his eye.

"It's a teddy bear, son." I told him when I finally isolated exactly what he was looking at on the next aisle.

I picked up the bear and handed it to him, explaining that he had to be gentle with it like it was a human because it would break apart if he wasn't. The bear seemed strangely familiar, as though I had seen one like it before. I concentrated for a moment, looking at the stitched on eyes and nose and the red thread used for the mouth. It was a brown bear, a replica of those made in the early 1900's.

. . . 1900's . . .

Realization dawned on me. The bear seemed familiar to me because I had one as a child. It was a human memory and extremely fuzzy . . . but it was there. I had carried a bear just like this one everywhere with me when I was small, even hugging it tightly to me when I slept. It was interesting that my son had been drawn to the same toy that I had loved as a child. We left the store with a new ball and some blocks in a bag, and the teddy bear grasped tightly in Masen's hand. I had to laugh. He was just such a combination of both of us, Bella and I.

He wanted to touch and taste everything and I couldn't help but be reminded of Bella. She loved to taste things just as he did and I couldn't help my mind going to the gutter for a moment as I thought about her describing me to my sisters as her favorite Popsicle.

Damn. How had things gone so wrong so quickly.

I remembered Alice's words from yesterday . . .

"Some lessons you need to learn all on your own.

I can't always tell you the right move, brother."

What was I missing?

We had been in Paris for the better part of a month, and everyone was having a wonderful time. I loved my wife and I knew she loved me. She would never purposefully upset me . . . so why had she done this?

"Done what?" my son asked mentally.

I turned to look at his face as he sat in the grass across from me, playing with the ball we had just bought from the toy store as we continued our silent conversation.

"Your mom did something that hurt my feelings, son, that's all. I love your mom, you know that," I told him.

"Then why are you mad at her? Did you ask her if she did it?" he said, looking me in the eye as he thought it, still rolling the ball back and forth as we st on the grass across from each other.

"What?" I asked, cocking my head as we continued to communicate.

"Did she say that she did what you say hurt your feelings?" he asked again.

"Well . . . no son. No. I never asked her if she actually did the thing that made me angry."

My infant son looked at me like he just didn't understand at all.

"Then how do you know she did it?" he asked.

I was stunned. My infant son had thought to ask the question that had never entered my mind. How could I have been so stupid. I never asked her if she let a man wax her. I assumed when I read Renee's mind, but I never actually asked Bella what exactly had happened. What if all this was for nothing, all the upset and drama . . . maybe she hadn't allowed a man near her at all. Damn it all to hell, why hadn't I asked her? I trust her, I should have trusted in her and her decisions yet I hadn't even asked!

My phone rang, Carlisle phoning to check on how we were all doing . . . especially Masen. Apparently he had called Bella to ask her about my son, and she had let him know that Masen was with me. He had also apparently gathered from his talk with her that there was a problem.

"Is everything alright, son?" my dad asked me, concern dripping in his voice.

I went into detail about the toy store and what Masen had done, his abilities and growing strength and dexterity . . . and his ability to reason. I told Carlisle that Masen had come up with the question I hadn't thought to ask - the one thing that would have mattered with my wife.

"Well son, flowers work well with Esme, but since Bella is still human and probably somewhat hormonal from having given birth, chocolates might help."

I had no idea what he meant and he had no problem spelling it out.

"Over the years when I've come home late or been inattentive or hurt your mother's feelings, I bring her flowers. Sometimes ones to plant but more often fresh flowers for a vase. Since Bella is human and probably having some postpartum hormonal issues, a box of chocolates might be good as well. You're apparently in the doghouse, as they say, and you'll need to add a gift or gesture of some sort to the apology you'll be offering her," he said, no humor in his voice.

"But dad, she could have just told me," I reiterated.

"Edward. Did you ask her?"

"What?"

"Did you ask her if she let a man do the waxing?"

"Dad," I all but whined, taking a deep breath. "No. I never talked to her about it at all. I assumed that since a man did her mother, that the same man did her. There was no thought of anyone other than Jean Claude in Renee or Rose's mind, though, and Alice is blocking me completely."

"A large box of chocolate's, son . . . and a sincere apology. Then you can deal with the issue of whether she actually did it or not. Your apology at first will just have to be for jumping to conclusions."

"She called me childish," I added, waiting an inordinately long time for his response.

". . . and?"

"Fine," I huffed, I suppose running off this morning with Masen was a little sudden.

I heard a slight scuffle as my mother took the phone from Carlisle. Vampire hearing - she had been listening to the entire conversation and she certainly had some opinions for me on how one is supposed to treat their wife.

"Yes ma'am. I will. Yes. But . . . but mom, I suppose leaving quickly with Masen fits the definition when you put it like that but . . . yes, a very large box. No, no Masen and I are meeting her at the train station. I hadn't even considered it, mom, you know Alice always packs for us. Yes. Yes, I should have been there to help her whether I was mad or not, you're right. Yes. I love you too, mom."

Damn.

Looks like I was going to be apologizing for the way I acted before I even got to discuss if there was any reason to have been upset in the first place.

~oooOooo~

BPOV

I heard him come in. I had been lying in bed for hours, ever since Masen had fed and fallen asleep. It was evening and I always spent this time with Edward - just us.

He had stormed out this morning, breaking things and screaming something about 'mine'. Jasper had explained that along with the anger that was obviously displayed, Edward's overwhelming emotion was hurt. Stupid ridiculous possessive vampire thought another man had seen and touched me . . . like I didn't have enough respect for his feelings to keep that from happening.

I knew my husband. I knew.

The problem was that he should have known. He should have trusted me and known that I would understand him. The insecure side of me screamed loudly as he rushed out the door, flinging it from its hinges in his haste and anger.

He was leaving me.

Tears poured down my cheeks as I struggled to quell my insecurities. I knew he loved me . . . I knew he would never leave me. I knew . . . but the tears came anyway.

I had pulled myself together after Emmett and Jasper took off after him. Alice had talked me into taking Masen for a stroll in the park by the river and my mom had come as well. Rose stayed home, opting to replace the front door rather than come along.

"I'm so sorry, Bella. I didn't say anything to him, I swear," my mom kept telling me, "I'm just not used to watching what I think!"

I told her not to worry about it, we all knew that he should have talked to me first. They all tried to comfort me, Rose even going to find Jasper and send him home to help with my mood. Nothing worked, really. I just wanted Edward and I hoped that he hadn't done anything drastic - though we all thought the news report about an abandoned building collapsing for no apparent reason sounded suspiciously like a vampire venting his anger and frustration, and the wink from Alice confirmed it.

My thoughts came back to the present as he got into bed with me, leaning over to kiss my cheek before he laid down on his side of the bed. Edward had no need of sleep, so it was obvious that he just wanted to be with me. I rolled over and put my head on his shoulder, his arm immediately going around me as I held him tightly. I was furious with him in so very many ways . . . but my love for him was the strongest emotion that played in my head and I breathed in the familiar and comforting smell that was Edward.

We made love long into the night . . . I knew he needed to claim me. He surprised me by taking it a bit to extreme, marking me and grasping me roughly in his need. He ejaculated all over my stomach at his own hand as he sat on his heels between my legs, and it was then that I knew I could not just forgive him and let it go. He had to know that he didn't need to act this way, that I wouldn't just accept it. Though some of it was well beyond his control, the vampire part of him showing dominance, he needed to trust me . . . he needed to trust us. I loved him beyond all reason and I would never turn down the opportunity to make love to him, but he had to know that I didn't like the way he had behaved.

When I awoke, Edward was still lying on top of me, partially covering me just as I loved. I pushed against him just slightly and he immediately woke, kissing me softly and moved to let me get up and go to the bathroom. Apparently he sensed my anger when I came out of the bathroom fully dressed and realized that I was mad, though I had made love to him all night. I'm not sure what he expected, but my anger seemed to take him by surprise . . . and calling him childish just set him off even further. There was no other word for it - his behavior WAS childish . . . running off without even talking to me to see if I had done what he suspected me of. Seriously.

This time when he left, he took Masen with him. If it hadn't been for Jasper calming me and Alice assuring me that everything would be alright, I would have lost it. It had been bad enough to spend the day before without Edward, but for him to leave and take my baby with him . . . what if he decided to really leave and not come back . . .

No. I wasn't going to go there. He said he would meet us at the train tonight and I had to trust that he meant it. If I expected him to trust me, I had to trust him as well.

This time, I was every bit as mad as my husband.