Chapter 9:No Glove. No Love
"Did that guy you were talking about call back about the job? " Marissa Pang, Bella's agent asked. "Because you were absolutely right about him. Even with these generic pictures of you two, it's obvious he's model material. Where'd you find him?"
Bella laughed, "We were friends growing up and re-met when I moved back to Forks in high school." Bella sighed, "Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to use the agency instead because he said he was too busy right now. It's really too bad because I really wanted to use him for the Little Red Riding Hood illustrations."
"Ok. So what kind of girls do you want for the shoots?" Bella's mind skipped a beat. That's right, I needed to hire the female models. I'm such a bubble-head today. "Ummm…" Bella took a moment to compose her thoughts.
"Well, I wanted a blonde for Goldilocks and The Three Barons, maybe an Asian for Snow White but so long as she fits the description you know: fair skin, black hair, delicate looking. I also want a brunet for East of the Sun and West of the Moon and Red Riding Hood. I sent over the cover so that we can match up a model for Red Riding Hood, That I unconsciously made to look like me and Jacob. Idiot hormones.
"Ookie-doike. I'll send your specifications over the some modeling agencies near by. You do realize that you're going to have to deal with a lot of models here, Bella? I mean the publishing house is fine with it so long as the product is superb, but I mean," Bella sighed, "I know, it's a lot to juggle. And models are a handful." The whining, the bitching, the huffy sulking if you give them a little too much direction.
"But hey, there's only two illustrations that have more than two people."- "Thirteen male models, Bella. Are you sure you want to this at your studio in LaPush?"
"Of course. Why shouldn't it be there? I have everything set up, there's plenty of room. I've unpacked everything."
Marissa sighed, for such a worldly girl, Bella Swan was sometimes incredibly naive. Marissa had never been to LaPush but she could imagine the small town gossip if thirteen very sexy men had paraded into a young divorce's apartment followed by five women.
"I'm just saying try to be discrete. You don't want to kill you elderly neighbor by giving her a heart attack."
Bella laughed, "Hardly. I think she'd sit in the hallway just to check out each of their butts as they march up the stairs. She's shameless. The models should be here the day after tomorrow, though right?"
Marissa shook her head, Bella hadn't gotten that well placed hint. "Sure thing. And Bella?"
"Hmmm?"
"Good luck."
A brilliant smile lit up Bella's face. "Thanks."
Jacob had hoped to avoid Bella Swan this week especially since he had a hot date tonight and the last thing he wanted to think about her.
However, fate was not cooperating. Jacob had a basketful of canned goods and food when he remembered why he'd gone to the Forks Walmart to begin with. He had just grabbed a large box of condoms from the shelf when he spied her standing about ten feet away, tilting her head to one side as she weighted a box of Kimono condoms in one hand and diaphragms in the other. Her basket was full of votive white candles, some apples, a bottle of cheap champagne, and a pair of black satin lined handcuffs.
"Hot date tonight?"
Bella's face flamed as she spun around, her hand pressed to her chest. He could tell she had been painting because the fumes of acrylic paint and her perfume almost masked her scent.
"N-no. Just thinking about…stuff."
Jacob felt his lips twitch and decided to close the distance, putting about an inch between his lips and her ear as he whispered, "What kind of stuff?"
Bella looked shocked and seemed to stiffen before she snapped out of it, "Jeez Jake, you're making me claustrophobic!"
She wiggled away from his grasp; an irritated frown on her face as she hastily grabbed the petroleum jelly, dropped it in her basket, and took off toward the self-checkout line.
"Looks like you're going to wine and dine someone," Jacob made his voice light but felt a twinge.
"And it looks like you have food and condoms for the next apocalypse." She was rolling her eyes. "Besides, only the wine is for me, the rest is for work." Bella smiled as she scanned the Vaseline and dropped it the into a plastic bag, "And Jake?"
He glanced up at her sweet but obviously irritated tone, "What?"
"Good luck with your date. No glove no love right?" She laughed at his shocked expression and proceeded to stride out the doors with a smile.
It was Saturday that Jacob started hearing the rumors, that so-and-so had seen Bella in the sex store in Forks, "She was stocking up on bondage gear, flipping through the adult catalogues and ordering costumes like some cheap call girl!"
Jake hadn't really listened to that rumor because there were a million girls that looked like Bella with brown hair and brown eyes. It could have been anyone.
The other rumors he wouldn't have believed if Sam and Billy and Nadia Williams from the apartment below Bella's, hadn't seen it with there own eyes, Bella ushering seven young men up to her apartment.
The two girls that followed were the last straw.
"Bells? You up there?" He heard moaning and giggling from the first floor and to his alarm, a parade of tanned men followed by a young blonde in rumpled clothes trotted down the stairs.
"G-hod that was long. She takes forever doesn't she?"
"But to-tall-ly worth it.
The other boys laughed as they made their way to the car.
Now Jake way taking the steps two by two and then four by four feeling, an insistent buzzing in the back of his mind.
Bella was dating very young these days.
Chapter 10 No Glove. No Love Part 2:
Beware reader: SMUT AHEAD!
Boys call me sexy (What up sexy)
And I don't care what they say
Acting -and feeling - and treatin this way
When I was young I wanted attention
Ah ah ah ah ah
Bella surveyed the damage, if she folded up the plastic sheet with the Vaseline and took the restraints off her bedposts the apartment would almost look cozy. I still need to do laundry though.
The whole house smelled like teenaged hormones, lip-gloss and photography chemicals. The vampire nose thing could be a downer, Bella had discovered early on.
Not that she had ever found the wolf pack or Jacob Black to smell as bad as any of the Cullens had played it up to be.The pack, when they were together could be a bit overwhelming, but Jacob alone didn't smell nearly as bad as the Cullens had claimed.
I knew that they were just being mean. Jake never smelt like a wet dog. Better for the wolves to smell like dogs, then for them to smell like food like all her young models did. Jake didn't smell like food or as much like a dog as the other wolves, More like, she paused, deep in thought about what Jacob smelt like to her, dirt, salt, pine needles, aftershave, Tide laundry soap and something else.
She caught a whiff of it and without thinking, deeply inhaled. Sex? Was that the missing smell? What the hell did she know about sex after only having it once? With a frustrated growl, Bella tore the plastic sheet off the bed and tossed it in the hamper.
"Dating a bit young these days aren't we Bells?"
"God, Jake," Jacob's low voice in her door way made her start. "You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing around here?"
Jacob was already making his way towards her, "You have better senses now than just about anyone, right Bells?," He closed the door with a click behind him.
-"So why is it then that I not only hear rumors bout you in a sex shop and picking up high school kids," He closed the gap between them as his hand planted on the wall above her head, "I can smell the sex off them?"
Bella's first thought was a desperate. "I can explain!" But then seeing him in her house, in her face, thinking he could cow her into submission with an idle threat…A growl of her own was starting to work it's way into her throat, You wanna be an assuming jerk Jake. Fine by me. Two can play at that game.
Jake watched her face go from pale to self-satisfied within seconds. "They were all eighteen Jake."
Jacob's eyes flashed amber then gold. She has to be bluffing. She didn't just have sex with eight people. Bella's too sweet.
"I think we both know that you don't do things like that Bella," it was said between gritted teeth.
Bella carefully placed a lock of brown hair behind her ear. Her eyes widened marginally and her lower lip pouted, just slightly, a face of pure innocence.
"Really Jake?," She angled her head so that her eyes met his.
"Cause the way I see it, I'm divorced, single, and it's a free country. And as for claiming to know me at all, well, I did marry Edward and he was going to be seventeen forever," Her voice was becoming somehow more vampiric and bell-like the angrier she became. "And if I remember correctly, you were only sixteen when we dated."
"For all you know," her eyes flashed at him, "I'm into young tail!"
Jacob's hands began to shake as the unwilling image of his Bells scoping out the local high school, leaning against her red truck and flirting with seventeen-year old football players.
"You're just saying that to piss me off Bells," Even his voice was shaking as he stood there, staring at her pleased and challenging expression.
"Really Jake? Am I?"
A growl suddenly ripped through his throat and his whole body began to tremble like a guitar string just plucked. The rage was filling up everything inside him, his skin was burning, his eyes focusing on hers. Instinctively he was backing away. The tiny voice in the back of his head chanting to calm down to get away from her before he transformed.
But Bella wasn't backing away. She was coming closer.
Suddenly, her lips were on his and his fingers were in her hair as she roughly dragged him to her, by his shirt. It was a violent kiss but he wasn't resisting. For all the hardness of her skin, it wasn't like the other bloodsuckers at all. It was both incredibly soft and strong. And her smell, it was sweeter like the other vampires, but not overwhelmingly so. It was just intense. He half expected her to break off the kiss and punch him in the face like she had the last time. It'd still be worth it, a small part of him argued.
When he was kissing her, it was as if nothing had changed in the seven years they had been apart. He kept waiting and waiting for Ol' Ed to pop up out of the woodwork to take her back, for her to make some lame excuse for why she was stomping on what was left of his heart again, and then punch him and re-break her hand. He kept waiting but it didn't happen, the kiss didn't end, until he broke it off gasping for air.
And Bella took a step back her eyes filled with chagrin. He watched as her expression had go from insatiable to dejected within moments, the change was only visible for a few seconds before she carefully masked it. It was then the stupid excuse came:
"I'm guessing you're calm now so if you don't mind I need to clean up."
All that to calm me down? He began shaking again with rage at the her stupid, selfish, insensitivity, when he noticed the unnecessarily breathes she kept taking, the flexing of her fingers and the hurt that lay in her honey eyes that cut his rage down to the quick.
"I guess you should be"-
-"Shut up" he growled. And then he was grabbing her by the arms to shove her against the wall to kiss her again. Her hands were everywhere this time, up his shirt and scratching the planes of his rigid back. Their kissing seemed to intensify with the seconds, as Jacob inhaled a familiar smell of her arousal that made him growl under his breath. Then he was tearing the buttons off her shirt and kissing her nape, nibbling on the damp skin there.
How he wanted to rush this, how he wanted to devourer her. It was worse then the need to transform because both sides of him, the wolf and the human were one mind this time. They both wanted her but he wouldn't take her, not like this.
"Bella," Jacob's moan against her skin was rough and sounded like he was dying of thirst. "Tell me to stop, Bella. If you don't want me, tell me to stop now because I don't know if I'll be able to stop later."
Her answer was to kiss him deeper to his her teeth graze his throat. "Don't stop." It was barely a whisper but it was what he needed.
Bella's legs locked around his waist he eased her backward onto her bed, unbuttoning her jeans, ripping off her bra.
Jacob's kisses were everywhere, and as many times as he had fantasized, as many times as he imagined her moaning his name, that weed that could not be killed by Edward or even himself, was killed by the reality: sex with Bella wasn't as good as the fantasy.
It was better.
At first, Bella'd seemed almost nervous as he eased on top of her, and he swore she flinched as he slid inside her, he had to remind himself that she had been separated for almost two years before she divorced Edward.
Even so though, she was impossibly tight. Panting, he'd willed himself to stay still. She had taken a minute to adjust and then taken the lead from there, flipping him on his back to grind into him and race him towards his fastest orgasm since puberty. Thank god she was just as eager, practically crying as she climaxed, shuttering with release.
If it had only been one time, he could have excused it as left over hormones from the teenaged love that never was. Even twice he could have lied to himself and said that it was all her that she seduced him.
But it wasn't once or twice. It was the whole night. As insatiable as he was for her, she was for him. They had sex on her bed, on the floor, up against the bathroom door. Their clothes were more shredded if both of them had transformed into wolves.
And when it was all said and done she lay in his arms, her slightly colder skin was a relief from his internal furnace.
"Mmm?" Her eyes were closed in exhaustion.
His ears kept picking up on an insistent humming, fast like a bird or a mouse. He pressed his ear to Bella's chest and gaped at the new realization.
-"It's, it's still beating. How can you be a vampire and you still have a heartbeat?"
Bella sighed. "Technically I'm not really a vampire."
Jacob glanced down startled.
"Half-vampire is what Edward and Carlisle think. Remember when I told you about how Edward couldn't read my mind when I was human? Well things didn't happen exactly as planned when he turned me. The Volturi think that it's because I have natural abilities to 'shield' myself from other vampire's special abilities and that because of that instead of being a full vampire, no aging, sparkly skin, I'm a freak. My skin, although hard, isn't sparkly, I can survive off of human food or blood, and I should stop aging soon but until then I'm just a human with a taste for raw meat."
Jacob lay in silence next to her. "Why do you sound so angry about it? It sounds like a pretty good deal to me. You get to see Charlie. Even if your eyes aren't the same you don't look seventeen"
"And my ex-husband did. He turned me and I still aged! And you, you look like you're still twenty-two or so, I look older than you even. Like that's going to change. Plus there were all these problems with this half vampire thing. Alice couldn't see my future anymore because of it."
Jake coughed again in surprise and then smiled, "Really? You mean like she can't see us she can't see you?"
Bella nodded. "And then the Volturi was interested in me being a threat to them and I had to go to Italy to straighten that out." Her eyes flashed angrily.
They lay in silence again as Jacob sighed. Bella hadn't really changed. She was still a weirdo and still scared of getting old.
"I think you look younger than me. Besides I thought we agreed years ago that I was more mature than you anyway."
They lay in silence again and Jacob was suddenly acutely aware that they were both naked. It was silly to be self conscious now after hours and hours of attacking each other and yet, he hadn't really been thinking then, just riding off his emotions and hormones.
"Now what?" Her plaintive question asked what he, himself, was afraid to.
"I don't know." He sighed and watched her head ease slowly downward with his expulsion of air.
"Are we still friends?" This time Bella's question was muffled in his chest as she had turned.
"Duh," he snorted.
"Are we anything else?" her question was soft into his skin again.
He had to think about that. Did he want to be 'anything else' than a friend to Bella right now? He wasn't sure. Being a friend alone seemed to have drained him almost completely of his patience as it was. And what about her? She was newly divorced, a new half vampire, it would overwhelm anyone. Not to mention all the times she had hurt him before, without sex. Fear found its way into Jacob's heart where contentment had been resting.
What if he fell in love with her now and she left him again? The separation of an imprint from its mate was said to be excruciating, so much so that it was tribal law that the pack was to support imprints and their mates or there would be severe consequences.
Hearing this, knowing this, Jacob weighed his words carefully.
"What am I to you?"
Bella expelled another sigh.
"I'm not sure, my best friend? What am I to you?"
Jacob thought on that: a best friend, unrequited love, first love, possible imprint, and concluded that she was his worst fears neatly bundled up in a female.
"My best friend," he'd settled for that rather than to offend her by telling her the whole truth.
Bella sighed. "Do you regret doing what we did?"
"I regret rushing into it but no, I don't completely regret it."
Bella groaned into his skin, "The whole pack is going to know aren't they? Damn it. That means Billy will know, and then Charlie will know, and then all of Forks will know."
Jacob laughed bitterly, "Pack mind is a bitch sometimes. I can tell them not to tell my dad and we can keep it between us." The idea was appealing, he had to admit, having Bella to himself without having to worry about Billy or Charlie butting in.
"If that's what you want," he cut in quickly.
Bella nodded. "I just want privacy and a new start. The last few years have been really hard. I just want to live my life without judgment," her voice seemed to waver and take on the quality Jacob recognized as the voice she had when she was left broken from Edward after he abandoned her in the woods.
"So is this going to be our secret?"
Bella snorted. "I wouldn't exactly call it a secret since your pack will know but yes, I would prefer if Charlie didn't know."
Jacob nodded, and then grinned. "Does this mean a lot a lot of late night visits?"
Bella's laugh was lush and sweet. "I would say my door is always open but you already have the key."
From then on there was an agreement. He would come to visit, make her food, they would make love and he would leave early in the morning before anyone could catch him. Often times they had to juggle both of their schedules since she had a deadline for a book fast approaching and he had the onslaught of customers to deal with at Black Wolf Garage.
It was easy this routine, easy and comfortable as well as addictive.
"You sneaking in again?" Billy's voice was loud from the kitchen as Jacob nimbly climbed through the living room window.
Jacob sighed inwardly. The last month of avoiding this subject was too good to be true. " 'Snot sneaking in if it's my house," Jacob said lightly. He was silently praying that the shower he had taken with Bella that morning had been enough to clean the heady smell of sex off of him.
Billy wheeled around to meet him as Jacob strode to the kitchen to raid the fridge. "So are you two dating or is it just for the sex?" Billy's question was both light-hearted and steely in tone. Jacob clenched his fist around the refrigerator door handle in an effort not to phase then quickly released it when he realized that he was reshaping it into his hand.
"I know you wish she was your daughter-in-law, and you feel the need to protect me,but please do us both a favor, dad, and butt out." Billy wheeled around to block Jacob's escape. His face was sympathetic.
"Don't get me wrong son, I love you, but you're barkin' up the wrong tree this time. Isabella Swan is an adult. She can make her own choices," Billy sighed. "Even though I know this one will make Charlie come after you with a baseball bat if you screw around with her head."
"Please explain to me why it's always me hurting her and not her hurting me?" Jacob grabbed a bag of chips off of the top of the refrigerator. "I mean, am I really that bad? Because last time I checked I wasn't the one that left a trail of broken hearts in her wake at the local high school."
Billy rolled his eyes, "You know Jake, this whole woe is me crap is getting old fast. I understand that she hurt you"-
-"No, dad," his voice was tight. "She destroyed me. Plain and simple, one day she was every thing I lived for and the next life wasn't worth living. Her leaving…", he drifted off unable to find the words.
Billy pinched the bridge of his nose, "So what is this then? Revenge for her running off without you? I knew you could be petty, Jacob but messing with her head isn't how I taught you to treat women."
Jacob's eyes about fell out of his head at that comment. "God, Dad! Do you really think that I'd…Shit! What kind of asshole do you take me for? Am I mad about it? Duh. But it's not like that between us now! Not like this is any of your business to begin with." Jacob paced around the tiny kitchen now, his bare feet silent as he made a tight circle from the kitchen counter, fridge, and then table.
Did people really think that's what it was between Bella and him? That he was keeping it a secret so he could burn her later like she burned him? Whatever confused feelings he had for Bella, even the angry petty ones that weren't completelysure about a full blown relationship, he'd never contemplated doing something like Billy suggested.
Billy watched his son pace, his eyes a light with interest and whistled through his teeth, "That's good news. For a moment I was afraid I was going to hit you myself. If you don't mind me asking then,"
-"I do," Jacob continued pacing with fierce little steps.
"What are you doing then? Because if this is your idea of romancing a woman, it's no wonder she chose the bloodsucker. I mean, what do you guys do eat frozen pizza at her house every night after you, you know?"
Jacob pulled a disgusted face from the kitchen counter and glanced back over his shoulder. "First off, gross. And second off no," Jacob pressed the fingers of his right hand into his eyes. "I cook for her when I come over. I buy the groceries and we generally eat in."
Billy paused in his train of thought. He wondered if his bone-head of a son realized that he already was doing things for Bella that he didn't do for other women. After Bella had chosen Edward over Jacob, Billy had been worried, knowing that Jacob had to be in an incredible amount of pain to phase wolf and refused to phase back. He also knew that it was the grief that Jacob had felt over losing Bella that had made Sam agree to take over the pack a little longer when Jacob hid out in Canada and then Europe for almost a year.
He'd hoped that the meaningless flings and a change of scenery would help. And it did. But Billy also knew that Jacob wasn't the same. The sunny disposition Jacob had since he was an infant was clouded first by the burden of being a protector for the tribe and then completely eclipsed by the consuming grief he felt by the loss of Bella.
Now she was back and somehow, despite her turning, she remained mostly unchanged. Still naive, sweet, and a magnet for trouble. Billy shook his head over the image of Bella the vampire running around in the woods eating mountain lions and cougars.
Billy Black had heard rumors of what had happened to cause her return from Charlie. He knew enough to know that the grief Jacob felt over losing his first love was petty over the grief she must have felt losing a child. He also knew that she probably told Jacob in her letters but that because Jacob never read them, he didn't know and she would probably would want to avoid the subject as much as possible in ordinary conversation.
Before he could breech the subject again and plead with his son to open the bundle of letters Bella had sent him, Jacob had heard the phone ring and was bounding off to answer it.
"Jacob Black speaking." Billy watched his son lean on the side of the kitchen wall as he cradled the phone with his shoulder. His son's dark brown eyes lit up and a slow warm smile began to play on his lips, "Hey there, Bells. I get off around eight." His smile was becoming more and more prominent. "Yeah, I could do that. I'll bring some food by." Jacob had already grabbed a pen and a pad of paper. His son's low chuckle made Billy roll his eyes.
A sudden wolf howl diverted both of their attentions and Billy could hear the plaintive sound of a Sam calling out to Jacob. Jacob instinctively bristled and sighed, "You heard it too huh, Bells? What? Nothing, It's just Sam ruining my life again. He wants a meeting right now. Yeah, I'll still drop by. It might take a little longer since I'll need to grab the groceries. You sure? Okay then."
