Chapter Summary: I do not remember when I went to the field with Pa seeing baseball played this way. Unfortunately, I don't think Rosalie cares. Her game, her rules. Oh: her game is me. I just figured that out, ... much too late.

Rosalie smirked at my comment on her 'unladylike' tongue, and shrugged.

"You be careful," I continued warningly, "I just might want to bite that naughty tongue of yours, you keep showing it off like that!"

She raised her eyebrows. "I could say I have the same designs on your tongue, and offer you the same warning."

I blushed hard, suddenly, and tried to say something intelligent, but all that came out was, "Meep?"

She smiled easily, and shrugged again.

"Quid pro quo," she whispered.

I think I recall Rosalie saying those words meant something like 'what goes around, comes around,' but ...

"You want to bite my tongue?" I asked shyly, not daring to look at her.

She didn't answer. I sneaked a peak at her to see if I had crossed the line and offended her.

I didn't have to look far. She had silently slid right up next to me, and we were now face-to-face.

"Oh, just bite your tongue?" her voice had gone low and sultry, ... and predatory. I scooched away from her a bit, but she slid even closer to me.

I felt a bit panicky. She was intentionally in my space, and instead of allowing me regain it, she was closing even that gap, closing even more space between us.

"I don't want to do just that, oh, no!" she purred, and slid even closer to me.

I breathed her in between my gasps, and I felt the heat rise of my cheeks.

She noticed, of course. She raised her hand up to my face, and I tried to back away even further, but I backed right up against the cross, and it stopped my retreat.

Ironic, isn't it? The cross was supposed to ward off vampires, but instead, this one, the one she dug out of this self-same tree she felled then embedded into the trunk as easy as you please, now trapped me in said vampire's snare.

I really didn't appreciate the irony all that much now. All I felt was panic, and I flinched away from her touch, afraid of what it might mean.

My flinch didn't deter her at all. The back of her hand touched my cheek, brushing across it so that her hand was now comfortably, but firmly, nestled behind my neck. And where my cheeks were burning before ...? Her touch felt like a hot brand, searing me there.

I was captured. A cross blocking my retreat, and her — only her — in front of me.

"No," she continued, "I would take your head in my hands, just like this," she whispered as she brought her other hand up, placing it behind my head.

I didn't know where to look.

"...And I would tilt your head back, just like this, ..." she started to pull me into her.

"Rosalie, please! Stop!" I gasped, terrified.

She didn't stop. Her smile went from predatory to wicked and possessive.

"...And I would bring your lips to my lips ..." she breathed, hungrily, and she pulled my face less than an inch from hers.

I panted, a tiny little sparrow transfixed in the cobra's gaze.

"...And, baby, I would kiss you... I would press my lips against yours, and I would kiss you, and kiss you, each kiss lasting forever and a day, each kiss burning into your very being, and then..."

Her smile was radiant, no ... it was triumphant.

"...I would part your lips, and then ... do you know what I would do?"

I couldn't even swallow. I couldn't even breathe any more. I couldn't tear my eyes away from hers as I shook my head no.

"Oh, baby," she cooed, "I would let my tongue slip into your sweet, little mouth, and ..."

Here her voice dropped down into an almost worshipful silence: "... and I would taste you."

I squirmed, trying to back away from the terror that was her, rooting me to the spot. But she would even let me squirm! Her right hand dropped from my neck down to the small of my back, and she pulled, she almost yanked me into her. There was no space between our bodies, and just a fraction of an inch between her lips and mine.

"...And, baby, I would kiss you so long, and so hard, yet so gently, and sweetly, and so deeply, that you would forget to breathe!"

She almost snarled this last utterance, a predator staking claim of me — her prey — marking me as hers.

"Rosalie, you're scaring me!" I whimpered, too scared to know even what I was scared of.

She ignored my squeak as if it was too little for her to hear. Too little: like me.

"...And you would faint, dead away, and you would be mine," she purred quietly, "utterly in my power, and I could do whatever I wanted to you, and I could keep kissing you and kissing you and kissing you, tasting your sweetness, and you could do nothing about it. Do you understand me?"

"Yes!" I squeaked, terrified, defeated, humbled.

"You could do nothing!" she snarled, more forcefully, not satisfied with just my submission. No, she wanted even more than all I could give. "You would be mine! Just from my kiss. I would make you mine, yes?" she demanded.

"Rosalie," I whimpered.

"Yes?" she roared, locking me more tightly into her embrace, glaring down at me, balefully, a goddess demanding servitude from an ant.

"Yes!" I cried, submitting completely.

She stared at me a moment, totally dominating my being, and then, seeming satisfied ... she eased back, releasing me from her constraining embrace.

I was backed up against the cross, almost as big as me, — and much more solid than me, anyway — and I was panting, gasping for air, scared out of my mind, regarding Rosalie, the predator, the terror, the demoness, the vampire, as she shrunk back down from God-sized, filling my entire universe, into herself and look away from me, breaking the spell that had transfixed me in her gaze.

"...Just from my kiss alone," she whispered quietly ... almost despondently.

And she was lost in herself for a moment, as I tried, desperately, to recover, and tried to understand what was going on. I mean: what did this sudden transformation of hers from a ladylike conversation to a demoness terrorizing me and capturing me in her embrace and gaze ... what did all this mean?

But, then, just as suddenly as she had turned pensive, she looked up from her self-reflection, and regarded me critically.

"...And that's just first base, baby," she said, and it felt to me that she was like ... sad for me, somehow.

I gulped. "First base?"

She looked away, waving in irritation. "Yes," she barked, "first base. Baseball, you know?"

She flashed a look at me for my comprehension.

I wondered why she even bothered, when she knows all she's every going to see is my confused look as I try to keep up with the twists of her conversation and the dangerous swings of her moods that in one moment has her smiling encouragingly at me, and the next moment, her leaning in to take me and make me hers.

"Baseball?" I repeated stupidly, still drunk from her proximity, still shaken from her possession of my body and my mind.

And I thought her sucking out my soul was the most terrifying thing she could do to me.

"Yes," she repeated, annoyed and displeased. "Baseball. Men... boys... they make sport of us. They make it a game, ... they make us their game." Then she spat out: "And we are played by them."

"First base," she explained, "are the lips. Kissing a girl is getting to first base with her, optionally with the tongue taking possession of her mouth, if possible and the advantage pressed and seized upon, and wouldn't it be o-so-exquisite if it were! And then, afterward, they talk so casually about us — their conquests — over the water cooler at work or in the locker room at school, swapping their manly stories of their sexual prowess, cheapening us and our virtues as commodities to be used and abused, or 'benefits' to be consumed ... for, obviously," her explanation turned dark and hateful, "despoiling a girl is manly and ... fun."

The way she said 'fun' ... it was anything but funny.

She looked over at me, looking at her in terror pushing back against the unyielding cross, and smiled sadly.

"And so the game is played."

Then her smile hardened, and twisted cruelly. She stood, towering over me.

"Get up," she barked. "Time to make a play for second base."

I looked up at her fearfully, and even as I was shaking my head no — 'first base' was already way too much for me, and I just wanted this cruel game to end — I squeaked out a weak "Second base?"

"Oh, yes," she purred, grabbing my coat by the lapels, and lifting from the tree as easily as my legs didn't lift me. And she didn't let me go, but held me eye-to-eye, forcing me to look right into the eyes of a cobra as my toes barely brushed the ground.

"You'll like this part of the game," she cooed alluringly. "First base was to capture your lips, but second base? Second base is the play for your breasts."

And her smile widened, and in the cold, cruel sunlight, it flashed pure white. I didn't know lightning could be hungry, until I saw Rosalie's smile.

I waited for myself to faint. I couldn't feel anything anywhere, not my breath, not my heartbeat, not my hands or feet, everything had gone numb, leaving only terror