When Bella sat down on her piano bench, my heart sputtered. When she pulled up its cover, releasing the pearly white keys and running her finger over them, I swear my heart could have fucking stopped.
"I've never really played for anyone before," she spoke timidly, making my heart clench once again.
I had to clear my throat before I spoke, though I still sounded hoarse when I asked her, "Really? Never?"
She shrugged, her little hands continuing to stroke the piano's keys. "I've played pieces for my lessons and stuff, you know, Debussy and Mozart or whatever,"
I swallowed, frozen in place as she spoke.
"I wrote this song." She finally continued, taking a deep breath before forcing her gaze back to me. Her eyes were burning into mine, their intensity more staggering than usual. "I'll play it for you, if you want."
Holy shit.
Holy shit! I was fucking flabbergasted, standing their staring at her while she waited for me to respond. After a few seconds of my prolonged silence, her nostrils flared, and I watched as her eyes flickered with rage and what looked like…embarrassment?
Oh, fuck.
"Fuck, Bella." I finally sputtered out. "Of course I fucking want you to play." God, the last thing I would ever want to do was make her feel embarrassed about playing for me. It's all I've fucking wanted since the moment I'd stepped inside her home and saw the fucking instrument.
Still, I hadn't told her about my more-than-frequent spy missions I've been performing in the hallway outside the music room. I couldn't fucking tell her, now. It would surely piss her off beyond belief, and it would certainly make me look like the lunatic I am. Fucking obsessed. And since I was so obsessed, I wasn't sure how I would react right now, watching her play for me.
My concerns flew out the window when her face finally broke out into a huge grin. It knocked me breathless; seeing the pure fucking joy in her eyes at my obvious desire to hear her music. She slid over on the bench, patting the space next to her. I took the seat next to her slowly, aware that this close proximity to her was only going to make my reaction ten times worse.
Without another word, she pressed down on the keys, eliciting a beautiful melody from her piano. As she played, her arm rubbed against my own, and the sensation of her flesh against mine while I watched her fingers dance across the keys was almost my fucking undoing. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, feeling the need to glance over at Bella's face as she played, but afraid to do so.
I wasn't sure my heart could handle it.
But only a few notes later, her voice rang out; it was quiet, but sounded deafening in this living room with only the two of us in it.
My eyes snapped to her face, unable to restrain themselves any longer. She was singing a song I hadn't heard before; she definitely hadn't been playing it at school. It was dark and deep and fucking sexy.
I sat in stunned silence as she sang for me. I was more turned on than I'd ever been in my life; my cock was about to bust through my fucking pants. It wasn't the only thing about to bust, though; my chest swelled with an emotion I'd never felt before, and couldn't put a name to.
When her song finally winded down to its end, her hands remained on the keys and her head remained bowed. Unsure if I was able to speak without sounding like a stuttering fool, I just stared at her, waiting for her to break her stance.
Finally, her eyes flicked over to mine, and I quickly saw they held the same look as earlier; something akin to embarrassment.
"Bella…" I started, needing to say something to fill the silence, but unable to continue. What could I even say? That strange emotion I was feeling was up to my throat, and if I tried to speak, it would come out in a spew of word vomit that would most definitely ruin the sanctity of the moment.
At the sound of my voice, she turned to face me, her big brown eyes glistening as they gazed into mine, frantically searching for my reaction to her song.
"Fuck, Bella," I spoke again, this time it came out in an incredulous laugh. I felt like I was losing my mind, and there was only one way to get it back.
I smashed my lips against Bella's with abandon, my hands reaching for her waist and sliding her closer to me on the bench. She opened up to me immediately, her tongue coming out and swirling with mine.
Groaning into her mouth, I lifted myself up slightly so I could straddle the piano bench. Bella shifted to do the same, allowing me to pull her closer to me so our chests were pressed against each other. Our lips did not disconnect once during our maneuvers.
"You're amazing, Bella," I grumbled against her lips, pulling her impossible closer to me, but it still wasn't enough. Our kissing did nothing to suppress that foreign feeling that swelled within my chest, it only made the feeling more intense. I was gasping against her lips as I held her to me, unraveling more by the second.
Bella whimpered my name, her little fingers running up to the nape of my neck and grabbing onto my hair.
"Upstairs," she finally mumbled against my skin, keeping her lips connected with mine as she attempted to rise from the bench. Taking the hint, I stood quickly and scooped her up, her small body cradled against me. I blindly stumbled towards the stairs, crashing into the wall once and eliciting a small laugh from my girl as we finally made our way into her bedroom and closed the door.
It did not take long for us to shed our clothes and press our naked bodies against one another. We were on her bed, Bella underneath me and I on top, when I finally slid into her.
Fucking heaven.
With every thrust our bodies rubbed together, sweaty and warm and fucking connected. I kept my lips on Bella's skin at all times; if not her lips, I was kissing her neck, or her collarbone, or her perfect tits…
"Oh my God, Edward," Bella sighed against me, causing my eyes to roll back into my head. The sound of her saying my name as she writhed underneath me was almost as beautiful as her singing earlier, and I felt the funny feeling inside of me continue to swell and climb up my throat.
Sliding my hands from her body, I grabbed Bella by the hand and pressed it against the bed, interlocking our fingers. I needed something to fucking hold on to as the pleasure and the pressure in my chest rose. The intensity of it all was staggering, and as I continued to push into Bella and hear her whimper my name, I had to choke back the fucking tears that threatened to overflow from my eyes.
"Bella, fuck, Bella." I couldn't shut up, her name coming from my mouth incessantly as I shook above her, my orgasm imminent. "Please fucking come with me, Bella," I begged against her lips.
My words must have done something to her, because in the next second, her back arched and her walls squeezed down on me. "Oh my god, baby," she moaned, and as her thighs clenched my hips, pulling me ever closer to her, I found my release, too.
I felt the tear drip down my cheek as I collapsed against her, but did nothing to catch it. I was spent in every way. I knew I must have been crushing her with my weight, but she did nothing but wrap her arms around me as I pressed my face into the crook of her neck, breathing her in and attempting to come down from whatever the fuck just happened to me.
We remained that way for a while, just holding each other on the bed in the quiet. It was snowing outside, a typical Chicago Valentine's Day, and the streetlights illuminating against its flakes reflected into the room as our only source of light.
Eventually, when my weight was finally too much for Bella to bear, I rolled off of her and allowed her to pee and do whatever else girl's do after you bang them.
She came back into the room, still gloriously naked, and holding a joint. "My Dad's not gonna be home until late tomorrow, so we can smoke in here." She walked over to the window and cracked it open, the cold breeze from outside making her shiver.
"Come on before you freeze, woman." I said, wiggling myself under the covers and holding them up for Bella to join me. She did, snuggling up against my body and lighting the joint.
"Thank you for today." Bella said eventually, passing the joint to me. I took a hit before answering, letting the weed high course through me.
"Any fucking time, Bella," I told her as I exhaled. "Thank you for playing for me."
"It felt good to play for someone. Thanks for listening."
I laughed as I pulled her tighter against me, pressing my face into her hair and inhaling. "Seriously, Bella? Any fucking time."
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
It wasn't until I got home the next morning and was alone in my room that the events of the night prior hit me.
What the fuck was going on?
Being around Bella put me under her spell, made it impossible for me to have rational fucking thoughts or use my decision making skills. I shouldn't have let her play the piano for me, as much as I wanted it. I should have known how the sound of her singing would get under my skin, make me a willing fucking slave for this chick.
And, what? I fucking cried while fucking her? What the fuck was that about?
The strange emotion I had been feeling the night before did not leave me in the morning, but it lightened, and it gave me space to have some clarity about what was going on.
I was fucking obsessed with her. It was not healthy- for me or for Bella. How could I let it go this far? How could I drag her into my life this deeply, a life where all I could do is take, suck the energy out of her until she was bone dry?
This was fucking wrong. I'm sure if she knew the truth behind it all; how I stalked her in the band room and how I thought of her constantly, she would run away screaming. Bella wasn't the kind of girl to get caught up with South Side Scum like me, yet here I was, lying to her just enough to get away with it.
She deserved someone capable of treating her right. Of loving her. Maybe I needed to tell her to end our arrangement, at least let her see other people so she knew how pathetic I was. James was probably a better choice than I was, at the end of the day. He was a fucking asshole but he was honest about it, unlike me, pretending to be some chill dude for Bella to fuck around with when in reality, I wanted to crawl under her skin and live there.
I wished my dad didn't fuck me up so badly. I wished I was capable of love, like Alice and Mom. Instead, I was destined to drown, and I could not be saved. I could only drag others down with me, and I had to fucking stop it before it happened to Bella. I would not let her become my mother. I could not.
I had every intention of sitting Bella down and telling her she should leave me alone, I really did. But when the pebbles hit my window that night, and I finally got her back in my bed, I said nothing. I was back under her spell, and suddenly, all of my thoughts from earlier felt irrelevant and fucking stupid.
Maybe I'd have the guts to tell her next time.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Next time never came.
As winter began its slow transformation into spring, not much changed. Alice still spent most of her time at Jasper's house, actively avoiding me. We talked, here and there, when I caught her at home, but it was never about anything of substance.
Uncle Carlisle's calls stopped coming a few weeks after my fight with Dad, another normalcy I was appreciative of. Hearing his pity for me every time we spoke was grating, and I hated the way it made me resent him for all he had.
I had not seen my father once since our blow out, which I was extraordinarily appreciative of. Without Alice around the house, there was no one to hold me back from beating him to death, and I didn't think that would go over well with the few remaining members of the family.
Or the Chicago PD.
Every other thought that entered my mind was mostly composed of Bella. She still spent each and every night in my bed with me, though something had shifted. Most notably; we didn't have sex every night anymore, and as much as it sounds like a bad thing… it wasn't.
Sometimes we just stayed up for hours and talked. Sometimes we'd work on that giant bottle of vodka she'd stolen months prior, getting drunk and giggly and fucking tickling each other and shit. Bella would laugh often, a stark contrast to her demeanor when we first started spending time together. I liked to think it was because of me- that I was making her laugh, making her happy enough to smile more often- but I wasn't sure that was the case.
She'd come over one night with a good report from her mother in Phoenix.
"She's doing good, I think." She told me, her little hands playing with my fingers. "She sounded sober, at least."
She also had been practicing some piano pieces out on me, when we had the privacy, and I could tell having someone listen to what she played was making her happy. It was making me happy, too, though each time she sang for me, I was getting tangled deeper in her web, and when we parted ways, the crippling fear of that knowledge swept through me and nearly knocked me off my feet.
The crippling fear was something I felt often, along with that ever increasing, burning feeling that radiated out of my chest and towards Bella.
The emotions were conflicting, but similar in their intensity and relation to the girl. They butt heads for attention, the fear taking note when it noticed I was becoming too happy, too carefree. That other feeling came when Bella noticed my sulking, or fuck, even when she didn't notice, and cheered me up. Her mere presence was like a drug to me, and the more time I spent with her, the more addicted I was becoming.
It felt dangerous. It probably was, and I knew, above all else, that I should walk away. Or that I should let her walk away, because I was sure at this point I wouldn't be able to. But every time an opportunity presented itself to express this to Bella, to warn her that I was fucking insane, that Good Feeling would come back and knock the wind out of me. How could I deny myself this one good thing?
I couldn't. I was far too selfish.
Cue the fear.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Some of my more tangible fears were realized on a late day in March, spent at the park with our newly formed, half assed excuse for a friend group: Emmett, Jasper, Alice, Rose, Bella and myself.
We had all decided to get high, Alice included, which kind of pissed me off because she used to bitch at me constantly for smoking so much pot. I slipped up; as we made ourselves comfortable under a tree in the farthest corner of the park, I leaned against its trunk and pulled Bella between my opened legs, tucking her back against my chest.
I didn't even think about it. The incessant need to touch her had simply become too strong over the past few months, and my instincts grabbed at her whenever they noticed she was near.
When I noticed Bella stiffening in my arms, I looked up. The four of them were gaping at us, me in particular, as if they couldn't fucking comprehend what they were seeing.
"What?" I spat, glaring at each one of them.
"I dunno, man." Emmett gawked, his arms sweeping out to the display of us infront of him. "What's going on with you guys?"
Bella remained tense in my arms, and as I glanced down at her, I noticed she was looking off to the side and biting her lip, clearly fucking embarrassed.
We'd never shown any…affection in front of anyone before, not really. Alice had seen us together once or twice, of course, and Emmett knew we were fucking, but in the past I'd tried to keep my distance from her around our friends. We weren't a thing, after all.
Yet here I was, making it a fucking thing, making it fucking weird again. How did I become so uncool? How did this girl manage to make me lose my grip on myself so completely?
I released my arms from Bella, and she sat up quickly, disconnecting our touch. My body instantly yearned to reach out to her and touch her again, so I did, sliding my hand up her shirt til my cold palm met her warm back. She jumped at the temperature, and I pulled my hand back, ashamed at my lack of control when it came to her.
No one ever spoke of it again, and it loomed like an awkward silence without our group. Bella's reaction to being outed as more than friends was haunting me daily; her clear hesitation to admit she was that close to me. That look of embarrassment on her face.
Was I really that bad?
Still, Bella came to my room nightly, and just when that fear got so powerful inside of me I felt I might burst, she saved me with her kisses and touch and smile and laughter and songs. She chose to come and rescue me, and I was not at liberty to deny her or myself any longer.