I made my way into the en suite bathroom eventually and found a large towel with slippers and soft hand towels to use. I showered for what felt like hours and took my time washing every last crevice until the skin over my bones felt like it would melt off. I shut off the water stream and dried off, still stuck in my own thoughts. Over the years I thought less and less about this man, but here I was. In his vacation house, in his favor. At his whim.

It might have been different if our past was lest checkered. If the sex wasn't so explosive and amazing. If we weren't so passionate about each other at one point in our lives. If there was only just hate left, that would be so much easier.

The old picture came into my brain again. He kept it for a reason. I had loved him dearly but the only pictures I had kept were the mental ones that occasionally haunted my dreams.

I tied the robes around myself and ventured out into the bedroom again, only to come face to face with very angry thought in my head. He was shirtless sitting on the edge of the bed, his chest facing me. I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared at him, too frozen to keep moving. He was still so handsome, so in shape, so out of my reach nowadays. His lightly peppered hair did nothing but add to his sex appeal, and I wanted to constantly reach for one of the curls at the nape of his neck. The scar along his orbital bone and the change of color in his left eye just added to the mysterious nature of Edward.

Before when we were dating, we couldn't keep our hands off of each other. Once one article of clothing was off, it was inevitable that we'd be going at it like bunnies.

My heart raced at the thoughts I was having about him. Sex with him was amazing. It was earth-shattering sometimes… we were so in tune with each other. He was brazenly staring at me the same way I was staring at him, and I forced myself to look away.

That wasn't why I was here. Having sex would ruin everything.

"I, um, that's a nice shower. The whole house is really nice." I was blushing beet red, trying my hardest to form coherent thoughts and sentences.

Edward smirked at the lame compliment. "I've had it for a few years now. I hardly have down time to come around."

I nodded slowly. My lower lip was caught between my teeth so that I wouldn't speak. I didn't trust myself to. My body was on fire, and I wanted him… right now.

"This is the only made-up room; they keep it ready for whenever I might come. You can stay here, and I'll take the study. That's where I get my work done anyway." He got up from the bed and went to the door when I said nothing in return. He probably thought I was still angry with him or throwing another glorious fit. I didn't know how to express what I was feeling and moreover I didn't know if it was a good idea to express myself either. "Dinner will be whatever frozen foods are stocked. Unless you'd like to try your hand at a rod and reel."

My smile was involuntary. I was skilled at fishing in my youth but hadn't actually thrown a line in the water for many years. I wasn't sure I'd even be good at it anymore. On the other hand, I hated processed foods. I could at least try to catch my own dinner and have it be fresh… that sounded so delicious to me. "Do you have fishing equipment here?" I asked skeptically.

"There's a tackle box and a pole by the beach gate. The keeper's son uses it. You still have a few hours of daylight." He offered in an odd tone. Was this his version of being friendly?

It put me off kilter to be treated like a friend for once. He was walking away and out of the room when I lurched myself forward, as if propelled by an unknown force. I grabbed onto his arm tightly and he stopped in his tracks. He obliged to my own supruse and just stood there, patiently waiting. I stepped forward and didn't give myself another chance to think.

I pressed my lips to his ad felt my whole body light up like a Christmas tree. He had kissed me the other day but it wasn't like this. This was soft and inviting, this made me feel like his lover again. Not his ex. Not his enemy. His lover.

He encircled his arms around my bottom, like he always used to, and pressed us against one another closer than I'd been to another man in awhile. We kept kissing, our tongues caressing one another's and our lips sealing then unsealing the bond between us. He didn't reach for my cleavage or rip open my robe the way I expected him to. He just kept kissing me like his life depended on it. I thought of the picture in his dresser, I thought of the little kids that were going to sleep peacefully tonight, I thought of every beautiful memory I had ever made with this man.

A swell of pride started in my chest. I was so lucky to know this man, to have experiences with him that I'd never trade for a million dollars. He was lovely in all his weird ways. Edward was as much man as he was softness. Maybe he didn't love me that way anymore, but he had once- and it was magnificent. He loved me with every ounce of his being and I tried to love him the best way that I knew how. I was young and stupid and selfish… I made so many mistakes and regretted not taking enough moments into my own hands.

I made up my mind in that instance. When I separated myself from his lips his eyes were glazed over and a red tint marred his olive skinned face. He wanted me, just as I wanted him, even after all of this time and all of the terrible things we had said to each other.

I knelt before him and pulled my wet hair to the side of my face, feeling a whoosh of blood rush through my ears. Could I really do this? What if rejected me at the last minute? Would I be terrible at it? Had his other lovers been masters of intimacy, and I would come off homely and lame?

I ripped at the buttons of his jeans and pulled down his briefs to get to the part of him I had perhaps missed most. He was already hard and proof his excitement laid at the very tip of his shaft. I put it gently into my mouth and eased it down my throat, inch by inch, trying my hardest not to gag on his length. I tried to think happy thoughts and make this as pleasurable as possible for him.

He sighed in pleasured and let out small mutters in Italian, just as he used to. I would have never done this outside of the safety of our bed, in the daytime- it would have had to be pitch black and I had to be under the confines of a blanket to do something embarrassing like this. But something about the way he was looking down at me, his hands wound through my hair and pulling then pushing me back and forth along his dick… it invigorated me. This empowered me.

I looked up at him through heavy lashes, adoring the way he nearly went cross-eyed with pleasure when I flicked my tongue up and down the bulging vein. "Bella… cara, I'm close." Being called cara again after so many years did something to my stomach. He meant it as a warning for me to move away so he could spill himself into his hand. Instead, I wanted to stay right here and see what would happen. He even tried to pull me away by the nape of my neck but I enclosed my lips tighter on the bottom part of his shaft.

Edward let out a tortured noise mixed with a sigh of pleasure when he finished inside of my mouth and I felt the hot liquid slide down my throat. It was a weird, salty taste that I couldn't define but it hadn't been nearly as torturous as I thought it'd be. I kept licking and sucking on his dick until I started to feel him chuckle, his strong body reveling in his newfound good mood. "You've taken everything from me, Bella. I promise." He meant it as a joke, but I wasn't so sure.

I pulled away and sat back on my folded keens, my eyes not peeling away from his now limp manhood. What had I just done? Why had I done that? Wouldn't a simple "thanks for everything" have sufficed? I was caught in the moment where I felt immense gratitude and appreciation and I just wanted to show him that. But to go as far as giving him a blowjob? It seemed I had lost my mind.

I bit my lip and tasted him again, making me balk and run to the restroom. I rinsed my mouth out and swished with the available mouthwash, even tempted to borrow his toothbrush that was present. I mean, after what I had just done, we were closer than ever, right? I splashed some cold water on my face to bring down the redness. How on Earth was I going to get through this week now? I had sucked his dick no for seemingly good reason, like a wanton whore! Would he expect that of me all the time now?

I left the restroom to find an empty bedroom once more. Memories of what just happened flooded my vision and I had to get out of there. I put on the bathroom slippers and made my way down to the beach entrance he was talking about and found it pleasantly empty.

Of course it's empty. This is a private island, you dolt!

I baited my hook and treaded into thigh-high water, letting the soft robe get soaked as I stood there basking in the sunlight. The great thing and the shitty thing about fishing was how much time it gave you to think or mull over all of your life decisions. I did that for almost an hour- the empty bottom compartment of the tacklebox served as a makeshift cooler with salt water and the few flopping fishes that I had caught. I had barely caught enough to satisfy my own appetite, but my legs and lower back were already complaining from standing still so long.

I washed my hands with the small tube of sanitizer that was available and put the tacklebox safely on shore before scoping out my surroundings. When I was satisfied that I was truly alone, I disrobed.

I wish I had that damn swimsuit with me now, didn't I?

Before I could be stark naked any longer, I dove deep into the water and let the salty warmness wash over me. It relaxed all of my tense aches and pains. I had always loved the beach. Even the packed ugly ones. Water was second nature to me. When I wasn't at the beach, I was in a pool. It was-

When I felt my head being dunked from behind, I knew immediately the culprit but didn't dare look back at him. Twice now he had followed me into the water- and he hated the water. Hated getting wet, hated the sand getting everywhere, hated "swimming in fish piss water". But here he was, standing beside me in ocean water that just covered my chest and part of his torso.

"That's not funny, you know." I shot out. "Not the hundredth time you do it!" I turned to glare at him, still spluttering salt water. He just shrugged, that childlike smile playing on his lips. "You're going to drown me one of these times." I was trying to be serious but he kept walking towards me and I kept taking steps backwards until my feet lost their footing and my body dipped back into deeper water.

He snatched me to him, as though I would drown if he didn't hold onto me. "I'd drown myself right after."

"Gee thanks." I rolled my eyes but couldn't stop the blushing schoolgirl smile his words brought on. He used to say stupid cheesy stuff like that all the time. It was part of his charm, to not be serious and tough when he was with me. To be silly and act young and carefree. "But if you drown me here, I will definitely haunt your mansion. A ghost of your ex-lover would definitely kill sexy time with your mistresses." I hadn't meant to say that but it came out that way regardless.

I didn't want him to know that he thought of him being with other women burned my throat. I didn't even want him to know that the thought had crossed my mind.

His eyebrow rose. "Is that what you call us? Just lovers?"

I tried to swim away from his grip but he held me tighter. "Well, what do you consider us?" I didn't know how to give him a straight answer. The truth was that I was married to him in my mind way before he ever considered the idea of dating me. I fell in love the first night we snuck off from a party and told jokes to each other through rose-covered bushes in my mom's garden. He was my soulmate the moment he pressed his soft lips to mine when I was eighteen years old.

Edward stared down at me. "You were the woman I was going to be with and take care of for the rest of my life. You were my fiancé."

"You never even proposed." I balked at him calling me that."

"I didn't need to. It would come eventually. We'd marry and have children and live together until one of us perished. That's how it works." My mouth dried at the romantics in his words. This was him in rare form. He hardly talked about his feelings or what the future held for us. He hardly talked; he always chose actions over words. "And you gave me your virginity. You chose me."

I glared at him. "That's so barbaric to think of first-time sex that way. It was sex. And it was awkward sex because I was crying and it hurt. Nothing poetic about virginity."

Edward pressed a fast kiss against my mouth, coaxing it open until I relented and let him do what he wanted. He knew he owned me, damn it. He pulled back just an inch to catch my gaze. "Don't try and ruin a beautiful memory. I know the truth, I was there." Edward dug his thumbs into the grooves of my hips as a reminder. "You gave me a gift you could only give once. And you wanted nothing in return, just for me to take care of you in that moment. It made me want to take care of you for the rest of your life."

My heart was beating out of my chest. I loved this stupid man. I loved how he looked at me, talked to me, how he made me feel about myself. How had I ever had the nerve to walk away from him? What kept me from fixing us?

"Except i didn't end up the person you wanted me to be. I couldn't walk away from that… the lifestyle." Edward murmured more to himself than to me. He never talked about it- the mafia. He mostly pretended like he didn't know what I was talking about when I mentioned it. Acted like I was making up fictional stories or letting my imagination get the best of me. "I was more like your dad than you thought. And now I've surpassed him. I'm richer, more powerful, I have more connections, perfected the English language, built an entire empire for myself." He got lost in his own train of thought. His face turned a darker color. "And instead of impressing you, all of those things kept you away from me." He gripped my hips so tight, I knew it'd leave a bruise. "For the last five years. Not a word from you."

I licked my lips nervously, not sure where this was going. Were we really going to argue out here in the middle of the ocean? "Our lives just went in different directions…" I let my words trail off.

"You mean that you became a philanthropist, jetting off to save the world's hurt children while I became a boss for the Moltozano Family." Edward said it with such brashness that I almost looked around on instainct. Charlie never let anyone talk like that. Words like mafia, mob, Omerta, underboss, Don, gang etc. were banned from our mouths. My dad was always very hush-hush about everything. It was where Edward had learned most of his habits from. Don't speak of it, don't drag on it, don't even acknowledge it, always deny it.

It was like a bath of cold water to hear him be so frank about the truth. All of my suspcions, all of my worries had been true!

Charlie had sucked him into this stupid life, and in a way I felt like it was my fault. Hadnt Edward only stuck around on Charlie's security detail because of me? He was never a big fan of my dad's, and there were plenty of other made men that offered him higher salaries and more power in his position.

"I tried to take you away from it." I whispered.

Edward let out a dark chuckle. "Your dad wasn't the first mobster I worked for. Once you involve yourself in this life, there's no way out. So I'd either be a lackey my whole life or my own boss. I needed the power and the money to have people beneath me, working and doing the things that I used to handle. I wanted both of us to live a peaceful life, as peaceful as I could make it. So you'd be safe with me and taken care of. That's all I wanted."

I swallowed back the ball of tears lodged in my throat. He had never talked that much in the entire time I knew him. And to dump all of that on me like that… I didn't even know what to say.

"That's not the kind of life I wanted. I can't live everyday like a princess locked in a gilded cage. We'd both be stuck in that cage." I pressed on. "Constantly needing protection. Never being a part of a normal life again- it's a jail sentence."

Edward said nothing. This was his life that I was talking in hypotheticals about. But he wouldn't apologize for the way it turned out.

"I want four kids, and for them to go to public school. I want to walk them to a neighborhood park and let them run wild when they're toddlers. I want them to be able to sneak away for an hour when they're teenagers. I want them to know a life without security guards and emergency exits. A life without danger lurking around every corner." Our faces were as close as they could be without them actually touching. "I want them to marry happy, boring, normal people and fall madly in love." And most of all, I wanted my kids to experience the most mundane and natural parts of childhood. I couldn't make them live in a cage the way I had.

Edward pressed his mouth on mine and forced my legs to loop around his waist, our naked bottom halves now touching one another without any fabric between us. We kissed out of agony, out of heartbreak, out of desperation. We were two ships passing each other in the dead of night. Things would never be innocent like they once were, things would never be simple again.

He held me by my buttocks and ground himself against me, kissing me hard as he moved. "You promised me that you'd have my babies." He muttered against my mouth. "You named all of them. You looked around my shabby little apartment and dreamed of all the ways we'd make more space for crawling babies. You wanted to give me that when I had nothing to offer you." Edward wound his fingers through my hair and tugged gently. "And now you say you that you'll have children with a boring simpleton?" He bucked against me, letting a finger slide from the curve of my bottom and onto my more sensitive area.

"We shouldn't do this, Edward." I whispered the warning. We shouldn't have se, we shouldn't talk about the past anymore, we shouldn't think about the adorable kids we could have… none of this.

But he started kissing down my neck, his warm breath fanning my exposed skin. He walked us back to a shallower sandbar, where he sat me down and bent between my open legs. The shallow water washed over us, causing a weird sensation to run up and down my thighs. We were in just enough water to keep us wet, but he was in much more control now.

Edward kissed the bottom of my earlobes again and leaned his weight on me, his dick pressing softly on my entrance. "Tell me you'll have my baby."

My mouth ran dry. I would have died to hear him say that at one point in my life. He was always so careful back then- he always had a condom and took me to get on birth control when I was ready. I wanted to get pregnant every time he looked at me the way he was looking at me just now. Edward was always the one that killed any dream of having kids until I was much older. "Eddie- no." I quickened my breathing when one of his expert fingers made tight circles around my entrance and then zoned in on my clit.

"Yes." He goaded me, one finger pressing deeper.

I was breathless when he was touching me like that. I couldn't say yes or no, I just held onto his forearm and begged him to keep going. He pulled away right before I was going to climax, causing me to growl at him in anguish. "Now!" I screamed at him with no shame.

He smiled and kissed my pursed lips. "Say you'll give me a baby. I'll do things with my tongue," he dragged his tongue along my lower lip in demonstration, "and fingers that will you leave you lifeless here on the beach." It sounded definitely like a threat or a promise- something I should be weary of.

"YesI'llhaveyourbaby." It came tumbling out. "Now make me cum."

And he did, multiple times. He used his tongue, then his fingers, and when I felt like I was for sure done, he licked his plate clean until I felt myself quite literally leave my own body.