Love Buzz- Nirvana

Dive- Nirvana

I had never been to Aberdeen before either, other than just passing through, so we explored together. It was a standalone building, obviously repurposed from a colonial revival home into a shop of both new and used books. If my senses were correct, someone lived in the upstairs area. Luckily, it wasn't one of those places with a café inside, and the odor of food from the owner's kitchen was overwhelmed by the comforting aroma of leather and paper.

The shop was warm inside, and Edward helped me out of my raincoat and draped it over his arm with his own, even though I quietly told him that I didn't mind carrying anything since it wouldn't be burden. He just shook his head and pulled me along with him by the hand to peruse the shelves in the very front of the store.

As was the price I paid for my existence, I had already read almost everything, so I gravitated to the new releases while Edward shuffled through the battered books in the discount section, working his way through each section of the shop.

"Have you read this yet?" I asked, holding up the shiny yellow cover of a new crime thriller with plenty of critical buzz. Edward shook his head and took it from me to read the summary in the inside flap.

"S-s-sounds good," he said, adding it to the small stack of books we had compiled for our haul.

"How about Harry Potter? Have you read these yet?"

"Not the n-newest one," Edward said, adding it to the stack as well. "The l-last t-two had depressing endings. V-violence, death. You'd never think it's s-s-supposed to be a children's s-series."

I added it to our selections anyways, along with a Joan Didion memoir and the newest installment of a Neil Gaiman series while Edward studied the covers of the biographical novels on display. He looked so focused, his brows knitted together as he studied the descriptions of each book he selected. I noticed the only one he picked was one about one of the women who served as a mathematical calculator at the Harvard University Observatory in the 1880s, before the development of computers. I didn't know much about her, but I knew she was one of the forgotten members of a team that sought to measure the galaxy and map the universe, lost to history as most women were.

I was done here. It was a small selection anyways, as were most bookshops outside of big cities, and this place was no exception. But Edward seemed to enjoy it here. He had been limited to picking out books from our home library and the very quick rush through the bookstore in Port Angeles while Alice was in therapy. But oftentimes, especially lately, we were more occupied with one another, in my car, than we were with finding books to read. This was someplace new and with more variety than either of his previous options- which isn't saying much for Aberdeen- so we could stay as long as Edward wanted.

I gravitated to the small case where the classics were shelved, and tilted out Wuthering Heights. It was an older edition, likely worth more than the seven dollars the sticker on the front marked as its price, and the pages were yellowed and smelled of musk and wood.

I flipped through the pages, speeding through the first section of the novel where the scraggly young orphan Heathcliff comes to live at Wuthering Heights and the narration skips from one unreliable perspective to another. I was intimately familiar with each complex entanglement of the complicated family and their mysteries- each word, each mark of punctuation was as engrained in my memory as everything else I had read in this existence.

I was at my favorite part- early in the novel, when Heathcliff returns home after Catherine's marriage, looking physically impressive and polished and still as devoted to Catherine as she was to him. If I forced myself to forget about the turmoil and abuse that followed, I liked to imagine Catherine running off with Heathcliff, sailing away from the harsh moors of Wuthering Heights and living in some sunny place with the protection of Heathcliff's fortune.

"This again?" Edward smiled, coming up behind me and wrapping his arm around me. His hand rested on the curve of my hip, impossibly hot through the thin fabric of my sweater, and again his thumb massaging in alluring circles, this time at the sensitive skin at the side of my waist. It sent a proverbial chill up my side, and I turned around to face Edward.

"It's a good book," I defended, anticipating his scoff. We had had this conversation before, and I was sure there would be years ahead of us with similar banter. I smiled up at him, thinking of us decades in the future, still in some nondescript bookstore, but this time I couldn't feel the steady rhythm of Edward's heart beating in his chest, nor see the human flush in his soft skin.

"It's a d-depressing book."

"Do you have some problem with the classics?" I asked, turning in his arms so our torsos were flush against each other.

"They r-ruin each other's lives. Heathcliff is a v-vicious man who s-s-sets out t-to d-destroy and abuse everything and everyone around him, and Cathy is s-s-so s-selfish that innocent people around h-her f-fall victim to Heathcliff, but she d-doesn't care."

"All she cares about is him," I added. "That's it. That's the point of the story. It's a gothic romance, but the only romance is that their love for each other knows no bounds. Even in death…"

Edward's hands traveled up my side so he cradled my face in his palms, his touch soft and warm, and I struggled to gather my wits and maintain coherency under the pierce of his gaze. "What are you th-thinking about?" he asked, for the second time that day.

"What do you mean? We're talking about Wuthering Heights." I figured he read something on my face- Rose always told me that I was too expressive for my own good. Even Emmett, oblivious as he could be, could always read me too well.

"I don't l-like when you b-bring up death," he said softly but firmly. I was suddenly profoundly grateful for the exclusivity of a bookstore in Aberdeen, because the only other people around were the cashier and an older man trying to pick which Stephen King novel he'd be reading next.

"Oh, no," I reassured, cupping his cheek in turn. "No, it's not like that. I was, maybe inappropriately, romanticizing it all. The idea of being so consumed in love that it sweeps you away- that I understand. And…" I inhaled deeply and looked down at the forgotten book I had slipped back on the shelf. "'I only wish us never to be parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground, and for my own sake, forgive me'?"

Edward laughed out loud, drawing the sharp glare of the old man who had apparently been disturbed while reading the inside flap of The Stand- as if the book hadn't been out for decades with a popular television adaptation.

He kissed me softly, briefly, while still smiling. "You're forgiven," he promised. "What p-part of the book was th-that f-from?"

"The most romantic part," I grinned, eliciting another chuckle. "When Heathcliff comes to Cathy's sickbed, just before she dies."

"Morbid."

"Maybe," I shrugged, picking the book back up. "But still romantic. He exudes passion, she begs him to stay with her… With all his flaws and detractors, he was completely devoted to Cathy, and she was destroyed by losing him. I can identify with that."

"I know," he said, smiling sadly and hugging me to him. "I w-wish… I wish I could do s-s-something. I w-wish I could make you s-s-stay."

"I know."

"At l-least I know you can't d-die f-from this." He was trying to lighten the mood, but his smile was tight and painful, and didn't reach his eyes. "You can't, right?"

"What, waste away from a broken heart? No, I couldn't do that even if I wanted to. So long as you don't elope with someone else while I'm gone, I'm sure I'll be fine."

I was downplaying it, of course. I couldn't die from a crippling depression, like Cathy, but there was the possibility of destruction awaiting me in Volterra, however small. And, more likely than not, this was going to be extremely difficult to separate myself from.

"I d-don't think we'll have th-that p-problem," Edward snorted. "B-besides, isn't the w-woman Heathcliff married Isabella?"

I nodded. "Poor Isabella."

"Wait. Were y-you c-comparing me t-to Heathcliff?"

"Definitely not. Do you think I'm like Catherine?"

"No," he scoffed. "Catherine's d-defining character t-trait was her s-s-selfishness. I'd s-s-say you're her p-polar opposite."

"Who would you compare me to?" I asked curiously, fingering the spines of the classics selection at my side. "Which literary figure, I mean."

"Hmmm," Edward hummed, mocking a deep contemplation. "Dracula?"

I burst out laughing, bending over and holding my side while the old man shot us another glare as he paid for his dated King book and left.

"Alright, I deserved that," I said, plucking a copy of Dracula from between the Salinger and the Tolstoy. "Let's see, do I have 'a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils'?" I asked, Edward tracing one finger along my nose.

"No."

"How about massive eyebrows 'almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion'?"

He twirled a lock of my hair with his index finger. "Not bushy."

"Not even curly, either. Just undecided between straight and wavy, I think," I added, then continued reading from the second chapter. "Now, I don't have a heavy moustache, but how about a 'fixed and rather cruel-looking' mouth, 'with peculiarly sharp white teeth'?"

"Let me s-s-see," he murmured, grasping my chin and tilting my head up as he leaned down to press his mouth to mine. His tongue was through my lips before I could blink my eyes closed, and he almost caressed my teeth with his tongue before I quickly drew back.

"Careful," I warned. He knew the danger around the sharpness of my teeth and the venom that naturally coated them.

"I j-just needed to check. I can't be k-k-kissing s-some kind of mythical monster. What would the polite s-s-society s-say?"

"Ugh," I scoffed. "You offend. You could have at least compared me to Carmilla. She wasn't hideous."

"Wasn't she a l-lesbian?" he laughed, still teasing me. "Are you t-trying to come out t-to me?"

I bit back a laugh of my own, chewing on my bottom lip and gently pushed him away from me. "I can prove to you later that I'm not," I said, looking up at him from my lashes. The effect was immediate. The blush reddened the tips of his ears and blossomed down his cheekbones and up his neck, and I could easily hear his heartrate pick up.

He groaned and rolled his eyes, but grabbed our discarded coats and a stack of books we had accumulated. "Alright, l-let's go then."

"What?" I laughed, but Edward didn't turn around. I grabbed the other stack of books and followed Edward to the little desk in the middle of the store, where a young woman with sandy blonde hair and colored contacts that changed her natural brown eyes to a murky violet stood waiting.

"All together?" she asked smally as we both set a stack of books each on the counter.

"Yup," I confirmed, pulling out my wallet from my back pocket and handing her a credit card. Edward threaded his fingers through mine and stood looking down, his verdant gaze piercing and serious, and all the lightheartedness melted away at that checkout counter.

The girl bagged our book haul, slipping the receipt in one of the bags and smiling snidely when she wished us a nice day. Edward helped me put my raincoat back on- unnecessarily, but he was too much of a gentleman- and took the bags before I could take them off the counter.

"Oh, wait!" I stopped him just before he opened the door to leave the shop. I weaved through the cluttered shelves back to the section of used classics we had been galivanting through and plucked the wilting copy of Wuthering Heights from the shelf.

"Here," I said, carefully placing the book on the wooden countertop in front of the cashier. "It's a second edition, and definitely worth more than you're selling it for."

The girl gave me a blank stare, blinking so I could see the contact lenses sliding across the sclera. I arched my brow and chewed on my bottom lip, waiting for her to say something, do something.

"So, if you want to pass it along to your boss, maybe? I'm sure a collector somewhere would love to have it," I said, trying to prompt some kind of response. Edward chuckled softly behind me and came around to my side.

"This?" the girl finally said, and I wondered if maybe she had some kind of disability or was otherwise impaired.

"This is Wuthering Heights," I said kindly, sliding the book further across the counter. "It's a very old copy. Someone must have given it away without realizing. If you set it aside, I'm sure your employer would be very happy to have it."

The girl paled and her heartbeat picked up, and I realized what the problem was. I had been in the shop for a long time, and standing only a foot from her and staring at her must have triggered a response in her sympathetic nervous system. Normally being around humans wasn't a problem for me, which was a trait I shared only with Carlisle. And especially around Edward, I didn't think it would be a problem, but here we were.

I blinked slowly and backed away, trying to make myself seem less predatory. Edward was still at my side, and I hoped his obvious humanity would dull my affect.

"Thank you," she said, her voice a little hoarse. She still hadn't looked at the book, and I hoped that she would be able to comprehend just how precious that book was once I left the vicinity. I made a mental note to call the store later and make sure that the owner had gotten the message, and maybe I could even connect them to a book collector who would give them a more than fair price.

"No problem," I said, picking my bag of books back up and turning back to Edward.

He opened the door for me, the little bell jingling happily, and as we stepped into the misting rain on the front porch, I heard her softly say, "Have a nice day."

We walked back to the car quietly. Edward opened the driver's side door for me, and took the bag from me to put in the backseat along with our rain jackets. I turned the heat on for Edward since his hair had gotten damp in our short walk, and he joined me in the car.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly before pulling out of my parking spot.

"What for?" he asked, tilting his head in confusion. I didn't know how he had missed it.

"She was terrified of me," I sighed, fiddling with the air controls. "I ruined our afternoon just by existing."

I was waiting for Edward to realize, to admonish me. Somehow, I was still waiting for that moment of truth where he would realize that he was far too good for me and finally run for the hills as fast as he could.

Instead, he laughed.

It was a loud, startling belly laugh that actually shook the car, and he kept laughing and trying to gasp to regain his breath control. I sat next to him, waiting for the hysterics to pass. I hoped he wouldn't demand to be left in Aberdeen, and would at least let me drive him home.

"You th-think sh-she was afraid of you?" he finally managed, still chuckling and mouth twisted up in a crooked smile so that one cheek dimpled.

"Of course. I can smell it, Edward. I know when someone is afraid of me. The norepinephrine, the heartrate-"

"Bella, come on," Edward huffed, still grinning. He took my hand and weaved our fingers together, and I was surprised he even wanted to touch me at this point. His skin was hot against mine, and I was reminded of how I must have felt to him. Edward could feel the cold of my skin, like a dead monster from the pages of one of the novels I had once loved. I only hoped I could be more comparable to Carmilla or Lord Ruthven from The Bride of Isles than Dracula. They may have been murderous monsters, but at least they were refined. "She l-liked you."

"What?" I asked, feeling the steady, sure pulse of Edward's heart from where his palm pressed into mine.

"Come on, Carmilla. You d-don't r-recognize your Lucy?"

"Laura," I corrected softly, replaying the last few minutes in the shop. The way her eyes dilated, her heart pounding, even the hormonal response- the physical cues for fear and attraction were quite similar. "I didn't realize…"

"It's the t-twenty-first century, Bella. Welcome to m-modernity."

"I'm not offended!" I defended. "It's just that, well, I'm usually around Carlisle and Rose. Comparatively, I'm not the most alluring. I'm not as familiar with that particular response from human interaction, with men or women."

Edward rolled his eyes. "We're g-going t-to have t-to work on that."

"On what?" I asked, finally pulling out of the parking spot and onto the road. Aberdeen wasn't exactly a beautiful town, but there was a certain working class charm to it. The roads needed to be paved, and they were soaked and slippery and I was very thankful for my quick reaction time and the custom grip tires Rose had installed. The buildings were squat and dull, and even the trees that lined the gridded streets seemed duller than the lush and bright forestry outside of the city limits. I understood why Kurt Cobain wrote such depressing lyrics and seemed so eager to leave his hometown.

"You," he answered, still shaking his head as he looked out the window. We were passing a commemorative plaque for Cobain, and Edward craned his head to get a look at it.

"What about me?"

"The way you t-talk about yourself, Bella. The w-way y-you think about yourself." His teeth clenched, and I was momentarily distracted from the road by the way his jaw sharply defined with the muscle contraction, and I pushed back the urge to lick the sharp lines.

"I know myself," I shrugged. He didn't understand. There was a level of self-awareness that came with age, and I could be honest with myself. I had spent decades with the most stunning vampire in the world, and my closest companion for centuries was one of the most beautiful vampire men I had ever seen. And now, of course, I had a mate I couldn't really measure up to. I was plain for a vampire, brown hair, pale skin, the standard gold to black eye color gradient. Edward was different. He had the most compelling, unique bronze hair, and the emerald of his eyes were made ever more brilliant by leaves of gold in his irises.

"You d-don't s-s-see yourself clearly," he disagreed.

I shot him a glare from the corner of my eye, sure he was teasing again. But he wasn't smiling, and he gripped my hand in his warm embrace so tightly I was sure I could match his temperature. I didn't want him to let go of me, so I took my hand from the wheel and steadied the car with my knee so I could shift up and speed down the open road of the one-oh-one, back to Forks.

We were quiet on the drive, with only the sound of the radio mixing with the soft melody of Edward's heart and breaths. He was still clutching my hand in his so tightly his knuckles were whitening, and I worried he would hurt himself on my solid flesh.

I zipped through the forest, my foot firmly down on the pedal so the world around us was a green blur. Thankfully, there were no more cops, and I peeled through the tiny towns we passed so quickly no one would have time to call them anyways.

"Can we s-s-stop for food?" Edward asked as we approached the next town, and I acquiesced, pulling off at the pitstop town of Amanda Park. Edward ordered a few slices of pizza from a less-than-stellar looking sub shop, and we walked down the street to a small park that overlooked Lake Quinault. It was still raining, but we took refuge at a picnic bench in a little pavilion. The water was blue and still and mirror the brilliant reflection of the picturesque mountains in the distance. There was a rocky shore here, marked with pebbles and stones surrounded by larger, flat boulders than melted into tall grass and delicate yellow wildflowers that crept up to the more manicured landscaping of the park.

Edward picked at the pizza with his fingers, tossing the crusts to a flock of geese that were grooming in a puddle. He sighed deeply and stared out across the water. "I f-feel so terrible about Alice."

"I know." I smiled sadly. We had cocooned ourselves in the comfort of driving and books this morning, but reality lay just a few miles north of us. Even if he wanted to, Alice was an unavoidable presence. "I can try to talk to her, if you want. Girl to girl. It may be easier than talking to you about it."

"That m-may b-be a good idea," he sighed, running his fingers through his hair. I cringed as I saw the grease from the pizza that clung to his fingertips rub off on his hair. He held his head in his hands and rubbed at his temples. "We used t-to t-tell each other everything."

"It's natural to grow apart a bit," I offered. "Do you tell her everything?"

"No," he said quickly, looking a bit taken aback. "I would n-never t-tell her about you or your f-family. I would never t-tell anyone."

"I know that," I smiled, flipping my palm over to offer him my hand. "That's not what I was talking about. I meant, you don't talk to her about us. What we do, you know, intimately." Edward blushed, and I quickly added, "It would be okay if you did. I don't have a problem with that. I certainly have a family that doesn't really have boundaries in any sense of the word, so I don't mind if you did talk to her."

"No, no," Edward shook his head. "No, we d-don't t-talk about that. About us. Are you k-kidding? I c-can b-barely get the words out without t-totally l-losing control of myself and f-falling apart."

"You manage perfectly well with me."

"Does it s-s-seem s-s-so, to you?" he looked down at me. I watched the way his long lashes clung together in the dampness, casting a light shadow down the apples of his cheekbones.

"Is it difficult?" I asked, not really wanting to know.

He did leave me hanging for a minute, but I left him with his thoughts and prepared for a potential heartbreak. "B-being with you is the m-most n-natural thing in the w-world. I love you, Bella." He slid close to me on the picnic bench and leaned down to tenderly press his soft lips against mine. "It is d-difficult being touched s-s-sometimes. I… I know you know that s-s-some instincts have s-started t-to s-s-surface, the kind that I d-don't have experience with and d-didn't know how to deal with. But I'm l-learning, and the old s-s-scars are fading." He was blushing, his cheeks splotching with the color of an amaranth and the tips of his ears a burning red. One hand was on my knee, and the other on his chest, with his hand over his heart and one finger pressed right on a cigarette burn that still marred his skin.

"They say time heals all wounds."

Edward chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Always s-s-so cheesy."

I couldn't help but smile back, and we kissed softly until the rain subsided and we had a window of opportunity to walk back to the car. I bought Edward a packaged ice cream from the gas station next to the sub shop, and he consumed it very alluringly in the car.

It was inappropriate, but Edward had started it. He had opened the proverbial floodgates in that little meadow after swimming. Could that really have been only yesterday? But my thoughts were growing more and more explicit, and I couldn't seem to push them away anymore.

I stared at Edward out of the corner of my eye, thinking of his tongue on me instead of that ice cream cone, licking and sucking. His full lips wrapped around the peak of the ice cream, but instead I thought of them on my breast, his warm mouth enveloping me where his thumb had been just the day before. And then moving lower, and lower…

I was flying across the pavement. We peeled up the coast, but I didn't even glance at the expansive ocean to my left when there was a seductive Adonis less than a foot to my right.

The one-oh-one veered east and we crisscrossed with the Hoh River, and Edward's hand was again on my thigh just a few inches above my knee, the heat of his hand not dampened by the thin denim of my jeans.

The road wove north, then back west again until we crossed another river- the Bogachiel this time, and Edward's thumb was rubbing soft circles on my inner thigh, and that movement shot right up my leg to where my thighs joined. I chewed on my bottom lip and thought of that day with the flowers and how sweet it had all been, how honest and overwhelmingly beautiful.

I thought I might spontaneously combust by the time we sped past the little airport and into Forks proper. I was listening intently for any of the handful of cops who were working at any given time, but the only one I could hear was parked over at the police station. I whipped the car around, not bothering to stop at the stop sign, and I took out my frustration on the gas pedal, punching it down as hard as I could.

The tires screeched on the pavement when I turned onto Edward's street, and I almost fishtailed pulling into the driveway, but I shifted down quickly and fought the wheel back into place so we smoothly slid right up to the house.

"Is th-there a fire?" Edward asked, smirking at me.

I couldn't muster a witty comeback, just smiled weakly and grabbed the bags from the back seat, then ran to Edward's door to open it before he could blink twice. He rolled his eyes. "Welcome to modernity," I joked, and he rolled his eyes again and insisted on taking one of the bags from me, even though I protested that I could carry both bags and him into the house with one hand and without a second thought.

Alice and Charlie were still out, probably at that craft fair Charlie had mentioned, or maybe lunch or other shopping. A trip out with Alice always turned into an expedition. I was almost surprised Alice had managed to convince Charlie to take her to something like that. It definitely was not Charlie's scene, but Alice was a force of nature. If she wanted something, she got it, especially with Charlie, who she had wrapped around her little finger.

Edward stashed his new books in his room and laid out on the couch with the crime novel I had picked out. I boiled some water for tea, which Edward sipped at happily, and curled in next to him with the Joan Didion memoir.

I wasn't really paying much attention to reading though. I was still distracted by Edward, and stared at his long fingers as he rubbed the corner of a page to separate it and turn to the next. For some reason, I just wasn't in the mood to read about Joan Didion's husband's passing or her sick daughter, but Edward was sitting next to me, squinting at the book with his brows knitted together.

I scooted closer to him and tucked my head into his chest so I could get a view of his page and leech his warmth. His heart was beating right into my ear, and I was cocooned in his scent of lilac mixed with delicate sweet notes of honey and, somehow, sunshine.

I understood why Edward was so intensely reading. It was a little dry, more of an explanation of Swedish economic history than the detailing of any fast-paced criminal activity. I was losing interest in that too, especially since Edward, as with most humans, read so slowly. I could read each page several times over by the time he flipped to the next, and I started filling the gap of time. I ran my fingers along his upper back, tracing along the lines of his musculature, then dipping in to the hollow of his shoulder blades. Edward shivered under my touch, but he didn't tell me to stop, so I figured he wasn't getting too cold.

I followed up along his spine to the exposed sensitive skin at the nape of his neck, and I brushed back the baby hairs there. They were somehow impossibly soft, moreso than even the silky tangle of hair on the top of his head, and I scratched my blunt fingernails there in a way I knew he liked.

Edward reached behind him and grabbed my hand, stilling my ministrations. He tossed the books haphazardly onto the coffee table and turned to me, forcing me off his chest. But before I could protest, his lips were on mine.

I let him guide me down onto the couch so he hovered over me, propped up with his elbows on either side of me.

"I didn't mean to distract you," I said against him, and he laughed into my mouth.

"Sure you d-didn't," he chuckled, pulling at my bottom lip with his teeth so I whimpered, drawing a smile from him.

It was as if yesterday had transformed Edward into a completely new person. There was an urgency in him I hadn't experienced before, and it was becoming impossible to stay still. I kept my legs closed tight, suppressing the desire to buck up into him, and almost twisted my fingers in his hair too tightly when I felt his hand slide down to my waist.

My shirt had ridden up a bit, and his palm burned on the bare skin of my hip. "Is th-this okay?" he asked, pulling away slightly to catch his breath.

"Yes." I sounded too needy, but he didn't seem to mind. Instead, his hand trailed up further to the curve of my waist, then over the center of my stomach, my shirt pulling up even further. Our tongues slid against one another. I didn't think I'd ever get used to his heat, or the slippery silk of his tongue, or his taste in my mouth. It made me wonder what he tasted like, the rest of his skin, of his body, and in the same moment his hand slid up further to cup my bare breast.

I moaned loudly into him, and he didn't find it so humorous anymore. I hadn't put a bra on- I didn't really need one, it was more of a cultural practice. But I hadn't been home. I had changed out of my bathing suit the night before and into a spare set of clothes I stashed in my car, undergarments not included.

He pulled back and his hand slid back down to the middle of my stomach, where the hem of my shirt was curled up. "C-can I?" he asked, rubbing the fabric nervously between his thumb and index finger. If I had a working heart, it would have been beating out of my chest at this moment.

I nodded and moved my hands from his hair to raise them above my head, sitting up a bit on the couch so he could slide the shirt over my head. The sleeves got caught on my arms, and he had to tug it hard to get my hands through the holes. The shirt ended flung into the corner of the living room, and there I was.

There I was, as exposed as I had ever been in front of someone other than my immediate family. Yesterday was already so fast, yet altogether too slow. I wanted to stop. I wanted more. I didn't know what I wanted, but it was happening no matter what. Edward was hovering over me, looking down at me, and I clenched my fists at my sides to keep myself from covering myself.

He brushed a thumb up over my abdomen, then his index finger traced along the flat, hard skin at the center of my sternum, then back down so his hand rested flat at my midsection just above my jeans. I needed him to stay still, but also move further down. I didn't understand how I could have so many warring, conflicting emotions at once.

He treated his other thumb to the same journey. Up my abdomen, tracing over my ribs, up over the center of my sternum, but again avoiding the place I wanted him to touch me most.

I tried to gauge his expression. His lips were parted, his brows knitted together and deep eyes gleaming in concentration, similar to how he looked reading that books just a few minutes before.

Or maybe it had been hours. I was impossibly distracted, and it was almost as if I had lost track of time. With less and less clothing on, doubts settled in. Would he grow tired of me? Bored? I was unchanging, cold and marble while others were soft and warm and constantly changing.

Finally, he looked at me, and all my worries melted away. His pupils had dilated and his eyes were a burnished green, each delicate leaf of his iris a different, warm shade. He wasn't repulsed by the cold of my skin or that I wasn't soft and pliable like human girls. He wasn't judging me or critical or comparing me to Rose as I always did to myself. He loved me.

"You are s-s-so beautiful, love," he said, one hand behind my neck to pull me up to him, and he kissed me hard. My chest pressed against him, bare, cool skin against his warm flesh with only his shirt between us, and I gasped into his mouth.

His hands was on my breast again, his touch feather-soft and delicate. My nipples were impossibly responsive and pebbled tightly. I could feel even the most microscopic particle of dust drifting around me, but nothing in the world could compare to the rough pad of Edward's thumb against the sensitive skin.

I drew in a needlessly shaky breath as Edward's fingers traced along the curvature of my breast, like he was memorizing the shape and texture of my skin. I was burning. And he was… experimenting?

At first I wasn't entirely sure. It didn't matter either way. I could explode with happiness and tension with the mere fact that I was topless under Edward with his mouth against mine and his hand on my breast. As far as I was concerned, it was a miracle, and I was floating in the closest thing to heaven I imagined I would ever experience.

First, his touch was soft but moving. Then, he simply cupped my breast, squeezing ever so slightly and then pushing upward as he repositioned himself to kneel between my legs so I could sit up a bit with my back against the arm of the couch, though I didn't really need the support.

"You can… uh… a bit, you know, harder, if you want," I whispered as he very gently took one of my nipples between his index finger and thumb. I swallowed back the venom with the embarrassment. "It's not like you can hurt me."

"D-does it feel g-good?" he asked, increasing the pressure and rolling it between his fingers. It still felt soft, but I couldn't hold back the moan in answer, and Edward smiled before snaking his tongue back into my mouth.

I had my hands at my side still, but I reached up to touch the bottom of Edward's shirt, careful to avoid his body since he had only given me explicit permission to touch his back and shoulders. "Can I?" I asked, gesturing to his shirt the same as he did to me earlier. He sat back, his hand leaving my chest and the warmth immediately abandoning me, but I couldn't entertain the sadness for too long since he pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it in the same direction as my own shirt.

I pressed my palms flat against the couch cushions to keep myself from running my hands along the smooth planes of his chest and abdomen. It was begging to be touched. Every scar, each cut, the burns, they all held a story, a marked etching of Edward's history on his own skin, and I longed to worship each one. I wanted him to tell me so I could kiss it better. I wanted him to tell me so I knew exactly what I was taking revenge for when I found the disgusting excuse for humans that had been his foster parents.

He pulled me close to him, intending to kiss me. But when our chests pressed against one another, bare skin to bare skin, cool flesh to warm, he gasped. "Oh God, Bella."

The sound of my name in his mouth, the way his lips wrapped around the word when said in such passion, it was enough to drive me insane. I wanted to rip my jeans off, and his own with them as I struggled with the shock of the new sensation.

His hand was back, this time on my other breast where the skin was especially cold, and he started back with what he stopped with, with my nipple pinched between his fingers. He squeezed a bit tighter and it sent a shock down to my navel which zipped between my legs.

I moaned and bucked up reflexively, catching the softest brush of Edward's obvious erection. He stopped, and I felt my whole body freeze up. I had lost control and been impulsive, and I had triggered a panic in Edward again, just like I had before. And, of course, it was going to be entirely my fault again.

But he just glanced down at me in confusion, panic and pain absent in his expression. "Are you okay?" he asked, brows pulled together in concern.

"Yeah," I said, again incredibly grateful for the venom in my veins because if I had an ounce of bloodflow, I would be scarlet red. "It felt… uh… good."

"Yeah?" he asked, full lips pulling up in a crooked grin.

I couldn't look him in the eyes, instead choosing to stare at the dramatic curve of his Cupid's bow when answering, "Yeah."

His gaze flickered down to where his hand was connected to me, and then his mouth was on my neck and the sensitive patch of skin under my earlobe, and his fingers were moving along my nipple again.

He pinched, then harder again when I whimpered as I felt that shocking connection to the bundle of nerves between my legs. He seemed to like my reaction almost as much as I liked how he was making me feel, and he sucked along my jaw before peppering a trail of kisses back up to my mouth. He tasted like the sweetest elixir, and I almost franticly sucked at his tongue trying to imprint his flavor. I had to compartmentalize, remind myself to be gentle and careful and always, always mindful.

But then he tugged at my nipple, and I felt a coil tighten at the pit of my stomach, somewhere where a long-forgotten, never-used organ was warmed up and ready to burst. "Please," I whimpered into his mouth, begging for more. His mouth moved urgently against mine, and his fingers tightened again.

I wondered how it would feel when he was a vampire, how he could squeeze me tightly.

He rolled my nipple between his fingers, then tugged again, and when I moaned, he took that as tacit permission to repeat, pinching and tugging and with each cycle increasing the pressure ever so slightly. There was a throbbing between my thighs now, and I was twitching with the effort to keep my hips still. If I made one wrong move and we stopped now, I would self-immolate.

The coil was tightening, and a primal urgency was building in a race to I wasn't sure what, but it couldn't be stopped. I ignored the car door slamming in the distance. Was that a neighbor? I couldn't think. It was all Edward, only Edward. And how he was making me feel. He pinched again, and my thoughts fogged over as the pleasure jolted down my abdomen, and I crushed my fists to my sides to keep from bucking up into him in search of friction. His tongue was against mine, and I could taste him purely, swallow back his sweet nectar with my own venom. I didn't realize that my body was so connected in this way, and I had never heard of someone orgasming just from this. Maybe it was a vampire thing. I had always done my best to ignore the details of my family's private life, but now I almost wished I had eavesdropped a bit more because I wasn't expecting this.

I was finally there, on the edge of a precipice and about to crescendo just from Edward's ministrations on only one of my nipples, and just as I was there, with the bundle of nerves between my thighs throbbing and soft waves of pleasure coursing down my legs and up my stomach…. Just then, there was a key in the door.

I pulled back and stared at Edward in horror, freezing up as if a proverbial bucket of ice water had been dumped on me. Edward was expressionless, but then he heard the sound of the lock click, and his mouth dropped in panic as well.

I moved as swiftly as I had ever moved before, pushing him off me as gently as I could manage and darting to the corner of the living room where our shirts were pooled in a pile. I threw my shirt over my head and quickly tugging Edward's shirt over his head, not even getting the chance to mourn the loss of the view of his bare chest. I tossed him the book he had been reading, then opened mine and tried to lounge as casually as possible as far away on the couch as I could possibly be from Edward.

He still hadn't emotively reacted, seemingly stunned. He had a pillow on his lap and fumbled with the book, and the door swung up and Charlie ambled in just as I nonchalantly turned the page, keeping my eyes trained on the meaningless scribbles that I knew to be words.

"Hey, kids. How was your afternoon?" Charlie asked, and I finally looked up to see him kicking off his shoes, Alice right behind him holding two small shopping bags- a small haul in comparison to what she typically dragged out of me.

And out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Edward with his book upside down. I kicked my foot out and tapped his leg, then nodded my head at his book when he looked up at me nervously. He immediately understood, looking down and noticing the novel was upside down. He flipped it around just as Charlie walked past us and into the kitchen to rifle through the refrigerator.

That was what I loved about Charlie. He didn't linger, didn't push. He didn't mind that we hadn't answered his question, and didn't study us long enough to see anything wrong.

Alice trailed after him, keeping her eyes cast down at her feet as she shuffled into the living room. I felt terrible, and I know Edward did too. We had been ignoring it all morning and afternoon, but poor Alice had been so hurt, and there was obviously something more going on than either of us knew.

Alice's green eyes flickered over to the couch, then back at the ground, but she stopped dead in her tracks. Slowly, she turned on her heel to face the back of the couch, Edward's back to her but me in full view as I was sitting on the couch sideways with my legs stretched across the cushions. She stared at the back of Edward's head, and I wondered how he couldn't feel the heat of her gaze burning a hole through his neck.

Then, slowly, her stare rolled over to me. Her eyes narrowed and her arched brows knitted together, and she resembled her brother more than I had ever seen her look before. We stared at each other, then her stare slowly trailed downwards so she was staring at my chest.

I followed her gaze and looked down, then breathed deeply in surprise and sat up quickly. I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

"How dare you," she whispered, venom dripping from her words. She looked back over at Edward, and he turned to mirror how I was sitting and face Alice. Her face was screwed up in an expression of rage, and if she wasn't a waifish human girl who I could blow over with one breath, I would almost be physically scared of her. "After what you said… I felt horrible. I thought you were right. And then…" she clenched her jaw together, and I could hear the enamel scrape away with the force of her teeth grinding. "How dare you."

She dropped the bags she had been holding right there in the hallways, turned on her heel, and marched upstairs, shoes still on and soles slapping against the worn wood angrily. Edward seemed bewildered, and he looked over to me for an answer. But the second Alice was out of sight, and before Charlie could put his beer down and come out to investigate, I essentially answered Edward's unasked question.

I sat up and ripped my shirt off, quickly turning it rightside in and slipping it back over my head.