There's an Alice and Jasper plan, I promise. I mean, you can't have one without the other, right? Just bear with me.

Therapy- Mary J. Blige

Fool in the Rain- Led Zeppelin

Alice needed help, and Charlie was dedicated to her getting whatever she needed. While Alice slept the medication off, Charlie called the therapist's office first thing in the morning, and then reported it to the social worker. He followed all of his obligations as a foster parent to the letter of the law, as any good police officer would. And when Tuesday morning rolled around and the fog of the medication had had over an entire day to wear off, Charlie drove Edward and Alice to Port Angeles for therapy.

"I'm sure it's nothing," I said. We were quietly wrapped up in each other in his bedroom. Edward was laying on top of me, his knee between my legs and one of his socked feet absentmindedly stroking my ankle.

"What if th-there's s-s-something wrong," he mumbled into my neck. I ran my fingers through his soft hair, brushing it back so I could see the smooth skin of his forehead and the translucent tips of his long lashes.

"Maybe he just wants to spend time with you?" It was a long shot. Two days after Alice had two consecutive breakdowns in an obvious and rapid deterioration, Charlie wouldn't have insisted on driving them to therapy without good reason. "And this is maybe good timing. It's been a while since I hunted much of anything."

Edward shifted up to hover over me, grimacing and tracing the bruising under one of my eyes with the tip of his finger. He sighed heavily and dropped his head back down, his forehead pressing into the crevice of my collarbone. "I c-can't l-let anything happen to Alice," he said, his voice shaky as he choked back another round of tears. I kissed the crown of his head, the scent of honeyed sunshine distilled and clouding my thoughts.

"I won't let anything happen to Alice," I promised. "Whatever happens, if anything's wrong, I will keep Alice safe by whatever means necessary." It was something I couldn't know, and a promise I couldn't keep.

Alice trudged downstairs in sweats, blanket in hand, and bundled herself up in the back of the cruiser, seemingly unbothered by the summer heat sweltering in the off car. Charlie frowned but headed out quickly to turn the car on. Edward kissed me goodbye quickly, distracted by the sound of the front door slamming shut behind Alice, and followed Charlie outside, locking the door behind him.

I followed them north until the one-oh-went turned west to Port Angeles before I veered into the park. Their drive had been obscenely uneventful, without even music on in the background. Charlie attempted to make awkward small talk with Edward about me of all topics, but gave up when Edward responded only monosyllabically.

Once they were almost to Port Angeles, I back-tracked along the highway and back to the park, running along a river rushing west, brimming with snow that had melted down from the mountains.

It wasn't my place to follow them any closer, and I never stuck around for therapy. It was the briefest allowance of privacy I could provide, giving Edward his space where he could talk about whatever he needed to. Besides the hour or so in the evenings I had been spending away from him, which had ended when Alice found Edward and me in a compromising state and started with her silent treatment, I was never away from Edward.

But it was really killing me this time. It wasn't that I was nosy or pushy, but I was desperate to know what was happening with Alice. I could so easily circle back and listen in as she laid out everything that was on her mind. The mood swings, the outbursts, the rapid succession of panic attacks, one of which had no discernible trigger and had to be treated with a triazolobenzodiazepine tranquilizer.

But I kept to my path. If there was one thing I could boast of, it was my self-control, and I darted alongside the twisting stream and tried to let the animalistic instinct take over before I lost my will and found myself on the roof of a Port Angeles office building with a burning throat and black eyes.

It was the height of the summer, and a bear was easy enough to find. The thick, slightly sour blood pulsed into my mouth from the sliced artery in its neck, and the burn in my throat subsided with the soothing flow. The animal was dead the moment I snapped its neck so I took my time draining it, enjoying the feeling of my stomach sloshing with liquid and the surge of energy that came from a fresh kill.

The ground was muddy from the constant downpour, making it slightly more difficult to pull the soil aside to bury the body. I was filthy and drenched by the time the body was completely covered, and I detoured back home to shower and change out of the soiled clothing before running back to the one-oh-one to track down Edward.

No one bothered me at home. Emmett and Rose were in their room and not paying attention to anything outside of their door, and Esme was a mother. She understood the concept of space and compassion as much as she was capable of smothering love, and she let me shower and leave without a word of distraction.

I traced my earlier route back to Port Angeles, catching the old smell of the cruiser from the morning. They hadn't come this far west yet, so I kept running and running until I caught them.

It was already the afternoon, far later than the usual time we left Port Angeles after therapy unless Alice insisted on going shopping after, usually with the excuse of needing Edward there to try something on or be fitted for a suit, which at the time I hadn't realized was for our night at the prom.

I followed alongside the car, loping through the forest and occasionally catching a glimpse of them through the treeline. I couldn't guess at anything that had happened, though. They were quiet and no one was recounting all the conversations of the day that I had missed, which, if this was a television show or movie or something, is exactly what would be happening.

I didn't have that kind of luck, though. If we were in a movie, I would know that there was going to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything and a happy ending waiting for all of us. Those were the kinds of movies Edward liked. He liked to tease me for my love of Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet when, if we had to watch a romantic classic, there were options like Pride and Prejudice and Much Ado About Nothing.

It was just one of many instances in which Edward was self-contradictory. He liked the less-tense and more light-hearted films where he could be assured of the happy ending and laugh throughout, but he was usually so negative with himself and skeptical of our own happy ending.

And no matter what I said, I couldn't talk that out of him. When I finally got to hold him in my arms again, he had no interest in talking about Alice or therapy, but instead chose the cheery topic of my trip to Italy.

"Why d-do you have to leave d-during the s-s-schoolyear," he groaned quietly, rolling into bed and kicking his sneakers off. I pulled mine off and joined him, closing the window behind me.

"I figured it would be easier," I said, careful to speak softly with Charlie on the couch right outside the door. He had popped open a beer and flipped on the sports channel while Edward and Alice split to their respective rooms the moment they came home. It was like nothing was different, nothing had changed, which I took as a good sign. If something was wrong, I figured there would be some kind of discussion of it either on the drive back or a makeshift-family meeting at the house.

Edward also didn't want to talk about it with me. Then again, he never told me what he talked about in therapy besides a few abstract bits of advice mentioned in passing.

"What about th-this is easier?"

"You'll be in school, learning things and doing work. You'll have Emmett and Rose, Carlisle and Esme, Charlie and Alice. With school, you'll have… distractions."

"Distractions," he snorted skeptically. "Sure. Xbox with Emmett and p-playing the p-piano with Rose, who doesn't even really l-like me."

"She likes you!" I objected. "She's just not the best at showing affection. It took two years for her to even smile at me, and even then it was only because it was Emmett was a newborn who could beat me wrestling."

"And how are y-you g-going to explain t-taking off in the middle of th-the y-year for an indeterminate amount of t-time?"

"People don't usually question the Cullens," I said slyly, unsuccessfully trying to coax a smile out of him. But he didn't so much as roll his eyes, instead he just pressed his lips together in a tight line and stared up at the spackled ceiling.

"S-s-so you're just going to fly there and fly back, no problem, and act like nothing happened? That's the plan?"

"Well, not like-"

"You w-will f-fly, right?" he interrupted, tone turning combatant, and I glanced at the door where Charlie sat just a few feet away, seemingly oblivious despite the low volume setting on the television. "Like, on a p-plane? You're not g-going t-to turn into a bat, or t-teleport?"

"Didn't you ask me this a few months ago?"

"S-s-sorry, I don't have photographic m-memory and instant r-recall."

I drew back and rolled off Edward's arm, biting on my bottom lip to hold back the snarky retort. I didn't need to lash out or say anything anger and only make matters worse.

"I'm s-s-sorry," Edward said, immediately rolling onto his side to face me and cupping my cheek in his free hand, his palm burning its imprint on my skin. "It's not you, I'm just.. I'm s-s-sorry."

"I know." I put my hand over his, stroking the soft skin of his knuckles. "It's fine."

"Tell me m-more about Volterra?"

"What do you want to know?" I asked.

"Where d-do you have t-to f-fly to?"

"Florence," I told him, rolling out of bed to grab a history textbook buried under a stack of other books on the small desk and flipping it open to the index of maps. "I'll fly into Florence and probably run to Volterra. It's been a long time since I've been to Italy so I'm sure it's more developed and might be a little more difficult to move around, but renting a car would be cumbersome."

"Why?"

"For one, I don't know exactly how long I'm going to be there," I started, drawing a grimace from Edward. "And parking isn't exactly easy to come by in Italian cities, so I'd have to leave it somewhere. Not to mention the very issue of driving in Italy."

"What's wr-wrong w-with driving in Italy?"

"They're crazy," I laughed, tracing my fingers down to his wrist where the veins thumped steadily under the delicate cover of his soft skin. "Absolutely maniacal drivers with total disregard for the rules of the road."

"That s-s-sounds familiar," Edward said, one brow quirking upwards.

I lightly swatted at his forearm. "I'm an excellent driver. Never gotten one ticket."

"I think that's l-less about obeying 'the r-rules of the road' and more about y-you b-being able t-to hear every cop car in a f-five mile r-radius."

"I've never gotten in a crash or accident before either," I reminded him.

"But if you ever had, y-you c-could j-just walk away like n-nothing happened."

"That's true," I capitulated. "But I could never get into an accident. Cat-like reflexes, remember?" I joked, tossing up the box of tissues on the bedside table and catching it without looking in a pedestrian show of speed.

"Impressive," he patronized, but I couldn't help but smile.

"So once I get to Volterra, I don't think I'm going to be surprising anyone. Aro knows I'm coming, and there are patrols miles beyond the city walls. Even if they don't recognize me, and chances are they won't-"

"Why not?"

"Patrols like that are transient members of the Guard, there for only a short period of time. I doubt many of those I knew three centuries ago are still around."

"Why are they so impermanent. It sounds like a good gig, the kind of place where you can move up."

I stared at him, trying to figure out where he was coming from. He seemed to recognize my questioning and shook his head, his lip quirking upwards at one side. "I don't want the job myself, Bella. But, if your options are either wandering around with no purpose and no aim or a job with basically the government, I'd pick the latter."

"There is another option," I reminded him.

"And it's the option I'm going to take in a year or two, whenever the time comes. Obviously. But I'd imagine that most vampires don't really have that option."

"No," I admitted, "They don't."

"So why do some leave the Guard?"

And that's how Edward continued into the evening. Every time I tried to shift the conversation towards something lighter like the crime book he had been reading earlier in the week or a funny Emmett moment, Edward just asked another question about the Volturi and which members of the Guard had which powers.

He never left his bed, either. Once the sun had sunk below the trees and twilight blanketed the world around us, Charlie shuffled around the kitchen and mustered together a sandwich and some stale chips. He walked over to Edward's room and I could see his shadow from the light filtering in under the door, and he brought his fist up to knock, but hesitated. I pressed my index finger to Edward's lips, stopping his question about just how strong Felix was versus Emmett. We waited in silence, propped up beside each other on the small mattress, but Charlie sighed and walked away back to the kitchen where his sandwich was waiting.

Alice never came down for dinner either, nor anything later when Charlie had gone to bed and the house was quiet but for the claps of thunder shaking the walls and the pounding of rain on the windows. From the faster pace of her heart, I could tell she was still awake, just unmoving and quiet.

Edward, on the other hand, was not. There was a rumbling in his empty stomach that mirrored the thunder outside, but he was too busy rifling through books to find a reference to a new question.

"S-s-so Alec and Jane are f-from Medieval England?"

"Early Medieval," I corrected.

"Is th-that a s-s-separate historical period?"

"Mhmm," I agreed, brushing my fingers through his hair so my nails could scratch at his scalp in the way I knew he liked, trying to get him to calm down and relax and maybe finally fall asleep.

"Was b-burning at the s-s-stake common then? And how old w-were they?"

"Alec and Jane were themselves pagan, or at least what we would today call pagan. The abilities that had manifested in their human childhood wouldn't have been terrifying in their culture. But Christianity was spreading, and that was how the Church dealt with witchcraft."

"How d-did their powers m-manifest? Is that common?"

"Sure, I mean, it's the same thing as what I told you about with, for example, Carlisle. We bring traits into this existence, and they're altered and amplified, sure, but it's still there."

"What were th-they l-like as humans, though? How d-does that work?"

"I didn't know them as humans," I said, trailing my hand down to massage the back of his neck where tension was building and the tendons had tightened. He marginally relaxed into my hand, and I rolled him over onto his stomach so I could kneel next to him and work my hands further down on his warm, pliable flesh. He shifted and folded a pillow under his head to get more comfortable, and I decompressed the nerves under his shoulder blades as he exhaled into the pillow.

"S-so?" he urged, voice muffled.

I sighed. "From what I gathered, they made people uncomfortable. Good things happened to people who were nice to them, and bad things happened to those who were not. Aro… well, he was very proud to have found them. They had a great-great-aunt who had been changed before they were born and was a mental manipulator-"

"-What's a m-"

"She could influence another's thoughts," I interrupted mid-question. "Not control, but if you weren't paying attention or aware of her ability she could plant suggestions that others tended to take."

"What happened t-to her?"

"I'm not sure," I shrugged, very carefully digging deeper into the line of lymph nodes along each side of his spine. "No one even mentioned her by name, only that it was her existence that had drawn Aro's interest."

"B-because it's hereditary?"

"Exactly," I smiled. "It's not a direct causal relationship, but there seems to be some correlation between special abilities and genetics. So apparently," I continued, "Aro had been watching her descendants, or at least keeping track of them. I think he does that with every vampire with powers, but I wasn't close enough to be privy to that information."

"Who is c-close to him? It d-doesn't s-s-sound like these people have very m-many friends."

"They don't," I laughed. "It's not the same as human relationships. It's all about viciousness and power, so their bonds aren't the same as what binds humans together."

"Or you," he added.

"Or me. Or the rest of our family, and our cousins in Denali. But we're the exceptions to the rule, and that's not how the rest of our kind functions, much less the Volturi."

"S-s-so Aro s-saw that they s-seemed s-special, and changed them b-before they could be put t-to death?" he asked, forgetting his questioning about Aro and returning to his original train of thought which I wasn't completely following.

There were heavy steps approaching from a distance, and I glanced out the window into the backyard. I pressed my palm on the facet joints of Edward's lower back to release the synovial fluid there, drawing a rapid cracking sound that he groaned at.

"Are you okay?" I asked, pulling my hand back. I had been very measured in my tactile strength, and deliberate in where I applied pressure so as to not accidentally paralyze him, or worse, snap him in half.

"It felt good," he said, stretching out underneath me so his back cracked even more. I laughed in relief and continued, pressing upward to the thoracic vertebrae so one pop coincided with another clap of thunder and one pound of Emmett's steps.

"So yes, Aro saw something special in Jane and Alec. Even as babies and small children, they had an influence on those around them that made other humans scared. I doubt Aro would have changed them so young if it hadn't been an emergency, but they were literally on the stake by the time he got there so there was no other choice."

"And they're twins, too?"

"Too?" I repeated back. "I hope you're not trying to draw parallels between Jane and Alec and yourself and Alice."

"Do I r-remind you of Alec?"

"Woah," Emmett chuckled from outside before tapping on the window unnecessarily to get Edward's attention. He turned his head, the pillow unfolding under him.

"It's just Emmett," I told him, unsure if Edward could see him outside with the dark room in the dead of night.

"That's not a very nice way to refer to your favorite brother," Emmett said, hopping through the cracked window and closing it behind him before the rain could.

"You're my only brother," I reminded him, sitting back to let Edward get up, but he just stayed where he was, laying on his stomach and holding his head up with his hand.

"You had some when you were human, didn't you?"

I blinked and stared at him, waiting for an apology or a show of shame that never came. Emmett was incapable of filtering his thoughts, and never felt sorry for them either. Emmett looked right back at me, tilting his head and bouncing his foot like the oblivious teenager he had been frozen as for seventy or so years.

"So," Emmett continued, moving right past his mention of my deceased family, "Why are we talking about Alec? You know you're nothing like that little snob, right, Edward?"

"Emmett," I cautioned.

"You've m-met him?" Edward asked curiously.

"No, he hasn't. He hasn't met anyone in the Volturi because they're not exactly the kinds of vampires one seeks out to hang out with."

"Yeah, but I know enough to know that he's a snotty brat."

"Who's over a thousand years older than you."

Emmett scoffed and made a show of trying cracking his knuckles for exclusively dramatic purposes. "It doesn't mean I can't take him."

"Good luck with that with the whole 'can't see, can't smell, can't feel, totally immobilized' thing."

"But I got you, kid," Emmett smiled, playfully punching my arm.

"Is there a reason you're here?"

"Oh, yeah!" Emmett exclaimed, and I glanced up to the ceiling to remind him of Charlie and Alice only one thin barrier away. "It's thundering, we just wanted to know if you wanted to baseball tonight?"

I looked out the window where the rain was pounding on the glass and the storm was slapping the trees like an angry and unknowable force. The thunder was loud and booming and perfect for our baseball games, which required some kind of cover for the sound of the ball against the bat at the force we hit with. Edward swung his head over to look at me as if baseball was some kind of option and he was looking for my permission.

In fact, they were both looking at me and waiting for an answer.

"No," I huffed. "It's one o'clock in the morning. Edward needs to sleep at some point tonight."

Emmett rolled his eyes and clearly forgot about my reminder of the other sleeping humans present in his complaint. "Oh, c'mon. School's starting in a week and a half. Summer's supposed to be all about staying up late, sleeping in until the afternoon."

"He's already staying up late. He's awake right now."

"And he could be awake but watching baseball instead of laying around and talking about Alec." Emmett then eyed me and added, "Real hot conversation, by the way. Really setting the mood."

I bit my teeth down on my bottom lip, but before I could come up with a rejoinder, Edward scoffed, "Oh, shut up."

I bit down on my lip harder, trying to hide my smiling. I settled in to stretch out at Edward's side, sinking into the warm mattress so I could wrap an arm around his waist. Emmett pursed his lips and looked ready to stomp his feet or throw a tantrum, but instead just grumbled. "You guys are no fun."

"We are l-lots of f-fun, otherwise you wouldn't b-be showing up at my window in the m-middle of the n-night w-wanting to hang out," Edward pointed out. I squeezed him around his waist, hugging myself to his side. I saw Emmett fight a smile when Edward's heartbeat picked up a bit, but for once he actually caught the message of my glare and didn't uncouthly point it out.

"Edward makes an excellent point."

Emmett huffed and folded his arms. "Fine."

"Fine," I repeated. "Good night, Emmett."

"'Night, Emmett!" Edward called out as Emmett slipped back through the window. He mumbled under his breath so Edward couldn't hear about how we were being so boring and acting like old people always staying in and reading musty old books.

"We could have gone if you wanted to," I said carefully, tracing my fingers along his back. There were fewer scars here than his chest, mostly smooth skin marked with a few human imperfections in the form of clogged pores. His muscles tensed wherever my fingers were, drawing his flesh up to meet me. "Is this okay?" I asked. I typically kept my touch to his shoulders and upper back, and my hand was splayed out on the small of his back and I had been touching him all over when I was massaging out the tension in his back.

"I love you."

I smiled and nuzzled my face into his bare shoulder, continuing to trace spiral patterns along the soft skin that covered the thoracolumbar fascia, right above a pair of dimples that sat just above the waistband of his sweatpants.

"I love you, too," I said, planting a kiss on the inside of his shoulder.

"How s-s-similar is v-vampire baseball to football?"

I chuckled and Edward squirmed under me, tickled by my laughter on his skin. "Well, there's just as much tackling, only with a bat added into the mix."

"S-s-so p-pretty much the s-same, then?"

"No."

Edward turned his head to look over at me, brow cocked up in questioning.

I grinned. "We cheat more."

He laughed out loud, and I quickly clapped my hand over his mouth just as Charlie gasped himself awake. I kept my hand there while Charlie sat up in bed and rubbed his hands through his hair, brushing sleep aside before he got out of bed. I could feel the imprint of his lips on my palm, and gently curled my fingers to trace along the dramatic curve of his Cupid's bow. His lips parted automatically and I trailed down to the plush expanse of his bottom lip.

Edward rolled over, off his back and onto his side, then pulling me to lay on him. He cupped my cheek and drew me to him, kissing me softly. His heat was emblazoning and so easily absorbed into my skin, matching the phantom warmth in my dead heart.

Charlie was just above us, pressing an ear to Alice's door where only the silence of an unsettled sleep met him. He didn't open the door, and he never did. Even when Alice was plagued with noticeable nightmares, Charlie never actually entered her bedroom and I wasn't sure if it came from a place of awkwardness, or respecting the personal boundaries of someone who had never had her own space.

Edward's hand found my waist as his tongue slid into my mouth like honeyed silk. I hovered over him, propped up with my knees sinking into the mattress at the side of his hip so I could tangle both of my hands in his hair.

One hand traveled up my side to fit his fingers between my ribs, the other cupping my face, his thumb gently moving over my cheek and then to the corner of my mouth to feel where our lips were connected. I touched his face lightly as he touched mine.

My breath caught in my throat and stalled when his hand found the slope of my breast, powerfully hot even through the fabric of my shirt. My nipple pebbled under his touch, and I pressed myself down on him without even meaning to, driven by an instinct I couldn't quite name and definitely couldn't control.

His hand left me briefly to slide down the curve of my waist and to the hem of my shirt. He tugged it upwards and I lifted it off of him, yanking it off and tossing the offending fabric to the other side of the room at the same time as I shifted my leg over to put one knee between Edward's legs. I had better leverage this way, balancing to free both of my hands to run across the planes of his chest and up to the crevice of his collarbone.

The rough pad of his thumb brushed over the peaking nipple, his other hand stroking from the curve of my waist up to the back of my neck to pull me as tightly as he could to him. Our mouths were pressed together, each tongue sliding against the other so I could consume every delicious note of his taste.

"Is this okay?" he asked, twisting the bud between his thumb and index finger and drawing a moan from me right into his mouth. He smiled against me, lips curving up against mine. I wanted to tease him for his smugness, but he increased the pressure between his fingers and all I could think about was the shimmering pulses shooting down my abdomen and into the pit of my stomach.

He took one hand from my jaw to push himself up on the mattress, inadvertently moving his leg up to shift himself into a less reclined position. His thigh connected between my legs, accidentally bumping upwards and into me in the most intimate way I could have ever imagined.

Need.

It was a primal response, boiling up from some long-dormant place in me. My hips bucked down, trying to find that same connection that drew such a sharp and stabbing jolt of pleasure. I found it again, pressing myself into Edward's leg, separated only by his sweatpants and my own jeans but I was overly sensitive enough that we could very well have both been entirely naked or bundled in winter clothing and it wouldn't have made a difference.

I closed my eyes, trying to focus with everything happening in so many places. It was too much. Was it too much? I didn't want it to stop but his hands were everywhere, his mouth on mine.

His teeth scraped against my bottom lip, drawing a hiss from me before he sucked it into his mouth, his tongue licking upward into the inside of my mouth. One of his hands was still on my breast, teasing my nipple into a stiffer peak shooting a pulsing connection right to where Edward's leg met at the apex of my thighs. His other hand was on the back on my neck, his fingers wrapping around my neck and pressing me down as tightly as he could to kep our mouths connected.

Carefully, appraisingly and in complete control this time, I ground down again, against his leg. I found it again, that tingling growing stronger with attention and touch, and I whimpered softly in his mouth.

He pulled back immediately, and I missed the way the satin of his lips felt against mine. "Are y-you okay?"

I couldn't speak. Where were my words? They were caught in my throat along with the breath I had been holding for who knows how long. It was too much and not enough all at once, and I felt like I was going to cry. I stared down at Edward, his brows knitted together in concern and his lips swollen and reddened and entirely too alluring. He was so beautiful it hurt to look at him, which only added to the screaming desire that shot from the cavity of my empty chest down to the coil in my stomach.

I couldn't explain it. I couldn't put it into words even for myself, this feral and impulsive need.

"Bella?" he asked again, fingerings brushing along my cheek as he moved his other hand aside to stroke the side of my breast, tenderly and not at all with the intent of burning at my skin. I pulled my shoulders back, pushing my chest further into his hand.

Mate.

Need.

A soft growl ripped through my chest as I pushed my hips down again, still maintaining my control enough to be careful with him and not cracking his leg in half. I moaned again, this time louder without his mouth on mine to muffle the sound, and my eyes closed on their own as stars danced on the insides of my eyelids. I was mortified, grinding myself into his leg like some kind of animal in heat, but the instinct was entirely animalistic.

I was still careful. I had to keep reminding myself, but I was deliberate and gentle in my movements. I kept my hands off of him, moving from his breakable chest to hold myself up with my palms pressed into the mattress on either side of his shoulders. The sheets were rough and the pulls in the fabric bristled against my skin, and I spread and forced my fingers apart in trying not to sink my hands in and rip into the mattress.

"Does that f-feel good?" he asked, seemingly understanding what I was doing. He was still caressing the side of my breast, the other hand cupping my cheek gingerly.

I tried to force the words out. Yes, I screamed internally, chasing the feeling that had eluded me after a brief moment on the couch a few weeks before. But now I wasn't consumed by anything. No, I was hyper-aware of the world around me- Charlie back to bed and fast asleep, Alice tossing in her tangled sheets, the claps of thunder that shook the trees as I rocked my hips slowly. We wouldn't be caught.

I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut even tighter to curb the temptation to look at him. I couldn't stop. And if I looked at him… if I watched him watching me as I used him for my own pleasure like a dog with a pillow or a teenager in a parked car on some hidden road, I didn't think I ignore my shame.

He sucked in a breath deliberately, ready to say something, and I waited. "God," he sighed, "You're s-s-so beautiful."

Before I could register his words, his mouth was on mine. His lips were open, his tongue quickly finding its place against mine, warming me from the inside out. His hands resumed their previous positions, with one at the nape of my neck and his fingers tangled in my hair and digging into my skull to keep me pressed into him, and the other finding the peak of my nipple and rolling it between his fingers until it pebbled tightly again.

His fingers moved in a pattern on my nipple, like he was playing some kind of tune that only he understood as he tweaked and tugged, then palmed. I whimpered again, keeping the dull growl subdued as the burning blazed down, blooming in my abdomen and connecting to the coil in the pit of my stomach that tightened further with each push of my hips against his leg.

He switched his hands, the one on my neck finding my other breast and his palm pressing into the bare skin on the small of my back, his fingers just barely curling around the side of my waist. I couldn't help it, my fingers curled into the mattress of their own accord and ripped through the sheets and burring holes into the mattress for me to cling in to.

I held on for dear life, keeping myself in place and in control with every ounce of tolerance I had built for myself over the past few centuries.

Edward is tender, I reminded myself, recalling his shy, crooked grin as he handed me a bouquet of wildflowers before our first real date. He had been so sweet, so thoughtful. And this was the same person under me, pressing his leg up for me to rub myself on as he bit on my bottom lip and sucked on my tongue and pulled at my nipple and scraped his blunt fingernails along the sensitive skin of my lower back and whose heart was thumping and filling the world with its rhythmic melody and and and and

So much was happening all at once.

The tingles had been building into a white glow of pleasure. It approached, the tightness in the pit of my stomach growing with each twitch of my hips and tug of his fingers, combining into a delicious, slow climb to ascend to heights I had never reached before, never even tried.

Mate.

I dug my hands further into the mattress, slicing through easily and trying to hold myself in place still.

I started to shake, gasping out the breath I had been holding while the world spun as I found it. Edward lapped at my tongue, his finger grazing over the bud of my nipple. The explosion erupted and the coil broke, and I came apart in his arms, arching against him to keep it going. Edward bit down on my lip hard enough that somewhere in the back of my mind I worried for his teeth, but the pressure only added to the pleasure while his fingers squeezed down on my nipple as tightly as his frail humanness could manage.

Mate.

The world tilted, and at the same time as the pleasure ripped through to tingle at my toes and warm me to the tips of my fingers, a sharp ache tore through my chest and I simultaneously growled while moaning, Edward's open mouth on mine catching the sound and swallowing it into him.

A lulled hush falls over the world as I rocked against his leg still, coming down from the prolonged and lingering bliss. There's a tenderness at the apex of my thighs. I'm hypersensitive and hyperaware.

The problem is, I was also hyperaware of the shame that surged forward to fill the gap the waves of pleasure left. He tried to keep me in place- I had no idea why he wasn't pushing me away- but he couldn't hold me. I rolled off of him, pressing my thighs together tightly to try to start to dry the wetness that had pooled in my jeans and dampen the sensitive throbbing still pulsing in the bundle of nerves of my clit. I pulled my lips from his, leaving my mouth cold and empty with only a stretch of saliva mixed with my venom still connecting our mouths, but it soon broke too as I covered my face with my arms.

"Bella?" Edward asked, a break in his voice changing the octave mid-syllable. He tried to touch my face, but I was covered by both of my arms and protected from whatever judgement was sure to come down on me. The tips of his fingers burned against my arm, brandishing me with the shameful knowledge that I didn't deserve him, didn't deserve the gentleness of his touch nor the gentleness of his soul. "No, d-don't hide from me. Please."

He was asking. Begging. I couldn't resist him, I could never resist him, and I let my arms fall away, back to my sides.

"Was th-that…" Edward swallowed. He touched my face gently, tracing along the curve of my jaw up to the crevice of my cheekbone. "Was that an o-orgasm?" he asked, voice falling off so the last word was a whisper. I opened my eyes a crack, peering over at him through my lashes though I could feel the heat of his blush emanating from his cheeks and blossoming down his neck and even spreading across his chest.

I just nodded again, words still escaping from me. I hadn't breathed since my shirt first came off, and maybe that was a good thing. I could taste Edward on me, but smelling what we had created might have been too much in the heat of the moment- the subtle notes of sweat from his skin combining with the own scent of my arousal in its own unique and impossibly sensual aroma. I could taste it in the air like a lizard, sitting on my tongue and in my nose just waiting to be inhaled.

"Bella," he started, pushing on my shoulder so I would roll onto my back. This time he hovered over me, tables turning. He kissed the apple of one cheek, then the other, then down to press his swollen lips tenderly on my own. He lingered there, our mouths closed. I could feel the pulse in his skin as his pliable flesh molded to my own. He pulled back, and I could feel the burn of his stare even behind closed eyes. "I d-didn't th-think you could be any m-more beautiful."

My eyes popped open and I looked up at him, his face mere inches from mine and our noses almost touching.

"I'm sorry," I started, finally finding words to even marginally match my shame. "I'm so sorry, I never meant to-"

"Bella," he interrupted, but I continued on.

"-get so carried away. I can't believe I just used you like that, and I didn't even ask to make sure you were okay. And of course you weren't, what with the fact that I was humping-"

"Bella," he said again, but again the babble was unstoppable now, after having built up after losing my voice.

"-your leg like some kind of wild animal. I was out of control. Well, no I wasn't actually out of control. You were never in any danger. Not physical danger, at least, but of course I'm sure I've psychologically traumatized you-"

"Bella," he whispered sharply, and the silence caught again. His lips were pressed in a line, a tightness on his face that I was beyond familiar with, always accompanied by some kind of internal conflict. I started to reach up, to smooth away the wrinkle between his brows, but I stopped myself, my hand hovering between us.

Edward glanced at my hand, then shifted his weight to hold himself up with one hand so the other could meet mine. His fingers were warm as they threaded between mine, our palms pressing together so mine was nestled into his much larger hand and dwarfed in his grasp. He tightened his fingers, squeezing until his knuckled whitened, but before I could say anything he loosened his grip and unthreaded our fingers. I studied his face, trying to decipher what he was thinking as he moved his hand so his thumb was on my palm and his fingers were on the back of my hand.

He looked back down at me, his stare intense and his jaw clenching together as he slowly pulled my hand down the middle of our bodies. My knuckles skimmed along the subtle ridges of his abdomen in the small gap between us.

Was he going to touch me?

I couldn't get my hopes up. Hope? What hope did I have?

I drank in the sight of him, memorizing every detail of his face before he could literally kick me out of bed. I counted each leaf of his eyes where the emerald green stretched out from his dilated pupils to the dark verdant rims that only contrasted the color more beautifully. Bronze hair fell in his face, curling down between us, and I wanted to reach up and wrap the soft strands through my fingers one more time, tuck it into place just once more.

He flipped my hand in his, and then, with his stare still fixated on my eyes, he pressed my hand on the hardness of his erection.

It was contained only by the thin layer of his sweatpants. His hand was on top of mine, holding my hand still and in place, but even still I could feel it all. The ridge of the head trying to peak up out of the waistband of his sweatpants, the softly pulsing vein against my palm that ran along the underside of the shaft. It was all there at my fingertips.

His chest was heaving, his panting breaths fanning the scent of heated honey across my face. He squeezed my hand, and I let him pull it away, off of his erection so he could hold it and press our entwined hands into the mattress.

"Edward," I started, venom burning at my eyes and choking up my throat.

He shook his head, breaking our stare to close his eyes, but his jaw softened as his teeth unclenched. "I liked it." He opened his eyes, lashes fanning out like butterflies to cast a quick shadow across his cheeks with a sharp flash of lightning illuminating the room. "W-watching you."

I swallowed back the venom. "Yeah?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Thank you," I said, reaching up to finally push his hair aside, up and tucking the stray locks behind his ears.

"You d-don't n-need to thank me f-for that," he said, tightening our hands together. "It f-felt g-good, right?"

"I don't know if 'good' begins to cover it."

He looked down, at my lips, then my neck, then back up into my eyes. "It felt m-more than good for m-me, t-too."

"Do you mean…" I glanced down between us, then over to our entwined hands.

The flush came back to the creamy surface of his skin, coloring his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears. "I d-didn't know that c-could feel good."

I bit on my bottom lip, all the moments Edward had told me about and the countless more I knew he kept secret of when James had touched him came flooding back. And that day in the kitchen of my house when Edward had ended up curled up on the tile floor because I had inadvertently grazed his erection.

"S-s-stop." His brows pulled together again, the familiar v wrinkling at the bridge of his nose. "C-can you… just not th-think about before? C-can we make new memories? Because th-this is d-different, it's all new for m-me ."

"It's new for me, too," I said, cupping Edward's face with my free hand so the warmth of his skin radiated on my palm. "It's all new."

"We'll learn together?"

"Always together," I promised. Edward smiled softly, one side of his mouth turning up slightly more than the other before he pressed his lips gently into mine. He pulled our hands up to the side of my head so he could hold himself up easier, but instead finding the divot I had dug into the mattress.

"What's this?" he asked, pulling a piece of tight cotton from the crater.

If I had been able to blush, I would have. I turned my head, looking at the hole next to my head that I had created. "Better the mattress than you."

He twirled the cotton between his fingers, studying the fibers seemingly intently, then flicked it aside. "I never l-liked this bed anyways," he smiled, kissing me again. I laughed into his mouth, parting my lips to let him back in as I threaded my fingers together at the nape of his neck.

"Now," he said, pressing his bare chest against mine so it felt as if his heart beat as my own. "How exactly did th-that work?

I laughed and ran my fingers through the thick mess of hair at the back of his head, pulling him down into me.

It's very expositional, I know. Just give me time and we'll get there.