I lied. One more chapter coming. An epilogue.
I sweep her up into my arms, housekeeper and cook be damned. Emmett and Rosalie are probably around somewhere, too, giving instructions for a late supper and setting up the flowers from the Escalade. I don't care. To hell with them all.
"Edward!" She sounds nineteen again, bright somehow like before the babies. "I can walk, you know!"
"Yeah? And I reckon I can carry you, too. What do you weigh these days? A buck twenty-five? Don't they sell taters in California? You're wasting away."
She wriggles, and it takes all my strength not to have her against the library door. She's laughing. "But my heels! At least let me take them off. I'll scratch the wallpaper if you keep carrying me."
My hands spasm against the black hose that end at her thighs. "Don't you dare take them off, darlin'."
I let her open the door from my arms and go for the stairs but in a split-second decision, I head down with her instead of up.
"Wait." She lifts her head from licking my Adam's apple with her sweet little tongue and her gaze is hooded but confused. "Where you going? I thought..."
I silence her with a quick kiss and practically jog down the rest of the stairs.
Emmett steps into the front room on the main floor, blinking. Rose is right behind him, her blonde hair falling out of some sort of fancy updo. With a reddened nose and raccoon eyes, it's clear she's been crying.
"What the devil?" she says, but Em just laughs.
"Looks like somebody lit a fire under you, Edward. Where you off to in such a hurry?"
We share a look over the heads of the women. Bella is twisting my black silk tie in her fingers. I need to move and quick-like. "Gotta take Bella home. Can you stay and watch over Essie May tonight?"
Rose has her hands on her hips now. "What home?" she snarls at the same time that Emmett says, "'Course we will." He steps in front of us to open the front door and down the limestone porch steps I go, Bella still in my arms. "Y'all have a good night now, y'hear?" He calls after us.
"God almighty, announce it to the whole damned ranch, why don't ya?" That's Bella, hissing like a pole cat in my arms.
"Bella?"
"Hmm?"
"Hush your mouth."
And for once in her contrary life, she does.
I take her, of course, to our house, a former bunk house we converted to a three-bedroom two years ago. When we get there, there's a good half hour lost to the insanity of Buck and Davy Don't, her chocolate lab and my plott hound, who mob us at the front door and won't let Bella come up the stairs with me until they've sniffed every inch of her. Buck, especially, can't seem to decide between peeing on the floor levels of excitement and extreme disapproval. She probably still smells like that cat, Davy Pissed. Our Davy goes right up her skirt, snout and all, and as usual she's laughing and swatting at him and hollering, "Davy, don't!"
She drifts into the living room with the dogs pacing behind her. The tree glows with twinkling C6 lights. This year's multi-color strands include purple, her favorite color. It's a Scotch pine I cut from Guv's eastern 200 a week after Thanksgiving. While she walks silently around it, fingering the strings of tinsel and photo ornaments of the two of us mixed in with the cheap shit she'd bought at the Cracker Barrel in Tulsa, I decide to give her a little space. I feed and water the dogs and then bring in an orange Rubbermaid pitcher to water the tree.
She catches my eye as I'm standing up from the base. "You decorate it yourself this year or did you have Rose do it?"
"I did it."
She stares until I feel the need to remove my hat and run my fingers momentarily through my hair.
"I was hoping you'd come home, before Gus got sick, I mean."
"Even after Thanksgiving?" Her voice might falter, just a little, but it's also pretty disbelieving.
"You're making me feel like quite the pathetic figure here, Bells."
She sniffs. "I'm the pathetic one, not you. I've messed everything up so much, and you–and you–"
She's in my arms before I realize it. I don't know who reached out first and I don't rightly care.
Crushing her to me, petting her head like Buck's, I whisper my truths into her ear. "Stop. Just stop it. You didn't mess anything up. What happened, it just sucked. Maybe there was some reason, maybe there wasn't, but either way it was not your fault."
She's crying for real now, whimpering on like she doesn't hear me at all. "And I ran away. I should've stayed. I should've went to therapy or something. But I would wake up and see you laid out next to me and think what if it's ever only us? What if I can't ever give you children? And then I stayed away so long..." Her words are so thick with snot it's hard to make them out. "I lost Guv. There's no more time with him. I just run out and now I can't get that time back."
I push her away from me, to the length of my arm, and cupping her chin in my both my hands, I make her look up at me. She's a mess. But she's my mess.
"No," I say, firm. "Neither of us can go back and change what's done. It's past and there's no getting it back. But we can do better now. You can let me love you. You can love me. We can hang on to the here and the now."
She leans into my hands, tilting her face against one of palms. "Why would you ever want me now?"
I want to shake her, but she's like a deer stuck in the middle of my truck lights. One false move and she will dart away into the darkness. I drop kisses across her messy face, snot and all, my lips lingering at her temple. "I never stopped wanting you. I never quit loving you. God damn it, Bella, I never will."
"I love you, too," she whispers back. "I always have. I swear I do."
I kiss her for real then, until she half chokes. "I can't bweave," she says, laughing. "I need to blow my doze." I lift her gingerly and bridal carry her up the stairs to our room, which is as much of a mess as it's ever been, several pairs of dirty jeans on the chair in the corner and the king bed unmade. Handing her some tissues, I offer to get her a drink.
"Shine, tea, or water?"
She looks up at me, blowing noisily into the Kleenex. "Do you have butter pecan?"
"Of course." She nods and I go downstairs, determined to take my time so she can get herself together. Besides, immediately jumping her bones would probably be bad manners.
When I return, her face is a little puffy but dry. She's removed her watch and hoop earrings and placed them in the blue glass dish on her bedside table next to her phone. The sight of them floods my heart with happiness. It's amazing the things you miss when someone you love is gone, little things you never noticed at all until you see their absence and hear it accusing you.
She's worrying a bunch of used tissues to pieces with her fingers but she takes a long swig of the iced shine while I knock the jeans off the chair and sit to remove my boots. Setting them aside, I put both hands on my knees and consider how to go on about it all from here. I decide forthright is probably best. It always worked before.
"I think it'll be less awkward if I get you naked pretty quick like," I say, trying not to smirk. "I mean, I'll do my best but I don't know how slow I can make it, at least the first time."
She snorts into her Ole Smoky. "Pretty confident you're getting laid tonight, huh?"
"You did ask me to take you to my room. That gives a fella a general expectation is all I'm saying. If that ain't the case, I reckon I can run Buck off the couch because to be honest with you, I think you're sitting on the only set of semi-clean sheets in the house."
She stands and deposits the now-empty tumbler on a coaster next to her phone. Cocking her head momentarily to one side, she reaches for the hem of her sweater dress thing and peels it off in one fluid motion.
"Well," I say. "You've done it now." And I am on her like a duck on a June bug.
Her mouth tastes like butter pecan and my cock, a combination I never knew I particularly enjoyed until about three minutes ago. I didn't let her get far down that road because I want this to last at least a little while and there's only so much of Bella squatting in heels, thigh high stockings, and nothing else that a man can take.
"You taste like my dick," I breathe, licking her lips. Her tongue fights with mine for a moment before pulling it into her mouth and sucking back and forth in a simulation of what she'd just been doing on her knees.
"Fuck." Her sweet rosy brown nipples feel like silk and velvet in my rough hands. "Stop that or I'll never make it to your pussy." I bite her neck, not hard enough to leave a mark but up and down and slow until she's mewling, keening, begging.
"Please, please, please," she moans, shoving her perky little titties into my hands and angling her neck for more. "Oh, Edward, please..."
"Please, what?" I pinch one of her nipples, tasting the pebbled nub of the other one as I slide down her body.
"Don't stop..." her voice sounds like she's talking out of a well, speaking to me from far away, but the heat of her, the smell of vanilla oil between her breasts, the sharpness of her heels against my calves, those are immediate and close.
I lick a path down her stomach, continuing to pinch and play with her nipples with the other. Rubbing my face in the mound of her dark winter curls, I breathe deeply. She always lets her bush grow in the winter and I love it. She smells like sex already, hot and ready for me. I bury my nose in her, drinking her in, and move to part the curls but instead of licking, I blow softly against her dark lips. I can see her pussy, dark pink and brown against her curls, and it is a sight for my sore eyes.
"I won't," I promise. "Not even when you come."
She's a feast and I am so damned hungry. I taste her soft like at first, warming her up with little licks, like a cat cleaning its paws might. Writhing, she's trying to reach for my cock, but I push her away and hold both her wrists down in one of my hands. "No, ma'am. This is for you."
Flattening my tongue, I lick a stripe from her glistening hole to the top of her hood, and then dive in with purpose. Once she stops resisting me, I find my cock and begin to palm and jerk it while I devour her. I can't come without her touch tonight, I wouldn't even try, but I also can't keep my hands off myself when she tastes so perfect. I bump her clit with my nose and let go of myself momentarily to pull her closer to my face, holding the globes of her ass to open her to me like the pages of a book.
Her thighs are pushing against my hands, trying to close me in. I let go and immediately squeeze her ass again. "Yes," I'm muttering. "Fuck my face. Give in to me, darlin.'" Lick, breathe, lick. "My Bella."
She's quivering all over, gooseflesh pebbling in my hands and her legs, still encased in those sexy stockings and heels, squeeze my ears flat against my head. Her hips are shaking, rolling her wet cunt against my mouth. I find her clit with the tip of my tongue and lave it, hard.
She comes with a low moan, pressing and shaking and shoving her pussy against my hungry mouth, and I take every bit of the honey she will give me. I have loved her. I have missed her. I have dreamed of her. And I will have all of her again tonight, every last drop.
There's no sense of control anymore. I sit up on my knees, throw her legs apart, and drop my dick with a thwack against her swollen pussy lips. I stop just long enough to suckle one of her breasts, already reddened from my beard stubble, again. I flick her nipple between my teeth and whisper toward the dip between her breasts, smashing my face against her chest. "I have to have you. Now."
Her eyes meet mine and when she nods, I hold my cock in place and push deep until we are both, finally, home.
"Oh, God," she keens, and I can feel her muscles fluttering against me, sucking me deep inside this wet heaven. Retreating and then pushing in again, I keep telling myself I have to go slow, I have to make it last. I have to let her know how much this means.
"Look at me." It's a growl and I can't help it. I reach up and support her shoulders with my arm, lifting her toward me so she can look down the length of her own body and see us. "Look at me loving you. Look at how we fit." Snapping my hips against her, I can smell her come, my arousal, sweat, vanilla, the sweetness of moonshine, the slight odor of the dogs from where they've laid on the covers beneath us. It's overwhelming and yet it's perfect because it's natural. It's the way we are always meant to be, me and her. The only way we can live.
She leans up on her elbows and reaches for my hands, threading her fingers through mine. I push them up into her hair, holding her down while she skewers my ass cheeks with the sharp points of her heels. "No one else," she says. "No one else has ever, will ever," she licks at my neck as I push her down into the mattress, trapping her on my cock, "touch me but you." There are tears at the corners of her eyes, and I kiss them, the rocking rhythm I had beginning to falter. She crosses her legs across my back. "I need..." She's moaning again.
"I know what you need." I grind against her with every thrust, giving her that pressure where she craves it, my pelvis to her clit. Possessed, I fuck her and fuck her and fuck her until the pressure is unbearable. "I'm coming. Jesus Christ, Bella, I'm coming," I manage to say through gritted teeth and she twists her hips, meeting me thrust for thrust.
"Yes! Yes! Come in me." Her voice is as raw as our love making, a whisper-scream in the darkness and moonlight from the window. I pump into her, as deep as I get, emptying into her as her muscles contract around me, milking my dick even as she joins me.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, baby. My girl. My life. My wife." I hold her tight and pummel her, wrecking her and not caring, rambling into her breasts. "Ugh..unf. Ugh..oh, God." There's no color anywhere else anymore. The whole world has melted into the wetness of her brown eyes on me. "You're never leaving me again."
I wake up who knows how many hours later to Bells shoving at my shoulder. "Wha–" I don't know where we are for a second, or worse, when we are. Is this real?
"Edward," she smiles down at me. "Wake up."
"What? Why?" Satisfied that I'm not dreaming, I rub my face against her breasts. "I'm perfectly comfortable where I am."
She giggle-snorts. "Well, I'm not. I have to pee!"
"Oh," I roll sideways. "Sorry, baby."
She returns a few minutes later, sans hose and shoes, with a little dixie cup of water for her and one for me. She holds hers up. "Cheers," she says. "We made it."
I drink deeply and then tilt my head at her. "To what?"
She smiles, and although it's a little sad, it's also a look I recognize as hope from the arch of her dark eyebrows and the quirk of her mouth.
"Back to each other." She sets her mouth against mine, snuggling into my chest. "Merry Christmas."