Stephanie Meyer owns the Twilight Saga. I own twitchy fingers that enjoy typing for no money.
Chapter 48: Sisters and Sex talk
Bella may have been grumbling under her breath when she walked indoors but really, she was absolutely delighted with how that had gone.
Sam had managed to keep himself completely calm – aided by Bella's pre-trance state even when Paul had phased and launched himself at her and so she'd been able to confront him as her own person. She knew that if she was ever going to get Paul to shift his opinion of her and begin to respect her, it needed to be based on her own value, not as the Alpha's imprint. She was also delighted that her new ability to say exactly what she wanted when in a confrontation hadn't abandoned her. Post-Edward Bella was pretty damn funny when riled up and she'd certainly put set Paul on his heels. Of course, that meant she now had to do a bit of damage control with Rachel and Kim to make sure she'd not accidentally destroyed any chance of a good relationship with them as collateral damage. She knew that she herself wouldn't feel too charitable with someone who had just torn a strip off of Sam, even if he'd deserved it. And she had taunted Paul that maybe Paul had heard from Jared that they'd fucked. Time to fix any problems she'd caused.
"Hi Kim. It's nice to meet you. Sorry I dragged Jared's name into that shit show outside but I'm certain you know there's absolutely nothing in it." Bella said with a bright smile at the smaller young woman. Kim grinned back, her even features going from just pretty to absolutely stunning as the bright white smile crossed her face, making her eye dance merrily.
"Oh no need to apologise to me, Bella. Seeing someone mess with the heads of the entire pack in one go was well worth it. So fucking funny! I'm taking notes too – it's about time I stopped letting myself fade into the background with these wolves; just because I always only have two legs, doesn't mean I'm just an accessory!" She held up a hand for a high-five which Bella found herself incapable of not delivering, despite really not being much of a high-fiver herself. "Can I snag a muffin real quick? Once those furry freaks get here, we'll be lucky to save a crumb for ourselves!"
Grinning herself, Bella gestured to the mountain of muffins on the kitchen counter. "Help yourself. I'm going to make another batch and start getting some bacon and eggs together. And you can bet I'll make sure we get to fix our own before the hounds are unleashed on it!" They laughed and Bella turned to Rachel "Hi Rachel." She said quietly. "I need to apologise to you too. I can only imagine how pissed I'd be if some harpy got all into Sam's face the way I just did with Paul. I really do feel like it was something I had to do to try and break the status quo but I wish I wouldn't have had to make him so mad. Especially not right in front of you." Bella waited anxiously, hoping that she hadn't ruined her chances of regaining her old childhood friendship with Jake's older sister.
Rachel stepped towards Bella with a serious expression and beggar waving a finger in her face. "Don't think for a second," she began, causing Bella's heart to sink… then Rachel smirked and 'booped' Bella's nose like she used to when they were little. She continued "that I'm unaware of what a complete dick Paul can be. Especially when he gets mad. You've got no need to apologise, Bella. You hit the nail on the head with him. He's got a really messed up way of looking at relationships and if things were more normal, I'd be trying my best to get him into therapy to work at it but I really don't see how therapy can work if you can't be completely open and honest with the therapist. I've got some hope that what you just said to him out there might do him some good." Rachel grabbed a muffin and started picking blueberries out of it. "I'm assuming from all the clear hints and clues that Sam imprinted on you?" Bella nodded happily. "That's confusing as Hell because I'd always understood the imprint comes with the first eye contact. And also, because we've always been told that imprinting was all to do with breeding bigger and better wolves. So, unless you've got some secret Quileute ancestor I don't know of, that's two theories disproved in one imprint. I can't tell you how please I am to know that Kim and I aren't just the fucking brood mares Old Quil seems to think we should be!" Both Rachel and Kim rolled their eyes. "I certainly won't be questioning Sam or his wolf on it though – he's hardly going to not recognise and imprint when it happens to him. So… congratulations I guess?" they all broke down into laughter, relieved to know that they were all together in their unusual situation.
"Can we help finishing breakfast, Bella?" Kim asked, glancing at the clock on the microwave. These Pack meetings don't normally last very long and trying to fight back seven or eight hungry wolf protectors while cooking is really not my idea of entertainment. Bella nodded gratefully.
"Oh yes! Please! Any help will be welcome. With the amount Sam can pack away, I'm assuming that with the whole Pack it'll be total carnage."
"You have no idea!" Rachel grimaced, making the other two crack up again, and she began helping too.
Bella was enjoying the company of the other two women, happy to be able to have some friends without superhero abilities and not still have to watch every sentence to make sure she didn't reveal more than she should. Angela was an amazing friend, Ben was great too and Bella was so happy to have them in her life, but she was always on edge about what she could and couldn't say, not just to keep the secrets but to keep her friends away from danger. For the first time, maybe since moving to Forks, Bella felt she could completely let down her guard with friends. It seems like Rachel and Kim were well ahead of her – wanting to get the lowdown while the wolves were out of earshot.
"So…" Began Kim, "dating a vampire? Not to be intrusive or anything but wasn't that super creepy?" Rachel snorted in amusement and Bella chuckled quietly.
"Actually no. I know that all your knowledge of vampires has been informed by the old stories of the tribe so I suppose it's only natural that you would see them as completely negative. Just as there's every chance that what I know of the vampire world was colored by the source. Whereas from what I've heard of the old stories vampires are described as crazed, bloodthirsty monsters, that's not my experience at all."
Bella held up a hand to delay the others from interrupting. "Now don't get me wrong; there are absolutely vampires who are just like that. Victoria, the redhead vampire the pack have been after for the last few months could definitely be described as crazed, having lost her mate. But with the exception of South of Texas, where things are still pretty terrifying on the vampire front, and in Italy where apparently the rulers of vampire society have allowed their power to corrupt any morals they might've had and they view humans as little more than cattle, the modern day vampire is usually too focussed on keeping their existence under the radar to be going around massacring whole towns for funsies." Bella deftly scooped portions of the muffin mix she'd been stirring into the muffin tins. "There are of course some who don't chose to care about the lives they're taking and some who have never taken a moment to consider that killing humans is wrong and naturally I'm not about to become besties with those types, any more than I'd want to become good buddies with a completely human serial killer, but for the most part, vampires didn't ask for their change. They didn't go looking to be turned, with days of excruciating pain into a creature that suffers for all eternity with a fire in their throat that can only be damped by blood, needing the death of a human to survive themselves. When you look at things from that angle, it's a lot harder to only feel hate for an entire species of part humans, you know?" She glanced at the two wide-eyed women to see if she was upsetting them with her vampire-sympathetic rant, relieved to find that they were astonished but not angry. She continued. "From what I understand, many vampires restrict their diet to what they can liberate from blood banks, or feed off the terminally ill, or even violent criminals and child molesters. Sadly, there are all too many of those sort of monsters in the world and I personally find it difficult to condemn anyone who picks off a few of them." She shrugged. "But even for vampires the Cullens are the exception, not the rule. They have gone even further by refusing to feed from human blood at all. They hunt animals and survive on their blood, despite it being nowhere near as satisfying and it not taking their burning thirst from them the way human blood would. They don't do it for fun or for the novelty. They do it because they cannot abide the idea of hurting another sentient being. It's a sacrifice and I feel they should be respected for it even if they aren't liked." Leaning back against the kitchen table, Bella gave a sad sigh. "I know the wolves have an instinctual hatred of vampires. It's built into them and understandably so, but I can't help hoping that I can get them to understand, even on a logical or theoretical level that the unthinking hatred is so limiting and destructive." Rachel gave a confused frown.
"Limiting and destructive? How so?" She asked.
"Well just one example is the wolves turning in the first place." Bella said, thinking aloud. "Carlise Cullen – the Doctor and father of the family" She added at seeing the confused looks "He talked about the wolves as extinct. I now know that by the terms of the treaty he shouldn't have talked about them at all but in his defence, he really did believe that the wolf line had died out completely so there was no harm done. Anyway" Bella added with a cheeky grin "Jake had already broken the treaty by accidentally telling me everything I needed to work out the Cullens were vampires." Rachel face palmed upon hearing that her little brother had broken the treaty. She was definitely going to smack him in the back of his stupid head for that… or have Paul do it for her so she doesn't break her hand.
"Ok, but that's just unfortunate, not limiting or destructive. Plus, I don't see how hate took any part there." Bella Stood up to grab the final batch of muffins out of the oven as they talked.
"The thing is, if the Cullens had had the first idea that their presence here was causing young Quileutes to change, destroying their futures and limiting them to the Rez forever, they would NEVER have come back here. They have properties all over the world and just would've sold this one. All it would've taken was a conversation with the Pack that was active when the Cullens were here last. Or for the Council of Elders to talk to them and explain it when they arrived this time round. But there's no way anyone was going to swallow their hatred and bitterness for long enough to have a civil conversation and so now we have a huge Pack. OH MY GOD!" she almost yelled, making the others think she'd burned herself. She waved off their concern. "I just had a sudden thought. If things had been different and the hatred wasn't there, I bet there could've been an arrangement where those with the bloodline could've opted to be protectors as adults and gone to visit the Cullens for something like exposure therapy to trigger their change. Safely, controlled. With consent. In a place where there's zero chance of any full humans getting injured by accident!" Bella shook her head sadly, knowing without a second's pause that the Cullen family (well most of them – Rosalie would probably not have been a fan, but then she never seemed to be a fan of anything much) would've been very happy to be of help. Such a lost opportunity for the Tribe. They could've had the best of both worlds – a Pack always on hand to keep the tribe safe, but a Pack of adults who had knowingly chosen their role, free of anger and bitterness, able to pass the mantle on to the next generation of willing wolves and share their direct knowledge of how this world worked. Rachel and Kim looked thoughtful on hearing everything Bella had to say. Both knew they had about as much chance of keeping the waves back on First Beach as they had of getting their wolves to suddenly become all vampire-positive, but they couldn't help but see the sad loss caused by the instinctual hatred. Kim spoke.
"Look I can definitely see how sad it is for the Tribe that some opportunities have been lost and I can see that it's not as black and white as we've been brought up to believe but I can also tell you that we're definitely not going to make any headway with our furry fools if we suddenly announce to them that we're all team bloodsucker and they need to join up too." Rachel snorted.
"Maybe that's the first step though" She mused and, seeing the confused faces she expanded "a language shift. Just like dealing with racism. We can't change opinions and firmly held beliefs overnight – to be honest, having been brought up with the legends in the forefront of family life, and with having an angry wolf constantly bitching about the Cullens I've got some biases of my own to battle but I'm willing to try. So, we begin by encouraging a shift in language. Just as we would react to someone using a racist slur, lets start by insisting on getting rid of terms like 'Bloodsucker' and 'Leech'. They can say 'vampire' or 'vamp' or we can refuse to hear what they're saying." Rachel ended with a firm nod. Bella was so touched by her old friend's speech that she blinked back tears and threw her arms around her.
"I think that's brilliant." She mumbled into Rachel's shoulder. "I'm so glad I'm going to have you both as my new sisters. Part of the reason I was so sad when the Cullen's left was the loss of my adopted family. Losing the people I'd considered brothers and sisters on top of the loss of Edward was just salt in the wound." Rachel awkwardly patted Bella's back but the exuberant Kim jumped forward to turn the awkwardness up a notch by joining in and turning it into a Bella sandwich.
"Glad to have you, sister." She murmured. "Now. Back to my original question… Vampire sex. Are they as cold as the stories say? And stone hard? Doesn't that feel sort of like masturbating with a granite dildo?" There was a brief pause before the Bella sandwich was shaking uncontrollably as all three of them giggled wildly. Rachel snorted loudly as she tried to drag in a breath, setting off a new wave of hysteria through them all. Finally, after a few minutes, Bella was able to catch her breath.
"I'm afraid I wouldn't know, Kim. You have to consider that Edward was born and changed in the early nineteen hundreds. His moral compass was so firmly fixed in the 'no sex before marriage' era that genuinely I don't think any amount of begging or coercion would've gotten him into my pants. On top of that, he was so scared that he might lose control and bite me or would accidentally catch me with a tooth that I couldn't even get him to French kiss." She grimaced at the memory. "Looking back on it, it was actually very humiliating; constantly trying to pressure him into going further like a desperate horny pervert. At the time I was too caught up in the frustration to notice it. Edward is a kind, sweet, generous and gentle person but more and more these days I can't help but see that before long I would've grown out of him and changed so much that we wouldn't have fitted together anymore."
"Wow. So you really didn't get any at all the whole time you were with him?" Rachel was astonished. "I bet you started regretting leaving Pheonix pretty quick. I expect the guys down there weren't so prudish." Bella blushed and looked at the floor
"I wouldn't know there either to be honest, girls. I'm afraid that before Edward I had exactly zero experiences with boys. Rene – my mom – was a real feather in the wind. We were always moving from one area to the next and so I was always moving schools. We moved back to Pheonix a couple of times but I've also lived in Texas, L.A., New Jersey, Deluth, Minnesota and Fresno. Perpetually the new girl. I wasn't even ever invited to the type of parties that had kids playing spin the bottle. So going on dates with Edward and closed mouth kissing was new and exciting for me. The Bella from back then would boggle in disbelief at how fast things moved with Sam."
Bella's blush flamed into her standard fire engine red. Kim and Rachel were astonished; both of them knew better than to believe the gossip of Forks and the Rez but they had thought there was a least a tiny crumb of truth setting off the rumours. To discover that Bella had been as innocent as the average third grader before meeting Sam had them both completely staggered. Rachel was flooded with guilt. Led by both Paul and Leah she had not only believed a lot of the gossip but she'd joined in bitching about Bella, encouraging her friend and her mate. Taking a hard look at herself now she was heartily ashamed; even had Bella been sleeping with dozens of guys, slut-shaming was unacceptable misogyny, whether it came from men or from other women. She herself would hate to be judged by her behaviour in her first year of college, for example.
"It seems that I'm the one who owes you an apology, Bella. I'm ashamed to admit that I not only believed the bullshit gossip but also talked about it myself. I can't believe I did that! I'm so sorry." Her eyes filled with tears so Bella patted her shoulder and touched their heads together in the way she remembered them all doing as kids when one of them had taken a tumble and had hurt themselves.
"It's ok, Rach. We all make mistakes. I'm just glad to have a few more people know the truth. To be honest I'm not even sure if Sam knows how inexperienced I was. Probably something I should've discussed with him before I lost my virginity in a frantic fuck on the bathroom floor!" Bella joked, trying to lighten the mood.
"WHAT?!" Both of the others shrieked together.
"Bella I know how intense and rough Jared can get, even the first time, with him knowing it was my first time and holding back as much as he could. Sam is way more intense and dominant than Jared, and his wolf is so much closer to the surface." She shuddered a bit. "I can only imagine how wild and intense your first time must've been! Did he scare you? Shit! Did he hurt you?" Kim asked urgently, Rachel nodding along beside her.
"No no I promise it was nothing like you're thinking. Honestly!" Bella reassured them. "I um.. well I.. I liked it." Bella whispered in embarrassment. "Seems like I've got quite a strong kink in that direction. Yeah there was a bit of pain right at the beginning, but I think that was inevitable, however I lost my virginity. After that, yes it was rough and intense but it was also really really good!" Once again bright red, Bella was relieved to see that the others were taking her at face value and looked far less concerned. "My only real worry is that in the heat of the moment I forgot that contraceptive was even a thing so it never popped into my head to have him wear a condom. I went and got Plan B the next day but I'm still more than a little worried on that front." She flashed a worried grimace. "I've got over a week before my period is due and I'm always regular as clockwork so that'll be the main clue. Also, if I can work out a way to buy one of those early prediction tests without setting off the gossip mill I can do a test on Tuesday." It felt good to get the concern off her chest.
"Oh I've got a couple of those tests in my bathroom cabinet. You can have one of mine if you want." Kim offered in an offhand way. She noticed the amused grin from Rachel.
"What?" Kim shrugged "My mom is really paranoid about teen pregnancy. She's caught Jared and I almost I the act too many times and says she'd rather I didn't end up featuring on one of those 'I Didn't Even Know I Was Pregnant, Then I Had A Baby In The Toilet' segments on Dr Phil or something." She defended herself, once again causing the three of them to burst out laughing.
Hearing the sound of the wolves approaching the back door, Bella hurriedly brought the conversation to a close before unwelcome ears were flapping.
"I'd really appreciate that, Rachel. Can I make sure to get both of you girls' cell numbers before we leave later so I can sort it out?" Understanding immediately why she was being a bit vague, Rachel and Kim immediately agreed and the three of them started piling plates, food and forks on the table, ready for the ravenous hoard to fall hungrily on the breakfast feast.
As the wolves filed in, Sam made his way straight to Bella as if drawn by a magnet. Bella vaguely noticed the same happening with the other two imprinted pairs.
Grabbing his mate up in an enthusiastic and tight hug, Sam immediately tucked his face into the crook of her neck where he cold get a nicely concentrated hit of her scent. That sweeter and richer edge still noticeable. He fought down the instant hardon that her scent always seem to call up and he pressed a demanding kiss to her lips.
"Now now, love birds, let's wrap this up before it gets too hot and heavy!" Jared called out noisily then took a big sniff of the air and looked expressively at the place on the kitchen counter where less than an hour earlier Bella had been enthusiastically sucking off Sam. "Ooops! Too late!" he sniggered, waggling his eyebrows at Bella and turning to Sam "Nice one." He congratulated. Kim beside him calmly picked up a baking sheet from the countertop and, with a sweet apologetic smile at Bella spun on her heel and smacked Jared as hard as she could with the tray, denting it on his shoulder with the force.
"Jared mind your fucking manners! Imagine how you'd react if someone embarrassed me like that!" The young woman hissed, then turned to Sam. "Sorry about your baking sheet, Sam. Jared will get you a new one
Everyone else in the room roared with laughter.
"Sorry Kimmy" Jared mumbled, looking at his feet. "Sorry Bella" he added before his imprint could tell him to. "Ummm. Breakfast smells good?" he tried to cover. Sam rolled his eyes and turned away from his packmate and back to his mate.
"All ok with the other imprints?" he asked quietly, knowing without question that Bella would've felt bad about riling up their wolves and would've wanted to smooth things over.
"Everything's great. Let's get some food into these giants before they start eating the furniture." She only half joked. A room full of huge grins showed how popular that suggestion was.
"Ok everyone. Let's hold off a moment while Bella, Kim and Rachel fix themselves some breakfast and I set some aside for Embry and Quil and then we can all jump in." Good-natured grumbles met that instruction but no one broke ranks until the imprints were sorted and out of the way and Sam had put two large plates-full of food over on one countertop.
The moment everyone else was clear it was as if a switch had been flipped and the mountain of wolf people fell upon the breakfast banquet, leaving barely a crumb behind less than a minute later when they all retreated, plates in hands. Bella stood, stunned for a moment and then, with a grin and a shrug, sat herself in Sam's lap as there were no free chairs and started picking away that the muffin she'd picked out. Sam hummed happily. He had almost everything he could want right at that moment; his mate, his Pack and plenty of good food. Life, for that moment in time at least, was very good.