Bella didn't sleep well.

No matter how deep the sleep felt with the alcohol, her body never got the quality of sleep she needed. When she blinked her eyes open, Jasper was there, and the room was darker than before. Groggy and tired, she was only distantly aware of Jasper sticking a glass of water in her hands. She drank it all before tossing herself back down onto the pillow. Her brain felt like it was bouncing around in her skull, pulsing with the imminent hangover.

"What time is it?" She managed to groan out.

"Midnight." He settled in behind her. "Sleep."

The next time she woke, Jasper wasn't with her. Miraculously, she didn't feel that familiar headache as she propped herself up to sit. The sky outside was still dark, and her phone by the bedside told her that it was almost three in the morning.

She got up and promptly threw herself into the obscenely large shower in the suite's bathroom. As the water soothed her skin, her mind began its usual recollection. It wasn't easy to avoid the guilt that drinking brought, especially gauging Jasper's distaste of it all. Methodically, she shampooed and soaped up, then let the water do its work. She went through the motions with a slight downward curl to her lips.

You've lost fat, and muscle, and you're still losing. There will be a threshold that you will reach and then we can't do this anymore.

When she shut off the water, it was so abrupt that the silence was disorienting.

There's a reason why you need to meet a certain weight to donate blood.

Her feet carried her out, and she avoided the large mirror by the sink as she toweled off.

She glanced through her phone as she absently combed through her hair with her fingers. Her eyes barely skimmed the texts Edward had sent her about their journey up to Alaska. There was a screenshot her mother had sent about flight tickets to Seattle. Neither got a response from her—not at three in the morning.

Wrapping a cotton robe around her, she headed off to the hall; feet silent, house desolate. She peeked around the door to Jasper's library with a meek, "Good morning."

Jasper looked up from the armchair at the corner of the room. But Bella's eyes darted quickly to the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him that were bare, the tall curtains pinned to the side. The gentle night seeped in along with the moonlight. The scene gave Bella pause, because it was the first time she had ever seen out of those windows. Jasper usually had them drawn tightly during the daylight hours.

"Should I expect your father to come knocking down the front door later this morning?" Jasper flipped a page of the book in his hands. "Have you told him you'd be gone?"

"Yes." Her eyes still bore into the darkness beyond as she made her way in. She paused before him, still trying to make out the faint outline of the trees. There weren't any outdoor lights at this side of the property.

And then, she gave Jasper a little smile. "So the cliche holds. The brooding vampire hides from the sun, and thrives in the dark."

He barely glanced up at her. "We are creatures of the night."

"The sun won't kill you."

"Not at this distance."

Bella fought to keep her eyes from rolling. When she tried to step away, he held her in place with a quick grip on her wrist. A hand rested casually on the book in his lap, and the other ran a thumb over her veins. Reverent, maybe. The candlelight flickered around them, as if the flames danced just to get closer.

"You did not sleep well," he noted.

She had not. "I didn't?"

"It's a depressant and a stimulant. Proves for restless sleep. Your heart doesn't rest, and neither do you." Bella's eyes darted away, but he added, "Though you are sober now."

"Yes," she confirmed quickly, hoping he wouldn't say much more. "What have you been doing besides keeping track of my vitals?"

"I just got back from a patrol."

"Even when Carlisle's gone, you're still on duty."

"Always."

"Well, you haven't eaten."

"And neither have you." He glanced down at his book, almost dismissively. His touch faded away as he released her. "Coffee and fruit should be fine. Drink some more water."

She shifted on her feet, a nervousness there. "Did I upset you?"

"No."

"I've upset you."

He didn't seem to be reading any of the words on the page he was staring at. "Feed yourself, so that I may as well."

The hangry vampire. She relented. "I'm sorry about last night."

"Coffee and fruit," he repeated. "Water."

A little reluctantly, Bella left him to prepare a quick meal. The kitchen and the entirety of the house was silent as the coffee machine whirred and brewed her a pot of coffee. She sliced up some of the fruit they had bought yesterday and arranged it on a platter before downing a glass of water.

She brought her quick breakfast upstairs, and decided to show her good student tendencies for once and flipped open the Tome at Jasper's desk. As she took a few sips of coffee, she skimmed the section she had tried to read last night. Her fingers absently toyed with her naked ring finger when she declared, "Diamonds can cut you."

She had taken off the ring in the shower, and hadn't bothered to put it back on.

"They're the hardest naturally occurring substance on our planet," Jasper affirmed from where he now sat across the desk, in the chair she usually preferred.

"It's nice to know that you have some weaknesses."

He didn't respond to that.

Bella brought a tall candle closer to the book to illuminate a diagram of skin layers, indicating the layers of epidermis. There were scientific explanations of vampiric skin, particularly focused on something called Corneocytes, and how they protected against all wear and tear. The sole exception was any harsh abrasion due to a crystalline arrangement of carbon: diamonds.

The candle flickered, sending warmth up to her face. "I could see vampires crafting weaponry this way. Diamond encrusted knives, brass knuckles."

"Keep reading."

She smiled, and cradled her coffee as she returned to the text. After a few minutes, she placed a finger on a sentence. "…nails are strengthened to a similar crystalline structure upon the change, comparable to teeth, as discussed in a section previously." She looked up at him, concluding, "Your nails are enough to cause significant damage. You wouldn't need any fancy diamond weaponry."

"Nails aren't as effective as our teeth, but I can tear my own skin open with my own fingers easily enough."

Bella stood, rounding the desk. She picked up his hand and examined his fingers. "You're telling me you have diamonds in your nails?"

"No." He chuckled, and Bella instantly warmed at the sound. "But their strength and composition are similar."

Bella pressed the pads of her fingers on the tops of his nails. "They don't seem so scary to me. The Tome makes it sound like you grow talons or something."

"Our ancestors might have, but that's pure speculation. The theory of evolution applies to vampirism as much as it does to humans, since the body that's transformed begins with a human who evolves continuously. Venom merely takes a snapshot, and enhances based on the body's needs."

Bella's eyebrows drew together. "Do we know how vampires came to be?"

"It's one of the questions the Tome doesn't answer." He looked up at her. "Our book-keeping started a little over three thousand years ago, and no one quite knows where our venom came from."

Jasper had begun to inspect her hand in return when Bella said softly, "Could you imagine? You wake up as the first cold, dead being on the planet, with some undoubtedly weird cravings." Bella took a light sip of her coffee, and perched on his lap, turning her head to him. "Maybe you try to fight it, because obviously drinking blood is unusual, and wrong."

"But eventually," Jasper said, his fingers caressing up her palm, "you stop resisting. Because you need sustenance, and energy. Your morals betray you, and you give in. You have to."

"You have to." She repeated, her eyes finding the grand windows. A moment of silence, and then, "The sunlight would be beautiful in here."

"Harmful." He bounced his knee, and Bella took that as a cue to get up. "Most of the books in here are older than you, and they must be kept properly."

"Sunlight damages them?"

"Most forms of light do." Jasper got up after her and pulled her towards his desk. "Everything decays around us. The best we can do is slow the process." He knocked on the desk beside her. "Up."

The light order sparked through her body. She pulled herself up with her hands and scooted on. Instinctively, she offered her right wrist.

Jasper accepted her arm, but only stared at her veins, contemplative. "Will you tell me why you came in here like this?"

"Like what?"

His guarded demeanor seemed to loosen as his hand cradled her cheek, a lazy thumb on her lower lip. "Flushed from a shower." His eyes flickered down. "And in nothing but a robe."

She kept her knees together, because he was right. "Is that a problem for you? I can change."

"You keep a poor mask of innocence, Bella."

She couldn't help the slight bite to her tone. "Well, you get me riled up just to put me to sleep." She put up a quick hand before he could respond. "But that's fine. I know you hate the drinking, and I know you're upset about it. Let's just get this feeding over with, and I'll work on it. I will."

There was a beat of consideration. A beat of an unreadable stare. Jasper came closer, standing just in front of her knees, and reached behind her. "The femoral artery," he began, scooting the Tome over to the side as his lips brushed her ear. "It extends the iliac artery and is responsible for the blood supply to your lower limbs."

Before she could even think of a response, his grip trailed from her wrist to her palm, and his right hand closed in around her waist, tugging her closer to the edge. His torso naturally coaxed her thighs to part, and he easily slipped between her legs as he lowered her gently onto the desk.

"I didn't realize you had such a nice chandelier," Bella noted a little stupidly, staring straight up at the ceiling. She tried to will away the blush on her cheeks at the realization that a thin robe was all that was separating her from this man who had very clearly just laid her down on his desk like a meal.

"It was Carlisle's," he said, with a finger on the belt of her robe, as if deciding whether or not to unwrap a present. "This was his old study."

He leaned over her, his jeans pressing into her, and she felt tender hands on her throat, and then her face. Feeling, assessing. His long fingers brushed her jaw, sweeping once over her lips.

"Was this Carlisle's desk, too?" She asked plainly, as if she didn't feel him hardening against her.

"It was."

"What about the chairs, and the shelves?"

"Yes, and yes." He leaned over further to look into her eyes, and Bella squirmed at the friction between them. Jasper simply gripped her hip to steady her and added, "So are the curtains. A quarter of these books. The carpet."

Bella bravely reached up a hand to his chest, watching as her fingers trailed up to his neck, then to his face. "Do you have a habit of stealing from Carlisle?"

That was when a small smile crept onto those lips. "Do you feel stolen, Bella?"

"That's not the term I would use," she said as he grabbed her hand that was on his cheek. He planted a simple kiss into her open palm before pulling her up to sit. She scooted closer to the edge, not accepting any moment of separation between them. Boldly, she wrapped her legs fully around him and her lips parted in a moan when she felt his breath on her neck. Her body coiled in anticipation of a bite.

"What term would you use?" Jasper asked against her throat.

Her reply was barely a whisper as her gaze lifted to the tall windows. "Saved? Liberated?"

"We're far from that."

Shadows danced in her vision from the unrelenting darkness beyond, the candlelight playing tricks on her. Her hand rested on his back, and then the back of his head, fingers weaving through his hair. She encouraged him into her neck. "Is it ever wrong to hope?"

There was a brief pause. A moment where Jasper's lips lifted from her skin. And instead of a bite, he began to place kisses up her neck, all the way to her ear. Bella sighed as his breath caressed her. "Such a critical artery, providing an easy path to the heart."

Her mind fought to catch up. "Jugular?"

Jasper grabbed both of her hands and lowered her down onto her back again. He tugged at the loose knot of the robe with one hand, while the other was already beneath the cloth, running slowly up her knee. His thumb finally pressed into her inner thigh as he corrected, "Femoral."

Another tug, and the belt loosened entirely, the robe barely hanging on her breasts. Jasper's hand came down the center of her chest, slowly, as if admiring the tease he was responsible for. A brush of his fingers, and the top of the robe came down on either side of her.

The candlelight wasn't enough to warm the room, and Jasper's cooler fingers pebbled her nipples as they ghosted over a breast, then down to her torso, her waist, where the robe provided poor coverage.

"Perhaps I can confess to light thievery," he said, voice low, eyes devouring.

"Who have you stolen from?"

"Edward."

Bella swallowed, heart pumping. "He would have killed me by now."

"No," he disagreed. "Not yet." A hand came down to her calf, lifting and baring her inner thigh. Two fingers ghosted down a section that Bella could only hope was that ungodly artery. Jasper's head snapped to her. "Two bites."

"Two?"

"Let me show you how good this could be."

Was that a pause for permission? "At this point, I would be upset if you didn't show me."

He didn't quite acknowledge the snark. He only bent lower, his lips at her inner thigh, his hand still holding her leg up. He let his teeth scrape, but that wasn't a sensation she could appreciate for long, because there were fingers swiping over her robe, right on her clit. Another kiss, and another sharp scrape at her inner thigh, and Jasper flipped the lower portion of the robe over both sides of her, leaving her entirely exposed. The next time his fingers pressed on her, Bella jolted at the direct contact, eyes distantly fixed on that chandelier.

She moaned as his thumb circled her clit, and whenever his fingers dipped lower, Bella's face heated at just how wet she was already. Her own fingers gripped the edge of the desk when he slipped one finger inside of her. He quickened the pace, and she could feel a second finger prodding. When was the last time she had been touched like this? She swallowed, her breaths coming in faster.

Bella wondered what he thought of her—panting and splayed out like this for him. She wondered what he thought of the sounds from her mouth every time he curled that finger inside of her. She wondered if he was thinking at all.

She did not anticipate the bite.

Jasper pushed in a second finger the moment his teeth came down on her left inner thigh. Bella arched slightly off of the desk, her back digging into the cloth of the robe that was thrown open beneath her. Her breaths were uneven, and heavy. She whimpered when she felt each draw from his lips. His bite seemed to heighten the pleasure his fingers were giving as he took from her. And it was exactly that: a give-and-take. The pace he set with his fingers was the same one he used as he pulled with his lips.

His teeth unlatched at some point, and Bella couldn't exactly pinpoint when. She was lost in the haze of warmth that seemed to emanate from the wound in her thigh.

The grip on her leg tightened, and he asked, "Do you feel pain?"

"No," she groaned. "Not at all."

"Good." His thumb circled her once again, and she felt his lips on the bite once more before they disappeared. And then his tongue was on her clit.

"Oh my god," Bella moaned as Jasper's tongue worked on her, drawing a spasm from her abdomen, and hips. "Jasper—"

"The femoral artery," he interrupted, his breath on her. Breathless? He seemed breathless. "Miraculously 4 centimeters wide, on average…"

Bella pressed a forearm over her eyes, fighting her smile. She knew with utmost certainty she would forget this lesson. Mouth and fingers working in tandem, it wasn't easy to hold onto coherency. It didn't even give her a chance to consider that Jasper was still fully clothed. The unfairness wouldn't dawn on her until later.

He built her up with each stroke and caress. His pace increased and decreased, adjusting from what he seemed to read of her body.

"Do you wish," Bella breathed, tilting her head back more, almost wincing at the sensitivity of her clit as his teeth barely made contact, "that you could feel me?"

Such a deep, mesmerizing timbre. "More than I can feel you now?"

"My feelings," she clarified.

"I don't need them."

She bit her grin. "Are you always this cocky with women?"

He was smiling against her, and she knew it. "I need you to do something for me."

"Anything." He could bite her ten more times if he wanted, just as long as he didn't stop. She didn't care how much of a mess they were making on his desk. She wanted it messier.

He gripped her outer thigh, baring open the bite once more. "I need you to come on my fingers." His lips returned to her clit, and he murmured, "Can you do that for me, sweetheart?"

He kept a steady pace as her body tensed beneath him, her heartbeat accelerating with each passing moment. Closer, closer, closer.

"Yes," she whispered, as his fingers and tongue worked her up to the edge of her cliff and let her glide smoothly over. Only when she crested the peak of her orgasm did she feel another bite very close to the previous one on her thigh. His teeth pierced, and Jasper drew from her as her body convulsed and twitched, her heart pumping fast and steady, delivering blood directly to him. She rode his fingers until she could catch her breath again.

Finally, when her pulse lowered, Jasper unlatched from her skin and withdrew his fingers. He hovered over her as he wrapped the robe around her body, loosely knotting the belt. He then grabbed both of her hands and pulled her up so she sat before him. His eyes swirled with bright red crimson, and he brushed part of her hair away from her shoulders before leaning into her neck.

Bella was still reeling from the pleasure and the pain. She still felt the pulsing, healing wounds on her thigh, and the slight twitch of her legs from the remnants of her orgasm. She placed a hand at the back of his neck as he nuzzled her. They paused in that early, dark morning. A sense of wordlessness overcame her.

"It would've been now," Jasper murmured eventually, pressing a kiss on her throat. "Edward would have killed you now."


A/N: Thank you for all of the support. I'm still getting back into things, hence the lack of a preview.