CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.
STALKER
CW: light spice
La allowed me to take the wheel for the drive home. She sat contentedly in the passenger seat watching the lush greenery of the Olympic National Park fly past. Without thinking, I reached out to touch her hand. She tossed me a smile, and slid her palm into mine, intertwining our fingers. The warmth of her sent electricity through my veins. It was too good to let go, so I put my knee under the steering wheel and used my left hand to switch gears.
La set the pace of continued touch as she turned my hand over, dragging her nails across my palm. While I maintained a cool and collected demeanor, inside I was soaring! Our time in the meadow had been better than I ever could have imagined. Not only had I kept Rule Number Three (don't fucking kill her), I had done the impossible. As we left the meadow, a fit of reckless insanity had overtaken me urging me to attempt to kiss the girl. It was idiotic, but the girl survived, and what an incredible moment it had been.
"Hold very, very still." I had asked, and La obliged, even closing her eyes. I looked at her, absorbing the way her cheeks were flushed with sun beneath the lightest spattering of freckles along the bones. She had been relaxed, breathing softly through her nose. Strands of her hair floated through the wildflower sented breeze, dancing around her neck, but she remained absolutely still, waiting.
Ever so slowly I bent to press my lips against hers -
"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" she interrupted my reverie.
"What's up?" I glanced over at her, but she seemed to be absorbed in memorizing the details of my hand as her fingers traced my nail beds and tickled across my palm. I held in another purr.
"Esme asked Carlisle to save you…" She paused as she thought about how to word her next question. "What does that mean? How does it work?"
I tensed, unsure of how I should answer. Admittedly, the curiosity was understandable, but I didn't want to go down the path of how truly horrendous the transition was. Especially now, since the hope was that she would eventually, having weighed all her options, choose transition.
"It's really difficult. Not many of us are capable of it," I told her. "Carlisle has always been the most compassionate of all of us. Somehow, where most of our kind fail, he has been able to hold on to his humanity. I think that's why he's capable of handling the scent of blood without much discomfort. It's also why he's able to turn others without killing them. He's a truly amazing man. For me, it was just really painful."
She absorbed that, then motioned for me to continue.
"Edward was first in the family and I think Carlisle acted from loneliness. Esme came very soon after Edward. She'd fallen from a cliff and the hospital sent her straight to the morgue. Somehow her heart was still beating and Carlisle was able to save her."
A frown followed this speech - I realized I hadn't actually answered her question, at least not the way she wanted me to. I opened my mouth to say more, but she chose a different path.
"Do you have to be dying to become a vampire?"
"God no," I managed to just barely catch an inappropriate laugh. "That's just Carlisle. He wouldn't do it to someone that had any other choice." I hoped she heard the emphasis on choice in that statement.
"Then they found you…" she ignored my implication.
"Yes," I said, then explained how Alice and Jasper found the family. La questioned me about vampiric lifestyles and histories and dwelled on the enigma of Alice's past. I told her everything, words pouring out of me like the opening of Pandora's Box. I tried not to think about how closely that resembled what was happening between us.
By the time we pulled into her driveway, her stomach was properly grumbling.
"Damn," she muttered looking down at her belly. I resigned myself to leaving for a few hours until she was asleep when she suddenly offered for me to join her inside. So abrupt was the offer, it seemed to surprise La for its appearance.
Keep it cool man, I told myself, but rushed to the other side of the car to open the door for her. She blinked, then stepped out of the car.
"How very human of you," she said dryly.
"It's resurfacing," I agreed.
As we approached the porch I raced ahead, eager to be the gentleman again. Heedless of perception, I grabbed the key from over the frame, used it to unlock the latch, then replaced it before she could blink. The door opened smoothly as she approached. Smug, I leaned against the door frame and motioned for her to lead the way.
She cocked her head. "Wasn't that…?"
"Yes," I admitted and damned my thoughtlessness. I needed to get better at warning her before I vamped out. "I used the key you hide over the door."
La slowly dropped her set keys into a bowl inside. A slight frown pulled the corners of her mouth down as she silently peeled off her sweatshirt to hang from a hook on the wall, tossing her bag onto the floor.
Her automatic movements of homecoming continued as she walked straight into the kitchen. I quickly shut the door, hung her bag and followed, feeling chastised.
An expectant pause only came once the fridge door was open. She turned toward me, brows lifted in question. When I didn't answer her unvoiced demand, she crossed her arms over her chest. The posture did delightful things to the neckline of her top. I swallowed, uncomfortable, but managed a nonchalant shrug.
"I got curious about you."
"You were spying on me?" she asked. I couldn't tell if she was surprised or angry, so I decided to play it cool.
"What else is there to do at night? I didn't think I was ever going to talk to you again, but I couldn't stay away either." I slumped into a chair at the table as La allowed the refrigerator door to slam shut behind her.
"How often?" she demanded. Definitely anger, then. It occurred to me that I could have handled this better. Now was probably the best time to come clean about all of it - delaying further would only dig my hole deeper.
"Hmm?" I asked, buying myself a second, and thinking about how to mitigate my massive fuck up. Be honest, I told myself over and over, be honest.
"How often did you come here?" she asked again.
"Almost every night." I grimaced. I couldn't feel bad about it despite my knowing I should. She was right to be angry, but I wasn't a human and shouldn't be expected to act like one.
"Still?" she yelped.
"Yep."
"Why?" she placed her hands on her hips, accentuating her curves, pinching the shirt into her waist which showed off her shape under the top. My gaze lingered a moment. She was deliciously soft. I wanted so badly to replace her hands with mine that I nearly reached for her.
"You're interesting when you sleep," I told her, refocusing, and smiled at her aghast frustration. "You talk."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," she threw her hands up in exasperation and turned toward the fridge again, digging through it.
"Are you mad at me?" I asked and adjusted in my seat. Her leggings were thick to fend off the lingering brisk winter, but they clung to her thighs as she bent over to jab at buttons on the microwave. A slow gathering warmth was spreading through me that had nothing to do with thirst. I adjusted again and shook myself out of it. "What can I do?"
She dropped a molten bowl of lasagna on the table and sat down. "That depends on what you heard." She stabbed viciously at the plate, then shoved a forkful of pasta into her mouth. Tears sprung up in her eyes.
I knelt at her feet and took her hands. The tears were for the blisters forming in her mouth from the lasagna, but I wasn't going to miss the chance to kneel at her feet. "Please don't be upset." She swallowed the lasagna and more tears sprang into her eyes. She must have burned her throat as well.
"You talk about your mom a lot, and you worry over your sister. One time you said, 'it's so green,' and I couldn't tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing." I told her, thinking of anything innocuous she'd said over the last months.
"Anything else?" she asked, blushing fiercely. I looked at her carefully, trying to discern what she was after. Be honest!
"You say my name…" I admitted. "A lot."
"Ugh." She dropped her face into her hands, hiding her embarrassment.
"Don't worry," I pulled her into my lap, screaming inside at the contact. She fit perfectly into my arms, cheek resting against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her in a chaste version of the way I'd been imagining as she curled into me. She was so sweet. I smelled her hair, full of the remnants of yesterday's shampoo and sweat from our day in the sun. I expected the beast inside me to be roaring and clawing to be fed, but instead, it grumbled contentedly, like a dog that had found the perfect patch of sun to sleep in.
I wanted to try kissing her again, but properly this time - with my arms around her waist where they belonged.
"If I could dream it would only be about you," I murmured into her hair. I kept my arms around her, holding her close to me. One of her hands lifted to rest on my chest, nails digging into my shirt. I wondered how those nails would feel in my back while her breath was in my ear.
It was then I realized the warmth I was feeling was not hunger or thirst, but desire.
Her stomach grumbled, breaking the moment, and I released her to resume her meal.
"There was another thing," I said, partly to distract myself from what was growing in my pants.
"Oh?" The lasagna had cooled, allowing her to throw it down by the mouthful.
"When it's raining really hard you get restless," I watched her as I spoke and saw the spike of alarm as she realized what I was about to say. Her expression turned stony. "And you say things like, 'he's here, he's coming back…'." Sometimes you shout 'run' if you're having a particularly bad night. What's that all about?"
"Just nightmares," she dropped her fork into the mostly empty bowl.
"No, it's not," I said. "But it's okay if you don't want to talk about it right now."
"Thank you," she stretched her neck out, forcing her shoulders down away from her ears. "I'm going to take a human minute if that's okay."
"Take your time." I left her in the kitchen and went out to the living room to offer her space. The remote was placed neatly on the coffee table next to a fresh handful of flowers in a vase I'd never seen before. There wasn't a speck of dust on anything.
In the kitchen, I heard La washing her dish and setting it on the drying rack. I turned the TV on and navigated to Netflix, choosing Star Trek: The Next Generation as she ran up the stairs. The shower came on and I could hear La moving the shower curtain aside, the sound of the water splashing around as she rinsed her hair, then it was quiet.
A soft moan sounded from the shower and I held my breath, listening closely. There was no movement, she just seemed to be soaking in the warmth of the shower. Another moan sounded and went straight to my groin. I shifted, ashamed of listening in, but too intrigued to stop. The warmth that had begun to spread a few moments ago became resoundingly evident in my jeans. I had to readjust to keep from busting through my zipper.
I tried breathing exercises to calm down this rampant desire and watched Data whistle from a tree - anything to get my mind away from the naked woman upstairs. The sounds from the shower became practical hair-washing ones; a loofah being rung out and hair flipping over in the water.
Focusing on Jean-Luc Picard did eventually help. La was soon brushing her teeth then padding down the stairs. She was wearing the same threadbare nightclothes she normally slept in, holes in her short boxers, and a faded band t-shirt that came down to her knees.
"You look beautiful," I told her.
"You too," La tossed back and fell onto the couch beside me. She was too far away. I pulled her into my side and let her adjust around my frame. Soon she was tucked in, with her knees up on my thigh, heels tucked underneath her. She smelled so astonishingly perfect. I had been wrong earlier. The coconuts came from her soap, I realized, and leaned in to smell it straight from her skin.
My nose touched her jaw where it met her neck. Her scent here was sweet like carnations, combined with the deep spiciness of the blood rushing inches from my mouth. I wanted to kiss her there, but I continued my trail, tracing my way along the bottom of her jaw. Her breaths quickened along with her pulse, and her scent grew richer like it had in the meadow.
I lifted a hand, and traced her collarbones, shifting the neck of her shirt down for better access. Her heart thumped madly, and the scent deepened. I liked the way it was becoming complex and rose-rich, so I moved my nose closer to her neck picking up more of the wood spiciness from her carotid.
She stretched, back arching gently into me, and opening her neck for access. I breathed her in, wanting very much to pull her on top of me so I could smell more of her.
"Mmm…" I gasped. "You smell so wonderful."
"It seems to be a lot easier for you to be near me…." she was also gasping.
"Does it seem that way?" I gave in and placed my lips along her throat, feeling the blood rush beneath my lips. This shook me, the beast in me roared in approval right along with this new version of myself that wanted something very different from her. My arm slipped tightly around her waist, ready to pull her on top of me.
"Yep," she made another sound in her throat that nearly made me growl, and slowly, cautiously pushed away. The beast nearly snatched her back to fling her underneath me, so I froze, holding my breath.
I waited several long seconds, willing myself to relax, talking myself off the ledge, thinking of Data whistling in a tree. One by one my muscles released their tension until finally I felt safe enough to breathe again. She still smelled that richer version of delicious.
"Mind over matter," I smiled, proud of my self-control. "Did I do something wrong?"
"Lord no," she showed me her shaking hands. "I am so turned on right now I was about to throw myself at you. You're driving me nuts."
"Really?" Her scent, the richness - that was arousal. I'd smelled it in the meadow too… as she was touching me. I wanted to shout in triumph. She wanted me the same way I wanted her! Oh no… she wanted me the same way I wanted her.
"I might have to take another human moment…" she joked. I tried not to think about what she meant by that. I didn't think I would be able to be so close to her while she… "So why is it so much easier now?" she asked.
"It's not easy," I said immediately. "I think this afternoon I was just unsure of my resolution. I'm not now. I don't think I could hurt you if I wanted to."
I studied her as she gazed up at me and brushed a cheek with my thumb, watching the blush fade and return. Could I do it? Could I kiss her again without hurting her? I leaned in and pressed a small, quick kiss to her lips. Her eyes went wide, pupils dilating.
"Emmett." She said cautiously. Her tone caught my attention.
"Hmm?" I watched her fidget, picking at her nail beds, and cracking her knuckles.
"Are we going to be able to have a physical relationship?" she let the words tumble out of her mouth as if she was racing her own insecurities. "Do… do you want… one?"
For a moment, it was all I could see. Her straddling me here on this couch, the warmth of her arms around my neck, the softness of her waist as she pressed herself into me, grinding her hips with mine. The taste of her breath as she kissed me, her hands pulling my hair. The scent of her neck so close to my lips, the taste of the skin along her jaw, her blood pumping into my mouth as we…
"Fuck yes," I ground out. "But I also want to eat you. I could kill you on accident when I'm being careful. You saw me break off a tree today and throw it like it was nothing… because it was nothing to me. If I let my guard down around you at all… as it would be with that kind of distraction… no."
"No?" she fell back into the sofa, aghast. "Never?"
"You're too fragile. I can't let myself hurt you, La. I could never live with myself." I was pleading with her to understand, to acknowledge that I only wanted to keep her safe. But maybe I was being unforgiving of my abilities. It seemed too quick to say "no" outright when I had been able to make so many huge leaps in proving my self-control during the day. Alice thought I was in the clear, maybe we could have a relationship.
"That's how I know you won't hurt me even if you let your instincts lead. Look at today!" She countered. "I'm still here, you're still here… we're both sitting here right now because we made the decision - with all the information on the table - to be together. Are you telling me that you plan on having a full relationship with me without ever having sex?"
"Delilah," I said, firmly, and realized I'd only ever used her full name in times of life endangerment. "This isn't fair. I plan on having a full relationship with you… alive."
…For now. But admitting there was another possibility while her very human hormones were dictating her decision-making was a recipe for disaster. I could only imagine what she would say, because I was truthfully aligned at the moment, but I battled that back to let common sense prevail.
La remained silent, fraught with disappointment.
"You're telling me right now you are willing to risk death… in order to have sex," I said it as skeptically as I could manage. I was definitely on the verge of risking death to taste her, and I couldn't stop the images in my head of what that would look like. Of her sitting on my face as I serviced her, the feeling of her thighs clamped around my ears as she came. I held my breath.
"No. Not just to have sex." She countered with a shudder. "We've already made the decision to be together, but it won't be possible for us to be together for long if I remain human."
The elephant in the room, though this was not how I pictured this conversation going. She was right, and she'd come to the conclusion so much faster than I had.
"I'm going to die one way or another by your own admission," she continued, noticing my inability to argue with the obvious. But I wasn't ready. I had decided on a year. We were going to travel, say goodbyes, let her feel the losses she would suffer before she decided.
"Is that what this is really about? You want me to turn you into a vampire?" It wasn't fair, but I was angry. Angry that she'd figured it out so quickly, and angry that she was so… willing.
"Yes." It was a simple answer. This was not how this was supposed to go. A ringing filled my ears as we continued to argue. I was losing track of the conversation as she battled each one of my concerns with a perfectly reasonable argument for the contrary. It wasn't about sex for her. Not entirely. It was about having made her choice, and coming to an understanding, albeit very quickly, of what she wanted her future to look like. And she wanted it to be with me.
Alice had said that La wouldn't want to wait, had known the type of person La was well before I was willing to acknowledge it. Alice had given me one piece of advice: trust her.
"Do you remember the day Mike asked you to go to the club with him?" I asked her. She looked up from picking her nails.
"Yeah, that was the day you started talking to me again." She recalled with a quiet laugh. "God, you pissed me off."
I gripped her hands to force her to stop their agitated picking. "I mention it because it brought up this huge flare of resentment and fury. It took me a long time to recognize it as jealousy because I've never had to be jealous before. At the time I just needed to know why you turned him down. I didn't know if it was for Jessica like you said, or for someone else… And then I realized what I was doing. Why did I care? I tried so hard not to care. But you looked so beautiful that day, you had your hair in a roll, and you were wearing that cute dress with the bees on it.
"That was the first night I came here. I felt like such a fucking creep."
Her response was automatic. "It's pretty creepy, Emmett."
"I sat there in your room going through all the pros and cons. I'm not a great philosophical thinker… It's never been my strong suit, but I knew I wanted to do right by you. So what was the best course of action? I went back and forth for hours as you slept and then suddenly… you said my name."
"That's it?"
"Yeah," I smiled and pulled her back into my side. "That's it. And it was everything. My entire world changed. Shifted around and turned up on its head and suddenly you were the center of it. I could never go back, I could never pretend to ignore you again."
"Why are you telling me this?" She curled into me, placing her hand on my chest again. It already felt so blissfully normal.
"I don't want you to ever think even for a fraction of a second that I don't want you. I need you to know that I didn't say no about turning you because there's even the smallest doubt in my mind that I'll love you forever. I said 'no' for your safety and your future, not because I don't want you with me for eternity."
What I didn't say, was that I would be speaking with both Carlisle and Esme in the morning to discuss the best way to proceed. I needed to trust her choice, and so I would. I would have the whole family talk to her about this if it meant she would think more seriously about what she would lose, but I would trust her choice. Relief flooded me. With the decision ultimately made, I could go back to enjoying her company, her sweet scent. I wondered if it would change when she transitioned - another thing to ask Carlisle about.
She pulled away, got to her feet, and offered me a hand to pull me up beside her. "I need to go to bed, that hike nearly killed me this morning."
It was a very cute gesture, and it made me smile. I pretended to let her pull me up and walked behind her up the stairs, not bothering to avoid staring at her ass.
I laid down in her bed, inviting her to crawl in next to me. The weight of her, the warmth pressing along the length of my side made my body alight with the desire that had dwindled through our argument. Her scent had tapered off as well, but lying here with me like this, I could sense her discomfort. I thought about offering to leave, to give her a chance to fall asleep without my presence, but she smelled too good, and I didn't want to leave her for a second, especially now that I didn't have to creep around.
After a moment, she poked me and lifted her chin for a kiss. I grinned and bestowed one on her, wishing I could live forever in the waves of joy her touch brought me. This wish made me kiss her again, and again until her arms snaked around my neck, and I was kissing her in earnest. I grew hard within seconds, my nose filled with her scent, the taste of her lips on my tongue.
Her little gasps filled me. I tried to swallow each of them, then traced the line I'd made with my nose earlier, this time with tiny kisses. I chanced a taste of her carotid, licking and kissing from under her chin all the way down to the base of her neck.
She let out a deep throaty moan as she opened her mouth to let me taste her fully. I drank her in and swept her underneath me. She kicked off the blanket and hooked her knee on my hip, arching into me, hips moving deliberately.
One of her hands left my hair to explore my back, lifting my shirt to slide beneath and trace the muscles with her nails. She was melting into me, hands now slipping under my jeans to cup my ass as she gyrated against me. I moved one hand from her knee, sliding it down to her hip. She moaned my name, begging me for more. I wanted more. So much more.
"La," I was muttering, "La, I want to feel you turn to liquid around me. I want to bury myself inside you and feel you coming for me."
"Emmett," she moaned my name again, breath coming in quick gasps. She grabbed the hand that was gripping her hip hard enough to bruise, and slowly tugged it toward the inside of her thigh. "May I?"
"Please," I muttered into her ear, desperate for her to teach me about her body. Needing to feel her. She opened her knee wider and guided my hand beneath her boxers. I should stop her, some part of me said. I should stop this madness right now, it wasn't safe. But then my fingers were gliding through the slick heat of her, and she was breathing faster and faster, her scent swallowing me whole.
I held my breath and circled her clit with my fingers, as she came apart in stages. I goaded her to the precipice, then left her there by widening the circles away from her clit. Her eyes were closed, she was biting down on her lip and gripping my face with one hand, my shoulder with the other. I bent and kissed her nose, then tightened the circles adding just a little more pressure. She cried out with a soft, high-pitched, feminine noise, so I sunk my fingers inside her as her muscles contracted around them, using my thumb to maintain pressure on her clit.
She shouted again, opening her eyes to gaze into mine, breathing heavily. Her shuddering subsided, and her muscles relaxed slowly. I gently pulled myself from her, keeping a tight lock on my muscles, not breathing at all.
I lifted myself off the bed, motioned for her to stay where she was, and bolted out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out into the backyard. I barely made it to the trees by the time I had pulled my cock out of my pants. I was surrounded by her scent. My hand still dripped with her come. I wrapped it around my length and pumped, keeping my fist tight. I came almost instantly, my other fist taking a chunk out of the tree that was holding me upright.
My knees went weak, with the force of my orgasm. Unable to help myself, I lifted my hand, still covered in her slickness, and tasted it. My cock responded, becoming almost painfully erect. I lowered the hand again and began pumping, the taste of her still in my mouth. I replayed the moment she'd put my hand inside her, the sound she made as she came, the rich scent of her arousal, and I exploded again.
Then, I walked. I walked until I found a cold stream to rinse my hands and my face. I let the cool water calm the pounding in my veins, and I waited until my muscles had relaxed, until the smell of her drifted away. I waited until the ringing in my ears stopped. I forced myself to breathe the clean fresh air before I rejoined her in the bedroom.
"Are you okay?" she asked and stretched languidly. I swallowed. It was such an insanely sexy movement that I was immediately hard again. I sat cautiously on the end of the bed.
"Yeah, I'm sorry," I told her. "I don't know why I did that, you just smell so good and I shouldn't have, and… I'm sorry."
"I am not sorry." She smiled evilly, and stretched again. I held my breath. "Come here, I'll be good." I didn't believe her for an instant, but I went to her anyway, letting her curl back into my side.
Despite her objections, La was asleep in minutes. It started as a soft trickling snore through her nose that quickly devolved into a wet spot on my chest. I gazed at her, trying to absorb every detail, every pore. An hour passed, or two, or five as I looked and looked and looked. She twitched and gripped me tightly around the waist.
"Emmett," she breathed with a smile.
"La," I whispered back, but she didn't react, sound asleep as she was.
"I love you," she said, ever so quietly. I froze and she giggled, rolling over and gripping my arm to her chest. "Emmett, I love you."
I peered down at her, gently sweeping her hair from her face to see if her expression had changed, if she was awake and hiding, but no. The smile was still there, like a smug cat, but her breathing remained that of a deep, deep sleep.
I kissed her head and said into her hair, "I love you."