seven.

I was a goddamn lucky bastard.

A fucking idiot, but a lucky one.

There had been plenty of times I could have stopped. Tried to correct our 'mistake' and treat Bella with the professional respect she deserved. But there was no going back. I didn't want to go back. Didn't think I would ever consider that first night a mistake.

Not when I would get to know, for the rest of my life, that I was the first man to give her an orgasm. The first one to taste her and worship her and feel her coming on my cock.

Any guilt I might have felt at taking her virginity was long gone. It was quite literally impossible to feel anything other than right when it was just the two of us. Even when we were working, things were good. Easy. Right.

When she knelt before me and nervously took my cock in her mouth the entire goddamn world was right.

She felt it too. I knew she had to. Because as soon as my family showed up I saw the change in her. The guilt over what we were doing.

It was an affair. Any way you looked at it, it was adultery. But it was also the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time. So when I found her on the balcony with an empty bottle of wine and the saddest brown eyes I had ever seen, I was desperate.

To make it okay. Make her smile and snort with laughter. Make us two different people who could be together without a second thought. To do whatever I could to get to keep whatever little part of her I could have for as long as possible.

"You shouldn't be here," she whispered, curling in on herself and eying the bottle of wine like she wished it was suddenly full again.

"I know. I'm sorry."

I was. Sorry. For so many fucking things when it came to Bella. I was sorry for not being strong enough to stay away from her and sorry I was going to do whatever I could to keep her in my life in as many different ways as possible. I was sorry she had to see me wear a wedding band every day and so fucking sorry that she had to watch Irina walk around for the rest of the week pretending to be my wife.

"You don't have to apologize, Edward. I…I know what this is. I might be inexperienced but I understand the basics of an affair."

Her words cut through me, a pristinely sharpened knife stabbing right in the center of my chest.

"I don't want her. I want you."

So much more than you will ever know.

Then she threw herself at me. All lips and legs and hands. And I was selfish enough to enjoy every fucking second of it.