A/N

I was going to dive straight in to Prom, but these two nuts clearly need to have an open and honest chat about their feelings. Let's see how that works out.

Chapter 6

Edward knocked on the door to Bella's house with barely restrained impatience. She was fine – he knew she was fine. Waiting at the boundary line, he had seen her driving her truck home, cheeks pink and eyes bright from the exercise, not a whiff of injury in the air. He felt a cloying desperation to get his hands on her nonetheless. Venom kept pooling around his gums, making him gulp nervously. His teeth actually ached, which they hadn't done in decades, not since his vigilante days. He wasn't even thirsty – he had nabbed a deer after leaving the beach to head home and change. If anything, he felt…sloshy, overfull of blood. He'd hunted more to kill something than to actually feed.

Rosalie had thrown him off balance more than he wanted to admit. Her words had clawed their way into the back of his mind, festering with old wounds and torments – not the least of which is that the line that separates him from the men he used to hunt wavers like a ribbon in the wind.

Then the connection between Bella and Jacob had gradually come into focus as they got familiar with one another again. By the time they were sitting by the fire, he felt like he could see the ties between them growing, rooting their way deeper. Rosalie and the self-hatred she'd so skillfully inspired had all but slipped from his mind in the face of such a catastrophe.

As a man, he felt insecure and haunted by the sight of Bella in another's arms. As a vampire, the scale tipped towards homicidal.

Edward hadn't gotten close enough to hear Jacob Black's thoughts. He suspected, for the sake of treaties between mythical creatures, that was for the best.

But right now, he didn't give a damn about treaties. For the sake of his sanity, he needed to know everything there was to know about his girlfriend's (oh, he loathes that term) very close and very male friend. A friend who seemed to think it was appropriate to be brazenly physically intimate with a girl who was not available – completely fucking off limits, actually – and when they were alone in each other's company, at that.

Where the hell had the Clearwater girl gotten to? He had been given the impression Bella was more excited about seeing Leah than she was Jacob, but perhaps that had been his wishful thinking. Clearly, she was an unreliable friend either way. Her presence would have been a buffer between Bella and Jacob's clear adoration for her, surely. Edward had held grudges for less.

Charlie Swan, no stranger to grudges himself, finally deigned to shuffle to the entranceway with a weary sigh.

"Edward," he said stiffly in greeting as he opened the door.

"Chief Swan," he replied, forcing his face into a smile he hoped looked polite. "May I come in to see –"

"Yep." He walked back to the television without a backwards glance.

Well, he couldn't exactly fault Charlie Swan for being right about him. Edward considered making small talk about the game, but he really didn't have enough humanity in him to spare. He hurried up to Bella's room.

He knocked and waited. He heard her heartbeat spike, and she nearly toppled over her desk chair, he thinks, by the crash, in her excitement to run to the door. She swung it open and leapt into his arms that caught her automatically, her warm limbs wrapping around him like white on rice.

"Hi," she said into his neck.

"Hi," he repeated back dumbly, slightly shocked at the exuberance of her greeting. He had instinctively held his breath when she jumped at him, not wanting to get overwhelmed with how vampiric his jealousy was making him right now. He was always more sensitive to her blood after they'd been apart, and her softness pressing so fully against him had nearly been his undoing more than once.

"I missed you," she said. "It's pretty lame how much I missed you, actually."

Edward wrapped his arms around her tighter. "Yeah?" he asked. He really needed her to keep saying things like that, which felt utterly pathetic.

"Every time I caught a wave, I pictured you on the beach watching me."

He winced internally.

She pulled back in his arms to smile at him. "I'm kinda' graceful on a surfboard. It took me a long time, and I'll never be that good, but still. You'd freak out if you saw," she said proudly.

He smiled. "I'm sure I would," he said, perfectly neutral, immaculate liar that he was.

She narrowed her eyes at him immediately. It was insulting, all things considered.

"I thought you weren't allowed on their land," she said flatly.

"I'm not," he said. That was his last bit of air, and he really needed her to be about five feet away from him before he tried breathing around her, so he hoped that was

Her eyes narrowed to angry slits. Well, he hadn't really expected to get away with that one anyway. She wriggled to be let down, and he gently set her on her feet.

He scanned what she was wearing for the first time, and his mood darkened thunderously at the sight of her in the boy's clothes.

He hadn't seen that. Foregoing his weak commitment to diplomacy entirely, he took a breath to suggest that she remove the abhorrent fucking things this instant before he rips them off himself –

Wolf.

The odour jolted through him like a lightning strike. He shivered with fraying nerves, teeth throbbing, instincts screaming in stress at the renewed call of Bella's blood. The torrid memory of the flavour all but consumed him, tantalising his mind like a ripe plum on a branch that hangs just out of reach. It's burnt sugar and floral absinthe, red with nourishing, pulsing life. It's a spicy and viscous heat that's the only balm for a throat raw with eternal thirst, and he'd never feel such blissful satisfaction again.

The boy's stench of musty wet-dog and damp forest (he was all over her) did help distract from his innate need to kill her, but only so he could instead kill him.

But the wolves had died out. Hadn't they? Was the lineage so strong that even a descendant who hadn't shifted would still smell like that? Was it the same? He knew the descendants carried enhanced senses, even if they never shifted, so he had marked Bella with his scent, just because – but he didn't think he'd be letting Bella surf with an actual werewolf. Edward wracked his brain, trying to recall the memory of the scent when they met the wolves generations ago.

No, it wasn't as strong. Not by half, but even a latent magical quirk carried quite the signature, apparently. If it planned on staying latent, however, was another question.

She was not going to have the opportunity to find out.

She had watched the change come over him warily, and apparently, she had some survival instincts after all, because she took a hasty couple steps away.

"You smell of him," he said quietly, knowing it explained nothing to her, really, but compelled to say it. He moved slowly towards her.

She took a further step back, her chin jutting up stubbornly.

"How did you watch us at the beach?"

"From a sea stack – a far one. I didn't come onto their land," he said dismissively.

She made a frustrated sound at the back of her throat.

"How long were you watching us for?"

"I left when the fire went out. I'm going to need you to take off his shorts."

He took a step closer. The back of her legs hit her bed.

"Edward, you can't –"

"Protect what's mine? I think you'll find that I can," he said, as a matter of fact.

In a blink, he was looming over her, and she dropped heavily to the bed. Her brown eyes, rich like coffee before the cream swirls in, shimmered with apprehension as she stared up at him. Her curly eyelashes fluttered nervously, her pink lips trembled, and she couldn't have pleased the predator more if she had been cast into flesh from the depths of his fantasies. He exhaled as she breathed in, the mild haze from his breath settling over her like a sprinkling of fairy dust. She tilted her head to one side and bit her lip, her heart pounding. Doe-eyed with shadowy tales, a brat and a-half who melted for him so sweetly – for god's sake, did she want him to eat her?

He leant down, his arms caging her curvy little form on the bed.

"Isabella," he said, voice somehow low and calm over the roaring in his head. "Why didn't you tell me Jacob Black was in love with you?"

She jumped a little in shock at his words, and she blinked away the glassiness in her eyes as she tried to process what he asked. She frowned up at him, leaning away. He growled at her without thinking, a sharp little snarl in a tenor, he realised, he hadn't used before. She stilled unconsciously, and the implications of it lit up something wild inside him with joy.

"Of course he's not," she gasped indignantly. "Did – did you hear his thoughts?"

"No," he replied. "I don't have to, either."

She looked relieved. She shouldn't.

He crouched down on one knee in front of her and pinched the hem of the shorts between a thumb and forefinger as if the fabric was diseased, face sour with disgust.

"I don't like seeing you in another man's clothes, for future reference," he raised his eyebrows at her. "Especially when that man is a rival for your affections."

"You're being ridiculous," she snapped, slapping at his hand.

"I thought it was Leah I had to worry about, you know," he said, since caution had long been thrown to the wind.

She gaped at him. "Leah? Where did that come from?"

"Something your mother thought in the hospital."

Edward wasn't deliberately trying to discombobulate Bella as some kind of tactic to knock the truth out of her, but it certainly was working in his favour. She groaned and buried her hands in her hair, tugging with exasperation.

"I knew she never let that go," she muttered. Edward coughed pointedly, and her eyes snapped to his and she went bright red. "No, it wasn't – I'm sorry, you've been wondering if I'd had a thing – like, a thing-thing – with my girlfriend for how long?"

"Hospital, as I said."

"Oh my god!"

"I wasn't particularly concerned. I was sure you would've told me if it was that important…and I don't mean to sound insulting, but I figured out quickly not to put too much weight on your mother's thoughts."

"But you're concerned about Jacob?" She folded her arms crossly. "That seems like a double standard."

"Maybe it is. But I also didn't know about Leah – I now know for damn sure about him. And while you are extraordinarily lovely, even I don't think it's likely that both your best friends are in love with you."

"Gah! Stop saying that!"

"I'm not sure which concerns me more: that you're lying to me or yourself."

Her jaw clenched as she ground her teeth. "I was going to talk to you about Jacob before you ambushed me. Screw you."

He had come too far to back down now. "Then talk," he said blankly.

She looked down at her hands as they fidgeted nervously in her lap. "He…implied he had feelings for me. Sort of. And no, I didn't know."

He took her hands in his, needing to touch her, needing to know that he could.

"I'm not accusing you, Bella, but given how close you two clearly were, I find that hard to believe."

She flinched.

"I promise. We grew up together, so it's weird, and we've always only seen each other once or twice a year, if that," she tried to tug away her hands, but he wouldn't let her. "And, like, maybe it was…we were just kids having crushes or whatever. But not like…"

Her breath hitched with anxiety, and Edward felt a really inconvenient stab of remorse.

"Bella…"

"Okay, fine! I thought he looked…attractive, or something. But only for like a second, and then I stopped being insane and he was just Jake. He's my childhood friend who suddenly became three metres tall and bulky and it took me off guard, but it didn't mean anything! It's just…hormones, whatever. You can't be mad at me for being a human – and a teenager."

Edward started to wonder nervously if there was a chance that he was being a prick, but then he thought of the way they smiled at each other, firelight dancing between them. He inhaled sharply in frustration.

"Can I be mad at you for being naïve?"

Tears filled her eyes, and he nearly folded. Another part of him hummed in satisfaction at this sign of remorse, and wanted to pin her down gently as she cried for him softly, licking the tears from her hot pink cheeks, soothing her with a rumbly purr.

And how exactly would he explain that impulse? Intrusively, an old Elvis line drawled sarcastically in his mind:

I can't help it, baby, it's the beast in me.

"Edward – I love you so much, so it's not even…" Her bottom lip trembled, and he was done.

"Isabella," he groaned, exasperated and achingly in love with her. In an instant, they were lying next to each other on the bed, his arms tight around her, his face pressed into her hair that smelled like a shock of sea and wolf and Bella, and it seemed so simple all of a sudden.

She buried her face into his chest, and he breathed out heavily over her, again and again, not giving a damn that she'd get haze-drunk and pliable as wet clay.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I trust you, Bella. I wasn't…in complete control of myself."

She sighed, her lips curving into a smile against his chest in relief. "It's okay. But can you lose control in a fun way soon, please?"

His chest vibrated with a growl against her cheek, and Bella giggled.

He rolled them over so he was covering her, resting on his forearms, his weight pressing against her heavily, perfectly, just enough so her chest could still rise and fall against his chest with easy breaths.

He buried his face in her neck, inhaling with masochistic abandon. It burned, but it burned because she was safe beneath him, warm and fragrant and his.

She looped her arms around him, stroking trails of tingling heat along his back.

"You're going to take off these clothes," he commanded quietly into her skin. "And you're going to shower while I burn them."

"That seems a little dramatic."

"Not compared to what I really want to do right now, and if you don't get his scent off you in the next five minutes…"

Her eyes sparkled with interest and not the least bit of mischief, and he was a condemned man. "Why? What will you do?"

He rolled his eyes. "God save me from curious little hellcats," he said wryly, rolling on to his back beside her. He covered his eyes with one hand and started gently nudging her away from him with the other.

"Go. A moment of peace, I beg you."

She laughed at him, but she relented. Just as he heard her patter to the door, he tensed with sudden alarm that strangled his throat. She was leaving, and he hadn't yet – he couldn't even think it, so how could he do it? He had been shoving it down, down deep with the rest of the animal, but…

He had to – didn't he?

"Wait," he said sharply.

She stopped and turned around, one hand on the door handle. He was already there, pressing her back against the shut door, one hand cupping the back of her neck, the other circling her waist and pressing into her lower back.

Some part of him was frantic with anxiety, trying to wrestle with reason. The rest of him was led by a decision that had all but been cemented the moment he smelled wolf on her.

He had surprised her, but she was still and trusting. It caused a pang of shrivelling guilt, but his resolve was unbreakable.

He let his eyes well with a veil of venom, causing them to gleam hypnotically as he bore his gaze into hers.

He tightened his hand, pressing against the sides of her neck, fingers stroking her pulse point. It wasn't restrictive to her breathing, but she froze in his grip.

He let out long, deep breaths, and her eyelids drooped and her lips parted. He had wondered if it would even work, her mind closed as it is, but he had seen her mildly affected enough by the haze to be sure it could.

"Good girl," he crooned to her blank and glazed eyes. She shuddered as the praise settled over her, yielding her further to him. He leaned in closer, holding her unblinking stare.

"You are never again to be alone with Jacob Black," he said, a deep rumble in his chest as he embedded his will and authority in every word. "Do you understand me, Isabella?"

She nodded, whimpering. He smiled, softening. "Thank you," he breathed.

He kissed her, and the spell broke. She pulled away from his lips in surprise, and she blinked at him.

"Was that it?" she asked, disorientated.

He pecked her on the lips again. "Is a kiss not a good enough reason?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. He laughed, and he hoped it sounded less strained to her than it did to him.

"Sorry. Go on."

He didn't resist stroking a possessive hand down the curve of her behind as he moved her to open the door, and she raised an eyebrow at him in slight surprise, but didn't shy away from his touch. He shrugged at her.

"I'm only human, too, you know," he teased.

She blushed and hurried away, too flustered to think of a response. He watched her go, a dreadful sinking feeling gnawing in his gut. He swallowed the shame with stubborn defiance.

He was keeping her safe. He had to keep her safe. A wolf, for Christ's sake, he wasn't – his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to look at the little green screen. Alice.

A terrible thud of guilty panic took his breath away, and then he rejected the call without a second glance.

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A/N

It is short, but a long one is coming very soon! I was impatient and wanted to share this Edward chapter with you guys.

It is so hard to describe Bella's blood without using the word 'ambrosia'. I almost cracked and used it. It was a very close call.

A woman's advice goes in one ear and out the other, eh, Edward? Typical.

Did anything stand out to you? Did I pull it off? Did I make you happy?

Are you there? :)