تكملة رواية شمس منتصف الليل بالانجليزيه حصريا لروايتى*مكتمله برابط للتحميل*

[مورا اسامة]

to make. Bella was concerned that my family didn’t like her. Now she would know exactly
where each of them stood on the issue of taking her life.
We Cullens are not your typical
neighborhood family. It would almost be amusing if it weren’t so real.
“All that next day I eavesdropped on the minds of everyone you spoke to, shocked
that you kept your word. I didn’t understand you at all. But I knew tha
t I couldn’t become
more involved with you. I did my very best to stay as far from you as possible. And every
day the perfume of your skin, your breath, your hair...it hit me as hard as the very first
day.”
“And for all that, I’d have fared better if I
had
e
xposed us all at that first moment,
than if now, here

with no witnesses and nothing to stop me

I were to hurt you.” That
was as deep a truth as I knew. And now she would know it too.
But she didn’t understand. “Why?”
I prepared myself to be as clear as I c
ould be.
“Isabella...” saying her beautiful name aloud filled me with joy; I reached toward
her to ruffle her shining mane of hair. The fragrance was heavenly. “Bella, I couldn’t live
with myself if I ever hurt you. You don’t know how it’s tortured me.”
“T
he thought of you, still, white, cold...to never see you blush scarlet again, to
never see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses...it would
be unendurable.” I held nothing back now. I had nothing left to retain, not even my pri
de.
“You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me
ever.”
I let the words sit there. I had no heart left to conceal myself, to demand a response,
or even to hope for any future at all. I had revealed myself to her, with no atte
mpt to hide
what would surely turn her away. An eternity passed in those moments.
Then I remembered something Alice had said to me recently. “Don’t underestimate
Bella.” Perhaps I had been, for she remained where she was, quietly contemplating, her
eyes f
ocused on our hands. She wasn’t running away from me, screaming...yet.
When time no longer had any meaning to me, Bella answered all of my words with
just a few of her own. Her soft, even voice assured me of their truth.
“You already know how I feel, of
course. I’m here...which roughly translated,
means I would rather die than stay away from you.” Her face crumpled into a frown. “I’m
an idiot,” she added.
Her words shocked me with their simplicity. The tension I had been holding onto
for hours broke free in
that moment. “You
are
an idiot,” I concurred, and we gave
ourselves over to laughter at the impossibility of our situation.
“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb,” I quoted. Bella looked away shyly, then
replied.
“What a stupid lamb.”
“What a sick,
masochistic lion.”
What would become of us? Yes, there was hope. But was there a future? Any at all?
I had no idea.
Bella broke into my thoughts with a word. “Why...?” Even her inexpressible
curiosity gratified me.
“Yes?” I pressed.
“Tell me why you ran fro
m me before.”
Owww...
The memory of losing control stung.
“You know why.” I couldn’t bring myself to repeat the words. But I had
misunderstood.
“No, I mean,
exactly
what did I do wrong? I’ll have to be on my guard, you see, so
I better start learning what I
shouldn’t do. This, for example”

she stroked the back of my
hand

“seems to be all right.”
Yes, it
was
all right. More than all right. I smiled reassuringly.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Bella. It was my fault.” It would always, always be
my fault.
“Bu
t I want to help, if I can, to not make this harder for you.” That was
so
Bella.
Even when her life was threatened, she was concerned for the would
–
be murderer. It was
no wonder I loved her. But it
was
important to know what particular thing had tripped my
hunting trigger.
“Well...” I considered each step leading to my panic and identified the precise
moment it rose. “It was just how close you were,” I realized. “Most humans instinctively
shy away from us, are repelled by our alienness....I wasn’t expecting yo
u to come so close.
And the smell of your
throat.
” I reveled in the memory before realizing the word’s likely
effect on Bella. I turned my eyes her way.
When I looked at her, she dropped her chin, covered her throat with her hands and
said, “Okay, then, no
throat exposure.” Her silly expression, along with the idea that her
little hands could prevent me from doing
anything
I chose to do, made me laugh in spite of
myself.
“No, really,” I told her, “it was more the surprise than anything else.”
I sought to p
rove it to myself. I reached out and placed my free hand on the smooth,
ivory skin of her neck. I could feel her racing heart and the blood pumping beneath her
skin. Absolutely enticing. The burn that had been with me all day intensified sharply. I held
my
self still and waited for it to subside.
“You see? Perfectly fine.”
Bella seemed to react as strongly to my touch as I had to hers. Her heartbeat
quickened markedly and the rush of blood to her pale face turned her skin a soft pink color.
“The blush on y
our cheeks is lovely,” I murmured, almost to myself. I would allow
myself to touch her heated skin. I was testing my control, after all.
I loosened my left hand from her grip and stroked her cheekbone gently before
molding both hands to the heart shape of
her face.
The warmth!
Electricity flowed through
my palms with a soft buzz.
Heavenly.
The welling of joy inside me made it easy to ignore
the fire clawing my throat. Bella’s heartbeat was so compelling, so enticing, that I wanted
to be nearer to it.
“Be s
till,” I warned, as I drew my face closer to hers. She became as motionless as
a human could be. I examined her eyes for any sign of fear, then laid my right cheek at the
base of her throat. Pressing my face against her flushed skin was as profoundly pleas
urable
as listening to the rush of her blood beneath it.
My craving for Bella’s blood had not lessened, but I was experiencing another kind
of desire that was becoming more urgent, nearly rivaling the thirst. If I focused my
attention on the new sensation
s, the burn faded somewhat from my consciousness.
While keeping my cheek at Bella’s throat, I allowed my hands to drop slowly from
her face onto her neck, an embrace familiar from the habitual hunting of humans. It had
been so long since my hands had touc
hed a human thus that I wasn’t compelled to follow
through with my teeth. Instead, I concentrated on the friction of my cold hands against
Bella’s soft flesh and the warmth that her skin transferred to mine.
As my hands moved slowly down her neck, a shive
r traveled through Bella’s body.
It passed into my hands and face and vibrated through me. The excitement of it throttled
my breath, but I kept my hands moving, settling them on her shoulders. Then ever so
slowly, I trailed my nose across her right collarb
one, finally placing my cheek over her
galloping heart.
“Ah,” I exhaled heavily, as the sound, heat, and electricity from Bella’s body
entered mine. A sense of fullness in my chest radiated through me. Her heart throbbed
against me until it felt like my ow
n. I savored my borrowed humanity for ten minutes,
fifteen... Gradually, Bella’s frantic heart and ragged breath, as well as my own, slowed to a
calm, even rhythm. I let my hands drop and raised my face to look at hers.
“It won’t be so hard again,” I said,
knowing this truth in my bones. I had made
contact with the part of her most likely to provoke my hunting instinct and it had not.
Without a doubt, this had been a dangerous experiment, but something in me had changed
today. I knew now that I could never i
ntentionally hurt her.
“Was that very hard for you?” Bella asked, no fear evident in her voice.
“Not nearly as bad as I imagined it would be,” I told her. “And you?”
“No, it wasn’t bad...for me.” I smiled at her implication that it had been the
opposite, hap
py that she hadn’t been afraid.
myself.
“No, really,” I told her, “it was more the surprise than anything else.”
I sought to p
rove it to myself. I reached out and placed my free hand on the smooth,
ivory skin of her neck. I could feel her racing heart and the blood pumping beneath her
skin. Absolutely enticing. The burn that had been with me all day intensified sharply. I held
my
self still and waited for it to subside.
“You see? Perfectly fine.”
Bella seemed to react as strongly to my touch as I had to hers. Her heartbeat
quickened markedly and the rush of blood to her pale face turned her skin a soft pink color.
“The blush on y
our cheeks is lovely,” I murmured, almost to myself. I would allow
myself to touch her heated skin. I was testing my control, after all.
I loosened my left hand from her grip and stroked her cheekbone gently before
molding both hands to the heart shape of
her face.
The warmth!
Electricity flowed through
my palms with a soft buzz.
Heavenly.
The welling of joy inside me made it easy to ignore
the fire clawing my throat. Bella’s heartbeat was so compelling, so enticing, that I wanted
to be nearer to it.
“Be s
till,” I warned, as I drew my face closer to hers. She became as motionless as
a human could be. I examined her eyes for any sign of fear, then laid my right cheek at the
base of her throat. Pressing my face against her flushed skin was as profoundly pleas
urable
as listening to the rush of her blood beneath it.
My craving for Bella’s blood had not lessened, but I was experiencing another kind
of desire that was becoming more urgent, nearly rivaling the thirst. If I focused my
attention on the new sensation
s, the burn faded somewhat from my consciousness.
While keeping my cheek at Bella’s throat, I allowed my hands to drop slowly from
her face onto her neck, an embrace familiar from the habitual hunting of humans. It had
been so long since my hands had touc
hed a human thus that I wasn’t compelled to follow
through with my teeth. Instead, I concentrated on the friction of my cold hands against
Bella’s soft flesh and the warmth that her skin transferred to mine.
As my hands moved slowly down her neck, a shive
r traveled through Bella’s body.
It passed into my hands and face and vibrated through me. The excitement of it throttled
my breath, but I kept my hands moving, settling them on her shoulders. Then ever so
slowly, I trailed my nose across her right collarb
one, finally placing my cheek over her
galloping heart.
“Ah,” I exhaled heavily, as the sound, heat, and electricity from Bella’s body
entered mine. A sense of fullness in my chest radiated through me. Her heart throbbed
against me until it felt like my ow
n. I savored my borrowed humanity for ten minutes,
fifteen... Gradually, Bella’s frantic heart and ragged breath, as well as my own, slowed to a
calm, even rhythm. I let my hands drop and raised my face to look at hers.
“It won’t be so hard again,” I said,
knowing this truth in my bones. I had made
contact with the part of her most likely to provoke my hunting instinct and it had not.
Without a doubt, this had been a dangerous experiment, but something in me had changed
today. I knew now that I could never i
ntentionally hurt her.
“Was that very hard for you?” Bella asked, no fear evident in her voice.
“Not nearly as bad as I imagined it would be,” I told her. “And you?”
“No, it wasn’t bad...for me.” I smiled at her implication that it had been the
opposite, hap
py that she hadn’t been afraid.
“You know what I mean,” I chastised.
She smiled mysteriously.
“Here.” I placed her hand against my cheek. Her body heat had transferred to me.
Maybe she wouldn‘t mind touching me there now. “Do you feel how warm it is?”
Sh
e didn’t reply, but gazed at my face with a look of what? Longing?
“Don’t move,” she whispered. It was easy to submit to her wishes. I calmly locked
my muscles, closed my eyes, and settled into stillness.
Bella leaned slowly toward me, her temperature ho
tter and her scent sweeter the
closer she came. Her careful approach gave me time to adjust to the proximity of the heady
fragrance. Her soft hand stroked and cradled my cheek, then her fingertips explored the
contours of my closed eyes, down the length of
my nose, and finally, around the sensitive
curves of my lips. They parted at her touch and I inhaled her scent, tasting her essence at
the back of my throat. Taste, touch, and scent prompted an array of physical responses in
my body. Incompatible urges co
mpeted for precedence, building a confusing tension.
Remaining silent and absolutely still allowed me to feel each one while resisting acting on
any of them.
Abruptly, Bella withdrew her hands and leaned away from me. I opened my eyes
slowly, my head swim
ming in sensation, my breath uneven.
“I wish...” My voice came out in a whisper; my thoughts were difficult to organize.
“I wish you could feel the...complexity...the confusion...I feel. That you could
understand.”
I wanted to touch Bella, too. I reached out to s
mooth her hair from her face, then
stroked her cheek once with the back of my hand.
“Tell me,” she implored, her voice husky.
“I don’t think I can. I’ve told you, on the one hand, the hunger

the thirst

that,
deplorable creature that I am, I feel for you. A
nd I think you can understand that, to an
extent. Though, as you are not addicted to any illegal substances, you probably can’t
empathize completely.” I smiled ruefully.
“But...” I touched my fingertips to the bow of her tantalizing upper lip, then along
he
r plump lower lip. I wanted to press my lips against them. “There are other hungers.
Hungers I don’t even understand, that are foreign to me.”
Bella’s breath became rapid and jagged. “I may understand
that
better than you
think.” It was then I knew with ce
rtainty that Bella felt the same desire for me as I did for
her. It was a heady moment.
“I’m not used to feeling so human. Is it always like this?”
“For me?” Bella responded. “No, never. Never before this.”
I collected her soft hands and held them betwee
n my own. Again, I told her the raw
truth. If she wanted to be physical with me, as she seemed to, she needed to know my
doubts... and my limitations.
“I don’t know how to be close to you. I don’t know if I can.”
In silent reply, Bella looked into my eyes a
nd leaned slowly toward me. I remained
very, very still and watched as she moved her face toward my chest and placed her cheek
against my bare skin. Her warmth where my heart should have been and the scent of her
hair so near my face were intensely pleasur
able.
“This is enough,” she assured me. Whether that was true, or if so, whether it would
always be true, were unanswerable questions. But this I
could
do and I would hold onto this
new experience for as long as she would allow. I wrapped my arms around h
er waist and
nestled my face in her hair.
“You’re better at this than you give yourself credit for,” Bella remarked.
“I have human instincts

they may be buried deep, but they’re there.”
And this was another truth I suddenly recognized. Holding Bella was
as natural to
me as breathing. I couldn’t escape the burning in my throat when I inhaled or the intrusive
thoughts of her arteries pulsing with blood, but these troubling reactions were balanced and
contained somehow by the delicious electricity that flowe
d between us wherever we
touched, by her softness and warmth, and by the intimate connection I felt with her that I
had never felt with anyone before. Love and desire intertwined.
We remained there, my arms holding Bella against me, and we listened to the
sound
of one another’s breathing until daylight began fading toward twilight. The time of
endings. Bella sighed.
I knew what she was thinking. “You have to go
,
”
I said.
“I thought you couldn’t read my mind.”
“It’s getting clearer.” Or at least more
predictable over time. I smiled.
It had been a miraculous day! I had shown Bella who

what

I was and she was
still here. She seemed to want to be here. The sense of freedom this loosed in me was
indescribable. As vampires in a human world, we could be ourse
lves only at home or far
from human civilization. It was a glorious revelation that I could love Bella in this new way
and
be myself with her.
With my newfound liberty, I wanted to share something with Bella, one of the joys
of my existence.
“Can I show
you something?” I asked her, enthusiasm ringing in my voice.
“Show me what?” She seemed a little suspicious.
“I’ll show you how
I
travel in the forest.” Bella scowled slightly.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be very safe, and we’ll get to your truck much faster.” Sh
e
couldn’t possibly want to repeat that five
–
mile hike in the semi
–
darkness. How could she
resist my offer? I seduced her with a smile.
“Will you turn into a bat?” Was she
serious
? The thought of her buying that old
myth was hilarious
,
and I laughed with g
reat amusement. Transfiguration was definitely
not one of my talents.
“Like I haven’t heard
that
one before!” I couldn’t contain myself.
“Right, I’m sure you get that all the time,” she said, poking fun.
Humans
. But she
was just stalling.
“Come on, little coward, climb on my back.” She hesitated like
she
thought
I
was
joking. I stretched my arms toward her and she allowed me to swing her onto my back. I
wrapped her arms tightly around my neck and her legs tightly around my waist to secure
h
er to me. The warmth of her torso and limbs encircling me and the pounding of her erratic
heartbeat against my back were exciting, and comfortable, and felt natural to me.
“I’m a bit heavier than your average backpack,” Bella apologized.
“Hah!” How she ma
de me laugh! Impulsively, I took her hand and pressed it to
my nose and mouth, inhaling deeply. The combination of scent, heat, and electricity was
intoxicating, and wonderfully

rather than painfully

stimulating.
“Easier all the time,” I noted, before da
shing into the woods at vampiric speed.
Running fast was one of my favorite activities. I hoped Bella liked it too
As I ran, my mind reviewed everything that had happened between us today. Our
careful balancing act was over. We had fallen from the razor’
s edge. Now we could pick
ourselves up, examine the landscape, and decide where to go

together.
Our closeness had encouraged me greatly. Though I would love and honor Bella
with or without physical contact, I was overjoyed that we could touch each other i
n some
limited way. I did not want to deprive Bella of anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary to
keep her safe. I aspired to give her all that a human man could give her.
In particular, I had not forgotten the conversation Bella had had with Jessica aft
er
our fateful night in Port Angeles. Jessica was
sure
that Bella wanted me to kiss her. At the
time, it had seemed highly improbable that Bella could want that, knowing what I was.
More importantly, I didn’t think I was remotely capable. It would take mon
umental self
control.
After today, however, it did seem possible. I’d just held Bella’s palm to my nose
and her wrist next to my teeth (!) and it was fine. Better than fine! And I wanted more...I
wanted to press my lips to her eyelids...cheekbones...jaw...throat...
and
lips. I wanted to
feel her hot breath on my face and her warm, silky skin against mine. The desire was
overpowering.
Our journey soon ended. Running back from the meadow, even carrying Bella, was
fifty
–
four times faster than our morning hike. Not that
I minded hiking at Bella’s pace. Any
time spent with her was precious and any excuse to touch her, if only to assist her around
obstacles, was a pleasure. She clearly didn’t enjoy hiking off trail, though. She probably
didn’t like hiking on trail much eith
er with her physical awkwardness and faulty sense of
balance.
When we reached Bella’s truck, I stopped to set her down.
“Exhilarating, isn’t it?” No reply and no movement was forthcoming.
“Bella?” Surely she hadn’t fainted. No, she was still clinging ti
ghtly to me.
“I think I need to lie down,” she croaked.
“Oh sorry,” I said, and released my grip to let her slide off. Again, no response from
Bella.
Then finally, she squeaked, “I think I need help.”
The run must have done her in. Chuckling, I released
her grip around my neck and
pulled her into my arms before setting her on some soft ferns.
“How do you feel?” I inquired.
She looked dazed. “Dizzy, I think.”
“Put your head between your knees.” I’d gotten the remedy from decades of high
school gym classes. I sat down beside her while she tried to recover.
“I guess that wasn’t the best idea
.
”
Typically, Bella tried to brush off her distress as nothing, a waste
d effort in this
case. “No, it was very interesting,” she said, her head still between her knees.
“Hah! You’re as white as a ghost

no, you’re as white as
me
!” I was not
exaggerating.
“I think I should have closed my eyes.”
“Remember that next time.”
“Next
time!” Her desolate tone tickled me and I laughed out loud.
“Show
–
off,” she accused. She seemed to be recovering.
Sitting beside her, my body still warm from our close contact, my wants caught up
Midnight
Sun, Part II
306
P.A. Lassiter
Twilight: The Missing Pieces
with me. I wanted to distract her from her discomfort; I wan
ted to give her something from
my heart; I wanted to know; and I just plain wanted her...
I leaned my face close to hers, just as she had done so disastrously to me in the
meadow. Maybe I could redeem myself.
“Open your eyes, Bella.” I felt her heated breath
sweep across my face. “I was
thinking, while I was running...” How to proceed from here?
“About not hitting the trees, I hope,” Bella interrupted.
“Silly Bella, running is second nature to me, it’s not something I have to think
about,” I informed her, amuse
d.
“Show
–
off,” she reiterated.
“No, I was thinking there was something I wanted to try.”
There was only one way to know...I took her face in my hands and very slowly,
very carefully, moved closer to her, at each moment weighing the strength of my self
contr
ol. I felt the electric fire in my hands and tasted the sweetness of her breath on my
tongue. I inhaled her flowery scent and braced against the searing of my throat. When at
last I pressed my cold stone lips gently to hers, the sensation was profound, int
ense...and

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15. MIND OVER MATTER
On the drive back to Forks, I kept glancing at Bella, marveling that she was sitting there
beside me. We could have been any human couple spending a Saturday together. I reached
for her hand and held it on the seat between us. Now
that I knew I could do so safely and
that she didn’t object, I wanted never to stop touching her. It was another dream coming
true.
Her old Chevrolet truck was not part of my fantasy, though. I didn’t have much
appreciation for classic vehicles unless they
were of the high
–
octane, high
–
speed variety.
The evolution of transportation in general, and automobiles in particular, was one of the
most worthwhile advances of the twentieth century. I was in no way nostalgic for old
–
time
cars or trucks. One of these d
ays, I would buy Bella a new car, especially if I would be
driving her around in it. Fortunately, her ancient radio worked and I twirled the dial until I
found a station to my liking.
“You like fifties music?” Bella asked.
“Music in the fifties was good. M
uch better than the sixties, or the seventies, ugh!
The eighties were bearable.” I hadn’t seen where this conversation was heading until we
were already there. It was one of the many pitfalls of not being able to read Bella’s mind.
“Are you ever going to t
ell me how old you are?”
“Does it matter much?”
“No, but I still wonder...There’s nothing like an unsolved mystery to keep you up
at night.” Always curious, she was.
“I wonder if it will upset you.” So far, Bella had maintained a remarkable
equanimity throu
gh all of my startling disclosures. I kept wondering what bit of
information would finally push her over the edge and away from me.
“Try me,” she prompted when I hesitated.
I sighed in resignation. She’d heard more frightening things about me than my age.
I supposed one more disquieting fact would make little difference. Still, I gazed into her
eyes to try to predict her response. She looked calm.
“I was born in 1901.” Her reaction seemed carefully controlled. She didn’t flinch,
at least. So I continued.
“Carlisle found me in a hospital in the summer of 1918. I was seventeen, and dying
of the Spanish influenza.” Bella inhaled sharply and I could see that this news hurt her. I
hastened to reassure.
“I don’t remember it well

it was a very long time ago, and
human memories
fade.” I wondered how much of this Bella should hear. “I do remember how it felt when
Carlisle saved me. It’s not an easy thing, not something you could forget.” The words
carried me painfully back.
“Your parents?” she interjected.
“They h
ad already died from the disease. I was alone. That was why he chose me.
In all the chaos of the epidemic, no one would ever realize I was gone.”
“How did he...save you?”
The details of how to create a vampire were not something I wanted to reveal to
Bella.
I hadn’t thought it through, exactly, but the idea of discussing it with her made me
uneasy. Becoming a vampire was not something I would ever wish on anyone, especially
someone I loved. Every member of my family, if given a choice, would choose to be
hum
an. But I owed Bella at least part of the truth.
“It was difficult. Not many of us have the restraint necessary to accomplish it. But
Carlisle has always been the most humane, the most compassionate of us.... I don’t think
you could find his equal throughout
all of history. For me, it was merely very, very
painful.”
I paused for more questions, but Bella remained silent, so I went on. “He acted from
loneliness. That’s usually the reason behind the choice. I was the first in Carlisle’s family,
though he found
Esme soon after. She fell from a cliff. They brought her straight to the
hospital morgue, though, somehow, her heart was still beating.”
“So you must be dying, then, to become....” We each finished the question silently.
“No, that’s just Carlisle. He would
never do that to someone who had another
choice. It is easier he says, though, if the blood is weak.” Perhaps that was more than I’d
needed to say.
“And Emmett and Rosalie?”
“Carlisle brought Rosalie to our family next. I didn’t realize until much later
that he
was hoping she would be to me what Esme was to him

he was careful with his thoughts
around me. But she was never more than a sister.” I couldn’t hide my disdain at the
memory.
“It was only two years later that she found Emmett. She was hunting

we
were in
Appalachia at the time

and found a bear about to finish him off. She carried him back to
Carlisle, more than a hundred miles, afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it herself. I’m only
beginning to guess how difficult that journey was for her.”
I
gazed at Bella, raising our joined hands to caress her cheek. As contentious as my
relationship with Rosalie could be, I had gained a new respect for her today. Carrying
Bella, bleeding, for one hundred miles without succumbing

it was almost beyond
imagini
ng.
“But she made it,” Bella brought me back from that horrific image.
“Yes. She saw something in his face that made her strong enough. And they’ve
been together ever since. Sometimes they live separately from us, as a married couple. But
the younger we pr
etend to be, the longer we can stay in any given place. Forks seemed
perfect, so we all enrolled in high school.”
I recalled a silly picture from the 1990s called
Groundhog Day.
The memory made
me laugh. “I suppose we’ll have to go to their wedding in a f
ew years,
again
.” That was our
existence in a nutshell, reliving the same milestones, over and over,
world without end.
Amen
.
“Alice and Jasper?” Bella cut in.
“Alice and Jasper are two very rare creatures. They both developed a conscience, as
we refer to
it, with no outside guidance. Jasper belonged to another...family, a
very
different kind of family. He became depressed, and he wandered on his own. Alice found
him. Like me, she has certain gifts above and beyond the norm for our kind.”
“Really?” Bella was
intrigued. “But you said you were the only one who could hear
people’s thoughts.”
“That’s true. She knows other things. She
sees
things

things that might happen,
things that are coming. But it’s very subjective. The future isn’t set in stone. Things
change
.” Like with Bella. I could no longer even imagine hurting Bella, let alone killing
her, and I definitely wouldn’t change her. So Alice was just wrong in this case. Surely.
Midnight Sun, Part II
311
P.A. Lassiter
Twilight: The Missing Pieces
“What kinds of things does she see?”
Does Bella suspect?
I glanced at her expressi
on.
No, I think not.
I attempted an answer. “She saw Jasper and knew that he was looking for her before
he knew it himself. She saw Carlisle and our family, and they came together to find us.
She’s most sensitive to non
–
humans. She always sees, for exampl
e, when another group of
our kind is coming near. And any threat they may pose.” And that answer led to another
question.
“Are there a lot of...your kind?” She seemed a little alarmed by that prospect.
I reassured her. “No, not many. But most won’t settle
in any one place. Only those
like us, who’ve given up hunting you people”

I monitored her reaction from the corner
of my eye

“can live together with humans for any length of time. We’ve only found one
other family like ours, in a small village in Alaska.
We lived together for a time, but there
were so many of us that we became too noticeable. Those of us who live...differently tend
to band together.” We’d arrived at Bella’s house. I pulled the truck to the curb and turned
off the engine.
“And the others?”
“
Nomads, for the most part. We’ve all lived that way at times. It gets tedious, like
anything else. But we run across the others now and then, because most of us prefer the
North.”
“Why is that?”
“Did you have your eyes open this afternoon?” I smiled. “Do y
ou think I could
walk down the street in the sunlight without causing traffic accidents? There’s a reason
why we chose the Olympic Peninsula, one of the most sunless places in the world. It’s nice
to be able to go outside in the day. You wouldn’t believe h
ow tired you can get of nighttime
in eighty
–
odd years.”
“So that’s where the legends came from?”
“Probably.” And another reason why twilight was often a sad time for me

too
many nights spent alone.
“And Alice came from another family, like Jasper?”
“No, an
d that
is
a mystery. Alice doesn’t remember her human life at all. And she
doesn’t know who created her. She awoke alone. Whoever made her walked away, and
none of us understand why, or how, he could. If she hadn’t had that other sense, if she
hadn’t seen
Jasper and Carlisle and known that she would someday become one of us, she
probably would have turned into a total savage.” Alice was the true miracle among us. She
was a great treasure and a comfort to me in a myriad of ways.
Bella’s stomach growled.
How
inconsiderate I am!
It hadn’t come to mind that
Bella would need food in the middle of the day, especially after a five
–
mile hike. I couldn’t
delay her any longer. “I’m sorry, I’m keeping you from dinner.”
“I’m fine, really,” Bella demurred, minimizing he
r needs. Typical.
“I’ve never spent much time around anyone who eats food. I forget.”
But never
again!
I promised myself.
“I want to stay with you,” Bella confessed timidly.
Joy!! And I you...!
Fortunately, that could be accomplished quite easily.
“Can’t
I come in?” I inquired.
“Would you like to?” she asked with surprise, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that I
might want to follow her everywhere, forever. What was she
thinking
?
“Yes, if it’s all right.” I exited the truck and opened her door for her in
the same
instant.
“Very human,” she remarked, ignoring my speed.
“It’s definitely resurfacing,” I told her, marveling at how much closer to human I
felt in her presence. Then I did something not at all human. Perhaps I was showing off a bit.
Having reached
the front door first, I retrieved the key, used it, and replaced it, all in a
fraction of a second. I held the door open for Bella to enter.
“The door was unlocked?” she asked, puzzled. My quick movements had been too
fast for her eyes to detect.
“No, I
used the key from under the eaves.” The secret, hidden key. This admission
would open a can of worms, no doubt. She stepped inside, then turned and raised her
eyebrows at me, the question unspoken.
“I was curious about you,” I confessed.
“You spied on me?”
I couldn’t apologize for my obsession, for wanting to know everything about her, or
for wishing never to be separated from her. And I felt too blissful right now to fret about
her reaction. “What else is there to do at
night?”
I led her to her kitchen an
d sat down at the table like I belonged there. She stared at
me with deep, unfathomable eyes, then proceeded with the task at hand.
It was fascinating to watch Bella work in the kitchen. This was not a time of day I
had ever spent with her. Her waking hou
rs inside her home were a mystery. I’d never seen
her cook, get ready for school, interact with her father, or do homework or household
chores. As she fixed herself something to eat, I absorbed everything

what she was
doing, how she moved, where she store
d things, what was in her refrigerator.
“How often?” Bella’s question came after several minutes of silence.
“Hmmm?” I was much too distracted to have followed her train of thought.
She remained facing away from me and clarified the question. “How often
did you
come here?”
“I come here almost every night.” I was not shy to admit it. It was impossible to feel
remorseful for something that made me so happy.
Bella whipped around to face me. “Why?” she demanded.
In for a dime, in for a dollar.
“You’re interes
ting when you sleep. You talk.”
“No!” she protested, a deep red blush coloring her face.
Okay, I was a
little
sorry for her distress, after all.
“Are you very angry with me?”
“That depends!”
“On?” I prodded. Might as well get it all out.
“What you heard!”
she cried, overcome with dismay. I rushed to her side and took
her hands in mine.
“Don’t be upset!” I begged, looking deeply into her eyes. I could see that she felt
embarrassed, exposed. She didn’t understand that everything about her was beautiful to
m
e. She had nothing to be ashamed of. I tried to calm her with my gentlest voice.
“You miss your mother. You worry about her. And when it rains, the sound makes
you restless. You used to talk about home a lot, but it’s less often now. Once you said, ‘It’s
too
green.
’ ” I chuckled at the memory.
“Anything else?” Bella pressed, obviously wanting to know something in
particular.
I relented. “You did say my name.”
She sighed, resigned. “A lot?”
“How much do you mean by ‘a lot,’ exactly?” I stalled.
“Oh no!”
She knew by my answer that it had been more than a little. And each time had been
a treasure to me. I reached for her and hugged her to my chest.
“Don’t be self
–
conscious,” I pleaded. “If I could dream at all, it would be about
you. And I’m not ashamed of
it.”
Holding her had been such a natural reaction to her distress that it didn’t occur to
me until later that doing so would have been impossible a mere twelve hours ago.
Just then, Charlie pulled into the driveway and Bella tensed.
“Should your father k
now I’m here?” I asked.
Charlie’s mind was so clouded and vague that I didn’t know how he would react to
finding me in the house alone with his daughter. Judging by Bella’s stress level, it wouldn’t
be the ideal way to meet him.
“I’m not sure...” She seemed
befuddled, so I made a quick decision.
“Another time then...” I said and retreated to her bedroom, making myself at home
on her bed. I loved the smell of her sheets.
“Edward!” Bella called in a half whisper. It must have looked to her like I had
disappeare
d into thin air. I
chuckled
.
“Bella?” Charlie called.
While Bella fed Charlie and asked him about his day, I reviewed our day together
with enormous satisfaction. Alice’s “eighty
–
percent certainty” hadn’t given me eighty
–
percent confidence that things
wouldn’t go badly today. And when Bella revealed that not
only had she withheld her plans from Charlie, but also had gone out of her way to mislead
Jessica, my self
–
confidence had dropped well below that eighty percent.
Bella’s initial reluctance, or fea
r, or whatever had soured her mood before our hike
had further eroded my faith that everything would turn out all right. I still couldn’t
understand why Bella had followed me into the trees when the bottom so plainly had
dropped out of her resolve at the l
ast minute. I would give a lot to know what she’d been
thinking. But she would not tell me then and I was pretty sure she would not tell me now,
either.
Once in the meadow, I’d given her plenty of reasons to be frightened

such as
nearly sinking my teeth i
nto her neck. I wonder if she knew how close I’d come to losing
control. It was one thing to test my own limits

apparently, it was quite another for Bella
to test them so unexpectedly. Still, her provocative reaction to my touch was enormously
gratifying.
I had avoided killing Bella at least twice today, demonstrating t
o myself that I had
enough self
–
control

barely enough, perhaps

to thwart my deadly instincts when highly
provoked. This gave me hope for the future because I felt sure that today, when every
thing
was so new and intense, would prove to be the most difficult of the days to come.
And Bella had survived. Not only that, but she had neither run away nor been
repulsed by what she had seen and heard. She wanted me to stay. I wasn’t going to think
abo
ut how long that might be possible. Not now. Now was the time to relish the
Midnight Sun, Part II
moment

to feel what it was like to be truly happy.
Something downstairs caught my attention. I felt anxiety enter Charlie’s
mind

suspicion.
“No plans tonight?” he interrogated Bel
la.
“No, Dad, I just want to get some sleep.” Bella’s voice sounded a little higher and
tighter than normal to me. A police chief, even one from a tiny jurisdiction, was unlikely to
miss that. He didn’t.
“None of the boys in town your type, eh?” His attem
pt at sounding casual made me
chuckle. He might be a better actor than Bella, but that wasn’t saying much.
“No, none of the
boys
have caught my eye yet.” Fortunately, Charlie missed the
emphasis. I didn’t

it would seem that Bella didn’t consider me to be i
n the same category
as the
boys
. That was flattering.
“I thought maybe that Mike Newton...you said he was friendly.” I stifled the growl
that rose in my throat at the mention of his name. It angered me that they ever had
discussed the vile Mike Newton.
“He’s
just
a friend, Dad.” I appreciated Bella’s disavowal of Newton, but I resented
her use of the word “friend.” Possibly that was unreasonable.
“Well, you’re too good for them all, anyway.” That was certainly true. Even me.
Especially
me. “Wait ‘til you get
to college to start looking.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Bella humored him. Not convincingly, I thought.
Bella’s steps were so heavy and slow on the stairs when she finally ascended that
she could have been carrying a body. Lying on the bed, arms be
hind my head, I watched
her enter the room, slam the door, tiptoe noisily to the window, and open it.
“Edward?” she hissed.

[مورا اسامة]

I laughed silently at her amusing performance and answered, “Yes?” from behin
her. The look on her face when she whipped around
and saw me was priceless.
Unconsciously, I presumed, she slapped a protective hand across her throat. I could not
“Oh!” She exhaled in surprise and slumped to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized reflexively, trying to suppress my smile.
“Just give me a minute to restart my heart,” she gasped.
Watching her eyes for fear, I slowly sat up and reached to help her off the floor.
“Why don’t you sit with me?” I wrapped my hands around her waist and lifted her
into place beside me on the bed. Th
en I took her hand and queried, “How’s the heart?”
“You tell me

I’m sure you hear it better than I do.” That was true. I was eminently
aware of her excitable heartbeat. I laughed, remembering some of its gyrations today. We
sat quietly on the bed until she
had recovered from her fright. Her heart slowed and
steadied, then fluttered as she inquired, “Can I have a minute to be human?”
“Certainly,” I acquiesced, wondering what thought had prompted the glitch. So
frustrating it was not to know!
I laughed again
when she ordered me to “Stay!” like an errant puppy. That was
something I
could do
well.
“Yes, ma’am,” I
said
, watching her eyes as I froze my body into the perfect stillness
of the vampire.
Though I had spent many secret hours in this room, it was an ut
terly new
experience now. Sitting on Bella’s bed, waiting for her to return, I was a guest rather than
an intruder. It felt very different.
As a vampire, my entire existence was that of an outsider. We lived hidden from the
humans among whom we mingled. As
Edward Cullen, the vampire, I was a constant
intruder, privy to the thoughts, wishes, and dreams of everyone around me. Except, of
course, for the one whose thoughts I most longed to know.
Listening to Bella talk in her sleep was a poor substitute for m
y usual capabilities,
but even had she not revealed some of her thoughts in her sleep, I likely would have visited
her bedchamber just to observe her, to be near her. I was too besotted to stay away.
Intruding on others was such a part of who I was that I
hadn’t thought anything of entering
her window without her knowledge or permission.
I could see now that being asked in, being welcomed, was an intimate act. It was
more satisfying to be here knowing I was truly wanted. Paradoxically, it also made me feel
vulnerable, an emotion that, until now, had been largely foreign to me. Having been given
this gift meant that it could also be taken away. I was beginning to understand what Bella
meant about being afraid I would disappear.
Though I was engrossed in cons
idering this new perspective, I was also aware that
Bella was taking a shower and brushing her teeth. I heard the door open when she exited
the bathroom and noted her rushing footsteps on the stairs.
“ ‘Night, Dad,” she said, a little too loudly.
“ ‘Night
, Bella,” he replied.
She raced back up the stairs to her room and shut the door behind her. The lights
were still off, but I could see her as clearly in the dark as I would have in the light. I had
faithfully obeyed her order, having not moved a millimet
er from my frozen position. She
smiled, noticing that, and I returned her smile, marveling at this new, post
–
shower Bella in
her nightclothes. Of course, I had seen her in her holey t
–
shirt and ragged sweatpants many
times before, but never upright and awa
ke. Animation changed everything!
“Nice,” I commented.
She thought I was making fun of her.
“No, it looks good on you.” I meant it, though of course, I would have appreciated
her dressed in a potato sack.
“Thanks,” she murmured, sitting down beside me. S
hyly, she dropped her eyes
toward the floor.
“What was all that for?” I asked, tilting my head toward the door.
“Charlie thinks I’m sneaking out.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Apparently, I look a little overexcited.”
I had missed that in Charlie’s murky mind. I seldom
heard anything he was
thinking. My first impression of him was that he had a slow
–
moving, uncultivated mind.
Eavesdropping on his conversations had revealed that, in fact, he was smarter than most of
the humans around him and plenty literate. I just couldn
’t read him. His mind wasn’t as
frustrating as Bella’s, but nearly so.
Charlie had said Bella looked “overexcited
.
” To see for myself, I lifted her
drooping chin and scrutinized her face. She was flushed and her eyes were bright. So, so
appealing.
“You look very warm, actually.” I yearned to feel the heat of the blood that colored
her skin. I leaned forward and placed my cheek against hers.
“Mmmmmm....” Yes, warm. And that intoxicating scent! It held me enthralled.
Bella stuttered an observation wit
h uneven breath. “It seems to be...much easier for
you, now, to be close to me.”
“Does it seem that way to you?” I questioned softly as I brushed my nose along her
jaw line, inhaling her sweet fragrance. Drawing her hair aside, I pressed my lips to the
hollo
w beneath her ear, feeling the thrum of blood in her carotid artery.
It was miraculous
,
really, that I was strong enough to kiss Bella’s neck and not
pierce her skin with my teeth. I felt the inevitable searing of my throat, but the thrill of
touching Bel
la’s smooth, ivory skin with my lips completely overshadowed the impulse to
drink. A different kind of desire was ascending now.
“Much, much easier.” Bella continued, her voice raspy.
“Hmm,” was all I could offer. Her sensuous, curving collarbone had dist
racted me.
I placed my fingers there, tracing the enticing line it drew to her sternum.
“So I was wondering...” Bella croaked, then stopped and took a ragged breath.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Why is that, do you think?” Her voice trembled, charming me.
The answer
boiled down to that pivotal moment when I had laid my cheek against
her heart in the meadow. Before that, a beating heart had always signified the quenching of
thirst. There had never been any other reason for its existence in my vampire’s life. Now, it
h
ad an entirely different significance

one that made it easier to suppress my thirst.
“Mind over matter,” I simplified.
Without warning, Bella recoiled from me. I snapped my jaw shut, held my breath,
and froze into a statue

the opposite of a predator’s nat
ural reaction to retreating prey.
I assessed the moment, scanning for potential danger. Reading no threats, I slowly
relaxed and resumed breathing. Bella’s breathing had evened out.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked warily.
Her reply amazed me. “No

the
opposite. You’re driving me crazy.”
“Really?” My face opened into the widest of smiles. How thrilling!
All through the day, I had registered Bella’s accelerated heart rate whenever I drew
close to her. I knew now that her response signaled her attraction
for me, though she’d
never said so directly. And although I understood this in theory, in my innocence, I never
considered that my touching Bella in the ways I longed to do might be as exciting to her as
to me. Perhaps I did have a guardian angel.
Bella br
ought me back down to earth. “Would you like a round of applause?” she
said
tartly.
I couldn’t stop grinning. “I’m just pleasantly surprised. In the last hundred years or
so,” I joked, “I never imagined anything like this. I didn’t believe I would ever fi
nd
someone I wanted to be with...in another way than my brothers and sisters. And then to
find, even though it’s all new to me, that I’m good at it...at being with you...” It was hard
to find the right words.
“You’re good at everything,” Bella stated flatly. In
my euphoria, I just smiled and
shrugged, as if it were entirely true. We both laughed.
“But how can it be so easy now? This afternoon...”
“It’s not
easy
,” I admitted. “But this afternoon, I was still...undecided. I am sorry
about that, it was unforgivable for
me to behave so.” I was ashamed.
“Not unforgivable.” She was being generous...again.
“Thank you.” I took her hand and held it gently against my face. “You see, I wasn’t
sure if I was strong enough....And while there was still that possibility that I might
be
...overcome,”

I inhaled the scent radiating from her wrist

“I was...susceptible.
Until I made up my mind that I
was
strong enough, that there was no possibility at all that I
would...that I ever could...” Again, I couldn’t find the words. My sentences kept veeri
ng
off into the macabre. But I think she understood.
“So there’s no possibility now?”
“Mind over matter,” I declared.
“Wow, that was easy.” The incongruity of her comment laid next to the effort
involved, struck me as hilarious. Or perhaps I was just glad
that she could joke about it.
“Easy for you!” I poked the tip of her nose. But it was also time for some serious
truth. “I’m trying,” I confessed. “If it gets to be...too much, I’m fairly sure I’ll be able to
leave.” That was as much as I could honestly
promise at this moment. “And it will be
harder tomorrow. I’ve had the scent of you in my head all day and I’ve grown amazingly
desensitized. If I’m away from you for any length of time, I’ll have to start over again. Not
quite from scratch, though, I think
.” There was no way to know for sure. I’d never seen a
self
–
help book
titled
For Vampires Who Love (Humans) Too Much
.
“Don’t go away, then,” Bella responded hurriedly. Did I detect a pleading note in
her voice?
“That suits me.” I would happily stay, of cou
rse. “Bring on the shackles

I’m your
prisoner.” I grasped her wrists, one in each hand, as if to demonstrate. I could not
remember ever feeling this lighthearted. I didn’t want it to end.
“You seem more...optimistic than usual. I haven’t seen you like this b
efore,” Bella
marveled.
“Isn’t it supposed to be like this?” I observed. “The glory of first love, and all that.
It’s incredible, isn’t it, the difference between reading about something, seeing it in the
pictures, and experiencing it?”
“Very different. Mo
re forceful than I’d imagined,” Bella agreed.
I nodded.
“For example, the emotion of jealousy. I’ve read about it a hundred thousand times,
seen actors portray it in a thousand different plays and movies. I believed I understood that
one pretty clearly. Bu
t it shocked me...” I was reliving a moment. “Do you remember the
day that Mike asked you to the dance?”
Bella nodded. “The day you started talking to me again.”
“I was surprised by the flare of resentment, almost fury, that I felt

I didn’t
recognize what it
was at first.” My words spilled out faster as the emotion of the memory
gripped me.
“I was even more aggravated than usual that I couldn’t know what you were
thinking, why you refused him. Was it simply for your friend’s sake? Was there someone
else? I k
new I had no right to care either way. I
tried
not to care. And then the line started
forming. I waited, unreasonably anxious to hear what you would say to them, to watch your
expressions. I couldn’t deny the relief I felt, watching the annoyance on your f
ace. But I
couldn’t be sure.”
“That was the first night I came here. I wrestled all night, while watching you sleep,
with the chasm between what I knew was
right,
moral, ethical, and what I
wanted.
I knew
that if I continued to ignore you as I should, or i
f I left for a few years, until you were gone,
that someday you would say ‘yes’ to Mike, or someone like him. It made me angry.”
“And then,” I murmured, almost to myself, “as you were sleeping, you said my
name. You spoke so clearly, at first I thought you
’d woken. But you rolled over restlessly
and mumbled my name once more, and sighed. The feeling that coursed through me then
was unnerving, staggering. And I knew I couldn’t ignore you any longer.” Bella’s heart
pumped faster. I paused to listen for a mome
nt.
“But jealousy...it’s a strange thing. So much more powerful than I would have
thought. And irrational! Just now, when Charlie asked you about that vile Mike Newton...”
A surge of anger shot through me again just thinking about it.
“I should have known you’
d be listening,” Bella commented.
“Of course.”
“
That
made you feel jealous, though, really?”
“I’m new at this; you’re resurrecting the human in me, and everything feels
stronger because it’s fresh.”
“But honestly, for that to bother you, after I have to he
ar that Rosalie

Rosalie, the
incarnation of pure beauty,
Rosalie

was meant for you. Emmett or no Emmett, how can I
compete with that?” I couldn’t tell whether Bella was trying to pass this comment off as
kidding, or if she was serious. I took it seriously.
“There’s no competition,” I assured her. With her wrists still shackled in my hands,
I stretched my arms behind my back, pulling her close. I held her against me; she laid her
face in the crook of my neck.
Mmmm, the warmth...
“I
know
there’s no competition
,” she murmured, her heated lips moving against my
throat. “That’s the problem.” Her breath on my neck distracted me and it took a moment
before I could respond.
“Of course Rosalie
is
beautiful in her way, but even if she wasn’t like a sister to me,
even
if Emmett didn’t belong with her, she could never have one tenth, no, one hundredth
of the attraction you hold for me. For almost ninety years I’ve walked among my kind, and
yours...all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was see
king.
And not finding anything, because you weren’t alive yet.”
“It hardly seems fair,” Bella mused. “Why should I get off so easily?”
I laughed. “You’re right. I should make this harder for you, definitely.” I took both
her wrists in one hand behind my ba
ck and touched her damp hair with my other hand,
stroking slowly from the crown of her head down to her waist. Her body trembled against
mine. I couldn’t help myself

I loved to feel her respond to me.
I continued, “You only have to risk your life every se
cond you spend with me,
that’s surely not much. You only have to turn your back on nature, on humanity...what’s
that worth?”
“Very little

I don’t feel deprived of anything.”
“Not yet.” Perhaps she didn’t now. But as time passed and her human desires
changed,
how would she feel then? Surely, she would resent my intrusion into her life.
And if I hadn’t killed her by then, I had little doubt that she would leave me. It was
unbearable to imagine. Of course, I shouldn’t have put her in this position in the first
place,
but I couldn’t see myself turning back now.
She felt my change of mood and tried to peer into my face, but I held her tightly
against me. I couldn’t allow her to see my sudden desperation

my expression was not
under my control.
I was caught up in dejection and almost missed Charlie’s step on the stairs. His
mind was amazingly quiet.
“What

” Bella started, when she felt my sudden tension.
I leaped for her closet, causing her to teeter and almost fall onto the bed.
“Lie down!” I
hissed and she understood just in time, throwing the covers over
herself. She began heaving her chest up and down in a tortured imitation of a sleeping girl.
Fortunately, it was too dark for Charlie to see as clearly as I could. He cracked the door,
peeked
in, and seemed satisfied that Bella had not escaped on some nefarious midnight
adventure. Little did he know, the adventure was right here, only a short distance down the
hallway from his own bedroom.
As soon as he shut the door, I joined Bella in her be
d, her back to my front, my arm
around her waist under the covers. It was a true miracle that this closeness was even
possible. My heart soared, all my joy returned.
I put my lips to her ear and teased, “You are a terrible actress

I’d say that career
path
is out for you.”
“Darn it,” she said with fake disappointment. I smiled at her in the dark.
I felt Bella’s heart racing

she was entirely too wound up to sleep. Without
thinking about it, I began to hum her lullaby. After a moment, I thought to ask. “Shoul
d I
sing you to sleep?”
“Right,” Bella scoffed. “Like I could sleep with you here!”
“You do it all the time,” I pointed out.
“But I didn’t
know
you were here.” I refused to acknowledge her implicit reproach
for my “spying.”
“So if you don’t want to sleep....
” I flirted with the open
–
ended sentence, but she
didn’t take the bait.
“If I don’t want to sleep....” Savvy. I laughed.
“What do you want to do then?”
Bella was silent for a long moment before answering. “I’m not sure.”
“Tell me when you decide,” I said c
heerfully. Until then, I would do what I wanted.
I raised myself up on my elbow and inhaled the scent at the base of her neck beneath her
now, almost
–
dry hair. I skimmed my nose along her jaw line and inhaled again.
“I thought you were desensitized.”
“Just
because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet.
You have a very floral smell, like lavender...or freesia,” I told her. Yes...a combination of
sweet and musky. “It’s mouthwatering.”
“Yeah, it’s an off day when I don’t get
somebody
t
elling me how edible I smell.”
I laughed, but I also felt an irrational twinge of jealousy. Who? I sighed at my own
absurdity.
Bella interrupted my thoughts. “I’ve decided what I want to do. I want to hear more
about you.”
“Ask me anything.” After having
risked her desertion many times today, I was
prepared to tell Bella whatever she wanted to know, with only one or two exceptions. I
watched her choose her first question.
“Why do you do it? I still don’t understand how you can work so hard to resist what
y
ou...
are.
Please don’t misunderstand, of course I’m glad that you do. I just
don’t see why Y ou would bother in the first place.”
“That’s a good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others

the
majority of our kind who are quite content with
our lot


[مورا اسامة]

I laughed silently at her amusing performance and answered, “Yes?” from behin
her. The look on her face when she whipped around
and saw me was priceless.
Unconsciously, I presumed, she slapped a protective hand across her throat. I could not
“Oh!” She exhaled in surprise and slumped to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized reflexively, trying to suppress my smile.
“Just give me a minute to restart my heart,” she gasped.
Watching her eyes for fear, I slowly sat up and reached to help her off the floor.
“Why don’t you sit with me?” I wrapped my hands around her waist and lifted her
into place beside me on the bed. Th
en I took her hand and queried, “How’s the heart?”
“You tell me

I’m sure you hear it better than I do.” That was true. I was eminently
aware of her excitable heartbeat. I laughed, remembering some of its gyrations today. We
sat quietly on the bed until she
had recovered from her fright. Her heart slowed and
steadied, then fluttered as she inquired, “Can I have a minute to be human?”
“Certainly,” I acquiesced, wondering what thought had prompted the glitch. So
frustrating it was not to know!
I laughed again
when she ordered me to “Stay!” like an errant puppy. That was
something I
could do
well.
“Yes, ma’am,” I
said
, watching her eyes as I froze my body into the perfect stillness
of the vampire.
Though I had spent many secret hours in this room, it was an ut
terly new
experience now. Sitting on Bella’s bed, waiting for her to return, I was a guest rather than
an intruder. It felt very different.
As a vampire, my entire existence was that of an outsider. We lived hidden from the
humans among whom we mingled. As
Edward Cullen, the vampire, I was a constant
intruder, privy to the thoughts, wishes, and dreams of everyone around me. Except, of
course, for the one whose thoughts I most longed to know.
Listening to Bella talk in her sleep was a poor substitute for m
y usual capabilities,
but even had she not revealed some of her thoughts in her sleep, I likely would have visited
her bedchamber just to observe her, to be near her. I was too besotted to stay away.
Intruding on others was such a part of who I was that I
hadn’t thought anything of entering
her window without her knowledge or permission.
I could see now that being asked in, being welcomed, was an intimate act. It was
more satisfying to be here knowing I was truly wanted. Paradoxically, it also made me feel
vulnerable, an emotion that, until now, had been largely foreign to me. Having been given
this gift meant that it could also be taken away. I was beginning to understand what Bella
meant about being afraid I would disappear.
Though I was engrossed in cons
idering this new perspective, I was also aware that
Bella was taking a shower and brushing her teeth. I heard the door open when she exited
the bathroom and noted her rushing footsteps on the stairs.
“ ‘Night, Dad,” she said, a little too loudly.
“ ‘Night
, Bella,” he replied.
She raced back up the stairs to her room and shut the door behind her. The lights
were still off, but I could see her as clearly in the dark as I would have in the light. I had
faithfully obeyed her order, having not moved a millimet
er from my frozen position. She
smiled, noticing that, and I returned her smile, marveling at this new, post
–
shower Bella in
her nightclothes. Of course, I had seen her in her holey t
–
shirt and ragged sweatpants many
times before, but never upright and awa
ke. Animation changed everything!
“Nice,” I commented.
She thought I was making fun of her.
“No, it looks good on you.” I meant it, though of course, I would have appreciated
her dressed in a potato sack.
“Thanks,” she murmured, sitting down beside me. S
hyly, she dropped her eyes
toward the floor.
“What was all that for?” I asked, tilting my head toward the door.
“Charlie thinks I’m sneaking out.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Apparently, I look a little overexcited.”
I had missed that in Charlie’s murky mind. I seldom
heard anything he was
thinking. My first impression of him was that he had a slow
–
moving, uncultivated mind.
Eavesdropping on his conversations had revealed that, in fact, he was smarter than most of
the humans around him and plenty literate. I just couldn
’t read him. His mind wasn’t as
frustrating as Bella’s, but nearly so.
Charlie had said Bella looked “overexcited
.
” To see for myself, I lifted her
drooping chin and scrutinized her face. She was flushed and her eyes were bright. So, so
appealing.
“You look very warm, actually.” I yearned to feel the heat of the blood that colored
her skin. I leaned forward and placed my cheek against hers.
“Mmmmmm....” Yes, warm. And that intoxicating scent! It held me enthralled.
Bella stuttered an observation wit
h uneven breath. “It seems to be...much easier for
you, now, to be close to me.”
“Does it seem that way to you?” I questioned softly as I brushed my nose along her
jaw line, inhaling her sweet fragrance. Drawing her hair aside, I pressed my lips to the
hollo
w beneath her ear, feeling the thrum of blood in her carotid artery.
It was miraculous
,
really, that I was strong enough to kiss Bella’s neck and not
pierce her skin with my teeth. I felt the inevitable searing of my throat, but the thrill of
touching Bel
la’s smooth, ivory skin with my lips completely overshadowed the impulse to
drink. A different kind of desire was ascending now.
“Much, much easier.” Bella continued, her voice raspy.
“Hmm,” was all I could offer. Her sensuous, curving collarbone had dist
racted me.
I placed my fingers there, tracing the enticing line it drew to her sternum.
“So I was wondering...” Bella croaked, then stopped and took a ragged breath.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Why is that, do you think?” Her voice trembled, charming me.
The answer
boiled down to that pivotal moment when I had laid my cheek against
her heart in the meadow. Before that, a beating heart had always signified the quenching of
thirst. There had never been any other reason for its existence in my vampire’s life. Now, it
h
ad an entirely different significance

one that made it easier to suppress my thirst.
“Mind over matter,” I simplified.
Without warning, Bella recoiled from me. I snapped my jaw shut, held my breath,
and froze into a statue

the opposite of a predator’s nat
ural reaction to retreating prey.
I assessed the moment, scanning for potential danger. Reading no threats, I slowly
relaxed and resumed breathing. Bella’s breathing had evened out.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked warily.
Her reply amazed me. “No

the
opposite. You’re driving me crazy.”
“Really?” My face opened into the widest of smiles. How thrilling!
All through the day, I had registered Bella’s accelerated heart rate whenever I drew
close to her. I knew now that her response signaled her attraction
for me, though she’d
never said so directly. And although I understood this in theory, in my innocence, I never
considered that my touching Bella in the ways I longed to do might be as exciting to her as
to me. Perhaps I did have a guardian angel.
Bella br
ought me back down to earth. “Would you like a round of applause?” she
said
tartly.
I couldn’t stop grinning. “I’m just pleasantly surprised. In the last hundred years or
so,” I joked, “I never imagined anything like this. I didn’t believe I would ever fi
nd
someone I wanted to be with...in another way than my brothers and sisters. And then to
find, even though it’s all new to me, that I’m good at it...at being with you...” It was hard
to find the right words.
“You’re good at everything,” Bella stated flatly. In
my euphoria, I just smiled and
shrugged, as if it were entirely true. We both laughed.
“But how can it be so easy now? This afternoon...”
“It’s not
easy
,” I admitted. “But this afternoon, I was still...undecided. I am sorry
about that, it was unforgivable for
me to behave so.” I was ashamed.
“Not unforgivable.” She was being generous...again.
“Thank you.” I took her hand and held it gently against my face. “You see, I wasn’t
sure if I was strong enough....And while there was still that possibility that I might
be
...overcome,”

I inhaled the scent radiating from her wrist

“I was...susceptible.
Until I made up my mind that I
was
strong enough, that there was no possibility at all that I
would...that I ever could...” Again, I couldn’t find the words. My sentences kept veeri
ng
off into the macabre. But I think she understood.
“So there’s no possibility now?”
“Mind over matter,” I declared.
“Wow, that was easy.” The incongruity of her comment laid next to the effort
involved, struck me as hilarious. Or perhaps I was just glad
that she could joke about it.
“Easy for you!” I poked the tip of her nose. But it was also time for some serious
truth. “I’m trying,” I confessed. “If it gets to be...too much, I’m fairly sure I’ll be able to
leave.” That was as much as I could honestly
promise at this moment. “And it will be
harder tomorrow. I’ve had the scent of you in my head all day and I’ve grown amazingly
desensitized. If I’m away from you for any length of time, I’ll have to start over again. Not
quite from scratch, though, I think
.” There was no way to know for sure. I’d never seen a
self
–
help book
titled
For Vampires Who Love (Humans) Too Much
.
“Don’t go away, then,” Bella responded hurriedly. Did I detect a pleading note in
her voice?
“That suits me.” I would happily stay, of cou
rse. “Bring on the shackles

I’m your
prisoner.” I grasped her wrists, one in each hand, as if to demonstrate. I could not
remember ever feeling this lighthearted. I didn’t want it to end.
“You seem more...optimistic than usual. I haven’t seen you like this b
efore,” Bella
marveled.
“Isn’t it supposed to be like this?” I observed. “The glory of first love, and all that.
It’s incredible, isn’t it, the difference between reading about something, seeing it in the
pictures, and experiencing it?”
“Very different. Mo
re forceful than I’d imagined,” Bella agreed.
I nodded.
“For example, the emotion of jealousy. I’ve read about it a hundred thousand times,
seen actors portray it in a thousand different plays and movies. I believed I understood that
one pretty clearly. Bu
t it shocked me...” I was reliving a moment. “Do you remember the
day that Mike asked you to the dance?”
Bella nodded. “The day you started talking to me again.”
“I was surprised by the flare of resentment, almost fury, that I felt

I didn’t
recognize what it
was at first.” My words spilled out faster as the emotion of the memory
gripped me.
“I was even more aggravated than usual that I couldn’t know what you were
thinking, why you refused him. Was it simply for your friend’s sake? Was there someone
else? I k
new I had no right to care either way. I
tried
not to care. And then the line started
forming. I waited, unreasonably anxious to hear what you would say to them, to watch your
expressions. I couldn’t deny the relief I felt, watching the annoyance on your f
ace. But I
couldn’t be sure.”
“That was the first night I came here. I wrestled all night, while watching you sleep,
with the chasm between what I knew was
right,
moral, ethical, and what I
wanted.
I knew
that if I continued to ignore you as I should, or i
f I left for a few years, until you were gone,
that someday you would say ‘yes’ to Mike, or someone like him. It made me angry.”
“And then,” I murmured, almost to myself, “as you were sleeping, you said my
name. You spoke so clearly, at first I thought you
’d woken. But you rolled over restlessly
and mumbled my name once more, and sighed. The feeling that coursed through me then
was unnerving, staggering. And I knew I couldn’t ignore you any longer.” Bella’s heart
pumped faster. I paused to listen for a mome
nt.
“But jealousy...it’s a strange thing. So much more powerful than I would have
thought. And irrational! Just now, when Charlie asked you about that vile Mike Newton...”
A surge of anger shot through me again just thinking about it.
“I should have known you’
d be listening,” Bella commented.
“Of course.”
“
That
made you feel jealous, though, really?”
“I’m new at this; you’re resurrecting the human in me, and everything feels
stronger because it’s fresh.”
“But honestly, for that to bother you, after I have to he
ar that Rosalie

Rosalie, the
incarnation of pure beauty,
Rosalie

was meant for you. Emmett or no Emmett, how can I
compete with that?” I couldn’t tell whether Bella was trying to pass this comment off as
kidding, or if she was serious. I took it seriously.
“There’s no competition,” I assured her. With her wrists still shackled in my hands,
I stretched my arms behind my back, pulling her close. I held her against me; she laid her
face in the crook of my neck.
Mmmm, the warmth...
“I
know
there’s no competition
,” she murmured, her heated lips moving against my
throat. “That’s the problem.” Her breath on my neck distracted me and it took a moment
before I could respond.
“Of course Rosalie
is
beautiful in her way, but even if she wasn’t like a sister to me,
even
if Emmett didn’t belong with her, she could never have one tenth, no, one hundredth
of the attraction you hold for me. For almost ninety years I’ve walked among my kind, and
yours...all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was see
king.
And not finding anything, because you weren’t alive yet.”
“It hardly seems fair,” Bella mused. “Why should I get off so easily?”
I laughed. “You’re right. I should make this harder for you, definitely.” I took both
her wrists in one hand behind my ba
ck and touched her damp hair with my other hand,
stroking slowly from the crown of her head down to her waist. Her body trembled against
mine. I couldn’t help myself

I loved to feel her respond to me.
I continued, “You only have to risk your life every se
cond you spend with me,
that’s surely not much. You only have to turn your back on nature, on humanity...what’s
that worth?”
“Very little

I don’t feel deprived of anything.”
“Not yet.” Perhaps she didn’t now. But as time passed and her human desires
changed,
how would she feel then? Surely, she would resent my intrusion into her life.
And if I hadn’t killed her by then, I had little doubt that she would leave me. It was
unbearable to imagine. Of course, I shouldn’t have put her in this position in the first
place,
but I couldn’t see myself turning back now.
She felt my change of mood and tried to peer into my face, but I held her tightly
against me. I couldn’t allow her to see my sudden desperation

my expression was not
under my control.
I was caught up in dejection and almost missed Charlie’s step on the stairs. His
mind was amazingly quiet.
“What

” Bella started, when she felt my sudden tension.
I leaped for her closet, causing her to teeter and almost fall onto the bed.
“Lie down!” I
hissed and she understood just in time, throwing the covers over
herself. She began heaving her chest up and down in a tortured imitation of a sleeping girl.
Fortunately, it was too dark for Charlie to see as clearly as I could. He cracked the door,
peeked
in, and seemed satisfied that Bella had not escaped on some nefarious midnight
adventure. Little did he know, the adventure was right here, only a short distance down the
hallway from his own bedroom.
As soon as he shut the door, I joined Bella in her be
d, her back to my front, my arm
around her waist under the covers. It was a true miracle that this closeness was even
possible. My heart soared, all my joy returned.
I put my lips to her ear and teased, “You are a terrible actress

I’d say that career
path
is out for you.”
“Darn it,” she said with fake disappointment. I smiled at her in the dark.
I felt Bella’s heart racing

she was entirely too wound up to sleep. Without
thinking about it, I began to hum her lullaby. After a moment, I thought to ask. “Shoul
d I
sing you to sleep?”
“Right,” Bella scoffed. “Like I could sleep with you here!”
“You do it all the time,” I pointed out.
“But I didn’t
know
you were here.” I refused to acknowledge her implicit reproach
for my “spying.”
“So if you don’t want to sleep....
” I flirted with the open
–
ended sentence, but she
didn’t take the bait.
“If I don’t want to sleep....” Savvy. I laughed.
“What do you want to do then?”
Bella was silent for a long moment before answering. “I’m not sure.”
“Tell me when you decide,” I said c
heerfully. Until then, I would do what I wanted.
I raised myself up on my elbow and inhaled the scent at the base of her neck beneath her
now, almost
–
dry hair. I skimmed my nose along her jaw line and inhaled again.
“I thought you were desensitized.”
“Just
because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet.
You have a very floral smell, like lavender...or freesia,” I told her. Yes...a combination of
sweet and musky. “It’s mouthwatering.”
“Yeah, it’s an off day when I don’t get
somebody
t
elling me how edible I smell.”
I laughed, but I also felt an irrational twinge of jealousy. Who? I sighed at my own
absurdity.
Bella interrupted my thoughts. “I’ve decided what I want to do. I want to hear more
about you.”
“Ask me anything.” After having
risked her desertion many times today, I was
prepared to tell Bella whatever she wanted to know, with only one or two exceptions. I
watched her choose her first question.
“Why do you do it? I still don’t understand how you can work so hard to resist what
y
ou...
are.
Please don’t misunderstand, of course I’m glad that you do. I just
don’t see why Y ou would bother in the first place.”
“That’s a good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others

the
majority of our kind who are quite content with
our lot


[مورا اسامة]


they, too, wonder at how we live.
But you see, just because we’ve been ...dealt a certain hand...it doesn’t mean that we can’t
choose to rise above

to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try
to retain whatever essential huma
nity we can.”
Bella was inexplicably quiet. I lay with my arm around her and listened to her
breathing. After a few minutes, I grew curious.
“Did you fall asleep?” I whispered.
“No.”
“Is that all you were curious about?”
“Not quite.” She probably didn’t
realize I could see her roll her eyes in the dark.
“What else do you want to know?”
“Why can you read minds

why only you? And Alice, seeing the future...why
does that happen?”
“We don’t really know. Carlisle has a theory...he believes that we all bring
somethi
ng of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are
intensified

like our minds, and our senses. He thinks that I must have already been very
sensitive to the thoughts of those around me. And that Alice had some precognition,
whereve
r she was.”
“What did he bring into the next life, and the others?”
“Carlisle brought his compassion. Esme brought her ability to love passionately.
Emmett brought his strength, Rosalie her...tenacity. Or you could call it pigheadedness.” I
chuckled. “Jasper
is very interesting. He was quite charismatic in his first life, able to
influence those around him to see things his way. Now he is able to manipulate the
emotions of those around him

calm down a room of angry people, for example, or excite
a lethargic c
rowd, conversely. It’s a very subtle gift.”
Bella lapsed into silence. I waited.
“So where did it all start? I mean, Carlisle changed you, and then someone must
have changed him, and so on....”
“Well, where did you come from? Evolution? Creation? Couldn’t we
have evolved
in the same way as other species, predator and prey? Or, if you don’t believe that all this
world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is it so
hard to believe that the same force that created the delica
te angelfish with the shark, the
baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our kinds together?”
“Let me get this straight

I’m the baby seal, right?”
“Right,” I chuckled. Then with a sudden surge of tenderness, I pressed my lips
against the back of
her head. I inhaled the scent of her hair, feeling the burn of the denied
predator, but also the wonder of our proximity.
“Are you ready to sleep? Or do you have any more questions?”
“Only a million or two.”
“We have tomorrow, and the next day, and the ne
xt....”
“Are you sure y
ou won’t vanish in the morning?
You are mythical, after all.”
“I won’t leave you,” I promised. I would do everything in my power to make it true.
The pain of leaving her now would be unbearable.
“One more, then, tonight...” The warmth
emanating from Bella’s face told me she
was blushing. She was embarrassed about something.
“What is it?” I was extra curious now.
“No, forget it. I changed my mind.”
“Bella, you can ask me anything,” I encouraged her. She remained silent and I
groaned in f
rustration. Why couldn’t I just read her mind already? “I keep thinking it will
get less frustrating, not hearing your thoughts. But it just gets worse and
worse,
” I
complained.
“I’m glad you can’t read my thoughts. It’s bad enough that you eavesdrop on m
y
sleep
–
talking.”
“Please?” I begged in my most seductive tone.
She shook her head “no.”
Arrrgh!
So frustrating!
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume it’s something much worse than it is. Please?”
“Well,” she began, seeming to relent.
“Yes?” I encourag
ed.
“You said that Rosalie and Emmett will get married soon... Is that...marriage...
the same as it is for humans?”
Oh!
I laughed in amusement. Her embarrassment made sense now

I should have
seen this one coming.
“Is
that
what you’re getting at?”
Bella
fidgeted, but offered no reply.
“Yes, I suppose it is much the same. I told you, most of those human desires are
there, just hidden behind more powerful desires.” Although for me, the two seemed to be
converging or, possibly, even switching precedence. One
held sway at one moment, the
other at another moment

an altogether new experience.
“Oh,” was Bella’s only response. I knew there was more to the question and I was
anxious to hear it.
I pressed her. “Was there a purpose behind your curiosity?”
She hesitat
ed less this time. “Well, I did wonder...about you and me...
someday...” She couldn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to.
Her words sent a rush of desire through me and I froze, not sure how closely
physical passion might be linked to my desire for her
blood. Could the former ignite the
latter? If I allowed the first, would the second be unleashed as well?
Enjoy the bouquet. For
e
go the wine,
I reminded myself.
After a moment, I calmed enough to consider my answer and a feeling of sadness
came over me.
It didn’t take much thought to predict how lovemaking would end, even if I
could
control my thirst.
“I don’t think that...that...would be possible for us.”
“Because it would be too hard for you, if I were that...close?” she asked.
I had to restrain my imaginat
ion to keep it from rushing headlong down that road
right now.
“That’s certainly a problem,” I acknowledged. “But that’s not what I was thinking
of. It’s just that you are so soft, so fragile. I have to mind my actions every moment that
we’re together so t
hat I don’t hurt you. I could kill you quite easily, Bella, simply by
accident.”
The knowledge pained me. I didn’t want to frighten her, so I softened my voice to a
whisper. I rested my hand against her cheek.
“If I was too hasty...if for one second I wasn
’t paying enough attention, I could
reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don’t realize
how incredibly
breakable
you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control
when I’m with you.”
Her silence was
unreadable. “Are you scared?” I asked.
More silence. Then, finally, “No, I’m fine.”
This was her standard reply when she was hurt or
not
fine, of course. I wondered
whether it was fear or something else that distressed her.
Suddenly, I was distracted by
a powerful pang of...what? Anger? Ah, no...
jealousy... I recognized it now, but it was misplaced. I disregarded the feeling, but had to
ask the question. I tried adopting a carefree tone.
“Have
you
ever...?” I let her fill in the blank.
The blood rushed beneath
her skin in an enticing, warm flush.
“Of course not. I told you I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, not even
close.”
Relief. “I know. It’s just that I know other people’s thoughts. I know love and lust
don’t always keep the same company.”
“The
y do for me. Now, anyway, that they exist for me at all.” Bella sighed.
“That’s nice. We have that one thing in common, at least.”
Though it shouldn’t matter what Bella had done with human boys before she met
me, I felt unreasonably happy that there had b
een no one else.
“Your human instincts...,” Bella began. I waited for her to continue. “Well, do you
find me attractive, in
that
way, at all?”
How could she not know? I laughed and ruffled her mostly dry hair.
“I may not be a human, but I am a man,” I told her with a smile. She couldn’t see it
in the dark, but surely it was evident in my voice.
My answer must have satisfied her, for I felt her relax in my arms. She yawned.
What a long, wonderful day it had been
!
“I’ve answered your questions, now you should sleep,” I encouraged her.
“I’m not sure if I can.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No!” Bella almost shouted. I laughed, pleased.
Then I began to hum Bella’s lullaby softly in her ear. After a time, her breathin
g
slowed and evened out. “Are you asleep?” I whispered.
Her silence answered my question. I settled happily next to her and continued
humming her song. Our song.
***
Four blissful hours later, I disentangled myself from Bella’s arms and legs, which she h
ad
wrapped around me in her sleep. I gently lifted her head from my chest and slid my arm out
from beneath her. Then I tucked the blanket around her and emerged from her bed. Though
I had visited Bella’s bedroom on other nights, this had been our true firs
t night together.
How glorious it was to hold her in my arms all night! My joy was matchless.
Though Bella had said some delightful things in her sleep a couple of hours earlier,
she had settled into a deeper slumber afterwards. It was a good time to run t
o the forest and
hunt for small game. I intended to keep myself as blood
–
sated as possible whenever I spent
time close to Bella, and I would spend as much time being close to Bella as she would
allow.
I ran by my family’s house on the way to the forest be
hind it and heard Emmett
clicking through the television channels inside. He was grumbling to himself about
Rosalie, annoyed at her annoyance with me. I was disrupting his sex life, apparently, and as
physical a man as he was, Emmett considered this a grea
t hardship. I decided to invite him
to join me. Perhaps I could take his mind off Rosalie and possibly gather some information
as well.
Emmett was the most forthright person I knew. He took things as they came and
never worried about the past or the futur
e. He was difficult to offend and never held
grudges. He was also fearlessly honest about anything you might ask him. He didn’t keep
secrets (even if he
could
keep them from me) and he wasn’t shy about speaking his mind.
Being bored, he quickly agreed to
join me. Rosalie was working out some of her
tension on the engine of her BMW. Working with iron and steel took less focus than other
hobbies, simply because we didn’t have to concentrate so hard not to break them. And
Rosalie had trouble with breaking thi
ngs. She was quick to fly into a temper and anything
within her reach could be at risk.
You’ve been at Bella’s?
Emmett inquired.
“Yes, as usual.”
So I guess things went fine yesterday in the woods?
Emmett had an ulterior motive
in asking. He had bet again
st Bella’s safe return in the sibling betting pool. I didn’t hold it
against him. He tended to measure others’ motives and actions by his own. He was upfront
about his failure of will when he’d encountered a particularly enticing scent

or two.
“It went re
markably well, actually. Better than I had hoped.”
Please tell me you struggled just a little bit!
“No doubt about it, Emmett. There were a couple of dicey moments.”
Well, I’m glad you didn’t lose it, Bro, even if I had my doubts. Alice informed us
about
halfway through the afternoon that you’d be bringing Bella back, though I told
Jasper I wanted evidence before I paid him.
“I appreciate your faith in me, Em,” I said
with heavy sarcasm
.
It’s nothing personal, you know.
“Yeah, I know. It doesn’t matter.”
S
o what do you do with her all night when you’re over there? She sleeps, doesn’t
she?
“Yes, she sleeps. We talk. Actually, last night was the first night we talked. Before
that, she didn‘t know I was there.”
She didn’t know? What, you broke in? That’s a
little stalker
–
y, don’t you think?
“Maybe it was. I really couldn’t help myself, though. And I did tell her last night.”
How’d she take it?
“Surprisingly well. She was embarrassed when I told her she talked in her sleep.” I
smiled, remembering.
Emmett cam
e to a complete stop, stared at me, then erupted in hilarity. He cackled.
He guffawed. He howled. Between gasps, he choked out, “No wonder you couldn’t stay
away. I would have hung out there myself if I’d known!”
“I shouldn’t have told you. You mustn’t let
on that you know. It would truly
distress her.”
“You aren’t going to tell me everything she said, then, I take it.” He laughed harder.
I let him have his fun while we loped through the woods. After a short time, I said,
“Em,” and raised my chin in a north
–
westerly direction. He quieted and crouched, then we
ran purposefully toward a group of mule deer about fifty yards away. It wasn’t long before
we were satisfied and heading back home.
“How’s Rosalie? Has she calmed down at all?”
Ah, you know Rose. It mi
ght take awhile. She wasn’t exactly rooting for you
yesterday and now she’s miffed about losing her bet. Jasper is going to clean up.
“I’m sorry about setting Rosalie off, but why would she bet against Alice? Why
would you?”
Jasper gave us 3
–
to
–
1 odds and
Alice wasn’t sure about anything until halfway
through the afternoon, so we were well in by then. And, by the way, Alice
freaked
out
around two
–
thirty. Did something happen? She wouldn’t talk about it.
“Like I said, there were a couple of dicey moments. I
don’t think it will happen
again.”
So you’re going to keep seeing her.
“I don’t know how to stay away. I don’t think Ican
.”
Sucks being you.
“Actually, Emmett, I wanted to ask you something.”
Sure, go ahead.
“I know this is personal and you can tell me t
o get lost if you want to, but”

Am I
really going to ask this?

“did you have physical relations with human women before
you were changed?”
We both know that as soon as you ask me a question, you already know
the answer
because I’ll think about it whether I want to or not. It’s like that old joke, “Think about
anything you want, except a purple
–
polka
–
dotted elephant.”
“I know. It’s not fair. But you can still decline to answer if you want to.”
Oh no, man, I do
n’t mind at all. Sure, I was a favorite with the ladies. I was a
starter on the high school football team. Defensive tackle, of course. Emmett grinned.
“So you were a teenager when you had your first sexual experience?”
Yeah, sixteen. It was kind of a disa
ster.
He laughed, recalling.
I tried to block out the scene playing in his head, but it was already too late. An
eighteen
–
year
–
old, blonde senior had dragged him under the bleachers after a football
game. His hands were up her blouse and hers went down his
dungarees. And then it was
over. I laughed along with him and he gave me a wry smile.
It got better. What about you?
“No, actually. I was thirteen when the war in Europe began and sixteen when the
United States declared war. I grew up playing war and dre
aming of being a soldier. Girls
weren’t yet on my radar, so to speak, when the influenza epidemic hit Chicago.”
I’m surprised we’ve never had this conversation.
“I guess I never had reason to be curious before.”
But you do now?
“Yes...well...no, not really, I
guess.”
“What’s going on?” He stopped running and turned to look at me, all ears. I snarled
at the rude images of Bella that were popping into his head, but kept walking. I had asked
him
, after all. He caught up to me.
“No, nothing like that!” I preempted
him. “Bella just asked me

though not in so
many words

whether vampires had the same sex lives as humans. I told her “yes,” but as
I have no direct experience of either, I was curious.”
“So the lady wants you, eh?” he teased. “That’s always good.”
“No, I
can’t agree with you there,” I said, trying to divert his attention away from
Bella. “I’ve never found that to be a particularly good thing in the past.”
Oh! I guess nothing ever happened in Alaska then. We kind of wondered with the
way the Denali ladies w
ere lining up for you at the time. Alice wouldn’t tell us
anything
.
When I didn’t respond to his comment, he chuckled, then considered how to answer
my original query.
Okay...when I was a newborn vampire, sex was definitely not the first thing on my
mind. It
was all about the blood. Rosalie had been a vamp for two years, though, so she
was ready for me. It wasn’t too difficult to oblige her.
He smiled widely, a glint in his
golden eyes. We all knew about Emmett and Rosalie’s relationship. They could be
unbear
able to live with at times.
“Is sex very different as a vampire from what it was like as a human?” I asked,
knowing it was intrusive, but who else could I ask if not my own brother? Emmett, being
Emmett, didn’t seem to mind.
Well, you know how vague human
memories are. My sexual encounters as a human
were always memorable, though...
He cackled loudly to himself as a Rolodex of images
flashed through his mind.
I wished I could put my hands over my ears like a human child and holler “La, la,
la, la, la,...” to b
lock them out, but, regrettably, that is not an effective technique against
mental pictures. I just had to wait him out. Eventually, his inner voice returned to a more
thoughtful tone.
There is one thing I remember from my first experience with Rosalie. A
t the time, I
was amazed at how much more intense sex was as a vampire than it had been as a human.
It was way beyond anything I’d ever had. Once I was with Rosalie, the past quickly faded
out, but I know my previous encounters were pretty pale in comparis
on. I can’t say whether
that’s because my human experiences were casual, one
–
time things, mostly. There’s
nothing casual about Rosalie!
He laughed again and I grinned at the truth in that.
“Are you thinking about, um...,” he started to ask. I heard his mind
flounder for
words in an attempt not to be crude. “...being physical with Bella?”
“I can’t help
but
think about it
,
” I admitted.
“So, you
can
touch her? Without losing it?”
“So far, so good. It’s getting easier.”
“I cannot even imagine how you could manage
such a thing or why you’d want to,
but hey, power to you, my brother!” It seemed ungentlemanly, but he raised his fist for a
knuckle bump and I obliged, if only because he’d been so open and uncritical with me.
“To be honest, I can’t see it going much f
urther in that direction. It just seems
dreadfully risky. I would sacrifice sex to keep Bella safe, but I’m not sure that
she
could.
And I never want to deprive her of anything, either. Changing her or giving her up are still
the only solutions I can think
of. I won’t do the former and I don’t think I can do the latter.”
Well, no one can ever say that you choose the easiest row to hoe. No pun intended.
He grinned at his pun. I ignored it.
“If it weren’t so hopeless, it would be almost funny, wouldn’t it?”
Midnight Sun, Part II
326
P.A. Lassiter
Twilight: The Missing Pieces
I
am
not
laughing at your dilemma. But don’t give up hope. If you’re truly in love
with her, then you’ll both be motivated to solve the problem. Hell, even I could probably
come up with a couple of ideas for you.
My hopes soared for a second, before I felt the metaphoric waggling of his
eyebrows and caught a couple of his pictorial suggestions. In current vernacular, I
so
did
not want to go there with him right now. I interrupted his train of thought the surest way
I
knew. “Beat you home!”
“Hey, wait a second! Play fair!” Emmett hollered, but I was already gone.



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16. THE VISIT

Dawn was on its way when I climbed through Bella’s window and sat in her rocking chair.
Charlie had just departed on his fishing trip after fiddling under the hood of Bella’s truck
for a few minutes. He must not have bought her acting job
the night before. I chuckled to
myself.
Despite my frequent visits to Bella’s bedchamber, I had never met the sunrise with
her. On this special morning, I could be there when she awoke. Bella was sleeping soundly
when I arrived. I listened to the gentle be
ating of her heart and watched the subtle rise and
fall of her chest under the blanket. I was absolutely content. It had been a minor shock
returning to her room after a couple of hours away. After all the fresh outdoor air, her
concentrated scent burned m
y throat, but I could tolerate it. The continual exposure to her
hair, skin, and breath yesterday had built my tolerance to such a degree that two hours away
set me back only a little.
I was thinking a lot about my conversation with Emmett. Though nothing
had been
solved, I felt better for having gotten some worries off my chest
and I had learned
something too. It seems that in the world of desire, vampires and humans had more in
common than I might have thought. If it weren’t for the possibility of killin
g Bella in an
uncontrollable fit of bloodlust, or by squeezing her to mush in an excess of passion, we
might even be physically compatible. Perhaps what I was could satisfy what she needed.
Though it was no real consolation, it was good to know. I had to l
augh at the absurdity of
this situation. For now, I decided to put these concerns aside and just enjoy my time with
Bella to the fullest extent possible. The future was unknowable, despite Alice’s visions.
Just then, Bella began to stir. She threw her arm
over her eyes as if to block the
light, then moaned and rolled to her side.
“Oh!” she cried, then sat straight up, her eyes wide and her jaw hanging loose. She
was not quite awake.
“Your hair looks like a haystack...but I like it,” I said.
“Edward! You s
tayed!” Bella launched herself off the bed, flew across the room,
and landed in my lap. Though she couldn’t move fast enough to actually surprise me, such
a rambunctious attack would have been disastrous yesterday. I’d had ne
ither the
knowledge or the self
confidence to hold myself in check. Today was altogether different.
I wanted to press my face into her hair and inhale her scent.
When she realized what she had done, Bella froze and nervously checked my
reaction. I just laughed. It felt so good to just l
augh.
“Of course,” I said, rubbing her back. She laid her head against my shoulder and I
got my wish, burying my nose in her hair.
“I was sure it was a dream,” she said, referring, I assumed, to our day together.
“You aren’t that creative,” I joked.
“Charl
ie!” she squealed, jumping off my lap, only to stand awkwardly in the middle
of the room.
“He left an hour ago
after reattaching your battery cables, I might add. I have to
admit I was disappointed. Is that really all it would take to stop you, if you were
determined
to go?”
She didn’t answer, just stood there, apparently stalled by indecision.
“You’re not usually this confused in the morning.” I stretched my arms out to

encourage her to return to my lap.
“I need another human minute,” she confessed.
“I’
ll wait.” Bella was manic, her heart racing, her head befuddled, her skin flushed.
It was endearing.
She came back a few minutes later, slightly less disheveled, her heart still racing. I
reached toward her and she returned to my lap. I held her and rocked
, relishing the contact,
barely
believing it was possible.
“You left?” Bella challenged, noting my clean shirt.
“I could hardly leave in the clothes I came in
what would the neighbors think?” I
teased.
She gave me a disgruntled look.
“You were very dee
ply
asleep.
I didn’t miss anything
.
” I smiled to myself. “The
talking came earlier.”
“What did you hear?” Bella demanded.
I paused, remembering her words. “You said you loved me.”
She hid her face. “You knew that already.”
“It was nice to hear, just the same.”
“I love you,” she reiterated into my shoulder.
“You are my life now,” I told her, rocking gently back and forth.
***
“Breakfast time,” I announced. I was not going to be guilty of starving my love again.
Bella stiffened on my lap, her eyes wide, and
sla
pped
her
hands over her
throat.
She thinks...I meant...?!
Shocked, I went rigid.
“Kidding!” she hooted. “And you said I couldn’t act!”
“That wasn’t funny,” I groused.
“It was very funny, and you know it.” She looked into my eyes and I gave her a
disapproving
frown.
“Shall I rephrase? Breakfast time for the human.”
“Oh, okay,” she agreed reluctantly.
I stood up, lifting her by the waist, and slung her over my shoulder like a sack of
potatoes. She howled at me, but I held her firmly in place and carried her dow
n the stairs to
the kitchen where I flipped her upright and set her in a chair. That’ll teach her to tease the
monster!
“What’s for breakfast?” she inquired, as if waiting for service.
The surprise question stumped me. “Er, I’m not sure. What would you lik
e?” I
could give it a try...
She grinned.
Got me again!
I must be extraordinarily unguarded,
I thought.
It’s not at all like
me.
“That’s all right, I fend for myself pretty well,” Bella went on. “Watch me hunt.”
I observed the steps she took to prepare
herself a bowl of boxed cereal. It was not
something I’d had as a kid. The Kellogg brothers invented cold cereal before I was born,
but it didn’t become standard American breakfast food until automobiles replaced horses
and all that cheap grain had to go s
omewhere. It still seemed like horse feed to me.
Bella sat down to eat, then interrupted herself. “Can I get you something?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Just eat, Bella.” I could hardly have what I wanted.
I watched her every move. I rarely paid attention to h
umans eating, but like
everything else, it was fascinating to see her do it.
“What’s on the agenda today?” she asked.
I had been toying with an idea and wondered how she’d take it. I hesitated.
“Hmmm...What would you say to meeting my family?”
She swallowed hard.
“Are you afraid now?” I asked, equal parts hope and concern.
“Yes.”
It was not like her to admit it. I was taken aback.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I’ll protect you.”
“I’m not afraid of
them
,” she corrected. “I’m afraid they won’t...
like me. Won’t
they be, well, surprised that you would bring someone...like me...home to meet them? Do
they know that I know about them?”
“Oh, they already know everything. They’d taken bets yesterday, you know, on
whether I’d bring you back, though why anyone
would bet against Alice, I can’t imagine.
At any rate, we don’t have secrets in the family. It’s not really feasible, what with my mind
reading and Alice seeing the future and all that.”
“And Jasper making you feel all warm and fuzzy about spilling your g
uts, don’t
forget that.”
“You paid attention.”
“I’ve been known to do that every now and then,” Bella asserted. Then she
frowned. “So did Alice see me coming?”
What could I say? I turned to look out the window so she wouldn’t see my reaction.
I would not t
ell her about Alice’s predictions. There was no point.
“Something like that.” I turned back toward her and changed the subject. “Is that
any good?” I asked, indicating her bowl. “Honestly, it doesn’t look very appetizing.”
“Well, it’s no irritable grizzly
....” Bella quipped.
I scowled, but my mind was already somewhere else. Being here in Charlie’s
kitchen reminded me of something that had troubled me more than I liked to admit. When
Charlie had pulled into the driveway yesterday, Bella became agitated abou
t my being in
the house with her. I could understand why she didn’t want to surprise Charlie with my
presence in his kitchen. If he were the suspicious type
which as the Chief of Police, he
undoubtedly was
he might think that I was sneaking around to see h
is daughter and that
we were up to no good. I had seen no need to set him off.
But that begged the question of when I should meet him formally. It would be best
to introduce myself and put everything aboveboard from the beginning. And though I hated
to adm
it to being possessive, my newly awakened human side wanted Bella to
acknowledge me, to let it be known that I was hers and she was mine. I wasn’t sure she’d
see it my way, though, and I was preparing to charm her into it. I turned and gave her my
most bri
lliant smile, looked into her eyes, and spoke.
“And you should introduce me to your father, too, I think.”
“He already knows you,” she replied.
“As your boyfriend, I mean.”
“Why?” she challenged, immediately resistant.
“Isn’t that customary?” I smiled swee
tly.
“I don’t know.” Bella seemed confused. “That’s not necessary, you know. I don’t

[مورا اسامة]

know. I don’t
expect you to...I mean, you don’t have to pretend for me.”
“I’m not pretending.”
Bella bit her lip and fidgeted, both signs of anxiety. Her resistance made me feel
insecure
and suspicious
than
admirable human
traits
but I couldn’t help myself.
“Are you going to tell Charlie I’m your boyfriend or not?” I asked petulantly,
annoyed at her avoidance.
“Is that what you are?” Stalling.
“It’s a loose interpretation of the word
‘boy,’ I’ll admit.” My voice was harsher
than I intended.
“I was under the impression that you were something more, actually,” Bella
mumbled.
Oh.
That softened my temper a bit, but she was still avoiding the question. What
was she thinking? It was impossi
ble to know.
“Well, I don’t know if we need to give him all the gory details.” I needed to read her
eyes, so I reached across the table and lifted her chin. “But he will need some explanation
for why I’m around here so much. I don’t want Chief Swan getting a restrainin
g order put
on me.”
“Will you be? Will you really be here?” Bella asked
“As long as you want me
“I’ll always want you,” Bella replied. “Forever.”
My heart melted, but an inevitable sadness touched me too. This beautiful, loving
girl shouldn’t set her
sights on a creature such as me, but I was too selfish to stop her. I
moved to her, looked into her eyes, and reached out to stroke her cheek.
“Does that make you sad?”
She was perceptive.
I could not explain myself...my doubts, my regrets. I sank into her
eyes for a long
time. Finally, I decided that I wouldn’t let melancholy ruin this day.
“Are you finished?” I asked, referring to her breakfast.
“Yes,” she said, rising.
“Get dressed
I’ll wait here.”
Bella bounded up the stairs to her bedroom, leaving me al
one with my thoughts.
Apparently, I was going to proceed as if I were a legitimate human suitor, rather than a
cruel joke of nature. I couldn’t stop myself.
I looked forward to taking Bella home with me. I wanted to share the private side of
my life with
her and show her off to my family. Alice and Esme would share my happiness,
I knew. Carlisle would too, though tempered with legitimate concern for my well
–
being...and hers.
Just then, Bella appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Okay,” she chirped, “I’m decen
t.” She descended enthusiastically,
but
awkwardly
misjudging the last step and stumbling into me. I set her upright, then stepped back to look
at her.
I was overcome by the beauty of her long mahogany hair and pale skin set against
the deep blue color of
my favorite blouse. She took my breath away.
“Wrong again,” I whispered, my lips now at her ear. “You are utterly indecent
no one should look so tempting, it’s not fair.”
She misunderstood. “Tempting how? I can change...”
I shook my head and sighed. She had
no idea how desirable she was.
“You are
so
absurd.” I pressed my lips to her forehead and felt her heart wind up.
Tempting, yes
. I paused to listen to the beating inside her chest and remembered then that
the last thing she’d asked last night was whether I was attracted to her. Perhaps my feelings
had not been as obvious as I’d thought.
“Shall I explain how you are tempting me?”
I held her close and dragged my fingers
gently down her spine, tracing the curve of each vertebra through the soft, clingy fabric of
her blouse. My own breath accelerated as my body responded to the pressure of her breasts
against my chest, the scent of he
r hair, the pounding of the blood through her veins, and the
delicate geography of her spine. My lips burned with the memory of yesterday’s aborted
kiss. I looked into her chocolate eyes, then leaned down and pressed my lips to hers,
inhaling her heated br
eath. A jolt of electricity shot through my body and burned fiercely in
my groin. I longed to carry her back up the stairs to her bedroom.
Without warning, Bella went slack in my arms.
“Bella?” I exclaimed, as I caught and supported her body. She remaine
d unconscious only briefly.
“You...made...me...faint,” she gasped.
I exhaled with relief, but my voice was agitated.
“What am I going to do with you? Yesterday I kiss you, and you attack me! Today
you pass out on me!” She remained limp in my arms,
chuckling
So much for being good at everything,” I lamented.
“That’s the problem,” she whispered. “You’re
too
good. Far, far too good.”
Hmmm...was
that
it? It was nice to know.
Her physical collapse did concern me,
though.
“Do you feel sick?” I inquired, not sure
what course to take.
“No
that wasn’t the same kind of fainting at all. I don’t know what happened. I
think I forgot to breathe.”
“I can’t take you anywhere like this.”
“I’m fine,” she asserted. “Your family is going to think I’m insane anyway, so
what’s t
he difference?” Holding her close like this, I couldn’t attend to her words. I was
wholly distracted by the subtle curves beneath her blue blouse.
“I’m very partial to that color with your skin,” I said, my voice gravelly. Bella
blushed and averted her ey
es.
“Look, I’m trying really hard not to think about what I’m about to do, so can we go
already?” she complained, jolting me from my trance. Funny, that
she
should curb
my
excess passion today.
“And you’re worried, not because you’re headed to meet a house
ful of vampires,
but because you think those vampires won’t approve of you, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re incredible.” Incredibly odd, incredibly funny, incredibly appealing.
***
Bella handed over the keys to her truck without resistance. It seems I
had won her trust on
our return trip yesterday. It was still a chore to drive the slow, old truck, but I kept my
comments to myself.
She was unusually quiet the entire trip
nervous, perhaps. Her eyes grew large as I
turned into the dense forest several mi
les outside of town and proceeded along our
circuitous driveway through ancient trees. Our land was natural rainforest, with huge
sword and deer ferns covering the ground, along with native salal, salmonberry, and
huckleberry bushes. The trees were cedar a
nd Douglas fir, with some spruce and hemlock
sprinkled around. Closer to the house, clusters of native vine maples decorated the
landscape, leafless now, their red
edged branches creating sculptures in the air.
The house stood in a meadow shaded by six ma
jestic cedar trees. They blocked the
sunlight so that uninvited human visitors would not see our sparkling skin even on sunny
days. This beautiful house
northwest traditional with three stories, soft white paint, and a
large wrap
around porch
was all Esme’
s doing, as she enjoyed restoring old houses,
remaking them into modern homes. We relied on her architectural and design skills to
create a suitable home for us wherever we lived. What you couldn’t see from the front of
the house was that the entire back s
ide had been converted to glass and overlooked the
forest and river view.
“Wow,” was Bella’s first word in half an hour.
“You like it?”
“It...has a certain charm,” she said, downplaying her reaction. I laughed and gave
her ponytail a yank.
“Ready?” I asked
as I opened her door.
“Not even a little bit
let’s go.”
I was feeling
asense of ceremony
in this classic human occasion, bringing the
girlfriend home to meet the parents. It might have happened this way ninety years ago if
my human life had continued. Se
eing their son enact this rite of passage
at one hundred
eight years old
would be a new experience for Carlisle and Esme. Alice had told them we
were coming and they were waiting to welcome us.
Bella uncharacteristically fussed with her hair and clothing.
“You look lovely,” I told her, taking her hand as I led her to the front door.
Bella’s eyes grew wide when she stepped into the house. Esme had converted the
entire downstairs into a great room with a large staircase on one side. The floor to
ceiling wind ows at the back brought in lots of light despite our forest setting. The whole house was
decorated in the white
on
beige color scheme Esme favored. It was a very clean look and,
along with warm lighting, made us appear less pale.
Captured by the beautiful
view, it took a minute for Bella to notice my parents. As I
expected, Carlisle and Esme were standing to the side of the foyer on the raised platform
where my grand piano sat. They made no move to approach us as we entered. When Bella’s
attention returned
from the view, I introduced them, though of course everyone already
knew who everyone was.
This was a ritual ceremony of sorts and my family members were
all from more formal eras than the present one.
“Carlisle, Esme, this is Bella
“You’re very welcome
, Bella,” Carlisle declared
His natural kindness put humans
at ease
, but b
ecause Bella knew what we were, he was careful to move slowly and
predictably toward her in case she was frightened. He offered his hand and Bella stepped
forward to shake it.
“It’s nice to see you again, Dr. Cullen.”
“Please, call me Carlisle.”
“Carlisle,” Bella echoed and smiled. She was
suddenly
confident
and seemed
completely at ease, even when grasping Carlisle’s
to her
icecold hand.
Esme smiled and stepped forward, also
offering her hand. “It’s very nice to know
you,” she said warmly. I could see my mother’s eyes sparkle with delight at the occasion.
Bella grasped Esme’s hand, again behaving as if touching ice were the most natural thing
in the world. I suppose it was, in
a way, given how much I had touched her in the last
twenty
four hours.
“Thank you. I’m glad to meet you, too,” Bella responded. It was obvious that she
was not addressing Carlisle and Esme as vampires, but as her new boyfriend’s parents. It
was such a ske
wed version of a Norman Rockwell moment that I almost laughed.
Edward, I’m glad you brought Bella to our home and that she’s so much at ease
here. She’ll always be welcome,
Carlisle conveyed silently. I blinked at him and raised one
side of my mouth in re
sponse.
Esme also shared her elation.
Edward, she’s beautiful
I’m thrilled you
’vefound her
after all this time. And look at you two together, holding hands.
Not to embarrass you, but
I’m just so happy for you.
For all of us.
I smiled and dipped my head minutely to thank her.
“Where are Alice and Jasper?” I inquired just before they appeared at the top of the
stairs.
“Hey, Edward!” Alice bounced down the stairs toward us, stopping short a foot
away.
“Hi, Bella!” she enthus
ed
springing forward to kiss Bella’s cheek. I tensed at her
quick movement and close proximity to Bella’s throat
it was unnerving
but I knew
Alice wasn’t a threat.
Carlisle and Esme, however, were not so placid. They threw disapproving looks at
Alice and re
primanded her in their minds. Alice couldn’t hear them, but I knew she had
received their messages loud and clear
not that it would do any good. Wisely, my parents
remained silent, knowing that to do otherwise might frighten Bella more than Alice had.
As
for Bella, she was surprised by Alice’s enthusiasm, but did not seem alarmed.
Anyone else surely would have been, but inexplicably, Bella didn’t see us as human
predators. She
was
unused to being embraced by semi
strangers, though. Alice already felt
that
Bella was her close friend, forgetting, as she often did, that others weren’t always
caught up to her reality.
“You do smell nice, I never noticed before,” Alice announced unselfconsciously.
Bella, now quite self
conscious, blushed scarlet. Carlisle and Es
me were aghast. There
was just no containing Alice, but that was part of her charm once you got used to it.
True to form, Jasper chose that awkward moment to step closer to the circle. He
radiated his soothing energy around us and everyone relaxed. I rais
ed an eyebrow both to
acknowledge his effort and to remind him of my warning.
“Hello, Bella,” he said, keeping his distance.
“Hello, Jasper,” she replied with a smile. “It’s nice to meet you all
you have a
very beautiful home.”
“Thank you,” Esme responde
d. “We’re so glad that you came.” Esme was amazed
at Bella’s courage, surprised that she dared to enter our house. So few humans had ever
passed through our doors, and nobody ever shook hands with us. We’d never seen Alice
kiss a human before, either.
Edwa
rd, Carlisle interrupted my thoughts. I glanced over to acknowledge him.
Alice says that we will soon have visitors
nomads. They know we are here and will seek
us out. The timing is a little unclear. You may or may not want to tell Bella, but you should
be
aware.
I nodded discreetly, hiding my immediate concern. I’d have to keep a close eye on
Bella.
“Do you play?” Esme asked Bella. I noticed then her fascination with my piano.
“Not at all. But it’s so beautiful. Is it yours?” she asked Esme.
“No,” Esme la
ughed and looked at me with mild reproof. “Edward didn’t tell you
he was musical?”
“No.” Bella gave me a mock
churlish look. “I should have known, I guess.”
Esme raised her eyebrows
, a question
“Edward can do everything, right?” Bella
said
Yeah, everyth
ing except make love to his girlfriend!
Jasper teased silently. I shot a
vicious glare at him when Bella looked away.
That’s great, Emmett, just grea
tGood thing he’s keeping his distance. He might
get that fight he wanted.
I returned to the moment when
Esme addressed me. “I hope you haven’t been
showing off
it’s rude,” she chastised. Just like a mother.
“Just a bit,” I told her, laughing.
“He’s been too modest, actually,” Bella amended.
“Well, play for her,” Esme pressed.
“You just said showing off was
rude.”
“There are exceptions to every rule,” Esme replied.
“I’d like to hear you play,” Bella added.
“It’s settled then.” Esme nudged me toward the piano. It was almost as hard to
refuse Esme as it was to refuse Bella.
They had just ganged up on me, I real
ized.
I grabbed Bella’s hand and pulled her onto the piano bench with me. I didn’t want
to stop touching her just because my hands would be busy.
To please Esme, I began playing the song I’d written for her. It was a fun piece,
with complicated counterpoin
t melodies, and it kept my fingers moving as fast as the piano
could respond.
Alice and Jasper were
chuckling
at Bella’s wide
eyed, loose
jawed expression.
Esme chuckled at Bella’s reaction too, before herding the family upstairs. They were all
gone in a
split second, leaving us alone.
I winked at Bella. “Do you like it?”
“You wrote this?”
I nodded. “It’s Esme’s favorite.”
Bella closed her eyes and shook her head in dejection.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m feeling extremely insignificant.”
I began weaving the mel
ody to Bella’s lullaby through Esme’s love song, then bit
by bit, dropped Esme’s melody until the piece became a simple, soft paean to Bella at rest.
“You inspired this one,” I told her.
She remained quiet.
“They like you, you know. Esme especially.”
Bell
a realized I was speaking only to her and looked around for the others. She
hadn’t heard them leave. “Where did they go?”
“Very subtly giving us some privacy, I suppose.”
Bella sighed. “
They
like me. But Rosalie and Emmett...”
She was so concerned about wha
t my family thought of her; it was touching. And
Rosalie had already hurt her feelings by not making an appearance.
Damn her
pigheadedness!
“Don’t worry about Rosalie,” I soothed. “She’ll come around.” I could hope,
anyway.
“Emmett?” she asked.
“Well, he
thinks
I’ma lunatic, it’s true, but he doesn’t have a problem with you.
He’s trying to reason with Rosalie.”
“What is it that upsets her?
I didn’t want to have this conversation particularly. No matter what I said, Bella
was going to feel badly, through
no fault of her own and with no way to resolve the
problem. This was a vampire thing
our attitudes were petrified, like our bodies, and very
difficult to alter. But I owed Bella some explanation. I sighed.
“Rosalie struggles the most with...with what we are.
It’s hard for her to have
someone on the outside know the truth. And she’s a little jealous.” A lot jealous
, in truth
Rosalie
is jealous of me?
“You’re human. She wishes she were too.” What I didn’t say was that Rose, with
her enormous, immutable ego,
also resented Bella for turning my head when she never had.
“Oh.” Bella let it drop. “Even Jasper, though...”
“That’s really my fault. I told you he was the most recent to try our way of life. I
warned him to keep his distance.”
Plus, he vowed to kill you
a few weeks ago,
I thought
ruefully.
Bella shuddered as if she had heard my thoughts. She
should
be afraid of Jasper...
of all of us really, but I still didn’t want her to be. Or rather, I didn’t want her to
have
to be.
“Esme and Carlisle...?” Bella continued.
“Are happy
to se
e me happy.
Actually, Esme wouldn’t care if you had a third eye
and webbed feet. All this time she’s been worried about me, afraid that there was
something missing from my essential makeup, that I was too young when Carlisle changed
me....Sh
e’s ecstatic. Every time I touch you, she just about chokes with satisfaction.” And
I am more than happy to indulge her. I smiled at the thought.
“Alice seems very...enthusiastic,” Bella went on.
“Alice has her own way of looking at things,” I said, tighteni
ng my jaw. I could
almost hear the words in Alice’s musical voice...
It doesn’t matter if somebody bites Bella,
because she’ll be changing anyway
if you don’t kill her.
Alice could
be a little cold in a
loving, sisterly sort of way
“And you’re not going to e
xplain that, are you?”
No. Hell
no! Not now, at least.
I looked at Bella and she looked at me. As much as
I wanted to be honest with her, this was something I couldn’t talk about. She would just
have to understand. I looked away.
“So what was Carlisle tel
ling you before?” Bella changed the subject.
I scowled, surprised. “You noticed that, did you?”
“Of course.” She spoke as if it were obvious.
I didn’t know how she would take this news...run screaming?
“He wanted to tell me some news
he didn’t know if it
was something I would
share with you.”
“Will you?”
“I have to, because I’m going to be a little...overbearingly protective over the next
few days
or weeks
and I wouldn’t want you to think I’m naturally a tyrant,” I
explained.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wron
g, exactly. Alice just sees some visitors coming soon. They know
we’re here, and they’re curious.”
“Visitors?”
“Yes...well, they aren’t like us, of course
in their hunting habits, I mean. They
probably won’t come into town at all, but I’m certainly not going
to let you out of my sight
until they’re gone.”
And not even then, if I have my way...
Bella shuddered.
“Finally, a rational response! I was beginning to think you had no sense of self
preservation at all.” Bella looked away. She was examining our living sp
ace.
“Not what you expected, is it?” She’d probably envisioned something more gothic.
I smiled.
“No.”
“No coffins, no piled skulls in the corner; I don’t even think we have cobwebs...
what a disappointment this must be for you,” I teased.
She ignored the
jab. “It’s so light...so open.”
“It’s the one place we never have to hide,” I told her, easing her lullaby to its
melancholic, irresolvable end. I let the final notes fade to silence, then looked up.
Bella had tears in her eyes. I wondered if she could sense
my ambivalence about
our
ending.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Her tears reminded me powerfully of her humanity. Though we were capable of
feeling the kind of love and joy and pain that made humans cry, that release was no longer
possible for us. In that mo
ment, when my music moved my love to tears, I wanted to share
that part of her humanity. Impulsively, I touched a tear in the corner of her eye and it
transferred itself to my index finger. I examined it for a second, then touched it to my
tongue. Slightly
salty, slightly floral, entirely lovely. Not at all connected to my thirst, I was pleased to find. Bella was regarding me curiously. I let myself fall into the depths of
her milk chocolate eyes. They were soft with tenderness
I basked for a long while.
Finally I smiled, breaking the spell.
“Do you want to see the rest of the house?”
“No coffins?” she queried, not entirely joking.
“No coffins.”
I led Bella up Esme’s grand staircase to the second floor and down the long
hallway, identifying the rooms along t
he way.
“Rosalie and Emmett’s room...Carlisle’s office...Alice’s room...”
Bella halted in her tracks at the end of the hall where Carlisle had hung an odd, but
beloved artifact of his history. The large wooden cross had followed our family all over the
continent
and, before that, traveled with Carlisle across Europe.
“You can laugh,” I told Bella. “It
is
sort of ironic.”
She raised her hand toward it reverently, recognizing, perhaps, the heavy weight of
its history. She extended a finger as if to touch it, but st
opped before she did.
“It must be very old,” she speculated.
Its history no longer surprised me. “Early sixteen
–
thirties, more or less.”
She stared at me, gaping. “Why do you keep this here?”
“Nostalgia. It belonged to Carlisle’s father.”
“He collected ant
iques?” she guessed, dubious.
“No. He carved this himself. It hung on the wall above the pulpit in the vicarage
where he preached.”
Bella tried to cover her shock, but I saw it before she turned her head and rested her
eyes again upon the cross. Stunned in
to silence, she stood inert for so long that I inquired,
“Are you all right?”
“How old is Carlisle?” Bella finally spoke, her voice shaky.
I had decided the
best
way to deal with these disturbing revelations was head on. I
could only hope that she wouldn’t
be scared off.
“He just celebrated his three hundred and sixty
second birthday.” I
watched
Bella’s
expression
, but
she just looked curious
“Carlisle was born in London, in the sixteen
forties, he believes. Time wasn’t marked as accurately then, for the common people
anyway. It was just before Cromwell’s rule, though.”
Bella still seemed calm and curious, so I went on.
“He was the only son of an Anglican pastor. His mother died giving birth to him.
His father was an intolerant man. As the Protestants came
into power, he was enthusiastic
in his persecution of Roman Catholics and other religions. He also believed very strongly
in the reality of evil. He led hunts for witches, werewolves...and vampires.”
Bella froze at the word.
“They burned a lot of innocent
people
of course the real creatures that he sought
were not so easy to catch.
“When the pastor grew old, he placed his obedient son in charge of the raids. At
first Carlisle was a disappointment; he was not quick to accuse, to see demons where they
did not
exist. But he was persistent, and more clever than his father. He actually discovered
a coven of true vampires that lived hidden in the sewers of the city, only coming out by
night to hunt. In those days, when monsters were not just myths and legends, tha
t was the
way many lived.”
“The people gathered their pitchforks and torches, of course”
the image was silly
to me, but not funny
“and waited where Carlisle had seen the monsters exit into the
street. Eventually one emerged.”
This part of the story always
troubled me, but I went on.
“He must have been ancient, and weak with hunger. Carlisle heard him call out in
Latin to the others when he caught the scent of the mob. He ran through the streets, and
Carlisle
he was twenty
three and very fast
was in the lea
d of the pursuit. The creature
could have easily outrun them, but Carlisle thinks he was too hungry, so he turned and
attacked. He fell on Carlisle first, but the others were close behind, and he turned to defend
himself. He killed two men, and made off wi
th a third, leaving Carlisle bleeding in the
street.”
I paused to carefully compose my next sentences, telling the story, but withholding
a few details.
“Carlisle knew what his father would do. The bodies would be burned
anything
infected by the monster mu
st be destroyed. Carlisle acted instinctively to save his own life.
He crawled away from the alley while the mob followed the fiend and his victim. He hid in
a cellar, buried himself in rotting potatoes for three days. It’s a miracle he was able to keep
si
lent, to stay undiscovered.”
“It was over then, and he realized what he had become.”
Bella was moved or stunned or catatonic. It was hard to tell.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, thinking of caffeine and sugar and wondering
whether we had any in the kitch
en.
“I’m fine,” Bella said. Of course. Coming from her, those words didn’t mean much
to me anymore. Then I saw the cross
examination she was biting her lip to contain and I
smiled.
“I expect you have a few more questions for me.”
“A few
Curiosity was pre
ferable to catatonia, so I was willing to accommodate
her. I grabbed her hand and pulled her back toward Carlisles office.
“Come on, then. I’ll show you.
تم الفصل

[مورا اسامة]

الفصل السابع عشر




Missing Sun, Part II
339
P.A. Lassiter
Twilight: The Missing Pieces
17. CARLISLE
No doubt Carlisle had heard me telling Bella his story. I knocked on the door to his office
and waited for him to acknowledge us.
“Come in,” Carlisle invited. He marked his place in the large medical book he was
reading and stood. “What can
I do for you?”
“I wanted to show Bella some of our history. Well, your history, actually.”
“We didn’t mean to disturb you,” Bella apologized.
“Not at all. Where are you going to start?”
“The Waggoner,” I said putting one hand on Bella’s shoulder and rotati
ng her to
face the wall behind us. Covering the wall and surrounding the doorway was Carlisle’s
collection of paintings and lithographs that served as a centuries
–
long record of his life.
Bella’s heart
began to race and w
ith his doctor’s ear, Carlisle aut
omatically noted it.
I heard him wonder whether her reaction was due to the impressive wall of paintings, his
own presence, or the fact that my hand was on Bella’s shoulder. The latter, he decided,
because he’d noticed it downstairs as well. I smiled to my
self. Bella
definitely
wasn’t
frightened.
I pulled Bella toward the left side of the wall where the 17
th
–
century painting by
Waggoner hung. It was a small, but detailed depiction of London from across the Thames.
The old London Bridge, with its collection
of residences and shops and even a tiny
cathedral perched on it, spanned the river. Waggoner, who is famous for his 1666 painting
called “The Great Fire of London,” had painted this one from the same perspective before
the fire.
“London in the 1650s,” I to
ld Bella.
“The London of my youth,” Carlisle added. Bella flinched when he spoke. He had
stepped up quietly beside us, forgetting, no doubt, that Bella couldn’t hear him move. I
squeezed her hand.
“Will
you
tell the story?” I asked Carlisle. Bella and I bo
th turned toward him.
“I would, but I’m actually running a bit late. The hospital called this morning

Dr.
Snow is taking a sick day. Besides, you know the stories as well as I do
.
”
With a parting
smile for Bella,
he
left for work.
I loved and admired my
father, not only for his singular
qualities of integrity and compassion, but also for the respectful, loving way he treated me.
He knew as well as I did that telling a human about us was an infraction punishable by
death in our world. But after I’d saved B
ella’s life and she learned what we are, he trusted
my judgment to handle the situation. When I knew that I loved Bella, Carlisle didn’t
question my decision to pursue her. And now that I was bringing her into our lives, Carlisle
accepted her as one of us,
human or not.
Bella, likewise, treated my family as if we were human. It was remarkable how well
she was absorbing all this information that would startle even some vampires. Still, I was
keeping an eye on her, watching for signs of shock or overload.
Af
ter a few more minutes examining the London painting, Bella asked, “What
happened then? When he realized what had happened to him?”
Because I couldn’t read her mind, it took me a second to realize that she wanted me
to continue with Carlisle’s story. I gl
anced at the painting of the English countryside and
the cliff from which Carlisle had jumped in a failed suicide attempt, and decided not to
share the details of that episode.
Missing Sun, Part II
340
P.A. Lassiter
Twilight: The Missing Pieces
“When he knew what he had become,” I continued the tale, “he rebelled against i
t.
He tried to destroy himself. But that’s not easily done.”
“How?” Bella blurted out, seeming to surprise herself.
“He jumped from great heights. He tried to drown himself in the ocean...but he was
young to the new life, and very strong. It is amazing that
he was able to resist”

I chose
my word carefully

“feeding...while he was still so new. The instinct is more powerful
then, it takes over everything. But he was so repelled by himself that he had the strength to
try to kill himself with starvation.”
“Is that
possible?” Bella asked.
“No, there are very few ways we can be killed.” I hurried on, before she asked the
obvious next question.
“So he grew very hungry, and eventually weak. He strayed as far as he could from
the human populace, recognizing that his wil
lpower was weakening, too. For months he
wandered by night, seeking the loneliest places, loathing himself.
“One night, a herd of deer passed his hiding place. He was so wild with thirst that
he attacked without a thought. His strength returned and he real
ized there was an
alternative to being the vile monster he feared. Had he not eaten venison in his former life?
Over the next months his new philosophy was born. He could exist without being a demon.
He found himself again.”
“He began to make better use of
his time. He’d always been intelligent, eager to
learn. Now he had unlimited time before him. He studied by night, planned by day. He
swam to France and

”
“He
swam
to France?” Bella interrupted.
“People swim the channel all the time, Bella.”
“That’s true,
I guess. It just sounded funny in that context. Go on.”
“Swimming is easy for us

”
“Everything is easy for
you
,” she complained.
I looked at her with exaggerated patience, waiting for her to let me finish the
sentence.
“I won’t interrupt you again, I prom
ise.”
I doubted that. “Because technically, we don’t need to breathe.”
“You

”
“No, no, you promised.” I laughed, shushing her with my finger on her lips. “Do
you want to hear the story or not?”
“You can’t spring something like that on me, and then expect m
e not to say
anything,” she said, speaking around my finger. I moved my hand to the side of her
neck

another of my favorite spots

and listened to her heart accelerate.
Bella pressed her question.
“You don’t have to
breathe
?”
“No, it’s not necessary. Just
a habit.”
“How long can you go...without
breathing?”
“Indefinitely, I suppose; I don’t know. It gets a bit uncomfortable

being without a
sense of smell.”
“A bit uncomfortable,” she repeated, incredulous.
It hit me again, the fear that each new revelation cou
ld be the one that pushed Bella
too far and sent her running. I dropped my arm to my side and grew still, sad about the
Missing Sun, Part II
341
P.A. Lassiter
Twilight: The Missing Pieces
inevitability of it. Already I missed her. Already I could feel a new kind of loneliness.
“What is it?” Bella interrupted my downward sp
iral by placing her hand on my
frozen cheek. Her touch reanimated me.
“I keep waiting for it to happen,” I said.
“For what to happen?”
“I know that at some point, something I tell you or something you see is going to be
too much. And then you’ll run away
from me, screaming as you go.” I knew my smile was
sad. “I won’t stop you. I want this to happen, because I want you to be safe. And yet, I want
to be with you. The two desires are impossible to reconcile....” I watched her face.
“I’m not running anywhere,”
Bella declared.
“We’ll see.” I smiled, but remained doubtful.
She saw the doubt and frowned at me.
“So, go on

Carlisle was swimming to France.”
“Carlisle swam to France, and continued on through Europe, to the universities
there. By night he studied musi
c, science, medicine

and found his calling, his penance, in
that, in saving human lives.” Talking about Carlisle like this always reminded me of how
remarkable he was, unique among our kind.
“I can’t adequately describe the struggle; it took Carlisle two c
enturies of torturous
effort to perfect his self
–
control. Now he is all but immune to the scent of human blood,
and he is able to do the work he loves without agony. He finds a great deal of peace there, at
the hospital....”
I drew Bella’s attention to the l
argest painting on the wall, a court scene by the
Italian painter, Solimena, also mid
–
17
th
century. I continued the story.
“He was studying in Italy when he discovered the others there. They were much
more civilized and educated than the wraiths of the London sewers.” I pointed to four
figures depicted on the highest balcony, looking down over the crowd below. After a few
seco
nds, Bella laughed with surprise. She recognized Carlisle.
“Solimena was greatly inspired by Carlisle’s friends. He often painted them as
gods. Aro, Marcus, and Caius: Nighttime patrons of the arts.” I laughed. The Volturi, as
they were collectively known
, pretty much considered themselves to be gods too.
“What happened to them?” Bella asked.
“They’re still there. As they have been for who knows how many millennia.
Carlisle stayed with them only for a short time, just a few decades. He greatly admired the
ir
civility, their refinement, but they persisted in trying to cure his aversion to ‘his natural
food source,’ as they called it. They tried to persuade him, and he tried to persuade them, to
no avail. At that point, Carlisle decided to try the New World.
He dreamed of finding
others like himself. He was very lonely, you see.”
“He didn’t find anyone for a long time. But, as monsters became the stuff of fairy
tales, he found he could interact with unsuspecting humans as if he were one of them. He
began pract
icing medicine. But the companionship he craved evaded him; he couldn’t risk
familiarity.”
“When the influenza epidemic hit, he was working nights in a hospital in Chicago.
He’d been turning over an idea in his mind for several years, and he had almost dec
ided to
act

since he couldn’t find a companion, he would create one. He wasn’t absolutely sure
how his own transformation had occurred, so he was hesitant. And he was loathe to steal
anyone’s life the way his had been stolen. It was in that frame of mind t
hat he found me.
Missing Sun, Part II
342
P.A. Lassiter
Twilight: The Missing Pieces
There was no hope for me; I was left in a ward with the dying. He had nursed my parents,
and knew I was alone. He decided to try....”
My mind wandered and I found myself staring out the window, remembering the
vague image I had salvaged fro
m my human life of my mother, Elizabeth. Carlisle told me
that she’d destroyed her own chances of survival by nursing me from her sickbed. When
she knew her life was ending, she told him she believed he could do things no one else
could, and begged him to
do everything in his power to save me.
I often wondered if my mother had figured out, much as Bella had, that Carlisle was
not human, and in some great leap of faith asked him to perform his miracle for her son.
Carlisle wasn’t sure what my mother had di
scerned or how much she knew, but her
desperate request convinced him to try to change me.
Not wanting to explain to Bella how Carlisle had done that, I ended the story there.
“And so we’ve come full circle.”
“Have you always stayed with Carlisle, then?”
she asked.
“Almost always.” I’d said enough for one day. I wrapped my arm around Bella’s
waist and walked her out of Carlisle’s office, toward the stairs to the third floor. She
stopped me with another question.
“Almost?” she prompted. I couldn’t seem to
deny her anything, so I reluctantly
replied.
“Well, I had a typical bout of rebellious adolescence

about ten years after I
was...born...created, whatever you want to call it. I wasn’t sold on his life of abstinence,
and I resented him for curbing my appetite.
So I went off on my own for a time.”
“Really?” Bella seemed truly curious, rather than disgusted or scared. Her reactions
always surprised me.
“That doesn’t repulse you?” I couldn’t quite believe it.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I guess...it sounds reasonable.” I cho
rtled in surprise. She was unbelievable. Here
she was sympathizing with my rebellion against my parents, when it included sucking the
blood out of human beings.
We climbed the stairs and I led her down the third
–
floor hallway.
“From the time of my new bir
th, I had the advantage of knowing what everyone
around me was thinking, both human and non
–
human alike. That’s why it took me ten
years to defy Carlisle

I could read his perfect sincerity, understand exactly why he lived
the way he did.
“It took me only a
few years to return to Carlisle and recommit to his vision. I
thought I would be exempt from the...depression...that accompanies a conscience.
Because I knew the thoughts of my prey, I could pass over the innocent and pursue only the
evil. If I followed a mur
derer down a dark alley where he stalked a young girl

if I saved
her, then surely I wasn’t so terrible.
“But as time went on, I began to see the monster in my eyes. I couldn’t escape the
debt of so much human life taken, no matter how justified. And I went
back to Carlisle and
Esme. They welcomed me back like the prodigal son. It was more than I deserved.”
And this was more than I’d wanted to tell Bella. I was not proud of that part of my
life and I would not expect a human ever to accept it.
“My room,” I a
nnounced, opening the door at the end of the hallway and pulling
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Bella through it. I watched her take in the beautiful view of the Sol Duc River, the Olympic
National Park, and the Olympic Mountains through the southern wall of windows. Then
she turned to
examine my music library tucked into shelves along the west wall.
“Good acoustics?” she inquired, noting the carpet and the fabric
–
covered walls.
I nodded, chuckling. She missed nothing. I turned on a jazz recording to
demonstrate while she perused my mus
ic collection.
A sudden lightness came over me as we stood together in my bedroom. I felt like a
yoke had been lifted off my shoulders or I had suddenly lost a hundred pounds. I wanted to
dance, sing, celebrate.
“How do you have these organized?” Bella’s question cut into my thoughts.
“Ummm, by year, and then by personal preference within that frame
.
” I turned to
look at Bella, marveling at the change she had wrought in me.
“What?” Bella prodded, referring to my
gaze.
I decided to share my thoughts with her.
“I was prepared to feel...relieved. Having you know about everything, not
needing to keep secrets from you. But I didn’t expect to feel more than that. I
like
it. It
makes me...happy.” I’d rarely used that wor
d before I met Bella. I shrugged and smiled.
“I’m glad.” Bella returned my smile. It was so hard to read her eyes sometimes. For
a second, I began to worry that the smile wasn’t real, that perhaps it was a kind prelude to
her exit from this bizarre stage.
Bella read my face this time. “You’re still waiting for the running and the
screaming, aren’t you?”
I nodded, a little surprised.
“I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re really not as scary as you think you are. I
don’t find you scary at all, actually
.
”
I
t was a
bald
statement
, overconfident
, and
nothing if
not an invitation to mischief.
“You
really
shouldn’t have said that.” I menaced her with an evil, horror
–
film
chuckle. Then I issued a baby growl and bared my teeth at her as I bent into a hunting
crouc
h, ready to spring.
“You wouldn’t.” She stepped back, shooting fire from her eyes, warning me away.
Warning
me!
Ha!
I leaped at her then, snatching her off her feet and trapping her in the protective
armor of my arms while we soared through the air togethe
r. My black leather sofa slammed
against the wall when we landed on it.
After catching her breath, Bella began struggling to free herself from my “evil
clutches,” but I wouldn’t allow it for at least two reasons. First, I was enjoying our physical
contact
tremendously and, second, she was so soft and pliable, like Play
–
Doh or Silly
Putty, that I couldn’t resist playing with her a little. Gently, and with her tacit
permission

nonresistance

I pressed her knees toward her torso and her calves toward
her thigh
s, forming a little human ball which I
squeezed
against my chest. A new game,
this. I’d call it “The Monster and the Maiden.”
She glared at me, trying to hide her alarm at being trapped with mock anger. I
leered at her, daring her to challenge my fearsome
ness.
“You were saying?” I growled, enjoying the moment.
“That you are a very, very terrifying monster,” Bella conceded.
“Much better.”
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She wriggled in my arms, but I held her firmly. This scene represented such a
triumph over myself that I didn’t want it
to end. Plus, holding her in this way was a
lot
of
fun...
“Um...Can I get up now?”
I just laughed.
At that moment, I heard Alice and Jasper approach.
“Can we come in?” Alice inquired.
Bella tried to squirm away again, but I wasn’t ready to let her go. Inst
ead, I tilted
her upright and set her on my lap in a more customary position. I felt the blood rush to her
face, but there was no reason to be shy here. This was my home. Besides, I was pretty sure
that she didn’t mind being held.
“Go ahead,” I replied to
our visitors, still grinning as they entered.
Alice didn’t hesitate, but moved to the center of the room and flopped onto the
carpet, while Jasper hung back by the door. My sister, of course, wasn’t surprised at all by
our playful shenanigans, but Jasper’s
mind was spinning.
My gawd, how can he hold her so close? Is he losing it? Is she in danger?
Alice recognized Jasper’s tension and decided to tease him and Bella at the same
time. She remarked, “It sounded like you were having Bella for lunch, and we came
to see
if you would share.” She kept a straight face as if nothing could be more natural. Bella
tensed in my arms, her heart racing.
Finally, a little fear!
“Sorry, I don’t believe I have enough to spare,” I refused, my mouth within inches
of Bella’s caro
tid artery and an evil grin plastered on my face. Bella couldn’t see my
expression, so the act was more to scandalize Jasper than anything else...and to show off a
little, if I were being honest.
Of course, one couldn’t fool Jasper for long with false drama.
His shock lasted only
a couple of seconds before he recognized my love, my joy, and, probably, my lust in the air.
He smiled at our joke before speaking. “Actually, Alice says there’s going to be a
real storm tonight, and Emmett wants to play ball. Are yo
u game?”
I loved our family’s baseball games. There weren’t a lot of thunderstorms on the
Olympic Peninsula

more of a constant drizzle

so we didn’t get to play often. Still, I
didn’t want to leave Bella.
“Of course you should bring Bella,” Alice said, rea
ding my expression.
That can’t be a good idea, can it?
Jasper wondered to himself. Jasper, who until
recently was determined to kill Bella to protect Alice from any possible threat of exposure,
was now worried that I might lose control and kill Alice’s ne
w friend. As edgy as Jasper
could be sometimes, he loved Alice to distraction and I loved him for that. Still, it was fun
to tease him.
“Do you want to go?” I asked Bella, unable to hide my enthusiasm. I wouldn’t go if
she didn’t want to join us.
“Sure,” s
he said immediately. “Um, where are we going?”
“We have to wait for thunder to play ball

you’ll see why,” I told her.
“Will I need an umbrella?”
That struck all the vampires as quaintly amusing, since we were impervious to the
rain.
“Will she?” Jasper as
ked Alice.
“No,” Alice replied. “The storm will hit over town. It should be dry enough in the
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clearing.”
“Good, then.” Jasper was onboard now and a happy anticipation settled over all of
us.
We’ll leave you two alone, now that we’ve got that settled. Have
fun!
Alice directed
her thoughts at me. Aloud, she said, “Let’s go see if Carlisle will come.” She jumped up
and pulled Jasper along.
“Like you don’t know.” Jasper read the ruse and pulled the bedroom door shut
discreetly behind him.
“What will we be playi
ng?” Bella inquired, suddenly nervous.
“
You
will be watching. We will be playing baseball.” I felt her relax.
Not a sports
fan
, I remembered from the hike.
“Vampires like baseball?” Bella rolled her eyes, disbelieving
“It’s the American pastime,” I intone
d solemnly.
تم الفصل

[مورا اسامة]

الفصل الثامن عشر



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18. THE GAME
“So what happens now?” Bella inquired.
“We take you and your truck home, though at the moment, I’m quite content going
nowhere at all.” I bent my head to Bella’s hair and inhaled her lovely floral scent.
“Mmmm....”
Still sitting on my lap, Bella turned her face toward mine and looked into my eyes.
No doubt they were “dazzling,” if feeling blissful had anything to do with it.
“So...,” she started, then lost her train of thought.
“Yes?” I prompted. Bella’s deep eyes wid
ened and her heartbeat quickened. I
pulled her hair back from her right ear and touched my lips to her jaw just below it.
“... Emmett will be there. Will Rosalie and Esme come too?”
“Rosalie will play. Esme will come if Carlisle can get away from work.” I s
poke
against Bella’s warm skin, sliding my lips down her jaw to her chin. She began to pant
invitingly. It was profoundly satisfying

and more than a little exciting

to observe the
effect of my touch on the one I loved. I brushed my lips across the bow of h
er lower lip and
her left arm rose toward my neck. I caught it in mid
-
air and held it to my waist. Her other
arm was trapped against my body. If I could keep her still, my predatory instinct was less
likely to be triggered, it seemed.
Intimate contact wit
h Bella was dangerous territory, I knew, but after more than
twenty
-
four hours together, I had become less sensitive to the scent of her blood. I felt
strong enough to experiment and Bella seemed willing.
I placed my left hand at the back of her waist and
stretched my fingers to rest on the
curve of her left hip bone. I squeezed her waist gently and felt her soft flesh give beneath
the pressure. She began gulping air.
“Breathe slowly, Bella, slowly Bella, slowly,” I said softly and rhythmically, like a
ma
ntra, my lips moving down the side of her throat and across her left collar bone. I didn’t
want her to faint again, or hyperventilate, but I loved the way her flushed skin pulsed
against my lips. The burn in my throat was fierce, breathing as I was against
her skin, but it
was offset by intense new pleasures.
I stroked her ribs with my fingertips, feeling each ridge down the left side of her
back, across her waist, and up the right side. She shuddered, then, as I ran my middle finger
down her spine from he
r neck to her waist.
“Slowly, Bella, slowly,” I whispered, my cool hand against the back of her neck;
my lips touching the hollow at the front.
I drew my lips up her neck and along her jawline before pressing them gently
against hers, which parted softly
in response. I inhaled her sweet breath, then moved
slightly away and became still to let my excitement subside. Bella’s heart was knocking
wildly inside her chest, but she froze when I did and gradually her panting eased. When it
had, I brushed my lower l
ip slowly across her upper lip, then pressed my lips to hers once
more. Her breathing quickened again. I became still, my lips touching hers, inhaling her
breath, slowly in, slowly out. When her panting subsided, I leaned back and gazed at her
face. Flushe
d and beautiful, she opened her eyes. I held her against my chest and stroked
her hair.
H
er heartbeat
gradually
returned to somewhere near normal.
“Are you all right?” I murmured into her hair.
“Yes, I...I think so,” she replied in a raspy voice. “Your brea
th is so...sweet...so
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intoxicating.”
As is the scent of your blood
. Alice’s teasing had put evil thoughts in my head
again. If Bella’s fragrance w
as
any indication, and I was sure that it was, her flavor would
be delicious beyond anything I could imagine. Sa
dly, we weren’t made to sample
blood

once we’d tasted it, the frenzy began. I was unable to imagine being strong enough
to stop at that point. But of course, it could be done

Carlisle had done it four times.
It occurred to me that forty
-
eight hours ago, I
could not have indulged these
forbidden thoughts without instigating a crisis. Even now, my desiccated, flaming throat
was telling me it was time to remove myself from temptation. I had learned something new,
though...with Bella contained on my lap, unable
to make any sudden movements, my
hunting instinct was not engaged. Perhaps it was not a necessary condition, but it was
someplace to start.
“Perhaps we should go,” I said. My words rumbled in my chest.
“Mmm hmm,” Bella agreed.
I cradled her in my arms and
stood up. She rested her face on my chest and pressed
her hand against my silent heart. I held her close for a few moments, then gently kissed her
forehead and set her on her feet. When her legs wobbled, I wrapped my arm around her
waist and we walked sid
e
-
by
-
side through the hallway and down the staircase.
***
According to Alice, we had several hours before the thunderstorm would arrive. It started
drizzling in Forks just as I turned Bella’s truck onto her street. I’d left my thoughts back in
my bedroom
or I would have caught it sooner.
Billy and Jacob Black were at Charlie’s door, their car parked in the driveway.
They were not speaking aloud, but I caught Billy’s intention.
“Damn interfering aborigines,” I muttered, too softly for Bella to hear.
Billy was wondering how he could alert Charlie to the dangerous nature of the
Cullen clan, and of me in particular, without breaking the treaty or incurring Charlie’s
wrath. He had angered Charlie once before by disparaging our family.
“This is crossing t
he line.” I was very angry, but controlled.
“He came to warn Charlie?” Bella asked.
I nodded. Billy and I stared
each other d
own as I pulled the truck to the curb. I knew
Charlie had great respect for my father and I was hoping that that would give me some
positive currency with Charlie as well. The last thing I needed, besides meddling
Quileutes, was the Chief of Police watching my every move.
“Let me deal with this,”
Bella offered, no doubt sensing my fury.
I considered it for a second before assenting. “
That’s probably best. Be careful,
though. The child has no idea.” I didn’t want to lose my temper in my recently heightened
emotional state. And I didn’t want to give them an excuse to break the treaty.
Bella objected. “Jacob is not that much younger than
I am.”
“Oh, I know.”
Psychological warfare.
I grinned. I could hear Jacob’s thoughts too
and they were all about Bella. I didn’t appreciate his excessive interest, or as I liked to think
of it, his “adolescent crush.” He did have the decency to be embarras
sed by his father’s
behavior, though.
Bella sighed.
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“Get them inside so I can leave. I’ll be back around dusk.”
“Do you want my truck?”
I rolled my eyes. “I could
walk
home faster than this truck moves.”
“You don’t have to leave.” Bella sounded forlorn. I
didn’t want her to feel sad, but
knowing she would miss me lifted my spirits. I smiled.
“Actually, I do. After you get rid of them”

I indicated the unwelcome
guests

”you still have to prepare Charlie to meet your new boyfriend.” I smiled with glee.
“Thank
s a lot,” Bella groaned.
I didn’t let her lack of enthusiasm dampen mine. This was a human experience I’d
never had and for Bella to declare me to her father...well...I became exuberant thinking
about it. I flashed her my sideways smile

the lopsided grin that
always seemed to cheer
her up.
“I’ll be back soon,” I assured her.
I looked to see if Billy was still staring at us. He was, so with impish delight, I bent
my lips to Bella’s throat and kissed her just under her jaw line. I might have kissed her
there if
Billy hadn’t been watching, but it was even more satisfying that he was. My lovely
Bella’s heart leaped and, once again, I marveled at the magic of love and the miracle of
desire. I saw her glance toward the porch and my eyes followed hers. The shock on Bi
lly’s
face was highly amusing, as was the death grip he held on the armrests of his wheelchair.
“
Soon,
” Bella reiterated, as she exited the truck and rushed through the drizzle to
the porch.
“Hey, Billy. Hi, Jacob. Charlie’s gone for the day

I hope you hav
en’t been
waiting long.” Bella sounded excessively cheerful.
“Not long,” Billy repl
ied
. “I just wanted to bring this up.” He indicated a bag in his
lap.
“Thanks. Why don’t you come in for a minute and dry off?” Bella suggested. She
motioned for them to pre
cede her through the front door, then turned and met my eyes. I
wished her luck, but knew she would handle the situation better than me. I had no patience
for Billy’s meddling or Jacob’s pining. Jacob, especially, had a noisy mind. He had
interrogated Bell
a about me the last time he was here
,
and he was disappointed to see me
with her again.
Never mind. You’ve got other things to do,
I reminded myself. As soon as the front
door closed behind Bella, I started running for home.
When I arrived, Emmett was sit
ting in front of the big, flat
-
screen television,
watching Sunday sports.
“Hey, Bro,” he greeted me. “You’re coming to play, right?”
“Yes. May I borrow your Jeep to drive Bella to the end of the road?”
“Sure, no problem. The keys are in it. I guess if
Bella is coming to the game, her
visit today didn’t freak her out too much.”
“She is remarkably resilient. How’s Rosalie?”
Ah, same
-
same. There’s definitely more to it than being exposed. It seems personal
almost, but I don’t see what Bella’s ever done to
her.
“Change is hard.”
Yeah, I guess. Later.
He turned back to his game.
Alice poked her head around the partial living room wall to greet me. She was at the
computer, playing with a new fashion design program Esme had bought for her.
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“Hi Edward! It was
fun having Bella here today,” she chirped. “I’m designing some
new clothes for her. She really needs help with her wardrobe.”
“Okay, Alice, but you might want to break it to her slowly.”
Jasper stepped out from behind Alice
.
“Are you headed upstairs?”
“Yes
, I need to make some preparations for the ride up the mountain.”
“Mind if I join you for a bit?”
“No, not at all.”
I led the way upstairs and Jasper followed me to my room. “Thanks for giving Bella
space, Jasper.”
Sure. It’s for the best, anyway. I just d
on’t understand how you do it. I could have
sworn she was a goner when we came to your room.
“Was Alice worried? Is that why you two showed up when you did?” I asked,
alarmed. That would certainly
be cause for concern.
Surprisingly, no. She got a kick out
of seeing you two together, though. But
seriously, Edward, do you have any advice for me?
“I don’t know, Jasper. Mine is something of a special case because I am highly
motivated to keep Bella safe. It’s not easy, but it gets easier the more I’m around her
and,
especially, the more
continuously
I’m around her. A certain amount of desensitization
occurs. But everybody’s different, as you know. I’m not convinced that pushing yourself to
your limit is the right approach for you. None of us have had anything li
ke your history and
who’s to say that that hasn’t altered your makeup to a certain degree? I hate to see you push
yourself so hard. It’s just not necessary.”
Perhaps. I keep thinking there’s a trick or something that I’m missing.
“Not that I know of. The
early days are challenging. I’ve gotten more confident
with time. You know, it took Carlisle two hundred years to develop the tolerance he has
now and he’s barely even tasted human blood. He was also motivated

by his respect for
humanity and his dedication
to medicine.” I thought about that point for a second and came
to a new conclusion.
“Perhaps if there is a ‘trick,’ it’s that. You have to have a good reason for trying at
all. Having a conscience isn’t enough. That’s a negative incentive

avoiding depres
sion
and self
-
loathing. You also need a positive incentive, I think. Maybe for you, it’s Alice.”
Jasper was standing rigidly upright, a habit he’d developed as a soldier. He had
cupped his chin in his hand as he contemplated my words. He looked like a stan
ding
version of Rodin’s “The Thinker.” We all resembled statues in our motionless state

we
made good artists’ models.
That makes a certain amount of sense,
Jasper eventually responded.
I hate having
to hunt more than the rest of you
,
though. It galls me to
be so weak.
“I understand how you feel, Jasper. I got a dose of that after meeting Bella. None of
us cares, though, except you. Maybe your first effort should be to conquer your own head.
I’m not convinced that pushing the limits of your tolerance will ma
ke you more tolerant. It
might just be a question of time. If that’s true, then there’s no point in suffering so much.
It’s not worth it.”
Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I’ll consider your suggestions.
“Altering one’s natural tendencies is har
d, no doubt about it.”
Jasper stared at my face for a few seconds, thinking about how much I was
changing, then gave me a curt soldier’s nod and disappeared. I hoped the talk would help. I
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just wanted him to stay fed. The less thirsty he was, the less of a
danger he would pose to
Bella. I was dangerous enough all by myself.
I changed my clothes in preparation for the game, then went looking for Esme. I
knew my mother wanted to see me

I could hear her eager thoughts if I listened. I made a
point of seeking h
er out when I was home, as I had been spending most of my time away
lately. Esme had dreamed of this day for decades, when I would bring the love of my life
home to meet her. I also knew she was concerned about my future, given that my love
happened to be
human.
I headed to her office where she sat sketching. In the same instant she saw me, her
arms were around me in a bear hug, warm and heartfelt.
“Oh Edward, I’m so happy for you! Bella’s a lovely girl! What did she think of us?
She was so brave to visit.”
“You’d have to know Bella to understand this, Mom, but she wasn’t afraid of the
family...she was afraid the family might not like her.” Esme stepped back and looked at my
face in disbelief.
“She wasn’t afraid to visit the Cullen home?”
“No, not at all, b
ut she was quite nervous about making a good impression.”
Esme laughed her melodious laugh.
“She did have a worried moment when Alice and Jasper came upstairs to eat her.” I
laughed, remembering the shocked look on Bella’s face.
“Edward, you kids shouldn’
t tease her that way! She won’t want to come back!”
“I think it was a one
-
time joke. She won’t fall for it again, I’m sure. She’s quick that
way.” I laughed once more, then added, “She’s coming to the baseball game.”
“Oh, good,” Esme enthused. “I’ll have a
chance to get to know her a little better.
Did you take her home already?”
“Yes, I’m going to formally introduce myself to her father when I pick her up.”
Esme switched to “privacy mode.”
So, I take it that Bella’s father doesn’t know
you’ve been spending
nights in his home.
“No. Actually, Bella didn’t even know until yesterday.”
Don’t you think that’s a little risky?
“There’s not much risk of Charlie seeing me when I shouldn’t be seen, but I don’t
like courting Bella behind the p
olice
c
hief’s back. That’
s the point of introducing myself.
I’m hoping he’ll allow me legitimate entry to his home after school and in the evenings.
He’s quite protective of Bella. We have that in common.”
Well, don’t be a pest. And I hope you’ll bring Bella over here sometimes to
o. Let me
know if you plan to and we’ll make sure to have food on hand for her
.
“Thank you. It might be a while. Rosalie’s not happy about it
,
and I don’t want her
to hurt Bella’s feelings.”
We’ll work on Rose. Her distress is understandable.
Esme
pondered
for a moment.
You know,
Edward,
I’m
very
proud of you. You are becoming so like your father.
“I’m afraid I’ll never be as selfless as Carlisle. It’s dangerous for Bella to be with
me. I know I should leave her to live her human life in peace, but I can’t
help myself. I love
her.”
I know,
son
. And it’s obvious that she loves you too. As long as you’re honest with
her and she accepts you, then perhaps it’s not up to you alone to decide. I don’t believe that
you will hurt Bella

you’re much too good for that.
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“I can’t be one hundred percent sure that I won’t. Even if I can control my thirst, I
could hurt her so easily just by accident. I have to concentrate all the time to be gentle
enough. On top of that, do you know how many ways there are for a human to die?
It’s
mind boggling.”
Do you think you might change her?
she asked cautiously.
“No! I won’t steal her life and condemn her to our soulless existence!” I
snapped
,
then
was instantly remorseful
at my flare of temper. B
ut why did everyone assume that was
an a
cceptable solution
?
Well, Edward, I have faith in you. And whatever you decide to do, we’ll stand by
you.
“I know, Mom, thank you. I’d better go. I’ve got a Chief of Police to charm.” I
smiled to
indicate
there were no hard feelings.
“And I’m sure that you
will
.
” I left her to her architecture and design books and
headed downstairs. Time to face Rosalie.
“See you all at the game.” I tossed the words out as I exited
for
the garage, where
Rosalie would be working off some steam. She knew it was me and didn’t
bother removing
her head from under the hood of her car as I entered.
“Hey, Rose,” I greeted her.
Bite me
.
I
proceeded with
my speech, undeterred by her anger. “Rosalie, I understand that
you don’t like Bella with me and I can accept that. What I can’t accept, however, is your
actively being cruel to her or frightening her. She’s going to be around here sometimes and
if you mu
st be rude, I’m asking, as a favor to me, that you at least keep your mean words,
your hisses and growls, and your terrifying glares to yourself. Please. I’m not even asking
that you be actively nice, as that appears to be out of the question. I’ve made a
point of not
telling anyone
why
you dislike her so much
,
and I promise to keep that information to
myself if you will try to comply with my request.”
She snarled from under the hood, but didn’t hurl any words

or wrenches

at me.
I could hear her mind churn
ing in the background, but I tried to block it out.
“Bella will be at the baseball game.” Rosalie’s lack of response was the best I could
hope for. If she were still raging as she had been, she couldn’t have kept her mouth (or her
mind) quiet. To be sure,
her mind wasn’t silent. ...
not even pretty...won’t keep me
away...won’t end well...
I left it at that. As I backed the Jeep out of the garage, I reversed a little too
aggressively, spinning the tires. Her
ungenerous
thoughts followed me down the drive as I
left
.
***
The rain was pelting down when I pulled up outside Charlie’s house. Emmett’s Jeep was an
impressive vehicle, with oversized tires, fog lights, light guards, and a roll bar. I drove it
rarely, as I preferred speed to climbing, but it would get Bella a
nd I halfway up to the
baseball clearing and save her the long ride on my back.
I caught Charlie’s voice inside the house, “You must really like this guy.” So she
had
told Charlie about me.
Good.
I turned off the ignition.
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As usual, though I could hear h
im speaking, it was difficult to read Charlie’s mind.
I couldn’t get many words, but it felt like his hackles were up. Bella had surprised him with
her news. Charlie was both suspicious and protective, but he seemed like a fair man. I
thought he’d give me
a chance.
I rang the doorbell
,
and he was right there waiting for me. He opened the door,
using his body to block the doorway. I recognized the posturing of an “alpha” male meant
to intimidate an upstart youngster, but I maintained a respectful smile. It w
as time for me to
put away the century
-
old, human predator that I was, and play the teenage suitor. It was
about time I got the chance!
“Come on in, Edward.” Charlie got my name right the first time. Bella didn’t
realize he’d been tormenting her for his ow
n amusement when he kept referring to me as
“Edwin.” It was funny. I liked him already.
“Thanks, Chief Swan.”
“Go ahead and call me Charlie. Here, I’ll take your jacket.”
“Thanks, sir.”
“Have a seat there, Edward.” He meant for me to sit on the couch, but
I took the
only chair instead, so he couldn’t face Bella and me together like an interrogator. Now
Bella had to sit beside him on the couch, of course. She scowled at me and I winked back.
“So I hear you’re getting my girl to watch baseball.”
“Yes, sir,
that’s the plan.”
“Well, more power to you, I guess.” Charlie laughed at a remembered image of
Bella, the one summer she’d tried to play softball. It was funny, I had to admit, and I
grinned
.
Bella was annoyed. “Okay, enough humor at my expense. Let’s go.”
Charlie and I
got up to follow her to the front door.
“Not too late, Bell.”
“Don’t worry, Charlie, I’ll have her home early,” I told him.
“You take care of my girl, all right?”
It’s what I lived for, ac
tually. Bella, who hated being
taken care of, groane
d in
protest.
“She’ll be safe with me, I promise, sir.” I meant it. Bella made us both laugh again
by stomping out.
When Charlie spotted Emmett’s Jeep parked in front of the house, he whistled,
either in appreciation or uneasiness, I wasn’t sure which. He
was having second thoughts
about letting Bella go, but he said only, “Wear your seat belts.” Charlie didn’t know me
yet, but I would be looking out for Bella’s welfare at least as carefully as he would have
himself.
Bella had no hope of climbing into the
Jeep without damaging herself, so I hoisted
her in with one hand, hiding the maneuver from Charlie with my body.
“What’s all this?” Bella was fumbling with the safety harness when I got behind the
wheel.
“It’s an off
-
roading harness.”
“Uh
-
oh,” she replied.
She wasn’t going to figure out the buckles any time soon, so I leaned over to help. I
became
distracted by the long line of her neck and the way her open
-
necked shirt exposed
her jutting collarbones. Except for lifting her into the truck
, I hadn’t touched Bella for
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sixty
-
seven
-
and
-
a
-
quarter minutes and I couldn’t resist. It was raining too hard for
Charlie’s eyes to see our movements inside the Jeep. So when I ran my fingers along her
jawline, down her throat, and across her collarbones,
each side separately, I was the only
one who knew her heart was galloping and her breath was shallow and fast.
I leaned close to taste her enticing breath and, suddenly, my throat blazed with fire.
I could hear her blood rushing beneath her rosy skin
,
and
I felt a jolt of electricity surge
through me and settle in my groin.
Ah!
The burning above, the tingling heat below

it
proved
almost overwhelming. I withdrew my hands and clutched the steering wheel to get
a grip on myself. I
must
be more cautious.
A min
ute later, I turned the key and started the engine. Charlie closed the front
door
,
and Bella broke the silence.
“This is a...um...
big
Jeep you have.”
The better to haul you away and ravish you, my dear,
I thought, feeling like the
wolf in “Little Red Riding H
ood
.
”
“It’s Emmett’s. I didn’t think you’d want to run the whole way.”
“Where do you keep this thing?”
“We remodeled one of the outbuildings into a garage.”
“Aren’t you going to put on your seat belt?” Bella inquired.
I raised both eyebrows at her,
surprised she still had to ask such questions.
Then her mind caught up with my previous comment.
“Run the
whole
way? As in, we’re still going to run part of the way?” Her voice
became shrill with stress.
“You’re not going to run.” I smiled, but I knew thi
s was going to be a problem.
“
I’m
going to be sick.”
“Keep your eyes closed, you’ll be fine.”
She was biting her lip now, a sign of anxiety. I leaned over and kissed the top of her
head. The fragrance of her damp hair seared my throat and sent another jolt
of electricity
through my body.
“Ooohhhhh...” A low, guttural moan escaped me.
Bella looked at me, a question on her face.
“You smell so good in the rain,” I gasped.
“In a good way or in a bad way?” she asked
warily
.
“Both, always both.” I exhaled
hard to
relea
se
some of the tension. The short
separation from her followed by the closeness of th
e
vehicle was proving a challenge. I
nee
ded to focus on something else.
Fortunately, four
-
wheeling provided a distraction. I
headed toward the mountains
and turned on
to the abandoned logging road that would take us upward for several miles.
T
he road, barely more than a trail,
really, was
quite rough. I
had to
dr
i
ve slowly to avoid
bouncing Bella’s brain against her skull.
When we
reached
the end of the road deep in th
e ancient forest, the rain had slowed
to a drizzle. Alice was right, of course, that the sky was clear higher up the mountain.
Bella’s face registered
distress.
“Sorry, Bella, we have to go on foot from here.”
“You know what? I’ll just wait here.” She see
med not to be kidding.
“What happened to all your courage? You were extraordinary this morning.”
“I haven’t forgotten the last time yet.”
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I jumped f
rom
the truck, opened her door, and started unbuckling the harness. I
couldn’t let my impulsive trip through the forest
the previous
day ruin her for running with
me forever.
“I’ll get those, you go on ahead,” she
offered
.
“Hmmm...it seems I’m going to have to
tamper with your memory.”
When all else
fails, try the magical monster cure.
I lifted her out of the Jeep and shut the door.
“Tamper with my memory?” Bella looked at me, half
-
believing.
“Something like that.”
I leaned over her with my hands on the Jeep

on
e on either side of her head

and
stared into her eyes. As I moved closer, she pressed her body flatter against the vehicle.
When my face was only inches from hers, I
said
softly
,
“Now what exactly are you
worrying about?”
“Well, um, hitting a tree...and...dyi
ng. And then getting sick,” she stuttered.
I suppressed my smile and leaned forward to touch my lips to the base of her throat.
“Are you still worried now?” I murmured, my lips moving against her skin.
“Yes.” She struggled to focus. “About hitting trees an
d getting sick.” Her voice was
breathy.
I brushed my nose up her throat and onto her chin, exhaling as I went.
“And now?” I asked, speaking the words against her jaw.
“Trees,” she panted. “Motion sickness.”
I raised my face and pressed my lips against her
eyelids, one at a time.
“Bella, you don’t really think I would hit a tree, do you?”
“No, but
I
might.” She was losing her will to argue.
I
trailed kisses
slowly
down her cheek, stopping at the corner of her mouth.
“Would I let a tree hurt you?” My lips b
rushed her lower lip. I felt her body tremble
and resisted the urge to press myself against her from stem to stern.
“No,” she whispered, emptied of words.
“You see,” I
said
with my lips touching hers, “there’s nothing to be afraid of, is
there?”
“No
.
”
S
he
sighed
in
surrender.
With a sharp intake of breath, I took her face between my hands and kissed her with
more passion than was absolutely safe. I didn’t want to stop. And in my aroused state, I
neglected
to
heed the vow I’d made less than an hour before
.
B
ella responded eagerly to my kiss, twining her hands through my hair, pulling me
toward her, and pressing her entire body into mine, point to point to point. Her lips parted,
releasing her breath across my face
,
and I felt a powerful urge to devour her mou
th, her
jaw, her throat...
In a split second of lucidity, I batt
led for self
-
control, uncertain which side of my
nature would win.
But s
omehow, from somewhere, I summoned enough strength to
preempt disaster. I grasped her hands and released their grip on me,
then lurched backward,
gasping.
“Damn it, Bella! You’ll be the death of me, I swear you will.”
Because I
will
die if I
kill you.
“You’re indestructible,” Bella gulped.
“I might have believed that before I met
you.