Spiral Static

When I was younger, around thirteen or fourteen, I’d found some of Renée’s romance novels hidden at the back of the bookshelf in our house in Phoenix. I’d seen the covers of such books before in the stores, with impossibly beautiful people sprawled out across the front, looking like they were in pain or drugged or something. I considered the whole genre beneath me ... but that didn’t mean I wasn’t curious about them. So I read a few. Skimmed, more like, to the “interesting parts” as I called them.

Despite my displeasure with the flowery language and strangely obscene metaphors the authors employed to describe sexual organs, I had learned what little I knew about sex from those books. I never touched romance novels again after I stowed them back in their hiding place, preferring Jane Austen or L. M. Montgomery to anything bearing Fabio on the front cover, but the images captured in those worn pages were forever burned in my mind.

Renée and Charlie were too embarrassed to really talk to me about what happened during sex ... not that I would ever want them to. It was humiliating enough when they pleaded with me over the importance of abstinence and being safe if it did happen. My sex-ed class was pretty much the same, offering little insight besides inane pop quizzes about STDs. There never been anyone else I really wanted to ask about the logistics of the act. I hadn’t even been quite sure what an orgasm really was until ... well, until about five minutes ago. Even talking about it with Alice or Esme would have been mortifying, proof of my youth and inexperience. Sex was a private thing to me, like it was supposed to be. Even letting Edward shine a little light into that particular corner in my mind had yielded unexpected results.

So I put my face in my hands, content to hide from my husband in a hotel bathroom for a few moments while I tried to understand what had just happened. He gave me my space, always good about that when I really needed it. But it was strange – part of me kept expecting him to barge into the room to see if I was okay. It almost started to bother me when he stayed away and respected my privacy. I felt stupid and childish for hiding from him while wanting him at the same time, like a child who had run away from a guardian just to see if they would get worried and come find them.

What Edward had done in the other room ... it hadn’t been a bad experience. Just surprising. Maybe a little life-changing. I looked up at my face in the mirror, now scrubbed free of my wedding day makeup. I looked twelve-years-old. Wasn’t I supposed to look older now? Or did that only happen after he’d...

Good grief, there was going to be more. A lot more.

The “tip of the iceberg” metaphor didn’t work in this instance. More like I’d just encountered one enormous iceberg, been steamrolled by it, only to realize there were twenty more of them lined up, ready to strike. It wasn’t like me to take the coward’s road, though. Sure I might avoid uncomfortable situations at all costs, but when it really came down to it, I knew I could face a difficult circumstance head-on if I had to. Just because I was cautious didn’t make me a coward.

I now had a small picture of what I was to expect from being intimate with Edward. That was good. It gave me a place to start from – a place to orient myself. Now all that was left for me to do was to trust him enough to ease me through the rest.

So I sat there for a few minutes and fortified myself. I was Bella Swan ... no, Bella Cullen now. I’d faced runaway vans on ice, trackers, werewolves, the Volturi, and Charlie’s cooking. I could handle a single vampire’s advances, however shockingly ardent they might be.

Biting my lip, I glanced at the forgotten wedding present that still lay in a box on the bathroom counter, peeking out from a bed of pearlescent tissue paper.

***

He was at the door of the bathroom when I finally opened it. Of course. My heart lurched when I saw him.

His hand was resting flat against the wood, as if he was trying to reach out and comfort me through the door while I struggled with my thoughts inside. I leaned against the door jam, arms crossed protectively over my chest. Our bodies weren’t touching, but we were so close that he could probably feel runaway strands of my hair brushing against his face.

He was alert, holding his body as still as dead air, not breathing, golden eyes searching mine for the answers to the silent questions he posed. Tell me what you’re thinking, Bella, he seemed to beg. But he didn’t say a single word. He waited until I was ready – so utterly motionless I almost forgot he was an animated being.

Gazing into those intense eyes, I felt a sudden chill. A twinge of déjà vu. It was like our first days together all over again. The stares, the uncertainty, the tension building until I thought I was going to go mad. It made sense, in a way. When we first met, he was trying to restrain himself from killing me. I think he must have been going through much the same mental frustration now that a new temptation was before him. It was like the careful restraint of his control had been compromised somehow, and the creature before me was someone I barely knew. It was ... exciting.

“You didn’t hurt me,” I told him, answering his silent question. I had thought that much had been obvious, but apparently not.

He maintained that perfect stillness for a few moments longer, as if repeating my words in his head a few times to fully understand them. Then, reluctant as it seemed, he blinked and relaxed. “I thought for a second...”

I shrugged one shoulder, color staining my cheeks as I looked timidly up at him. “You thought wrong.” I reach out to put my palm flat against his chest, reestablishing our connection. We both let some of the tension seep out of our bodies. “How could you have hurt me? You barely touched me.” Which, come to think of it, was part of the reason I had been so freaked out in the first place.

He considered that for a moment. “But I did frighten you.” His fingertips brushed my cheek lightly as he said it. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I admitted, then added, “a little.”

His whole demeanor softened – it’s such a strange thing to witness a marble statue melting before your eyes. I didn’t resist when he gathered me close, holding the back of my head like I was something precious.

There ... that was what I needed.

The moment I allowed myself to relax in his arms, all the fear and uncertainly faded away and was forgotten. I was pleased, and buried a smile into his chest, relieved that I didn’t harbor any embarrassment even though he’d now seen me at my most vulnerable state. There was no shame here. Nothing to be self-conscious about.

“We’ll stop, then,” he told me. If there was any regret or disappointment in his voice, I didn’t hear it. He only sounded relieved. “Maybe this was for the best, Bella. You needed to understand why.”

My smile deepened. Dearest Mr. Darcy was laboring under a misapprehension. “Edward?” I mumbled against his chest.

“Hmm?”

I lifted my head up, the tip of my nose brushing his chin before I locked eyes with him. “I got over it.”

He hesitated. “Got over what?” he asked slowly, eyes narrowing.

I pushed away from him by means of reply, and let him get a good look at me ... all of me. He’d been staring so intently at my face, I don’t think he’d noticed anything different about my appearance.

“Oh,” he said finally. “Oh ... Bella.”

I was wearing Alice’s present.

It was a floor-length satin gown so regrettably thin that the ivory fabric was easily see-through in the wrong light. The material gathered together at the waistline, pulled into place by a delicate ribbon that tied in the back, and the bodice exploded from there into a detailed pattern of lace and complicated beadwork. It was softly feminine. Innocent without sacrificing sexiness.

It was also, in a word, ridiculous. But that was just my opinion. Like the whole wedding day itself, however, I realized this wasn’t really about me.

Alice always did seem to know better, at least in terms of what Edward would want. She’d probably known that I would eventually wear the gown for him, even given my initial resistance, and I didn’t even want to think about what else she had foreseen. Had it not been for her superior ability to know what would look good on me, I would have never looked twice at the gown. It was bordering on the absurd, like it should be adorning a Disney princess or at least someone with better curves.

But seeing Edward’s reaction – eyes full of clear wonder – well, it wouldn’t kill me to let him look at me in something pretty. Just this once.

His fingers reached out hesitantly, as if asking for permission, and he ran the tips of them down the length of my bare arms. He didn’t say anything as he stepped closer. Didn’t compliment the outfit or tell me what he was thinking. He didn’t have to. It was all written there on his face, out in the open for me to read. Still barely touching, he left a whisper soft kiss on my brow, then cupped my cheek to do the same to my lips. My body began to feel very hot, and a strangely familiar sensation tugged at the base of my stomach.

It was a shame to break the silence, but if I didn’t, he was likely to stand there all night just looking at me. “I want to do this, Edward,” I said in a hushed voice, trying to sound as if I meant it. I did mean it, but it was embarrassing trying to make that fact clear to him. “I’m ready. Just ... can we maybe take it a little slower this time? That was ... intense.”

Either he could tell from the look on my face that I wasn’t going to listen if he quarreled with me, or maybe he just really, really loved the gown. But for once in his entire existence, Edward Cullen did not argue with me.

He picked me up – not in the typical Rhett-toting-Scarlett-up-the-stairs sort of way. Instead, he stooped and encircled his arms around my thighs, just under my bottom. He lifted me effortlessly, our chests pressed together, eyes locked, teasing lips open against each other but not kissing. When his knees hit the edge of the bed, he eased me down carefully onto my back and moved over me.

“Remind me to thank Alice,” he whispered against my mouth.

“I was about to say the same thing."

At least those are the words I meant to speak. I can’t say for certain if I managed it or not. The next few moments were intense. As we kissed, he explored my body through the fabric of the gown, and for once, he let me explore his, too. I slipped my hands beneath his undershirt, taking a moment to fortify my nerve before I peeled it off of him. Muscles moved and tensed under my fingers, unyielding and smoother than stone.

The smell of roses surprised me. It was only then that I noticed the bed was covered in petals. I’d barely looked at the room before thanks to the distractions at hand. The gesture seemed silly, but at the same time, it pleased me. He was really trying so hard to make this special for me. He never wanted me to miss out on one little detail, however small.

It was difficult to reach all of him from this angle. His body had me all but pinned to the bed under his unyielding weight. I urged him silently to roll over so that we were side-by-side, and he must have complied because I never would have managed it with my own strength. He was easier to touch this way, and I acquainted myself with his chest and the hard peaks and valleys of his stomach, so different from the softness of my own. Again, I moved to change positions, feeling more excited and carefree than I had in my entire life.

The general idea was to be sexy. Unfortunately, I had little practice at being a seductress, and the few times I had tried to seduce the vampire before me, he’d turned me down flat. I was a novice. More than that, I was a klutzy novice.

The move had looked good in my head; I would go up on my knees and cast one leg over his body so that I had him straddled, then proceed with the kissing and happy-making.

Instead, I misjudged the distance to the edge of the bed. My knee encountered nothing but air when it tried to set it back down on the mattress. And of course, I flipped head over heels and off the bed in a flurry of satin and curses.

Edward peered over the side of the bed, a laughing smile spreading across his face. “Bella?”

“Ow... ” I moaned from the floor, though I wasn’t really hurt. Only my pride was smarting. I looked up at him, mortified. “You could have caught me.”

He slipped from the bed to join me on the floor, quicker than my eyes could follow, and I shivered as his breath fanned my face. “Sorry, love. I was a bit preoccupied.”

I scowled. He was still laughing, more and more with every moment that passed, making little effort to keep it in. I pushed him away when he tried to kiss me ... or attempted to anyway. It was like pushing against a skyscraper. “Stop laughing at me.”

“Oh, Bella. I’m not laughing at you.”

But he was. His grin was huge, eyes dancing at me. It was infectious, and even I found myself smiling. “Liar,” I whispered, but my anger and embarrassment were both gone.

He tangled his fingers in the hair behind my neck and brought me in for a kiss. His lips were still curled into my favorite crooked smile as he touched them to mine again and again in a rain of soft kisses. “I’m not laughing at you,” he repeated, each word whispered between a kiss. “I’m adoring you.”

That got me a little giddy.

I reached for him, but he got serious again, very suddenly. He took hold of my wrists so that I couldn’t touch him. “Promise me something first, Bella.”

“Anything.”

“We can try this. But if I start to hurt you, I need you to tell me. I can’t read your mind, and I might be ... distracted.” I’m not sure how he did it, but he made the word seem so ridiculously sensual when he said it. I was sure he could feel the heat burning off of my cheeks. “Promise me.”

I chewed on my bottom lip. “I’m a virgin, Edward. Isn’t it supposed to hurt? It’s like a rite of passage or something.”

“It might,” he admitted. “There are some things I can do to help. But I want to know anyway.”

I tried bargaining. “I promise to tell you if it’s too much.”

“Hmmm. Let’s just hope I’m too far gone by then.” Given what I had experienced in his arms earlier that evening, I could understand his dilemma.

He let go of my wrist – just one of them – and his hand went around behind me, fingers finding the bow at the back of my gown. He tugged at it, and it unraveled obediently. The gown loosened on my body.

My eyes widened. Oh, crap. I’d forgotten about this part.

“C-Can we turn the lights off?” I stammered, probably sounding like an enormous spaz.

His impish smile widened. “Nervous?”

I blushed impossibly deeper as he guided one of the thin straps off of my shoulder, running the pad of his thumb over my collarbone as he did so.

“No.” A pathetic lie.

Chuckling, he lowered himself to my throat, again so quickly that I had to resist the urge to cry out. There he pressed his lips to my pulse while ever so casually slipping the other strap off of my shoulder. The combination of the lightning fast movements then slow, slow ministrations was going to give me a heart attack. He pulled me to my feet then, and the gown sort of just slipped off of me and fell into a puddle on the ground. I hadn’t really thought to put on anything underneath it, a fact I instantly came to regret.

He looked me up and down quite frankly, eyes hazy with want, lips parted in a palpable look of gratification, and I could only just stand there gaping at him as the tips of my breasts smarted in the cold.

“All right,” he said at last, grinning. “We can turn the lights out now.” He reached for the lamp on the night table. The room fell into blissful darkness, and I felt his breath trickling on my neck, stirring my hair. “But don’t forget, Bella,” he breathed to my ear. “I can see in the dark.”

He gave me a moment to process that. Then he was on me, hands like polished crystal grasping at my bare flesh. We melted onto the bed. My body jolted when the cool, hard length of him settled on top of me. He was bare all the way down. Somehow, without me even noticing, he’d slipped off the rest of his own clothing.

“That’s not fair!” I protested, but he silenced me with another searing kiss.

Then he was gone. Stunned, I squinted into the darkness but couldn’t see him. My empty arms ached from his sudden absence, and I could feel my heartbeat hammering in my bruised lips. He chuckled somewhere, probably seeing the bewildered look on my face, and I realized from the direction of the sound that he was only a short distance down the bed near my knees. He was capable of such quiet movements that he might have disappeared into thin air for all I knew.

I gasped when he gripped me by the thighs, gentle but with decided firmness, then dipped his head and once again kissed me down there. “Unnngghh, Edward! ” I cried out in protest, pushing at his forehead with the palm of my hand. “Stop doing that. I can’t handle anymore, please!”

He did stop, but he took his time about it. Too much time. Sometimes I forgot how brazenly wicked he could be. “Had enough of that for now?” he purred. “All right. What about this then?”

Then something ice cold and smooth slipped inside of me ever so slowly. His fingers, I realized, trying to resist the urge to squirm off of the bed. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t just get on with it. Did he have to drive me crazy beforehand? Maybe he was doing this now to save me a little pain down the road.

It wasn’t so bad. I was clenched tight against his probing fingers, but it didn’t hurt the way I expected it to. Granted, it was just a few fingers. But if this was what the real act was like, virgins in those silly romance novels were a bunch of babies. It felt particularly nice when he rubbed his thumb on the spot just above my entrance. My breath took on an uneven, shaky quality.

“Do – do we need a con...” I trailed off, trying to find another word that seemed less obscene to me. “Do we need protection?”

His fingers stilled inside of me, but he didn’t pull them out. “No,” he whispered back, a strange look on his face as if he was surprised at my question. Perhaps he’d already told me all this once before, but I was in no condition to remember details of past conversations. “I can find some, though. If you want me to.”

“You can’t get me pregnant?”

“No,” he repeated. He said it like it was a bad thing.

I stared at him. My eyes had adjusted now to the darkness, and I could make out the lines of his face. “Then why would I want you to use one?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to make you feel safer.”

“I’m already safe.”

He pulled his fingers out of me then, frowning in obvious disapproval. “Oh, Bella,” he whispered. “I hope you still feel that way in the morning.” He crawled over me, and I felt something hard and unfamiliar brush against my inner thigh. I swallowed with difficulty, nervousness blooming anew in the pit of my gut.

A few adjustments. A nuzzle of reassurance. Then, nose to nose, eyes locked, he pressed into me.

It hurt more than the fingers had. A sharp, sharp pain right at the entrance. Like I was being stretched in a place that wasn’t supposed to stretch. I struggled to keep any sign of discomfort from registering on my face, knowing he would stop if he saw it. It wasn’t that bad, really – so I was surprised when I caught the faint, metallic smell of blood, mixed with something else ... a warmer, musky scent had filled the room, and it helped me get past the first unpleasant odor, which I was so unfortunately sensitive to.

I was suddenly alarmed, remembering I wasn’t the only one in the room who could smell the blood.

His eyes had gone stone-cold black. I could make out the flash of his white teeth glinting even in the darkness of the room, slick with venom. He panted like he was in pain.

“Edward... ” I whispered, putting a hand on his cheek.

He blinked. Swallowed.

“You can control this. Just remember who I am. Who you are.”

“Just ... give me a second,” he gasped after what seemed like a long time. He grit his teeth, fingers tightening on the pillow on each side of my head. I thought the pillow might rip to shreds any second, right out from underneath me, and feathers would go flying. The thought might have made me smile had I not been so scared.

I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable down there. It hurt like hell to have him inside me, like a blunt knife threatening to split me down the middle. The full weight of his body on mine was about to smother me into the mattress. I kept still, only moving to stroke his hair while he collected himself. I hummed my lullaby to him, something that had always brought me comfort or calmed me down. It was probably a pale comparison to his beautiful voice, but it seemed to work.

He became very still, though his body still seemed to hum with tension. “I love you, Bella,” he breathed. “Don’t forget your promise.”

Then he pressed the rest of himself into me, hissing in pleasure as he went, and my eyes just about bugged out of their sockets. I hadn’t realized before that he was barely inside of me. I cried out before I could stop myself, nails digging into the unyielding flesh of his shoulder. I was choking at the size of him, my mind straining to grasp the sudden overwhelming presence of ... of him.

He didn’t give me any time to get used to it, and I bit my lip as he began to thrust – long, deep strokes that my brain wasn’t capable of comprehending right now. I didn’t know my body went that deep, and I could feel every burning inch of it. I struggled to keep quiet. I didn’t want to begrudge him the lack of gentleness. I had a feeling he was barely holding onto the delicate façade of control as it was. Besides, he probably thought he was being gentle.

I prayed there wouldn’t be bruises. He’d never forgive himself if he saw them. He’d never forgive me for not saying anything.

The friction was the part that hurt the most, or maybe the feeling of him so far inside of me that he bumped up against the end of my passage. I only noticed all this after the pain of the stretching faded a bit. My inner muscles struggled to adjust and yield to his movements. It was definitely for the best that I was already wet down there from his earlier ministrations; otherwise, he never would have managed what he was doing now without causing me much, much more pain. I could see now that he’d planned it that way.

It did get better. Just like those ridiculous romance novels I’d read so long ago said it would. There always seemed to be someone who got deflowered in those books, after all. Surprisingly, it was the friction, the terrible rubbing that had bothered me so much at first, that I found myself enjoying. I smiled into his neck, eyes drifting closed, and for the first time, I let myself enjoy making love to my husband.

After the first few frantic moments, Edward seemed to find a weak grasp on his control. To my relief, he lifted himself off of me slightly so that he could watch my face as he penetrated me. I stopped thinking about his hardness moving inside me and focused on his eyes, and the way they smiled down at me in adoration.

I’d never been able to touch him so freely or watch him really let go while in my presence. I don’t think I’d ever seen him allow himself to experience pleasure like this. It was fascinating to witness.

Yeah, I decided, unable to keep from smiling. I could definitely do this again.

The closeness ... such a deep, unbreakable connection ... that was the best part of all. The act was much more intimate than I’d ever thought it could be. More intimate than I could ever explain if someone asked me to. It wasn’t just about achieving an end ... a shallow moment of pleasure followed by a smoke and a snooze. No, this was special. No wonder they wrote books about it. I didn’t really understand before now.

Breathing my name, he slipped a hand between us and started touching me on the same place he’d kissed me before. I turned my face to the side, suddenly overwhelmed, and smothered a gasp. It was happening again ... that slow, terrifying climb. I went with it this time and let it take me along in its swift current. I started to shake when I remembered that I had to descend from it eventually.

“Bella...” He sounded strained, like he was losing control. “I’m ... I think we need to stop.” He hissed out a curse. “I’m slipping...”

Looking back, I probably should have listened to him.

But it had already taken me ... different this time, maybe because he was there inside of me when my muscles clenched up in release. I cried out and clawed at him as it crashed over me. He tipped right over the edge after me. I suppose he had only been waiting for me to catch up with him after all.

I watched his face as he came, gasping and shuddering. He’d never looked less human to me. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

But then something shifted.

I felt his teeth suddenly on my throat, and so help me, they almost broke through the skin. He held me there by the neck as he writhed against me. My eyes swam as his fingers dug into my fragile body. It would have been so easy for him to shatter me at that moment, to just rip my throat out and my body apart in a mindless fury. I became very still in his arms, docile, like a kitten that had been picked up by the scruff by its mother, afraid to move, afraid that anything might be enough to fully set him off.

But somehow he kept himself from falling over that particular ledge. Somehow he kept me safe.

It occurred to me in that moment how deeply he must love me ... to protect me from himself when every fiber of his being was screaming for my blood.

The moment passed as he spent himself inside of me, and the terrifying pressure of his teeth on my neck turned into a soft drizzle of kisses. His sudden change from deadly to adoring was enough to make my head spin. I stared up at the ceiling, gasping, and stroked his neck while he found himself again. I wasn’t even sure if he knew what he’d just done. I shook in his arms, trying not to think very hard, until his mouth found mine again. He kissed me breathless – so achingly gentle now – lazy, wet kisses that went on and on.

I don’t remember exactly when it ended. The last thing I recall before I drifted off into a dreamless sleep was the sight of crushed rose petals beside my face. Blood red against the white pillow.

***
Here’s small preview of the next part:

“Edward…” I said, voice cracking from disuse while I slept. “What’s wrong?”

His hands tightened on the arms of the chair. I heard the crack of wood, sharp like a whip.

“What happened?” I pressed, pulling up the sheet to cover myself.

It took him a minute to respond. When he did, his voice had a strange quality to it. Light and dreamlike.

“I hurt you.”

He looked like he didn’t really believe what he was saying – as if he couldn’t really fathom it. Then his beautiful face twisted into disgust. And fury.