This explanation would be as difficult as any of the others, with many words I hated to say, but there were also words I very much wanted to speak to her.
“Isabella… Bella.” It was a pleasure just to say her name. It felt like a kind of avowal. This is the name to which I belong.
I carefully loosed one hand and stroked her soft hair, warm from the sun. The joy of the simple touch, the knowledge that I was free to reach out to her this way, was overwhelming. I grasped her hands again.
“I couldn’t live with myself if I ever hurt you. You don’t know how it’s tortured me.” I hated to look away from her sympathetic expression, but it was too hard to see her other face, the one from Alice’s vision, in the same frame. “The 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.” That word did nothing to convey the anguish behind the thought. But I was through the ugly part now, and I could say the things I’d wanted to tell her for so long. I met her eyes again, rejoicing in this confession.
“You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever.”
Just as the word unendurable was not enough, so were these words weak echoes of the feelings they tried to describe. I hoped she could see in my eyes exactly how inadequate they were. She was always better at knowing my mind than I was at reading hers.
She held my exultant gaze for just a moment, pink creeping into her cheeks, but then her eyes fell to our hands. I thrilled to the beauty of her complexion, seeing only the loveliness and nothing else.
“You already know how I feel, of course,” she said, her voice not much louder than a whisper. “I’m here… which, roughly translated, means I would rather die than stay away from you.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel such euphoria and such regret at the same time. She wanted me—bliss. She was risking her very life for me—unacceptable.
She scowled, her eyes still lowered. “I’m an idiot.”
I laughed at her conclusion. From a certain angle, she had a point. Any species that ran so headlong into the arms of its most dangerous predator wouldn’t survive long. It was a good thing she was an outlier.
“You are an idiot,” I teased gently. And I would never stop being grateful for it.
Bella glanced up with a puckish grin, and we both laughed together. It was such a relief to laugh after my grueling revelations that my laugh shifted from humor to sheer joy. I was sure she felt the same. We were utterly in sync for one perfect moment.
Though it was impossible, we belonged together. Everything was wrong with this picture—a killer and an innocent leaning close, each basking in the presence of the other, totally at peace. It was as if we’d somehow ascended to a better world, where such impossibilities could exist.
I was suddenly reminded of a painting I’d seen many years ago.
Whenever we canvassed the countryside for likely towns in which to settle, Carlisle would frequently make side trips to duck into old parish churches. He seemed unable to stop himself. Something about the simple wooden structures, usually dark for lack of good windows, the floorboards and pew backs all worn smooth and smelling of layer upon layer of human touches, brought him a reflective kind of calm. Thoughts of his father and his childhood were brought to the fore, but the violent end seemed far away in those moments. He remembered only pleasant things.
On one such diversion, we found an old Quaker meetinghouse around thirty miles north of Philadelphia. It was a small building, no bigger than a farmhouse, with a stone exterior and a very Spartan arrangement inside. So plain were the knotty floors and straight-backed pews that I was almost shocked to see an adornment on the far wall. Carlisle’s interest was piqued as well, and we both examined it.
It was quite a small painting, no more than fifteen inches square. I guessed that it was older than the stone church that housed it. The artist was clearly untrained, his style amateurish. And yet, there was something in the simple, poorly wrought image that managed to convey an emotion. There was a warm vulnerability to the animals depicted, an aching kind of tenderness. I was strangely moved by this kinder universe the artist had envisioned.
A better world, Carlisle had thought to himself.
The sort of world where this present moment could exist, I thought now, and felt that aching tenderness again.
“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…,” I whispered.
Her eyes were so open and accessible for one second, and then she flushed again and looked down. She steadied her breath for a moment, and her impish smile returned.
“What a stupid lamb,” she teased, stretching out the joke.
“What a sick, masochistic lion,” I countered.
I wasn’t sure that was a true statement, though. In one light, yes, I was deliberately causing myself unnecessary pain and enjoying it, the textbook definition of masochism. But the pain was the price… and the reward was so much more than the pain. Really, the price was negligible. I would pay it ten times over.
“Why…?” she murmured, hesitant.
I smiled at her, eager to know her mind. “Yes?”
A hint of the forehead crease began to form. “Tell me why you ran from me before.”
Her words hit me physically, lodging in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t understand why she would want to rehash a moment so loathsome.
“You know why.”
She shook her head, and her brows pulled down. “No, I mean, exactly what did I do wrong?” She spoke intently, serious now. “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 her fingertips slowly up the back of my hand to my wrist, leaving a trail of painless fire—“seems to be all right.”
How like her to take the responsibility on herself.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Bella. It was my fault.”
Her chin lifted. It would have implied stubbornness if her eyes were not so pleading.
“But I want to help, if I can, to not make this harder for you.”
My first instinct was to continue insisting that this was my problem and not something for her to worry about. Yet I knew that she was simply trying to understand me, with all my strange and monstrous quirks. She would be happier if I just answered her question as clearly as possible.
How to explain bloodlust, though? So shameful.
“Well… it was just how close you were. Most humans instinctively shy away from us, are repelled by our alienness.… I wasn’t expecting you to come so close. And the smell of your throat—”
I broke off, hoping I had not disgusted her.
Her mouth was pursed as if fighting off a smile.
“Okay, then, no throat exposure.” She made a show of tucking her chin against her right collarbone.
It was clearly her intention to ease my anxiety, and it worked. I had to laugh at her expression.
“No, really,” I reassured her. “It was more the surprise than anything else.”
I lifted my hand again and rested it lightly against her neck, feeling the incredible softness of her skin there, the warm give of it. My thumb grazed her jawline. The electric pulse that only she could awaken started to thrum through my body.
“You see,” I whispered. “Perfectly fine.”
Her pulse began to race as well. I could feel it under my hand and hear her galloping heart. Pink flooded her face from her chin to her hairline. The sound and sight of her response, rather than awakening my thirst again, seemed only to speed the rush of my more human reactions. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this alive; I doubted I ever had, even when I’d been alive.
“The blush on your cheeks is lovely,” I murmured.
I gently extracted my left hand from hers, and arranged it so that I was cradling her face between my palms. Her pupils dilated and her heartbeat increased.
I wanted so much to kiss her then. Her soft, curving lips, ever so slightly parted, mesmerized me and drew me forward. But, though these new human emotions now seemed so much stronger than anything else, I didn’t fully trust myself. I knew I needed one more test. I thought I’d passed through Alice’s knot, but still felt something was lacking. I realized now what more I had to do.
One thing I’d always avoided, never let my mind explore.
“Be very still,” I warned her. Her breath hitched.
Slowly, I leaned close, watching her expression for any hint that this was unwelcome to her. I found none.
Finally, I let my head dip forward, and turned it to lean my cheek against the base of her throat. The heat of her warm-blooded life pulsed through her fragile skin and into the cold stone of my body. That pulse leaped beneath my touch. I kept my breathing steady as a machine, in and out, controlled. I waited, judging every minuscule happening inside my body. Perhaps I waited longer than necessary, but it was a very pleasant place to linger.
When I felt sure that no trap waited for me here, I proceeded.
Cautiously I readjusted, using slow, steady movements so that nothing would surprise or frighten her. As my hands drifted from her jaw to the points of her shoulders, she shivered, and for a moment I lost my careful hold on my breathing. I recovered, settling myself again, and then moved my head so that my ear was directly over her heart.
The sound of it, loud before, seemed to surround me in stereo now. The earth beneath me didn’t seem quite as steady, as if it rocked faintly to the beat of her heart.
The sigh escaped against my will. “Ah.”
I wished I could stay like this forever, immersed in the sound of her heart and warmed by her skin. It was time for the final test, though, and I wanted it behind me.
For the first time, as I breathed in the sear of her scent, I let myself imagine it. Rather than blocking my thoughts, cutting them off and forcing them deep down, out of my conscious mind, I allowed them to range unfettered. They did not go willingly, not now. But I forced myself to go where I had always avoided.
I imagined tasting her… draining her.
I’d had enough experience to know what the relief would feel like, if I were to utterly quench my most bestial need. Her blood had so much more pull for me than any other human’s I’d encountered—I could only assume that the relief and pleasure would be that much more intense.
Her blood would soothe my aching throat, erasing all the months of fire. It would feel as if I had never burned for her; the alleviation of pain would be total.
The sweetness of her blood on my tongue was harder to imagine. I knew I had never experienced any blood so perfectly matched to my desire, but I was sure it would satisfy every craving I had ever known.
For the first time in three quarters of a century—the span I had survived without human blood—I would be totally sated. My body would feel strong and whole. It would be many weeks before I thirsted again.
I played the sequence of events through to the end, surprised, even as I let these taboo imaginings loose, at how little they appealed to me now. Even withholding the inevitable sequel—the return of the thirst, the emptiness of the world without her—I felt no desire to act on my imaginings.
I also saw very clearly in that moment that there was no separate monster and never had been one. Eager to disconnect my mind from my desires, I had—as was my habit—personified that hated part of myself to distance it from the parts that I considered me. Just as I had created the harpy to give myself someone to fight. It was a coping mechanism, and not a very good one. Better to see myself as the whole, bad and good, and work with the reality of it.
My breathing continued steadily, the bite of her scent a welcome counterpoint to the glut of other physical sensations that overwhelmed me as I held her.
I thought I understood a little better what had happened to me before, in the violent reaction that had terrified us both. I had been so convinced that I might be overwhelmed, that when I actually was overwhelmed, it was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. My anxiety, the agonizing visions I’d obsessed over, plus the months of self-doubt that had shaken my former confidence all combined to weaken the determination that I now knew was absolutely up to the job of protecting Bella.
Even Alice’s nightmare vision was suddenly less vibrant, the colors leaching away. Its power to shake me was ebbing, because, and this was obvious now, that future was entirely impossible. Bella and I would leave this place hand in hand, and my life would finally begin.
We were through the knot.
I had no doubt that Alice saw this, too, and that she was rejoicing.
Though I was exceptionally comfortable in my current position, I was also eager for the rest of my life to unfold.
I leaned away from her, letting my hands trace along the length of her arms as they dropped to my side, full of simple happiness to just see her face again.
She looked at me curiously, unaware of the momentous occurrences inside my head.
“It won’t be so hard again,” I promised, though I realized as I spoke that my words probably made little sense to her.
“Was that very hard for you?” she asked with sympathetic eyes.
Her concern warmed me to the core.
“Not nearly as bad as I imagined it would be. And you?”
She gave me one disbelieving glance. “No, it wasn’t bad… for me.”
She made it look so easy, being embraced by a vampire. But it must take more courage than she let on. “You know what I mean.”
She smiled a wide, warm, lopsidedly dimpled grin. It was clear that if it did take any effort to bear my nearness, she would never admit to it.
Giddy. That was the only word I could think of to describe the high I was experiencing. It wasn’t a word I often thought of in relation to myself. Every thought in my head wanted to spill out through my lips. I wanted to hear every thought in hers. That, at least, was nothing new. Everything else was new. Everything had changed.
I reached for her hand—without first exhaustively debating the act in my mind—simply because I wanted to feel it against my skin. I felt free to be spontaneous for the first time. These new impulses were completely unrelated to the old.
“Here.” I placed her palm against my cheek. “Do you feel how warm it is?”
Her reaction to this first instinctive act of mine was more than I’d expected. Her fingers trembled against my cheekbone. Her eyes grew round and the smile slipped away. Her heartbeat and her breathing accelerated.
Before I could regret the deed, she leaned closer and whispered, “Don’t move.”
A thrill shivered through me.
Her request was easily accomplished. I froze myself into the absolute stillness that humans were incapable of duplicating. I didn’t know what she intended—acclimating herself to my lack of a circulatory system seemed unlikely—but was eager to find out. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure whether I did this to free her from the self-consciousness of my scrutiny, or because I wanted no distractions from this moment.
Her hand began to move very slowly. First she stroked my cheek. Her fingertips grazed across my closed eyelids, and then brushed a half circle beneath them. Where her skin met mine, it left a trail of tingling heat. She traced the length of my nose and then, with the trembling in her fingers more pronounced now, the shape of my lips.
My frozen form melted. I let my mouth fall slightly open, so that I could breathe in the nearness of her.
One finger caressed my bottom lip again, and then her hand fell away. I felt the air cool between us as she leaned back.
I opened my eyes and met her gaze. Her face was flushed, her heart still raced. I felt a phantom echo of the pace inside my own body, though no blood pushed it.
I wanted… so many things. Things I had not felt any need for in my entire immortal life before I met her. Things I was sure I had not wanted before I was immortal, either. And I felt that some of them, things I’d always thought impossible, might, in fact, be very possible.
But while I felt comfortable with her now as far as my thirst was concerned, I was still too strong. So much stronger than she was, every limb of my body unyielding as steel. I must always think of her fragility. It would take time to learn exactly how to move around her.
She stared at me, waiting, wondering what I thought of her touches.
“I wish… I wish you could feel the… complexity,” I fumbled to explain. “The confusion I feel. That you could understand.”
A tendril of her hair, caught in the breeze, danced in the sun, catching the light with a reddish shine. I reached out to feel the texture of that errant lock between my fingers. And then, because it was so close, I couldn’t resist stroking her face. Her cheek felt like velvet left out in the sun.
Her head tilted into my hand, but her eyes remained intent on my face.
“Tell me,” she breathed.
I couldn’t imagine where to even begin. “I… don’t think I can. I’ve told you, on the one hand, the hunger, the thirst, that”—I gave her an apologetic half smile—“deplorable creature I am, I feel for you. And 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.… But…”
My fingers seemed to search out her lips of their own accord. I brushed them lightly. Finally. They were softer than I’d imagined. Warmer.
“There are other hungers,” I continued. “Hungers I don’t even understand, that are foreign to me.”
She gave me that slightly skeptical look again. “I may understand that better than you think.”
“I’m not used to feeling so human,” I admitted. “Is it always like this?” The wild current singing through my system, the magnetic pull drawing me forward, the feeling that there might never be a closeness that would be close enough.
“For me?” She paused, considering. “No, never. Never before this.”
I took both her hands between mine.
“I don’t know how to be close to you,” I cautioned her. “I don’t know if I can.”
Where to set the limits to keep her safe? How to keep selfish desire from pushing those limits unwisely?
She shifted closer to me. I held myself still and careful while she rested the side of her face against the bare skin of my chest—I’d never been more grateful for Alice’s influence on my wardrobe than in this second.
Her eyes slid closed. She sighed contentedly. “This is enough.”
The invitation was not something I could resist. I knew I was capable of getting this much right. With meticulous care, I wrapped my arms lightly around her, truly holding her in my embrace for the first time. I pressed my lips against the crown of her head, breathing in her warm scent. A first kiss, though a stealthy one—unrequited.
She chuckled once. “You’re better at this than you give yourself credit for.”
“I have human instincts,” I murmured into her hair. “They may be buried deep, but they’re there.”
The passing of time was meaningless while I cradled her, my lips against her hair. Her heart moved languorously now, her breath was slow and even against my skin. I only noticed the change when the shadow of the trees fell over us. Without the reflection off my skin, the meadow seemed suddenly darker, evening rather than afternoon.
Bella heaved a deep sigh. Not contented this time, but regretful.
“You have to go,” I guessed.
“I thought you couldn’t read my mind.”
I grinned and then pressed one last hidden kiss to the top of her head. “It’s getting clearer.”
We’d been a long time here, though now it seemed like mere seconds. She would have human needs she was neglecting. I thought of the long, slow trek to get to the meadow, and I had an idea.
I pulled away—reluctant to end our embrace no matter what came next—and placed my hands lightly on her shoulders.
“Can I show you something?” I asked.
“Show me what?” she asked, a hint of suspicion in her voice. I realized my tone was more than a little enthusiastic.
“I’ll show you how I travel in the forest,” I explained.
Her lips pursed, doubtful, and the crease between her brows appeared, deeper than before, even when I’d nearly attacked her. It surprised me a little; she was usually so curious and fearless.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “You’ll be very safe, and we’ll get to your truck much faster.”
I grinned encouragingly at her.
She considered for a minute, and then whispered, “Will you turn into a bat?”
I couldn’t suppress my laughter. I didn’t really want to. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so free to be myself. Of course, that wasn’t exactly true; I was always free and open when it was just me and my family. However, I never felt like this with my family—ecstatic, wild, every cell of my body alive in a new, electric way. Being with Bella intensified all sensation.
“Like I haven’t heard that one before,” I teased once I could speak again.
She grinned. “Right. I’m sure you get that all the time.”
I was on my feet in an instant, holding out one hand to her. She eyed it doubtfully.
“Come on, little coward,” I coaxed. “Climb on my back.”
She stared at me for a moment, hesitating. I wasn’t sure whether she was wary of this idea of mine, or just wasn’t sure exactly how to approach me. We were very new to this physical closeness, and there was still plenty of shyness between us.
Deciding that the latter was the problem, I made it easy for her.
I lifted her from the ground and gently arranged her limbs around me as if for a piggyback ride. Her pulse quickened and her breath caught, but once she was in place, her arms and legs constricted around me. I felt enveloped in the warmth of her body.
“I’m a bit heavier than your average backpack.” She sounded worried—that I might not be able to bear her weight?
“Hah,” I snorted.
It struck me how easy it was, not to carry her insignificant weight, but to have her literally wrapped around me. My thirst was so wholly overshadowed by my happiness that it barely caused me any conscious pain.
I took her hand from where it was gripped around my neck, and held her palm to my nose. I inhaled as deeply as I could. Yes, there the pain was. Real, but unimpressive. What was a little fire to all this light?
“Easier all the time,” I breathed.
I took off at a relaxed lope, choosing the smoothest route back to our starting point. It would cost me a few extra seconds to go the long way, but we would still get to her truck in minutes rather than hours. It was better than to jostle her with a more vertical path.
Another new, joyous experience. I’d always loved to run—for nearly a hundred years, it had been my purest physical happiness. But now, sharing this with her, no distance between us bodily or psychically, I realized how much more pleasure there could be in simply running than I’d ever imagined. I wondered if it thrilled her as much as it did me.
One qualm nagged at me. I’d been in a hurry to get her home as soon as that seemed to be her wish. However… surely we should have concluded that most momentous interlude with a proper finale, a sort of seal on our new understanding? A benediction. But I’d been too hasty to realize it was missing until we were already in motion.