August 11, 2010

Smiling, I nodded – even though Edward couldn’t see me – and tried not to bite my lip. I was trying to rid myself of the habit; it chapped my lips and made them look bad. “Of course I’ll be there.”

I could hear him smiling over the phone. “Good.”

We chatted a moment longer and then I had to say goodbye. It was my first day back at the office and the last thing I wanted to do was piss Mr. Uley off. He loved me, but he was serious when it came to work –as he should be.

The rest of the afternoon flew by in a blur of emails, faxes and deliveries. While the busyness made the day go by quickly it only reinforced what I now knew deep down: I couldn’t continue doing this. My calling was in education, not office work. I had a long road ahead of me: finding a job that would pay me adequately while helping me toward my chosen career path as I continued getting an education of my own.

It felt good to be excited again – real, sustained excitement – the kind that could only come from feeling inspired.

Later that afternoon I drove home, not surprised to see the driveway empty since my mother sometimes met her friends for drinks after work. She’d also recently begun dating a sweet guy, Phil, and they often went out to dinner. He was the gym teacher at one of the local high schools and definitely very her type, if not a bit young.

Love made me gracious, though, and I was happy for her.

I grabbed an apple on my way upstairs, contemplating what I wanted to wear. Edward would be by within the hour and I didn’t want to be dawdling around naked when he showed.

Well, maybe I did.

The very thought of him sent my heart into a tailspin.

–

“Where’re you going?”

Edward looked at me sideways, his mouth quirked into that crooked smile that made my heart beat funny. “Quick pit stop. I’m hungry.”

“Oh…” I frowned, wondering where he could possibly expect to find food down this road.

He drove a little further and then pulled off, cutting the lights. The greyblue of dusk settled around us, as did the quiet alone.

He leaned over, cupping my cheek in his hand as he kissed me.

I smiled against his mouth. “Hungry, huh?”

“Mhm.”

Giving into his kiss, I heard myself sigh. My body relaxed in his familiarity, air exhaling from a balloon.

Soon he pulled away and pulled me with him, luring me to his lap as he unzipped his jeans.

I let go of him long enough to take my own jeans off and then crawled over the console, settling into his lap. We kissed again, his tongue and mine coming together, warm and wet and good. I ground myself against him, liking the way his hardness rubbed me just the right way.

He found the hem of my shirt and lifted it so I brought my arms up, allowing him to take it off.

I hadn’t worn a bra, liking the way the soft fabric felt against my nipples. His eyes went right for them and then so did his mouth. I let him kiss me that way for a while until I was restless and itchy with want, and then I slid him inside of me, moaning and probably biting my lip even though I didn’t mean to.

He moaned too, his hands gripping me nice and rough and all over.

I rode him till I couldn’t and then he took over, pulling and pushing and moving me until I hit the steering wheel in my pleasure, the horn bleeping out a disjointed wail.

“I love you,” he gasped, looking so serious when he came. “Be with me, Bella.”

“I love you too,” I nearly sobbed, clasping him close. “I want to wake up with you and go to sleep with you. Let’s do this. Let’s find a place.”

He kissed me soft and quiet and I put on his shirt when we were done, forcing him to pull something else to wear from his backpack.

–

If it felt like all eyes were on us when we got to the lounge it’s because they were.

We were late; the band was already setting up on stage and the groupies were in place, holding down the fort at a corner table.

But love made me gracious so I smiled and I waved.

Charlotte and Kate got up when I got closer and we grabbed our own table beside the others.

“You look good,” Charlotte cooed, and I knew what she meant. “I heard you guys went to Hawaii?”

I nodded, sneaking a peek at Edward.

“I don’t believe it. This is the real deal Holyfield,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “Like, for real – for real.”

Snorting a little, I forced myself to focus on her and Kate. “It is, yeah. I think so anyway.”

“I think so too,” Kate said. She smiled down at the table. “He can hardly stop looking at you.”

I was in junior high all over again. “Really?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And isn’t this…” Charlotte pulled gently at the shirt. “…his?”

I nodded, feeling the apples of my cheeks rubify.

The boys began to play then, music filling the place with great. We swayed along, singing when we knew the words, simply nodding if we didn’t.

That girl Carmen showed up, slinky and pretty, a Jezebel in jeans and dark purple. Our eyes met for just a second before her gaze drifted down to my shirt, his shirt. She frowned

and I just knew she knew; it was a shirt he wore all the time and my wearing it was about as obvious about claiming him as I could get.

But it wasn’t even about that.

I loved him. I wanted to wear his clothes, to smell him, to imagine him.

I wanted him to look at me in his shirt and like what he saw, to remember how it had gotten on me in the first place.

The song ended and then Edward came to the front, half sitting on the barstool on stage.

“This is for her,” he said, and he looked at me.

Damn.

I glanced around the room, hoping I might’ve accidentally missed another empty seat; no such luck. As if having Mr. Banner, who liked to creep on innocent high school girls, as a teacher wasn’t bad enough, I was stuck having to sit next to the bane of my existence.

Edward Cullen.

He was the world’s biggest douche bag, and it seemed like his purpose in life was to make mine a living hell. He thought he was the hottest thing alive since George Clooney. I’ll admit, he was pretty much “sex on legs,” but he had the personality of a mango.

I sighed and dropped my head into my arms, wallowing in self-misery. I heard Mr. Pedophile rush inside, almost tripping on a student’s foot.

He pulled up a PowerPoint over the Civil War era and began another one of his boring lectures, checking around the room occasionally to see if we were taking notes.

I actually found the lesson interesting and took pleasure in writing down the information. Mid-lecture, I heard the faint sounds of music coming from my left. My brows furrowed as I stared at Doucheward Cullen listening to his expensive MP3 player and creating a paper football like he didn’t have a care in the world.

I rolled my eyes and turned my attention back to the PowerPoint, hoping to tune out whatever crap music he was listening to. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the next forty-five minutes listening to an asshole jock’s poor choice in music.

I couldn’t help but gape at Edward in surprise when I heard his next song.

It was O Fortuna by Carmina Burana.

I tried, and failed, to hold back a snicker; Edward Cullen, the quarterback of the school’s football team, was listening to opera.

At the end of class I took my time packing up my stuff so I could leave at the same time as Edward. Messing with his mind would brighten up my day a little.

I hummed part of the song as I walked by him, remembering bits and pieces from all the times my mother would play it on maximum-volume while she cleaned. He obviously heard me and tensed up.

“Oh, didn’t see you there, Eddie-boy.”

He glared at me, not buying my bullshit. He knew me too well. “Are you trying to fuckin’ start something, Swan?”

I smiled innocently. “What do you mean? You can’t harass somebody for humming.”

He pushed me up against the lockers, albeit gently, his eyes filled with anger. I knew full well he wouldn’t result to physically hurting me or anything, yet I still couldn’t help but gulp.

My small moment of fear didn’t go unnoticed by Edward, and he gave that stupid signature smirk of his that made me want to shove my foot up his ass.

“You tell anyone I listen to opera, and I’ll let the whole school know just how much you love a guy with a guitar,” he murmured huskily in my ear. The warmth of his breath shot straight down to the apex of my thighs.

My teeth gritted together, remembering my one moment of weakness that resulted in Edward and I in a very compromising position. He may be a horrendous person, but he had mad skills on the guitar…and among other things.

I shoved him off me and all but ran to my next class, hoping my sexual frustration would wear off before the next bell rang.

“I don’t want you to be good,” she’d said.

I thought about it and everything it meant, everything it would mean. It was music to my ears as I had been waiting for this moment since I’d first seen her sitting outside of the library that day. Things were different though than I’d thought they would be. I was nervous for one. That almost never happened, and I wanted to make sure; I didn’t want to mess this up. That absolutely never happened.

I had never cared before.

“Are you sure?” I asked, really, really hoping she was sure because at that moment there was nothing that I wanted more than Bella. Over and over again.

“Yes,” she said, and she kissed me.

The last time we had been in this position, we were out in the middle of the woods, fully clothed. Now, she had on nothing but a tank top and a pair of sleep shorts and I had on boxers and nothing else. Her kiss was shy at first, gentle, and I responded likewise. Her lips molded to mine and I began to coax her mouth open, wanting to taste her, touch her with my tongue. My hands held her shoulders as she wrapped her legs around my hips, inching her core closer towards my aching erection.

My hands drifted. Down, down her back to the hem of her shirt, touching the soft skin of her lower back, feeling the dip of her spine and the beginning curve of her ass. I pulled up on the shirt, pulling it up and over, and then I stopped kissing her because I wanted to look at her.

How many times had I pictured her this way, beautiful and bare, peaking for me and my mouth.

“Beautiful,” I whispered, tracing her breasts with my fingertips, gently licking their rosy peaks, watching with fascination as they puckered and hardened underneath my touch. The moan that escaped her mouth kept me going. Her head arched back and I momentarily left her breasts to kiss and lick the expanse of neck that she gave me. It was as if I were a kid in a candy store and I didn’t know what to eat next.

Tracing the long line of her neck with my tongue back down to her collarbone, her beautiful creamy skin, I felt her hands on my chest and stomach where they came to rest on the top edege of my boxers, her fingers tracing underneath the elastic. She hooked her fingers and slid down the cotton, tracing my ass with her hands and suddenly I wanted to feel her touch me. My dick twitched, anxious for her hands. Dragging the boxers off with her toes, her hands were free to touch.

When she palmed me, her little hands, stroking up the length to the tip and then back down, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. But when I felt her kisses move from my neck down my sternum, from my sternum to my bellybutton, from my bellybutton down lower, I knew I was about to die for sure.

And when I felt her mouth on me, licking my tip, sliding me in her mouth, it was all I could do not to offer myself up as a sacrifice. She sucked and licked and my hands slid into her hair, guiding her, encouraging her and all the while I tried not to pass out from the sheer pleasure of it all. Very quickly it became too much and so I stopped her; I wanted to be inside her when I came, especially for our first time.

“Bella, you have to stop,” I said, using ever bit of my strength to say the words when all I really wanted her to do was continue.

“I want to be inside you when I come,” I said, dragging her mouth up to mine. “Besides, I haven’t even touched you yet.”

And I really wanted to touch her.

I kissed her, tracing her tongue with mine, memorizing the feel of her lips before sliding my mouth to her ear and neck while simultaneously sliding my hand from her hair to her shoulder, down to her breast, ghosting my palm over her erect nipple and finally down to her core.

She was warm, and ready and aching.

“Ed..ward…please,” she moaned as I ran my fingers over her slick folds, kissing her breasts as her body arched more with each finger I slid into her. Tracing her center bud with my thumb, it only took a second. She cried out as she came; her entire body shook with sensation and she was without a doubt the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

As Bella came down from her high, she said, “Now, Edward, I need you now…it’s okay, I’m covered.”

I needed no more invitation.

Sliding effortlessly into her, I was prepared for the heat, the tightness, the friction. I wasn’t prepared for the way it made me feel: complete, whole, loved. Her legs slid around me, deepening the angle and I propped myself on my elbows as we found our rhythm. Over and over, the pressure built and Bella began thrashing. She was close and I held off, feeling the sweat break over my brow as my eyes closed and I concentrated on everything I was feeling.

“Unnnhh….” was all she managed as her release found her. I was incapable of any sound other than a grunt as felt myself empty into her, pulsating, streaming, immediately exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.

“God, I love you…” I said, my breathing uneven and labored.

“Me too, she said,” pushing my hair off my forehead. “I love you too.”