A/N: I can't believe I wrote a Twilight story. I really, really can't. I'm in the "it's ridiculous" camp. But I think James is really hot, and I thought the scene with he and Bella in the ballet studio was the best part of that whole movie, so...

Smell. Scent. The quick flare of nostrils, the rush of air, the heady spiced musk of blood and sweat, all salt and skin and life. It's hard to explain, hard to understand, hard to quantify the impossibility of ignoring this draw. Add that to the rhythm, the secret heat, the pulsing fragile miraculous heartbeat... He didn't need to see her in the field to know, in the deepest, basest part of him, that there would be killing here. Some kind of killing, anyway, and that wasn't even the important part. Not worth the focus.

Now, in this glassy dark place, her scent was strong again and he felt that knowledge rise up like a hot tide. He couldn't see her yet; she was hovering outside, perhaps, gathering the courage to enter. But she was close. She was close, and her boy was not, and he could feel her pulse beneath his skin like a drum.

She was slow walking in. Hesitant. Careful. She moved like a deer, that tired comparison, thin long legs picking across the studio floor as if each step might be her last. Blind. Breathing hard, the dark hair tumbling around her neck in thick tossing falls. She was afraid. Of course she was afraid. He closed his eyes and he could feel it, vibrating through the air, humming up beneath the dirt that smeared his forearms and the dried blood crusting around his nails. He could feel her intake of breath, the shuddery layer of fear beneath her voice as she called for her mother, as she stepped further away from the light, as his trap snicked shut.

When he caught her it was fast, a slick sidestep around the door, his body slicing through her shocked realization faster than she could register. He could see it in those chocolate eyes, the stunned horror, the knowledge that she'd been tricked, shattering. And then he was on her, one arm smoothly shoving her against the wall as her fragile human body bent where he pushed, her broken-down doe eyes refusing to meet his.

"That was easier than I'd hoped," he told her, enjoying the way his words made her chest buzz against his, their bodies close, a mockery of intimacy. Her throat was warm against his arm, the whole of her warm, her hair so soft against the frail thin skin. Translucent. So delicate. It made him want to hurt her, to break her, to leave some kind of mark.

She smelled, right here, like God.

He brought up the video camera, unsteady hand zooming in too close on her face. Those eyes.

"Hi, Bella," James said. "Edward, whenever you watch this, tell Alice I say hello."

"Screw you," is what the girl said then, and James laughed.

"Dangerous words, sweetheart..." He licked her chin, fast, tongue darting from the line of her jaw up to the corner of her mouth. She gasped, eyes shuddering closed, and the muscle in her throat tensed beautifully. He wanted her, he wanted the blood and the salt and the sweat, he wanted that gasp. "Look at this, Edward," he told the camera, holding it at an angle to catch the human's white cheek as he twisted his hand and drew a nail along her cheekbone. Blood beaded along the scratch, and Bella started to cry. He bent his head and kissed her cheek, tasting the blood and the tear and pressing into her with the delicious agony in that taste. The girl jerked her head away.

"Don't touch me!" she snarled, surprising him. The fire in her excited him, but there was anger, too. He narrowed his eyes, the camera mostly forgotten, and snarled back.

"I do what I want," he told her sharply, dropping the camera and sliding his free hand up her waist beneath her shirt, pinning her. "Edward might play around with acting human, but I won't." He kissed her on the mouth, forcing her head back, biting her lower lip just hard enough to make her yelp into his mouth. The sound pleased him, and he gentled the kiss, Edward Cullen the last thing on his mind. She was so soft, this human girlchild, so wickedly breakable. Her lips. Her waist.

It was instantaneous and shocking, the shift. He felt it before she did, enjoyed the surge of smug triumph even before her eyes snapped open in stunned horror.

When she yanked her head away, slamming it against the wall, he let her. A small victory, in exchange for a much greater one.

"Liked that, did you?" he asked her, inhaling the new mix of smells washing over him. Fear, fury... and lust. He couldn't smell himself, but the reflection in her wide dark eyes was enough.

"Go to hell!" He laughed at her, at Bella Swan, and shook his head.

"Oh, this is even better than I thought it could be. This is perfect." Big brown eyes squeezed shut, chest heaving against his. She wouldn't say more. She wouldn't give him more. Well, then, he would makeher give him more.

He kissed her again, cold mouth almost too rough, delighted with this change of plans, delighted with the wildness, with his wildness. There was something about a human, it was true. Something about that fluttering angry heat, the way their heartbeats sped up and jittered about beneath all that thin skin... The girl had stopped fighting now, helpless, not quite kissing back but not quite resisting the urge. The knowledge that she hated him, feared him, didn't understand any of this, and he'd won her just the same-- was more powerful than he'd expected. More enticing... intriguing, even.

As he pulled away for a second time and let her catch her breath, breath that he hadn't needed for decades, James had a whole new plan circling behind his hunger-blackened eyes.

When he picked her up, arms wrapping around her legs and torso tightly enough that no amount of struggling would break his grip, she let out a sob. When he kicked the video camera out of his way and flickered out of the studio, moving nearly too fast for a human to see, she squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face against his chest in a move that was clearly reluctant, and just as clearly necessary. And when he whispered to her, low and dark and smiling, about the new future he had planned, she let her shuddering living pulse answer him.

NEXT:

...the suffocating pressure on my throat and the thick agony of my tongue choking on whatever plea I might have come up with. His eyes, his red eyes, darkening to a roiling sort of storm-black, dropped to my lip. Blood, I remembered with a hysterical thrill, blood on my lip, salt, bitten lip...